65.
[605] On Sept. 13, 1777, Johnson wrote:--'Boswell shrinks from the Baltick expedition, which, I think, is the best scheme in our power.' Ante, iii. 134, note 1.
[606] See ante, ii. 59, note 1.
[607] See ante, iii. 368.
[608] 'Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning ... nor is caution ever so necessary as with associates or opponents of feeble minds.' The Idler, No. 92. In a letter to Dr. Taylor Johnson says:--'To help the ignorant commonly requires much patience, for the ignorant are always trying to be cunning.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462. Churchill, in The Journey (Poems, ed. 1766, ii. 327), says:--
''Gainst fools be guarded; 'tis a certain rule, Wits are safe things, there's danger in a fool.'
[609] See ante, p. 173.
[610]
'For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read; For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it.'
The Dunciad, iv. 249.
[611] Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures; and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in life; what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.' The Idler, No. 45. 'Southey wrote thirty years later:--'I find daily more and more reason to wonder at the miserable ignorance of English historians, and to grieve with a sort of despondency at seeing how much that has been laid up among the stores of knowledge has been neglected and utterly forgotten.' Southey's Life, ii. 264. On another occasion he said of Robertson:--'To write his introduction to Charles V, without reading these Laws [the Laws of Alonso the Wise], is one of the thousand and one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue, as long as his volumes last. Ib. p. 318
[612]
'That eagle's fate and mine are one, Which on the shaft that made him die, Espy'd a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high.' Epistle to a Lady.
Anderson's Poets, v. 480.
[613] See ante, iii. 271.
[614] 'In England there may be reason for raising the rents (in a certain degree) where the value of lands is increased by accession of commerce, ...but here (contrary to all policy) the great men begin at the wrong end, with squeezing the bag, before they have helped the poor tenant to fill it; by the introduction of manufactures.' Pennant's Scotland, ed. 1772, p. 191.
[615] Boswell refers, not to a passage in Pennant, but to Johnson's admission that in his dispute with Monboddo, 'he might have taken the side of the savage, had anybody else taken the side of the shopkeeper.' Ante, p. 83.
[616] 'Boswell, with some of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family and reminded me that the 18th of September is my birthday. The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.' Piozzi Letters, i. 134. See ante, iii. 157.
[617] 'At Dunvegan I had tasted lotus, and was in danger of forgetting that I was ever to depart, till Mr. Boswell sagely reproached me with my sluggishness and softness.' Johnson's Works, ix. 67.
[618] Johnson wrote of the ministers:--'I saw not one in the islands whom I had reason to think either deficient in learning, or irregular in life; but found several with whom I could not converse without wishing, as my respect increased, that they had not been Presbyterians.' Ib. p. 102.
[619] See ante, p. 142.
[620] See ante, ii. 28.
[621]
'So horses they affirm to be Mere engines made by geometry, And were invented first from engines, As Indian Britons were from penguins.'
Hudibras, part i. canto 2, line 57. Z. Gray, in a note on these lines, quotes Selden's note on Drayton's Polyolbion:--'About the year 1570, Madoc, brother to David Ap Owen, Prince of Wales, made a sea-voyage to Florida; and by probability those names of Capo de Breton in Norimberg, and Penguin in part of the Northern America, for a white rock and a white-headed bird, according to the British, were relicts of this discovery.'
[622] Published in Edinburgh in 1763.
[623] See ante, ii. 76. 'Johnson used to say that in all family disputes the odds were in favour of the husband from his superior knowledge of life and manners.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 210.
[624] He wrote to Dr. Taylor:--' Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 342.
[625] As I have faithfully recorded so many minute particulars, I hope I shall be pardoned for inserting so flattering an encomium on what is now offered to the publick. BOSWELL.
[626] See ante, iv.