Fontenoy, every heart beat, and every eye was in tears. Now, we know that no man eat his dinner the worse, but there should have been all this concern; and to say there was (smiling) may be reckoned a consecrated lie."

He once advised Mr. Boswell to complete a Dictionary of words peculiar to Scotland, of which he had shewn him a specimen. "Sir (said he), Ray has made a collection of northcountry words. By collecting those of your country, you will do a useful thing towards the history of the language." He bade him also go on with collections which he was making upon the antiquities of Scotland. "Make a large

book, a folio."-BOSWELL. "But of what use will it be, Sir?"-JOHNSON. "Never mind the use; do it."

At another time Johnson observed, "It is amazing what ignorance of certain points one sometimes finds in men of eminence. A wit about town asked me, how it happened that England and Scotland, which were once two kingdoms, were now one: and Sir Fletcher Norton did not seem to know that there were such publications as the Reviews."

He loved, he said, the old black letter books; they were rich in matter, though their style was inelegant.

In a conversation which took a philosophical

turn, Johnson said, "Human experience, which is constantly contradicting theory, is the great test of truth. A system, built upon the discoveries of a great many minds, is always of more strength than what is produced by the mere workings of any one mind, which of itself can do little. There is not so poor a book in the world that would not be a prodigious effort were it wrought out entirely by a single mind, without the aid of prior investigators. The French writers are superficial, because they are not scholars, and so proceed upon the mere power of their own minds; and we see how very little power they have."

He was of opinion, that the English nation cultivated both their soil and their reason better than any other people; but admitted that the French, though not the highest, perhaps in any department of literature, yet in every department were very high. Intellectual preeminence, he observed, was the highest superiority; and every nation derived their highest reputation from the splendor and dignity of their writers. Voltaire, he said, was a good narrator, and his principal merit consisted in a happy selection and arrangement of circumstances.

Speaking of the French novels, compared with Richardson's, he said they might be pretty baubles, but a wren was not an eagle.

In a Latin conversation with the Pere Boscovitz, at the house of Mrs. Cholmondeley, he maintained the superiority of Sir Isaac Newton over all foreign philosophers, with a dignity and eloquence that surprized that learned foreigner. It being observed to him, that a rage for every thing English prevailed much in France after Lord Chatham's glorious war, he said he did not wonder at it, for that we had drubbed those fellows into a proper reverence for us, and that their national petulance required periodical chastisement.

Being once told that Gilbert Cowper called him the Caliban of literature, "Well (said he), I must dub him the Punchinello."

He spoke with much contempt of the notice taken of Woodhouse, the poetical shoemaker. He said, that it was all vanity and childishness; and that such objects were, to those who patronised them, mere mirrors of their own superiority. "They had better (said he) furnish the man with good implements for his trade, than raise subscriptions for his poems. He may make an excellent shoemaker, but he can never make a good poet. A school-boy's exercise may be a pretty thing for a school-boy; but it is no treat for a man."

Speaking of the old Earl of Cork and Orrery, he said, "That man spent his life in catching at

an object (literary eminence), which he had not power to grasp.'

Talking of Tacitus, Mr. Boswell hazarded an opinion, that with all his merit for penetration, shrewdness of judgment, and terseness of expression, he was too compact, too much broken into hints, as it were, and therefore too difficult to be understood. Dr. Johnson sanctioned this opinion. "Tacitus, Sir, seems to me rather to have made notes for an historical work, than to have written a history."

At another time the conversation having turned on modern imitations of ancient ballads, and some one having praised their simplicity, he treated them with that ridicule which he always displayed when that subject was mentioned.

A gentleman expressing his wonder why the author of so excellent a book as The Whole Duty of Man' should conceal himself, Johnson said, "There may be different reasons assigned for this, one of which would be very sufficient. He may have been a clergyman, and may have thought that his religious counsels would have less weight when known to come from a man whose profession was Theology. He may have been a man whose practice was not suitable to his principles, so that his character might injure the effect of his book, which he had written in a season of penitence; or he may have been a man

of rigid self-denial, so that he would have no reward for his pious labours while in this world, but refer it all to a future state."

Talking of birds, Mr. Daines Barrington's ingenious Essay against the received notion of their migration was mentioned. Johnson said, "I think we have as good evidence for the migration of woodcocks as can be desired. We find they disappear at a certain time of the year, and appear again at a certain time of the year; and some of them, when weary in their flight, have been known to alight on the rigging of ships far out at sea. One of the company observed, that there had been instances of some of them found in summer in Essex.

that strengthens our argument.

JOHNSON. 66 Sir,

Exceptio probat

regulam. Some being found shews, that if all remained many would be found. A few sick or lame ones may be found."-GOLDSMITH. "There is a partial migration of the swallows; the stronger ones migrate, the others do not."

At Mr. Langton's with Dr. Beattie and some other company, Johnson descanted on the subject of Literary Property.. "There seems (said he) to be in authors a stronger right of property than that by occupancy; a metaphysical right, a right, as it were, of creation, which should from its nature be perpetual; but the consent of nations is against it, and indeed reason and the in