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... 'Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam, Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.' 'And sure the man who has it in his power To practise virtue, and protracts the hour, Waits like the rustic till the river dried; Still glides the river, and will ever glide.' |
FRANCIS. Horace, Epist. i. 2. 41.
[388] See ante, p. 59.
[389] See ante, iii. 251.
[390] See ante, iii. 136.
[391] This assertion is disproved by a comparison of dates. The first four satires of Young were published in 1725; The South Sea scheme (which appears to be meant,) was in 1720. MALONE. In Croft's Life of Young, which Johnson adopted, it is stated:—'By the Universal Passion he acquired no vulgar fortune, more than £3000. A considerable sum had already been swallowed up in the South Sea.' Johnson's Works, viii. 430. Some of Young's poems were published before 1720.
[392] Crabbe got Johnson to revise his poem, The Village (post, under March 23, 1783). He states, that 'the Doctor did not readily comply with requests for his opinion; not from any unwillingness to oblige, but from a painful contention in his mind between a desire of giving pleasure and a determination to speak truth.' Crabbe's Works, ii. 12. See ante, ii. 51, 195, and iii. 373.
[393] Pope's Essay on Man, iv. 390. See ante, iii. 6, note 2.
[394] He had within the last seven weeks gone up drunk, at least twice, to a lady's drawing-room. Ante, pp. 88, note 1, and 109.
[395] Mr. Croker, though without any authority, prints unconscious.