[551] Horace, Odes, ii. 14.
[552] I am informed by Mr. Langton, that a great many years ago he was present when this question was agitated between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke; and, to use Johnson's phrase, they 'talked their best;' Johnson for Homer, Burke for Virgil. It may well be supposed to have been one of the ablest and most brilliant contests that ever was exhibited. How much must we regret that it has not been preserved. BOSWELL. Johnson (Works, vii. 332), after saying that Dryden 'undertook perhaps the most arduous work of its kind, a translation of Virgil,' continues:—'In the comparison of Homer and Virgil, the discriminative excellence of Homer is elevation and comprehension of thought, and that of Virgil is grace and splendour of diction. The beauties of Homer are therefore difficult to be lost, and those of Virgil difficult to be retained.' Mr. E.J. Payne, in his edition of Burke's Select Works, i. xxxviii, says:— 'Most writers have constantly beside them some favourite classical author from whom they endeavour to take their prevailing tone. Burke, according to Butler, always had a "ragged Delphin Virgil" not far from his elbow.' See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 21, note.
[553] According to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Mr. Burke, speaking of Bacon's Essays, said he thought them the best of his works. Dr. Johnson was of opinion that their excellence and their value consisted in being the observations of a strong mind operating upon life; and in consequence you find there what you seldom find in other books.' Northcote's Reynolds, ii. 281.
[554] Mr. Seward perhaps imperfectly remembered the following passage in the Preface to the Dictionary (Works, v. 40):—'From the authors which rose in the time of Elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. If the language of theology were extracted from Hooker and the translation of the Bible; the terms of natural knowledge from Bacon; the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from Raleigh; the dialect of poetry and fiction from Spenser and Sidney; and the diction of common life from Shakespeare, few ideas would be lost to mankind for want of English words in which they might be expressed.'
[555] Of Mallet's Life of Bacon, Johnson says (Works, viii. 465) that it is 'written with elegance, perhaps with some affectation; but with so much more knowledge of history than of science, that when he afterwards undertook the Life of Marlborough, Warburton remarked, that he might perhaps forget that Marlborough was a general, as he had forgotten that Bacon was a philosopher.'
[556] It appears from part of the original journal in Mr. Anderdon's papers that the friend who told the story was Mr. Beauclerk and the gentleman and lady alluded to were Mr. (probably Henry) and Miss Harvey. CROKER. Not Harvey but Hervey. See ante, i. 106, and ii. 32, for another story told by Beauclerk against Johnson of Mr. Thomas Hervey.
[557] Johnson, in his Dictionary, gives as the 17th meaning of make, to raise as profit from anything. He quotes the speech of Pompey in Measure for Measure, act iv. sc. 3:—'He made five marks, ready money.' But Pompey, he might reply, was a servant, and his English therefore is not to be taken as a standard.
[558] Idea he defines as mental imagination.
[559] See post, May 15, 1783, note.
[560] In the first three editions of Boswell we find Tadnor for Tadmor. In Dodsley's Collection, iv. 229, the last couplet is as follows:—