quotes from memory. Juvenal has, 'torrens dicendi copia multis.'

82. 7. This essay was written near his forty-first birthday. On his twenty-seventh birthday he prayed: ‘Mayest thou, O God, enable me for Jesus Christ's sake to spend this in such a manner that I may receive comfort from it at the hour of death.' On New Year's day of his thirty-sixth year: 'Let me remember, my God, that as days and years pass over me, I approach nearer to the grave where there is no repentance.' In 1778 he said: 'I value myself upon this, that there is nothing of the old man in my conversation. I am now sixty-eight, and I have no more of it than at twenty-eight.'

85. 15. Dictates. Rambler 87 discusses The Reasons why Advice is generally ineffectual.

87. 19. Imperial tragedy. The epithet is suggested by Milton's 'gorgeous Tragedy, In sceptred pall,' Pens. 97, 8. Johnson uses it again in the Preface to Shakespeare; see supra, p. xliv.

88. 12. 'Parva si non cotidie fiant' (Pliny, Ep. 3. 1. 3). 88. 17. I have often thought. The same idea is expressed by Goldsmith in the opening of his Life of Nash.

89. 24. Account of Thuanus. Perhaps Johnson refers to an account in the Bibliotheca Politico-heraldica Selecta, by Charles Arndius, Rostock and Leipzig, 1707, which I have not seen.

89. 35. Sallust. 'Citus modo, modo tardus, incessus (Conspiracy of Catiline 15. 5).

90. 2. Melancthon. He so hated dilatoriness in business that semper momentum horæ juberet nominari,' and had slight opinion of a man who made an engagement for some time about, say, two or three o'clock (Camerarius, Vita Melanchthonis, Halle, 1777, p. 62, §17). This Life by Melancthon's friend contained many of the invisible. circumstances' so prized by Johnson.

90. 27. Tickell. See his Life of Addison usually prefixed to Addison's Works; also in Collins' Critical Essays and Literary Fragments, in An English Garner, p. 220.

90. 30. Life of Malherb. By Racan. 'Il ne falloit qu'une femme lascive pour pervertir le sang de Charlemagne

et de Saint Louys, et que tel qui se pensoit estre issu d'un de ces grands héros, estoit peut estre venu d'un valey de chambre ou d'un violon' (Œuvres de Racan, Bibliothèque Elzévirenne, 1. 270). The other opinion occurs ibid. 1. 265. Beggars in asking alms, said, 'Noble gentilhomme.'

91. 27. Hale. Cf. 75. 14, n. On entering into office Hale drew up a list of things necessary to be continually had in remembrance.' One was, ' in business capital, though my nature prompt me to pity, yet to consider that there is also a pity due to the country' (Burnet's Life and Death of Hale, p. 31).

91. 31. This paper seems to have been especially treasured by Boswell. He quotes at length from it in describing his intention at the opening of his Life of Johnson, and no doubt it served as a guide and stimulus to him throughout the years which he spent in gathering materials for his book.

92. 8. Important by their frequency. An allusion to Pliny; see 88. 12.

92. 12. Draught of life. Perhaps Johnson recalls Rochester's Letters from Artemisia, 'make the nauseous draught of life go down.'

92. 20. Balm of being. Allusion to Paradise Lost 11. 542-6:

And for the air of youth,

Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign

A melancholy damp of cold and dry,

To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The balm of life.

92. 22. Verdure and flowers; see London 45, n. and p. xli. 95. 19. Generally degraded. Here and throughout the essay there is implied a contempt for mere popularity and for the man who is merely popular. A man will please

upon the whole by negative qualities than by positive; by never offending, than by giving a great deal of delight' (Life 3. 149). In his Life of Waller he speaks of that 'dull good nature, such as excites rather tenderness than esteem, and such as, though always treated with kindness, is never honored or admired.' See 159. 29, where he says: 'I question whether some abatement of character is not ncessary to general acceptance.'

96. 15. Philomides, 'laughter-loving,' Homer's epithet of Aphrodite.

On Johnson as a good-natured man see p. xlvi.

96. 18. Character of authors. 'Bayle's Dictionary is a very useful work for those to consult. who love the biographical part of literature, which is what I love most' (Life 1. 425).

96. 22. Baillet (1649-1706). Johnson refers to his best known work, Jugements des Savants. The first of its seven volumes devotes more than half its space to a list of the prejudices interfering with just literary criticism. It discusses fourteen kinds of prejudice, with minute distinction of the many varieties of each kind.

97. 7. Dryden. How much in vain it is for you to strive against the stream of the people's inclination' (Essay of Dram. Poesy, Ker's Essays of Dryden 1. 90).

97. 25. Seneca. In his Ludus de Morte Claudii, §12. More exactly,

Una tantum parte audita,
Sæpe ne utra.

