Aetat. 57.] Johnson's lines in THE TRAVELLER. Still to ourselves in every place consign'd, With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel, To men remote from power, but rarely known, 7 He added, 'These are all of which I can be sure'.' They bear a small proportion to the whole, which consists of four hundred and thirty-eight verses. Goldsmith, in the couplet which he inserted, mentions Luke as a person well known, and superficial readers have passed it over quite smoothly; while those of more attention have been as much perplexed by Luke, as by Lydiat', in The Vanity of Human Wishes. The truth is, that Goldsmith himself was in a mistake. In the Respublica Hungarica, there is an account of a desperate 1 'The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.' 'Caelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt.' See also ante, i. 441, note 1. 2 ''I once inadvertently put him,' wrote Reynolds, 'in a situation from which none but a man of perfect integrity could extricate himself. I pointed at some lines in The Traveller which I told him I was sure he wrote. He hesitated a little; during this hesitation I recollected myself, that, as I knew he would not lie, I put him in a cleftstick, and should have had but my due if he had given me a rough answer; but he only said, "Sir, I did not write them, but that you may not imagine that I have wrote more than I really have, the utmost I have wrote in that poem, to the best of my recollection, is not more than eighteen lines." [Nine seems the actual number.] It must be observed there was then an opinion about town that Dr. Johnson wrote the whole poem for his friend, who was then in a manner an unknown writer.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 458. See also post, April 9, 1778. For each line of The Traveller Goldsmith was paid 117a. (ante, i. 224, note). Johnson's present, therefore, of nine lines was, if reckoned in money, worth 8/54. 3 See ante, i. 225, note. 4 • Respublica et Status Regni Hungariae. Ex Officina Elzeviriana, rebellion 8 Teaching by lectures. [A.D. 1766. rebellion in the year 1514, headed by two brothers, of the name of Zeck, George and Luke. When it was quelled, George, not Luke, was punished by his head being encircled with a red-hot iron crown: 'corona candescente ferred coronatur'. The same severity of torture was exercised on the Earl of Athol, one of the murderers of King James I. of Scotland. Dr. Johnson at the same time favoured me by marking the lines which he furnished to Goldsmith's Deserted Village, which are only the last four: That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay, Talking of education, ' People have now-a-days, (said he,) got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures', except 1634, p. 136. This work belongs to the series of Republics mentioned by Johnson, post, under April 29, 1776. "Luke" had been taken simply for the euphony of the line. He was one of two brothers, Dosa... . The origin of the mistake [of Zeck for Dosa] is curious. The two brothers belonged to one of the native races of Transylvania called Szeklers or Zecklers, which descriptive addition follows their names in the German biographical authorities; and this, through abridgment and misapprehension, in subsequent books came at last to be substituted for the family name.' Forster's Goldsmith, i. 370. The iron crown was not the worst of the tortures inflicted. 2 See post, April 15, 1781. In 1748 Johnson had written (Works, v. 231): ‘At a time when so many schemes of education have been projected,... so many schools opened for general knowledge, and so many lectures in particular sciences attended.' Goldsmith, in his Life of Nash (published in 1762), describes the lectures at Bath 'on the arts and sciences, which are frequently taught there in a pretty, superficial manner, so as not to tease the understanding, while they afford the imagination some amusement.' Cunningham's Goldsmith's Works, iv. 59. where Aetat. 57.] Deists 9 where experiments are to be shewn. You may teach chymistry by lectures. You might teach making of shoes by lectures'!' At night I supped with him at the Mitre tavern, that we might renew our social intimacy at the original place of meeting. But there was now a considerable difference in his way of living. Having had an illness, in which he was advised to leave off wine, he had, from that period, continued to abstain from it, and drank only water, or lemonade'. I told him that a foreign friend of his3, whom I had met with abroad, was so wretchedly perverted to infidelity, that he treated the hopes of immortality with brutal levity; and said, 'As man dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog.' JOHNSON. 'If he dies like a dog, let him lie like a dog.' I added, that this man said to me, 'I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.' JOHNSON. Sir, he must be very singular in his opinion, if he thinks himself one of the best of men; for none of his friends think him so.'-He said, no honest man could be a Deist; for no man could be so after a fair examination of the proofs of Christianity. I named Hume1. JOHNSON. 1 Perhaps Gibbon had read this passage at the time when he wrote in his Memoirs :-'It has indeed been observed, nor is the observation absurd, that, excepting in experimental sciences which demand a costly apparatus and a dexterous hand, the many valuable treatises that have been published on every subject of learning may now supersede the ancient mode of oral instruction.' Gibbon's Mist: Works, i. 50. See post, March 20, 1776, note. ? See ante, i. 120. ' Baretti was in Italy at the same time as Boswell. That they met seems to be shewn by a passage in Boswell's letter (post, Nov. 6, 1766). Malone wrote of him :-' He appears to be an infidel.' Prior's Malone, p. 399. 'Lord Charlemont records (Life, i. 235) that 'Mrs. Mallet, meeting Hume at an assembly, boldly accosted him in these words:" Mr. Hume, give me leave to introduce myself to you; we deists ought to know each other." 'Madame," replied Hume, "I am no deist. I do not style myself so, neither do I desire to be known by that appellation."' Hume, in 1763 or 1764, wrote to Dr. Blair about the men of letters at Paris:-'It would give you and Robertson great satisfaction to find that there is not a single deist among them.' J. H. Burton's 'No, |