so, as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet than their own separate reasonings would do, uncultivated as they are.  We have many of these useful prejudices in this country which I should be very sorry to see removed.  The good Protestant conviction that the Pope is both Antichrist and the Whore of Babylon is a more effectual preservative against Popery than all the solid and unanswerable arguments of Chillingworth.’

THE JOHNSONIAN LEGEND

The ten handsome volumes which the indefatigable and unresting zeal of Dr. Birkbeck Hill, and the high spirit of the Clarendon Press, have edited, arranged, printed, and published for the benefit of the world and the propagation of the Gospel according to Dr. Johnson are pleasant things to look upon.  I hope the enterprise has proved remunerative to those concerned, but I doubt it.  The parsimony of the public in the matter of books is pitiful.  The ordinary purse-carrying Englishman holds in his head a ready-reckoner or scale of charges by which he tests his purchases—­so much for a dinner, so much for a bottle of champagne, so much for a trip to Paris, so much for a pair of gloves, and so much for a book.  These ten volumes would cost him L4 9s. 3d.  ’Whew!  What a price for a book, and where are they to be put, and who is to dust them?’ Idle questions!  As for room, a bicycle takes more room than 1,000 books; and as for dust, it is a delusion.  You should never dust books.  There let it lie until the rare hour arrives when you want to read a particular volume; then warily approach it with a snow-white napkin, take it down from its shelf, and, withdrawing to some back apartment, proceed to cleanse the tome.  Dr. Johnson adopted other methods.  Every now and again he drew on huge gloves, such as those once worn by hedgers and ditchers, and then, clutching his folios and octavos, he banged and buffeted them together until he was enveloped in a cloud of dust.  This violent exercise over, the good doctor restored the volumes, all battered and bruised, to their places, where, of course, the dust resettled itself as speedily as possible.

Dr. Johnson could make books better than anybody, but his notions of dusting them were primitive and erroneous.  But the room and the dust are mere subterfuges.  The truth is, there is a disinclination to pay L4 9s. 3d. for the ten volumes containing the complete Johnsonian legend.  To quarrel with the public is idiotic and most un-Johnsonian.  ‘Depend upon it, sir,’ said the Sage, ’every state of society is as luxurious as it can be.’  We all, a handful of misers excepted, spend more money than we can afford upon luxuries, but what those luxuries are to be is largely determined for us by the fashions of our time.  If we do not buy these ten volumes, it is not because we would not like to have them, but because we want the money they cost for something we want more.  As for dictating to men how they are to spend their money, it were both a folly and an impertinence.