Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies II.djvu/439

 4. He had originally contributed some notes to Theobald's Shakespeare, and afterwards talked of an edition of his own. But he went no further than to write some abusive remarks on the margin of Warburton's Shakespeare with a very few attempts at emendation, and those perhaps all in the first volume. In the other volumes he has only with great diligence counted the lines in every page. When this was told Dr. Jortin, / have known him, said he, amuse himself with still slighter employment, he would write down all the proper names that he could call into his memory. His mind seems to have been tumultuous and desultory, and he was glad to catch any employment that might produce attention without anxiety. Such employment, as Dr. Battie I has observed, is necessary for madmen.

N.B. In his cups he was jealous and quarrelsome. One of his pupils having been invited by him to supper, happened, as he was going away, to stumble at a Pile of Justin 2 which lay on the floor in quires; Thirlby told him that he kicked down the books in Contempt of the Editor, upon which the Pupil said, it is now time to go away.

N.B. One of his colloquial topicks was : That Nature ap parently intended a kind of parity among her sons. Sometimes, said he, she deviates a little from her general purpose, and sends into the world a man of powers superior to the rest, of quicker intuition, and wider comprehension, this man has all other men for his enemies, and would not be suffered to live his natural time, but that his excellences are ballanced by his failings. He that by intellectual exaltation thus towers above his contemporaries, is drunken, or lazy, or capricious, or by some defect or other is hindered from exerting his sovereignty of mind ; he is thus kept upon the level, and thus preserved from the destruction which would be the natural consequence of universal hatred.

This is what I can remember.

1 Dr. William Battie published in 2 Thirlby published in 1723 an 1757^4 Treatise on Madness. Gentle- edition of Justin Martyr in folio. man's Magazine, 1757, p. 605. Ib. 1784, p. 260.

�� �