For this almost
superstitious reverence, I have found very old and venerable authority,
quoted by our great modern prelate, Secker, in whose tenth sermon there
is the following passage:
'_Rabbi David Kimchi_, a noted Jewish Commentator, who lived about five
hundred years ago, explains that passage in the first Psalm, _His leaf
also shall not wither_, from Rabbins yet older than himself, thus: That
_even the idle talk_, so he expresses it, _of a good man ought to be
regarded_; the most superfluous things he saith are always of some
value. And other ancient authours have the same phrase, nearly in the
same sensc.'
[Page 34: Johnson's birth and baptism. A.D. 1709.]
Of one thing I am certain, that considering how highly the small portion
which we have of the table-talk and other anecdotes of our celebrated
writers is valued, and how earnestly it is regretted that we have not
more, I am justified in preserving rather too many of Johnson's sayings,
than too few; especially as from the diversity of dispositions it cannot
be known with certainty beforehand, whether what may seem trifling to
some and perhaps to the collector himself, may not be most agreeable to
many; and the greater number that an authour can please in any degree,
the more pleasure does there arise to a benevolent mind.
To those who are weak enough to think this a degrading task, and the
time and labour which have been devoted to it misemployed, I shall
content myself with opposing the authority of the greatest man of any
age, JULIUS CAESAR, of whom Bacon observes, that 'in his book of
Apothegms which he collected, we see that he esteemed it more honour to
make himself but a pair of tables, to take the wise and pithy words of
others, than to have every word of his own to be made an apothegm or an
oracle[109].
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