'The highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue[77].' And _sensitive_ is defined '_having sense or perception; but not reason_.' If I understand the meaning of this passage, it is, that no pleasure communicated through any of the organs of sense is equal to that of _rest_. This assertion leads to the most absurd consequences. In man, to separate sensitive from rational perception appears to be simply impossible. Even rest is not in strict language any pleasure. It is merely a mitigation of pain. The reader will decide whether I do the Doctor justice, while I say, that he must have been petrified when he composed this maxim. Thirst and hunger had been long forgot. Handel and Titian had no power to charm. We learn that a lover can receive, and his mistress can bestow nothing which is equal to the rapturous enjoyment of an _easy chair_. The thought is new; no human being ever did, or ever will conceive it, except this immortal IDLER. 'Physicians and lawyers are no friends to religion, and many _conjectures_ have been formed to discover the _reason_ of such _a combination_ between men who agree in _nothing else_, and who seem to be less affected in their own provinces by religious opinions than any other part of the community[78].' He then proceeds in the tone of an author, who has made a discovery to inform us of the cause. 'They have all seen a parson, seen him in a habit different from their own, and therefore _declared war_ against him.' But _this_ can be no motive for peculiar antipathy to parsons, allowing such antipathy to exist; for in habit all other classes differ no less from the clergy, than the lawyer and physician. But the remark itself is frivolous and false. Boerhaave and Hale were men of eminent piety. Physicians and lawyers have as much regard for religion as any other people generally have. Their _agreeing in nothing else_ is another of the blunders crowded into this passage. But I have too much respect for the reader's understanding to insist any farther on this point. The _conjecturers_, the _combination_, and the _declaration of war_, exist no where but in the Doctor's pericranium. He was at a loss what to say, and the position is only to be regarded as a _turbid ebullition of amphibological inanity_. But while we thus meet with something which is ridiculous in every page, we are not to forget even for a moment, what we have often heard, and what is most unquestionably _true_, viz. That Dr Johnson is the father of British literature, capital author of his age, and the greatest man in Europe[79]!!!