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—yet 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 cough'd, and spit.