sc. 1.
[766] Virgil, Eclogues, iii. III.
[767] 'The stormy Hebrides.' Milton's Lycidas, 1. 156.
[768] Boswell was thinking of the passage (p. xxi.) in which Hawkesworth tells how one of Captain Cook's ships was saved by the wind falling. 'If,' he writes, 'it was a natural event, providence is out of the question; at least we can with no more propriety say that providentially the wind ceased, than that providentially the sun rose in the morning. If it was not,' &c. According to Malone the attacks made on Hawkesworth in the newspapers for this passage 'affected him so much that from low spirits he was seized with a nervous fever, which on account of the high living he had indulged in had the more power on him; and he is supposed to have put an end to his life by intentionally taking an immoderate dose of opium.' Prior's Malone, p. 441. Mme. D'Arblay says that these attacks shortened his life. Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 278. He died on Nov. 17 of this year. See ante, i. 252, and ii. 247.
[769] 'After having been detained by storms many days at Sky we left it, as we thought, with a fair wind; but a violent gust, which Bos had a great mind to call a tempest, forced us into Col.' Piozzi Letters, i. 167. 'The wind blew against us in a short time with such violence, that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest... The master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties might, perhaps, have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr. Maclean of Col... piloted us safe into his own harbour.' Johnson's Works, ix. 117. Sir Walter Scott says, 'Their risque, in a sea full of islands, was very considerable. Indeed, the whole expedition was highly perilous, considering the season of the year, the precarious chance of getting sea-worthy boats, and the ignorance of the Hebrideans, who, notwithstanding the opportunities, I may say the necessities, of their situation, are very careless and unskilful sailors.' Croker's Boswell, p. 362.
[770] For as the tempest drives, I shape my way. FRANCIS. [Horace, Epistles, i. 1. 15.] BOSWELL.
[771]
'Imberbus juvenis, tandem custode remoto, Gaudet equis canibusque, et aprici gramine campi.' 'The youth, whose will no froward tutor bounds, Joys in the sunny field, his horse and hounds.'
FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. 1. 161.
[772] Henry VI, act i. sc. 2.
[773] See ante, i. 468, and iii. 306.
[774] Johnson describes him as 'a gentleman who has lived some time in the East Indies, but, having dethroned no nabob, is not too rich to settle in his own country.' Johnson's Works, ix. 117.
[775] This curious exhibition may perhaps remind some of my readers of the ludicrous lines, made, during Sir Robert Walpole's administration, on Mr. George (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, though the figures of the two personages must be allowed to be very different:--
'But who is this astride the pony; So long, so lean, so lank, so bony? Dat be de great orator, Littletony.'
BOSWELL.
These lines were beneath a caricature called The Motion, described by Horace Walpole in his letter of March 25, 1741, and said by Mr. Cunningham to be 'the earliest good political caricature that we possess.' Walpole's Letters, i. 66. Mr. Croker says that 'the exact words are:--
bony? O he be de great orator Little-Tony.'
[776] See ante, ii. 213.
[777] In 1673 Burnet, who was then Professor of Theology in Glasgow, dedicated to Lauderdale A Vindication of the Authority, &c., of the Church and State of Scotland. In it he writes of the Duke's 'noble character, and more lasting and inward characters of his princely mind.'
[778] See ante, i. 450.
[779] See ante, p. 250.
[780] 'Others have considered infinite space as the receptacle, or rather the habitation of the Almighty; but the noblest and most exalted way of considering this infinite space, is that of Sir Isaac Newton, who calls it the sensorium of the Godhead. Brutes and men have their sensoriola, or little sensoriums, by which they apprehend the presence, and perceive the actions, of a few objects that lie contiguous to them. Their knowledge and observation turn within a very narrow circle. But as God Almighty cannot but perceive and know everything in which he resides, infinite space gives room to infinite knowledge, and is, as it were, an organ to Omniscience.' Addison, The Spectator, No. 565.
[781] 'Le celebre philosophe Leibnitz ... attaqua ces expressions du philosophe anglais, dans une lettre qu'il ecrivit en 1715 a la feue reine d'Angleterre, epouse de George II. Cette princesse, digne d'etre en commerce avec Leibnitz et Newton, engagea une dispute reglee par lettres entre les deux parties. Mais Newton, ennemi de toute dispute et avare de son temps, laissa le docteur Clarke, son disciple en physique, et pour le moins son egal en metaphysique, entrer pour lui dans la lice. La dispute roula sur presque toutes les idees metaphysiques de Newton, et c'est peut-etre le plus beau monument que nous ayons des combats litteraires.' Voltaire's Works, ed.