Select Essays of Dr Johnson - 1 Author:Samuel Johnson Volume: 1 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1889 Original Publisher: J.M. Dent Subjects: Literary Collections / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Collections / Essays Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has... more » no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: No. 2. SATURDAY, MARCH 24, 1749-50. Stare loco nescit, pereunt vestigia mille Ante/ugam, abscntemque ferit grams itngula campum. -- Statius. Th' impatient courser pants in every vein, And pawing seems to beat the distant plain ; Hills, vales, and floods appear already crost, And ere he starts, a thousand steps are lost. -- POPE.1 sHAT the mind of man is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity ; and that we forget the proper use of the time now in our power, to provide for the enjoyment of that which, perhaps, may never be granted us, has been frequently remarked; and as this practice is a commodious subject of raillery to the gay, and of declamation to the serious, it has been ridiculed with all the pleasantry of wit, and exaggerated with all the amplifications of rhetoric. Every instance, by which its absurdity might appear most flagrant, has been studiously collected; it has been marked with every epithet of contempt, and all the tropes and figures have been called forth against it. Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority; men please themselves I with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey, than others, and detected 1 Windsor Forest, 1. 151. faults and follies, which escape vulgar observation. And the pleasure of ...« less