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I cannot help thinking that there is much weight in the opinion of those who have held, that Truth, as an eternal and immutable principle, ought, upon no account whatever, to be violated, from supposed previous or superiour obligations, of which every man being to judge for himself, there is great danger that we may too often, from partial motives, persuade ourselves that they exist; and probably whatever extraordinary instances may sometimes occur, where some evil may be prevented by violating this noble principle, it would be found that human happiness would, upon the whole, be more perfect were Truth universally preserved.

In the notes to the Dunciad, we find the following verses, addressed to Pope: –a

‘While malice, Pope, denies thy page

Its own celestial fire;

While criticks, and while bards in rage

Admiring, won’t admire:

While wayward pens thy worth assail,

And envious tongues decry;

These times, though many a friend bewail,

These times bewail not I.

But when the world’s loud praise is thine,

And spleen no more shall blame;

When with thy Homer thou shalt shine

In one establish’d fame!

When none shall rail, and every lay

Devote a wreath to thee:

That day (for come it will) that day

Shall I lament to see.’1181

It is surely not a little remarkable, that they should appear without a name. Miss Seward, knowing Dr. Johnson’s almost universal and minute literary information, signified a desire that I should ask him who was the authour. He was prompt with his answer: ‘Why, Sir, they were written by one Lewis, who was either under-master or an usher of Westminster-school, and published a Miscellany, in which Grongar Hill1182 first came out.’a Johnson praised them highly, and repeated them with a noble animation. In the twelfth line, instead of ‘one establish’d fame,’ he repeated ‘one unclouded flame,’ which he thought was the reading in former editions: but I believe was a flash of his own genius. It is much more poetical than the other.

On Monday, June 14, and Tuesday, 15, Dr. Johnson and I dined, on one of them, I forget which, with Mr. Mickle, translator of the Lusiad, at Wheatley, a very pretty country place a few miles from Oxford; and on the other with Dr. Wetherell, Master of University College. From Dr. Wetherell’s he went to visit Mr. Sackville Parker, the bookseller; and when he returned to us, gave the following account of his visit, saying, ‘I have been to see my old friend, Sack. Parker; I find he has married his maid; he has done right. She had lived with him many years in great confidence, and they had mingled minds: I do not think he could have found any wife that would have made him so happy. The woman was very attentive and civil to me; she pressed me to fix a day for dining with them, and to say what I liked, and she would be sure to get it for me. Poor Sack! He is very ill, indeed. We parted as never to meet again. It has quite broke me down.’ This pathetic narrative was strangely diversified with the grave and earnest defence of a man’s having married his maid. I could not but feel it as in some degree ludicrous.

In the morning of Tuesday, June 15, while we sat at Dr. Adams’s, we talked of a printed letter from the Reverend Herbert Croft, to a young gentleman who had been his pupil, in which he advised him to read to the end of whatever books he should begin to read. Johnson. ‘This is surely a strange advice; you may as well resolve that whatever men you happen to get acquainted with, you are to keep to them for life. A book may be good for nothing; or there may be only one thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through? These Voyages, (pointing to the three large volumes of Voyages to the South Sea,1183 which were just come out) who will read them through? A man had better work his way before the mast, than read them through; they will be eaten by rats and mice, before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books; one set of