[Nile] is so full of hippopotames, or river-horses, and crocodiles, that it is impossible to swim over without danger of being drowned" (p. 96).

6, mermaids and tritons. The belief that mermaids lived in the Nile is shown by Purchas his Pilgrimage, p. 710. Lobo makes no mention of these fabulous creatures.

IIO: 7, intercepting. Cf. Shakespeare, T. Andron., III. i. 40:

"For that they will not intercept my tale."

112: 18, Man of Learning. West points out that there were professed rain-makers' in Abyssinia, although Lobo makes no mention of this fact. He suggests also the similarity between the account of the astronomer and that of the madman of Seville. the story of whom is related in Don Quixote, ch. 47.

113: 14, vacation. Leisure; freedom from trouble or perplexity.'-Dict.

115: 6, emersion. The time when a star, having been obscured by its too near approach to the sun, appears again.'-Dict. This is the present technical sense of the word in astronomy.

28, rage. . . Dogstar. . . fervors. . . Crab. Expressions depending on the classical ideas of the influence of the stars upon the climate of the earth. Cf. "The dog-star rages."-Pope, Prologue to Satires, I. 3; and "The Tropic Crab."-Paradise Lost, X. 675.

116: 11, The Astronomer. Without authority other editions give as the chapter heading, "The Opinion of the Astronomer is Explained and Justified."

117: 8, rain on the southern mountains. Lobo gives an account of the various theories as to the annual overflow of the Nile. Some had supposed it was due to 'high winds which stop the current and so force the water to rise above its banks.' 'Others pretend a subterraneous connection between the ocean and the Nile.' Many have supposed it was due to the 'melting of snow on the mountains of Ethiopia.' He brushes all this aside for the real cause' known through the immense labors and fatigues of the Portuguese.' "Their observations inform us that Abyssinia where the Nile rises is full of mountains and in its

natural situation much higher than Egypt; that all the winter from June to September no day is without rain; that the Nile receives in its course all the rivers, brooks and torrents which fall from those mountains; these necessarily swell it above the banks and fill the plain of Egypt with the inundation.”—Lobo, pp. 106, 107.

15, the same day. "The Egyptians, especially the Coptics, are very fond of an opinion that the Nile begins to rise every year on the same day; it does indeed generally begin about the eighteenth or nineteenth of June."-Pococke, Description of the East, I. 199. "This [the inundation] comes regularly about the month of July, or three weeks after the beginning of the rainy season in Æthiopia."-Lobo, p. 107.

32, it. The sentence is not clear. Either it has the same reference as that, and so is superfluous, or have must be understood with exerted, and the clause is then co-ordinate with feel this power, rather than with I have long possessed.

118: 15, elements. This use of element, referring to the air, is explained in the Dictionary by the remark that when it is used alone, element commonly means the air.'

22, I have. "Some philosophers have been foolish enough to imagine, that improvements might be made in the system of the universe, by a different management of the orbs of heaven."-Adventurer, 45. "No other conformation of the system could have given such commodious distributions of light and heat, or imparted fertility and pleasure to so great a part of the revolving sphere."-Idler, 42.

119: 19, Of the uncertainties. "To Johnson, whose supreme enjoyment was the exercise of his reason, the disturbance or obscuration of that faculty was the evil most to be dreaded. Insanity, therefore, was the object of his most dismal apprehension." —Life, I. 66; cf. also I. 276, n. 2.

120: 6, no human mind. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, a favorite book with Johnson, takes this view. In his introduction Burton says: "To conclude, this being granted that all the world is melancholy, or mad, doats, and every member of it, I have ended my task and sufficiently illustrated that which I took upon me to demonstrate at first." The more restricted statement,

that all great men are somewhat mad, is as old as Aristotle, to whom Burton refers the sentiment, nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementia. Cf. Dryden, Absolom and Achitophel, II. 163-164.

13, insanity. Hill notes that this word is in no edition of the Dictionary; sanity, however, occurs as well as insane.

22, excogitation. A favorite word with Johnson; cf. also cogitation, 137: 25; 138: 29, 30.

121: 16, dangers of solitude.

Johnson clearly paints these 'dangers' too darkly. He was a man to whom society was essential in order to make him happy. Hence his characteristic summing up of the business of a scholar in 21: 15.

30, And I. Cf. with this 57: I.

122: 11, image. Johnson defines the verb as 'to copy by the fancy; to imagine.'

