Chapter XXVI: Part THE SECOND: Conversation the Sixteenth (3)

N.—G. and I had a dispute lately about the capacity of animals. He appeared to consider them as little better than machines. He made it the distinguishing mark of superiority in man that he is the only animal that can transmit his thoughts to future generations. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘for future generations to take no sort of notice of them.’ I allowed that there were a few extraordinary geniuses that every one must look up to—and I mentioned the names of Shakspeare and Dryden. But he would not hear of Dryden, and began to pull him in pieces immediately. ‘Why then,’ I answered, ‘if you cannot agree among yourselves even with respect to four or five of the most eminent, how can there be the vast and overwhelming superiority you pretend to?’ I observed that instinct in animals answered very much to what we call genius. I spoke of the wonderful powers of smell, and the sagacity of dogs, and the memory shown by horses in finding a road that they have once travelled; but I made no way with G—; he still went back to _Lear_ and _Othello_.

H.—I think he was so far right; for as this is what he understands best and has to imitate, it is fit he should admire and dwell upon it most. He cannot acquire the smell of the dog or the sagacity of the horse, and therefore it is of no use to think about them; but he may, by dint of study and emulation, become a better poet or philosopher. The question is not merely what is best in itself (of that we are hardly judges) but what sort of excellence we understand best and can make our own; for otherwise, in affecting to admire we know not what, we may admire a nonentity or a deformity. Abraham Tucker has remarked very well on this subject, that a swine wallowing in the mire may, for what he can tell, be as happy as a philosopher in writing an essay, but that is no reason why he (the philosopher) should exchange occupations or tastes with the brute, unless he could first exchange _natures_. We may suspend our judgments in such cases as a matter of speculation or conjecture, but that is different from the habitual or practical feeling. So I remember W— being nettled at D— (who affected a fashionable taste) for saying, on coming out of the Marquis of Stafford’s gallery, ‘A very noble art, very superior to poetry!’ If it were so, W— observed, he could know nothing about it, who had never seen any fine pictures before. It was like an European adventurer saying to an African chieftain, ‘A very fine boy, Sir, your black son—very superior to my white one!’ This is mere affectation; we might as well pretend to be thrown into rapture by a poem written in a language we are not acquainted with. We may notwithstanding believe that it is very fine, and have no wish to hang up the writer, because he is not an Englishman. A spider may be a greater mechanic than Watt or Arkwright; but the effects are not brought home to us in the same manner, and we cannot help estimating the cause by the effect. A friend of mine teazes me with questions, ‘Which was the greatest man, Sir Isaac Newton or a first-rate chess-player?’ It refers itself to the head of the _Illustrious Obscure_. A club of chess-players might give it in favour of the _Great Unknown_; but all the rest of the world, who have heard of the one and not of the other, will give it against him. We cannot set aside those prejudices which are founded on the limitation of our faculties or the constitution of society; only that we need not lay them down as abstract or demonstrable truths. It is there the bigotry and error begin. The language of taste and moderation is, _I prefer this, because it is best to me_; the language of dogmatism and intolerance is, _Because I prefer it, it is best in itself, and I will allow no one else to be of a different opinion_.

N.—I find in the last conversation I saw, you make me an admirer of Fielding, and so I am; but I find great fault with him too. I grant he is one of those writers that I remember; he stamps his characters, whether good or bad, on the reader’s mind. This is more than I can say of every one. For instance, when G— plagues me about my not having sufficient admiration of W—’s poetry, the answer I give is, that it is not my fault, for I have utterly forgotten it; it seemed to me like the ravelings of poetry. But to say nothing of Fielding’s immorality, and his fancying himself a fine gentleman in the midst of all his coarseness, he has oftener described _habits_ than _character_. For example, _Western_ is no character; it is merely the language, manners, and pursuits of the country-squire of that day; and the proof of this is, that there is no ‘_Squire Western_ now. Manners and customs wear out, but characters last forever. I remember making this remark to Holcroft, and he asked me, What was the difference? Are you not surprised at that?

H.—Not in him. If you mentioned the word _character_, he stopped you short by saying, that it was merely the difference of circumstances; or if you hinted at the difference of natural capacity, he said, ‘Then, Sir, you must believe in _innate ideas_.’ He surrendered his own feelings and better judgment to a set of cant-phrases, called the _modern philosophy_.

