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authority, were I to name him, would stamp a reverence on the opinion.

We may, with the utmost propriety, apply to his learned style that passage of Horace, a part of which he has taken as the motto to his Dictionary^[1]:

'Cum tabulis animum censoris sumet honesti;
Audebit quæcumque parùm splendoris habebunt
Et sine pondere erunt, et honore indigna ferentur,
Verba movere loco, quamvis invita recedant,
Et versentur adhuc intra penetralia Vestæ.
Obscurata diu populo bonus eruet, atque
Proferet in lucem speciosa vocabula rerum,
Quæ priscis memorata Catonibus atque Cethegis,
Nunc situs informis premit et deserta vetustas:
Adsciscet nova, quæ genitor produxerit usus:
Vehemens, et liquidus, puroque simillimus amni,
Fundet opes Latiumque beabit divite lingua^[2].'

To so great a master of thinking, to one of such vast and various knowledge as Johnson, might have been allowed a

1. The first nine lines form the motto.
2. Horat. Epist. Lib. ii. Epist. ii. [I. 110]. Boswell.
   'But how severely with themselves proceed
   The men, who write such verse as we can read!
   Their own strict judges, not a word they spare
   That wants or force, or light, or weight, or care,
   Howe'er unwillingly it quits its place,
   Nay, though at court, perhaps, it may find grace:
   Such they'll degrade ; and sometimes, in its stead.
   In downright charity revive the dead;
   Mark where a bold expressive phrase appears.
   Bright through the rubbish of some hundred years;
   Command old words that long have slept to wake.
   Words that wise Bacon or brave Rawleigh spake;
   Or bid the new be English, ages hence,
   (For use will father what's begot by sense;)
   Pour the full tide of eloquence along,
   Serenely pure, and yet divinely strong.
   Rich with the treasures of each foreign tongue.'
   
   

   Pope. Imitation of Horace, ii. 2. 157.