No. 14, 'Robbery of Time;' No. 24, 'Thinking;' No. 41,
'Death of a Friend[990];' No. 43, 'Flight of Time;' No. 51, 'Domestick
greatness unattainable;' No. 52, 'Self-denial;' No. 58, 'Actual, how
short of fancied, excellence[991];' No. 89, 'Physical evil moral
goode[992];' and his concluding paper on 'The horrour of the last[993];'
will prove this assertion. I know not why a motto, the usual trapping of
periodical papers, is prefixed to very few of the _Idlers_, as I have
heard Johnson commend the custom: and he never could be at a loss for
one, his memory being stored with innumerable passages of the
classicks[994]. In this series of essays he exhibits admirable instances
of grave humour, of which he had an uncommon share. Nor on some
occasions has he repressed that power of sophistry which he possessed in
so eminent a degree. In No. 11, he treats with the utmost contempt the
opinion that our mental faculties depend, in some degree, upon the
weather; an opinion, which they who have never experienced its truth are
not to be envied; and of which he himself could not but be sensible, as
the effects of weather upon him were very visible. Yet thus he
declaims:--
[Page 332: Influence of the weather. A.D. 1758.]
'Surely, nothing is more reproachful to a being endowed with reason,
than to resign its powers to the influence of the air, and live in
dependence on the weather and the wind for the only blessings which
nature has put into our power, tranquillity and benevolence.
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