Life of Johnson, Volume 5 / Tour to the Hebrides (1773) and Journey into North Wales (1774)

by James Boswell

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See ante, ii. 434, note 1, and iii. 209.

[2] His Account of Corsica, published in 1768.

[3] Horace Walpole wrote on Nov.6, 1769 (Letters, v. 200):—'I found Paoli last week at Court. The King and Queen both took great notice of him. He has just made a tour to Bath, Oxford, &c., and was everywhere received with much distinction.' See ante, ii. 71.

[4] Boswell, when in London, was 'his constant guest.' Ante, iii 35.

[5] Boswell's son James says that 'in 1785 Mr. Malone was shewn at Mr. Baldwin's printing-house a sheet of the Tour to the Hebrides which contained Johnson's character. He was so much struck with the spirit and fidelity of the portrait that he requested to be introduced to its writer. From this period a friendship took place between them, which ripened into the strictest and most cordial intimacy. After Mr. Boswell's death in 1795 Mr. Malone continued to shew every mark of affectionate attention towards his family.' Gent. Mag. 1813, p. 518.

[6] Malone began his edition of Shakespeare in 1782; he brought it out in 1790. Prior's Malone, pp. 98, 166.

[7] Boswell in the 'Advertisement' to the second edition, dated Dec. 20, 1785, says that 'the whole of the first impression has been sold in a few weeks.' Three editions were published within a year, but the fourth was not issued till 1807. A German translation was published in Lübeck in 1787. I believe that in no language has a translation been published of the Life of Johnson. Johnson was indeed, as Boswell often calls him, 'a trueborn Englishman'—so English that foreigners could neither understand him nor relish his Life.

[8] The man thus described is James I.

[9] See ante, i. 450 and ii. 291.

[10] A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Johnson's Works ix. 1.

[11] See ante, i. 450. On a copy of Martin in the Advocates' Library [Edinburgh] I found the following note in the handwriting of Mr. Boswell:—'This very book accompanied Mr. Samuel Johnson and me in our Tour to the Hebrides.' UPCOTT. Croker's Boswell, p. 267.

[12] Macbeth, act i. sc. 3.

[13] See ante, iii. 24, and post, Nov. 10.

[14] Our friend Edmund Burke, who by this time had received some pretty severe strokes from Dr. Johnson, on account of the unhappy difference in their politicks, upon my repeating this passage to him, exclaimed 'Oil of vitriol !' BOSWELL.

[15] Psalms, cxli. 5.

[16] 'We all love Beattie,' he had said. Ante, ii. 148.

[17] This, I find, is a Scotticism. I should have said, 'It will not be long before we shall be at Marischal College.' BOSWELL. In spite of this warning Sir Walter Scott fell into the same error. 'The light foot of Mordaunt was not long of bearing him to Jarlok [Jarlshof].' Pirate, ch. viii. CROKER. Beattie was Professor of Moral Philosophy and Logic in Marischal College.

[18] 'Nil mihi rescribas; attamen ipse veni.' Ovid, Heroides, i. 2. Boswell liked to display such classical learning as he had. When he visited Eton in 1789 he writes, 'I was asked by the Head-master to dine at the Fellows' table, and made a creditable figure. I certainly have the art of making the most of what I have. How should one who has had only a Scotch education be quite at home at Eton? I had my classical quotations very ready.' Letters of Boswell, p. 308.

[19] Gray, Johnson writes (Works, viii. 479), visited Scotland in 1765. 'He naturally contracted a friendship with Dr. Beattie, whom he found a poet,' &c.

[20] Post, Sept. 12.

[21] See ante, i. 274.

[22] Afterwards Lord Stowell. He, his brother Lord Eldon, and Chambers were all Newcastle men. See ante, i. 462, for an anecdote of the journey and for a note on 'the Commons.'

[23] See ante, ii. 453.

[24] See ante, iv. III.

[25] Baretti, in a MS. note on Piozzi Letters, i. 309, says:—'The most unaccountable part of Johnson's character was his total ignorance of the character of his most familiar acquaintance.'

[26] Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, with a happy pleasantry, and some truth, that 'Dr. Johnson's sayings would not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bow-wow way:' but I admit the truth of this only on some occasions. The Messiah, played upon the Canterbury organ, is more sublime than when played upon an inferior instrument, but very slight musick will seem grand, when conveyed to the ear through that majestick medium. While therefore Dr. Johnson's sayings are read, let his manner be taken along with them. Let it, however, be observed, that the sayings themselves are generally great; that, though he might be an ordinary composer at times, he was for the most part a Handel. BOSWELL. See ante, ii. 326, 371, and under Aug. 29, 1783.

[27] See ante, i. 42.

[28] See ante, i. 41.

[29] Such they appeared to me; but since the first edition, Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, 'that Dr. Johnson's extraordinary gestures were only habits, in which he indulged himself at certain times. When in company, where he was not free, or when engaged earnestly in conversation, he never gave way to such habits, which proves that they were not involuntary.' I still however think, that these gestures were involuntary; for surely had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in the publick streets. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 144.

[30] By an Act of the 7th of George I. for encouraging the consumption of raw silk and mohair, buttons and button-holes made of cloth, serge, and other stuffs were prohibited. In 1738 a petition was presented to Parliament stating that 'in evasion of this Act buttons and button-holes were made of horse-hair to the impoverishing of many thousands and prejudice of the woollen manufactures.' An Act was brought in to prohibit the use of horse-hair, and was only thrown out on the third reading. Parl. Hist. x. 787.

[31] Boswell wrote to Erskine on Dec. 8, 1761: 'I, James Boswell Esq., who "am happily possessed of a facility of manners"—to use the very words of Mr. Professor [Adam] Smith, which upon honour were addressed to me.' Boswell and Erskine Corres. ed. 1879, p. 26.

[32] Post, Oct. 16.

[33] Hamlet, act iii, sc. 4.

[34] See ante, iv., March 21, 1783. Johnson is often reproached with his dislike of the Scotch, though much of it was assumed; but no one blames Hume's dislike of the English, though it was deep and real. On Feb. 21, 1770, he wrote:—'Our Government is too perfect in point of liberty for so rude a beast as an Englishman; who is a man, a bad animal too, corrupted by above a century of licentiousness.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 434. Dr. Burton writes of the English as 'a people Hume so heartily disliked.' Ib. p. 433.

[35] See ante, iv. 15.

[36] The term John Bull came into the English language in 1712, when Dr. Arbuthnot wrote The History of John Bull.

[37] Boswell in three other places so describes Johnson. See ante, i.129, note 3.

[38] See ante, i.467.

[39] 'All nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.' Rev. vii.9.

[40] See ante, ii. 376

[41] In Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, i.157, there is a description of Edinburgh, towards the close of the century, 'the last purely Scotch age that Scotland was destined to see. Almost the whole official state, as settled at the Union, survived; and all graced the capital, unconscious of the economical scythe which has since mowed it down. All our nobility had not then fled. The lawyers, instead of disturbing good company by professional matter, were remarkably free of this vulgarity; and being trained to take difference of opinion easily, and to conduct discussions with forbearance, were, without undue obtrusion, the most cheerful people that were to be met with. Philosophy had become indigenous in the place, and all classes, even in their gayest hours, were proud of the presence of its cultivators. And all this was still a Scotch scene. The whole country had not begun to be absorbed in the ocean of London. According to the modern rate of travelling [written in 1852] the capitals of Scotland and of England were then about 2400 miles asunder. Edinburgh was still more distant in its style and habits. It had then its own independent tastes, and ideas, and pursuits.' Scotland at this time was distinguished by the liberality of mind of its leading clergymen, which was due, according to Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p 57), to the fact that the Professor of Theology under whom they had studied was 'dull and Dutch and prolix.' 'There was one advantage,' he says, 'attending the lectures of a dull professor—viz., that he could form no school, and the students were left entirely to themselves, and naturally formed opinions far more liberal than those they got from the Professor.'

[42] Chambers (Traditions of Edinburgh, ed. 1825, ii.297) says that 'the very spot which Johnson's armchair occupied is pointed out by the modern possessors.' The inn was called 'The White Horse.' 'It derives its name from having been the resort of the Hanoverian faction, the White Horse being the crest of Hanover.' Murray's Guide to Scotland, ed. 1867, p. 111.

[43] Boswell writing of Scotland says:—'In the last age it was the common practice in the best families for all the company to eat milk, or pudding, or any other dish that is eat with a spoon, not by distributing the contents of the dish into small plates round the table, but by every person dipping his spoon into the large platter; and when the fashion of having a small plate for each guest was brought from the continent by a young gentleman returned from his travels, a good old inflexible neighbour in the country said, "he did not see anything he had learnt but to take his broth twice." Nay, in our own remembrance, the use of a carving knife was considered as a novelty; and a gentleman of ancient family and good literature used to rate his son, a friend of mine, for introducing such a foppish superfluity.'—London Mag. 1778, p.199.

[44] See ante, ii. 403. Johnson, in describing Sir A. Macdonald's house in Sky, said:—'The Lady had not the common decencies of her tea-table; we picked up our sugar with our fingers.' Piozzi Letters, i.138.

[45] Chambers says that 'James's Court, till the building of the New Town, was inhabited by a select set of gentlemen. They kept a clerk to record their names and their proceedings, had a scavenger of their own, and had balls and assemblies among themselves.' Paoli was Boswell's guest there in 1771. Traditions of Edinburgh, i. 219. It was burnt down in 1857. Murray's Guide to Scotland, ed. 1883, p.49. Johnson wrote:—'Boswell has very handsome and spacious rooms, level with the ground on one side of the house, and on the other four stories high.' Piozzi Letters, i. 109. Dr. J.H. Burton says that Hume occupied them just before Boswell. He continues:—'Of the first impression made on a stranger at that period when entering such a house, a vivid description is given by Sir Walter Scott in Guy Mannering; and in Counsellor Pleydell's library, with its collection of books, and the prospect from the window, we have probably an accurate picture of the room in which Hume spent his studious hours.' Life of Hume, ii. 137, 431. At Johnson's visit Hume was living in his new house in the street which was humorously named after him, St. David Street. Ib. p. 436.

[46] The English servant-girl in Humphry Clinker (Letter of July 18), after describing how the filth is thus thrown out, says:—'The maid calls gardy loo to the passengers, which signifies Lord have mercy upon you!'

[47] Wesley, when at Edinburgh in May, 1761, writes:—'How can it be suffered that all manner of filth should still be thrown even into this street [High Street] continually? How long shall the capital city of Scotland, yea, and the chief street of it, stink worse than a common sewer?' Wesley's Journal, iii. 52. Baretti (Journey from London to Genoa, ii.255) says that this was the universal practice in Madrid in 1760. He was driven out of that town earlier than he had intended to leave it by the dreadful stench. A few years after his visit the King made a reform, so that it became 'one of the cleanest towns in Europe.' Ib. p 258. Smollett in Humphry Clinker makes Matthew Bramble say (Letter of July 18):—'The inhabitants of Edinburgh are apt to imagine the disgust that we avow is little better than affectation.'

[48] 'Most of their buildings are very mean; and the whole town bears some resemblance to the old part of Birmingham.' Piozzi Letters, i. 109.

[49] See ante, i. 313.

[50] Miss Burney, describing her first sight of Johnson, says:—'Upon asking my father why he had not prepared us for such uncouth, untoward strangeness, he laughed heartily, and said he had entirely forgotten that the same impression had been at first made upon himself; but had been lost even on the second interview.' Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii.91.

[51] See post, Aug. 22.

[52] see ante, iii. 216.

[53] Boswell writes, in his Hypochondriacks:—'Naturally somewhat singular, independent of any additions which affectation and vanity may perhaps have made, I resolved to have a more pleasing species of marriage than common, and bargained with my bride that I should not be bound to live with her longer than I really inclined; and that whenever I tired of her domestic society I should be at liberty to give it up. Eleven years have elapsed, and I have never yet wished to take advantage of my stipulated privilege.' London Mag. 1781, p.136. See ante, ii. 140, note 1.

[54] Sir Walter Scott was two years old this day. He was born in a house at the head of the College Wynd. When Johnson and Boswell returned to Edinburgh Jeffrey was a baby there seventeen days old. Some seventeen or eighteen years later 'he had the honour of assisting to carry the biographer of Johnson, in a state of great intoxication, to bed. For this he was rewarded next morning by Mr. Boswell clapping his head, and telling him that he was a very promising lad, and that if "you go on as you've begun, you may live to be a Bozzy yourself yet."' Cockburn's Jeffrey, i. 33.

[55] He was one of Boswell's executors, and as such was in part responsible for the destruction of his manuscripts. Ante, iii. 301, note i. It is to his Life of Dr. Beattie that Scott alludes in the Introduction to the fourth Canto of Marmion:—

'Scarce had lamented Forbes paid The tribute to his Minstrel's shade; The tale of friendship scarce was told, Ere the narrator's heart was cold— Far may we search before we find A heart so manly and so kind.'

It is only of late years that Forbes has generally ceased to be a dissyllable.

[56] The saint's name of Veronica was introduced into our family through my great grandmother Veronica, Countess of Kincardine, a Dutch lady of the noble house of Sommelsdyck, of which there is a full account in Bayle's Dictionary. The family had once a princely right in Surinam. The governour of that settlement was appointed by the States General, the town of Amsterdam, and Sommelsdyck. The States General have acquired Sommelsdyck's right; but the family has still great dignity and opulence, and by intermarriages is connected with many other noble families. When I was at the Hague, I was received with all the affection of kindred. The present Sommelsdyck has an important charge in the Republick, and is as worthy a man as lives. He has honoured me with his correspondence for these twenty years. My great grandfather, the husband of Countess Veronica, was Alexander, Earl of Kincardine, that eminent Royalist whose character is given by Burnet in his History of his own Times. From him the blood of Bruce flows in my veins. Of such ancestry who would not be proud? And, as Nihil est, nisi hoc sciat alter, is peculiarly true of genealogy, who would not be glad to seize a fair opportunity to let it be known. BOSWELL. Boswell visited Holland in 1763. Ante, i. 473. Burnet says that 'the Earl was both the wisest and the worthiest man that belonged to his country, and fit for governing any affairs but his own; which he by a wrong turn, and by his love for the public, neglected to his ruin. His thoughts went slow and his words came much slower; but a deep judgment appeared in everything he said or did. I may be, perhaps, inclined to carry his character too far; for he was the first man that entered into friendship with me.' Burnet's History, ed. 1818, i. III. 'The ninth Earl succeeded as fifth Earl of Elgin and thus united the two dignities.' Burke's Peerage. Boswell's quotation is from Persius, Satires, i. 27: 'Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.' It is the motto to The Spectator, No. 379.

[57] She died four months after her father. I cannot find that she received this additional fortune.

[58] See ante, ii. 47.

[59] See ante, iv. 5, note 2.

[60] See ante, iii. 231. Johnson (Works, ix. 33) speaks of 'the general dissatisfaction which is now driving the Highlanders into the other hemisphere.' This dissatisfaction chiefly arose from the fact that the chiefs were 'gradually degenerating from patriarchal rulers to rapacious landlords.' Ib. p. 86. 'That the people may not fly from the increase of rent I know not whether the general good does not require that the landlords be, for a time, restrained in their demands, and kept quiet by pensions proportionate to their loss.... It affords a legislator little self-applause to consider, that where there was formerly an insurrection there is now a wilderness.' Ib. p. 94. 'As the world has been let in upon the people, they have heard of happier climates and less arbitrary government.' Ib. p. 128.

