'
An addition to our company came after we went up to the drawing-room;
Dr. Johnson seemed to rise in spirits as his audience increased. He
said, 'He wished Lord Orford's pictures[1036], and Sir Ashton Lever's
Museum[1037], might be purchased by the publick, because both the money,
and the pictures, and the curiosities, would remain in the country;
whereas, if they were sold into another kingdom, the nation would indeed
get some money, but would lose the pictures and curiosities, which it
would be desirable we should have, for improvement in taste and natural
history. The only question was, as the nation was much in want of money,
whether it would not be better to take a large price from a
foreign State?'
He entered upon a curious discussion of the difference between intuition
and sagacity; one being immediate in its effect, the other requiring a
circuitous process; one he observed was the _eye_ of the mind, the other
the _nose_ of the mind[1038].
A young gentleman[1039] present took up the argument against him, and
maintained that no man ever thinks of the _nose of the mind_, not
adverting that though that figurative sense seems strange to us, as very
unusual, it is truly not more forced than Hamlet's 'In my _mind's eye_,
Horatio[1040].
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