ay on Criticism_, l. 370.

[790] Johnson's remark on these stones is curious as shewing that he had
not even a glimpse of the discoveries to be made by geology. After
saying that 'no account can be given' of the position of one of the
stones, he continues:--'There are so many important things of which
human knowledge can give no account, that it may be forgiven us if we
speculate no longer on two stones in Col.' _Works_, ix. 122. See _ante_,
ii. 468, for his censure of Brydone's 'anti-mosaical remark.'

[791]

'Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella.'
'My Phillis me with pelted apples plies.'

DRYDEN. Virgil, _Eclogues_, iii. 64.

[792]

'The helpless traveller, with wild surprise,
Sees the dry desert all around him rise,
And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies.'

_Cato_ act ii. sc. 6.

[793] Johnson seems unwilling to believe this. 'I am not of opinion that
by any surveys or land-marks its [the sand's] limits have been ever
fixed, or its progression ascertained. If one man has confidence enough
to say that it advances, nobody can bring any proof to support him in
denying it.' _Works_, ix. 122. He had seen land in like manner laid
waste north of Aberdeen; where 'the owner, when he was required to pay
the usual tax, desired rather to resign the ground.' _Ib_. p. 15.

[794] _Box_, in this sense, is not in Johnson's _Dictionary_.

[795] See _ante_, ii. 100, and iv. 274.

[796] In the original, _Rich windows. A Long Story_, l. 7.

[797] 'And this according to the philosophers is happiness.' Boswell
says of Crabbe's poem _The Village_, that 'its sentiments as to the
false notions of rustick happiness and rustick virtue were quite
congenial with Johnson's own.' _Ante_, iv. 175.

[798] 'This innovation was considered by Mr. Macsweyn as the idle
project of a young head, heated with English fancies; but he has now
found that turnips will really grow, and that hungry sheep and cows will
really eat them.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 121. 'The young laird is heir,
perhaps, to 300 square miles of land, which, at ten shillings an acre,
would bring him L96,000 a year. He is desirous of improving the
agriculture of his country; and, in imitation of the Czar, travelled for
improvement, and worked with his own hands upon a farm in
Hertfordshire.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 168.

[799] 'In more fruitful countries the removal of one only makes room for
the succession of another; but in the Hebrides the lo