to America.' BOSWELL. 'The Americans don't want oratory.'
JOHNSON. 'But we can want Sheridan.'

On Monday, April 29, I found him at home in the forenoon, and Mr. Seward
with him. Horace having been mentioned; BOSWELL. 'There is a great
deal of thinking in his works. One finds there almost every thing but
religion.' SEWARD. 'He speaks of his returning to it, in his Ode Parcus
Deorum cultor et infrequens.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, he was not in earnest: this
was merely poetical.' BOSWELL. 'There are, I am afraid, many people who
have no religion at all.' SEWARD. 'And sensible people too.' JOHNSON.
'Why, Sir, not sensible in that respect. There must be either a natural
or a moral stupidity, if one lives in a total neglect of so very
important a concern. SEWARD. 'I wonder that there should be people
without religion.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you need not wonder at this, when you
consider how large a proportion of almost every man's life is passed
without thinking of it. I myself was for some years totally regardless
of religion. It had dropped out of my mind. It was at an early part
of my life. Sickness brought it back, and I hope I have never lost it
since.' BOSWELL. 'My dear Sir, what a man must you have been without
religion! Why you must have gone on drinking, and swearing, and--'
JOHNSON (with a smile,) 'I drank enough and swore enough, to be sure.'
SEWARD. 'One should think that sickness and the view of death would make
more men religious.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, they do not know how to go about it:
they have not the first notion. A man who has never had religion before,
no more grows religious when he is sick, than a man who has never learnt
figures can count when he has need of calculation.'

I mentioned Dr. Johnson's excellent distinction between liberty of
conscience and liberty of teaching. JOHNSON. 'Consider, Sir; if you have
children whom you wish to educate in the principles of the Church of
England, and there comes a Quaker who tries to pervert them to his
principles, you would drive away the Quaker. You would not trust to the
predomination of right, which you believe is in your opinions; you would
keep wrong out of their heads. Now the vulgar are the children of the
State. If any one attempts to teach them doctrines contrary to what the
State approves, the magistrate may and ought to restrain him.' SEWARD.
'Would you restrain private conversation, Sir?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir,
it is difficult to say where private conversation begins, and