The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol 2 | Page 8

just reasons, requires faculties which it has not pleased
our Creator to give us.
'If, therefore, the profession you have chosen has some unexpected
inconveniencies, console yourself by reflecting that no profession is
without them; and that all the importunities and perplexities of business
are softness and luxury, compared with the incessant cravings of
vacancy, and the unsatisfactory expedients of idleness.
"Haec sunt quce nostra polui te voce monere[67]; Vade, age."
'As to your History of Corsica, you have no materials which others
have not, or may not have. You have, somehow, or other, warmed your
imagination. I wish there were some cure, like the lover's leap, for all
heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and
irregular possession. Mind your own affairs, and leave the Corsicans to
theirs. I am, dear Sir,
'Your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'London, Aug. 21,
1766.'
'To DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.
'Auchinleck, Nov. 6, 1766. 'MUCH ESTEEMED AND DEAR SIR,
'I plead not guilty to[68]----
'Having thus, I hope, cleared myself of the charge brought against me, I

presume you will not be displeased if I escape the punishment which
you have decreed for me unheard. If you have discharged the arrows of
criticism against an innocent man, you must rejoice to find they have
missed him, or have not been pointed so as to wound him.
'To talk no longer in allegory, I am, with all deference, going to offer a
few observations in defence of my Latin, which you have found fault
with.
'You think I should have used spei primæ, instead of spei alteræ. Spes
is, indeed, often used to express something on which we have a future
dependence, as in Virg. Eclog. i. l. 14,
".... modo namque gemellos Spem gregis ah silice in nudá connixa
reliquit."
and in Georg. iii. l. 473,
"Spemque gregemque simul,"
for the lambs and the sheep. Yet it is also used to express any thing on
which we have a present dependence, and is well applied to a man of
distinguished influence, our support, our refuge, our præsidium, as
Horace calls Mæcenas. So, Æneid xii. l. 57, Queen Amata addresses
her son-in-law Turnus:--"Spes tu nunc una:" and he was then no future
hope, for she adds,
"... decus imperiumque Latini Te penes;"
which might have been said of my Lord Bute some years ago. Now I
consider the present Earl of Bute to be 'Excelsæ familiæ de Bute spes
prima;' and my Lord Mountstuart, as his eldest son, to be 'spes altera.'
So in Æneid xii. l. 168, after having mentioned Pater Æneas, who was
the present spes, the reigning spes, as my German friends would say,
the spes prima, the poet adds,
"Et juxta Ascanius, magnae spes altera Romæ."

'You think alteræ ungrammatical, and you tell me it should have been
alteri. You must recollect, that in old times alter was declined regularly;
and when the ancient fragments preserved in the Juris Civilis Fontes
were written, it was certainly declined in the way that I use it. This, I
should think, may protect a lawyer who writes alteræ in a dissertation
upon part of his own science. But as I could hardly venture to quote
fragments of old law to so classical a man as Mr. Johnson, I have not
made an accurate search into these remains, to find examples of what I
am able to produce in poetical composition. We find in Plaut. Rudens,
act iii. scene 4,
"Nam Jiuic alters patria qua: sit profecto nescio."
Plautus is, to be sure, an old comick writer: but in the days of Scipio
and Lelius, we find, Terent. Heautontim. act ii. scene 3,
".... hoc ipsa in itinere alteræ Dum narrat, forte audivi."
'You doubt my having authority for using genus absolutely, for what
we call family, that is, for illustrious extraction. Now I take genus in
Latin, to have much the same signification with birth in English; both
in their primary meaning expressing simply descent, but both made to
stand [Greek: kat exochaen] noble descent. Genus is thus used in Hor.
lib. ii. Sat. v. 1. 8,
"Et genus et virtus, nisi cum re, vilior alga est."
'And in lib. i. Epist. vi. 1. 37,
"Et genus et forinam Regina pecunia donat."
'And in the celebrated contest between Ajax and Ulysses, Ovid's
Metamorph. lib. xiii. 1. 140,
"Nam genus et proavos, et quæ--non fecimus ipsi Vix ea nostra voco."
'Homines nullius originis, for nullis orti majoribus, or nullo loco nati, is,
you are "afraid, barbarous."

'Origo is used to signify extraction, as in Virg. Æneid i. 1. 286,
"Nascetur pulchrd Trojanus origine Cæsar."
And in Æneid x. 1. 618,
"Ille tamen nostrâ deducit origine nomen"
And as nullus is used for obscure, is it not in the genius of the Latin
language to