[Footnote 118: In the register of the College of Physicians, is the following entry: "May 3, 1700. Comitiis Censoriis ordinariis. At the request of several persons of quality, that Mr. Dryden might be carried from the College of Physicians to be interred at Westminster, it was unanimously granted by the president and censors."
This entry is not calculated to afford any credit to the narrative concerning lord Jefferies. R.]
[Footnote 119: See what is said on this head with regard to Cowley and
Addison, in their respective lives.]
[Footnote 120: Preface to Ovid's Metamorphoses. Dr. J.]
[Footnote 121: We are not about to attempt a justification of Dryden's strange use, in the above stanzas, of nautical phrases, but we must remark, that Johnson's antipathy to ships, and every thing connected with them, made him unusually sensitive of any thing like naval technicalities. And yet surely the occasional and judicious use of them in description is quite as allowable as the introduction of allusions to the printing office or bookseller's shop, with which Johnson happened to be familiar, and, therefore, did not disapprove. St. Paul did not disdain to adopt naval phraseology in his exquisite narrative of his own perils by sea. ED.]
[Footnoteb 122: A heart-sinking and painful depression has been experienced by most of us on concluding a favourite author; but the sensation has never been more vividly portrayed in language, than in the above passage. ED.]
[Footnote 123: I cannot see why Johnson has thought there was any want of clearness in this passage even in prose. Addison has given us almost the very same thought in very good prose: "If we look forward to him [the deity] for help, we shall never be in danger of falling down those precipices which our imagination is apt to create. Like those who walk upon a line, if we keep our eye fixed upon one point, we may step forward securely; whereas an imprudent or cowardly glance on either side will infallibly destroy us." Spectator, No. 615. J.B.]
[Footnote 124: This is an error. The alexandrine inserted among heroick lines of ten syllables is found in many of the writers of queen Elizabeth's reign. It will be sufficient to mention Hall, who has already been quoted for the use of the triplet:
As tho' the staring world hang'd on his sleeve.
Whenever he smiles to laugh, and when he sighs to grieve.
Hall's Sat. book i. sat. 7.