'I have enlarged my notions.' _Post_, v. 442. See also _ante_, iii. 164.
His letter to Warren Hastings shows his curiosity about India. _Ante,_
iv. 68.
1775. The Thrales had just received a sum of £14,000. Johnson wrote to
Mrs. Thrale:--
'If I had money enough, what would I do? Perhaps, if you and master did
not hold me, I might go to Cairo, and down the Red Sea to Bengal, and
take a ramble to India. Would this be better than building and planting?
It would surely give more variety to the eye, and more amplitude to the
mind. Half fourteen thousand would send me out to see other forms of
existence, and bring me back to describe them.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.
266.
'Regions mountainous and wild, thinly inhabited and little cultivated,
make a great part of the earth, and he that has never seen them must
live unacquainted with much of the face of nature, and with one of the
great scenes of human existence.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 36. 'All travel
has its advantages. If the traveller visits better countries he may
learn to improve his own; and if fortune carries him to worse he may
learn to enjoy it.' _Ib_. p. 136.