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In the evening I introduced to Mr. Johnson 1 two good friends of mine, Mr. William Nairne, advocate, and Mr. Hamilton of Sundrum, my neighbour in the country, both of whom supped with us. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Dr. Johnson displayed another of his heterodox opinions—a contempt of tragic acting. He said, the action of all players in tragedy is bad. It should be a man's study to repress those signs of emotion and passion, as they are called." He was of a directly contrary opinion to that of Fielding, in his "Tom Jones;" who makes Partridge say of Garrick, "Why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did." For, when I asked him, “Would not you, Sir, start as Mr. Garrick does, if you saw a ghost?" he answered, "I hope not. If I did, I should frighten the ghost."

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Monday, August 16th. -DR. WILLIAM ROBERTSON came to breakfast. We talked of Ogden on Prayer. Dr. Johnson said, "The same arguments which are used against God's hearing prayer, will serve against his rewarding good, and punishing evil. He has resolved, he has declared, in the former case as in the latter." He had last night looked into Lord Hailes's "Remarks on the History of Scotland." Dr. Robertson and I said, it was a pity Lord Hailes did not write greater things. His lordship had not then published his

Bristol, in January, 1741, the captain caused his brother to be forciby carried, and there barbarously murdered. Captain Goodere was, with two of his accomplices, executed for this crime in the April following. The circumstances of this extravagant case, and some other facts connnected with this family, lead to an opinion that Captain Goodere was insane; and some unhappy circumstances in Foote's life render it probable that he had not wholly escaped this hereditary irregularity of mind. The last baronet, who called himself Sir John Dinely, died in 1809, a poor Knight of Windsor -insane and in indigence. CROKER. Foote's first publication was a pamphlet in defence of his uncle's memory.WALTER SCOTT.

1 It may be observed, that I sometimes call my great friend Mr. Johnson, sometimes Dr. Johnson; though he had at this time a Doctor's degree from Trinity College, Dublin. The University of Oxford afterwards conferred it upon him by a diploma, in very honourable terms. It was some

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"Annals of Scotland." JoHNSON. member I was once on a visit at the house of a lady for whom I had a high respect. There was a good deal of company in the room. When they were gone, I said to this lady, What foolish talking have we had!'-'Yes,' said she, but while they talked, you said nothing.' I was struck with the reproof. How much better is the man who does any thing that is innocent, than he who does nothing! Besides, I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made. If a man is to wait till he weaves anecdotes into a system, we may be long in getting them, and get but few, in comparison of what we might get."

Dr. Robertson said, the notions of Eupham Macallan, a fanatic woman, of whom Lord Hailes gives a sketch, were still prevalent among some of the presbyterians; and therefore, it was right in Lord Hailes, a man of known piety, to undeceive them.

We walked out, that Dr. Johnson might see some of the things which we have to show at Edinburgh. We went to the Parliamenthouse, where the parliament of Scotland sat, and where the ordinary lords of session hold their courts, and to the new session-house adjoining to it, where our court of fifteen (the fourteen ordinaries, with the lord president at their head) sit as a court of review. We went to the advocate's library, of which Dr. Johnson took a cursory view; and then to what is called the Laigh (or under) Parliament-house, where the records of Scotland, which has an universal security by register, are deposited, till the great register office be finished. I was pleased to behold Dr. Samuel Johnson rolling about in this old magazine of antiquities. There was, by this time, a pretty numerous circle of us attending upon him. Somebody talked of happy moments for composition, and how a man can write at one time, and not at another. "Nay," said Dr. Johnson, "a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it."4

I here began to indulge old Scottish sentiments, and to express a warm regret, that, by

time before I could bring myself to call him Doctor; but, as he has been long known by that title, I shall give it to him in the rest of this Journal. BOSWELL. Johnson never, it seems, called himself Doctor. See antè, p. 168. — CROKER.

2 It was on this visit to the parliament-house, that Mr. Henry Erskine (brother of Lord Buchan and Lord Erskine), after being presented to Dr. Johnson by Mr. Boswell, and having made his bow, slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it was for the sight of his bear. WALTER SCOTT. This was the subject of a cotemporary caricature. WRIGHT.

