'Being told that Gilbert Cowper called him the Caliban of literature;
"Well, (said he,) I must dub him the Punchinello[380]."

'Speaking of the old Earl of Corke and Orrery, he said, "that man spent
his life in catching at an object, [literary eminence,] which he had not
power to grasp[381]."

'To find a substitution for violated morality, he said, was the leading
feature in all perversions of religion.'

'He often used to quote, with great pathos, those fine lines of Virgil:

'Optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi
Prima fugit[382]; subeunt morbi, tristisque senectus,
Et labor, et durae rapit inclementia mortis[383].'

'Speaking of Homer, whom he venerated as the prince of poets, Johnson
remarked that the advice given to Diomed[384] by his father, when he sent
him to the Trojan war, was the noblest exhortation that could be
instanced in any heathen writer, and comprised in a single line:

[Greek: Aien aristeuein, kai hupeirochon emmenai allon ]

which, if I recollect well, is translated by Dr. Clarke thus: _semper
appetere praestantissima, et omnibus aliis antecellere_.

'He observed, "it was a most mortifying reflexion for any man to
consider, _what he had done_, compared with what _he might have done_."

'He said few people had intellectual resources sufficient to forego the