"X is the last refuge of Y" - who first?

What is the source of the snowclone:

X is the last refuge of Y

Here are the following examples I could find:

• Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. - Samuel Johnson
• Audacity is the last refuge of guilt. - Samuel Johnson
• Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. - Oscar Wilde
• Conformity is the last refuge of the unimaginative. - Oscar Wilde
• Moderation is the last refuge of the unimaginative. - Oscar Wilde
• Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative. - Oscar Wilde
• Ambition is the last refuge of the failure. - Oscar Wilde
• I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex. - Oscar Wilde
• Sarcasm is the last refuge of the modest. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• Sarcasm is the last defense of the truly witless. - John Pollard
• [a country] is the last refuge of freedom/liberty. - everybody

Oscar Wilde seems to be the most prolific user of it, but Samuel Johnson seems to be the oldest.

So is Samuel Johnson the oldest recorded example of this snowclone?

There's also the related pattern:

X is the only refuge of Y

as in:

• Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow. Oscar Wilde

(I'm beginning to think that Oscar Wilde really liked this pattern, or that every variation was ascribed to him)

A very early instance in which something is identified figuratively as "the last refuge" of something else appears in William Painter, "The Forty-fourth Nouell" ["Alerane and Adelasia"], in The Palace of Pleasure (1566), page 208:

And if so be I chaunce to sayle of my purpose, I haue a medicine for my calamities, which is death, the last refuge of al my miseries. Which wil be right pleasaunt vnto me, ending my life, in the contemplation and memorie of the sincere and perfect Loue, that I beare to mine Alerane.

This instance is more personal and less aphoristic than (for example) "the last refuge of scoundrels is patriotism"; moreover, it seems to me that "of" in the phrase "the last refuge of al my miseries" might in modern English be changed to "from."

Painter adopts a similar wording in "The Twenty-ninth Nouell" ["Dom Diego and Geniura"] in book two of The Palace of Pleasure (1567), page 326:

When newes hereof came to the knight, he was altogether impacient, and séeyng the smal profite whiche he dyd gaine by pursuing his foolish opinion, and not able to bestowe his loue elsewhere, he deter∣mined to die: and yet vnwilling to imbrue his handes with his owne blood, he purposed to wander as a varabunde into some deserte, to perfourme the course of his vnhappie and sorowfull dayes, hoping by that meanes to quenche the heate of [that] amorous rage, either by length of time, or by [death], the last refuge of the miserable.

This time, the expression seems more aphoristic than the earlier one, as though "death is the last refuge of the miserable" were really a popular saying in sixteenth-century England. I put death in brackets because—although the linked text from the University of Michigan replaces the word with a bracketed diamond symbol—my three-volume copy of The Palace of Pleasure from Dover Books, which claims to be "Unabridged, unaltered republication of the 1890 edition, edited by Joseph Jacob," has the word death there.

A 1569 translation of Nicholas Hemminge [Niels Hemminsen], "The fifth Sunday in Lent commonly called Passion Sunday. ¶The Gospell. Iohn. viii," in A Postill, or, Exposition of the Gospels That Are Usually Red in the Churches of God, vpon the Sundayes and Feast Dayes of Saincts identifies a very different last refuge:

But what did the Iews in this case? They tooke vp stones too throvve at him. Héere is described the last refuge of Sathan, whiche is Uiolence & Tyrannie. Hythertoo they dealt against Chryst with rayling, hypocrisie, and sophistrie: and now in the end they take them too their weapons.

Alexander Roberts, A Sacred Septenarie, or The Seven Last Wordes of Our Saviour Christ Uttered upon the Cross (1614) argues that the last refuge of the unhappy is not death but hope:

Behold then the estate of the wicked, what place or preferment soeuer they haue, what port or pompe soeuer they beare among men, yet their hope (which when it faileth all thinges seeme to faile with it, as that which is the last refuge of a distressed soule) their hope I say, is but like the dust which is blown away with the wind, and like a thinn scumme which is scattered abroad with the storme, and as the smoake dispersed with winde.

Moving to the middle of the seventeenth century, we have this example from Joseph Caryl, An Exposition with Practicall Observations Continued upon the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Chapters of the Book of Job (1650), which takes Roberts's expression and replaces "hope" with "God":

Not to have prayer heard and accepted by God, is the greatest misery that can befall man.

God is the last refuge of a distressed soule, and the meanes by which we make God our refuge, or flye to him for refuge, is beleeving, and fervent prayer: ...

In the eighteenth century "the last refuge" comes up in connection not with the miserable or distressed but with the arrogant, the reprobate, and the guilty. From a letter from George Granville to William Burnaby, dated May 28, 1700, in New Letters of Mr. Alexander Pope and Several of His Friends, volume 5 (1737):

Yet do all of these [wits and critics] have it in their Power, to do a great deal of Mischief to a Poet who is so bold, as to venture his Reputation in their hands ; because the undiscerning Town never reflects, that as a Critic is the last Refuge of a Pretender to Wit, so he that is full only with the Faults of an Author, is less deserving, even of that Name, than he who sometimes rises up to a Taste of his Excellencies.