3 This great Register Office is now one of the architectural beauties of Edinburgh.- CROKER.

4 This word is commonly used to signify sullenly, gloomily; and in that sense alone it appears in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. I suppose he meant by it, "with an obstinate resolution, similar to that of a sullen man."- - BOSWELL.

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our union with England, we were no more; our independent kingdom was lost. JOHNSON. "Sir, never talk of your independency, who could let your queen remain twenty years in captivity, and then be put to death, without even a pretence of justice, without your ever attempting to rescue her; and such a queen too! as every man of any gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for." Worthy MR. JAMES KERR, keeper of the records. "Half our nation was bribed by English money." JOHNSON. "Sir, that is no defence: that makes you worse." Good MR. BROWN, keeper of the advocates' library. "We had better say nothing about it." BoSWELL. "You would have been glad, however, to have had us last war, Sir, to fight your battles!" JOHNSON. "We should have had you for the same price, though there had been no union, as we might have had Swiss, or other troops. No, no, I shall agree to a separation. You have only to go home." Just as he had said this, I, to divert the subject, showed him the signed assurances of the three successive kings of the Hanover family, to maintain the presbyterian establishment in Scotland. "We'll give you that," said he, "into the bargain." 1

We next went to the great church of St. Giles, which has lost its original magnificence in the inside, by being divided into four places of presbyterian worship. "Come," said Dr. Johnson jocularly to Principal Robertson, "let me see what was once a church!" We entered that division which was formerly called the New Church, and of late the High Church, so well known by the eloquence of Dr. Hugh Blair. It is now very elegantly fitted up; but it was then shamefully dirty. Dr. Johnson said nothing at the time; but when we came to the great door of the royal infirmary, where, upon a board, was this inscription, "Clean your feet!" he turned about slyly, and said, "There is no occasion for putting this at the doors of your churches!"

We then conducted him down the Posthouse-stairs, Parliament-close, and made him look up from the Cowgate to the highest building in Edinburgh (from which he had just descended), being thirteen floors or stories from the ground upon the back elevation; the front wall being built upon the edge of the hill, and the back wall rising from the bottom of the hill several stories before it comes to a level with the front wall. We proceeded to the college, with the Principal at our head.

1 This seems to have been a touch of Jacobite jocularity, meaning that Johnson would be willing, in consideration of the dissolution of the Union, to allow the Hanover family to reign in Scotland, inferring, of course, that the Stuarts were to reign in England. - CROKER. Perhaps, Johnson meant that they, the Scotch, were welcome not only to stay at home, but to keep their kirk too-as inferior to the church as Scotland to England. - LOCKHART.

2 I have hitherto called him Dr. William Robertson, to distinguish him from Dr. James Robertson, who is soon to make his appearance; but Principal, from his being the head of our college, is his usual designation, and is shorter: so I shall use it hereafter.- BOSWELL.

Dr. Adam Fergusson, whose "Essay on the History of Civil Society" gives him a respectable place in the ranks of literature, was with us. As the college buildings are indeed very mean, the Principal said to Dr. Johnson, that he must give them the same epithet that a Jesuit did when showing a poor college abroad: "Ha miseriæ nostræ." Dr. Johnson was, however, much pleased with the library, and with the conversation of Dr. James Robertson, professor of Oriental languages, the librarian. We talked of Kennicot's edition of the Hebrew Bible, and hoped it would be quite faithful. JOHNSON. "Sir, I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit, as poisoning the sources of eternal truth."

I pointed out to him where there formerly stood an old wall enclosing part of the college, which I remember bulged out in a threatening manner, and of which there was a common tradition similar to that concerning Bacon's study at Oxford, that it would fall upon some very learned man. It had some time before this been taken down, that the street might be widened, and a more convenient wall built. Dr. Johnson, glad of an opportunity to have a pleasant hit at Scottish learning, said, "They have been afraid it never would fall."

We showed him the royal infirmary, for which, and for every other exertion of generous public spirit in his power, that noble-minded citizen of Edinburgh, George Drummond*, will be ever held in honourable remembrance. And we were too proud not to carry him to the abbey of Holyrood House, that beautiful piece of architecture, but, alas! that deserted mansion of royalty, which Hamilton of Bangour, in one of his elegant poems calls,

"A virtuous palace, where no monarch dwells." I was much entertained while Principal Robertson fluently harangued to Dr. Johnson, upon the spot, concerning scenes of his celebrated History of Scotland. We surveyed Duke of Hamilton, as keeper, in which our that part of the palace appropriated to the beautiful Queen Mary lived, and in which David Rizzio was murdered, and also the state rooms. Dr. Johnson was a great reciter of all sorts of things, serious or comical. I overheard him repeating here, in a kind of muttering tone, a line of the old ballad, “Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night."

