or, lastly, by any of the following passages in our own poets:-- ----"Evils that take leave, On their departure most of all show evil." _Shakspeare._ "Wit, like tierce claret, when't begins to pall, Neglected lies, and's of no use at all; But in its full perfection of decay Turns vinegar, and comes again in play." _Rochester._ "Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide." _Dryden._ "There's but the twinkling of a star Between a man of peace and war." _Butler._ "For men as resolute appear With too much as too little fear." _Butler._ "Th' extremes of glory and of shame, Like east and west become the same: No Indian prince has to his palace More followers, than a thief to the gallows." _Butler._ "For as extremes are short of ill or good, And tides at highest mark regorge the flood; So fate, that could no more improve their joy, Took a malicious pleasure to destroy." _Dryden._ "Extremes in nature equal ends produce, And oft so mix, the difference is too nice Where ends the virtue or begins the vice." _Pope._ I might adduce other instances, but these are sufficient to show that the sentiment owes nothing to Napoleon but the sanction of his great name, and the pithy sentence in which he has embodied it. HENRY H. BREEN. St. Lucia, Nov. 1851. DR. JOHNSON'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO BARETTI'S INTRODUCTION. Boswell notices Dr. Johnson having in 1775 written the preface to Baretti's _Easy Lessons in Italian and English_; but neither he nor his editors appear to have been aware of the preface which Dr. Johnson contributed to an earlier work by Baretti, his _Introduction to the Italian Language_, London, 1775, 8vo. It is accompanied by an Italian translation, and is written with all his usual vigour, and commences: "Unjust objections commonly proceed from unreasonable expectation; writers are often censured for omitting what they never intended to perform." The note, p 48: "Though the design of these notes is rather to teach grammar than morality, yet, as I think nothing a deviation that can serve the cause of virtue," &c., and the excellent remarks, p. 198., on Machiavel's _Life of Castruccio Castracani_, have every internal evidence of Johnson's style, and were no doubt dictated by him to Baretti, for whom Johnson in the same year, 1755, endeavours to obtain the loan of _Crescimbeni_ from Thomas Warton (Croker's _Boswell_, edit. 1848, p. 91.). Nothing is more wanted than a good and complete edition of Johnson's Works, in which omissions similar to the above, of which I have a long list when required, may be supplied. His prefaces and dedications to the works of other writers are all models in their way, and not one of them ought to be lost. JAS. CROSSLEY. Minor Notes.