qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind ever since have
not produced any but what are to be found there.' MONBODDO. 'Yet no
character is described.' JOHNSON. 'No; they all develope themselves.
Agamemnon is always a gentleman-like character; he has always [Greek:
Basilikon ti]. That the ancients held so, is plain from this; that
Euripides, in his _Hecuba_, makes him the person to interpose[247].'
MONBODDO. 'The history of manners is the most valuable. I never set a
high value on any other history.' JOHNSON. 'Nor I; and therefore I
esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can
turn to use[248].' BOSWELL. 'But in the course of general history, we
find manners. In wars, we see the dispositions of people, their degrees
of humanity, and other particulars.' JOHNSON. 'Yes; but then you must
take all the facts to get this; and it is but a little you get.'
MONBODDO. 'And it is that little which makes history valuable.' Bravo!
thought I; they agree like two brothers. MONBODDO. 'I am sorry, Dr.
Johnson, you were not longer at Edinburgh to receive the homage of our
men of learning.' JOHNSON. 'My lord, I received great respect and great
kindness.' BOSWELL. 'He goes back to Edinburgh after our tour.' We
talked of the decrease of learning in Scotland, and of the _Muses'
Welcome_[249]. JOHNSON. 'Learning is much decreased in England, in my
remembrance[250].' MONBODDO. 'You, Sir, have lived to see its decrease
in England, I its extinction in Scotland.' However, I brought him to
confess that the High School of Edinburgh did well. JOHNSON. 'Learning
has decreased in England, because learning will not do so much for a man
as formerly. There are other ways of getting preferment. Few bishops are
now made for their learning. To be a bishop, a man must be learned in a
learned age,--factious in a factious age; but always of eminence[251].
Warburton is an exception; though his learning alone did not raise him.
He was first an antagonist to Pope, and helped Theobald to publish his
_Shakspeare_; but, seeing Pope the rising man, when Crousaz attacked his
_Essay on Man_, for some faults which it has, and some which it has not,
Warburton defended it in the Review of that time[252]. This brought him
acquainted with Pope, and he gained his friendship. Pope introduced him
to Allen, Allen married him to his niece: so, by Allen's interest and
his own, he was made a bishop[253]. But then his learning was the _sine
qu