’Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds
        what we have taught her. 
      I wonder any man alive will
        ever rear a daughter. 
      For she must have both hoods
        and gowns, and hoops to
        swell her pride,
      With scarfs and stays, and
        gloves and lace; and she
        will have men beside;
      And when she’s drest with care
        and cost, all-tempting, fine and gay,
      As men should serve a cucumber,
        she flings herself away.’

Air vii.

[787] See ante, p. 162.

[788] In 1715.

[789]

     ’When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw,
      The line too labours, and the words move slow.’

Pope, Essay on Criticism, l. 370.

[790] Johnson’s remark on these stones is curious as shewing that he had not even a glimpse of the discoveries to be made by geology.  After saying that ‘no account can be given’ of the position of one of the stones, he continues:—­’There are so many important things of which human knowledge can give no account, that it may be forgiven us if we speculate no longer on two stones in Col.’ Works, ix. 122.  See ante, ii. 468, for his censure of Brydone’s ‘anti-mosaical remark.’

[791]

     ‘Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella.’ 
     ‘My Phillis me with pelted apples plies.’

DRYDEN.  Virgil, Eclogues, iii. 64.

[792]

     ’The helpless traveller, with wild surprise,
      Sees the dry desert all around him rise,
      And smother’d in the dusty whirlwind dies.’

Cato act ii. sc. 6.

[793] Johnson seems unwilling to believe this.  ’I am not of opinion that by any surveys or land-marks its [the sand’s] limits have been ever fixed, or its progression ascertained.  If one man has confidence enough to say that it advances, nobody can bring any proof to support him in denying it.’ Works, ix. 122.  He had seen land in like manner laid waste north of Aberdeen; where ’the owner, when he was required to pay the usual tax, desired rather to resign the ground.’ Ib. p. 15.

[794] Box, in this sense, is not in Johnson’s Dictionary.

[795] See ante, ii. 100, and iv. 274.

[796] In the original, Rich windows.  A Long Story, l. 7.

[797] ‘And this according to the philosophers is happiness.’  Boswell says of Crabbe’s poem The Village, that ’its sentiments as to the false notions of rustick happiness and rustick virtue were quite congenial with Johnson’s own.’ Ante, iv. 175.

[798] ’This innovation was considered by Mr. Macsweyn as the idle project of a young head, heated with English fancies; but he has now found that turnips will really grow, and that hungry sheep and cows will really eat them.’  Johnson’s Works, ix. 121.  ’The young laird is heir, perhaps, to 300 square miles of land, which, at ten shillings an acre, would bring him L96,000 a year.  He is desirous of improving the agriculture of his country; and, in imitation of the Czar, travelled for improvement, and worked with his own hands upon a farm in Hertfordshire.’ Piozzi Letters, i. 168.