[893] Sir James Mackintosh says (Life, ii. 257):—'Dr. Johnson visited Iona without looking at Staffa, which lay in sight, with that indifference to natural objects, either of taste or scientific curiosity, which characterised him.' This is a fair enough sample of much of the criticism under which Johnson's reputation has suffered.
[894] Smollett in Humphry Clinker (Letter of Sept. 3) describes a Highland funeral. 'Our entertainer seemed to think it a disparagement to his family that not above a hundred gallons of whisky had been drunk upon such a solemn occasion.
[895] 'We then entered the boat again; the night came upon us; the wind rose; the sea swelled; and Boswell desired to be set on dry ground: we, however, pursued our navigation, and passed by several little islands in the silent solemnity of faint moon-shine, seeing little, and hearing only the wind and water.' Piozzi Letters, i. 176.
[896] Cicero De Finibus, ii. 32.
[897] I have lately observed that this thought has been elegantly expressed by Cowley:—
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'Things which offend when present, and affright, In memory, well painted, move delight.' BOSWELL. |
The lines are found in the Ode upon His Majesty's Restoration and Return, stanza 12. They may have been suggested by Virgil's lines—
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'Revocate animos, maestumque timorem Mittite; forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.' |
Aeneid, i. 202.
[898] Had our Tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage, the world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain. The present respectable President of the Royal Society was so much struck on reading it, that he clasped his hands together, and remained for some time in an attitude of silent admiration, BOSWELL. Boswell again quotes this passage (which is found in Johnson's Works, ix. 145), ante, iii. 173. The President was Sir Joseph Banks, Johnson says in Rasselas, ch. xi:—'That the supreme being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another is the dream of idle superstition; but that some places may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which hourly experience will justify. He who supposes that his vices may be more successfully combated in Palestine will, perhaps, find himself mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly; he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned dishonours at once his reason and religion.'