none can I find but what was formed by pride, differently modified as different occasions shewed it; yet never was pride so purified as Johnson's, at once from meanness and from vanity. The mind of this man was indeed expanded beyond the common limits of human nature, and stored with such variety of knowledge, that I used to think it resembled a royal pleasure-ground, where every plant, of every name and nation, flourished in the full perfection of their powers, and where, though lofty woods and falling cataracts first caught the eye, and fixed the earliest attention of beholders, yet neither the trim parterre nor the pleasing shrubbery, nor even the antiquated ever-greens, were denied a place in some fit corner of the happy valley.

THE END.

POSTSCRIPT

1

Naples, Feb. 10, 1786.

SINCE the foregoing went to press, having seen a passage from Mr. Boswell's "Tour to the Hebrides," in which it is said, that I could not get through Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare, I do not delay a moment to declare, that, on the contrary, I have always commended it myself, and heard it commended by every one else; and few things would give me more concern than to be thought incapable of tasting, or unwilling to testify my opinion of its excellence.

1 See Boswell's note vol. v. (Sept. 23 1773).

APOPHTHEGMS,

SENTIMENTS,

OPINIONS,

AND

OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS.

Published in the eleventh volume, pp. 196-216, of Sir John Hawkins Collective Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

London, 1787.

DR.

APOPHTHEGMS, SENTIMENTS

OPINIONS, &c.

R. JOHNSON said he always mistrusted romantick virtue, as thinking it founded on no fixed principle.

He used to say, that where secrecy or mystery began, vice or roguery was not far off; and that he leads in general an1 ill life, who stands in fear of no man's observation.

When a friend of his who had not been very lucky in his first wife, married a second, he said-Alas! another instance of the triumph of hope over experience.

Of Sheridan's writings on Elocution, he said, they were a continual renovation of hope, and an unvaried succession of disappointments.

Of musick, he said,—It is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

He used to say, that no man read long together with a folio on his table-Books, said he, that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.— He would say, such books form the man of general and easy reading.

He was a great friend to books like the French Esprits d'un tel; for example, "Beauties of Watts," &c., &c., at which, said he, a man will often look and be tempted to go on, when he would have been frightened at books of a larger size and of a more erudite appearance.

Being once asked if he ever embellished a story-No, said he ; a story is to lead either to the knowledge of a fact or character, and is good for nothing if it be not strictly and literally true.

1 Query-no ill life?-Editor.