Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/377

 *grafted in our nature; it exerts itself in our first years, and, without continual endeavours to suppress it, influences our last. Other vices tyrannize over particular ages, and triumph in particular countries. Rage is the failing of youth, and avarice of age; revenge is the predominant passion of one country, and inconstancy the characteristick of another; but pride is the native of every country, infects every climate, and corrupts every nation. It ranges equally through the gardens of the east, and the deserts of the south, and reigns no less in the cavern of the savage, than in the palace of the epicure. It mingles with all our other vices, and without the most constant and anxious care, will mingle also with our virtues. It is no wonder, therefore, that Solomon so frequently directs us to avoid this fault, to which we are all so liable, since nothing is more agreeable to reason, than that precepts of the most general use should be most frequently inculcated.

The second reason may be drawn from the circumstances of the preacher.

Pride was probably a crime to which Solomon himself was most violently tempted; and indeed it might have been much more easily imagined, that he would have fallen into this sin, than into some others of which he was guilty; since he was placed in every circumstance that could expose him to it. He was a king absolute and independent, and by consequence surrounded with sycophants ready to second the first motions of self-love, and blow the sparks of vanity; to echo all the applauses, and suppress all the murmurs of the people; to comply with every proposal, and flatter every failing. These are the tempters to which kings have been always exposed, and whose snares few kings have been able to overcome.

But Solomon had not only the pride of royalty to suppress, but the pride of prosperity, of knowledge, and of wealth; each of them able to subdue the virtue of most men, to intoxicate their minds, and hold their reason in captivity. Well might Solomon more diligently warn us against a sin which had assaulted him in so many dif