116 rest this verse.-V. 3. How are the words "plaintive," "artful," less," " busy," and "careless" used? III., IV., and V.--Point out the personifications and other figurative expressions in these several selections. CHAPTER XIV.-MISCELLANEOUS. I.-St. Philip Neri. St. Philip Neri, as he is called in English, was a wealthy Florentine who lived in the sixteenth century. Having sold all that he possessed and distributed the proceeds among the poor, he devoted himself to serving the sick in the hospitals and the pilgrims who flocked to Rome, and in instructing youth and children. He published letters, poems, and a work abounding in excellent advice to the young. After his death he was canonized by Pope Gregory XV. The English poet Byrom has put into verse the following incident which is narrated of him: St. Philip Neri, as old readings say, Met a young stranger in Rome's streets one day; To give young folks a sober turn of mind, St. P. N. Tell me, what brings you, gentle youth, to Rome? intend? Youth. To make myself a scholar, sir, I come. Youth. I may be made a bishop. St. P. N. What then? Why, then, for aught I know, Be it so, Why, cardinal's a high degree, And yet my lot it possibly may be. St. P. N. Suppose it should,-what then? Why, who can say But I've a chance of being pope one day? St. P. N. Well, having worn the mitre, and red hat, Youth. Nay, there is nothing farther, to be sure, As long as God shall please, then I must die. St. P. N. What! must you die, fond youth? and at the best But wish, and hope, and may be all the rest? Take my advice-whatever may betide, For that which must be, first of all provide; Then think of that which may be; and, indeed, When well prepared, who knows what may succeed? Who knows but you may then be, as you hope, Priest, canon, bishop, cardinal, and pope? II.-The Telegram. 1. Dead! did you say?-he! dead in his prime! [Some one reads]—“ By a sudden accident.” 2. Dead! It is not, it cannot, it must not be true! Let me read the dire words for myself, if I can; Relentless, hard, cold, they rise on my viewThey blind me!-How did you say that they ran? [Reads.]" He was mortally injured." 3. Dead!-Around me I hear the singing of birds And the breath of June roses come in at the pane; Nothing-nothing is changed by those terrible words : They cannot be true!-Let me see them again.— [Reads.]" And died yesterday." 4. Dead!-A letter but yesterday told of his love! Outstripped by this thunderbolt flung from above, 5. Oh, terrible Telegraph!-subtle and still! Darting thy lightnings with pitiless haste! No kind warning thunder-no storm-boding thrillBut one fierce deadly flash, and the heart lieth waste! [Reads.]—" Inform his friends." Sarah E. Henshaw. Verse 1.--Hor'o-lõge (hor'o-lõj), or hŏr'o-lõge, any machine for measuring time. CHAPTER XV.—SAMUEL JOHNSON.-1709–1784. I.-Biographical. 1. Dr. Johnson is the best-known character in English literature, because his biography is the best-known book of the kind in the language. Every detail of his matured habits, and every reminiscence of his former days, is minutely and adoringly told by James Boswell, of whom Lord Macaulay wrote, "Many of the greatest men who ever lived have written biography. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them all." The son of a Lichfield bookseller, young Johnson eagerly read the volumes on his father's shelves, and, having spent three years at Oxford, he left it without a degree, and entirely dependent on his own efforts for support. He became, like Dryden, a literary hack; but, unlike Dryden, his opinions do not vacillate, and his moral earnestness never fails. 2. Disgusted with unsuccessful attempts at school-teaching, Johnson went to London, sceking work from the publishers. For thirty years he was variously employed by them, and was often in dire poverty, having once fasted two days. To pay for his mother's funeral, in eight nights he wrote the philosophical romance called Rasselas. Of prodigious industry when urged by necessity, after being pensioned he indulged his natural indolence, lying in bed till afternoon, and receiving there the visits of eminent persons who came to hear him discourse. In personal appearance he was large and unwieldy; his face had been scarred by erysipelas, and he walked with a shamble, taking pains to cross the threshold with a particular foot advanced before the other. His well-known dress is thus described by Peter Pindar:: "Methinks I view his full, plain suit of brown, The large, gray, bushy wig, that graced his crown; And shirt that had no ruffles for his knuckles." 3. Johnson's mind was tinged with melancholy; poverty, ill health, and alternations of fasting and gormandizing making him, at times, irritable and overbearing among his nearest friends. But his piety, although gloomy, was sincere and devout; and his home was the asylum of penniless creatures. Mrs. Thrale, of whose house he was a frequent inmate, thus writes of him :-" "He loved the poor as I never yet saw any one else love them, with an earnest desire to make them happy." 4. Johnson was a poet, an essayist, a lexicographer, and a biographer. Though dictatorial in company and in the coffee-house, he was accepted, by the age in which he lived, as the master of criticism and the arbiter of style. Little indebted to society, he was a prejudiced conservative, a devout adherent of the established Church, a Tory, an enemy to American Independence, and a contemptuous foe of the French philosophers, because he would not have the foundations of authority disturbed. In the Rambler and the Idler he revived the form of composition which Steele and Addison had made popular in the Spectator and the Tatler. His dictionary is a monument of great industry and learning, and, "looking to its clearness of definition," says Carlyle, "its general solidity, honesty, insight, and successful method, it may be called the best of all dictionaries." 5. He wrote the lives of more than fifty poets, from Cowley to Akenside and Gray, which were intended by the booksellers to be mere biographical prefaces to new selections of British poetry; but his skill and enthusiasm raised these sketches to a far higher plane, and led "Christopher North" to say, "Johnson's mind was a furnace; it reduced everything to its clements; we have no truly great critical intellect since his time." While his Lives of the Poets is warped by political and religious prejudices, and is sadly destitute of delicate sensibility, it has great vigor of thought and freedom of style. Among the best of the sketches in this work is the comparison between Pope and Dryden. The following extract illustrates the author's insight and happiness of illustration, and furnishes a fine example of antithesis: II.-Parallel between Pope and Dryden. 1. Dryden knew more of man in his general nature, and Pope in his local manner. The notions of Dryden were formed by comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by minute attention. There is more dignity in the knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of Pope. |