...generality that distinguishes his work. Johnson was both a man of his time and very modern, both convinced that "wherever human nature is to be found, there...Vice and Virtue, a contest of Passion and Reason" (as he put it in his Preface to his first published work - the translation of a travel book, Father...

...language; no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences; he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer,...countries, their particular inconveniences by particular favors. is temperamentally and stylistically little removed from the Grand Old Dictator who castigated...

...preface to Father Jerome Lobo's Voyage to Abyssinia (1735), Johnson argues "that wherever human nature is found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and . . . the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions."21 Some forty years later, these ideas...

...language, no Chinese perfectly polite, and completely skilled in all sciences : he will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer,...passion and reason, and that the Creator doth not appealpartial in his distributions, but has balanced in most countries their particular inconveniences...