JOHNSON. 1 1 



French Father Lobo's 'Voyage to Abyssinia/ This work 

 has been carefully examined, to discover if any traces 

 can be perceived of his peculiar style; but nothing of 

 the kind appears. The preface, however, is as com- 

 pletely clothed in his diction as any of his subsequent 

 productions ; and shews that he had then, in his twenty- 

 fifth year, formed the habit of sturdily thinking for 

 himself and rejecting all marvellous stories, at least in 

 secular matters, which ever after distinguished him, as 

 well as of tersely and epigramniatically expressing his 

 thoughts. Mr. Boswell and Mr. Burke examined this 

 piece together, and the following portion of the passage 

 on which they pitched as a proof of his early maturity 

 in that manner may serve to gratify the reader, and to 

 prove the truth of the foregoing remark. 



"This Traveller has consulted his senses and not his 



imagination. He meets with no basilisks that destroy 



with their eyes; his crocodiles devour their prey without 



tears; and his cataracts fall from the rocks without 



deafening the neighbouring inhabitants. The reader will 



here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness 



or blessed with spontaneous fecundity ; no perpetual gloom 



or unceasing sunshine ; nor are the natives here described 



either devoid of all sense of humanity or consummate in 



all private or social virtues. Here are no Hottentots 



without religious piety or articulable language, no 



Chinese perfectly polite and completely skilled in all 



sciences; he will discover what will always be discovered 



by a diligent and impartial enquirer, that where human 



nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and 



virtue, a contest of passion and reason ; and that the 



Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but 



