‘SAM.  JOHNSON.’

’P.S.—­We passed two days at Talisker very happily, both by the pleasantness of the place and elegance of our reception.’

[721] Johnson (Works, viii. 409), after describing how Shenstone laid out the Leasowes, continues:—­’Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden, demands any great powers of mind, I will not inquire:  perhaps a surly and sullen speculator may think such performances rather the sport than the business of human reason.’

[722] Johnson quotes this and the two preceding stanzas as ’a passage, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature.’ Ib. p. 413.

[723] ’His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated.’ Ib. p. 411.

[724] In the preface to vol. iii. of Shenstone’s Works, ed. 1773, a quotation is given (p. vi) from one of the poet’s letters in which he complains of this burning.  He writes:—­’I look upon my Letters as some of my chef-d’auvres.’  On p. 301, after mentioning Rasselas, he continues:—­’Did I tell you I had a letter from Johnson, inclosing Vernon’s Parish-clerk?’

[725] ’The truth is these elegies have neither passion, nature, nor manners.  Where there is fiction, there is no passion:  he that describes himself as a shepherd, and his Neaera or Delia as a shepherdess, and talks of goats and lambs, feels no passion.  He that courts his mistress with Roman imagery deserves to lose her; for she may with good reason suspect his sincerity.’  Johnson’s Works, viii. 91.  See ante, iv. 17.

[726] His lines on Pulteney, Earl of Bath, still deserve some fame:—­

     ’Leave a blank here and there in each page
      To enrol the fair deeds of his youth! 
      When you mention the acts of his age,
      Leave a blank for his honour and truth.’

From The Statesman, H. C. Williams’s Odes, p. 47.

[727] Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2.

[728] He did not mention the name of any particular person; but those who are conversant with the political world will probably recollect more persons than one to whom this observation may be applied.  BOSWELL.  Mr. Croker thinks that Lord North was meant.  For his ministry Johnson certainly came to have a great contempt (ante, iv. 139).  If Johnson was thinking of him, he differed widely in opinion from Gibbon, who describes North as ’a consummate master of debate, who could wield with equal dexterity the arms of reason and of ridicule.’  Gibbon’s Misc.  Works, i. 221.  On May 2, 1775, he wrote:—­’ If they turned out Lord North to-morrow, they would still leave him one of the best companions in the kingdom.’ Ib. ii. 135.