"And ran him through the fair body!"5 We returned to my house, where there met

3 This lofty house was burnt down in 1824. The site is now occupied by Sir William Forbes's bank. - CHAMBERS. 4 This excellent magistrate died in 1766. Some years after his death, a bust of him, by Nollekens, was placed in the public hall of the hospital, with this inscription from the pen of Robertson:-" George Drummond, to whom this country is indebted for all the benefit which it derives from the royal infirmary."- BoswELL.

5 The stanza from which he took this line is "But then rose up all Edinburgh,

They rose up by thousands three;

A cowardly Scot came John behind,

And ran him through the fair body !"-BOSWELL.

ET. 64.

BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.

him, at dinner, the Duchess of Douglas', Sir Adolphus Oughton, Lord Chief Baron [Orde], Sir William Forbes, Principal Robertson, Mr. Cullen, advocate. Before dinner, he told us of a curious conversation between the famous George Faulkner and him. George said, that England had drained Ireland of fifty thousand pounds in specie, annually, for fifty years. "How so, Sir?" said Dr. Johnson: "you must have very great trade?"-"No trade." "No mines."-"From "Very rich mines?"whence, then, does all this money come?" "Come! why out of the blood and bowels of the poor people of Ireland!"

He seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift 2; for I once took the liberty to ask him, if Swift had personally offended him, and he told me, he had not. He said to-day, "Swift is clear, but he is shallow. In course humour he is inferior to Arbuthnot; in delicate humour he is inferior to Addison. So he is inferior to his contemporaries, without putting him against the whole world. I doubt if the Tale of a Tub' was his; it has so much more thinking, more knowledge, more power, more colour, than any of the works which are indisputably his. If it was his, I shall only he was impar sibi.”

say,

We gave him as good a dinner as we could. Our Scotch muir-fowl, or grouse, were then abundant, and quite in season; and, so far as wisdom and wit can be aided by administering agreeable sensations to the palate, my wife took care that our great guest should not be deficient.

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blasphemy to suppose evil spirits counteracting
'Why, Sir,
the Deity, and raising storms, for instance, to
destroy his creatures. JOHNSON.
if moral evil be consistent with the government
of the Deity, why may not physical evil be also
consistent with it? It is not more strange that
there should be evil spirits than evil men: evil
unembodied spirits, than evil embodied spirits.
And as to storms, we know there are such
things; and it is no worse that evil spirits
CROSBIE.
raise them than that they rise."
"But it is not credible that witches should
'Sir, I am not de-
have effected what they are said in stories to
have done." JOHNSON.
fending their credibility. I am only saying
that your arguments are not good, and will
not overturn the belief of witchcraft.
Fergusson said to me aside, 'He is right.') -
And then, Sir, you have all mankind, rude and
civilised, agreeing in the belief of the agency
of preternatural powers. You must take evi-
dence; you must consider that wise and great
men have condemned witches to die." CROSBIE.
"But an act of parliament put an end to
witchcraft."

66

(Dr.

JOHNSON. "No, Sir, witchcraft had ceased; and, therefore, an act of parliament was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many other things." Dr. Cullen, to keep up the gratification of mysterious disquisition, with the grave address for which he is remarkable in his companionable as in his professional hours, talked in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in Sir Adolphus Oughton, then our deputy their sleep. I am very sorry I have no note commander in chief, who was not only an ex- of this.5 We talked of the ouran-outang, and Dr. Johnson treated this cellent officer, but one of the most universal of Lord Monboddo's thinking that he might be scholars I ever knew, had learned the Erse taught to speak. with ridicule. Mr. Crosbie said that Lord language, and expressed his belief in the auDr. Johnson Monboddo believed the existence of every thenticity of Ossian's Poetry. took the opposite side of that perplexed ques- thing possible; in short, that all which is in tion, and I was afraid the dispute would have posse might be found in esse. JOHNSON. "But, run high between them. But Sir Adolphus, Sir, it is as possible that the ouran-outang does who had a very sweet temper, changed the dis- not speak, as that he speaks. However, I course, grew playful, laughed at Lord Mon- shall not contest the point. I should have boddo's notion of men having tails, and called thought it not possible to find a Monboddo; him a judge à posteriori, which amused Dr. yet he exists." I again mentioned the stage. JOHNSON. "The appearance of a player, with Johnson, and thus hostilities were prevented. At supper we had Dr. Cullen, his son the whom I have drunk tea, counteracts the imaadvocate, Dr. Adam Fergusson, and Mr. Cros-gination that he is the character he represents. Witchcraft was introduced. Nay, you know, nobody imagines that he is bie, advocate. Mr. Crosbie said he thought it the greatest the character he represents. They say, 'See

