[891] 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.' Ante, i. 471.
[892] Johnson said to me afterwards, 'Sir, they respected me for my literature; and yet it was not great but by comparison. Sir, it is amazing how little literature there is in the world.' BOSWELL.
[893] See ante, i. 320.
[894] Very near the College, facing the passage which leads to it from Pembroke Street, still stands an old alehouse which must have been old in Johnson's time.
[895] This line has frequently been attributed to Dryden, when a King's Scholar at Westminster. But neither Eton nor Westminster have in truth any claim to it, the line being borrowed, with a slight change, from an Epigram by Crashaw:—
'Joann. 2,
'Aquæ in vinum versæ.
Unde rubor vestris et non sua purpura lymphis?
Qua rosa mirantes tam nova mutat aquas?
Numen, convinvæ, præsens agnoscite numen,
Nympha pudica DEUM vidit, et erubuit.' MALONE.
What gave your springs a brightness not their own?
What rose so strange the wond'ring waters flushed?
Heaven's hand, oh guests; heaven's hand may here be known;
The spring's coy nymph has seen her God and blushed.
[896] 'He that made the verse following (some ascribe it to Giraldus Cambrensis) could adore both the sun rising, and the sun setting, when he could so cleanly honour King Henry II, then departed, and King Richard succeeding.
"Mira cano, Sol occubuit, nox nulla sequutaest."'