N.—I need not explain the difference to you. Character is the ground-work, the natural _stamina_ of the mind, on which circumstances only act. You see it in St. Giles’s—there are characters there that in the midst of filth, and vice, and ignorance, retain some traces of their original goodness, and struggle with their situation to the last: as in St. James’s, you will find wretches that would disgrace a halter. _Gil Blas_ has character.

H.—I thought he only gave professions and classes, players, footmen, sharpers, courtesans, but not the individual, as Fielding often does, though we should strip _Western_ of his scarlet hunting-dress and jockey phrases. There is _Square_, _Blifil_, _Black George_, _Mrs. Fitzpatrick_, _Parson Adams_; and a still greater cluster of them in the one that is least read, the noble peer, the lodging-house-keeper, _Mrs. Bennet_, and _Colonel Bath_.

N.—You mean _Amelia_. I have not read that, but will get it. I allow in part what you say; but in the best there is something too local and belonging to the time. But what I chiefly object to in Fielding is his conceit, his consciousness of what he is doing, his everlasting recommendation and puffing of his own wit and sagacity. His introductory chapters make me sick.

H.—Why, perhaps, Fielding is to be excused as a disappointed man. All his success was late in life, for he died in 1754; and _Joseph Andrews_ (the first work of his that was popular) was published in 1748. All the rest of his life he had been drudging for the booksellers, or bringing out unsuccessful comedies. He probably anticipated the same result in his novels, and wished to bespeak the favour of the reader by putting himself too much forward. His prefaces are like Ben Jonson’s prologues, and from the same cause, mortified vanity; though it seems odd to say so at present, after the run his writings have had; but he could not foresee that, and only lived a short time to witness it.

N.—I can bear any thing but that conscious look—it is to me like the lump of soot in the broth, that spoils the whole mess. Fielding was one of the swaggerers.

H.—But he had much to boast of.

N.—He certainly was not idle in his time. Idleness would have ruined a greater man.

H.—Then you do not agree to a maxim I have sometimes thought might be laid down, that no one is idle who can do any thing.

N.—No, certainly.

H.—I conceive it may be illustrated from Wilson, who was charged with idleness, and who, after painting a little, used to say, as soon as any friend dropped in, ‘Now let us go somewhere,’—meaning to the alehouse. All that Wilson could do, he did, and that finely too, with a few well-disposed masses and strokes of the pencil; but he could not finish, or he would have staid within all the morning to work up his pictures to the perfection of Claude’s. He thought it better to go to the alehouse than to spoil what he had already done. I have in my own mind made this excuse for —, that he could only make a first sketch, and was obliged to lose the greatest part of his time in waiting for _windfalls_ of heads and studies. I have sat to him twice, and each time I offered to come again, and he said he would let me know, but I heard no more of it. The sketch went as it was—of course in a very unfinished state.

N.—But he might have remedied this by diligence and practice.

H.—I do not know that he could: one might say that there is the same abruptness and crudity in his character throughout, in his conversation, his walk, and look—great force and spirit, but neither softness nor refinement.

N.—If he had more humility, he might have seen all that in the works of others, and have strove to imitate it.

H.—What I mean is, that it was his not having the sense of these refinements in himself that prevented his perceiving them in others, or taking pains to supply a defect to which he was blind.

N.—I do not think that under any circumstances he would have made a Raphael. But your reasoning goes too much to what Dr. Johnson ridiculed in poetry—fits of inspiration, and a greater flow of ideas in the autumn than the spring. Sir Joshua used to work at all times, whether he was in the humour or not.

H.—And so would every one else with his motives and ability to excel. Lawyers without fees are accused of idleness, but this goes off when the briefs pour in.

