SAMUEL JOHNSON ON VIVISECTION.
[To TILE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR, —May I ask leave to supplement my former letter on this subjectby a quotation from Johnson's notes on the passage from " Cymbeline," which I then cited ? It is his comment on the line, " Shall from this practice but make hard your heart.' "There is in this passage nothing that much requires a note, yet I cannot forbear to push it forward into observation. The thought would probably have been more amplified, had our author lived to be shocked with such experiments as have been published in later times, by a race of men who have practised tortures with- out pity and related them without shame, and are yet suffered to erect their ,heads among human beings. Cape saxa menu, cape robora, pastor !' " I do not advocate this " lynching " pro- cess, and am content, as you are, with the present operation of the Vivisection Act, to be supplemented, if need be—and I, for one, hope that the necessity will not arise—by more stringent regulations ; but there is something, I think, eminently char- acteristic of the grand, old Samuel in this utterance of indigna- tion.—I am, Sir, &c., Bickley Vicarage, August 29th. E. H. PLUNFTRE.
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