Sir William Forbes came to breakfast, and brought with him Dr
Blacklock, whom he introduced to Dr Johnson, who received him with a
most humane complacency. 'Dear Blacklock, I am glad to see you!'
Blacklock seemed to be much surprised, when Dr Johnson said, 'it was
easier to him to write poetry than to compose his Dictionary. His mind
was less on the stretch in doing the one than the other. Besides;
composing a dictionary requires books and a desk: you can make a poem
walking in the fields, or lying in bed.' Dr Blacklock spoke of
scepticism in morals and religion, with apparant uneasiness, as if he
wished for more certainty. Dr Johnson, who had thought it all over,
and whose vigorous understanding was fortified by much experience,
thus encouraged the blind bard to apply to higher speculations what we
willingly submit to in common life: in short, he gave him more
familiarly the able and fair reasoning of Butler's Analogy: 'Why, sir,
the greatest concern we have in this world, the choice of our
profession, must be determined without demonstrative reasoning. Human
life is not yet so well known, as that we can have it. And take the
case of a man who is ill. I call two physicians: they differ in
opinion. I am not to lie down, and die between them: I must do
something.' The conversation then turned on atheism; on that horrible
book, Systeme de la Nature; and on the supposition of an eternal
necessity, without design, without a governing mind. JOHNSON. 'If it
were so, why has it ceased? Why don't we see men thus produced around
us now? Why, at least, does it not keep pace, in some measure, with
the progress of time? If it stops because there is now no need of it,
then it is plain there is, and ever has been, an all-powerful
intelligence. But stay!' said he, with one of his satyrick laughs.
'Hal ha! ha! I shall suppose Scotchmen made necessarily, and
Englishmen by choice.'