N.—Did you see the newspaper accounts of the election of the new Pope? It appears that nothing could exceed his repugnance to be chosen. He begged and even wept to be let off. You are to consider, he is an old man labouring under a mortal disease (which is one circumstance that led to his elevation)—to be taken from the situation of Cardinal (in itself a very enviable one) and thrust violently into a mass of business, of questions and cabals which will distract him, and where he can get no thanks and may incur every kind of odium. It is true, he has an opportunity of making the fortunes of his family; and if he prefers them to himself, it is all very well, but not else. To persons of a restless and aspiring turn of mind, ambition and grandeur are very fine things, but to others they are the most intolerable tax. There is our own King—there is no conceiving the punishment that those processions and public show-days are to him—and then as to all the pomp and glitter that we so much admire, it is to those who are accustomed to it and who see behind the curtain, like so much cast-off rags and tinsel or Monmouth-street finery. They hold it in inconceivable scorn, and yet they can hardly do without it, from the slavery of habit. Then the time of such people is never their own—they are always performing a part (and generally a forced and irksome one) in what no way interests or concerns them. The late King, to whom rank was a real drudgery, used to stand buried in a pile of papers, so that you could not see those on the other side of the table, which he had merely to sign. It is no wonder kings are sometimes seen to retire to a monastery where religion leaves this asylum open to them, or are glad to return to their shepherd’s crook again. No situation can boast of complete ease or freedom; and even _that_ would have its disadvantages. And then again, look at those labourers at the top of the house yonder, working from morning till night, and exposed to all weathers for a bare pittance, without hope to sweeten their toil, and driven on by hunger and necessity! When we turn to others, whether those above or below us, we have little reason to be dissatisfied with our own situation in life. But, in all cases it is necessary to employ means to ends, be the object what it may; and where the first have not been taken, it is both unjust and foolish to repine at the want of success. The common expression, ‘Fortune’s Fools,’ may seem to convey a slur on the order of Providence; but it rather shows the equality of its distributions. Are the men of capacity to have all the good things to themselves? They are proud of their supposed superiority: why are they not contented with it? If a fool is not to grow rich, the next thing would be, that none but men of genius should have a coat to their backs, or be thought fit to live. If it were left to them to provide food or clothes, they would have none for themselves. It is urged as a striking inequality that enterprising manufacturers, for instance, should rise to great wealth and honours, while thousands of their dependants are labouring hard at one or two shillings a-day: but we are to recollect, that if it had not been for men like these, the working classes would have been perishing for want: they collect the others together, give a direction and find a vent for their industry, and may be said to exercise a part of _sovereign_ capacity. Every thing has its place and due subordination. If authors had the direction of the world, nothing would be left standing but printing-presses.

N.—What do you think of that portrait?

H.—It is very lady-like, and, I should imagine, a good likeness.

N.—J— said I might go on painting yet—he saw no falling-off. _They_ are pleased with it. I have painted almost the whole family, and the girls would let their mother sit to nobody else. But Lord! every thing one can do seems to fall so short of nature: whether it is the want of skill or the imperfection of the art that cannot give the successive movements of expression and changes of countenance, I am always ready to beg pardon of my sitters after I have done, and to say I hope they’ll excuse it. The more one knows of the art, and indeed the better one can do, the less one is satisfied. This made Titian write under his pictures _faciebat_, signifying that they were only in progress. I remember, Burke came in one day when Sir Joshua had been painting one of the Lennoxes; he was quite struck with the beauty of the performance, and said he hoped Sir Joshua would not touch it again: to which the latter replied, that if he had seen the original, he would have thought little of the picture, and that there was a _look_ which it was hardly in the power of art to give. No! all we can do is to produce something that makes a distant approach to nature, and that serves as a faint relic of the individual. A portrait is only a little better memorial than the parings of the nails or a lock of the hair.

H.—Who is it?

N.—It is a Lady W—: you have heard me speak of her before. She is a person of great sense and spirit, and combines very opposite qualities from a sort of natural strength of character. She has shown the greatest feeling and firmness united: no one can have more tenderness in her domestic connexions, and yet she has borne the loss of some of them with exemplary fortitude. Perhaps, the one is a consequence of the other; for where the attachment or even the regret is left, all is not lost. The mind has still a link to connect it with the beloved object. She has no affectation; and therefore yields to unavoidable circumstances as they arise. Inconsolable grief is often mere cant, and a trick to impose on ourselves and others. People of any real strength of character are seldom affected: those who have not the clue of their own feelings to guide them, do not know what to do, and study only how to produce an effect. I recollect one of the Miss B—s, Lord Orford’s favourites, whom I met with at a party formerly, using the expression—‘That seal of mediocrity, affectation!’ Don’t you think this striking?

H.—Yes; but not quite free from the vice it describes.

N.—Oh! they had plenty of that: they were regular _blue-stockings_, I assure you; or they would not have been so entirely to his lordship’s taste, who was a mighty coxcomb. But there is none of that in the person I have been speaking of: she has very delightful, genteel, easy manners.

H.—That is the only thing I envy in people in that class.

