There every bush with nature's music rings,
There every breeze bears health upon its wings.

Johnson had not yet learnt the value of perfect sincerity even in
poetry. But it must also be admitted that London, as seen by the poor
drudge from a Grub Street garret, probably presented a prospect gloomy
enough to make even Johnson long at times for rural solitude. The poem
reflects, too, the ordinary talk of the heterogeneous band of patriots,
Jacobites, and disappointed Whigs, who were beginning to gather enough
strength to threaten Walpole's long tenure of power. Many references to
contemporary politics illustrate Johnson's sympathy with the inhabitants
of the contemporary Cave of Adullam.

This poem, as already stated, attracted Pope's notice, who made a
curious note on a scrap of paper sent with it to a friend. Johnson is
described as "a man afflicted with an infirmity of the convulsive kind,
that attacks him sometimes so as to make him a sad spectacle." This
seems to have been the chief information obtained by Pope about the
anonymous author, of whom he had said, on first reading the poem, this
man will soon be _déterré_. _London_ made a certain noise; it reached a
second edition in a week, and attracted various patrons, among others,
General Oglethorpe, celebrated by Pope, and through a long life the warm
friend of Johnson. One line, however, in the poem printed in capital
letters, gives the moral which was doubtless most deeply felt by the
author, and which did not lose its meaning in the years to come. This
mournful truth, he says,--

Is everywhere confess'd,
Slow rises worth by poverty depress'd.