But his
philosophy stopped at the first turnpike-gate. Of the rural life of
England he knew nothing, and he took it for granted that everybody who
lived in the country was either stupid or miserable.'
Of the two assertions that Macaulay makes in these two passages, while
one is for the most part true, the other is utterly and grossly false.
Johnson had no contempt for foreign travel. That curiosity which
animated his eager mind in so many parts of learning did not fail him,
when his thoughts turned to the great world outside our narrow seas. It
was his poverty that confined him so long to the neighbourhood of Temple
Bar. He must in these early days have sometimes felt with Arviragus when
he says:--
'What should we speak of
When we are old as you? when we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December, how
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse
The freezing hours away? We have seen nothing.'
With his pension his wanderings at once began. His friendship with the
Thrales gave them a still wider range. His curiosity, which in itself
was always eager, was checked in his more prosperous circumstances by
his years, his natural unwillingness at any one moment to make an
effort, and by the want of travelling companions who were animated by a
spirit of inquiry and of enterprise equal to his own.
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