mistake the character.  Time toils after every great man, as well after Shakspeare.  The workings of an ordinary mind keep pace, indeed, with time; they move no faster; they have their beginning, their middle, and their end; but superiour natures can reduce these into a point.  They do not, indeed, suppress them; but they suspend, or they lock them up in the breast.’  The learned Society, under whose sanction such gabble is ushered into the world, would do well to offer a premium to any one who will discover its meaning.  BOSWELL.

[86] ’May 29, 1662.  Took boat and to Fox-hall, where I had not been a great while.  To the old Spring Garden, and there walked long.’  Pepys’s Diary, i. 361.  The place was afterwards known as Faux-hall and Vauxhall.  See ante, iii. 308.

[87] ’One that wouldst be a bawd, in way of good service and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar.’ King Lear, act ii. sc. 2.

[88] Yet W.G.  Hamilton said:—­’Burke understands everything but gaming and music.  In the House of Commons I sometimes think him only the second man in England; out of it he is always the first.’  Prior’s Burke, p. 484.  See ante, ii. 450.  Bismarck once ‘rang the bell’ to old Prince Metternich.  ‘I listened quietly,’ he said, ’to all his stories, merely jogging the bell every now and then till it rang again.  That pleases these talkative old men.’  DR. BUSCH, quoted in Lowe’s Prince Bismarck, i. 130.

[89] See ante, i. 470, for his disapproval of ‘studied behaviour.’

[90] Johnson had perhaps Dr. Warton in mind. Ante, ii. 41, note 1.

[91] See ante, i. 471, and iii. 165.

[92] ‘Oblivion is a kind of annihilation.’  Sir Thomas Browne’s Christian Morals, sect. xxi.

[93] ‘Nec te quaesiveris extra.’  Persius, Sat. i. 7.  We may compare Milton’s line,

     ‘In himself was all his state.’
      Paradise Lost, v. 353.

[94] See ante, iii. 269.

[95] ’A work of this kind must, in a minute examination, discover many imperfections; but West’s version, so far as I have considered it, appears to be the product of great labour and great abilities.’  Johnson’s Works, viii. 398.

[96] See Boswell’s Hebrides, Aug. 25, 1773.

[97] See ante, i. 82, and ii. 228.

[98] See ante, i. 242.

[99] See Boswell’s Hebrides, under Nov. 11.