be able to become a surveyor, or to lay out a garden V Ib. p. 197.
Sir Robert Walpole's general principle as a minister was ' Quieta non mover e y to let well alone.' This made Dr. Johnson say of him, ' He was the best minister this country ever had ; as if we would have let him (he speaks of his own violent faction) he would have kept the country in perpetual peace 2 .' Ib. p. 554-
' What is written without effort (said Dr. Johnson) is in general read without pleasure/ Ib. p. 260.
Dr. Johnson was of opinion that the happiest, as well as the most virtuous, persons were to be found amongst those who united with a business or profession a love of literature 3 .
He was constantly earnest with his friends, when they had thoughts of marriage, to look out for a religious wife 4 . ' A principle of honour or fear of the world,' added he, ' will many times keep a man in decent order, but when a woman loses her religion, she, in general, loses the only tie that will restrain her actions. Plautus, in his Amphytrio 5 , makes Alcmena say beautifully to her husband
'Non ego illam mihi dotem duco esse, quae dos dicitur, Sed pudicitiam, et pudorem, et sedatum cupidinem, Deum metum, parentum amorem, et cognatum concordiam ; Tibi morigera, atque Ut munifica sim bonis, prosim probis.'
Ib. p. 599.
1 Life, ii. 363 ; ante, ii. 48. 26, 1771 : ' One always prefers the
2 For Johnson's attacks on Wai- wisdom of one's own age. My pole, see Life,\. 129, 141. 'Walpole's father's maxim, Quieta non movere, name,' says Smollett describing the was very well in those ignorant days, last years of his ministry, 'was seldom The science of government is better or never mentioned with decency, understood now so, to be sure, except by his own dependents.' Hist, whatever is, is right' Walpole's of England, iii. 46. In 1773 'John- Letters, v. 292.
son called Mr. Pitt a meteor; Sir 3 Ante, i. 238 n.; ii. 13. Robert Walpole a fixed star.' Life, 4 Life, ii. 76. v. 339. 5 Act ii. sc. 2, 1. 209.
Horace Walpole wrote on March
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