Deformities of Samuel Johnson, Selected from His Works

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Callender James Thomson. Deformities of Samuel Johnson, Selected from His Works

INTRODUCTION

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

INTRODUCTION

DEFORMITIES, &c

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Man is endowed with sagacity sufficient to discover his errors, but seldom has fortitude to forsake them. Hence it arises that even the weakest of the species can point out the follies of his companions, and fancies that he can reform his own. We are amazed that a being like ourselves should thus deliberately act below the dignity of reason, but we forget that our own conduct may also be reviewed with contempt and pity.

The world is buried in prejudice: Every department of knowledge is deeply infected by its fatal poison. Thus we frequently respect or reprobate a book without a perusal, merely on account of the Author's name. Not one in ten thousand of his panegyrists hath ever comprehended the system of Newton. – What then is the value of their approbation? The public have long heard that a late English Dictionary is a most masterly performance; but is there a single man in England who ever read it half through? No. The school-boy imagines that it is above his capacity: The man of letters feels it to be below his; but being considered as a fashionable decoration in a closet of books, it is bought without the least chance of being perused, and WE (for the first time to be sure) have been admiring we know not what.

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Edinburgh, }

Nov. 21, 1782.

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