[61] 'To a man that ranges the streets of London, where he is tempted to contrive wants for the pleasure of supplying them, a shop affords no image worthy of attention; but in an island it turns the balance of existence between good and evil. To live in perpetual want of little things is a state, not indeed of torture, but of constant vexation. I have in Sky had some difficulty to find ink for a letter; and if a woman breaks her needle, the work is at a stop.' Ib. p. 127.

[62] 'It was demolished in 1822.' Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, i. 215.

[63] 'The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of isles be glad thereof.' Psalms, xcvii.1.

[64] A brief memoir of Mr. Carre is given in Forbes's Life of Beattie, Appendix Z.

[65] It was his daughter who gave the name to the new street in which Hume had taken a house by chalking on his wall ST. DAVID STREET. 'Hume's "lass," judging that it was not meant in honour or reverence, ran into the house much excited, to tell her master how he was made game of. "Never mind, lassie," he said; "many a better man has been made a saint of before."' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 436.

[66] The House of Lords reversed the decision of the Court of Session in this cause. See ante, ii.50, 230.

[67] Ogden was Woodwardian Professor at Cambridge. The sermons were published in 1770. Boswell mentions them so often that in Rowlandson's caricatures of the tour he is commonly represented as having them in his hand or pocket. See ante, iii. 248.

[68] 'Talking of the eminent writers in Queen Anne's reign, Johnson observed, "I think Dr. Arbuthnot the first man among them.'" Ante, i. 425.

[69] 'We found that by the interposition of some invisible friend lodgings had been provided for us at the house of one of the professors, whose easy civility quickly made us forget that we were strangers.' Works, ix. 3.

[70] He is referring to Beattie's Essay on Truth. See post, Oct. 1, and ante, ii. 201.

[71] See ante, ii. 443, where Johnson, again speaking of Hume, and perhaps of Gibbon, says:—'When a man voluntarily engages in an important controversy, he is to do all he can to lessen his antagonist, because authority from personal respect has much weight with most people, and often more than reasoning.'

[72] Johnson, in his Dictionary, calls bubble 'a cant [slang] word.'

[73] Boswell wrote to Temple in 1768:—'David [Hume] is really amiable: I always regret to him his unlucky principles, and he smiles at my faith; but I have a hope which he has not, or pretends not to have. So who has the best of it, my reverend friend?' Letters of Boswell, p.151. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. pp. 274-5) says:—'Mr. Hume gave both elegant dinners and suppers, and the best claret, and, which was best of all, he furnished the entertainment with the most instructive and pleasing conversation, for he assembled whosoever were most knowing and agreeable among either the laity or clergy. For innocent mirth and agreeable raillery I never knew his match....He took much to the company of the younger clergy, not from a wish to bring them over to his opinions, for he never attempted to overturn any man's principles, but they best understood his notions, and could furnish him with literary conversation.'

[74] No doubt they were destroyed with Boswell's other papers. Ante, iii.301, note 1.

[75] This letter, though shattered by the sharp shot of Dr. Horne of Oxford's wit, in the character of One of the People called Christians, is still prefixed to Mr. Hume's excellent History of England, like a poor invalid on the piquet guard, or like a list of quack medicines sold by the same bookseller, by whom a work of whatever nature is published; for it has no connection with his History, let it have what it may with what are called his Philosophical Works. A worthy friend of mine in London was lately consulted by a lady of quality, of most distinguished merit, what was the best History of England for her son to read. My friend recommended Hume's. But, upon recollecting that its usher was a superlative panegyrick on one, who endeavoured to sap the credit of our holy religion, he revoked his recommendation. I am really sorry for this ostentatious alliance; because I admire The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and value the greatest part of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Why should such a writer be so forgetful of human comfort, as to give any countenance to that dreary infidelity which would make us poor indeed?' ['makes me poor indeed.' Othello, act iii. sc.3]. BOSWELL. Dr. Horne's book is entitled, A Letter to Adam Smith, LL.D., On the Life, Death, and Philosophy of his Friend David Hume, Esq. By one of the People called Christians. Its chief wit is in the Preface. The bookseller mentioned in this note was perhaps Francis Newbery, who succeeded his father, Goldsmith's publisher, as a dealer in quack medicines and books. They dealt in 'over thirty different nostrums,' and published books of every nature. Of the father Johnson said:—'Newbery is an extraordinary man, for I know not whether he has read or written most books.' He is the original of 'Jack Whirler' in The Idler, No. 19. A Bookseller of the Last Century, pp. 22, 73.

[76] Hume says that his first work, his Treatise of Human Nature, 'fell dead-born from the press.' Auto. p.3. His Enquiry concerning Human Understanding 'was entirely overlooked and neglected.' Ib. p.4. His Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals 'came unnoticed and unobserved into the world.' Ib. p.5. The first volume of his History of England certainly met with numerous assailants; but 'after the first ebullitions of their fury were over, what was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion. Mr. Millar told me,' he continues, 'that in a twelvemonth he sold only forty-five copies of it...I was I confess, discouraged, and had not the war at that time been breaking out between France and England, I had certainly retired to some provincial town of the former kingdom, have changed my name, and never more have returned to my native country.' Ib. p.6. Only one of his works, his Political Discourses, was 'successful on the first publication.' Ib. p.5. By the time he was turned fifty, however, his books were selling very well, and he had become 'not only independent but opulent.' Ib. p. 8. A few weeks before he died he wrote: 'I see many symptoms of my literary reputation's breaking out at last with additional lustre.' Ib. p.10.

[77] Psalms, cxix. 99.

[78] We learn, post, Oct. 29, that Robertson was cautious in his talk, though we see here that he had much more courage than the professors of Aberdeen or Glasgow.

[79] This was one of the points upon which Dr. Johnson was strangely heterodox. For, surely, Mr. Burke, with his other remarkable qualities, is also distinguished for his wit, and for wit of all kinds too: not merely that power of language which Pope chooses to denominate wit:—

(True wit is Nature to advantage drest; What oft was thought, but ne'er so well exprest.)

[Pope's Essay on Criticism, ii. 297.] but surprising allusions, brilliant sallies of vivacity, and pleasant conceits. His speeches in parliament are strewed with them. Take, for instance, the variety which he has given in his wide range, yet exact detail, when exhibiting his Reform Bill. And his conversation abounds in wit. Let me put down a specimen. I told him, I had seen, at a Blue stocking assembly, a number of ladies sitting round a worthy and tall friend of ours, listening to his literature. 'Ay, (said he) like maids round a May-pole.' I told him, I had found out a perfect definition of human nature, as distinguished from the animal. An ancient philosopher said, Man was 'a two-legged animal without feathers,' upon which his rival Sage had a Cock plucked bare, and set him down in the school before all the disciples, as a 'Philosophick Man.' Dr. Franklin said, Man was 'a tool-making animal,' which is very well; for no animal but man makes a thing, by means of which he can make another thing. But this applies to very few of the species. My definition of Man is, 'a Cooking animal.' The beasts have memory, judgment, and all the faculties and passions of our mind in a certain degree; but no beast is a cook. The trick of the monkey using the cat's paw to roast a chestnut, is only a piece of shrewd malice in that turpissima bestia, which humbles us so sadly by its similarity to us. Man alone can dress a good dish; and every man whatever is more or less a cook, in seasoning what he himself eats. Your definition is good, said Mr. Burke, and I now see the full force of the common proverb, 'There is reason in roasting of eggs.' When Mr. Wilkes, in his days of tumultuous opposition, was borne upon the shoulders of the mob, Mr. Burke (as Mr. Wilkes told me himself, with classical admiration,) applied to him what Horace says of Pindar,

...numerisque fertur LEGE solutis. [Odes, iv. 2. 11.]

Sir Joshua Reynolds, who agrees with me entirely as to Mr. Burke's. fertility of wit, said, that this was 'dignifying a pun.' He also observed, that he has often heard Burke say, in the course of an evening, ten good things, each of which would have served a noted wit (whom he named) to live upon for a twelvemonth. I find, since the former edition, that some persons have objected to the instances which I have given of Mr. Burke's wit, as not doing justice to my very ingenious friend; the specimens produced having, it is alleged, more of conceit than real wit, and being merely sportive sallies of the moment, not justifying the encomium which, they think with me, he undoubtedly merits. I was well aware, how hazardous it was to exhibit particular instances of wit, which is of so airy and spiritual a nature as often to elude the hand that attempts to grasp it. The excellence and efficacy of a bon mot depend frequently so much on the occasion on which it is spoken, on the particular manner of the speaker, on the person to whom it is applied, the previous introduction, and a thousand minute particulars which cannot be easily enumerated, that it is always dangerous to detach a witty saying from the group to which it belongs, and to set it before the eye of the spectator, divested of those concomitant circumstances, which gave it animation, mellowness, and relief. I ventured, however, at all hazards, to put down the first instances that occurred to me, as proofs of Mr. Burke's lively and brilliant fancy; but am very sensible that his numerous friends could have suggested many of a superior quality. Indeed, the being in company with him, for a single day, is sufficient to shew that what I have asserted is well founded; and it was only necessary to have appealed to all who know him intimately, for a complete refutation of the heterodox opinion entertained by Dr. Johnson on this subject. He allowed Mr. Burke, as the reader will find hereafter [post. Sept.15 and 30], to be a man of consummate and unrivalled abilities in every light except that now under consideration; and the variety of his allusions, and splendour of his imagery, have made such an impression on all the rest of the world, that superficial observers are apt to overlook his other merits, and to suppose that wit is his chief and most prominent excellence; when in fact it is only one of the many talents that he possesses, which are so various and extraordinary, that it is very difficult to ascertain precisely the rank and value of each. BOSWELL. For Malone's share in this note, see ante, iii. 323, note 2. For Burke's Economical Reform Bill, which was brought in on Feb. 11, 1780, see Prior's Burke, p.184. For Blue Stocking, see ante, iv. 108. The 'tall friend of ours' was Mr. Langton (ante, i. 336). For Franklin's definition, see ante, iii. 245, and for Burke's classical pun, ib. p. 323. For Burke's 'talent of wit,' see ante, i. 453, iii. 323, iv. May 15, 1784, and post, Sept. 15.

[80] See ante, iv. 27, where Burke said:—'It is enough for me to have rung the bell to him [Johnson].'

[81] See ante, vol. iv, May 15, 1784.

[82] Prior (Life of Burke, pp.31, 36) says that 'from the first his destination was the Bar.' His name was entered at the Middle Temple in 1747, but he was never called. Why he gave up the profession his biographer cannot tell.

[83] See ante, ii. 437, note 2.

[84] See ante, i. 78, note 2.

[85] That cannot be said now, after the flagrant part which Mr. John Wesley took against our American brethren, when, in his own name, he threw amongst his enthusiastick flock, the very individual combustibles of Dr. Johnson's Taxation no Tyranny; and after the intolerant spirit which he manifested against our fellow-christians of the Roman Catholick Communion, for which that able champion, Father O'Leary, has given him so hearty a drubbing. But I should think myself very unworthy, if I did not at the same time acknowledge Mr. John Wesley's merit, as a veteran 'Soldier of Jesus Christ' [2 Timothy, ii. 3], who has, I do believe, 'turned many from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan to the living GOD' [Acts, xxvi. 18]. BOSWELL. Wesley wrote on Nov. 11, 1775 (Journal, iv. 56), 'I made some additions to the Calm Address to our American Colonies. Need any one ask from what motive this was wrote? Let him look round; England is in a flame! a flame of malice and rage against the King, and almost all that are in authority under him. I labour to put out this flame.' He wrote a few days later:—'As to reviewers, news-writers, London Magazines, and all that kind of gentlemen, they behave just as I expected they would. And let them lick up Mr. Toplady's spittle still; a champion worthy of their cause.' Journal, p. 58. In a letter published in Jan. 1780, he said:—'I insist upon it, that no government, not Roman Catholic, ought to tolerate men of the Roman Catholic persuasion. They ought not to be tolerated by any government, Protestant, Mahometan, or Pagan.' To this the Rev. Arthur O'Leary replied with great wit and force, in a pamphlet entitled, Remarks on the Rev. Mr. Wesley's Letters. Dublin, 1780. Wesley (Journal, iv. 365) mentions meeting O'Leary, and says:—'He seems not to be wanting either in sense or learning.' Johnson wrote to Wesley on Feb. 6, 1776 (Croker's Boswell, p. 475), 'I have thanks to return you for the addition of your important suffrage to my argument on the American question. To have gained such a mind as yours may justly confirm me in my own opinion. What effect my paper has upon the public, I know not; but I have no reason to be discouraged. The lecturer was surely in the right, who, though he saw his audience slinking away, refused to quit the chair while Plato staid.'

[86] 'Powerful preacher as he was,' writes Southey, 'he had neither strength nor acuteness of intellect, and his written compositions are nearly worthless.' Southey's Wesley, i. 323. See ante, ii. 79.

[87] Mr. Burke. See ante, ii. 222, 285, note 3, and iii. 45.

[88] If due attention were paid to this observation, there would be more virtue, even in politicks. What Dr. Johnson justly condemned, has, I am sorry to say, greatly increased in the present reign. At the distance of four years from this conversation, 21st February, 1777, My Lord Archbishop of York, in his 'sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts,' thus indignantly describes the then state of parties:—'Parties once had a principle belonging to them, absurd perhaps, and indefensible, but still carrying a notion of duty, by which honest minds might easily be caught. 'But there are now combinations of individuals, who, instead of being the sons and servants of the community, make a league for advancing their private interests. It is their business to hold high the notion of political honour. I believe and trust, it is not injurious to say, that such a bond is no better than that by which the lowest and wickedest combinations are held together; and that it denotes the last stage of political depravity.' To find a thought, which just shewed itself to us from the mind of Johnson, thus appearing again at such a distance of time, and without any communication between them, enlarged to full growth in the mind of Markham, is a curious object of philosophical contemplation.—That two such great and luminous minds should have been so dark in one corner,—that they should have held it to be 'Wicked rebellion in the British subjects established in America, to resist the abject condition of holding all their property at the mercy of British subjects remaining at home, while their allegiance to our common Lord the King was to be preserved inviolate,—is a striking proof to me, either that 'He who sitteth in Heaven' [Psalms, ii.4] scorns the loftiness of human pride,—or that the evil spirit, whose personal existence I strongly believe, and even in this age am confirmed in that belief by a Fell, nay, by a Hurd, has more power than some choose to allow. BOSWELL. Horace Walpole writing on June 10, 1778, after censuring Robertson for sneering at Las Casas, continues:—'Could Archbishop Markham in a Sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel by fire and sword paint charity in more contemptuous terms? It is a Christian age.' Letters, vii.81. It was Archbishop Markham to whom Johnson made the famous bow; ante, vol. iv, just before April 10, 1783. John Fell published in 1779 Demoniacs; an Enquiry into the Heathen and Scripture Doctrine of Daemons. For Hurd see ante, under June 9,1784.

[89] See Forster's Essays, ii 304-9. Mr. Forster often quotes Cooke in his Life of Goldsmith. He describes him (i. 58) as 'a young Irish law student who had chambers near Goldsmith in the temple.' Goldsmith did not reside in the temple till 1763 (ib. p.336), and Cooke was old enough to have published his Hesiod in 1728, and to have found a place in The Dunciad (ii. 138). See Elwin and Courthope's Pope, x. 212, for his correspondence with Pope.

