This
distinction of seasons is produced only by imagination operating on
luxury. To temperance, every day is bright; and every hour is propitious
to diligence. He that shall resolutely excite his faculties, or exert
his virtues, will soon make himself superiour to the seasons; and may
set at defiance the morning mist and the evening damp, the blasts of the
east, and the clouds of the south[995].'
[Page 333: The attendants on a Court. AEtat 49.]
'I think the Romans call it Stoicism[996].'
But in this number of his _Idler_ his spirits seem to run riot; for in
the wantonness of his disquisition he forgets, for a moment, even the
reverence for that which he held in high respect[997]; and describes 'the
attendant on a _Court_,' as one 'whose business, is to watch the looks
of a being, weak and foolish as himself[998].'
[Page 334: Johnson not a plagiary. A.D. 1758.]
Alas! it is too certain, that where the frame has delicate fibres, and
there is a fine sensibility, such influences of the air are
irresistible. He might as well have bid defiance to the ague, the palsy,
and all other bodily disorders, Such boasting of the mind is false
elevation.
His unqualified ridicule of rhetorical gesture or action is not, surely,
a test of truth; yet we cannot help admiring how well it is adapted to
produce the effect which he wished. 'Neither the judges of our laws, nor
the representatives of our people, would be much affected by laboured
gesticulation, or believe any man the more because he rolled his eyes,
or puffed his cheeks, or spread abroad his arms, or stamped the ground,
or thumped his breast; or turned his eyes sometimes to the ceiling, and
sometimes to the floor[999].
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