'
BOSWELL.
The lines are found in the _Ode upon His Majesty's Restoration and
Return_, stanza 12. They may have been suggested by Virgil's lines--
'Revocate animos, maestumque timorem
Mittite; forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.'
Aeneid, i. 202.
[898] Had our Tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage, the
world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain. The present
respectable President of the Royal Society was so much struck on reading
it, that he clasped his hands together, and remained for some time in an
attitude of silent admiration, BOSWELL. Boswell again quotes this
passage (which is found in Johnson's _Works_, ix. 145), _ante_, iii.
173. The President was Sir Joseph Banks, Johnson says in _Rasselas_, ch.
xi:--'That the supreme being may be more easily propitiated in one place
than in another is the dream of idle superstition; but that some places
may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which
hourly experience will justify. He who supposes that his vices may be
more successfully combated in Palestine will, perhaps, find himself
mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly; he who thinks they will
be more freely pardoned dishonours at once his reason and religion.'
[899] 'Sir Allan went to the headman of the island, whom fame, but fame
delights in amplifying, represents as worth no less than fifty pounds.
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