[90] It may be observed, that I sometimes call my great friend, Mr. Johnson, sometimes Dr. Johnson: though he had at this time a doctor's degree from Trinity College, Dublin. The University of Oxford afterwards conferred it upon him by a diploma, in very honourable terms. It was some time before I could bring myself to call him Doctor; but, as he has been long known by that title, I shall give it to him in the rest of this Journal. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 488, note 3, and ii. 332, note I.

[91] In The Idler, No. viii, Johnson has the following fling at tragedians. He had mentioned the terror struck into our soldiers by the Indian war-cry, and he continues:—'I am of opinion that by a proper mixture of asses, bulls, turkeys, geese, and tragedians a noise might be procured equally horrid with the war-cry.' See ante, ii.92.

[92] Tom Jones, Bk. xvi. chap. 5. Mme. Necker in a letter to Garrick said:—'Nos acteurs se métamorphosent assez bien, mais Monsieur Garrick fait autre chose; il nous métamorphose tous dans le caractère qu'il a revêtu; nous sommes remplis de terreur avec Hamlet,' &c. Garrick Corres. ii. 627.

[93] See ante, i. 432, and ii. 278.

[94] See ante, ii. 11.

[95] Euphan M'Cullan (not Eupham Macallan) is mentioned in Dalrymple's [Lord Hailes] Remarks on the History of Scotland, p. 254. She maintained that 'she seldom ever prayed but she got a positive answer.' The minister of her parish was ill. 'She prayed, and got an answer that for a year's time he should be spared; and after the year's end he fell sick again.' 'I went,' said she, 'to pray yet again for his life; but the Lord left me not an mouse's likeness (a proverbial expression, meaning to reprove with such severity that the person reproved shrinks and becomes abashed), and said, 'Beast that thou art! shall I keep my servant in pain for thy sake?' And when I said, 'Lord, what then shall I do?' He answered me, 'He was but a reed that I spoke through, and I will provide another reed to speak through.' Dalrymple points out that it was a belief in these 'answers from the Lord' that led John Balfour and his comrades to murder Archbishop Sharp.

[96] R. Chambers, in his Traditions, speaking of the time of Johnson's visit, says (i. 21) on the authority of 'an ancient native of Edinburgh that people all knew each other by sight. The appearance of a new face upon the streets was at once remarked, and numbers busied themselves in finding out who and what the stranger was.'

[97] It was on this visit to the parliament-house, that Mr. Henry Erskine (brother of Lord Erskine), after being presented to Dr. Johnson by Mr. Boswell, and having made his bow, slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it was for the sight of his bear.WALTER SCOTT.

[98] This is one of the Libraries entitled to a copy of every new work published in the United Kingdom. Hume held the office of librarian at a salary of £40 a year from 1752 to 1757. J.H. Burton's Hume, i.367, 373.

[99] The Edinburgh oyster-cellars were called laigh shops. Chambers's Traditions, ii. 268.

[100] This word is commonly used to signify sullenly, gloomily; and in that sense alone it appears in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. I suppose he meant by it, 'with an obstinate resolution, similar to that of a sullen man.' BOSWELL. Southey wrote to Scott:—'Give me more lays, and correct them at leisure for after editions—not laboriously, but when the amendment comes naturally and unsought for. It never does to sit down doggedly to correct.' Southey's Life, iii. 126. See ante, i. 332, for the influence of seasons on composition.

[101] Boswell, post, Nov. 1, writes of 'old Scottish enthusiasm,' again italicising these two words.

[102] See ante, iii. 410.

[103] See ante, i. 354.

[104] Cockburn (Life of Jeffrey, i. 182) writing of the beginning of this century, describes how the General Assembly 'met in those days, as it had done for about 200 years, in one of the aisles of the then grey and venerable cathedral of St. Giles. That plain, square, galleried apartment was admirably suited for the purpose; and it was more interesting from the men who had acted in it, and the scenes it had witnessed, than any other existing room in Scotland. It had beheld the best exertions of the best men in the kingdom ever since the year 1640. Yet was it obliterated in the year 1830 with as much indifference as if it had been of yesterday; and for no reason except a childish desire for new walls and change.'

[105] I have hitherto called him Dr. William Robertson, to distinguish him from Dr. James Robertson, who is soon to make his appearance. But Principal, from his being the head of our college, is his usual designation, and is shorter: so I shall use it hereafter. BOSWELL.

[106] The dirtiness of the Scotch churches is taken off in The Tale of a Tub, sect. xi:—'Neither was it possible for the united rhetoric of mankind to prevail with Jack to make himself clean again.' In Humphry Clinker (Letter of Aug. 8) we are told that 'the good people of Edinburgh no longer think dirt and cobwebs essential to the house of God.' Bishop Horne (Essays and Thoughts, p. 45) mentioning 'the maxim laid down in a neighbouring kingdom that cleanliness is not essential to devotion,' continues, 'A Church of England lady once offered to attend the Kirk there, if she might be permitted to have the pew swept and lined. "The pew swept and lined!" said Mess John's wife, "my husband would think it downright popery."' In 1787 he wrote that there are country churches in England 'where, perhaps, three or four noble families attend divine service, which are suffered year after year to be in a condition in which not one of those families would suffer the worst room in their house to continue for a week.' Essays and Thoughts, p. 271.

[107] 'Hume recommended Fergusson's friends to prevail on him to suppress the work as likely to be injurious to his reputation.' When it had great success he said that his opinion remained the same. He had heard Helvetius and Saurin say that they had told Montesquieu that he ought to suppress his Esprit des Lois. They were still convinced that their advice was right. J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 385-7. It was at Fergusson's house thirteen years later that Walter Scott, a lad of fifteen, saw Burns shed tears over a print by Bunbury of a soldier lying dead on the snow. Lockhart's Scott, i. 185. See ib. vii. 61, for an anecdote of Fergusson.

[108] They were pulled down in 1789. Murray's Handbook for Scotland, ed. 1883, p. 60.

[109] See ante, ii. 128.

[110] See ante, iii. 357, and post, Johnson's Tour into Wales, Aug. 1, 1774.

[111]

'There where no statesman buys, no bishop sells; A virtuous palace where no monarch dwells.'

An Epitaph. Hamilton's Poems, ed. 1760, p. 260. See ante, iii. 150.

[112] The stanza from which he took this line is,

'But then rose up all Edinburgh, They rose up by thousands three; A cowardly Scot came John behind, And ran him through the fair body!'

[113] Johnson described her as 'an old lady, who talks broad Scotch with a paralytick voice, and is scarce understood by her own countrymen.' Piozzi Letters, i.109. Lord Shelburne says that 'her husband, the last Duke, could neither read nor write without great difficulty.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 11. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 107) says that in 1745 he heard her say:—'I have sworn to be Duchess of Douglas or never to mount a marriage bed.' She married the Duke in 1758. R. Chambers wrote in 1825:—'It is a curious fact that sixty years ago there was scarcely a close in the High Street but what had as many noble inhabitants as are at this day to be found in the whole town.' Traditions of Edinburgh, ed. 1825, i. 72.

[114] See ante, ii. 154, note 1.

[115] Lord Chesterfield wrote from London on Dec. 16, 1760 (Misc. Works, iv. 291):—'I question whether you will ever see my friend George Faulkner in Ireland again, he is become so great and considerable a man here in the republic of letters; he has a constant table open to all men of wit and learning, and to those sometimes who have neither. I have been able to get him to dine with me but twice.'

[116] Dr. Johnson one evening roundly asserted in his rough way that "Swift was a shallow fellow; a very shallow fellow." Mr. Sheridan replied warmly but modestly, "Pardon me, Sir, for differing from you, but I always thought the Dean a very clear writer." Johnson vociferated "All shallows are clear."' Town and Country Mag. Sept. 1769. Notes and Queries, Jan. 1855, p. 62. See ante, iv. 61.

[117] 'The Memoirs of Scriblerus,' says Johnson (Works, viii. 298), 'seem to be the production of Arbuthnot, with a few touches, perhaps, by Pope.' Swift also was concerned in it. Johnson goes on to shew why 'this joint production of three great writers has never obtained any notice from mankind.' Arbuthnot was the author of John Bull. Swift wrote to Stella on May 10, 1712:—'I hope you read John Bull. It was a Scotch gentleman, a friend of mine, that wrote it; but they put it upon me.' See ante, i. 425.

[118] See ante, i. 452, and ii. 318.

[119] Horace, Satires. I. iii. 19.

[120] See ante, i. 396, and ii. 298.

[121] See ante, ii. 74.

[122] 'At supper there was such conflux of company that I could scarcely support the tumult. I have never been well in the whole journey, and am very easily disordered.' Piozzi Letters, i. 109.

[123] See ante, iv. 17, and under June 9, 1784.

[124] Johnson was thinking of Sir Matthew Hale for one.

[125] 'It is supposed that there were no executions for witchcraft in England subsequently to the year 1682; but the Statute of I James I, c. 12, so minute in its enactments against witches, was not repealed till the 9 Geo. II, c. 5. In Scotland, so late as the year 1722, when the local jurisdictions were still hereditary [see post, Sept. 11], the sheriff of Sutherlandshire condemned a witch to death.' Penny Cyclo. xxvii. 490. In the Bishopric of Wurtzburg, so late as 1750, a nun was burnt for witchcraft: 'Cette malheureuse fille soutint opiniâtrément qu'elle était sorcière.... Elle était folle, ses juges furent imbécilles et barbares.' Voltaire's Works, ed. 1819, xxvi. 285.

[126] A Dane wrote to Garrick from Copenhagen on Dec. 23, 1769:—'There is some of our retinue who, not understanding a word of your language, mimic your gesture and your action: so great an impression did it make upon their minds, the scene of daggers has been repeated in dumb show a hundred times, and those most ignorant of the English idiom can cry out with rapture, "A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse!"' Garrick Corres. i. 375. See ante, vol. iv. under Sept. 30, 1783

[127] See ante, i. 466.

[128] Johnson, in the preface to his Dictionary (Works, v. 43), after stating what he had at first planned, continues:—'But these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer.' See ante, i. 189, note 2, and May I, 1783.

[129] See his letter on this subject in the APPENDIX. BOSWELL. He had been tutor to Hume's nephew and was one of Hume's friends. J.H Burton's Hume, ii. 399.

[130] By the Baron d'Holbach. Voltaire (Works, xii. 212) describes this book as 'Une Philippique contre Dieu.' He wrote to M. Saurin:—'Ce maudit livre du Système de la Nature est un péché contre nature. Je vous sais bien bon gré de réprouver l'athéisme et d'aimer ce vers: "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer." Je suis rarement content de mes vers, mais j'avoue que j'ai une tendresse de père pour celui-là.' Ib. v. 418.

[131] One of Garrick's correspondents speaks of 'the sneer of one of Johnson's ghastly smiles.' Garrick Corres. i. 334. 'Ghastly smile' is borrowed from Paradise Lost, ii. 846.

[132] See ante, iii. 212. In Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 158, is given a comic poem entitled The Court of Session Garland, written by Boswell, with the help, it was said, of Maclaurin.

[133] Dr. John Gregory, Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh, died on Feb. 10 of this year. It was his eldest son James who met Johnson. 'This learned family has given sixteen professors to British Universities.' Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xvi. 289.

[134] See ante, i. 257, note 3.

[135] See ante, i. 228.

[136] See ante, ii. 196.

[137] In the original, cursed the form that, &c. Johnson's Works, i.21.

[138] Mistress of Edward IV. BOSWELL.

[139] Mistress of Louis XIV. BOSWELL. Voltaire, speaking of the King and Mlle. de La Vallière (not Valiere, as Lord Hailes wrote her name), says:—'Il goûta avec elle le bonheur rare d'être aimé uniquement pour lui-même.' Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. 25. He describes her penitence in a fine passage. Ib. ch. 26.

[140] Malone, in a note on the Life of Boswell under 1749, says that 'this lady was not the celebrated Lady Vane, whose memoirs were given to the public by Dr. Smollett [in Peregrine Pickle], but Anne Vane, who was mistress to Frederick Prince of Wales, and died in 1736, not long before Johnson settled in London.' She is mentioned in a note to Horace Walpole's Letters, 1. cxxxvi.

[141] Catharine Sedley, the mistress of James II, is described by Macaulay, Hist of Eng. ed. 1874, ii. 323.

[142] Dr. A Carlyle (Auto. p. 114) tells how in 1745 he found 'Professor Maclaurin busy on the walls on the south side of Edinburgh, endeavoring to make them more defensible [against the Pretender]. He had even erected some small cannon.' See ante, iii, 15, for a ridiculous story told of him by Goldsmith.

[143]

'Crudelis ubique Luctus, ubique pavor, et plurima mortis imago:' 'grim grief on every side, And fear on every side there is, and many-faced is death.'

Morris, Virgil Aeneids, ii. 368.

[144] Mr. Maclaurin's epitaph, as engraved on a marble tomb-stone, in the Grey-Friars church-yard, Edinburgh:—

Infra situs est COLIN MACLAURIN, Mathes. olim in Acad. Edin. Prof. Electus ipso Newtono suadente. H.L.P.F. Non ut nomini paterno consulat, Nam tali auxilio nil eget; Sed ut in hoc infelici campo, Ubi luctus regnant et pavor, Mortalibus prorsus non absit solatium; Hujus enim scripta evolve, Mentemque tantarum rerum capacem Corpori caduco superstitem crede. BOSWELL.

[145] See ante, i. 437, and post, p. 72.

[146]

'What is't to us, if taxes rise or fall, Thanks to our fortune we pay none at all. No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains To tax our labours and excise our brains. Burthens like these vile earthly buildings bear, No tribute's laid on Castles in the Air'

Churchill's Poems, Night, ed. 1766, i. 89.

[147] Pitt, in 1784, laid a tax of ten shillings a year on every horse 'kept for the saddle, or to be put in carriages used solely for pleasure.'Parl. Hist. xxiv. 1028.

[148] In 1763 he published the following description of himself in his Correspondence with Erskine, ed. 1879, p.36. 'The author of the Ode to Tragedy is a most excellent man; he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright; and his education has been good. He has travelled in post-chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple-pie. He drinks old hock. He has a very fine temper. He is somewhat of an humorist, and a little tinctured with pride. He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old.' He is oddly enough described in Arighi's Histoire de Pascal Paoli, i. 231, 'En traversant la Mediterranée sur de frêles navires pour venir s'asseoir au foyer de la nationalité Corse, des hommes graves tels que Boswel et Volney obéissaient sans doute à un sentiment bien plus élevé qu'au besoin vulgaire d'une puérile curiosité'

[149] See ante, i. 400.

[150] For respectable, see ante, iii. 241, note 2.

[151] Boswell, in the last of his Hypochondriacks, says:—'I perceive that my essays are not so lively as I expected they would be, but they are more learned. And I beg I may not be charged with excessive arrogance when I venture to say that they contain a considerable portion of original thinking.'London Mag. 1783, p. 124.

[152] Burns, in The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer, says:—

'But could I like Montgomeries fight, Or gab like Boswell.'

Boswell and Burns were born within a few miles of each other, Boswell being the elder by eighteen years.

[153] 'For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose, The best good man, with the worst-natured muse.'

Rochester's Imitations of Horace, Sat. i. 10.

