This is a strong confirmation of the truth
of a remark of his, which I have had occasion to quote elsewhere, that
'a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it;'
for, notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of
spirits, and his labour in carrying on his Dictionary, he answered the
stated calls of the press twice a week from the stores of his mind,
during all that time.
Posterity will be astonished when they are told, upon the authority of
Johnson himself, that many of these discourses, which we should suppose
had been laboured with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were
written in haste as the moment pressed, without even being read over by
him before they were printed. It can be accounted for only in this way;
that by reading and meditation, and a very close inspection of life,
he had accumulated a great fund of miscellaneous knowledge, which, by a
peculiar promptitude of mind, was ever ready at his call, and which
he had constantly accustomed himself to clothe in the most apt and
energetick expression.
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