[554] Tacitus's Agricola, ch. xii, was no doubt quoted in reference to the shortness of the northern winter day.
[555] It is remarkable, that Lord Monboddo, whom, on account of his resembling Dr. Johnson in some particulars, Foote called an Elzevir edition of him, has, by coincidence, made the very same remark. Origin and Progress of Language, vol. iii. 2nd ed. p. 219. BOSWELL. See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, note.
[556] On Saturday night Johnson recorded:—'I resolved last Easter to read within the year the whole Bible, a very great part of which I had never looked upon. I read the Greek Testament without construing, and this day concluded the Apocalypse…. Easter Day. After twelve at night. The day is now begun on which I hope to begin a new course, [Greek: hosper aph husplaeggon], [as if from the starting-place.]
My hopes are from this time—
To rise early,
To waste less time,
To appropriate something to charity.'
A week later he recorded:—'It is a comfort to me that at last, in my sixty-third year, I have attained to know even thus hastily, confusedly, and imperfectly, what my Bible contains. I have never yet read the Apocrypha. I have sometimes looked into the Maccabees, and read a chapter containing the question, Which is the strongest? I think, in Esdras' [I Esdras, ch. iii. v. 10]. Pr. and Med. pp. 112-118.
[557] Pr. and Med. p. iii. BOSWELL.
[558] 'Perfect through sufferings.' Hebrews, ii. 10.
[559] 'I was always so incapable of learning mathematics,' wrote Horace Walpole (Letters, ix. 467), 'that I could not even get by heart the multiplication table, as blind Professor Sanderson honestly told me, above three-score years ago, when I went to his lectures at Cambridge. After the first fortnight he said to me, "Young man, it would be cheating you to take your money; for you never can learn what I am trying to teach you." I was exceedingly mortified, and cried; for, being a Prime Minister's son, I had firmly believed all the flattery with which I had been assured that my parts were capable of anything.'
[560] Reynolds said:—'Out of the great number of critics in this metropolis who all pretend to knowledge in pictures, the greater part must be mere pretenders only. Taste does not come by chance; it is a long and laborious task to acquire it.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 264.
[561] 'Jemmy Boswell,' wrote John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon), 'called upon me, desiring to know what would be my definition of taste. I told him I must decline defining it, because I knew he would publish it. He continued his importunities in frequent calls, and in one complained much that I would not give him it, as he had that morning got Henry Dundas's, Sir A. Macdonald's, and J. Anstruther's definitions. "Well, then," I said, "Boswell, we must have an end of this. Taste, according to my definition, is the judgment which Dundas, Macdonald, Anstruther, and you manifested when you determined to quit Scotland and to come into the south. You may publish this if you please."' Twiss's Eldon, i. 303. See post, April 10, 1778, note for Lord Eldon.