Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives by Henry Francis Cary
page 62 of 337 (18%)
page 62 of 337 (18%)
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entrance into the nave of St. Paul's.
There was, in his mind, a strange mixture of credulity and doubtfulness. He did not disbelieve either in the existence of ghosts, or in the possibility of commuting other metals into gold; but was very slow to credit any fact that was at all extraordinary. He would tell of Cave's having seen an apparition, without much apparent doubt; and, with more certainty, of his having been himself addressed by the voice of his absent mother. The deception practised by the girl in Cock Lane, who was a ventriloquist, is well known to have wrought on him so successfully, as to make him go and watch in the church, where she pretended the spirit of a young woman to be, which had disclosed to her the manner of its having been violently separated from the body. On this occasion, Boswell endeavours in vain to clear him from the imputation of a weakness, which was but too agreeable to the rest of his character. Yet on Hume's argument against miracles, that it is more probable witnesses should lie or be mistaken than that they should happen, he remarked, as I think, very judiciously, that Hume, taking the proposition simply, is right; but that the Christian revelation is not proved by the miracles alone, but as they are connected with prophecies, and with the doctrines in confirmation of which the miracles were wrought. He was devout, moral, and humane; frequent and earnest in his petitions for the divine succour, anxious to sublime his nature by disengaging it from worldly soil, and prompt to sympathise with the sorrows, and out of his scanty means, to relieve the necessities of others; but such is the imperfection of man, that his piety was apt to degenerate into superstition; his abstinence yielded to slight temptations, and his charity was often not proof against a discrepancy of opinion either in politics or literature. |
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