N.—But you are not to suppose they all have it: it is only those who are born with it, and who would have had it in a less degree in every situation of life. Vulgarity is the growth of courts as well as of the hovel. We may be deceived by a certain artificial or conventional manner in persons of rank and fashion; but they themselves see plainly enough into the natural character. I remember Lady W— told me, as an instance to this purpose, that when she was a girl, she and her sister were introduced at court; and it was then the fashion to stand in a circle, and the Queen came round and spoke to the different persons in turn. There was some high lady who came in after them, and pushed rudely into the circle so as to get before them. But the Queen, who saw the circumstance, went up and spoke to them first, and then passed on (as a just punishment) without taking any notice whatever of the forward intruder. I forget how it arose the other day, but she asked me—‘Pray, Mr. Northcote, is Discretion reckoned one of the cardinal virtues?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘it is not one of them, for it is all!’ If we had discretion at all times, we should never do wrong: but we are taken off our guard by being thrown into new and difficult situations, and have not time to weigh the consequences or to summon resolution to our aid. That is what Opie used to say when he had been engaged in an argument over-night, what excellent answers he could give the next day—and was vexed with himself for not having thought of them. No! if we had sufficient presence of mind to foresee the consequences of our actions on the spot, we should very rarely have occasion to repent of them afterwards.

H.—You put me in mind of Cicero’s account of the cardinal virtues, in his _Offices_, who makes them out to be four; and then says they are all referable to the first, which is _Prudence_.

N.—Ay; do you recollect what they are?

H.—Prudence, Temperance, Justice, and Fortitude.

N.—They are too much alike. The most distinct is Fortitude.

H.—I never could make much of Cicero, except his two treatises on Friendship and Old Age, which are most amiable gossiping. I see that Canning borrowed his tautology from Cicero, who runs on with such expressions as ‘I will _bear_, I will _suffer_, I will _endure_ any extremity.’ This is bad enough in the original: it is inexcusable in the copy. Cicero’s style, however, answered to the elegance of his finely-turned features; and in his long, graceful neck you may trace his winding and involuted periods.

N.—Do you believe in that sort of stuff?

H.—Not more than I can help.

CONVERSATION THE TWENTY-SECOND

N.—I ought to cross myself like the Catholics, when I see you. You terrify me by repeating what I say. But I see you have regulated yourself. There is nothing personally offensive, except what relates to Sir Walter. You make him swear too, which he did not do. He would never use the expression _Egad_. These little things mark the gentleman. I am afraid, if he sees it, he’ll say I am a babbler. That is what they dread so at court, that the least word should transpire.

H.—They may have their reasons for caution. At least, they can gain nothing, and might possibly lose equally by truth or falsehood, as it must be difficult to convey an adequate idea of royalty. But authors are glad to be talked about. If Sir W. Scott has an objection to having his name mentioned, he is singularly unlucky. Enough was said in his praise; and I do not believe he is captious. I fancy he _takes the rough with the smooth_. I did not well know what to do. You seemed to express a wish that the conversations should proceed, and yet you are startled at particular phrases, or I would have brought you what I had done to show you. I thought it best to take my chance of the general impression.

N.—Why, if kept to be published as a diary after my death, they might do: nobody could then come to ask me questions about them. But I cannot say they appear very striking to me. One reason may be, what I observe myself cannot be very new to me. If others are pleased, they are the best judges. It seems very odd that you who are acquainted with some of the greatest authors of the day cannot find any thing of theirs worth setting down.

H.—That by no means pleases them. I understand G— is angry at the liberty I take with you. He is quite safe in this respect. I might answer him much in the manner of the fellow in the _Country Girl_ when his friend introduces his mistress and he salutes her—‘Why, I suppose if I were to introduce my grandmother to you’—‘Sir,’ replies the other, ‘I should treat her with the utmost respect.’ So I shall never think of repeating any of G—’s conversations. My indifference may arise in part, as you say, from their not being very new to me. G— might, I dare say, argue very well on the doctrine of philosophical necessity or many other questions; but then I have read all this before in Hume or other writers, and I am very little edified, because I have myself had access to the same sources that he has drawn from. But you, as an artist, have been pushed into an intercourse with the world as well as an observation of nature; and combine a sufficient knowledge of general subjects with living illustrations of them. I do not like the conversation of mere men of the world or anecdote-mongers, for there is nothing to bind it together, and the other sort is pedantic and tiresome from repetition, so that there is nobody but you I can come to.