[154] Johnson's Works, ix. i. See ante, ii. 278, where he wrote to Boswell:—'I have endeavoured to do you some justice in the first paragraph [of the Journey].' The day before he started for Scotland he wrote to Dr. Taylor:—'Mr. Boswell, an active lively fellow, is to conduct me round the country.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 422. 'His inquisitiveness,' he said, 'is seconded by great activity.' Works, ix. 8. On Oct. 7 he wrote from Skye:—'Boswell will praise my resolution and perseverance; and I shall in return celebrate his good humour and perpetual cheerfulness.... It is very convenient to travel with him, for there is no house where he is not received with kindness and respect.' Piozzi Letters, i. 198. He told Mrs. Knowles that 'Boswell was the best travelling companion in the world.' Ante, iii. 294. Mr. Croker says (Croker's Boswell, p. 280):—'I asked Lord Stowell in what estimation he found Boswell amongst his countrymen. "Generally liked as a good-natured jolly fellow," replied his lordship. "But was he respected?" "Well, I think he had about the proportion of respect that you might guess would be shown to a jolly fellow." His lordship thought there was more regard than respect.' Hebrides, p. 40.

[155] See ante, ii. 103, 411.

[156] There were two quarto volumes of this Diary; perhaps one of them Johnson took with him. Boswell had 'accidently seen them and had read a great deal in them,' as he owned to Johnson (ante, under Dec. 9, 1784), and moreover had, it should seem, copied from them (ante, i. 251). The 'few fragments' he had received from Francis Barber (ante, i. 27).

[157] In the original 'how much we lost at separation' Johnson's Works, ix. I. Mr. William Nairne was afterwards a Judge of the Court of Sessions by the title of Lord Dunsinnan. Sir Walter Scott wrote of him:—'He was a man of scrupulous integrity. When sheriff depute of Perthshire, he found upon reflection, that he had decided a poor man's case erroneously; and as the only remedy, supplied the litigant privately with money to carry the suit to the supreme court, where his judgment was reversed.' Croker's Boswell, p. 280.

[158]

'Non illic urbes, non tu mirabere silvas: Una est injusti caerula forma maris.

Ovid. Amor. L. II. El. xi.

Nor groves nor towns the ruthless ocean shows; Unvaried still its azure surface flows.

BOSWELL.

[159] See ante. ii. 229.

[160] My friend, General Campbell, Governour of Madras, tells me, that they made speldings in the East-Indies, particularly at Bombay, where they call them Bambaloes. BOSWELL. Johnson had told Boswell that he was 'the most unscottified of his countrymen.'Ante, ii. 242.

[161] 'A small island, which neither of my companions had ever visited, though, lying within their view, it had all their lives solicited their notice.' Johnson's Works, ix. 1.

[162] 'The remains of the fort have been removed to assist in constructing a very useful lighthouse upon the island. WALTER SCOTT.

[163]

'Unhappy queen! Unwilling I forsook your friendly state.'

Dryden. [Aeneid, vi. 460.] BOSWELL.

[164] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 331) says of his journey to London in 1758:—'It is to be noted that we could get no four-wheeled chaise till we came to Durham, those conveyances being then only in their infancy. Turnpike roads were only in their commencement in the north.' 'It affords a southern stranger,' wrote Johnson (Works ix. 2), 'a new kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption of toll-gates.'

[165] See ante, iii. 265, for Lord Shelburne's statement on this subject.

[166] See ante, ii. 339, and iii. 205, note 4.

[167] See ante, iii. 46.

[168] The passage quoted by Dr. Johnson is in the Character of the Assembly-man; Butler's Remains, p. 232, edit. 1754:—'He preaches, indeed, both in season and out of season; for he rails at Popery, when the land is almost lost in Presbytery; and would cry Fire! Fire! in Noah's flood.'

There is reason to believe that this piece was not written by Butler, but by Sir John Birkenhead; for Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses, vol. ii. p. 640, enumerates it among that gentleman's works, and gives the following account of it:

'The Assembly-man (or the character of an assembly-man) written 1647, Lond. 1662-3, in three sheets in qu. The copy of it was taken from the author by those who said they could not rob, because all was theirs; so excised what they liked not; and so mangled and reformed it, that it was no character of an Assembly, but of themselves. At length, after it had slept several years, the author published it to avoid false copies. It is also reprinted in a book entit. Wit and Loyalty revived, in a collection of some smart satyrs in verse and prose on the late times. Lond. 1682, qu. said to be written by Abr. Cowley, Sir John Birkenhead, and Hudibras, alias Sam. Butler.'—For this information I am indebted to Mr. Reed, of Staple Inn. BOSWELL. This tract is in the Harleian Misc., ed. 1810, vi. 57. Mr. Reed's quotation differs somewhat from it.

[169] 'When a Scotchman was talking against Warburton, Johnson said he had more literature than had been imported from Scotland since the days of Buchanan. Upon the other's mentioning other eminent writers of the Scotch; "These will not do," said Johnson, "Let us have some more of your northern lights; these are mere farthing candles."' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 208. Dr. T. Campbell records (Diary, p. 61) that at the dinner at Mr. Dilly's, described ante, ii. 338, 'Dr. Johnson compared England and Scotland to two lions, the one saturated with his belly full, and the other prowling for prey. He defied any one to produce a classical book written in Scotland since Buchanan. Robertson, he said, used pretty words, but he liked Hume better; and neither of them would he allow to be more to Clarendon than a rat to a cat. "A Scotch surgeon may have more learning than an English one, and all Scotland could not muster learning enough for Lowth's Prelections."' See ante, ii. 363, and March 30, 1783.

[170] The poem is entitled Gualterus Danistonus ad Amicos. It begins:—

'Dum studeo fungi fallentis munere vitae'

Which Prior imitates:—

'Studious the busy moments to deceive.'

Sir Walter Scott thought that the poem praised by Johnson was 'more likely the fine epitaph on John, Viscount of Dundee, translated by Dryden, and beginning Ultime Scotoruml' Archibald Pitcairne, M.D., was born in 1652, and died in 1713.

[171] My Journal, from this day inclusive, was read by Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL. It was read by Johnson up to the second paragraph of Oct. 26. Boswell, it should seem, once at least shewed Johnson a part of the Journal from which he formed his Life. See ante, iii. 260, where he says:—'It delighted him on a review to find that his conversation teemed with point and imagery.'

[172] See ante, ii. 20, note 4.

[173] Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning, published in 1759, says, (ch. x):—'When the great Somers was at the helm, patronage was fashionable among our nobility ... Since the days of a certain prime minister of inglorious memory [Sir Robert Walpole] the learned have been kept pretty much at a distance. ... The author, when unpatronised by the Great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller. There cannot be perhaps imagined a combination more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the interest of the one to allow as little for writing, and of the other to write as much as possible; accordingly tedious compilations and periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavours.'

[174] In the first number of The Rambler, Johnson shews how attractive to an author is the form of publication which he was himself then adopting:—'It heightens his alacrity to think in how many places he shall have what he is now writing read with ecstacies to-morrow.'

[175] Yet he said 'the inhabitants of Lichfield were the most sober, decent people in England.' Ante, ii. 463.

[176] At the beginning of the eighteenth century, says Goldsmith, 'smoking in the rooms [at Bath] was permitted.' When Nash became King of Bath he put it down. Goldsmith's Works, ed. 1854, iv. 51. 'Johnson,' says Boswell (ante, i. 317), 'had a high opinion of the sedative influence of smoking.'

[177] Dr. Johnson used to practise this himself very much. BOSWELL.

[178] In The Tatler, for May 24, 1709, we are told that 'rural esquires wear shirts half a week, and are drunk twice a day.' In the year 1720, Fenton urged Gay 'to sell as much South Sea stock as would purchase a hundred a year for life, "which will make you sure of a clean shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day."' Johnson's Works, viii. 65. In Tristram Shandy, ii. ch. 4, published in 1759, we read:—'It was in this year [about 1700] that my uncle began to break in upon the daily regularity of a clean shirt.' In the Spiritual Quixote, published in 1773 (i. 51), Tugwell says to his master:—'Your Worship belike has been used to shift you twice a week.' Mrs. Piozzi (Journey, i. 105, date of 1789) says that she heard in Milan 'a travelled gentleman telling his auditors how all the men in London, that were noble, put on a clean shirt every day.' Johnson himself owned that he had 'no passion for clean linen.' Ante, i. 397.

[179] Scott, in Old Mortality, ed. 1860, ix. 352, says:—'It was a universal custom in Scotland, that, when the family was at dinner, the outer-gate of the court-yard, if there was one, and if not, the door of the house itself, was always shut and locked.' In a note on this he says:—'The custom of keeping the door of a house or chateau locked during the time of dinner probably arose from the family being anciently assembled in the hall at that meal, and liable to surprise.'

[180] Johnson, writing of 'the chapel of the alienated college,' says:—'I was always by some civil excuse hindered from entering it.' Works, ix. 4.

[181] George Marline's Reliquiae divi Andreae was published in 1797.

[182] See ante, ii. 171, and iv. 75.

[183] Mr. Chambers says that Knox was buried in a place which soon after became, and ever since has been, a high-way; namely, the old church-yard of St. Giles in Edinburgh. Croker's Boswell, p. 283.

[184] In The Rambler, No. 82, Johnson makes a virtuoso write:—'I often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.' He had in 1754 'viewed with indignation the ruins of the Abbeys of Oseney and Rewley near Oxford.' Ante, i. 273. Smollett, in Humphry Clinker (Letrer of Aug. 8), describes St. Andrews as 'the skeleton of a venerable city.'

[185] 'Some talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals, and considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others readily allowed that there was a time when the claims of the publick were satisfied, and when a man might properly sequester himself to review his life and purify his heart.' Rasselas, ch. 22.

[186] See ante, ii. 423.

[187] See ante, iv. 5, note 2, and v. 27.

[188] 'He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well in a monastery. But, perhaps, every one is not able to stem the temptations of publick life, and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly retreat.' Rasselas, ch. 47. See ante, ii. 435.

[189] 'A youthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be encouraged.' Ante, ii. 10. The hermit in Rasselas (ch. 21) says:—'The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout.' In Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 203, we read that 'Johnson thought worse of the vices of retirement than of those of society.' Southey (Life of Wesley, i. 39) writes:—'Some time before John Wesley's return to the University, he had travelled many miles to see what is called "a serious man." This person said to him, "Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember, you cannot serve Him alone; you must therefore find companions or make them; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion." Wesley never forgot these words.'

[190] [Erga neon, boulai de meson euchai de gerunton. Hesiodi Fragmenta, Lipsiae 1840, p. 371]

Let youth in deeds, in counsel man engage; Prayer is the proper duty of old age. BOSWELL.

[191] One 'sorrowful scene' Johnson was perhaps too late in the year to see. Wesley, who visited St. Andrews on May 27, 1776, during the vacation, writes (Journal, iv. 75):—'What is left of St. Leonard's College is only a heap of ruins. Two colleges remain. One of them has a tolerable square; but all the windows are broke, like those of a brothel. We were informed the students do this before they leave the college.'

[192] 'He was murdered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.' Johnson's Works, ix. 3. In May 1546 the Cardinal had Wishart the Reformer killed, and at the end of the same month he got killed himself.

[193] Johnson says (Works, ix. 5):—'The doctor, by whom it was shown, hoped to irritate or subdue my English vanity by telling me that we had no such repository of books in England.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale (Piozzi Letters, i. 113):—'For luminousness and elegance it may vie at least with the new edifice at Streatham.' 'The new edifice' was, no doubt, the library of which he took the touching farewell. Ante, iv. 158.

[194] 'Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain.' The Rambler, No. 47. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on the death of her son:—'Do not indulge your sorrow; try to drive it away by either pleasure or pain; for, opposed to what you are feeling, many pains will become pleasures.' Piozzi Letters, i. 310.

[195] See ante, ii. 151.

[196] The Pembroke College grace was written by Camden. It was as follows:—'Gratias tibi agimus, Deus misericors, pro acceptis a tua bonitate alimentis; enixe comprecantes ut serenissimum nostrum Regem Georgium, totam regiam familiam, populumque tuum universum tuta in pace semper custodies.'

[197] Sharp was murdered on May 3, 1679, in a moor near St. Andrews. Burnet's History of his Own time, ed. 1818, ii. 82, and Scott's Old Mortality, ed, 1860, ix. 297, and x. 203.

[198] 'One of its streets is now lost; and in those that remain there is the silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy depopulation.... St. Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to study and education.... The students, however, are represented as, at this time, not exceeding a hundred. I saw no reason for imputing their paucity to the present professors.' Johnson's Works, ix. 4. A student, he adds, of lower rank could get his board, lodging, and instruction for less than ten pounds for the seven months of residence. Stockdale says (Memoirs, i. 238) that 'in St. Andrews, in 1756, for a good bedroom, coals, and the attendance of a servant I paid one shilling a week.'

[199] The Compleat Fencing-Master, by Sir William Hope. London, 1691.

[200] 'In the whole time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of kindness, and entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality' Johnson's Works, ix. 3.

[201] Dugald Stewart (Life of Adam Smith, p. 107) writes:—'Mr. Smith observed to me not long before his death, that after all his practice in writing he composed as slowly, and with as great difficulty as at first. He added at the same time that Mr. Hume had acquired so great a facility in this respect, that the last volumes of his History were printed from his original copy, with a few marginal corrections.' See ante, iii. 437 and iv. 12.

[202] Of these only twenty-five have been published: Johnson's Works, ix. 289-525. See ante, iii. 19, note 3, and 181. Johnson wrote on April 20, 1778:—'I have made sermons, perhaps as readily as formerly.' Pr. and Med. p. 170. 'I should think,' said Lord Eldon, 'that no clergyman ever wrote as many sermons as Lord Stowell. I advised him to burn all his manuscripts of that kind. It is not fair to the clergymen to have it known he wrote them.' Twiss's Eldon, iii. 286. Johnson, we may be sure, had no copy of any of his sermons. That none of them should be known but those he wrote for Taylor is strange.

[203] He made the same statement on June 3, 1781 (ante, iv. 127), adding, 'I should be glad to see it [the translation] now.' This shows that he was not speaking of his translation of Lobo, as Mr. Croker maintains in a note on this passage. I believe he was speaking of his translation of Courayer's Life of Paul Sarpi. Ante, i. 135.

[204] 'As far as I am acquainted with modern architecture, I am aware of no streets which, in simplicity and manliness of style, or general breadth and brightness of effect, equal those of the New Town of Edinburgh. But, etc.' Ruskin's Lectures on Architecture and Painting, p. 2.

[205] Horace, Odes, ii. 14. 1.

[206] John Abernethy, a Presbyterian divine. His works in 7 vols. 8vo. were published in 1740-51.

[207] Leechman was principal of Glasgow University (post, Oct. 29). On his appointment to the Chair of Theology he had been prosecuted for heresy for having, in his Sermon on Prayer, omitted to state the obligation to pray in the name of Christ. Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 69. One of his sermons was placed in Hume's hands, apparently that the author might have his suggestions in preparing a second edition. Hume says:—'First the addressing of our virtuous withes and desires to the Deity, since the address has no influence on him, is only a kind of rhetorical figure, in order to render these wishes more ardent and passionate. This is Mr. Leechman's doctrine. Now the use of any figure of speech can never be a duty. Secondly, this figure, like most figures of rhetoric, has an evident impropriety in it, for we can make use of no expression, or even thought, in prayers and entreaties, which does not imply that these prayers have an influence. Thirdly, this figure is very dangerous, and leads directly, and even unavoidably, to impiety and blasphemy,' etc. J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 161.

