of heresy that is the fixed belief of two such critics as Johnson and Lamb.
But let it be a heresy; one of the chief fascinations of Johnson’s notes on Shakespeare is that they introduce us to not a few of his private heretical opinions, and record some of his most casual reminiscences. We are enabled to trace his reading in the Life of Sir Thomas More, and in Sir Walter Raleigh’s political remains, and in the fashionable guide to conversation translated from the French of Scudery. We learn some things which Boswell does not tell us; some even (if a bold thought may be indulged) which Boswell did not know. We are introduced in the Life to Johnson’s cat Hodge, for whom Johnson used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. But we are not told, what is proved by a note on Cymbeline, that Johnson passionately protested against physiological experiments on live animals.[1] Again, is it not certain that Boswell, if he had known it, would have told us that his hero wore his boots indifferently, either on either foot, and further, which is yet a stranger thing,
- ↑ Act i., Scene vii. (i. v. 18–24):
‘Queen.I will try the forces
Of these thy compounds on such creatures as
We count not worth the hanging, but none human…
Cornelius.Your Highness
Shall from this practice but make hard your heart.
There is in this passage nothing that much requires a note, yet I cannot forbear to push it forward into observation. The thought would probably have been more amplified, had our authour lived to be shocked with such experiments as have been published in later times, by a race of men that have practised tortures without pity, and related them without shame, and are yet suffered to erect their heads among human beings.Cape saxa manu, cape robora, pastor.’