N.—You do not go enough into society, or you would be cured of what I cannot help regarding as a whim. You would there find many people of sense and information whose names you never heard of. It is not those who have made most noise in the world who are persons of the greatest general capacity. It is the making the most of a little, or the being determined to get before others in some one thing (perhaps for want of other recommendations) that brings men into notice. Individuals gain a reputation as they make a fortune, by application and by having set their minds upon it. But you have set out (like other people brought up among books) with such exclusive notions of authors and literary fame, that if you find the least glimmering of common sense out of this pale, you think it a prodigy, and run into the opposite extreme. I do not say that you have not a perception of character, or have not thought as far as you have observed; but you have not had the opportunities. You turn your back on the world, and fancy that they turn their backs on you. This is a very dangerous principle. You become reckless of consequences. It leads to an abandonment of character. By setting the opinion of others at defiance, you lose your self-respect. It is of no use that you still say, you will do what is right; your passions usurp the place of reason, and whisper you, that whatever you are bent upon doing is right. You cannot put this deception on the public, however false or prejudiced their standard may be; and the opinion of the world, therefore, acts as a seasonable check upon wilfulness and eccentricity.

H.—What you have stated is the best excuse I could make for my own faults or blunders. When one is found fault with for nothing, or for doing one’s best, one is apt to give the world their revenge. All the former part of my life I was treated as a cipher; and since I have got into notice, I have been set upon as a wild beast. When this is the case, and you can expect as little justice as candour, you naturally in self-defence take refuge in a sort of misanthropy and cynical contempt for mankind. One is disposed to humour them, and to furnish them with some ground for their idle and malevolent censures.

N.—But you should not. If you do nothing to confirm them in their first prejudices, they will come round in time. They are slow to admit claims, because they are not _sure_ of their validity; and they thwart and cross-examine you to try what temper you are made of. Without some such ordeal or difficulty thrown in the way, every upstart and pretender must be swallowed whole. That would never do. But if you have patience to stand the test, justice is rendered at last, and you are stamped for as much as you are worth. You certainly have not spared others: why should you expect nothing but ‘the milk of human kindness?’ Look to those men behind you (_a collection of portraits on the same frame_)—there is Pope and Dryden—did they fare better than living authors? Had not Dryden his Shadwell, and Pope his Dennis, who fretted him to a shadow, and galled him almost to death? There was Dr. Johnson, who in his writings was a pattern of wisdom and morality—he declared that he had been hunted down as if he had been the great enemy of mankind. But he had strength of mind to look down upon it. Not to do this, is either infirmity of temper, or shows a conscious want of any claims that are worth carrying up to a higher tribunal than the cabal and clamour of the moment. Sir Joshua always despised malicious reports; he knew they would blow over: at the same time, he as little regarded exaggerated praise. Nothing you could say had any effect, if he was not satisfied with himself. He had a great game to play, and only looked to the result. He had studied himself thoroughly; and, besides, had great equanimity of temper, which, to be sure, it is difficult to acquire, if it is not natural. You have two faults: one is a _feud_ or quarrel with the world, which makes you despair, and prevents you taking all the pains you might: the other is a carelessness and mismanagement, which makes you throw away the little you actually do, and brings you into difficulties that way. Sir Joshua used to say it was as wrong for a man to think too little as too much of himself: if the one ran him into extravagance and presumption, the other sank him in sloth and insignificance. You see the same thing in horses: if they cannot stir a load at the first effort, they give it up as a hopeless task; and nothing can rouse them from their sluggish obstinacy but blows and ill-treatment.

