[460] See ante, April 14, 1775.
[461] See Hutton's History of Derby, a book which is deservedly esteemed for its information, accuracy, and good narrative. Indeed the age in which we live is eminently distinguished by topographical excellence. BOSWELL. According to Hutton the Italians at the beginning of the eighteenth century had 'the exclusive art of silk-throwing.' Lombe went to Italy, and by bribery got admittance into the works. Having mastered the secret he returned to England with two of the workmen. About the year 1717 he founded a great silk-mill at Derby. He died early, being poisoned, it was asserted, by an Italian woman who had been sent over to destroy him. In this mill, Hutton, as a child, 'had suffered intolerable severity.' Hutton's Derby, pp. 193-205.
[462] 'I have enlarged my notions,' recorded Johnson in his Journal of a Tour into Wales (Aug. 3, 1774), after he had seen some iron-works.
[463] Young. BOSWELL.
'Think nought a trifle, though it small appear.'
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles life.'
Love of Fame, Satire vi.
[464] 'Pray, Sir, don't leave us;' said Johnson to an upholder of Berkeley's philosophy, 'for we may perhaps forget to think of you, and then you will cease to exist.' Post, 1780, in Langton's Collection. See also ante, i. 471.
[465] Perhaps Boswell is thinking of Gray's lines at the close of the Progress of Poesy:—
'Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate.'
[466] Goldsmith wrote:—'In all Pope's letters, as well as in those of Swift, there runs a strain of pride, as if the world talked of nothing but themselves. "Alas," says he in one of them, "the day after I am dead the sun will shine as bright as the day before, and the world will be as merry as usual." Very strange, that neither an eclipse nor an earthquake should follow the loss of a poet!' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 85. Goldsmith refers, I suppose, to Pope's letter to Steele of July 15, 1712, where he writes:—'The morning after my exit the sun will rise as bright as ever, the flowers smell as sweet, the plants spring as green, the world will proceed in its old course, people will laugh as heartily, and marry as fast as they were used to do.' Elwin's Pope's Works, vi. 392. Gray's friend, Richard West, in some lines suggested by this letter, gives a pretty turn to Pope's thoughts where he says:—