Dr Johnson on ability and evil

Many complain of neglect who never tired to attract regard. It cannot be expected that the patrons of science and virtue should be solicitous to discover excellencies, which they who possess them shade and disguise. Few have abilities so much needed by the rest of the world as to be caressed on their own terms; and he that will not condescend to recommend himself by external embellishments, must submit to the fate of just sentiment meanly expressed, and be ridiculed and forgotten before he is understood.

Dr Johnson – Notes on Macbeth.

Whatever philosophy may determine of material nature, it is certainly true of intellectual nature, that it abhors a vacuum; our minds cannot be empty; and evil will break in upon them if they are not pre-occupied with good.

Dr Johnson – Boswell: Life, ii, 140

I presume the second quotation is the source of the more commonly-known expression: Nature abhors a vacuum.

Doctor Johnson, I presume?

We spent some time today in the Samuel Johnson museum in Lichfield today. I hadn’t realised Johnson was one of Lichfield’s finest sons (Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles, and David Garrick, the actor are two others).
The museum resides in the house that once belonged to Johnson’s father, Michael. He had his bookshop there on the ground floor. It’s not a large house, although there are four storeys, but it’s in a prime location, in the market square. (Johnson’s statue stands at one end of the square now, and Boswell’s at the other).
The museum certainly inspires a considerable interest in Johnson: you want to go out and buy the Life of Johnson, or his Dictionary (an abridged version at least) or a book of Johnson’s impeccably-phrased and pithy sayings. He makes you love the English language.