here described, either void of all sense of humanity, or consummate in all private and social virtues; here are no Hottentots without religion, polity or articulate 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, that, wherever human nature is to be found, there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason; and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced, in most countries, their particular inconveniencies, by particular favours.”—­We have here an early specimen of Johnson’s manner; the vein of thinking, and the frame of the sentences, are manifestly his:  we see the infant Hercules.  The translation of Lobo’s narrative has been reprinted lately in a separate volume, with some other tracts of Dr. Johnson’s, and, therefore, forms no part of this edition; but a compendious account of so interesting a work, as father Lobo’s discovery of the head of the Nile, will not, it is imagined, be unacceptable to the reader.

“Father Lobo, the Portuguese missionary, embarked, in 1622, in the same fleet with the count Vidigueira, who was appointed, by the king of Portugal, viceroy of the Indies.  They arrived at Goa; and, in January 1624, father Lobo set out on the mission to Abyssinia.  Two of the Jesuits, sent on the same commission, were murdered in their attempt to penetrate into that empire.  Lobo had better success; he surmounted all difficulties, and made his way into the heart of the country.  Then follows a description of Abyssinia, formerly the largest empire of which we have an account in history.  It extended from the Red sea to the kingdom of Congo, and from Egypt to the Indian sea, containing no less than forty provinces.  At the time of Lobo’s mission, it was not much larger than Spain, consisting then but of five kingdoms, of which part was entirely subject to the emperour, and part paid him a tribute, as an acknowledgment.  The provinces were inhabited by Moors, Pagans, Jews, and Christians.  The last was, in Lobo’s time, the established and reigning religion.  The diversity of people and religion is the reason why the kingdom was under different forms of government, with laws and customs extremely various.  Some of the people neither sowed their lands, nor improved them by any kind of culture, living upon milk and flesh, and, like the Arabs, encamping without any settled habitation.  In some places they practised no rites of worship, though they believed that, in the regions above, there dwells a being that governs the world.  This deity they call, in their language, Oul.  The christianity, professed by the people in some parts, is so corrupted with superstitions, errours, and heresies, and so mingled with ceremonies borrowed from the Jews, that little, besides the name of christianity, is to be found among them.  The Abyssins cannot properly be said to have either cities