...the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings....frigid philosophy, as may conduct us, indifferent and umnoved, over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man is little...

...both moved by the presence of history. Boswell repeats Johnson s expostulation in his own account: "That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plan of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona\" (5: 334). Boswell...

...the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future, predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings....has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or...

...indifferent and unmoved, over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. The man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would...piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of lona." The extreme admiration Banks and Boswell felt for this passage was, I imagine, a response to the rapidity,...

...from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings....whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of lona!89" That is well said; and it underlines the way in which Johnson's learning, his sense of history...

...difference lies. They might have used Johnson's famous passage from the Western Islands, which concludes: 'That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism...whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.'! They might have taken that place in The Prelude where Wordsworth describes how the antiquity...

...has turned into Latin prose, the famous passage which ends in the typically Augustan declamation : " That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would...piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of lona." Less often quoted is the delightful account of the Doctor's arrival at Lochbuie—" where we found...

...habitually down-to-earth Dr Samuel Johnson, who first set foot on the island in 1773, to declare: ' I hat man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would...piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of lona.' The island inspired both John Keats and William Wordsworth to write about it after visits there in...

...and put down by an act of parliament : not an Irish history permitted in an Irish national school. 'That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer amid the ruins of lona,' are the words of...

...prompt emotion: "That man is little to lx- envied, whose patriotism would not gain force u|xm the plains of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of lona" (Journey to the Western I1les of Scotland, ed. Mary Ijtscelles [New Haven, 1971], 148). 35 In other...