Sir, the impression is universal[768]; yet it
is strange. As to the sailor, when you look down from the quarter deck
to the space below, you see the utmost extremity of human misery; such
crouding, such filth, such stench[769]!' BOSWELL. 'Yet sailors are happy.'
JOHNSON. 'They are happy as brutes are happy, with a piece of fresh
meat,--with the grossest sensuality. But, Sir, the profession of
soldiers and sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence those
who have got over fear[770], which is so general a weakness.' SCOTT. 'But
is not courage mechanical, and to be acquired?' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir,
in a collective sense. Soldiers consider themselves only as parts of a
great machine[771].' SCOTT. 'We find people fond of being sailors.'
JOHNSON. 'I cannot account for that, any more than I can account for
other strange perversions of imagination.'
His abhorrence of the profession of a sailor was uniformly violent[772];
but in conversation he always exalted the profession of a soldier. And
yet I have, in my large and various collection of his writings, a letter
to an eminent friend, in which he expresses himself thus: 'My god-son
called on me lately.
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