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square; at the back was a breach yet smaller, which I could not easily have entered, and wanting light, did not inspect.

"I was in a cave yet higher, called Reynard's Kitchen. There is a rock called the Church, in which I saw no resemblance that could justify the name.*

"Dovedale is about two miles long. We walked towards the head of the Dove, which is said to rise about five miles above two caves called the Dog-holes, at the foot of Dovedale.

"In one place, where the rocks approached, I proposed to build an arch from rock to rock over the stream, with a summer-house upon it. "The water murmured pleasantly among the stones.

"I thought that the heat and exercise mended my hearing. I bore the fatigue of the walk, which was very laborious, without inconvenience.

"There were with us Gilpin and Parker. Having heard of this place before, I had formed some imperfect idea, to which it did not answer. Brown says he was disappointed. I certainly expected a large river where I found only a clear quick brook. I believe I had imaged a valley enclosed by rocks, and terminated by a broad expanse of water.

"He that has seen Dovedale has no need to visit the Highlands." (p. 18-21.)

Those who have visited the magnificent edifice of lord Scarsdale, at Kedleston, would not thank us for transcribing the account of it here given, showing only, that in architecture the author was no proficient; nor would they be obliged by our extracting his remarks on the machinery of a silk-mill, the process of salt-making, the preparation of papier maché, or on the splendid works at Boulton's,† which would expose further his utter ignorance of all that relates to practical mechanics and chemistry. His genius had taken a different direction, and it was a mark of his wisdom, if he selected for it the course on which he could outrun all his competitors. Victory was the constant object of his pursuit, even in the friendly contests of domestic intercourse and familiar conversation, and he rarely failed to acquire it, either by dexterity or strength.

At Pool's Hole, near Buxton, our traveller was unwilling to encounter the difficulties it presented, and therefore, taking an imperfect view, he gives an inadequate description of it; but as the editor relies much upon the comparison of the beauties of Hawkestone and Ilam for the reception of his publication, and the novelty he assumes to have discovered in the mind of his author, we will supply the whole passage.

"We saw Hawkestone, the seat of Sir Rowland Hill, and were conducted by Miss Hill over a large tract of rocks and woods; a region abounding with striking scenes and terrific grandeur. We were always on the brink of a precipice, or at the foot of a lofty rock; but the steeps

"This rock is supposed rudely to resemble a tower; hence, it has been called the Church."

"Of this last he only says: We then went to Boulton's, who led us through the shops. I could not distinctly see his enginery. Twelve dozen of buttons for three shillings. Spoons struck at once.'

were seldom naked: in places, oaks of uncommon magnitude shot up from the crannies of stone; and where there were no trees, there were underwoods and bushes.

"Round the rocks is a narrow path, cut upon the stone, which is very frequently hewn into steps; but art has proceeded no further than to make the succession of wonders safely accessible. The whole circuit is somewhat laborious: it is terminated by a grotto cut in the rock to a great extent, with many windings, and supported by pillars, not hewn into regularity, but such as imitate the spots of nature, by asperities and protuberances.

"The place is without any dampness, and would afford an habitation not uncomfortable. There were from space to space seats cut out in the rock. Though it wants water, it excels, Dovedale by the extent of its prospects, the awfulness of its shades, the horrors of its precipices, the verdure of its hollows, and the loftiness of its rocks. The ideas which it forces upon the mind are, the sublime, the dreadful, and the vast. Above is inaccessible altitude: below is horrible profundity. But it excels the garden of Ilam only in extent.

"Ilam has grandeur, tempered with softness; the walker congratulates his own arrival at the place, and is grieved to think he must ever leave it. As he looks up to the rocks, his thoughts are elevated; as he turns his eyes on the vallies, he is composed and soothed.

"He that mounts the precipices at Hawkestone, wonders how he came thither, and doubts how he shall return. His walk is an adventure, and his departure an escape. He has not the tranquillity, but the horrors, of solitude; a kind of turbulent pleasure, between fright and admiration.

"Ilam is the fit abode of pastoral virtue, and might properly diffuse its shades over nymphs and swains; Hawkestone can have no fitter inhabitants than giants of mighty bone and bold emprise-men of lawless courage and heroic violence. Hawkestone should be described by Milton, and Ilam by Parnel." (p. 38-43.)