1 Margaret, daughter of James Douglas, Esq., of the Mains. "An old lady," writes Dr. Johnson, "who talks broad Scotch with a paralytic voice, and is scarce understood by her own countrymen."- Letters. - CROKER.

2 There probably was no opportunity for what could be in strictness called personal offence, as they had never met; but I suspect that the affair of the Dublin degree (antè, p. 37.) may have created this prejudice. But what could Johnson mean by calling Swiftshallow ?" If he be shallow, who, in his department of literature, is profound? Without admitting that Swift was "inferior in coarse humour to Arbuthnot" (of whose precise share in the works to which he is supposed to have contributed, we know little or nothing), it may be observed, that he who is

second to the greatest masters of different styles may be said to be the first on the whole. It is as certain that the Tale of a Tub was Swift's as that the Rambler was Johnson's. CROKER.

3 Lord Stowell remembered with pleasure the elegance and extent of Sir Adolphus Oughton's literature, and the suavity of his manners.- CROKER.

A question perplexed only by national prejudices, heightened, in a few cases, by individual obstinacy. See post, Sept. 23. 1773.-CROKER.

There is in the Life of Blacklock, in Anderson's Brit. Poets, an anecdote of Dr. Blacklock's somnambulism, which may very probably have been one of the topics on this occasion. CROKER.

T 3

Garrick! how he looks to-night! See how he'll clutch the dagger!' That is the buzz of the theatre."

2

Tuesday, Aug. 17. Sir William Forbes came to breakfast, and brought with him Dr. Blacklock, whom he introduced to Dr. Johnson, who received him with a most humane complacency; "Dear Dr. Blacklock, I am glad to see you!" Blacklock seemed to be much surprised when Dr. Johnson said, "it was easier to him to write poetry than to compose his Dictionary. His mind was less on the stretch in doing the one than the other. Besides, composing a dictionary requires books and a desk: you can make a poem walking in the fields, or lying in bed." Dr. Blacklock spoke of scepticism in morals and religion with apparent uneasiness, as if he wished for more certainty. Dr. Johnson, who had thought it all over, and whose vigorous understanding was fortified by much experience, thus encouraged the blind bard to apply to higher speculations what we all willingly submit to in common life in short, he gave him more familiarly the able and fair reasoning of Butler's Analogy: "Why, Sir, the greatest concern we have in this world, the choice of our profession, must be determined without demonstrative reasoning. Human life is not yet so well known, as that we can have it: and take the case of a man who is ill. I call two physicians; they differ in opinion. I am not to lie down, and die between them: I must do something." The conversation then turned on atheism; on that horrible book, Système de la Nature; and on the supposition of an eternal necessity without design, without a governing mind. JOHNSON. "If it were so, why has it ceased? Why don't we see men thus produced around us now? Why, at least, does it not keep pace, in some measure, with the progress of time? If it stops because there is now no need of it, then it is plain there is, and ever has been, an all-powerful intelligence. But stay! (said he, with one of his satiric laughs). Ha! ha! ha! I shall suppose Scotchmen made necessarily, and Englishmen by choice."

