Note 670 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 4)

Johnson often maintained this diffusion of learning. Thus he wrote:—'The call for books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders, nor often gentlemen, thought themselves disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature nor was every house supplied with a closet of knowledge.' Works, vii. 107. He goes on to mention 'that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its ranks.' Works, p. 108. 'That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in Addison's time rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and, in the female world, any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured.' Ib. p.470. 'Of the Essay on Criticism, Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick, because "not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could understand it." The gentlemen, and the education of that time, seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this.' Ib. viii. 243. See ante, iii. 3, 254. Yet he maintained that 'learning has decreased in England, because learning will not do so much for a man as formerly.' Boswell's Hebrides, post, v. 80.