easonable hopes to perform. Columbus had solicited other princes, and
had been repulsed with the same indignity; at last, Isabella of Arragon
furnished him with ships, and having found America, he entered the mouth
of the Tagus in his return, and showed the natives of the new country.
When he was admitted to the king's presence, he acted and talked with so
much haughtiness, and reflected on the neglect which he had undergone
with so much acrimony, that the courtiers, who saw their prince
insulted, offered to destroy him; but the king, who knew that he
deserved the reproaches that had been used, and who now sincerely
regretted his incredulity, would suffer no violence to be offered him,
but dismissed him with presents and with honours.

The Portuguese and Spaniards became now jealous of each other's claim to
countries which neither had yet seen; and the pope, to whom they
appealed, divided the new world between them by a line drawn from north
to south, a hundred leagues westward from cape Verd and the Azores,
giving all that lies west from that line to the Spaniards, and all that
lies east to the Portuguese. This was no satisfactory division, for the
east and west must meet at last, but that time was then at a great
distance.

According to this grant, the Portuguese continued their discoveries
eastward, and became masters of much of the coast both of Africa and the
Indies; but they seized much more than they could occupy, and while they
were under the dominion of Spain, lost the greater part of their Indian
territories.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A collection of Voyages and Travels, selected from the writers of
all nations, in twenty small pocket volumes, and published by
Newbery; to oblige whom, it is conjectured that Johnson drew up this
curious and learned paper, which appeared in the first volume,
1759.

[2] Read Mickle's very excellent introduction to his translation of
Camoens' Lusiad.--Ed.

THE PREFACE
TO THE PRECEPTOR,
CONTAINING
A GENERAL PLAN OF EDUCATION[1]

The importance of education is a point so generally understood and
confessed, that it would be of little use to attempt any new proof or
illustration of its necessity and advantages.

At a time, when so many schemes of education have been projected, so
many proposals offered to the publick, so many schools opened for
general knowledge, and so many lectures in particular sciences attended;
at a time when mankind seems intent rat