Now the reader has had an opportunity of judging for himself as to the felicity of this description, we shall not be disposed to detract a syllable from what we have before said with regard to it: yet it has merit; the author was awake to the magnificence and loveliness of the scene; and if he do not exhibit it with the pencil of an artist, he felt the close alliance between moral and natural beauty; and from his keen perception of the one, he supplies a happy illustration of the other.

The old clerk at Dymerchion Church, by his mercenary Battery of Mrs. Thrale, seems to have, occasioned a feeling of permanent dislike in the doctor, hardly justified by the weakness which produced it. In the original note, the observation is in this form, and is somewhat varied in the text, as the editor acknowledges: The old clerk had great appearance of joy at seeing his mistress, and foolishly said, that he was now willing to die.' The author afterwards wrote in a separate column, under the head of Notes and additions,' he had a crown,' and subsequently there is interlined the word only,' in ink of a different shade. On no occasion of his life did Johnson show more his detestation of flattery, than at the period when the vanity of lord Chesterfield excited it. It will be recollected, that the plan of

bis Dictionary was announced to the public in a pamphlet addressed to that nobleman. In the hope of a dedication, after neglect and abandonment, his lord thought fit to write some papers in The World' of a complimentary character. The manly spirit displayed in the letters of Dr. Johnson on that concession are well known and they contributed more, perhaps, to the mortification of the arrogant peer, than any other circumstance in his ceremonious and courtly history.

The doctor, we believe, never in his writings avowed any attachment to the University of Oxford, where he was maintained by Mr. Corbet as a companion to his son. He was entered a commoner at Pembroke when nineteen years of age, but was careless of his character and conduct, whether in regard to discipline or study; and after the departure of his young friend, he was reduced to a condition of great poverty. Yet his mind was not depressed by his circumstances, and he translated Pope's Messiah into Latin hexameters, if not with classic correctness, in a style of extraordinary vigour. His pursuit was general knowledge, and finding it not to be attained in the confined studies of academical establishments, he left Oxford without taking a degree; so that it was not until the lapse of nearly half a century that he obtained the diploma of doctor of laws from the University, and by the interest of lord North, not gratuitously or voluntarily conferred.* Yet he was desirous of this distinction, and had then published the whole of those works that raised him to the pinnacle of literary fame, the Lives of the Poets excepted, with which he concluded his labours as an author.

At Oxford he seems to have shut himself up with Mr. Coulson, senior fellow of University College; a man resembling the doctor in appearance, and who is the person designated in the Rambler under the name of 'Gelidus the Philosopher.' The ladies;' our traveller says, 'wandered about the University. The only conversation he mentions is with Dr. Vansittart, the uncle of the present chancellor of the exchequer, who communicated to him the particulars of some disorder with which he was afflicted. He now concludes, Afterwards we were at Burke's (Beaconfield,) where we heard of the dissolution of the parliament. We went home.'

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No conclusion can be fairly drawn as to the declining strength of the doctor's mind from this short fragment; indeed, at the time of penning these notes he was in the full vigour of his understanding, although sixty-five years of age. He had received his pension in 1762, and published his edition of Shakspeare in 1765; but it was not until 1770, four years prior to this journey, that he interfered ostensibly in any political controversy; and then he wrote 'False Alarm,' when the constitution was by some supposed

* Johnson had before obtained the same rank from the Dublin University, which he declined to assume.

to have received a violent shock from the resolutions of the house of commons in the case of John Wilkes. The next year appeared Falkland's Island,' to show the folly of going to war on account of the conduct of Spain; and in the same year of the Journey to Wales (1774,) he published The Patriot,' on the eve of the general election, of which, as we have seen, he first obtained information at Mr. Burke's, at Beaconfield. Taxation no Tyranny,' which came out in 1775, was directed against the American congress; and it was from the utility of such publications to the ministry, and the respect the highest officer in it entertained for an accomplished scholar, that he acquired the degree from Oxford, to which we have already adverted.

