" Mr. Langton suggested, that in the line
"And panting Time toil'd after him in vain,"
Johnson might have had in his eye the passage in The Tempest, where
Prospero says of Miranda,
"-----She will outstrip all praise,
And make it halt behind her."
Johnson said nothing. Garrick then ventured to observe, "I do not think
that the happiest line in the praise of Shakspeare." Johnson exclaimed
(smiling,) "Prosaical rogues! next time I write, I'll make both time and
space pant."'
'It is well known that there was formerly a rude custom for those who
were sailing upon the Thames, to accost each other as they passed, in
the most abusive language they could invent, generally, however, with as
much satirical humour as they were capable of producing. Addison gives
a specimen of this ribaldry, in Number 383 of The Spectator, when Sir
Roger de Coverly and he are going to Spring-garden. Johnson was once
eminently successful in this species of contest; a fellow having
attacked him with some coarse raillery, Johnson answered him thus, "Sir,
your wife, under pretence of keeping a bawdy-house, is a receiver of
stolen goods.
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