Samuel Johnson
The Royal Commission on MSS. unearthed at Spencer House, St. James’s, London, the following epitaph by Soame Jenyns on Dr. Johnson:
Here lies poor Johnson; reader have a care;
Tread lightly, lest you rouse a sleeping bear.
Religious, moral, generous, and humane
He was; but self-sufficient, rude, and vain;
Ill-bred, and overbearing in dispute,
A scholar and a Christian and a brute.
Would you know all his wisdom and his folly,
His actions, sayings, mirth and melancholy?
Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit,
Will tell you how he wrote and talked and coughed and spit.