'How instinct varies in the grovelling swine,
Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine.'
Pope, Essay on Man, i. 221.

[1153] See ante, iii. 153, 296.

[1154] Mr. Burke suggested to me as applicable to Johnson, what Cicero, in his CATO MAJOR, says of Appius:—'Intentum enim animum tanquam arcum habebat, nec languescens succumbebat senectuti;' repeating, at the same time, the following noble words in the same passage:—'Ita enim senectus honesta est, si se ipsa defendit, si jus suum retinet, si nemini emancipata est, si usque ad extremum vitae spiritum vindicet jus suum.' BOSWELL. The last line runs in the original:-'si usque ad ultimum spiritum dominatur in suos.' Cato Major, xi. 38.

[1155]

'atrocem animum Catonis.'
'Cato—
Of spirit unsubdued.'
FRANCIS. Horace, 2 Odes, i. 24.

[1156] Yet Baretti, who knew Johnson well, in a MS. note on Piozzi Letters, i.315, says:—'If ever Johnson took any delight in anything it was to converse with some old acquaintance. New people he never loved to be in company with, except ladies, when disposed to caress and flatter him.'

[1157] Johnson, thirty-four years earlier, wrote:—'I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so proportioned that the one can bear all that can be inflicted on the other; whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul well principled will not be separated sooner than subdued.' The Rambler, No. 32. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:—'But what if I am seventy-two; I remember Sulpitius says of Saint Martin (now that's above your reading), Est animus victor annorum, et senectuti cedere nescius. Match me that among your young folks.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 177. On Sept. 2, 1784, he wrote to Mr. Sastres the Italian master:—'I have hope of standing the English winter, and of seeing you, and reading Petrarch at Bolt-court.' Ib. p. 407.

[1158] Life of Johnson, p. 7.

[1159] It is a most agreeable circumstance attending the publication of this Work, that Mr. Hector has survived his illustrious schoolfellow so many years; that he still retains his health and spirits; and has gratified me with the following acknowledgement: 'I thank you, most sincerely thank you, for the great and long continued entertainment your Life of Dr. Johnson has afforded me, and others, of my particular friends.' Mr. Hector, besides setting me right as to the verses on a sprig of Myrtle, (see vol. i. p. 92, note,) has favoured me with two English odes, written by Dr. Johnson, at an early period of his life, which will appear in my edition of his poems. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 16, note 1.

[1160] The editor of the Biographia Britannica. Ante, iii. 174.