139), writing of gratitude and resentment, says:--'Though there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will never be wanting multitudes that will indulge an easy vice.'
[637] Aul. Gellius, lib. v. c. xiv. BOSWELL.
[638] 'The difficulties in princes' business are many and great; but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind. For it is common with princes, saith Tacitus, to will contradictories. Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, et inter se contrariae. For it is the solecism of power to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean.' Bacon's Essays, No. xix.
[639] Yet Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 30:--'I am now no longer pleased with the delay; you can hear from me but seldom, and I cannot at all hear from you. It comes into my mind that some evil may happen.' Piozzi Letters, i. 148. On Oct. 15 he wrote to Mr. Thrale:--'Having for many weeks had no letter, my longings are very great to be informed how all things are at home, as you and mistress allow me to call it.... I beg to have my thoughts set at rest by a letter from you or my mistress.' Ib. p. 166. See ante, iii. 4.
[640] Sir Walter Scott thus describes Dunvegan in 1814:--'The whole castle occupies a precipitous mass of rock overhanging the lake, divided by two or three islands in that place, which form a snug little harbour under the walls. There is a court-yard looking out upon the sea, protected by a battery, at least a succession of embrasures, for only two guns are pointed, and these unfit for service. The ancient entrance rose up a flight of steps cut in the rock, and passed into this court-yard through a portal, but this is now demolished. You land under the castle, and walking round find yourself in front of it. This was originally inaccessible, for a brook coming down on the one side, a chasm of the rocks on the other, and a ditch in front, made it impervious. But the late Macleod built a bridge over the stream, and the present laird is executing an entrance suitable to the character of this remarkable fortalice, by making a portal between two advanced towers, and an outer court, from which he proposes to throw a draw-bridge over to the high rock in front of the castle.' Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iv. 303.
[641]
'Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube; Quae dat Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.'
[642] Johnson says of this castle:--'It is so nearly entire, that it might have easily been made habitable, were there not an ominous tradition in the family, that the owner shall not long outlive the reparation. The grandfather of the present laird, in defiance of prediction, began the work, but desisted in a little time, and applied his money to worse uses.' Works, ix. 64.
[643] Macaulay (Essays, ed. 1843, i. 365) ends a lively piece of criticism on Mr. Croker by saying:--'It requires no Bentley or Casaubon to perceive that Philarchus is merely a false spelling for Phylarchus, the chief of a tribe.'
[644] See ante, i. 180.
[645] Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1814:--'The monument is now nearly ruinous, and the inscription has fallen down.' Lockhart's Scott, iv. 308.
[646] 'Wheel carriages they have none, but make a frame of timber, which is drawn by one horse, with the two points behind pressing on the ground. On this they sometimes drag home their sheaves, but often convey them home in a kind of open pannier, or frame of sticks, upon the horse's back.' Johnson's Works, ix. 76. 'The young Laird of Col has attempted what no islander perhaps ever thought on. He has begun a road capable of a wheel-carriage. He has carried it about a mile.' Ib. p. 128.
[647] Captain Phipps had sailed in May of this year, and in the neighbourhood of Spitzbergen had reached the latitude of more than 80 deg.. He returned to England in the end of September. Gent. Mag. 1774, p. 420.
[648] Aeneid, vi. II.
[649] 'In the afternoon, an interval of calm sunshine courted us out to see a cave on the shore, famous for its echo. When we went into the boat, one of our companions was asked in Erse by the boatmen, who they were that came with him. He gave us characters, I suppose to our advantage, and was asked, in the spirit of the Highlands, whether I could recite a long series of ancestors. The boatmen said, as I perceived afterwards, that they heard the cry of an English ghost. This, Boswell says, disturbed him.... There was no echo; such is the fidelity of report.' Piozzi Letters, i. 156.
[650] 'Law or low signifies a hill: ex. gr. Wardlaw, guard hill, Houndslow, the dog's hill.' Blackie's Etymological Geography, p. 103.
[651] Pepys often mentions them. At first he praises them highly, but of one of the later ones--Tryphon--he writes:--'The play, though admirable, yet no pleasure almost in it, because just the very same design, and words, and sense, and plot, as every one of his plays have, any one of which would be held admirable, whereas so many of the same design and fancy do but dull one another.' Pepys's Diary, ed. 1851, v.