Why did you ** my debt to you. I will punish you for it, by telling you that your Latin wants correction.' In the beginning, Spei alteræ, not to urge that it should be primæ, is not grammatical: altere should be alteri. In the next line you seem to use genus absolutely, for what we call family, that is, for illustrious extraction, I doubt without authority Homines nullius originis, for Nullis orti majoribus, or, 9 The passage omitted alluded to a private transaction. I This censure of my Latin relates to the Dedication, which was as. follows: VIRO NOBILISSIMO, ORNATISSIMO, JOANNI, VICECOMITI MOUNTSTUART, ATAVIS EDITO REGIBUS EXCELSE FAMILIE DE BUTE SPEI ALTERE; LABENTE SECULO, QUUM HOMINES NULLIUS ORIGINIS NATALIUM SPLENDOREM VIRTUTIBUS AUGENTI: AD PUBLICA POPULI COMITIA JAM LEGATO; IN OPTIMATIUM VERO MAGNÆ BRITANNIÆ SENATU, OLIM CONSESSURO: VIM INSITAM VARIA DOCTRINA PROMOVENTE, NEC TAMEN SE VENDITANTE, PRISCA FIDE, ANIMO LIBERRIMO, ET MORUM ELEGANTIA INSIGNI: IN ITALIE VISITANDÆ ITINERE, SOCIO SUO HONORATISSIMO, HASCE JURISPRUDENTIÆ PRIMITIAS D. D. C. Q. JACOBUS BOSWELL. : Nullo loco nati, is, as I am afraid, barbarous.-Ruddiman is dead. "I have now vexed you enough, and will try to please you. Your resolution to obey your father I sincerely approve; but do not accustom yourself to enchain your volatility by vows; they will sometime leave a thorn in your mind, which you will, perhaps, never be able to extract or eject. Take this warning; it is of great importance. 2 "The study of the law is what you very justly term it, copious and generous; and in adding your name to its professors, you have done exactly what I always wished, when I wished you best. I hope that you will continue to pursue it vigorously and constantly. You gain, at least, what is no small advantage, security from those troublesome and wearisome discontents, which are always obtruding themselves upon a mind vacant, unemployed, and undetermined. "You ought to think it no small inducement to diligence and perseverance, that they will please your father. We all live upon the hope of pleasing somebody, and the pleasure of pleasing ought to be greatest, and at last always will be greatest, when our endeavours are exerted in consequence of our duty. "Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent: deliberation, which those who begin it by prudence, and continue it with subtilty, must, after long expence of thought, conclude by chance. To prefer one future mode of life to another, upon just reasons, requires faculties which it has not pleased our Creator to give us. 2 This alludes to the first sentence of the Prooemium of my Thesis. "JURISPRUDENTIE studio nullum uberius, nullum generosius: in legibus enim agitandis, populorum mores, variasque fortunæ vices ex quibus leges oriuntur, contemplari simul solemus." "If therefore the profession you have chosen has some unexpected inconveniences, console yourself by reflecting that no profession is without them; and that all the importunities and perplexities of business are softness and luxury, compared with the incessant cravings of vacancy, and the unsatisfactory expedients of idleness. • Hæc sunt quæ nostrâ potui te voce monere ; • Vade, age.' "As to your History of Corsica, you have no materials which others have not, or may not have. You have, somehow, or other, warmed your imagination. I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession. Mind your own affairs, and leave the Corsicans to theirs. I am, dear Sir, "Your most humble servant, "London, Aug. 21, 1766. "SAM. JOHNSON." "TO DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON. "MUCH ESTEEMED AND DEAR SIR, 66 "I PLEAD not guilty to "Auchinleck, Nov. 6, 1766. Having thus, I hope, cleared myself of the charge brought against me, I presume you will not be displeased if I escape the punishment which you have decreed for me unheard: If you have discharged the arrows of criticism against an innocent man, you must rejoice to find they have missed him, or have not been pointed so as to wound him. "To talk no longer in allegory, I am, with all deference, going to offer a few observations in defence of my Latin, which you have found fault with. 13 The passage omitted explained the transaction to which the preceding letter had alluded. "You think I should have used spei primæ, instead of spei altera. Spes is, indeed, often used to express something on which we have a future dependence, as in Virg. Eclog. i. l. 14. -modo namque gemellos 'Spem gregis ah silice in nudá connixa reliquit.' and in Georg. iii. 1. 473. 'Spemque gregemque simul,' for the lambs and the sheep. Yet it is also used to express any thing on which we have a present dependence, and is well applied to a man of distinguished influence,— our support, our refuge, our præsidium, as Horace calls Mæcenas. So, Æneid xii. 1. 57, Queen Amata addresses her son-in-law, Turnus: Spes tu nunc una:' and he was then no future hope, for she adds, which might have been said of my Lord Bute some years ago. Now I consider the present Earl of Bute to be Excelsa familia de Bute spes prima;' and my Lord Mountstuart, as his eldest son, to be spes altera.' So in Æneid xii. 1. 168, after having mentioned Pater Æneas, who was the present spes, the reigning spes, as my German friends would say, the spes prima, the poet adds, 'Et juxta Ascanius, magna spes altera Roma.' "You think altere ungrammatical, and you tell me it should have been alteri. You must recollect, that in old times alter was declined regularly; and when the ancient fragments preserved in the Juris Civilis Fontes were written, it was certainly declined in the way that I use it. This, I should think, may protect a lawyer who writes altera in a dissertation upon part of his own science. But as I could hardly venture to quote fragments of old law to so classical a man as Mr. John son, I have not made an accurate search into these remains, to find examples of what I am able to produce in poetical composition. We find in Plaut. Rudens, act iii. scene 4, • Nam huic alteræ patria quæ sit profecto nescio.' Plautus is, to be sure, an old comick writer; but in the days of Scipio and Lelius, we find Terent. Heautontim. act ii. scene 3. -hoc ipsa in itinere alteræ 'Dum narrat, forte audivi.' "You doubt my having authority for using genus absolutely, for what we call family, that is, for illus trious extraction. Now I take genus in Latin, to have much the same signification with birth in English; both in their primary meaning expressing simply descent, but both made to stand xar' on for noble descent. Genus is thus used in Hor. lib. ii. Sat. v. 1. 8. 'Et genus et virtus, nisi cum re, vilior alga est. And in lib. i. Epist. vi. 1. 37. 'Et genus et formam Regina pecunia donat.' And in the celebrated contest between Ajax and Ulysses, Ovid's Metamorph. lib. xiii. 1. 140. 'Nam genus et proavos, et quæ non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco.' "Homines nullius originis, for nullis orti majoribus, or nullo loco nati, is," you are afraid, barbarous." "Origo is used to signify extraction, as in Virg. Eneid i. 286. "Nascetur pulchra Trojanus origine Cæsar.' and in Eneid x. 1. 618, 'Ille tamen nostrâ deducit origine nomen.' and as nullus is used for obscure, is it not in the genius |