136 SAMUEL JOHNSON

sport of those who delight too much in silent speculation. When we are alone we are not always busy; the labour of excogitation is too violent to last long; the ardour of enquiry will sometimes give way to idleness or satiety. He who has nothing external that can divert him must find pleasure in his own thoughts, and must conceive himself what he is not; for who is pleased with what he is ? He then ex- patiates in boundless futurity, and culls from all imaginable conditions that which for the present moment he should most desire, amuses his desires with impossible enjoy- ments, and confers upon his pride unattain- able dominion. The mind dances from scene to scene, unites all pleasures in all combina- tions, and riots in delights which nature and fortune, with all their bounty, cannot be- stow.

"In time, some particular train of ideas fixes the attention : all other intellectual grati- fications are rejected; the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious false- hood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. By degrees, the reign of fancy is confirmed; she grows first imperious, and in time despotic. Then fictions begin to operate as realities, false opinions fasten upon

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