[151] See post, Sept. 14, 1777.
[152] See ante, i. 116.
[153] The advancement had been very rapid. 'When Dr. Robertson's career commenced,' writes Dugald Stewart in his Life of that historian (p. 157), 'the trade of authorship was unknown in Scotland.' Smollet, in Humphry Clinker, published three years after this conversation, makes Mr. Bramble write (Letter of Aug. 8):—'Edinburgh is a hot-bed of genius. I have had the good fortune to be made acquainted with many authors of the first distinction; such as the two Humes [David Hume and John Home, whose names had the same pronunciation], Robertson, Smith, Wallace, Blair, Ferguson, Wilkie, &c.' To these might be added Smollett himself, Boswell, Reid, Beattie, Kames, Monboddo. Henry Mackenzie and Dr. Henry began to publish in 1771. Gibbon, writing to Robertson in 1779, says:—'I have often considered with some sort of envy the valuable society which you possess in so narrow a compass.' Stewart's Robertson, p. 363.
[154] See post, April 30, 1773, where Johnson owned that he had not read Hume. J.H. Burton (Life of Hume, ii. 129), after stating that 'Hume was the first to add to a mere narrative of events an enquiry into the progress of the people, &c.,' says:—'There seems to be no room for the supposition that he had borrowed the idea from Voltaire's Essai sur les Moeurs. Hume's own Political Discourses are as close an approach to this method of inquiry as the work of Voltaire; and if we look for such productions of other writers as may have led him into this train of thought, it would be more just to name Bacon and Montesquieu.'
[155] See post, May 8 and 13, 1778.
[156] See post, April 30, 1773, April 29, 1778, and Oct. 10, 1779.
[157] An Essay on the Future Life of Brutes. By Richard Dean, Curate of Middleton, Manchester, 1767. The 'part of the Scriptures' on which the author chiefly relies is the Epistle to the Romans, viii. 19-23. He also finds support for his belief in 'those passages in Isaiah where the prophet speaks of new Heavens, and a new Earth, of the Lion as eating straw like the Ox, &c.' Vol. ii. pp. x, 4.
[158] The words that Addison's Cato uses as he lays his hand on his sword. Act v. sc. 1.
[159] I should think it impossible not to wonder at the variety of Johnson's reading, however desultory it may have been. Who could have imagined that the High Church of England-man would be so prompt in quoting Maupertuis, who, I am sorry to think, stands in the list of those unfortunate mistaken men, who call themselves esprits forts. I have, however, a high respect for that Philosopher whom the Great Frederick of Prussia loved and honoured, and addressed pathetically in one of his Poems,—
'Maupertuis, cher Maupertuis,
Que notre vie est peu de chose!'