H.—I confess all this, but I hardly know how to remedy it; nor do I feel any strong inducement. Taking one thing with another, I have no great cause to complain. If I had been a merchant, a bookseller, or the proprietor of a newspaper, instead of what I am, I might have had more money or possessed a town and countryhouse, instead of lodging in a first or second floor, as it may happen. But what then? I see how the man of business and fortune passes his time. He is up and in the city by eight, swallows his breakfast in haste, attends a meeting of creditors, must read Lloyd’s lists, consult the price of consols, study the markets, look into his accounts, pay his workmen, and superintend his clerks: he has hardly a minute in the day to himself, and perhaps in the four-and-twenty hours does not do a single thing that he would do if he could help it. Surely, this sacrifice of time and inclination requires some compensation, which it meets with. But how am I entitled to make my fortune (which cannot be done without all this anxiety and drudgery) who do hardly any thing at all, and never any thing but what I like to do? I rise when I please, breakfast _at length_, write what comes into my head, and after taking a mutton-chop and a dish of strong tea, go to the play, and thus my time passes. Mr. — has no time to go to the play. It was but the other day that I had to get up a little earlier than usual to go into the city about some money transaction, which appeared to me a prodigious hardship: if so, it was plain that I must lead a tolerably easy life: nor should I object to passing mine over again. Till I was twenty, I had no idea of any thing but books, and thought every thing else was worthless and mechanical. The having to study painting about this time, and finding the difficulties and beauties it unfolded, opened a new field to me, and I began to conclude that there might be a number of ‘other things between heaven and earth that were never dreamt of in my philosophy.’ Ask G—, or any other literary man who has never been taken out of the leading-strings of learning, and you will perceive that they hold for a settled truth that the universe is built of words. G— has no interest but in literary fame, of which he is a worshipper: he cannot believe that any one is clever, or has even common sense, who has not written a book. If you talk to him of Italian cities, where great poets and patriots lived, he heaves a sigh; and if I were possessed of a fortune, he should go and visit the house where Galileo lived or the tower where Ugolino was imprisoned. He can see with the eyes of his mind. To all else he is marble. It is like speaking to him of the objects of a _sixth sense_; every other language seems dumb and inarticulate.

The end of CONVERSATIONS OF JAMES NORTHCOTE, ESQ., R.A.

NOTES

TABLE TALK

PAGE

2. _An Advertisement, etc._ The advertisement to the Paris edition of
_Table Talk_ was as follows:—

‘The work here offered to the public is a selection from the four
volumes of _Table Talk_, printed in London. Should it meet with
success, it will be followed by two other volumes of the same
description, which will include all that the author wishes to
preserve of his writings in this kind. The title may perhaps
serve to explain what there is of peculiarity in the style or
mode of treating the subjects. I had remarked that when I had
written or thought upon a particular topic, and afterwards had
occasion to speak of it with a friend, the conversation
generally took a much wider range, and branched off into a
number of indirect and collateral questions, which were not
strictly connected with the original view of the subject, but
which often threw a curious and striking light upon it, or upon
human life in general. It therefore occurred to me as possible
to combine the advantages of these two styles, the _literary_
and the _conversational_; or after stating and enforcing some
leading idea, to follow it up by such observations and
reflections as would probably suggest themselves in discussing
the same question in company with others. This seemed to me to
promise a greater variety and richness, and perhaps a greater
sincerity, than could be attained by a more precise and
scholastic method. The same consideration had an influence on
the familiarity and conversational idiom of the style which I
have used. How far the plan was feasible, or how far I have
succeeded in the execution of it must be left to others to
decide. I am also afraid of having too frequently attempted to
give a popular air and effect to subtle distinctions and trains
of thought; so that I shall be considered as too metaphysical by
the careless reader, while by the more severe and scrupulous
inquirer my style will be complained of as too light and
desultory. To all this I can only answer that I have done not
what I wished, but the best I could do; and I heartily wish it
had been better.’

ESSAY I. ON THE PLEASURE OF PAINTING

This and the following essay are from _The London Magazine_ for December 1820 (Vol. II. pp. 597–607), No. V. of a series entitled _Table Talk_.

5. ‘_There is a pleasure_,’ _etc._ Cf. vol. I. note to p. 76.

‘_No juggling here._’ Cf. ‘Here is such patchery, such juggling,
and such knavery.’ _Troilus and Cressida_, Act II. Scene 3.

‘_Study with joy_,’ _etc._ Cowper, _The Task_, III. 227–8.

6. ‘_More tedious_,’ _etc._ _King John_, Act III. Scene 4.

‘_My mind to me_,’ _etc._ The first line of the well-known poem
attributed to Sir Edward Dyer (d. 1607).

6. Note. See _The Sorrows of Young Werther_ (_Novels and Tales_,
Bohn, p. 254).

7. ‘_Pure in the last recesses of the mind._’ Dryden’s translation of
the Second Satire of Persius, l. 133. According to Frances
Reynolds (_Johnsonian Miscellanies_, ed. G. B. Hill, II. 272),
the lines were quoted by Johnson at the end of an eloquent
eulogium of Mrs. Thrale.

‘_Palpable to feeling_,’ _etc._ Cf. ‘If ’tis not gross in
sense ... ’tis probable and palpable to thinking.’ _Othello_,