Note 1264 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 7)

The change of his sentiments with regard to Dr. Clarke, is thus mentioned to me in a letter from the late Dr. Adams, Master of Pembroke College, Oxford:—'The Doctor's prejudices were the strongest, and certainly in another sense the weakest, that ever possessed a sensible man. You know his extreme zeal for orthodoxy. But did you ever hear what he told me himself? That he had made it a rule not to admit Dr. Clarke's name in his Dictionary. This, however, wore off. At some distance of time he advised with me what books he should read in defence of the Christian Religion. I recommended Clarke's Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, as the best of the kind; and I find in what is called his Prayers and Meditations, that he was frequently employed in the latter part of his time in reading Clarke's Sermons. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 398.