Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/384

 376 A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Johnson

��were the aversion of Milton z ) ; and he might have said, as that King is made to do by Prior,

1 1 drank, I lik'd it not, 'twas rage, 'twas noise, An airy scene of transitory joys 2 .'

His temper was not naturally smooth, but seldom boiled over 3. It was worth while to find out the mollia tempora /andi*. The words nugarum contemptor fell often from him, in a reverie. When asked about them, he said, he appropriated them from a preface of Dr. Hody. He was desirous of seeing every thing that was extraordinary in art or nature 5 ; and to resemble his Imlac 6 in his moral romance of Rasselas. It was the fault of fortune that he did not animadvert on every thing at home and abroad 7. He had been upon the salt-water, and observed something of a sea-life : of the uniformity of the scene, and of the sickness and turbulence belonging to that element, he had felt enough 8. He had seen a little of the military life and

��1 ' In his diet he was abstemious ; not delicate in the choice of his dishes ; and strong liquors of all kinds were his aversion,' &c. Milton's Poems ; ed. Elijah Fenton, 1725. Preface, p. 26.

' What neat repast shall feast us,

light and choice, Of Attic taste with wine.'

Milton's Sonnets.

( What more foul common sin among us than drunkenness ? And who can be ignorant that if the im portation of wine and the use of all strong drink were forbid, it would both clean rid the possibility of committing that odious vice, and men might afterwards live happily and healthfully without the use of those intoxicating liquors.' Milton's Tetrachordon, Works, 1806, ii. 163.

2 Solomon on the Vanity of the World, Bk. ii. 1. 106.

3 ' He was hard to please and easily offended ; impetuous and ir ritable in his temper, but of a most

��humane and benevolent heart.' Life, iv. 426.

' mollissima fandi Tempora.'

Aeneid, iv. 293.

5 Boswell, recording his visit with Johnson to a silk-mill at Derby, says : ' I had learnt from Dr. John son, during this interview, not to think with a dejected indifference of the works of art, and the pleasures of life, because life is uncertain and short ; but to consider such indiffer ence as a failure of reason, a morbid ness of mind.' Life, iii. 164.

6 Boswell compares him to Imlac. Ib. iii. 6. See also ante, ii. 220.

1 Life, iii. 449.

8 At Plymouth in 1762, and among the Hebrides in 1773. Ib. \. 377 ; v. 280-4, 308. He had also crossed the Straits of Dover. Ib. ii. 384. It was ' a state of life of which Dr. Johnson always expressed the greatest abhorrence.' Ib. i. 348; ii. 438 ; iii. 266 ; v. 137 ; ante, \. 335.

discipline

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