1831.] Paragraphs from a Portfolio. 40!) 



well on the system of borrowing ; or rather, is not the good sense tliat 

 dictates this general adoption of all that is useful among strangers, the 

 true guide to greatness in men or nations? 



Eccentricity finds eccentric reasons for its doings. Schlager, a Danish 

 man of fortune, sold his estate, and fixed in the northernmost corner of 

 Iceland. He said that he fixed there because he hated the confined air 

 of Europe, and chose to have his breeze fresh from the pole. 



An Englishman, some years ago, was found vegetating in the midst 

 of bogs and solitudes, in a village on the west coast of Ireland. His 

 reason was, to be in the next post-town to America. 



A Spaniard perched his house on the summit of the Sierra Morena; 

 on being asked, "why he preferred that place of clouds, storms, and 

 solitude ?" he said, " that he was tired of mankind, and the clouds hid 

 mankind from him ; that he was tired of his wife's tongue, and that the 

 storms drowned her talk ; and as to the solitude, he could not be soli- 

 tary, who had the angels for his next door neighbours." 



No book has lost more by " improvements" than Johnson's Dictionary. 

 The definitions in which Johnson's spleen burst out against a world 

 which had used him hardly enough, have been extinguished one by one, 

 until this famous Dictionary differs little from a common word-book. 

 The first edition took the town by surprise more than any book of its 

 day, and a second edition was called for within the year.— No slight 

 part of the charm was to be found in such definitions as these : 



" Tor)/. — A cant term, derived, I suppose, from an Irish word signifying 

 a savage — One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the state, and 

 the apostolic hierarchy of the church of England Opposed to a whiff." 



" /f7z/-.-The name of a faction." ^ ^^ » 



" Pension.— An allowance made to any one without an equivalent 



In England it is generally understood to mean pay given to a state-hire- 

 ling for treason to his country." 



" Pcn.no)ier.—A slave of state hired by a stipend to obey his master." 



" Excise. — A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not 

 by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to 

 wliom it is paid." 



For this opinion on matters of excise, the commissioners conceiving 

 violent wrath, actually meditated a prosecution for libel, and laid an 

 opinion before ]\IuiTay, the Attorney-general, afterwards Lord Mansfield, 

 to ascertain how far they could take vengeance on the man who had 

 called them wretches, a name, however, to which they had been tolerably 

 well accustomed from the time of Walpole. Murray, who probably 

 thought the whole affair absurd, recommended that "an opportunity 

 should be given to the writer to alter his definition ; otherwise, he should 

 be threatened with an information." JMurray thus dexterously contrived 

 to evade the onus of a public prosecution, and the hint was probably 

 given to Johnson, for the definition of both Excise and Pension were 

 altered in his octavo abridgment. 



The Doctor's well-known antipathy to the Scotch, still displayed itself 

 in Ins definition of ' i J 



" [^"'•''' — ^" England the food of horses, in Scotland tlie food of men." 

 Kilt Ins gall was let fly on other things too, for exanij)le— " Dragoon, a 

 soldier who fights im/ijereitl/,/ on foot or horseback." His scorn' of his 



M.M. i\ew .Serics.^VoL. XII. No, 70. 2 M 