At dinner this day we had Sir Alexander Dick, whose amiable character and ingenious and cultivated mind are so generally known; (he was then on the verge of seventy, and is now (1785) eighty-one, with his faculties entire, his heart warm, and his temper gay) 3; Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes; Mr. Maclaurin, advocate; Dr. Gregory, who now

worthily fills his father's medical chair; and my uncle, Dr. Boswell. This was one of Dr. Johnson's best days. He was quite in his element. All was literature and taste, without any interruption. Lord Hailes, who is one of the best philologists in Great Britain, who has written papers in the World, and a variety of other works in prose and in verse, both Latin and English, pleased him highly. He told him he had discovered the Life of Cheynel, in the Student, to be his. JOHNSON. "No one else knows it." Dr. Johnson had before this dictated to me a law-paper upon a question purely in the law of Scotland, concerning vi cious intromission, that is to say, intermeddling with the effects of a deceased person, without a regular title; which formerly was understood to subject the intermeddler to payment of all the defunct's debts. The principle has of late been relaxed. Dr. Johnson's argument was for a renewal of its strictness. The paper was printed, with additions by me, and given into the court of session. Lord Hailes knew Dr. Johnson's part not to be mine, and pointed out exactly where it began and where it ended Dr. Johnson said, "It is much now that his lordship can distinguish so."

In Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes there is the following passage:

:

"The teeming mother, anxious for her race,

Begs, for each birth, the fortune of a face;
Yet Vane could tell what ills from beauty spring:
And Sedley cursed the charms which pleased a
king."

Lord Hailes told me he was mistaken in the

instances he had given of unfortunate fair ones; for neither Vane nor Sedley had a title to that description. His lordship has since been so obliging as to send me a note of this, for the communication of which I am sure my readers will thank me.

"The lines in the tenth Satire of Juvenal, according to my alteration, should run thus:

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1 There is hardly any operation of the intellect which requires nicer and deeper consideration than definition, A thousand men may write verses, for one who has the power of defining and discriminating the exact meaning of words and the principles of grammatical arrangement. — CROKER. 2 See his Letter on this subject in the Appendix.BOSWELL.

3 Sir A. Dick was born in 1703; died Nov. 10. 1785.WRIGHT.

4 See ante, p. 244., and Appendix.-C.

5 Mistress of Edward IV. BOSWELL.

6 Mistress of Louis XIV. -BOSWELL. 7 See antè, p. 60. — C.

Catherine Sedley, created Countess of Dorchester for life. Her father, Sir Charles, resenting the seduction of his daughter, joined in the Whig measures of the Revolution, and excused his revolt from James under an ironical profession of gratitude. "His Majesty," said he, "having done me the unlooked-for honour of making my daughter a countess, I cannot do less in return than endeavour to make his daughter a queen."- CROKER.

9 Lord Hailes was hypercritical. Vane was handsome, or,

Mr. Maclaurin's learning and talents enabled him to do his part very well in Dr. Johnson's company. He produced two epitaphs upon his father, the celebrated mathematician. One was in English, of which Dr. Johnson did not change one word. In the other, which was in Latin, he made several alterations. In place of the very words of Virgil, "Ubi luctus et pavor et plurima mortis imago," he wrote " Ubi luctus regnant et pavor." He introduced the word prorsus into the line " Mortalibus prorsus non absit solatium :" and after "Hujus enim scripta evolve," he added, "Mentemque tantarum rerum capacem corpori caduco superstitem crede;" which is quite applicable to Dr. Johnson himself.2

Mr. Murray, advocate, who married a niece of Lord Mansfield's, and is now one of the judges of Scotland, by the title of Lord Henderland, sat with us a part of the evening; but did not venture to say any thing that I remember, though he is certainly possessed of talents which would have enabled him to have shown himself to advantage if too great anxiety had not prevented him.

At supper we had Dr. Alexander Webster 3, who, though not learned, had such a knowledge of mankind, such a fund of information and entertainment, so clear a head, and such accommodating manners, that Dr. Johnson found him a very agreeable companion.

When Dr. Johnson and I were left by ourselves, I read to him my notes of the opinions

what is more to our purpose, appeared so to her royal lover; and Sedley, whatever others may have thought of her, had the "charms which pleased a king." So that Johnson's illustrations are morally just. His lordship's proposed substitution of a fabulous (or at least apocryphal) beauty like Jane Shore, whose story, even if true, was obsolete; or that of a foreigner, like Mlle. de la Valière, little known and less cared for amongst us, is not only tasteless but inaccurate; for Mlle. de la Valière's beauty was quite as much questioned by her contemporaries as Miss Sedley's. Bussy Rabutin was exiled for sneering, at Louis's admiration of her mouth, which he calls

un bec amoureux, Qui d'une oreille à l'autre va."