[208] Nichols (Lit. Anec. ii. 555) records:—'During the whole of my intimacy with Dr. Johnson he rarely permitted me to depart without some sententious advice.... His words at parting were, "Take care of your eternal salvation. Remember to observe the Sabbath. Let it never be a day of business, nor wholly a day of dissipation." He concluded his solemn farewell with, "Let my words have their due weight. They are the words of a dying man." I never saw him more.'

[209] See ante, ii. 72.

[210] 'From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century.... The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown.... A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice: I told him that it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought so. "This," said he, "is nothing to another a few miles off." I was still less delighted to hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer. "Nay," said a gentleman that stood by, "I know but of this and that tree in the county."' Johnson's Works, ix. 7 'In all this journey [so far as Slains Castle] I have not travelled an hundred yards between hedges, or seen five trees fit for the carpenter.' Piozzi Letters, i.120. See ante, ii. 301.

[211] One of the Boswells of this branch was, in 1798, raised to the bench under the title of Lord Balmuto. It was his sister who was Boswell's step-mother. Rogers's Boswelliana, pp. 4, 82.

[212] 'The colony of Leuchars is a vain imagination concerning a certain fleet of Danes wrecked on Sheughy Dikes.' WALTER SCOTT. 'The fishing people on that coast have, however, all the appearance of being a different race from the inland population, and their dialect has many peculiarities.' LOCKHART. Croker's Boswell, p. 286.

[213] 'I should scarcely have regretted my journey, had it afforded nothing more than the sight of Aberbrothick.' Works, ix. 9.

[214] Johnson referred, I believe, to the last of Tillotson's Sermons preached upon Several Occasions, ed. 1673, p. 316, where the preacher says:—'Supposing the Scripture to be a Divine Revelation, and that these words (This is My Body), if they be in Scripture, must necessarily be taken in the strict and literal sense, I ask now, What greater evidence any man has that these words (This is My Body) are in the Bible than every man has that the bread is not changed in the sacrament? Nay, no man has so much, for we have only the evidence of one sense that these words are in the Bible, but that the bread is not changed we have the concurring testimony of several of our senses.'

[215] This also is Tillotson's argument. 'There is no more certain foundation for it [transubstantiation] in Scripture than for our Saviour's being substantially changed into all those things which are said of him, as that he is a rock, a vine, a door, and a hundred other things.' Ib. p. 313.

[216] Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except ye eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. See St. John's Gospel, chap. vi. 53, and following verses. BOSWELL.

[217] See ante, p. 26.

[218] See ante, i. 140, note 5, and v. 50.

[219] Johnson, after saying that the inn was not so good as they expected, continues:—'But Mr. Boswell desired me to observe that the innkeeper was an Englishman, and I then defended him as well as I could.' Works, ix. 9.

[220] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on July 29, 1775 (Piozzi Letters, i. 292):—' I hope I shall quickly come to Streatham...and catch a little gaiety among you.' On this Baretti noted in his copy:—'That he never caught. He thought and mused at Streatham as he did habitually everywhere, and seldom or never minded what was doing about him.' On the margin of i. 315 Baretti has written:—'Johnson mused as much on the road to Paris as he did in his garret in London as much at a French opera as in his room at Streatham.'

[221] A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson, by Thomas Tyers, Esq. See ante, iii. 308.

[222] This description of Dr. Johnson appears to have been borrowed from Tom Jones, bk. xi. ch. ii. 'The other who, like a ghost, only wanted to be spoke to, readily answered, '&c. BOSWELL.

[223] Perhaps he gave the 'shilling extraordinary' because he 'found a church,' as he says, 'clean to a degree unknown in any other part of Scotland.' Works, ix. 9.

[224] See ante, iii. 22.

[225] See ante, May 9, 1784. Yet Johnson says (Works, ix. 10):—'The magnetism of Lord Monboddo's conversation easily drew us out of our way.'

[226] There were several points of similarity between them; learning, clearness of head, precision of speech, and a love of research on many subjects which people in general do not investigate. Foote paid Lord Monboddo the compliment of saying, that he was an Elzevir edition of Johnson.

It has been shrewdly observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive, or pocket edition. BOSWELL. The latter part of this note is not in the first edition.

[227] Lord Elibank (post, Sept. 12) said that he would go five hundred miles to see Dr. Johnson; but Johnson never said more than he meant.

[228] Works, ix. 10. Of the road to Montrose he remarks:—'When I had proceeded thus far I had opportunities of observing, what I had never heard, that there were many beggars in Scotland. In Edinburgh the the proportion is, I think, not less than in London, and in the smaller places it is far greater than in English towns of the same extent. It must, however, be allowed that they are not importunate, nor clamorous. They solicit silently, or very modestly.' Ib. p. 9. See post, p. 116, note 2.

[229] James Mill was born on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left of the high road.' Bain's Life of James Mill, p. 1. Boswell and Johnson, on their road to Laurence Kirk, must have passed close to the cottage in which he was lying, a baby not five months old.

[230] See ante, i. 211.

[231] There is some account of him in Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ed. 1825, ii. 173, and in Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 136.

[232] G. Chalmers (Life of Ruddiman, p. 270) says:—'In May, 1790, Lord Gardenston declared that he still intended to erect a proper monument in his village to the memory of the late learned and worthy Mr. Ruddiman.' In 1792 Gardenston, in his Miscellanies, p. 257, attacked Ruddiman. 'It has of late become fashionable,' he wrote, 'to speak of Ruddiman in terms of the highest respect.' The monument was never raised.

[233] A Letter to the Inhabitants of Laurence Kirk, by F. Garden.

[234] 'Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.' Hebrews xiii, 2.

[235] This, I find, is considered as obscure. I suppose Dr. Johnson meant, that I assiduously and earnestly recommended myself to some of the members, as in a canvass for an election into parliament. BOSWELL. See ante, ii, 235.

[236] Goldsmith in Retaliation, a few months later, wrote of William Burke:—'Would you ask for his merits? alas! he had none; What was good was spontaneous, his faults were his own.' See ante, iii 362, note 2.

[237] See ante, iii. 260, 390, 425.

[238] Hannah More (Memoirs, i. 252) wrote of Monboddo in 1782:—'He is such an extravagant adorer of the ancients, that he scarcely allows the English language to be capable of any excellence, still less the French. He said we moderns are entirely degenerated. I asked in what? "In everything," was his answer. He loves slavery upon principle. I asked him how he could vindicate such an enormity. He owned it was because Plutarch justified it. He is so wedded to system that, as Lord Barrington said to me the other day, rather than sacrifice his favourite opinion that men were born with tails, he would be contented to wear one himself.'

[239] Scott, in a note on Guy Mannering, ed. 1860, iv. 267, writes of Monboddo:—'The conversation of the excellent old man, his high, gentleman-like, chivalrous spirit, the learning and wit with which he defended his fanciful paradoxes, the kind and liberal spirit of his hospitality, must render these noctes coenaeque dear to all who, like the author (though then young), had the honour of sitting at his board.'

[240] Lord Cockburn, writing of the title that Jeffrey took when he was raised to the Bench in 1834, said:—'The Scotch Judges are styled Lords; a title to which long usage has associated feelings of reverence in the minds of the people, who could not now be soon made to respect or understand Mr. Justice. During its strongly feudalised condition, the landholders of Scotland, who were almost the sole judges, were really known only by the names of their estates. It was an insult, and in some parts of the country it is so still, to call a laird by his personal, instead of his territorial, title. But this assumption of two names, one official and one personal, and being addressed by the one and subscribing by the other, is wearing out, and will soon disappear entirely.' Cockburn's Jeffrey, i. 365. See post, p. 111, note 1.

[241] Georgics, i. 1.

[242] Walter Scott used to tell an instance of Lord Monboddo's agricultural enthusiasm, that returning home one night after an absence (I think) on circuit, he went out with a candle to look at a field of turnips, then a novelty in Scotland. CROKER.

[243] Johnson says the same in his Life of John Philips, and adds:— 'This I was told by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose experience was, that "there were many books written on the same subject in prose, which do not contain so much truth as that poem."' Works, vii. 234. Miller is mentioned in Walpole's Letters, ii. 352:—'There is extreme taste in the park [Hagley]: the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle built by Miller, that would get him his freedom, even of Strawberry: it has the true rust of the Barons' Wars.'

[244] See ante, p. 27.

[245] My note of this is much too short. Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio. ['I strive to be concise, I prove obscure.' FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. l. 25.] Yet as I have resolved that the very Journal which Dr. Johnson read, shall be presented to the publick, I will not expand the text in any considerable degree, though I may occasionally supply a word to complete the sense, as I fill up the blanks of abbreviation, in the writing; neither of which can be said to change the genuine Journal. One of the best criticks of our age conjectures that the imperfect passage above was probably as follows: 'In his book we have an accurate display of a nation in war, and a nation in peace; the peasant is delineated as truly as the general; nay, even harvest-sport, and the modes of ancient theft are described.' BOSWELL. 'One of the best criticks is, I believe, Malone, who had 'perused the original manuscript.' See ante, p. 1; and post, Oct. 26, and under Nov. 11.

[246] It was in the Parliament-house that 'the ordinary Lords of Session,' the Scotch Judges, that is to say, held their courts. Ante, p. 39.

[247] Dr. Johnson modestly said, he had not read Homer so much as he wished he had done. But this conversation shews how well he was acquainted with the Maeonian bard; and he has shewn it still more in his criticism upon Pope's Homer, in his Life of that Poet. My excellent friend, Mr. Langton, told me, he was once present at a dispute between Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke, on the comparative merits of Homer and Virgil, which was carried on with extraordinary abilities on both sides. Dr. Johnson maintained the superiority of Homer. BOSWELL. Johnson told Windham that he had never read through the Odyssey in the original. Windham's Diary, p. 17. See ante, iii. 193, and May 1, 1783.

[248] Johnson ten years earlier told Boswell that he loved most 'the biographical part of literature.' Ante, i. 425. Goldsmith said of biography:—'It furnishes us with an opportunity of giving advice freely and without offence.... Counsels as well as compliments are best conveyed in an indirect and oblique manner, and this renders biography as well as fable a most convenient vehicle for instruction. An ingenious gentleman was asked what was the best lesson for youth; he answered, "The life of a good man." Being again asked what was the next best, he replied, "The life of a bad one."' Prior's Goldsmith, i. 395.

[249] See ante, p. 57.

[250] Ten years later he said:—'There is now a great deal more learning in the world than there was formerly; for it is universally diffused.' Ante, April 29,1783. Windham (Diary, p. 17) records 'Johnson's opinion that I could not name above five of my college acquaintances who read Latin with sufficient ease to make it pleasurable.'

[251] See ante, ii. 352.

[252] 'Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook without solicitation to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him from the imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and from month to month continued a vindication of the Essay on Man in the literary journal of that time, called the Republick of Letters' Johnson's Works, viii. 289. Pope wrote to Warburton of the Essay on Man:—'You understand my work better than I do myself.' Pope's Works, ed. 1886, ix. 211.

[253] See ante, ii. 37, note I, and Pope's Works, ed. 1886, ix. 220. Allen was Ralph Allen of Prior Park near Bath, to whom Fielding dedicated Amelia, and who is said to have been the original of Allworthy in Tom Jones. It was he of whom Pope wrote:—

'Let low-born Allen, with an awkward shame, Do good by stealth and blush to find it fame.'

Epilogue to the Satires, i. 135.

Low-born in later editions was changed to humble. Warburton not only married his niece, but, on his death, became in her right owner of Prior Park.

[254] Mr. Mark Pattison (Satires of Pope, p. 158) points out Warburton's 'want of penetration in that subject [metaphysics] which he considered more peculiarly his own.' He said of 'the late Mr. Baxter' (Andrew Baxter, not Richard Baxter), that 'a few pages of his reasoning have not only more sense and substance than all the elegant discourses of Dr. Berkeley, but infinitely better entitle him to the character of a great genius.'

[255] It is of Warburton that Churchill wrote in The Duellist (Poems, ed. 1766, ii. 82):—

'To prove his faith which all admit Is at least equal to his wit, And make himself a man of note, He in defence of Scripture wrote; So long he wrote, and long about it, That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it.'

[256] I find some doubt has been entertained concerning Dr. Johnson's meaning here. It is to be supposed that he meant, 'when a king shall again be entertained in Scotland.' BOSWELL.

[257] Perhaps among these ladies was the Miss Burnet of Monboddo, on whom Burns wrote an elegy.

[258] In the Rambler, No. 98, entitled The Necessity of Cultivating Politeness, Johnson says:—'The universal axiom in which all complaisance is included, and from which flow all the formalities which custom has established in civilized nations, is, That no man shall give any preference to himself.' In the same paper, he says that 'unnecessarily to obtrude unpleasing ideas is a species of oppression.'

[259] Act ii. sc. 5.

[260] Perhaps he was referring to Polyphemus's club, which was

'Of height and bulk so vast The largest ship might claim it for a mast.'

Pope's Odyssey, ix. 382.

Or to Agamemnon's sceptre:—

'Which never more shall leaves or blossoms bear.'

Iliad, i. 310.

[261] 'We agreed pretty well, only we disputed in adjusting the claims of merit between a shopkeeper of London and a savage of the American wildernesses. Our opinions were, I think, maintained on both sides without full conviction; Monboddo declared boldly for the savage, and I, perhaps for that reason, sided with the citizen.' Piozzi Letters, i. 115.

[262]

'Heroes are much the same, the point's agreed, From Macedonia's madman to the Swede; The whole strange purpose of their lives to find, Or make, an enemy of all mankind! Not one looks backward, onward still he goes, Yet ne'er looks forward further than his nose.'

Essay on Man, iv. 219.

[263] Maccaroni is not in Johnson's Dictionary. Horace Walpole (Letters, iv. 178) on Feb. 6, 1764, mentions 'the Maccaroni Club, which is composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses.' On the following Dec. 16 he says:—'The Maccaroni Club has quite absorbed Arthur's; for, you know, old fools will hobble after young ones.' Ib. p. 302. See post, Sept. 12, for buck.

[264] 'We came late to Aberdeen, where I found my dear mistress's letter, and learned that all our little people were happily recovered of the measles. Every part of your letter was pleasing.' Piozzi Letters, i. 115. For Johnson's use of the word mistress in speaking of Mrs. Thrale see ante, i. 494.

[265] See ante, ii. 455. 'They taught us,' said one of the Professors, 'to raise cabbage and make shoes, How they lived without shoes may yet be seen; but in the passage through villages it seems to him that surveys their gardens, that when they had not cabbage they had nothing.' Piozzi Letters, i. 116. Johnson in the same letter says that 'New Aberdeen is built of that granite which is used for the new pavement in London.'

[266] 'In Aberdeen I first saw the women in plaids.' Piozzi Letters, i. 116.

[267] Seven years later Mackintosh, on entering King's College, found there the son of Johnson's old friend, 'the learned Dr. Charles Burney, finishing his term at Aberdeen.' Among his fellow-students were also some English Dissenters, among them Robert Hall. Mackintosh's Life, i. 10, 13. In Forbes's Life of Beattie (ed. 1824, p. 169) is a letter by Beattie, dated Oct. 15, 1773, in which the English and Scotch Universities are compared. Colman, in his Random Records, ii. 85, gives an account of his life at Aberdeen as a student.

[268] Lord Bolingbroke (Works, iii. 347) in 1735 speaks of 'the little care that is taken in the training up our youth,' and adds, 'surely it is impossible to take less.' See ante, ii. 407, and iii. 12.