Claudius is satirized as having been able to see the right in a law-suit' at hearing only one side of the quarrel-often not either.'

97. 30. Langbaine, 1656-92, compiled A New Catalogue of English Plays, and An Account of the English Dramatic Poets. He was an omnivorous reader of plays, and once owned a collection of over one thousand. Johnson calls him the great detector of plagiarism' (Life of Otway).

Borrichius. Olaf Borch, 1626-90, librarian, and Professor of Philology, Chemistry, and Botany, at Copenhagen. His De Poetis is a critical and bibliographical review of Greek and Latin poets, but its most original part is a descriptive list of the mediaval and modern Latin poets of all European nations.

97. 31. Rapin, 1621-87, Jesuit critic and theologian. His Reflexions sur la Poétique includes a second part, Sur la Poétique en particulier, which implies the author's acquaintance with a vast number of writers-Latin, Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, and English.

98. 8. Dryden. Johnson's statement is illustrated by the titles of many of the Dissertations; see W. P. Ker's Essays of Dryden. Johnson says of Dryden's criticism, 'his occasional and particular positions were sometimes interested, sometimes negligent, and sometimes capricious' (Life of Dryden, Lives 1. 413).

98. 11. Addison is suspected. See p. 332. In Spectator 40 (April 16, 1711) he mentions the ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism' that playwrights are 'obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice.' Four acts of Cato had been written; see p. 322.

98. 33. Scaliger, Julius Cæsar (1484-1538), born at Padua; his famous treatise on poetry claimed the superiority of Vergil over Homer. This gave rise to a controversy which lasted a century, and in which Scaliger had many followers. Dryden preferred Vergil (Ker, Essays of Dryden 2. 128). Johnson and Burke once had a dispute on this question in which Johnson maintained the superiority of Homer (Life 5. 79, n. 2).

6

100. 23. Addison. A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and to communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation' (Spectator, No. 291). Later in the essay Addison says: 'As I intend in my next paper (really 297) to show the defects in Milton's Paradise Lost, I thought fit to premise these few particulars.'

101. This Essay should be compared with Addison's Vision of Mirza, Spectator No. 159.

101. 1. Seneca. • Tota vita nihil aliud quam ad mortem iter est' (Dial 11. 11. 2; cf. 6. 21, end). I find no passage exactly corresponding to Johnson's quotation.

101. 18. Ocean of life. 'On life's vast ocean diversely we sail' (Pope, Essay on Man, 2. 107). Johnson uses the same figure at 218. 8, and in Rasselas, chap. 12; cf. Idler, No. 2, first paragraph.

105. 35. Gaze not idly; touching upon what Johnson considered his own peculiar failing; cf. 122. 1 ff.; 393. 106. 4. An ancient poet. Lucretius. Johnson makes a

free paraphrase, doubtless from memory, of De Rerum Natura 5. 200-209. Munro translates: In the first place, of all the space which the vast reach of heaven covers, a portion greedy mountains and forests of wild beasts have occupied, rocks and wasteful pools take up, and the sea, which holds wide apart the coasts of different lands. Next of nearly two-thirds burning heat and the constant fall of frost rob mortals. What is left for tillage, even that nature by its power would overrun with thorns, unless the force of man made head against it, accustomed for the sake of a livelihood to groan beneath the strong hoe and to cut through the earth by pressing down the plough.'

108. 1. Proverbial oracles. Such as 'A little leak will sink a great ship'; 'Ready money will away'; 'Better spare at the brim than at the bottom.'

108. 14. Devote days and nights. See 363. 28, n.

109. 28. Erasmus, born at Rotterdam about 1466, lived in the following places: 1497, Oxford; 1499, Paris, then Orleans and St. Omer's; 1506, London, Cambridge, Turin, Bologna; 1508, Padua; 1509, Siena, London, Cambridge; 1513, Strasburg; 1514, Basel; 1517, Flanders, Basel, England; 1520, Basel; 1529, Freiburg; 1535, Basel. He was neither poor nor neglected, but was driven about by his nervous and restless temperament. Carlyle exaggerates the misery of Johnson much as Johnson does that of Erasmus and Statius (142. 15, n.).

110. 3. Knowledge of the world application to books. A necessary qualification of genius and scholarship; see p. xxxvi.

110. 5. Literary heroes. The term recurs at 128. 18; 215. 27.

110. 7. Praise of Folly. The lightest, but best known of his works. It was written at Sir Thomas More's house in England from notes which he made on the journey from (not to) Italy.

110. 20 ff. This jeu d'esprit, with its generalizations, its learned citations from writers ancient and modern, and its formal style, is a sly caricature of Johnson himself. He humorously indulges in the pedantry which he defines