And Madame Du Plessis Bellièvre writes to Fouquet, “Mile. de la Vallière a fait la capable envers moi. Je l'ay encensée par sa beauté qui n'est pourtant pas grande." And finally, after Lord Hailes had clipped down the name into Vallière, his ear might have told him that it did not fit the metre. CROKER.

1 Mr. Maclaurin, advocate, son of the great mathematician, and afterwards a judge of session by the title of Lord Dreghorn. He wrote some indifferent English poems; but was a good Latin scholar, and a man of wit and accomplishment. His quotations from the classics were particularly apposite. In the famous case of Knight, which determined the right of a slave to freedom if he landed in Scotland, Maclaurin pleaded the cause of the negro. The counsel opposite was the celebrated Wight, an excellent lawyer, but of a very homely appearance, with heavy features, a blind eye, which projected from the socket, a swag belly, and a limp. To him Maclaurin applied the lines of Virgil➡

**Quamvis ille niger, quamvis tu candidus esses, O formose puer, nimium ne crede colori." Mr. Maclaurin wrote an essay against the Homeric tale of "Troy divine," I believe, for the sole purpose of introducing a happy motto,

"Non anni domuere decem, non mille carina." WALTER SCOTT.

• Mr. Maclaurin's epitaph, as engraved on a marble tombtone, in the Grayfriars churchyard, Edinburgh :

of our judges upon the questions of literary property. He did not like them; and said, "they make me think of your judges not with that respect which I should wish to do." To the argument of one of them, that there can be no property in blasphemy or nonsense, he answered, "then your rotten sheep are mine! By that rule, when a man's house falls into decay, he must lose it." I mentioned an argument of mine, that literary performances are not taxed. As Churchill says,

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No statesman yet has thought it worth his pains To tax our labours, or excise our brains;" and therefore they are not property. "Yet," said he, "we hang a man for stealing a horse, and horses are not taxed." Mr. Pitt has since put an end to that argument.

Wednesday, Aug. 18. On this day we set out from Edinburgh. We should gladly have had Mr. Scott to go with us, but he was obliged to return to England.

I have given a sketch of Dr. Johnson: my readers may wish to know a little of his fellowtraveller. Think, then, of a gentleman of ancient blood, the pride of which was his predominant passion. He was then in his thirty-third year, and had been about four years happily married. His inclination was to be a soldier, but his father, a respectable judge, had pressed him into the profession of the law. He had travelled a good deal, and seen many varieties of human life. He

Infra situs est
COLIN MACLAURIN,
Mathes. olim in Acad. Edin. Prof.
Electus ipso Newtono suadente.
H. L. P. F.
Non ut nomini paterno consulat,
Nam tali auxilio nil eget;
Sed ut in hoc infelici campo,
Ubi luctus regnant et pavor,
Mortalibus prorsus non absit solatium:
Hujus enim scripta evolve,
Mentemque tantarum rerum capacem

Corpori caduco superstitem crede. - BosWELL.

Johnson probably changed the very words of Virgil, as not thinking an exact quotation from a heathen poet quite appropriate to a Christian epitaph.-CROKER.

3 Dr. Webster was remarkable for the talent with which he at once supported his place in convivial society, and a high character as a leader of the strict and rigid presbyterian party in the church of Scotland. He was ever gay amid the gayest: when it once occurred to some one present to ask, what one of his elders would think, should he see his pastor in such a merry mood." Think!" replied the Doctor; "why he would not believe his own eyes."-WALTER

SCOTT.

Dr. Johnson's illustration is sophistical, and might have been retorted upon him; for if a man's sheep are so rotten as to render the meat unwholesome, or, if his house be so decayed as to threaten mischief to passengers, the law will confiscate the mutton and abate the house, without any regard to property, which the owner thus abuses. Moreover, Johnson should have discriminated between a criminal offence and a civil right. Blasphemy is a crime; would it not be in the highest degree absurd, that there should be a right of property in a crime, or that the law should be called upon to protect that which is illegal? If this be true in law, it is much more so in equity, as he who applies for the extraordinary assistance of a court of equity should have a right, consistent at least with equity and morals; and a late question (that as to the Cain of Lord Byron) was so decided, and upon that principle, by the greatest judge of modern times, Lord Eldon.- CROKER.

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