[269] London, 2d May, 1778. Dr. Johnson acknowledged that he was himself the authour of the translation above alluded to, and dictated it to me as follows:—

Quos laudet vates Graius Romanus et Anglus Tres tria temporibus secla dedere suis. Sublime ingenium Graius; Romanus habebat Carmen grande sonans; Anglus utrumque tulit. Nil majus Natura capit: clarare priores Quae potuere duos tertius unus habet. BOSWELL.

It was on May 2, 1778, that Johnson attacked Boswell with such rudeness that he kept away from him for a week. Ante, iii. 337.

[270] 'We were on both sides glad of the interview, having not seen nor perhaps thought on one another for many years; but we had no emulation, nor had either of us risen to the other's envy, and our old kindness was easily renewed.' Piozzi Letters, i. 117.

[271] Johnson wrote on Sept. 30:—'Barley-broth is a constant dish, and is made well in every house. A stranger, if he is prudent, will secure his share, for it is not certain that he will be able to eat anything else.' Piozzi Letters, i. p. 160.

[272] See ante. p. 24.

[273] Genesis, ix. 6.

[274] My worthy, intelligent, and candid friend, Dr. Kippis, informs me, that several divines have thus explained the mediation of our Saviour. What Dr. Johnson now delivered, was but a temporary opinion; for he afterwards was fully convinced of the propitiatory sacrifice, as I shall shew at large in my future work, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. BOSWELL. For Dr. Kippis see ante, iii. 174, and for Johnson on the propitiatory sacrifice, iv. 124.

[275] Malachi, iv. 2.

[276] St. Luke, ii 32.

[277] 'Healing in his wings,'Malachi, iv. 2.

[278] 'He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.' St. Mark, xvi. 16.

[279] Mr. Langton. See ante, ii. 254, 265.

[280] Spedding's Bacon, vii. 271. The poem is also given in The Golden Treasury, p. 37; where, however, 'limns the water' is changed into 'limns on water.'

[281] 'Addison now returned to his vocation, and began to plan literary occupations for his future life. He purposed a tragedy on the death of Socrates... He engaged in a nobler work, a defence of the Christian religion, of which part was published after his death.' Johnson's Works, vii. 441, and Addison's Works, ed. 1856, v. 103.

[282] Dr. Beattie was so kindly entertained in England, that he had not yet returned home. BOSWELL. Beattie was staying in London till his pension got settled. Early in July he had been told that he was to have a pension of £200 a year (ante, ii. 264, note 2). It was not till Aug. 20 that it was conferred. On July 9, he, in company with Sir Joshua Reynolds, received the degree of D.C.L. at Oxford. On Aug. 24, he had a long interview with the King; 'who asked,' Beattie records, 'whether we had any good preachers at Aberdeen. I said "Yes," and named Campbell and Gerard, with whose names, however, I did not find that he was acquainted.' It was this same summer that Reynolds painted him in 'the allegorical picture representing the triumph of truth over scepticism and infidelity' (post, Oct. 1, note). Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, pp. 151-6, 167.

[283] Dr. Johnson's burgess-ticket was in these words:—'Aberdoniae, vigesimo tertio die mensis Augusti, anno Domini millesimo septingentesimo septuagesimo tertio, in presentia honorabilium virorum, Jacobi Jopp, armigeri, praepositi, Adami Duff, Gulielmi Young, Georgii Marr, et Gulielmi Forbes, Balivorum, Gulielmi Rainie Decani guildae, et Joannis Nicoll Thesaurarii dicti burgi. 'Quo die vir generosus et doctrina clarus, Samuel Johnson, LL.D. receptus et admissus fuit in municipes et fratres guildae: praefati burgi de Aberdeen. In deditissimi amoris et affectus ac eximiae observantiae tesseram, quibus dicti Magistratus eum amplectuntur. Extractum per me, ALEX. CARNEGIE.' BOSWELL. 'I was presented with the freedom of the city, not in a gold box, but in good Latin. Let me pay Scotland one just praise; there was no officer gaping for a fee; this could have been said of no city on the English side of the Tweed.' Piozzi Letters, i. 117. Baretti, in a MS. note on this passage, says:—'Throughout England nothing is done for nothing. Stop a moment to look at the rusticks mowing a field, and they will presently quit their work to come to you, and ask something to drink.' Aberdeen conferred its freedom so liberally about this time that it is surprising that Boswell was passed over. George Colman the younger, when a youth of eighteen, was sent to King's College. He says in his worthless Random Records, ii. 99:—'I had scarcely been a week in Old Aberdeen, when the Lord Provost of the New Town invited me to drink wine with him one evening in the Town Hall; there I found a numerous company assembled. The object of this meeting was soon declared to me by the Lord Provost, who drank my health, and presented me with the freedom of the City.' Two of his English fellow-students, of a little older standing, had, he said, received the same honour. His statement seemed to me incredible; but by the politeness of the Town-clerk, W. Gordon, Esq., I have found out that in the main it is correct. Colman, with one of the two, was admitted as an Honorary Burgess on Oct. 8, 1781, being described as vir generosus; the other had been admitted earlier. The population of Aberdeen and its suburbs in 1769 was, according to Pennant, 16,000. Pennant's Tour, p. 117.

[284] 'King's College in Aberdeen was an exact model of the University of Paris. Its founder, Bishop [not Archbishop] Elphinstone, had been a Professor at Paris and at Orleans.' Burton's Scotland, ed. 1873, iii. 404. On p. 20, Dr. Burton describes him as 'the rich accomplished scholar and French courtier Elphinstone, munificently endowing a University after the model of the University of Paris.'

[285] Boswell projected the following works:—1. An edition of Johnson's Poems. Ante, i. 16. 2. A work in which the merit of Addison's poetry shall be maintained, ib. p. 225. 3. A History of Sweden, ii. 156. 4. A Life of Thomas Ruddiman, ib. p. 216. 5. An edition of Walton's Lives iii. 107. 6. A History of the Civil War in Great Britain in 1745 and 1746, ib., p. 162.

7. A Life of Sir Robert Sibbald, ib. p. 227. 8 An account of his own Travels, ib. p. 300. 9. A Collection, with notes, of old tenures and charters of Scotland, ib. p. 414, note 3. 10. A History of James IV. 11. 'A quarto volume to be embellished with fine plates, on the subject of the controversy (ante, ii. 367) occasioned by the Beggar's Opera.' Murray's Johnsoniana, ed. 1836, p. 502.

Thomas Boswell received from James IV. the estate of Auchinleck. Ante, ii. 413. See post, Nov. 4.

[286] Mackintosh says, in his Life, i. 9:—'In October, 1780, I was admitted into the Greek class, then taught by Mr. Leslie, who did not aspire beyond teaching us the first rudiments of the language; more would, I believe, have been useless to his scholars.'

[287] 'Boswell was very angry that the Aberdeen professors would not talk.' Piozzi Letters, i. 118. Dr. Robertson and Dr. Blair, whom Boswell, five years earlier, invited to meet Johnson at supper, 'with an excess of prudence hardly opened their lips' (ante, ii. 63). At Glasgow the professors did not dare to talk much (post, Oct. 29). On another occasion when Johnson came in, the company 'were all as quiet as a school upon the entrance of the headmaster.' Ante, iii. 332.

[288] Dr. Beattie says that this printer was Strahan. He had seen the letter mentioned by Gerard, and many other letters too from the Bishop to Strahan. 'They were,' he continues, 'very particularly acquainted.' He adds that 'Strahan was eminently skilled in composition, and had corrected (as he told me himself) the phraseology of both Mr. Hume and Dr. Robertson.' Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 341.

[289] An instance of this is given in Johnson's Works, viii. 288:—'Warburton had in the early part of his life pleased himself with the notice of inferior wits, and corresponded with the enemies of Pope. A letter was produced, when he had perhaps himself forgotten it, in which he tells Concanen, "Dryden, I observe, borrows for want of leisure, and Pope for want of genius; Milton out of pride, and Addison out of modesty."'

[290] 'Goldsmith asserted that Warburton was a weak writer. "Warburton," said Johnson, "may be absurd, but he will never be weak; he flounders well."' Stockdale's Memoirs, ii. 64. See Appendix A.

[291] The Doctrine of Grace; or the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit vindicated from the Insults of Infidelity and the Abuses of Fanaticism, 1762.

[292] A Letter to the Bishop of Gloucester, occasioned by his Tract on the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit, by John Wesley, 1762.

[293] Malone records:—'I could not find from Mr. Walpole that his father [Sir Robert] read any other book but Sydenham in his retirement.' To his admiration of Sydenham his death was attributed; for it led him to treat himself wrongly when he was suffering from the stone. Prior's Malone, p. 387. Johnson wrote a Life of Sydenham. In it he ridicules the notion that 'a man eminent for integrity practised Medicine by chance, and grew wise only by murder.' Works, vi. 409.

[294] All this, as Dr. Johnson suspected at the time, was the immediate invention of his own lively imagination; for there is not one word of it in Mr. Locke's complimentary performance. My readers will, I have no doubt, like to be satisfied, by comparing them; and, at any rate, it may entertain them to read verses composed by our great metaphysician, when a Bachelor in Physick. AUCTORI, IN TRACTATUM EJUS DE FEBRIBUS.

Febriles aestus, victumque ardoribus orbem Flevit, non tantis par Medicina malis. Nam post mille artes, medicae tentamina curae, Ardet adhuc Febris; nec velit arte regi. Praeda sumus flammis; solum hoc speramus ab igne, Ut restet paucus, quem capit urna, cinis. Dum quaerit medicus febris caussamque, modumque, Flammarum & tenebras, & sine luce faces; Quas tractat patitur flammas, & febre calescens, Corruit ipse suis victima rapta focis. Qui tardos potuit morbos, artusque trementes, Sistere, febrili se videt igne rapi. Sic faber exesos fulsit tibicine muros; Dum trahit antiquas lenta ruina domos. Sed si flamma vorax miseras incenderit aedes, Unica flagrantes tunc sepelire salus. Fit fuga, tectonicas nemo tunc invocat artes; Cum perit artificis non minus usta domus. Se tandem Sydenham febrisque Scholaeque furori Opponens, morbi quaerit, & artis opem. Non temere incusat tectae putedinis [putredinis] ignes; Nec fictus, febres qui fovet, humor erit. Non bilem ille movet, nulla hic pituita; Salutis Quae spes, si fallax ardeat intus aqua? Nec doctas magno rixas ostentat hiatu, Quîs ipsis major febribus ardor inest. Innocuas placide corpus jubet urere flammas, Et justo rapidos temperat igne focos. Quid febrim exstinguat, varius quid postulet usus, Solari aegrotos, qua potes arte, docet, Hactenus ipsa suum timuit Natura calorem, Dum saepe incerto, quo calet, igne perit: Dum reparat tacitos male provida sanguinis ignes, Praslusit busto, fit calor iste rogus. Jam secura suas foveant praecordia flammas, Quem Natura negat, dat Medicina modum. Nec solum faciles compescit sanguinis aestus, Dum dubia est inter spemque metumque salus; Sed fatale malum domuit, quodque astra malignum Credimus, iratam vel genuisse Stygem. Extorsit Lachesi cultros, Pestique venenum Abstulit, & tantos non sinit esse metus. Quis tandem arte nova domitam mitescere Pestem Credat, & antiquas ponere posse minas? Post tot mille neces, cumulataque funera busto, Victa jacet parvo vulnere dira Lues. Aetheriae quanquam spargunt contagia flammae, Quicquid inest istis ignibus, ignis erit. Delapsae coelo flammae licet acrius urant Has gelida exstingui non nisi morte putas? Tu meliora paras victrix Medicina; tuusque, Pestis quae superat cuncta, triumphus eris [erit]. Vive liber, victis febrilibus ignibus; unus Te simul & mundum qui manet, ignis erit.

J. LOCK, A.M. Ex. Aede Christi, Oxon. BOSWELL.

[295] See ante, ii. 126, 298.

[296] 'One of its ornaments [i.e. of Marischal College] is the picture of Arthur Johnston, who was principal of the college, and who holds among the Latin Poets of Scotland the next place to the elegant Buchanan.' Johnson's Works, ix. 12. Pope attacking Benson, who endeavoured to raise himself to fame by erecting monuments to Milton, and printing editions of Johnson's version of the Psalms, introduces the Scotch Poet in the Dunciad:— On two unequal crutches propped he came, Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name.' Dunciad, bk. iv. l. III. Johnson wrote to Boswell for a copy of Johnston's Poems (ante, iii. 104) and for his likeness (ante, March 18, 1784).

[297] 'Education is here of the same price as at St. Andrews, only the session is but from the 1st of November to the 1st of April' [five months, instead of seven]. Piozzi Letters, i. 116. In his Works (ix. 14) Johnson by mistake gives eight months to the St. Andrews session. On p. 5 he gives it rightly as seven.

[298] Beattie, as an Aberdeen professor, was grieved at this saying when he read the book. 'Why is it recorded?' he asked. 'For no reason that I can imagine, unless it be in order to return evil for good.' Forbes's Beattie, ed. 1824. p. 337.

[299] See ante, ii. 336, and iii. 209.

[300] See ante, iii. 65, and post, Nov. 2.

[301] See ante, i. 411. Johnson, no doubt, was reminded of this story by his desire to get this book. Later on (ante, iii. 104) he asked Boswell 'to be vigilant and get him Graham's Telemachus.'

[302] I am sure I have related this story exactly as Dr. Johnson told it to me; but a friend who has often heard him tell it, informs me that he usually introduced a circumstance which ought not to be omitted. 'At last, Sir, Graham, having now got to about the pitch of looking at one man, and talking to another, said Doctor, &c.' 'What effect (Dr. Johnson used to add) this had on Goldsmith, who was as irascible as a hornet, may be easily conceived.' BOSWELL.

[303] Graham was of Eton College.

[304] It was to Johnson that the invitation was due. 'What I was at the English Church at Aberdeen I happened to be espied by Lady Dr. Middleton, whom I had sometime seen in London; she told what she had seen to Mr. Boyd, Lord Errol's brother, who wrote us an invitation to Lord Errol's house.' Piozzi Letters, i. 118. Boswell, perhaps, was not unwilling that the reader should think that it was to him that the compliment was paid.

[305] 'In 1745 my friend, Tom Cumming the Quaker, said he would not fight, but he would drive an ammunition cart.' Ante, April 28, 1783. Smollett (History of England, iv. 293) describes how, in 1758, the conquest of Senegal was due to this 'sensible Quaker,' 'this honest Quaker,' as he calls him, who not only conceived the project, but 'was concerned as a principal director and promoter of the expedition. If it was the first military scheme of any Quaker, let it be remembered it was also the first successful expedition of this war, and one of the first that ever was carried on according to the pacifick system of the Quakers, without the loss of a drop of blood on either side.' If there was no bloodshed, it was by good luck, for 'a regular engagement was warmly maintained on both sides.' It was a Quaker, then, who led the van in the long line of conquests which have made Chatham's name so famous. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 185) says:—'Dr. Johnson told me that Cummyns (sic) the famous Quaker, whose friendship he valued very highly, fell a sacrifice to the insults of the newspapers; having declared to him on his death-bed, that the pain of an anonymous letter, written in some of the common prints of the day, fastened on his heart, and threw him into the slow fever of which he died.' Mr. Seward records (Anec. ii. 395):—'Mr. Cummins, the celebrated American Quaker, said of Mr. Pitt (Lord Chatham):—"The first time I come to Mr. Pitt upon any business I find him extremely ignorant; the second time I come to him, I find him completely informed upon it."'

