“The
glowworm in the garden made complaint
that
the candle in the palace window shone
more
brilliantly that evening than his own
light which was faint.
“He
glimmered in the darkness and in doubt,
but
a companion glowworm said, `Just wait!
A
candle that can burn at such a rate
must
soon go out.’
“Had
the glowworm only known that in the palace
there
were dozens of candles, hundreds, and, if required,
thousands
more from the chandler, he’d have expired,
burning with malice.
"Or
even, one to one, what was he to feel,
what
satisfaction, when the room went dark,
had
he suspected that, another spark
of flint on steel
“would
make it burn again? They’re all bad—
comparisons,
envy, pride, invidious vying.
There’s
a tale of a lightning bug that died, trying
to glow in plaid.”
We
have Boswell to thank for Slavitt’s recovery of the glowworm fable. He recounts
an April 27, 1773, visit with Johnson, who chides Oliver Goldsmith for his
habit of “attempting to shine in conversation.” Goldsmith’s “putting himself
against another,” he says, “is like a man laying a hundred to one who cannot
spare the hundred.” Boswell confides to the reader: “Johnson’s own superlative
powers of wit set him above any risk of such uneasiness.” Then Boswell tells of
the time Goldsmith bragged to Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds how easy it would
be to write a “good fable” because of “the simplicity which that kind of
composition requires.” Goldsmith notices Johnson “shaking his sides, and
laughing,” and objects: “Why, Dr. Johnson, this is not so easy as you seem to
think; for if you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.”
Boswell defends Johnson, saying that “though remarkable for his great variety
of composition, [he] never exercised his talents in fable.” He continues:
“I
have, however, found among his manuscript collections the following sketch of
one: `Glow worm lying in the garden saw a candle in a neighbouring palace,--
and complained of the littleness of his own light;-- another observed--wait a
little; soon dark,--have outlasted πολλ [many] of these glaring lights which
are only brighter as they haste to nothing.”
Slavitt
concludes his poem:
“And
yet the companion was right to speak so to his friend.
Nonsense
we can live with is better than truth.
Beauty,
wealth, talent, vigor, youth
all come to an end,
“and
if there is some palace conveniently by,
let
us imagine calamities, suffering, woe,
whatever
will help us outside, where we know we glow
faintly and die.”
Johnson
frequently noted the ubiquity of envy and ingratitude among men and women, in
particular among writers of delicate ego and indelicate manners, but never so
tersely as in The Idler #32: “All
envy would be extinguished, if it were universally known that there are none to
be envied.”
[In reference to glowworms, see this.]
[In reference to glowworms, see this.]
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