of his breach of filial duty, which had happened just fifty years before on that very day.  ’To do away the sin of this disobedience, I this day went,’ he said, ’in a chaise to—­, and going into the market at the time of high business uncovered my head, and stood with it bare an hour, before the stall which my father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by, and the inclemency of the weather.’  This penance may recall Dante’s lines,—­

     ’Quando vivea piu glorioso, disse,
      Liberamente nel campo di Siena,
      Ogni vergogna deposta, s’affisse.’ 
    ’"When at his glory’s topmost height,” said he,
     “Respect of dignity all cast aside,
        Freely he fix’d him on Sienna’s plain."’

      CARY.  Dante, Purgatory.  Cant. xi. l. 133.

[1152]

     ’How instinct varies in the grovelling swine,
      Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine.’

        Pope, Essay on Man, i. 221.

[1153] See ante, iii. 153, 296.

[1154] Mr. Burke suggested to me as applicable to Johnson, what Cicero, in his CATO MAJOR, says of Appius:—­’Intentum enim animum tanquam arcum habebat, nec languescens succumbebat senectuti;’ repeating, at the same time, the following noble words in the same passage:—­’Ita enim senectus honesta est, si se ipsa defendit, si jus suum retinet, si nemini emancipata est, si usque ad extremum vitae spiritum vindicet jus suum.’  BOSWELL.  The last line runs in the original:-’si usque ad ultimum spiritum dominatur in suos.’ Cato Major, xi. 38.

[1155]

‘atrocem animum Catonis.’ 
’Cato—­
Of spirit unsubdued.’

FRANCIS.  Horace, 2 Odes, i. 24.

[1156] Yet Baretti, who knew Johnson well, in a MS. note on Piozzi Letters, i.315, says:—­’If ever Johnson took any delight in anything it was to converse with some old acquaintance.  New people he never loved to be in company with, except ladies, when disposed to caress and flatter him.’

[1157] Johnson, thirty-four years earlier, wrote:—­’I think there is some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so proportioned that the one can bear all that can be inflicted on the other; whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and whether a soul well principled will not be separated sooner than subdued.’ The Rambler, No. 32.  He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14, 1780:—­’But what if I am seventy-two; I remember Sulpitius says of Saint Martin (now that’s above your reading), Est animus victor annorum, et senectuti cedere nescius.  Match me that among your young folks.’ Piozzi Letters, ii. 177.  On Sept. 2, 1784, he wrote to Mr. Sastres the Italian master:—­’I have hope of standing the English winter, and of seeing you, and reading Petrarch at Bolt-court.’ Ib. p. 407.

[1158] Life of Johnson, p. 7.