[306] See ante, i. 232.

[307] See ante, i. 46.

[308] 'From the windows the eye wanders over the sea that separates Scotland from Norway, and when the winds beat with violence, must enjoy all the terrifick grandeur of the tempestuous ocean. I would not for any amusement wish for a storm; but as storms, whether wished or not, will sometimes happen, I may say, without violation of humanity, that I should willingly look out upon them from Slanes Castle.' Johnson's Works, ix. 15.

[309] See ante, p. 68.

[310] Horace. Odes, i. 2.

[311] See ante, ii. 428.

[312] Perhaps the poverty of their host led to this talk. Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1814:—'Imprudence, or ill-fortune as fatal as the sands of Belhelvie [shifting sands that had swallowed up a whole parish], has swallowed up the estate of Errol, excepting this dreary mansion-house and a farm or two adjoining.' Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iv. 187.

[313] See ante, ii. 421, note 1.

[314] Since the accession of George I. only one parliament had had so few as five sessions, and it was dissolved before its time by his death. One had six sessions, six seven sessions, (including the one that was now sitting,) and one eight. There was therefore so little dread of a sudden dissolution that for five years of each parliament the members durst contradict the populace.

[315] To Miss Burney Johnson once said:—'Sir Joshua Reynolds possesses the largest share of inoffensiveness of any man that I know.' Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 343. 'Once at Mr. Thrale's, when Reynolds left the room, Johnson observed:—"There goes a man not to be spoiled by prosperity."' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 82. Burke wrote of him:—'He had a strong turn for humour, and well saw the weak sides of things. He enjoyed every circumstance of his good fortune, and had no affectation on that subject. And I do not know a fault or weakness of his that he did not convert into something that bordered on a virtue, instead of pushing it to the confines of a vice.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 638.

[316] He visited Devonshire in 1762. Ante, i. 377.

[317] Horace Walpole, describing the coronation of George III, writes:— 'One there was ... the noblest figure I ever saw, the high-constable of Scotland, Lord Errol; as one saw him in a space capable of containing him, one admired him. At the wedding, dressed in tissue, he looked like one of the Giants in Guildhall, new gilt. It added to the energy of his person, that one considered him acting so considerable a part in that very Hall, where so few years ago one saw his father, Lord Kilmarnock, condemned to the block.' Letters, iii. 438. Sir William Forbes says:—'He often put me in mind of an ancient Hero, and I remember Dr. Johnson was positive that he resembled Homer's character of Sarpedon.' Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, Appendix D. Mrs. Piozzi says:—'The Earl dressed in his robes at the coronation and Mrs. Siddons in the character of Murphy's Euphrasia were the noblest specimens of the human race I ever saw.' Synonymy, i.43. He sprang from a race of rebels. 'He united in his person,' says Forbes, 'the four earldoms of Errol, Kilmarnock, Linlithgow, and Callander.' The last two were attainted in 1715, and Kilmarnock in 1745. Life of Beattie, Appendix D.

[318] Lord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son [iii. 130], complains of one who argued in an indiscriminate manner with men of all ranks, Probably the noble lord had felt with some uneasiness what it was to encounter stronger abilities than his own. If a peer will engage at foils with his inferior in station, he must expect that his inferior in station will avail himself of every advantage; otherwise it is not a fair trial of strength and skill. The same will hold in a contest of reason, or of wit.—A certain king entered the lists of genius with Voltaire. The consequence was, that, though the king had great and brilliant talents, Voltaire had such a superiority that his majesty could not bear it; and the poet was dismissed, or escaped, from that court.—In the reign of James I. of England, Crichton, Lord Sanquhar, a peer of Scotland, from a vain ambition to excel a fencing-master in his own art, played at rapier and dagger with him. The fencing-master, whose fame and bread were at stake, put out one of his lordship's eyes. Exasperated at this, Lord Sanquhar hired ruffians, and had the fencing-master assassinated; for which his lordship was capitally tried, condemned, and hanged. Not being a peer of England, he was tried by the name of Robert Crichton, Esq.; but he was admitted to be a baron of three hundred years' standing.—See the State Trials; and the History of England by Hume, who applauds the impartial justice executed upon a man of high rank. BOSWELL. The 'stronger abilities' that Chesterfield encountered were Johnson's. Boswell thought wrongly that it was of Johnson that his Lordship complained in his letters to his son. Ante, i. 267, note 2. 'A certain King' was Frederick the Great. Ante, i. 434. The fencing-master was murdered in his own house in London, five years after Sanquhar (or Sanquire) had lost his eye. Bacon, who was Solicitor-General, said:—'Certainly the circumstance of time is heavy unto you; it is now five years since this unfortunate man, Turner, be it upon accident or despight, gave the provocation which was the seed of your malice.' State Trials, ii. 743, and Hume's History, ed. 1802, vi. 61.

[319] Hamlet, act i. sc. 2.

[320] Perhaps Lord Errol was the Scotch Lord mentioned ante, iii. 170, and the nobleman mentioned ib. p. 329.

[321] 'Pitied by gentle minds Kilmarnock died.' Ante. i. 180.

[322] Sir Walter Scott describes the talk that he had in 1814 near Slains Castle with an old fisherman. 'The old man says Slains is now inhabited by a Mr. Bowles, who comes so far from the southward that naebody kens whare he comes frae. "Was he frae the Indies?" "Na; he did not think he came that road. He was far frae the Southland. Naebody ever heard the name of the place; but he had brought more guid out o' Peterhead than a' the Lords he had seen in Slains, and he had seen three."' Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iv. 188. The first of the three was Johnson's host.

[323] See ante, ii. 153, and iii. 1, note 2.

[324] Smollett, in Humphry Clinker (Letter of Sept. 6), writing of the Highlanders and their chiefs, says:—'The original attachment is founded on something prior to the feudal system, about which the writers of this age have made such a pother, as if it was a new discovery, like the Copernican system ... For my part I expect to see the use of trunk-hose and buttered ale ascribed to the influence of the feudal system.' See ante, ii. 177.

[325] Mme. Riccoboni wrote to Garrick on May 3, 1769:—'Vous conviendrez que les nobles sont peu ménagés par vos auteurs; le sot, le fat, ou le malhonnête homme mêlé dans l'intrigue est presque toujours un lord.' Garrick Corres, ii. 561. Dr. Moore (View of Society in France, i. 29) writing in 1779 says:—'I am convinced there is no country in Europe where royal favour, high birth, and the military profession could be allowed such privileges as they have in France, and where there would be so few instances of their producing rough and brutal behaviour to inferiors.' Mrs. Piozzi, writing in 1784, though she did not publish her book till 1789, said:—'The French are really a contented race of mortals;—precluded almost from possibility of adventure, the low Parisian leads gentle, humble life, nor envies that greatness he never can obtain.' Journey through France, i. 13.

[326] He is the worthy son of a worthy father, the late Lord Strichen, one of our judges, to whose kind notice I was much obliged. Lord Strichen was a man not only honest, but highly generous; for after his succession to the family estate, he paid a large sum of debts contracted by his predecessor, which he was not under any obligation to pay. Let me here, for the credit of Ayrshire, my own county, record a noble instance of liberal honesty in William Hutchison, drover, in Lanehead, Kyle, who formerly obtained a full discharge from his creditors upon a composition of his debts; but upon being restored to good circumstances, invited his creditors last winter to a dinner, without telling the reason, and paid them their full sums, principal and interest. They presented him with a piece of plate, with an inscription to commemorate this extraordinary instance of true worth; which should make some people in Scotland blush, while, though mean themselves, they strut about under the protection of great alliance, conscious of the wretchedness of numbers who have lost by them, to whom they never think of making reparation, but indulge themselves and their families in most unsuitable expence. BOSWELL.

[327] See ante, ii. 194; iii. 353; and iv. June 30, 1784.

[328] Malone says that 'Lord Auchinleck told his son one day that it would cost him more trouble to hide his ignorance in the Scotch and English law than to show his knowledge. This Mr. Boswell owned he had found to be true.' European Magazine, 1798, p. 376.

[329] See ante, iv. 8, note 3, and iv. 20.

[330] Colman had translated Terence. Ante, iv. 18.

[331] Dr. Nugent was Burke's father-in-law. Ante, i. 477.

[332] Lord Charlemont left behind him a History of Italian Poetry. Hardy's Charlemont, i. 306, ii. 437.

[333] See ante, i. 250, and ii. 378, note 1.

[334] Since the first edition, it has been suggested by one of the club, who knew Mr. Vesey better than Dr. Johnson and I, that we did not assign him a proper place; for he was quite unskilled in Irish antiquities and Celtick learning, but might with propriety have been made professor of architecture, which he understood well, and has left a very good specimen of his knowledge and taste in that art, by an elegant house built on a plan of his own formation, at Lucan, a few miles from Dublin. BOSWELL. See ante, iv. 28.

[335] Sir William Jones, who died at the age of forty-seven, had 'studied eight languages critically, eight less perfectly, but all intelligible with a dictionary, and twelve least perfectly, but all attainable.' Teignmouth's Life of Sir W. Jones, ed. 1815, p. 465. See ante, iv. 69.

[336] See ante, i. 478.

[337] See ante, p. 16.

[338] Mackintosh in his Life, ii. 171, says:—'From the refinements of abstruse speculation Johnson was withheld, partly perhaps by that repugnance to such subtleties which much experience often inspires, and partly also by a secret dread that they might disturb those prejudices in which his mind had found repose from the agitations of doubt.'

[339] See ante, iv. 11, note 1.

[340] Our Club, originally at the Turk's Head, Gerrard-street, then at Prince's, Sackville-street, now at Baxter's, Dover-street, which at Mr. Garrick's funeral acquired a name for the first time, and was called THE LITERARY CLUB, was instituted in 1764, and now consists of thirty-five members. It has, since 1773, been greatly augmented; and though Dr. Johnson with justice observed, that, by losing Goldsmith, Garrick, Nugent, Chamier, Beauclerk, we had lost what would make an eminent club, yet when I mentioned, as an accession, Mr. Fox, Dr. George Fordyce, Sir Charles Bunbury, Lord Ossory, Mr. Gibbon, Dr. Adam Smith, Mr. R.B. Sheridan, the Bishops of Kilaloe and St. Asaph, Dean Marley, Mr. Steevens, Mr. Dunning, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Scott of the Commons, Earl Spencer, Mr. Windham of Norfolk, Lord Elliott, Mr. Malone, Dr. Joseph Warton, the Rev. Thomas Warton, Lord Lucan, Mr. Burke junior, Lord Palmerston, Dr. Burney, Sir William Hamilton, and Dr. Warren, it will be acknowledged that we might establish a second university of high reputation. BOSWELL. Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Jones wrote in 1780 (Life, p. 241):—'Of our club I will only say that there is no branch of human knowledge on which some of our members are not capable of giving information.'

[341] Here, unluckily, the windows had no pullies; and Dr. Johnson, who was constantly eager for fresh air, had much struggling to get one of them kept open. Thus he had a notion impressed upon him, that this wretched defect was general in Scotland; in consequence of which he has erroneously enlarged upon it in his Journey. I regretted that he did not allow me to read over his book before it was printed. I should have changed very little; but I should have suggested an alteration in a few places where he has laid himself open to be attacked. I hope I should have prevailed with him to omit or soften his assertion, that 'a Scotsman must be a sturdy moralist, who does not prefer Scotland to truth,' for I really think it is not founded; and it is harshly said. BOSWELL. Johnson, after a half-apology for 'these diminutive observations' on Scotch windows and fresh air, continues:—'The true state of every nation is the state of common life.' Works, ix. 18. Boswell a second time (ante, ii. 311) returns to Johnson's assertion that 'a Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth; he will always love it better than inquiry.' Works, ix. 116.

[342] See ante, p. 40.

[343] A protest may be entered on the part of most Scotsmen against the Doctor's taste in this particular. A Finnon haddock dried over the smoke of the sea-weed, and sprinkled with salt water during the process, acquires a relish of a very peculiar and delicate flavour, inimitable on any other coast than that of Aberdeenshire. Some of our Edinburgh philosophers tried to produce their equal in vain. I was one of a party at a dinner, where the philosophical haddocks were placed in competition with the genuine Finnon-fish. These were served round without distinction whence they came; but only one gentleman, out of twelve present, espoused the cause of philosophy. WALTER SCOTT.

[344] It is the custom in Scotland for the judges of the Court of Session to have the title of lords, from their estates; thus Mr. Burnett is Lord Monboddo, as Mr. Home was Lord Kames. There is something a little awkward in this; for they are denominated in deeds by their names, with the addition of 'one of the Senators of the College of Justice;' and subscribe their Christian and surnames, as James Burnett, Henry Home, even in judicial acts. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 77, note 4.

[345] See ante, ii. 344, where Johnson says:—'A judge may be a farmer, but he is not to geld his own pigs.'

[346]

'Not to admire is all the art I know To make men happy and to keep them so.'

Pope, Imitations of Horace, Epistles, i. vi. 1.

[347] See ante, i. 461.

[348] See ante, iv. 152.

[349] See ante, iii. 322.

[350] In the Gent. Mag. for 1755, p. 42, among the deaths is entered 'Sir James Lowther, Bart., reckoned the richest commoner in Great Britain, and worth above a million.' According to Lord Shelburne, Lord Sunderland, who had been advised 'to nominate Lowther one of his Treasury on account of his great property,' appointed him to call on him. After waiting for some time he rang to ask whether he had come, 'The servants answered that nobody had called; upon his repeating the inquiry they said that there was an old man, somewhat wet, sitting by the fireside in the hall, who they supposed had some petition to deliver to his lordship. When he went out it proved to be Sir James Lowther. Lord Sunderland desired him to be sent about his business, saying that no such mean fellow should sit at his Treasury.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 34.

[351] I do not know what was at this time the state of the parliamentary interest of the ancient family of Lowther; a family before the Conquest; but all the nation knows it to be very extensive at present. A due mixture of severity and kindness, oeconomy and munificence, characterises its present Representative. BOSWELL. Boswell, most unhappily not clearly seeing where his own genius lay, too often sought to obtain fame and position by the favour of some great man. For some years he courted in a very gross manner 'the present Representative,' the first Earl of Lonsdale, who treated him with great brutality. Letters of Boswell, pp. 271, 294, 324, and ante, iv. May 15, 1783. In the Ann. Reg. 1771, p. 56, it is shewn how by this bad man 'the whole county of Cumberland was thrown into a state of the greatest terror and confusion; four hundred ejectments were served in one day.' Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 418) says that 'he was more detested than any man alive, as a shameless political sharper, a domestic bashaw, and an intolerable tyrant over his tenants and dependants.' Lord Albemarle (Memoirs of Rockingham, ii. 70) describes the 'bad Lord Lonsdale. He exacted a serf-like submission from his poor and abject dependants. He professed a thorough contempt for modern refinements. Grass grew in the neglected approaches to his mansion.... Awe and silence pervaded the inhabitants [of Penrith] when the gloomy despot traversed their streets. He might have been taken for a Judge Jefferies about to open a royal commission to try them as state criminals... In some years of his life he resisted the payment of all bills.' Among his creditors was Wordsworth's father, 'who died leaving the poet and four other helpless children. The executors of the will, foreseeing the result of a legal contest with a millionaire, withdrew opposition, trusting to Lord Lonsdale's sense of justice for payment. They leaned on a broken reed, the wealthy debtor "Died and made no sign."' [2 Henry VI, act iii. sc. 3.] See De Quincey's Works, iii. 151.

