Spectator, No. 410. 'What signifies our wishing?' wrote Dr. Franklin. 'I have sung that wishing song a thousand times when I was young, and now find at fourscore that the three contraries have befallen me, being subject to the gout and the stone, and not being yet master of all my passions.' Franklin's Memoirs, iii. 185.
[66] He uses the same image in The Life of Milton (Works, vii. 104):--'He might still be a giant among the pigmies, the one-eyed monarch of the blind.' Cumberland (Memoirs, i. 39) says that Bentley, hearing it maintained that Barnes spoke Greek almost like his mother tongue, replied:--'Yes, I do believe that Barnes had as much Greek and understood it about as well as an Athenian blacksmith.' See ante, iii 284. A passage in Wooll's Life of Dr. Warton (i. 313) shews that Barnes attempted to prove that Homer and Solomon were one and the same man. But I. D'Israeli says that it was reported that Barnes, not having money enough to publish his edition of Homer, 'wrote a poem, the design of which is to prove that Solomon was the author of the Iliad, to interest his wife, who had some property, to lend her aid towards the publication of so divine a work.' Calamities of Authors, i. 250.
[67] 'The first time Suard saw Burke, who was at Reynolds's, Johnson touched him on the shoulder and said, "Le grand Burke."' Boswelliana, p. 299. See ante, ii. 450.
[68] Miss Hawkins (Memoirs, i. 279, 288) says that Langton told her father that he meant to give his six daughters such a knowledge of Greek, 'that while five of them employed themselves in feminine works, the sixth should read a Greek author for the general amusement.' She describes how 'he would get into the most fluent recitation of half a page of Greek, breaking off for fear of wearying, by saying, "and so it goes on," accompanying his words with a gentle wave of his hand.'
[69] See post, p. 42.
[70] See ante, i. 326.
[71] This assertion concerning Johnson's insensibility to the pathetick powers of Otway, is too round. I once asked him, whether he did not think Otway frequently tender: when he answered, 'Sir, he is all tenderness.' BURNEY. He describes Otway as 'one of the first names in the English drama.' Works, vii. 173.
[72] See ante, April 16, 1779.
[73] Johnson; it seems, took up this study. In July, 1773, he recorded that between Easter and Whitsuntide, he attempted to learn the Low Dutch language. 'My application,' he continues, 'was very slight, and my memory very fallacious, though whether more than in my earlier years, I am not very certain.' Pr. and Med. p. 129, and ante, ii. 263. On his death-bed, he said to Mr. Hoole:--'About two years since I feared that I had neglected God, and that then I had not a mind to give him; on which I set about to read Thomas a Kempis in Low Dutch, which I accomplished, and thence I judged that my mind was not impaired, Low Dutch having no affinity with any of the languages which I knew.' Croker's Boswell, p. 844. See ante, iii. 235.
[74] See post, under July 5, 1783.
[75] See ante, ii. 409, and iii. 197.
[76] One of Goldsmith's friends 'remembered his relating [about the year 1756] a strange Quixotic scheme he had in contemplation of going to decipher the inscriptions on the written mountains, though he was altogether ignorant of Arabic, or the language in which they might be supposed to be written.' Goldsmith's Misc. Works, ed. 1801, i. 40. Percy says that Goldsmith applied to the prime minister, Lord Bute, for a salary to enable him to execute 'the visionary project' mentioned in the text. 'To prepare the way, he drew up that ingenious essay on this subject which was first printed in the Ledger, and afterwards in his Citizen of the World [No. 107].' Ib. p. 65. Percy adds that the Earl of Northumberland, who was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, regretted 'that he had not been made acquainted with his plan; for he would have procured him a sufficient salary on the Irish establishment.' Goldsmith, in his review of Van Egmont's Travels in Asia, says:--'Could we see a man set out upon this journey [to Asia] not with an intent to consider rocks and rivers, but the manners, and the mechanic inventions, and the imperfect learning of the inhabitants; resolved to penetrate into countries as yet little known, and eager to pry into all their secrets, with an heart not terrified at trifling dangers; if there could be found a man who could unite this true courage with sound learning, from such a character we might hope much information.' Goldsmith's Works, ed. 1854, iv. 225. Johnson would have gone to Constantinople, as he himself said, had he received his pension twenty years earlier. Post, p. 27.
[77] It should be remembered, that this was said twenty-five or thirty years ago, [written in 1799,] when lace was very generally worn. MALONE. 'Greek and Latin,' said Porson, 'are only luxuries.' Rogers's Table Talk, p. 325.
[78] See ante, iii. 8.
[79] Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Cowley, says, that these are 'the only English verses which Ben