sin of this disobedience, I this day went,' he said, 'in a chaise
to--, and going into the market at the time of high business uncovered
my head, and stood with it bare an hour, before the stall which my
father had formerly used, exposed to the sneers of the standers-by, and
the inclemency of the weather.' This penance may recall Dante's lines,--

'Quando vivea piu glorioso, disse,
Liberamente nel campo di Siena,
Ogni vergogna deposta, s'affisse.'
'"When at his glory's topmost height," said he,
"Respect of dignity all cast aside,
Freely he fix'd him on Sienna's plain."'

CARY. Dante, _Purgatory_. Cant. xi. l. 133.

[1152]

'How instinct varies in the grovelling swine,
Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine.'

Pope, _Essay on Man_, i. 221.

[1153] See _ante_, iii. 153, 296.

[1154] Mr. Burke suggested to me as applicable to Johnson, what Cicero,
in his CATO MAJOR, says of _Appius:--'Intentum enim animum tanquam arcum
habebat, nec languescens succumbebat senectuti_;' repeating, at the same
time, the following noble words in the same passage:--_'Ita enim
senectus honesta est, si se ipsa defendit, si jus suum retinet, si
nemini emancipata est, si usque ad extremum vitae spiritum vindicet jus
suum_.' BOSWELL. The last line runs in the original:-'si usque ad
ultimum spiritum dominatur in suos.' _Cato Major_, xi. 38.

[1155]

'_atrocem_ animum Catonis.'
'Cato--
Of spirit unsubdued.'

FRANCIS. Horace, 2 _Odes_, i. 24.

[1156] Yet Baretti, who knew Johnson well, in a MS. note on _Piozzi
Letters_, i.315, says:--'If ever Johnson took any delight in anything it
was to converse with some old acquaintance. New people he never loved to
be in company with, except ladies, when disposed to caress and
flatter him.'

[1157] Johnson, thirty-four years earlier, wrote:--'I think there is
some reason for questioning whether the body and mind are not so
proportioned that the one can bear all that can be inflicted on the
other; whether virtue cannot stand its ground as long as life, and
whether a soul well principled will not be separated sooner than
subdued.' _The Rambler_, No. 32. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Aug. 14,
1780:--'But what if I am seventy-two; I remember Sulpitius says of Saint
Martin (now that's above your reading), _Est animus victor annorum, et
senectuti cedere nescius_. Match me that among your yo