s to resolve it;
but I think I can answer it now. I will suppose myself born a thousand
years before Noah was born or thought of. I rise with the sun; I
worship; I prepare my breakfast; I swallow a bucket of goat's milk and
a dozen good sizable cakes. I fasten a new string to my bow, and my
youngest boy, a lad of about thirty years of age, having played with
my arrows till he has stript off all the feathers, I find myself
obliged to repair them. The morning is thus spent in preparing for the
chase, and it is become necessary that I should dine. I dig up my
roots; I wash them; boil them; I find them not done enough, I boil
them again; my wife is angry; we dispute; we settle the point; but in
the mean time the fire goes out, and must be kindled again. All this
is very amusing.

I hunt; I bring home the prey; with the skin of it I mend an old coat,
or I make a new one. By this time the day is far spent; I feel myself
fatigued, and retire to rest. Thus, what with tilling the ground and
eating the fruit of it, hunting, and walking, and running, and
mending old clothes, and sleeping and rising again, I can suppose an
inhabitant of the primeval world so much occupied as to sigh over the
shortness of life, and to find, at the end of many centuries, that
they had all slipt through his fingers and were passing away like a
shadow. What wonder then that I, who live in a day of so much greater
refinement, when there is so much more to be wanted and wished, and to
be enjoyed, should feel myself now and then pinched in point of
opportunity, and at some loss for leisure to fill four sides of a
sheet like this?

II

ON JOHNSON'S TREATMENT OF MILTON[59]

I have been well entertained with Johnson's biography, for which I
thank you: with one exception, and that a swinging one, I think he has
acquitted himself with his usual good sense and sufficiency. His
treatment of Milton is unmerciful to the last degree. A pensioner is
not likely to spare a republican, and the Doctor, in order, I suppose,
to convince his royal patron of the sincerity of his monarchical
principles, has belabored that great poet's character with the most
industrious cruelty. As a man, he has hardly left him the shadow of
one good quality. Churlishness in his private life, and a rancorous
hatred of everything royal in his public, are the two colors with
which he has smeared all the canvas. If he had any virtues, they are
not to be found in the Doctor's pictu