[1337] 'Dr. Johnson said that he had been told by an acquaintance of Sir Isaac Newton, that in early life he started as a clamorous infidel.' Seward's Anecdotes, ii. 324. In Brewster's Life of Newton I find no mention of early infidelity. On the contrary, Newton had been described as one who 'had been a searcher of the Scriptures from his youth' (ii. 314). Brewster says that 'some foreign writers have endeavoured to shew that his theological writings were composed at a late period of life, when his mind was in its dotage.' It was not so, however. Ib. p. 315.
[1338] I fully intended to have followed advice of such weight; but having staid much longer both in Germany and Italy than I proposed to do, and having also visited Corsica, I found that I had exceeded the time allowed me by my father, and hastened to France in my way homewards. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 410.
[1339]
'Has heaven reserved, in pity to the poor,
No pathless waste, or undiscovered shore?
No secret island in the boundless main?
No peaceful desert, yet unclaimed by Spain?'
Johnson looked upon the discovery of America as a misfortune to mankind. In Taxation no Tyranny (Works, vi. 233) he says that 'no part of the world has yet had reason to rejoice that Columbus found at last reception and employment. In the same year, in a year hitherto disastrous to mankind, by the Portuguese was discovered the passage of the Indies, and by the Spaniards the coast of America.' On March 4, 1773, he wrote (Croker's Boswell, p. 248):—'I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.' See ante, p. 308, note 2, and post, March 21, 1775, and under Dec. 24, 1783.
[1340] See ante, p. 394, note 2.
[1341] Letters written from Leverpoole, Chester, Corke, &c., by Samuel Derrick, 1767.
[1342] _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3rd ed. p. 104 [Aug. 27, 1773]. BOSWELL.
[1343] Ibid. p. 142 [242, Sept. 22, 1773]. BOSWELL. Johnson added:—'but it was nothing.' Derrick, in 1760, published Dryden's Misc. Works, with an Account of his Life.
[1344] He published a biographical work, containing an account of eminent writers, in three vols. 8vo. BOSWELL.