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When, however, the row was over, the group had been joined by several of the elder boys, who appeared to appreciate Simon's poem, "An Adventure outside the Dormitory Door." It was called an "epick," and began thus. The reader must be contented with quite a short extract:
Thar's a hundred an' 'levcn verses into it, an' each one like a bullet outen a Winchester. It goes like this: "Thar's a word to be uttered to the rich man in his pride. "Mighty sperited epick, that! You recalls that English preacher sharp that comes squanderin' 'round the tavern yere for his health about a month ago? Shore! I knows you couldn't have overlooked no bet like that divine.
Hence Wit has no place in History, Philology, Philosophy, or in the greater Lyrick or Epick Poems; the two last of which containing either the Praises of Deities or Demi-Gods, or treating of lofty and illustrious Subjects; such as the Foundation, Rise, and Revolution of Kingdoms, Commotions of State, Battles, Triumphs, solemn Embassies, and various other important Actions of Princes and Heroes, are exalted above the Sphere of Wit and Humour.
The "epick" went on, of course, to unravel the threads of the "adventure," and to intimate pretty plainly who "the youth" referred to was. To any one not interested in the poet or his epic the production was a dull one, and the moral at the end was not quite clear even to the most intellectual. "Now I must say farewell; yet stay, methinks How many many youths do sit on brinks.
To be poor, in the epick language, is only not to command the wealth of nations, nor to have fleets and armies in pay. Vanity has perhaps contributed to this impropriety of style. He that wishes to become a philosopher at a cheap rate, easily gratifies his ambition by submitting to poverty when he does not feel it, and by boasting his contempt of riches when he has already more than he enjoys.
He begged of General Paoli to repeat one of the introductory stanzas of the first book of Tasso's Jerusalem, which he did, and then Johnson found fault with the simile of sweetening the edges of a cup for a child, being transferred from Lucretius into an epick poem . The General said he did not imagine Homer's poetry was so ancient as is supposed, because he ascribes to a Greek colony circumstances of refinement not found in Greece itself at a later period, when Thucydides wrote.
'He would undertake, he said, 'to write an epick poem on the story of Robin Hood, and half England, to whom the names and places he should mention in it are familiar, would believe and declare they had heard it from their earliest years. One of his objections to the authenticity of Fingal, during the conversation at Ulinish, is omitted in my Journal, but I perfectly recollect it.
JOHNSON. 'No, sir; it is only, one man has more mind than another. He may direct it differently; he may, by accident, see the success of one kind of study, and take a desire to excel in it. I am persuaded that, had Sir Isaac Newton applied to poetry, he would have made a very fine epick poem.
They had first attacked him on the score of his private morals. That he taxes Shadwell with it is only a seeming exception, as any careful reader will see. Preface to Fables. Dedication of the Georgics. Preface to Second Miscellany. Ibid. Memoirs of Wordsworth, Vol. A Discourse of Epick Poetry "If the public approve."
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