'I think not.'
BOSWELL. 'You will allow his Apology to be well done.' JOHNSON. 'Very
well done, to be sure, Sir. That book is a striking proof of the justice
of Pope's remark:
"Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand."'
BOSWELL. 'And his plays are good.' JOHNSON. 'Yes; but that was his
trade; l'esprit du corps: he had been all his life among players and
play-writers. I wondered that he had so little to say in conversation,
for he had kept the best company, and learnt all that can be got by the
ear. He abused Pindar to me, and then shewed me an Ode of his own, with
an absurd couplet, making a linnet soar on an eagle's wing. I told him
that when the ancients made a simile, they always made it like something
real.'
Mr. Wilkes remarked, that 'among all the bold flights of Shakspeare's
imagination, the boldest was making Birnamwood march to Dunsinane;
creating a wood where there never was a shrub; a wood in Scotland!
ha! ha! ha!' And he also observed, that 'the clannish slavery of the
Highlands of Scotland was the single exception to Milton's remark of
"The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty," being worshipped in all hilly
countries.
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