Likewise, from "Maxims and Reflections," in Charles Gildon, ed., Examen Miscellaneum: Consisting of Verse and Prose (1702):

A Critick's the last Refuge of a Pretender of Wit.

And from The English Theophrastus: or, The Manners of the Age. Being the Modern Characters of the Court, the Town, and the City second edition (1706):

After all, a Critick is the last Refuge of a pretender to Wit.

From The London Magazine, and Monthly Chronologer (1739) [combined snippets]:

Corruption is the miserable Expedient of those, whose Actions will not bear a fair Examination ; it is the last Refuge of Cheats, Impostors, and Knaves: Ministers who have multiplied Crimes upon their own Heads, will certainly have Recourse to it, if they have the Means in their Hands of employing it : For this, every publick Act will be turn'd into a Jobb; the best Laws will be clog'd with Clauses, to render them Grievances in the Execution; Employments will be split and multiplied; Salaries will be encreased: ...

Samuel Johnson himself was evidently responsible for yet another "last refuge" option, not long before the date that "patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels" is attributed to him. From Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, serialized in The Monthly Review (February 1775):

I suppose my opinion of the poems of Ossian is already discovered. I believe they never existed in any form other than that which we have seen. The editor, or author, never could shew the original; nor can it to shewn by any other. To revenge reasonable incredulity, by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence, with which the world is not yet acquainted; and stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt. It would be easy to shew it if he had it ; but whence could it be had!

This is particularly interesting because James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, volume 1 (1791) reports that Johnson made his (subsequently) famous apothegm that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel" at a dinner in a tavern on April 7, 1775 (two months after the Monthly Review's publication of his assertion that "stubborn audacity is the last refuge of guilt") attended by Edward Gibbon, Topham Beauclerk, Joshua Reynolds, Bennet Langton, and others. The "scoundrels" comment occurred following a discussion of Ossian (again), which led to a discussion of bears, which gave way to a discussion of patriotism. It thus seems possible that Johnson's insight about patriotism arose from his prior thought about audacity, the common thread being the protracted Ossian hoax perpetrated James Macpherson—a man more notable for his dishonesty than for any pretension he may have had to patriotism, either Scottish or British.

Before the Life of Samuel Johnson appeared (in 1791), a number of other "last refuges" popped up in the years surrounding Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. For example, from The True Church of England-man's Companion in the Closet: Or, a Complete Manual of Private Devotions; Fitted for Most Persons and Cases, sixteenth edition (1777):

They who dare be bold with the things belonging to God, generally at last despise God himself, and atheism is too often the last refuge of the sacrilegious.

From "A Letter to Adam Smith, LL. D. on the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his friend David Hume, Esq; just published," in The North-British Intelligencer; or, Constitutional Miscellany (April 30, 1777):

But let them ["our modern sceptics"] know, that in the solitary scenes of life, there is many an honest and tender heart pining with incurable anguish, pierced with the sharpest sting of disappointment, bereft of friends, chilled with poverty, racked with disease, scourged by the oppressor ; whom nothing but trust in Providence, and the hope of a future retribution, could preserve from the agonies of despair. And do they, with sacriligeous hands, attempt to violate this last refuge of the miserable [namely, religious faith], and to rob them of the only comfort that had survived the ravages of misfortune, malice, and tyranny?

From a translation of a quotation from "M. du Jarry," in The Rule of Life; a Collection of Select Moral Sentences Extracted from the Greatest Authors, Ancient and Modern (1783):

Great men who are not animated with the spirit of religion, make the ceremony of their funeral the last refuge of their vanity. They endeavour to fix to their memory that which death is going to take from them ; and gathering, as it were, the ruins of their glory in some pompous encomiums, stately mausoleums, and magnificent inscriptions, they make a kind of charm of that funeral pomp, to remove from their minds the mortifying image of their sad destiny.

Conclusions

There seem to be two main branches of "the last refuge of" instances. One, dating back to at least 1566, describes some form of relief (death, hope, or God) from extreme misery or desperate circumstances; the other, from no later than 1569, focuses on the efforts of the wicked to evade exposure, denunciation, or (in general) their just deserts.

Johnson's famous saying about scoundrels and patriotism clearly falls into the second branch, preceded by Uiolence & Tyrannie (the last refuge of Sathan), Criticks (the last refuge of Pretenders to Wit), Corruption (the last refuge of Cheats, Impostors, and Knaves), and stubborn audacity (the last refuge of guilt).

Expressions of this form have been around for a long time and have been used by some very prominent English writers, including Samuel Johnson (twice). Oscar Wilde is by no means the first to find it peculiarly suitable to aphoristic use.