Butter accompanied us to see the
manufactory of china there. I admired the ingenuity and delicate art
with which a man fashioned clay into a cup, a saucer, or a tea-pot,
while a boy turned round a wheel to give the mass rotundity. I thought
this as excellent in its species of power, as making good verses in
_its_ species. Yet I had no respect for this potter. Neither, indeed,
has a man of any extent of thinking for a mere verse-maker, in whose
numbers, however perfect, there is no poetry, no mind. The china was
beautiful, but Dr. Johnson justly observed it was too dear; for that he
could have vessels of silver, of the same size, as cheap as what were
here made of porcelain[459].
I felt a pleasure in walking about Derby such as I always have in
walking about any town to which I am not accustomed. There is an
immediate sensation of novelty; and one speculates on the way in which
life is passed in it, which, although there is a sameness every where
upon the whole, is yet minutely diversified. The minute diversities in
every thing are wonderful. Talking of shaving the other night at Dr.
Taylor's, Dr. Johnson said, 'Sir, of a thousand shavers, two do not
shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.
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