[[39]] "This last comet (which appeared in the year 1680) I may well call the most remarkable one that ever appeared; since, besides the former consideration, I shall presently shew, that it is no other than that very comet, which came by the earth at the time of Noah's deluge, and which was the cause of the same." Whiston's Theory of the Earth, p. 188.
[[40]] "Since 575 years appear to be the period of the comet that caused the deluge, what a learned friend who was the occasion of my examination of this matter, suggests, will deserve to be considered; viz. Whether the story of the phœnix, that celebrated emblem of the resurrection in Christian antiquity, (that it returns once after five centuries, and goes to the altar and city of the sun, and is there burnt; and another arises out of its ashes, and carries away the remains of the former; &c.) be not an allegorical representation of this comet, which returns once after five centuries, and goes down to the sun, and is there vehemently heated, and its outward regions dissolved; yet that it flies off again, and carries away what remains after that terrible burning; &c. and whether the conflagration and renovation of things, which some such comet may bring on the earth, be not hereby prefigured, I will not here be positive: but I own, that I do not know of any solution of this famous piece of mythology and hieroglyphics, as this seems to be, that can be compared with it." Ibid. p. 196.
[[41]] "'Tis here foretold [by Esdras] that there should be signs in the woman; and before all others this prediction has been verified in the famous rabbet-woman of Surrey, in the days of King George I.—This story has been so unjustly laughed out of countenance, that I must distinctly give my reasons for believing it to be true, and alleging it here as the fulfilling of this ancient prophecy before us.—1st. The man-midwife, Mr. Howard of Godalmin in Surrey, a person of very great honesty, skill and reputation in his profession, attested it.—It was believed by King George to be real; and it was also believed by my old friends the Speaker and Mr. Samuel Collet, as they told me themselves, and was generally by sober persons in the neighbourhood. Nay Mr. Molyneux, the Prince's Secretary, a very inquisitive person, and my very worthy friend, assured me he had at first so great a diffidence in the truth of the fact, and was so little biassed by the other believers, even by the King himself, that he would not be satisfied till he was permitted both to see and feel the rabbet, in that very passage, whence we all come into this world."
Whiston's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 110.
[[42]] "The incumbrances of fortune were shaken from his mind as dew-drops from the lion's mane." Johnson's Preface to his edition of Shakespeare.
[[43]] Every reader of sensibility must be strongly affected by the following pathetick passages:—"Much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations and distant ages gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle."
"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the authour, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academick bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow." Preface to Dr. Johnson's Dictionary.
[[44]] See Swift's letter to Lord Oxford for the institution of an academy to improve and fix the English language.
[[45]] The great French and Italian Dictionaries were not the productions of an individual, but were compiled by a body of Academicians in each country.
[[46]] "In times and regions so disjoined from each other, that there can scarcely be imagined any communication of sentiments, either by commerce or tradition, has prevailed a general and uniform expectation of propitiating God by corporal austerities, of anticipating his vengeance by voluntary inflictions, and appeasing his justice by a speedy and cheerful submission to a less penalty when a greater is incurred."
Rambler, No. 110.
[[47]] The style of the Ramblers seem to have been formed on that of Sir Thomas Brown's Vulgar Errors and Christian Morals.