To the Diary is subjoined, in the aphoristic method, 'Opinions and Observations, by Dr. Johnson;' and these, equally on account of the authority from which they are derived, the peculiar felicity with which they are stated, and the intrinsic merit they possess, we cannot persuade ourselves to omit.

"1. Life, to be worthy of a rational being, must be always in progression; we must always purpose to do more and better than in time past. “2. Of real evils the number is great; of possible evils there is no end.

"3. The desire of fame not regulated, is as dangerous to virtue as that of money.

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4. Flashy, light, and loud conversation, is often a cloak for cunning; as shewy life, and a gay outside, spread now and then a thin covering over avarice and poverty.

"5. There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful; power is nothing but as it is felt; and the delight of superiority is proportionate to the resistance overcome.

"6. Old times have bequeathed us a precept, to be merry and wise; but who has been able to observe it? Prudence soon comes to spoil our mirth.

7. The advice that is wanted is commonly unwelcome, and that which is not wanted is evidently impertinent.

"8. It is very rarely that an author is hurt by his critics. The blaze of reputation cannot be blown out, but it often dies in the socket; a very few names may be considered as perpetual lamps that shine unconsumed.

"9. There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved, nor will by me at least be thought worthy of esteem.

"10. In the world there is much tenderness where there is no mis

fortune; and much courage where there is no danger.

"11. He that has less than enough for himself, has nothing to spare, and as every man feels only his own necessities, he is apt to think those of others less pressing, and to accuse them of withholding what in truth they cannot give. He that has his foot firm upon dry ground may pluck another out of the water; but of those that are all afloat, none has any care but for himself.

"12. Attention and respect give pleasure, however late or however useless. But they are not useless when they are late; it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

"13. Cool reciprocations of esteem are the great comforts of life; hyperbolical praise only corrupts the tongue of the one, and the ear of the other.

"14. The fortuitous friendships of inclination or vanity, are at the mercy of a thousand accidents.

"15. A sudden blaze of kindness may, by a single blast of coldness, be extinguished. Esteem of great powers or amiable qualities newly discovered, may embroider a day or a week; but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life. A friend may be often found and lost; but an old friend never can be found, and nature has provided that he cannot easily be lost.

“16. Incommunicative taciturnity neither imparts nor invites friendship, but reposes on a stubborn sufficiency self-centred, and neglects the interchange of that social officiousness by which we are habitually endeared to one another. To be without friendship, is to be without one of the first comforts of our present state. To have no assistance from other minds in resolving doubts, in appeasing scruples, in balancing deliberations, is a very wretched destitution.

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17. Faith in some proportion to fear." (p. 150-156.

CRITICISM. Reflections on the Authorized Version of the Holy Scriptures, intended to show its defects, and the necessity of attempting to improve it, with a specimen of such an attempt. By B. Boothroyd, 4to. pp. 58. 1816. From the Critical Review.

[The account of the early English version of the Bible, contained in this article, is rather superficial. In his remarks on the Psalter, the author does injustice to the church of England. The Psalter is translated from the Septuagint, and not from the Hebrew Bible, as he asserts.—Ed.]

It is probably well known to the generality of our readers, that we are indebted for the first printed edition of any part of the scriptures in the English language, to William Tyndal. This distinguished person embraced the doctrine of the reformation, and having thus rendered himself obnoxious to the Romish hierarchy, he was compelled to leave England, his native country, and seek an asylum in foreign lands. For some time he travelled in Germany, where he became personally acquainted with Luther. He afterwards removed into the Netherlands, and fixed his residence at Antwerp. Justly supposing that the circulation of the scriptures in the vernacular language would be efficacious as a means to oppose the superstitions of his countrymen, and of directing their attention to the truth, he projected a translation of the New Testament, and having obtained the assistance of John Fryth, who had been educated at Cambridge, he completed this important work, which was published at Antwerp about three years after the first edition of Luther's German version, in 1523.

The effects produced by this translation of the scriptures into the English language may be estimated by the conduct of its adversaries, the popish clergy, whose authority was not then broken in this country. They alleged that it was not possible to translate the scriptures into English; they asserted that it was not lawful for the laity to possess them in their mother tongue; that it

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