Voltaire, I am
afraid, meant only by wanton profaneness to obtain a sportive victory
over religion, and to discredit the belief of a superintending
Providence; Johnson meant, by shewing the unsatisfactory nature of
things temporal, to direct the hopes of man to things eternal. Rasselas,
as was observed to me by a very accomplished lady, may be considered as
a more enlarged and more deeply philosophical discourse in prose, upon
the interesting truth, which in his Vanity of Human Wishes he had so
successfully enforced in verse.
I would ascribe to this year the following letter to a son of one of his
early friends at Lichfield, Mr. Joseph Simpson, Barrister, and authour
of a tract entitled Reflections on the Study of the Law.
'TO JOSEPH SIMPSON, ESQ.
'DEAR SIR,--Your father's inexorability not only grieves but amazes me:
he is your father; he was always accounted a wise man; nor do I remember
any thing to the disadvantage of his good-nature; but in his refusal to
assist you there is neither good-nature, fatherhood, nor wisdom.
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