The different degrees of this flood are such
certain indications of the fruitfulness or sterility of the ensuing
year, that it is publickly proclaimed at Cairo how much the water hath
gained during the night."
Such is the account of the Nile and its inundations, which, it is hoped,
will not be deemed an improper or tedious digression, especially as the
whole is an extract from Johnson's translation. He is, all the time, the
actor in the scene, and, in his own words, relates the story. Having
finished this work, he returned in February, 1734, to his native city;
and, in the month of August following, published proposals for printing,
by subscription, the Latin poems of Politian, with the history of Latin
poetry, from the aera of Petrarch to the time of Politian; and also the
life of Politian, to be added by the editor, Samuel Johnson. The book to
be printed in thirty octavo sheets, price five shillings. It is to be
regretted that this project failed for want of encouragement. Johnson,
it seems, differed from Boileau, Voltaire, and D'Alembert, who had taken
upon them to proscribe all modern efforts to write with elegance in a
dead language. For a decision pronounced in so high a tone, no good
reason can be assigned. The interests of learning require, that the
diction of Greece and Rome should be cultivated with care; and he who
can write a language with correctness, will be most likely to understand
its idiom, its grammar, and its peculiar graces of style.
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