The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets. Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.

Great minds do indeed react on the society which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received.

With the dead there is no rivalry, with the dead there is no change.

Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the Spring of life and the fruits of its Autumn.

We deplore the outrages which accompany revolutions. But the more violent the outrages, the more assured we feel that a revolution was necessary.

Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action.

Even Holland and Spain have been positively, though not relatively, advancing.