Johnson and His Circle

These might at first seem to be the manuscript and published versions of the same work, but in fact these odes have different authors and sharply different intentions behind them. The first is indeed by Johnson, written on the Isle of Skye during his Hebridean tour. Although the tone is adoring, he clearly considered the poem sufficiently platonic to forward it to Hester Thrale in a letter addressed to her husband Henry. A sample, in a nineteenth century English translation of the Latin original:
Through paths that halt from stone to stone,
Amid the din of tongues unknown,
One image haunts my soul alone,
                        Thine, gentle Thrale!
The second poem is the work of Boswell, written just days after Henry Thrale's death, and is a biting satire on the notion of Johnson succeeding him as Hester's husband. (Boswell biographer Frank Brady called it a "combination of unusual wit and extraordinary tastelessness.") Boswell circulated the poem privately, but in 1788 published it in retribution for perceived slights against him in Hester Thrale's Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson. In an allusion to Henry Thrale's brewery, Boswell writes:
My dearest lady! view your slave,
Behold him as your very Scrub,
Eager to write as authour grave,
Or govern well the brewing tub.