1860, iii. 138), describes 'Miss Bertram's solicitude to soothe and accommodate her parent.' See ante, iv. 39, note 1, for 'accommodated the ladies.' To sum up, we may say with Justice Shallow:--'Accommodated! it comes of accommodo; very good; a good phrase.' 2 Henry IV, act iii. sc. 2.
[841] 'Louis Moreri, ne en Provence, en 1643. On ne s'attendait pas que l'auteur du Pays d'amour, et le traducteur de Rodriguez, entreprit dans sa jeunesse le premier dictionnaire de faits qu'on eut encore vu. Ce grand travail lui couta la vie... Mort en 1680.' Voltaire's Works, ed. 1819, xvii. 133.
[842] Johnson looked upon Ana as an English word, for he gives it in his Dictionary.
[843] I take leave to enter my strongest protest against this judgement. Bossuet I hold to be one of the first luminaries of religion and literature. If there are who do not read him, it is full time they should begin. BOSWELL.
[844]
Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell; And pale diseases, and repining age; Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage; Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep, Forms terrible to view their sentry keep.
Dryden, Aeneid, vi. 273. BOSWELL. Voltaire, in his Essay Sur les inconveniens attaches a la Litterature (Works, xliii. 173), says:--'Enfin, apres un an de refus et de negociations, votre ouvrage s'imprime; c'est alors qu'il faut ou assoupir les Cerberes de la litterature ou les faire aboyer en votre faveur.' He therefore carries on the resemblance one step further,--
'Cerberus haec ingens latratu regna trifauci Personat.' Aeneid, vi. 417.
[845] It was in 1763 that Boswell made Johnson's acquaintance. Ante, i. 391.
[846] It is no small satisfaction to me to reflect, that Dr. Johnson read this, and, after being apprized of my intention, communicated to me, at subsequent periods, many particulars of his life, which probably could not otherwise have been preserved. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 26.
[847] Though Mull is, as Johnson says, the third island of the Hebrides in extent, there was no post there. Piozzi Letters, i. 170.
[848] This observation is very just. The time for the Hebrides was too late by a month or six weeks. I have heard those who remembered their tour express surprise they were not drowned. WALTER SCOTT.
[849] The Charmer, a Collection of Songs Scotch and English. Edinburgh, 1749.
[850] By Thomas Willis, M.D. It was published in 1672. 'In this work he maintains that the soul of brutes is like the vital principle in man, that it is corporeal in its nature and perishes with the body. Although the book was dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury, his orthodoxy, a matter that Willis regarded much, was called in question.' Knight's Eng. Cyclo. vi. 741. Burnet speaks of him as 'Willis, the great physician.' History of his Own Time, ed. 1818, i. 254. See Wood's Athenae, iii. 1048.
[851] See ante, ii. 409 and iii. 242, where he said:--'Had I learnt to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.'
[852] Ante, p. 277.
[853] Ante, p. 181.
[854] Mr. Langton thinks this must have been the hasty expression of a splenetick moment, as he has heard Dr. Johnson speak of Mr. Spence's judgment in criticism with so high a degree of respect, as to shew that this was not his settled opinion of him. Let me add that, in the preface to the Preceptor, he recommends Spence's Essay on Papers Odyssey, and that his admirable Lives of the English Poets are much enriched by Spence's Anecdotes of Pope. BOSWELL. For the Preceptor see ante, i. 192, and Johnson's Works, v. 240. Johnson, in his Life of Pope (ib. viii. 274), speaks of Spence as 'a man whose learning was not very great, and whose mind was not very powerful. His criticism, however, was commonly just; what he thought he thought rightly; and his remarks were recommended by his coolness and candour.' See ante, iv. 9, 63.
[855] 'She was the only interpreter of Erse poetry that I could ever find.' Johnson's Works, ix. 134. See ante, p. 241.
[856] 'After a journey difficult and tedious, over rocks naked and valleys untracked, through a country of barrenness and solitude, we came, almost in the dark, to the sea-side, weary and dejected, having met with nothing but waters falling from the mountains that could raise any image of delight.' Piozzi Letters, i. 170. 'It is natural, in traversing this gloom of desolation, to inquire, whether something may not be done to give nature a more cheerful face.' Johnson's Works, ix. 136.
[857] Ante, p. 19.
[858] See ante, i. 521.
[859] See ante, p. 212.
[860] Sir William Blackstone says, in his Commentaries, that 'he cannot find that ever this custom prevailed in England;' and therefore he is of opinion that it could not have given rise to Borough-English. BOSWELL. 'I cannot learn that ever this custom prevailed in England, though it certainly did in Scotland (under the name of mercketa or marcheta), till abolished by Malcolm III.' Commentaries, ed. 1778, ii.