12, perfect government. That dreaming of a perfect government could be dangerous' 'indulgence of fantastic delight,' is quite in accord with Johnson's own notions. He believed in the 'inseparable imperfection annexed to all human governments.'—Life, II. 118. Cf. also note to 76: 10.

27, rose to return home. Although Johnson does not tell us so, we may perhaps conjecture that the royal party had spent the evening in the 'private summer-house on the bank of the Nile,' mentioned at 68: 26.

123: 2, assembly of the sages. Presumably the 'assembly of learned men' mentioned at 62: 4.

II, prattled. Note that the word was not restricted to children's talk.

18, conserves. Johnson distinguishes between this word and preserves; the former meaning the juice of fruits boiled with sugar, the latter fruits preserved in sugar. The distinction is no longer kept.

·

26, dignity. The word means not worthiness' but advancement, high place,' in knowledge.

124: 1, annual overflow of the Nile. A favorite subject of dispute in former times, as shown by many theories concerning it; cf. note on 117: 8.

love of fame, a desire of filling the minds of others with admiration, and of being celebrated by generations to come with praises which we shall not hear."-Rambler, 49.

II, I have. Cf. Introduction, p. xiv. “I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds."-Preface to Dictionary. Johnson's wife had died in 1752, three years before the Dictionary was published. What is success to him that has none to enjoy it? Happiness is not found in self-contemplation; it is perceived only when it is reflected from another."Idler, 41. This was written just after Johnson had heard of his mother's death. It was published Jan. 27, 1759.

24, retrospect of life. "Whether it be that life has more vexations than comforts, or what is in the event just the same, that evil makes deeper impression than good, it is certain that few can review the time past without heaviness of heart. He remembers many calamities incurred by folly, many opportunities lost by negligence."-Idler, 44.

27, vacancу. ‘5. Listlessness, emptiness of thought.'-Dict. 125: 3, that happiness. "It is not therefore from this world that any comfort can proceed, to cheer the gloom of the last hour. But futurity has still its prospects; there is yet happiness in reserve which, if we transfer our attention to it, will support us in the pains of disease and the languor of decay. This happiness we may expect with confidence, because it is out of the power of chance, and may be attained by all that sincerely desire and earnestly pursue it."-Rambler, 203.

15, age

querulous. “The querulousness and indignation which is observed so often to disfigure the last scene of life." -Rambler, 50. 19, enjoy can. This reading of the first edition may be explained as an instance of a general truth taking the present tense in a clause dependent upon a preterit. Most editions have a different reading, as enjoyed . . . could, or enjoyed . . . can, but without authority.

126: 29, great republic. Cf. note on 62: 24, for a similar reference.

127: 20, come. Note the change in the point of view of the

speaker. A word to agree with 'go' in the preceding line would be expected.

128:6, stay. Note the sense of 'to wait.'

129: 5, contrived. Refers to attempted not completed action, as in To form or design; to plan, to scheme, to complot.'Dict.

10, house of Imlac. 132:4, scruples.

Cf. 47: 25-26.

'I. Doubt; difficulty of determination; perplexity; generally about minute things.'-Dict. 22, who.

Note the lack of explicit reference, who having no antecedent except as it is implied in yours.

133: 14, Those men. Hill notes the general resemblance to Voltaire's Candide, ch. xxx. "I have no more than twenty acres of ground,' answered the Turk, the whole of which I cultivate with the help of my children, and our labor keeps off from us three great evils-idleness, vice, and want.' . . . 'Let us work then without disputing,' said Martin, it is the only way to render life supportable.''

134: I, converses. The older sense of mingling with mankind,' not simply speaking to them.

12, But perhaps. See what Johnson says of retiring from the world, 62: 23-29, and Life, I. 365; II. 24. 'The narrowest system of morality, monastic morality, which holds pleasure itself to be vice."-Ibid., III. 292. "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat."Milton's Areopagitica (Hales), p. 18.

31, it is.

Note the redundant subject it, the real subject being what pleasures are harmless.

135: 8, Mortification.

"Austerities and mortifications are means by which the mind is invigorated and roused, by which the attractions of pleasure are interrupted and the chains of sensuality broken."-Rambler, 110.

22, catacombs. The term 'catacomb' was originally used only for the subterranean burial places of Christians at Rome, but was later extended, first to similar Christian cemeteries in other places and then to those of other people. There are no catacombs in