Addison, Locke and Newton, and their contemporaries of chief note, have not left any thing recorded of them resembling the peculiarities of this pair of originals. How it came that Swift and Johnson manifested the same habit, considering their early lives and prospects were so dissimilar, we are unequal to expound; but both these uncommon men must have known that any ordinary fellow, who had affected the same licence, would have been shouldered out of the room, and excluded from all society but that of the bear garden. In becoming so eccentric, did they presume then on the deference which they knew was paid to the consequence derived from their works—or were these vagaries unpremeditated?
The sagacity Mr. Croker has shown in detecting the source of the Doctor's hatred of excisemen and excise laws (which the great Cham of literature must have imagined would never meet the light) and his success in elucidating numerous passages in Boswell's work, without prejudice to those of Mrs. Piozzi, Sir John Hawkins, &c., indicating how much his services might have been valued by the commonwealth of letters, had they taken a different direction; as they might have done in a season of peace, we suppose, without deranging his regular avocations, we cannot but regret that the summons which recently stimulated him to dip his pen in never-fading ink, when Samuel Johnson was the theme; was some fifteen years ago, either entirely unheard, or only as small and exile a voice as that of Hylas to his Master, who thought him three miles off[1] (when the water nymphs had got possession of his page.)—Had Mr. Croker, in 1818, when he resorted to the records of the Board of Longitude, for his purpose at the time, followed up a hint (much broader than the parchment manufactory) in one of those records, dated the 28th November, 1772, which he either overlooked, or passed on to the order of the day; nobody would have thought on
- ↑ Lord Bacon deduces from this fable, that the antients were well acquainted with the effect of sound passing through water, which is as here described.
