Note 383 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 2)
Reading edition
De Quincey says that Sir Humphry Davy told him, 'that he could scarcely imagine a time, or a condition of the science, in which the Bishop's Essays would be superannuated.' De Quincey's Works, ii. 106. De Quincey describes the Bishop as being 'always a discontented man, a railer at the government and the age, which could permit such as his to pine away ingloriously in one of the humblest among the Bishopricks.' Ib. p. 107. He was, he adds, 'a true Whig,' and would have been made Archbishop of York had his party staid in power a little longer in 1807.'