Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell;
And pale diseases, and repining age;
Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage;
Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep,
Forms terrible to view their sentry keep.

Dryden, Aeneid, vi. 273. BOSWELL. Voltaire, in his Essay Sur les inconvéniens attachés à la Littérature (Works, xliii. 173), says:—'Enfin, après un an de refus et de négociations, votre ouvrage s'imprime; c'est alors qu'il faut ou assoupir les Cerbères de la littérature ou les faire aboyer en votre faveur.' He therefore carries on the resemblance one step further,—

'Cerberus haec ingens latratu regna trifauci Personat.' Aeneid, vi. 417.

[845] It was in 1763 that Boswell made Johnson's acquaintance. Ante, i. 391.

[846] It is no small satisfaction to me to reflect, that Dr. Johnson read this, and, after being apprized of my intention, communicated to me, at subsequent periods, many particulars of his life, which probably could not otherwise have been preserved. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 26.

[847] Though Mull is, as Johnson says, the third island of the Hebrides in extent, there was no post there. Piozzi Letters, i. 170.

[848] This observation is very just. The time for the Hebrides was too late by a month or six weeks. I have heard those who remembered their tour express surprise they were not drowned. WALTER SCOTT.

[849] The Charmer, a Collection of Songs Scotch and English. Edinburgh, 1749.

[850] By Thomas Willis, M.D. It was published in 1672. 'In this work he maintains that the soul of brutes is like the vital principle in man, that it is corporeal in its nature and perishes with the body. Although the book was dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury, his orthodoxy, a matter that Willis regarded much, was called in question.' Knight's Eng. Cyclo. vi. 741. Burnet speaks of him as 'Willis, the great physician.' History of his Own Time, ed. 1818, i. 254. See Wood's Athenae, iii. 1048.

[851] See ante, ii. 409 and iii. 242, where he said:—'Had I learnt to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.'