George Jeffreys’s Translation of a Latin Epigram on Casimire and Hosschius’s Elegy on Sarbiewski

Abstract

The “Poems of Doubtful Authorship” in modern editions of Samuel Johnson’s poetry include three Latin poems that were first associated with Johnson in 1856. This article reveals the weakness of this alleged “attribution” and discusses the arguments for and against Johnson’s authorship of each poem in turn. While certainty is impossible, it concludes that he possibly wrote the translation Ex cantico Solomonis but that Venus in Armour and The Logical Warehouse are unlikely to be his.