deafening the neighbouring inhabitants. The reader will here find no
regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous
fecundity; no perpetual gloom, or unceasing sunshine; nor are the
nations, here described, either void of all sense of humanity, or
consummate in all private and social virtues; here are no Hottentots
without religion, polity or articulate language; no Chinese perfectly
polite, and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover, what
will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that,
wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and
virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth not
appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced, in most
countries, their particular inconveniencies, by particular favours."--We
have here an early specimen of Johnson's manner; the vein of thinking,
and the frame of the sentences, are manifestly his: we see the infant
Hercules. The translation of Lobo's narrative has been reprinted lately
in a separate volume, with some other tracts of Dr. Johnson's, and,
therefore, forms no part of this edition; but a compendious account of
so interesting a work, as father Lobo's discovery of the head of the
Nile, will not, it is imagined, be unacceptable to the reader.

"Father Lobo, the Portuguese missionary, embarked, in 1622, in the same
fleet with the count Vidigueira, who was appointed, by the king of
Portugal, viceroy of the Indies. They arrived at Goa; and, in January
1624, father Lobo set out on the mission to Abyssinia. Two of the
Jesuits, sent on the same commission, were murdered in their attempt to
penetrate into that empire. Lobo had better success; he surmounted all
difficulties, and made his way into the heart of the country. Then
follows a description of Abyssinia, formerly the largest empire of which
we have an account in history. It extended from the Red sea to the
kingdom of Congo, and from Egypt to the Indian sea, containing no less