London on his long-projected journey into the East. He now directed his course through Flanders, Brabant, and Holland, into Germany, which he traversed in all directions, from the shores of the Baltic to Hungary and Illyria. He then passed into Italy, and proceeding to Leghorn, embarked at that port, on the 7th of September, 1737, for Alexandria in Egypt, where he arrived on the 29th of the same month.
It is a remark which I have frequently made during the composition of these Lives, that when an original-minded traveller directs his course through a well known but interesting country, we follow his track and peruse his observations with perhaps still greater pleasure than we should feel had he journeyed through an entirely new region. In the former case we in some measure consider ourselves competent to decide upon the accuracy of his descriptions and the justness of his views; while in the latter, delivered up wholly to his guidance, and having no other testimony to corroborate or oppose to his, we experience an involuntary timidity, and hesitate to believe, lest our confidence should lead us into error. Besides, in no country can the man of genius fail to find matter for original remark. No man can forestall him, because such a person discovers things literally invisible to others; though, when once pointed out, they immediately cease to be so. His acquirements, the peculiar frame of his mind, in one word, his individuality, is to him as an additional sense, which no other person does or can possess; and this circumstance, which is not one of the least fortunate in the intellectual economy, delivers us from all solicitude respecting that lack of materials for original composition about which grovelling and barren speculators have in all ages clamoured; while the consciousness of mental poverty has generated in their imaginations an apprehension that every one who approached them had a
