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14. Kad-[?] 1 6 6 expense of journey 0 10 6 to Mr. Wright 0 5 0 to Labourer 2 2 0
15. Receipt for pension April 5-75£. Salust imitates Plato. Longin 13 and Xenophon. Longin[1].
1 I owe the copy of this entry and those of August 28 and 30 and September 17-18 to the kindness of Mr. Godfrey Locker-Lampson of Rowfant, where the original is preserved.
On July 10 Johnson went to Rochester to visit Bennet Langton who was quartered there as an officer of Militia. Dartford and Northfleet are on the road between Rochester and London.
Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on July 23: – 'While I was with Mr. Langton we took four little journies in a chaise, and made one little voyage on the Medway, with four misses and their maid, but they were very quiet.' Letters, ii. 320.
His pension was payable quarterly on the old quarter days, Jan. 5, April 5, July 5, Oct. 10. Life, i. 376, n. 2. Owing to the distressed state of the Treasury, brought about by the American War, payments no doubt were often at this time in arrears. Even in time of peace there had been great delays. Lord Chesterfield, on June 1, 1767, sending some money to his son who was envoy at Dresden, wrote: – 'I believe it will come very seasonably, as all places, both foreign and domestic, are so far in arrears. They talk of paying you all up to Christmas. The King's inferior servants are almost starving.' Chesterfield's Letters, iv. 262.
Johnson, I conjecture, had found among Langton's books Longinus's Treatise on the Sublime. In Section 13 is quoted a passage from Plato's
Republic, ix. 586 A. where it is said: – Οἱ ἄρα φρονήσεως καὶ ἀρετῆς ἄπειροι ... Boσкημáтwv díkŋy káтw dei BλénovTes βοσκημάτων δίκην κάτω ἀεὶ βλέποντες καὶ κεκυφότες εἰς γῆν καὶ εἰς τραπέζας βίσκονται χορταζόμενοι καὶ ὀχεύοντες. 'They who have no knowledge of wisdom and virtue ... like beasts ever look downwards, and their heads are bent to the ground, or rather to the table; they feed full their bellies and their lusts' (Longinus on the Sublime, translated by H. L. Havell, 1890, p. 28). This recalled to him the opening lines in Sallust's Catiline: – 'Omnes homines, qui sese student praestare ceteris animalibus, summa ope niti decet, ne vitam silentio transeant veluti pecora, quae natura prona atque ventri obedientia finxit.'
The passage in which Sallust imitated Xenophon was perhaps the following quoted in section 28 from the Cyropaedia, i. 5. 12: – Πόνον δὲ τοῦ ζῆν ἡδέως ἡγεμόνα νομίζετε κάλ- λιστον δὲ πάντων καὶ πολεμικώτατον κτῆμα εἰς τὰς ψυχὰς συγκεκόμισθε· ἐπαι- νούμενοι γὰρ μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἅπασι χαίρετε. [This reading differs some- what from the accepted text.]
'Labour you regard as the guide to a pleasant life, and you have laid up in your souls the fairest and most soldier-like of all gifts: in praise is your delight – more than in anything else.' Sallust says: – 'Verum enimvero is demum mihi vivere atque frui anima videtur, qui aliquo negotio intentus praeclari facinoris aut artis bonae famam quaerit.' Catilina, cap. ii.
- ↑ 1
