When a small boy in a wherry, on whom had devolved the arduous task of rowing Johnson and his biographer across the Thames, said he would give all he had to know about the Argonauts, the Doctor was much pleased, and gave him, or got Boswell to give him, a double fare. He was ever an advocate of the spread of knowledge amongst all classes and both sexes. His devotion to letters has received its fitting reward, the love and respect of all 'lettered hearts.' Considering him a little more in detail, we find it plain that he was a poet of no mean order. His resonant lines, informed as they often are with the force of their author's character--his strong sense, his fortitude, his gloom--take possession of the memory, and suffuse themselves through one's entire system of thought. A poet spouting his own verses is usually a figure to be avoided; but one could be content to be a hundred and thirty next birthday to have heard Johnson recite, in his full sonorous voice, and with his stately elocution, _The Vanity of Human Wishes_. When he came to the following lines, he usually broke down, and who can wonder?-- 'Proceed, illustrious youth, And virtue guard thee to the throne of truth! Yet should thy soul indulge the gen'rous heat Till captive science yields her last retreat; Should reason guide thee with her brightest ray, And pour on misty doubt resistless day; Should no false kindness lure to loose delight, Nor praise relax, nor difficulty fright; Should tempting novelty thy cell refrain, And sloth effuse her opiate fumes in vain; Should beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart, Nor claim the triumph of a lettered heart; Should no disease thy torpid veins invade, Nor melancholy's phantoms haunt thy shade; Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man revers'd for thee. Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause a while from letters to be wise; There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron and the gaol. See nations, slowly wise and meanly just, To buried merit raise the tardy bust. If dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end.' If this be not poetry, may the name perish! In another style, the stanzas on the young heir's majority have such great merit as to tempt one to say that the author of _The Jolly Beggars_, Robert Burns himself, might have written them. Here are four of them: 'Loosen'd from the minor's tether, Free to mortgage or to sell; Wild as wind and light as feather, Bid the sons of thrift farewell. 'Call the Betseys, Kates, and Jennies, All the names that banish care, Lavish of your grandsire's guineas, Show the spirit of an heir. 'Wealth, my lad, was made to wander, Let it wander as it will; Call the jockey, call the pander, Bid them come and take their fill.