See post, under May 8, 1781, for a like instance. In 1775, under a yew tree, he promised Temple to be sober. On Aug. 12, 1775, he wrote:--'My promise under the solemn yew I have observed wonderfully, having never infringed it till, the other day, a very jovial company of us dined at a tavern, and I unwarily exceeded my bottle of old Hock; and having once broke over the pale, I run wild, but I did not get drunk. I was, however, intoxicated, and very ill next day.' Letters of Boswell, p. 209. During his present visit to London he wrote:--'My promise under the solemn yew was not religiously kept, because a little wine hurried me on too much. The General [Paoli] has taken my word of honour that I shall not taste fermented liquor for a year, that I may recover sobriety. I have kept this promise now about three weeks. I was really growing a drunkard.' Ib p. 233. In 1778 he was for a short time a water drinker. Post, April 28, 1778. His intemperance grew upon him, and at last carried him off. On Dec. 4, 1790, he wrote to Malone:--'Courtenay took my word and honour that till March 1 my allowance of wine per diem should not exceed four good glasses at dinner, and a pint after it, and this I have kept, though I have dined with Jack Wilkes, &c. On March 8, 1791, he wrote:--'Your friendly admonition as to excess in wine has been often too applicable. As I am now free from my restriction to Courtenay, I shall be much upon my guard; for, to tell the truth, I did go too deep the day before yesterday.' Croker's Boswell, pp. 828, 829.
[1279] 'Mathematics are perhaps too much studied at our universities. This seems a science to which the meanest intellects are equal. I forget who it is that says, "All men might understand mathematics if they would."' Goldsmith's Present Stale of Polite Learning, ch. 13.
[1280] 'No, Sir,' he once said, 'people are not born with a particular genius for particular employments or studies, for it would be like saying that a man could see a great way east, but could not west. It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called by the generality of mankind a particular genius.' Miss Reynolds's Recollections. Croker's Boswell, p. 833:--'Perhaps this is Miss Reynolds's recollection of the following, in Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 15, 1773':--JOHNSON. 'I could as easily apply to law as to tragick poetry.' BOSWELL. 'Yet, Sir, you did apply to tragick poetry, not to law.' JOHNSON. 'Because, Sir, I had not money to study law. Sir, the man who has vigour may walk to the east just as well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head that way.' 'The true genius,' he wrote (Works, vii. 1), 'is a mind of large general powers, accidentally determined to some particular direction.' Reynolds held the same doctrine, having got it no doubt from Johnson. He held 'that the superiority attainable in any pursuit whatever does not originate in an innate propensity of the mind to that pursuit in particular, but depends on the general strength of the intellect, and on the intense and constant application of that strength to a specific purpose. He regarded ambition as the cause of eminence, but accident as pointing out the means.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. II. 'Porson insisted that all men are born with abilities nearly equal. "Any one," he would say, "might become quite as good a critic as I am, if he would only take the trouble to make himself so. I have made myself what I am by intense labour."' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 305. Hume maintained the opposite. 'This forenoon,' wrote Boswell on June 19, 1775, 'Mr. Hume came in. He did not say much. I only remember his remark, that characters depend more on original formation than on the way we are educated; "for," said he, "princes are educated uniformly, and yet how different are they! how different was James the Second from Charles the Second!"' Letters of Boswell, p. 205. Boswell recorded, two years earlier (Hebrides, Sept. 16):--'Dr. Johnson denied that any child was better than another, but by difference of instruction; though, in consequence of greater attention being paid to instruction by one child than another, and of a variety of imperceptible causes, such as instruction being counteracted by servants, a notion was conceived that, of two children equally well educated, one was naturally much worse than another.'
[1281] See ante, i. 348.
[1282] The grossness of naval men is shewn in Captain Mirvan, in Miss Burney's Evelina. In her Diary, i. 358, she records:--'The more I see of sea-captains the less reason I have to be ashamed of Captain Mirvan, for they have all so irresistible a propensity to wanton mischief--to roasting beaus and detesting old women, that I quite rejoice I shewed the book to no one ere printed, lest I should have been prevailed upon to soften his character.'
[1283] Baretti, in a MS. note in Piozzi Letters, i. 349, describes Gwyn as 'the Welsh architect that built the bridge at Oxford.' He built Magdalen Bridge.
[1284] 'Whence,' asks Goldsmith, 'has proceeded the vain magnificence of expensive architecture in our colleges? Is it that men study to more advantage in a palace than in a cell? One single performance of taste or genius confers more real honour on its parent university than all the labours of the chisel.' Present State of Polite Learning, ch.