for the old feudal times', apparent, whenever any possible manner of shewing them occurred. I have spoken of his piety, his charity, and his truth, the enlargement of his heart, and the delicacy of his sentiments; and when I search for shadow to my portrait, none can I find but what was formed by pride, differently modified as different occasions shewed it; yet never was pride so purified as Johnson's, at once from meanness and from vanity. The mind of this man was indeed expanded beyond the common limits of human nature, and stored with such variety of knowledge, that I used to think it resembled a royal pleasureground, where every plant, of every name and nation, flourished in the full perfection of their powers, and where, though lofty woods and falling cataracts first caught the eye, and fixed the earliest attention of beholders, yet neither the trim parterre nor the pleasing shrubbery, nor even the antiquated ever-greens, were denied a place in some fit corner of the happy valley. POSTSCRIPT. Naples, Feb. 10, 1786. SINCE the foregoing went to the press, having seen a passage from Mr. Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, in which it is said, that I could not get through Mrs. Montagu's Essay on Shakespeare, I do not delay a moment to declare, that, on the contrary, I have always commended it myself, and heard it commended by every one else; and few things would give me more concern than to be thought incapable of tasting, or unwilling to testify my opinion of its excellence 1. 'I spoke of Mrs. Montague's very high praises of Garrick. JOHNSON. "Sir, it is fit she should say so much, and I should say nothing. Reynolds is fond of her book, and I wonder at it; for neither I, nor Beauclerk, nor Mrs. Thrale could get through it."' Life, v. 245. For Boswell's reply to Mrs. Piozzi's Postscript see ib. n. 2. AN ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND GENIUS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. BY ARTHUR MURPHY, ESQ.1 [LONDON: M DCC XCII.] 'For this slight Essay the Booksellers paid Mr. Murphy £300.' Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, ix. 159. |