Pope, Essay on Criticism, l. 370.

[790] Johnson's remark on these stones is curious as shewing that he had not even a glimpse of the discoveries to be made by geology. After saying that 'no account can be given' of the position of one of the stones, he continues:—'There are so many important things of which human knowledge can give no account, that it may be forgiven us if we speculate no longer on two stones in Col.' Works, ix. 122. See ante, ii. 468, for his censure of Brydone's 'anti-mosaical remark.'

[791]

'Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella.'
'My Phillis me with pelted apples plies.'

DRYDEN. Virgil, Eclogues, iii. 64.

[792]

'The helpless traveller, with wild surprise,
Sees the dry desert all around him rise,
And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies.'

Cato act ii. sc. 6.

[793] Johnson seems unwilling to believe this. 'I am not of opinion that by any surveys or land-marks its [the sand's] limits have been ever fixed, or its progression ascertained. If one man has confidence enough to say that it advances, nobody can bring any proof to support him in denying it.' Works, ix. 122. He had seen land in like manner laid waste north of Aberdeen; where 'the owner, when he was required to pay the usual tax, desired rather to resign the ground.' Ib. p. 15.

[794] Box, in this sense, is not in Johnson's Dictionary.