[352] 'Let us not,' he says, 'make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence.' Works, ix. 20.

[353] Note by Lord Hailes. 'The cathedral of Elgin was burnt by the Lord of Badenoch, because the Bishop of Moray had pronounced an award not to his liking. The indemnification that the see obtained was, that the Lord of Badenoch stood for three days bare-footed at the great gate of the cathedral. The story is in the Chartulary of Elgin.' BOSWELL. The cathedral was rebuilt in 1407-20, but the lead was stripped from the roof by the Regent Murray, and the building went to ruin. Murray's Handbook, ed. 1867, p. 303. 'There is,' writes Johnson (Works, ix. 20), 'still extant in the books of the council an order ... directing that the lead, which covers the two cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen, shall be taken away, and converted into money for the support of the army.... The two churches were stripped, and the lead was shipped to be sold in Holland. I hope every reader will rejoice that this cargo of sacrilege was lost at sea.' On this Horace Walpole remarks (Letters, vii. 484):—'I confess I have not quite so heinous an idea of sacrilege as Dr. Johnson. Of all kinds of robbery, that appears to me the lightest species which injures nobody. Dr. Johnson is so pious that in his journey to your country he flatters himself that all his readers will join him in enjoying the destruction of two Dutch crews, who were swallowed up by the ocean after they had robbed a church.'

[354] I am not sure whether the Duke was at home. But, not having the honour of being much known to his grace, I could not have presumed to enter his castle, though to introduce even so celebrated a stranger. We were at any rate in a hurry to get forward to the wildness which we came to see. Perhaps, if this noble family had still preserved that sequestered magnificence which they maintained when catholicks, corresponding with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, we might have been induced to have procured proper letters of introduction, and devoted some time to the contemplation of venerable superstitious state. BOSWELL. Burnet (History of his own Times, ii. 443, and iii. 23) mentions the Duke of Gordon, a papist, as holding Edinburgh Castle for James II. in 1689.

[355] 'In the way, we saw for the first time some houses with fruit-trees about them. The improvements of the Scotch are for immediate profit; they do not yet think it quite worth their while to plant what will not produce something to be eaten or sold in a very little time.' Piozzi Letters, i. 121.

[356] 'This was the first time, and except one the last, that I found any reason to complain of a Scottish table.' Johnson's Works, ix. 19.

[357] The following year Johnson told Hannah More that 'when he and Boswell stopt a night at the spot (as they imagined) where the Weird Sisters appeared to Macbeth, the idea so worked upon their enthusiasm, that it quite deprived them of rest. However they learnt the next morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were quite in another part of the country' H. More's Memoirs, i. 50.

[358] See ante, p. 76.

[359] Murphy (Life, p. 145) says that 'his manner of reciting verses was wonderfully impressive.' According to Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 302), 'whoever once heard him repeat an ode of Horace would be long before they could endure to hear it repeated by another.'

[360] Then pronounced Affléck, though now often pronounced as it is written. Ante, ii. 413.

[361] At this stage of his journey Johnson recorded:—'There are more beggars than I have ever seen in England; they beg, if not silently, yet very modestly.' Piozzi Letters, i. 122. See ante, p. 75, note 1.

[362] Duncan's monument; a huge column on the roadside near Fores, more than twenty feet high, erected in commemoration of the final retreat of the Danes from Scotland, and properly called Swene's Stone. WALTER SCOTT.

[363] Swift wrote to Pope on May 31, 1737:—'Pray who is that Mr. Glover, who writ the epick poem called Leonidas, which is reprinting here, and has great vogue?' Swift's Works (1803), xx. 121. 'It passed through four editions in the first year of its publication (1737-8).' Lowndes's Bibl. Man. p. 902. Horace Walpole, in 1742, mentions Leonidas Glover (Letters, i. 117); and in 1785 Hannah More writes (Memoirs, i. 405):—'I was much amused with hearing old Leonidas Glover sing his own fine ballad of Hosier's Ghost, which was very affecting. He is past eighty [he was seventy-three]. Mr. Walpole coming in just afterwards, I told him how highly I had been pleased. He begged me to entreat for a repetition of it. It was the satire conveyed in this little ballad upon the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole's ministry which is thought to have been a remote cause of his resignation. It was a very curious circumstance to see his son listening to the recital of it with so much complacency.'

[364] See ante, i. 125.

[365] See ante, i. 456, and post, Sept. 22.

[366] See ante, ii. 82, and post, Oct. 27.

[367] 'Nairne is the boundary in this direction between the highlands and lowlands; and until within a few years both English and Gaelic were spoken here. One of James VI.'s witticisms was to boast that in Scotland he had a town "sae lang that the folk at the tae end couldna understand the tongue spoken at the tother."' Murray's Handbook for Scotland, ed. 1867, p. 308. 'Here,' writes Johnson (Works, ix. 21), 'I first saw peat fires, and first heard the Erse language.' As he heard the girl singing Erse, so Wordsworth thirty years later heard The Solitary Reaper:—

'Yon solitary Highland Lass Reaping and singing by herself.'

[368]

'Verse softens toil, however rude the sound; She feels no biting pang the while she sings; Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitude of things.'

Contemplation. London: Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall, and sold by M. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster-Row, 1753.

The author's name is not on the title-page. In the Brit. Mus. Cata. the poem is entered under its title. Mr. Nichols (Lit. Illus. v. 183) says that the author was the Rev. Richard Gifford [not Giffard] of Balliol College, Oxford. He adds that 'Mr. Gifford mentioned to him with much satisfaction the fact that Johnson quoted the poem in his Dictionary.' It was there very likely that Boswell had seen the lines. They are quoted under wheel (with changes made perhaps intentionally by Johnson), as follows:

'Verse sweetens care however rude the sound; All at her work the village maiden sings; Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.'

Contemplation, which was published two years after Gray's Elegy, was suggested by it. The rising, not the parting day, is described. The following verse precedes the one quoted by Johnson:—

'Ev'n from the straw-roofed cot the note of joy Flows full and frequent, as the village-fair, Whose little wants the busy hour employ, Chanting some rural ditty soothes her care.'

Bacon, in his Essay Of Vicissitude of Things (No. 58), says:—'It is not good to look too long upon these turning wheels of vicissitude lest we become giddy' This may have suggested Gifford's last two lines. Reflections on a Grave, &c. (ante, ii. 26), published in 1766, and perhaps written in part by Johnson, has a line borrowed from this poem:—

'These all the hapless state of mortals show The sad vicissitude of things below.'

Cowper, Table-Talk, ed. 1786, i. 165, writes of

'The sweet vicissitudes of day and night.'

The following elegant version of these lines by Mr. A. T. Barton, Fellow and Tutor of Johnson's own College, will please the classical reader:—

Musa levat duros, quamvis rudis ore, labores; Inter opus cantat rustica Pyrrha suum; Nec meminit, secura rotam dum versat euntem, Non aliter nostris sortibus ire vices.

[369] He was the brother of the Rev. John M'Aulay (post, Oct. 25), the grandfather of Lord Macaulay.

[370] See ante, ii. 51.

[371] In Scotland, there is a great deal of preparation before administering the sacrament. The minister of the parish examines the people as to their fitness, and to those of whom he approves gives little pieces of tin, stamped with the name of the parish as tokens, which they must produce before receiving it. This is a species of priestly power, and sometimes may be abused. I remember a lawsuit brought by a person against his parish minister, for refusing him admission to that sacred ordinance. BOSWELL.

[372] See post, Sept. 13 and 28.

[373] Mr. Trevelyan (Life of Macaulay, ed.1877, i. 6) says: 'Johnson pronounced that Mr. Macaulay was not competent to have written the book that went by his name; a decision which, to those who happen to have read the work, will give a very poor notion my ancestor's abilities.'

[374]

'The thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman.'

Macbeth, act i. sc. 3.

[375] According to Murray's Handbook, ed. 1867, p. 308, no part of the castle is older than the fifteenth century.

[376] See post, Nov. 5.

[377] The historian. Ante, p. 41.

[378] See ante, iii. 336, and post, Nov. 7.

[379] See post, Oct. 27.

[380] Baretti was the Italian. Boswell disliked him (ante, ii. 98 note), and perhaps therefore described him merely as 'a man of some literature.' Baretti complained to Malone that 'the story as told gave an unfair representation of him.' He had, he said, 'observed to Johnson that the petition lead us not into temptation ought rather to be addressed to the tempter of mankind than a benevolent Creator. "Pray, Sir," said Johnson, "do you know who was the author of the Lord's Prayer?" Baretti, who did not wish to get into any serious dispute and who appears to be an Infidel, by way of putting an end to the conversation, only replied:—"Oh, Sir, you know by our religion (Roman Catholic) we are not permitted to read the Scriptures. You can't therefore expect an answer."' Prior's Malone, p. 399. Sir Joshua Reynolds, on hearing this from Malone, said:—'This turn which Baretti now gives to the matter was an after-thought; for he once said to me myself:—"There are various opinions about the writer of that prayer; some give it to St. Augustine, some to St. Chrysostom, &c. What is your opinion? "' Ib. p. 394. Mrs. Piozzi says that she heard 'Baretti tell a clergyman the story of Dives and Lazarus as the subject of a poem he once had composed in the Milanese district, expecting great credit for his powers of invention.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 348.

[381] Goldsmith (Present Slate of Polite Learning, chap. 13) thus wrote of servitorships: 'Surely pride itself has dictated to the fellows of our colleges the absurd passion of being attended at meals, and on other public occasions, by those poor men who, willing to be scholars, come in upon some charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction for men to be at once learning the liberal arts, and at the same time treated as slaves; at once studying freedom and practising servitude.' Yet a young man like Whitefield was willing enough to be a servitor. He had been a waiter in his mother's inn; he was now a waiter in a college, but a student also. See my Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics, p. 27.

[382] Dr. Johnson did not neglect what he had undertaken. By his interest with the Rev. Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was educated for some time, he obtained a servitorship for young M'Aulay. But it seems he had other views; and I believe went abroad. BOSWELL. See ante, ii. 380.

[383] 'I once drank tea,' writes Lamb, 'in company with two Methodist divines of different persuasions. Before the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to say anything. It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less importance he made answer that it was not a custom known in his church.' Essay on Grace before Meat.

[384] He could not bear to have it thought that, in any instance whatever, the Scots are more pious than the English. I think grace as proper at breakfast as at any other meal. It is the pleasantest meal we have. Dr. Johnson has allowed the peculiar merit of breakfast in Scotland. BOSWELL. 'If an epicure could remove by a wish in quest of sensual gratification, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland.' Johnson's Works, ix. 52.

[385] Bruce, the Abyssinian Traveller, found in the annals of that region a king named Brus, which he chooses to consider the genuine orthography of the name. This circumstance occasioned some mirth at the court of Gondar. WALTER SCOTT.

[386] See ante, ii. 169, note 2, and post, Sept. 2. Johnson, so far as I have observed, spelt the name Boswel.

[387] Sir Eyre Coote was born in 1726. He took part in the battle of Plassey in 1757, and commanded at the reduction of Pondicherry in 1761. In 1770-71 he went by land to Europe. In 1780 he took command of the English army against Hyder Ali, whom he repeatedly defeated. He died in 1783. Chalmers's Biog. Dict. x. 236. There is a fine description of him in Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, iii. 385.

[388] See ante, iii. 361.

[389] Reynolds wrote of Johnson:—'He sometimes, it must be confessed, covered his ignorance by generals rather than appear ignorant' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 457.

[390] 'The barracks are very handsome, and form several regular and good streets.' Pennant's Tour, p. 144.

[391] See ante, p. 45.

[392] Here Dr. Johnson gave us part of a conversation held between a Great Personage and him, in the library at the Queen's Palace, in the course of which this contest was considered. I have been at great pains to get that conversation as perfectly preserved as possible. It may perhaps at some future time be given to the publick. BOSWELL. For 'a Great Personage' see ante, i. 219; and for the conversation, ii. 33.

[393] See ante, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 4 and June 15, 1784.

[394] See ante, i. 167, note 1.

[395] Booth acted Cato, and Wilks Juba when Addison's Cato was brought out. Pope told Spence that 'Lord Bolingbroke's carrying his friends to the house, and presenting Booth with a purse of guineas for so well representing the character of a person "who rather chose to die than see a general for life," carried the success of the play much beyond what they ever expected.' Spence's Anec. p. 46. Bolingbroke alluded to the Duke of Marlborough. Pope in his Imitations of Horace, 2 Epist. i. 123 introduces 'well-mouth'd Booth.'

[396] See ante, iii. 35, and under Sept. 30, 1783.

[397] 'Garrick used to tell, that Johnson said of an actor who played Sir Harry Wildair at Lichfield, "There is a courtly vivacity about the fellow;" when, in fact, according to Garrick's account, "he was the most vulgar ruffian that ever went upon boards."' Ante, ii. 465.

[398] Mrs. Cibber was the sister of Dr. Arne the musical composer, and the wife of Theophilus Cibber, Colley Cibber's son. She died in 1766, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Baker's Biog. Dram. i. 123.

[399] See ante, under Sept. 30, 1783.

[400] See ante, i. 197, and ii. 348.

[401] Johnson had set him to repeat the ninth commandment, and had with great glee put him right in the emphasis. Ante, i. 168.

[402] Act iii. sc. 2.

[403] Boswell's suggestion is explained by the following passage in Johnson's Works, viii. 463:—'Mallet was by his original one of the Macgregors, a clan that became about sixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and so infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a legal abolition.'

[404] See ante, iii. 410, where he said to an Irish gentleman:—'Do not make an union with us, Sir. We should unite with you, only to rob you. We should have robbed the Scotch, if they had had anything of which we could have robbed them.'

[405] It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson read this gentle remonstrance, and took no notice of it to me. BOSWELL. See post, Oct. 12, note.

[406] St. Matthew, v. 44.

[407] It is odd that Boswell did not suspect the parson, who, no doubt, had learnt the evening before from Mr. Keith that the two travellers would be present at his sermon. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, ii. 283) says that one day at Sir Joshua's dinner-table, when his host praised Malone very highly for his laborious edition of Shakespeare, he (Northcote) 'rather hastily replied, "What a very despicable creature must that man be who thus devotes himself, and makes another man his god;" when Boswell, who sat at my elbow, and was not in my thoughts at the time, cried out "Oh! Sir Joshua, then that is me!"'

[408] Johnson (Works, ix. 23) more cautiously says:—'Here is a castle, called the castle of Macbeth.'

[409] 'This short dialogue between Duncan and Banquo, whilst they are approaching the gates of Macbeth's castle, has always appeared to me a striking instance of what in painting is termed repose. Their conversation very naturally turns upon the beauty of its situation, and the pleasantness of the air; and Banquo, observing the martlet's nests in every recess of the cornice, remarks that where those birds most breed and haunt the air is delicate. The subject of this quiet and easy conversation gives that repose so necessary to the mind after the tumultuous bustle of the preceding scenes, and perfectly contrasts the scene of horror that immediately succeeds. It seems as if Shakespeare asked himself, what is a prince likely to say to his attendants on such an occasion? whereas the modern writers seem, on the contrary, to be always searching for new thoughts, such as would never occur to men in the situation which is represented. This also is frequently the practice of Homer, who from the midst of battles and horrors relieves and refreshes the mind of the reader by introducing some quiet rural image, or picture of familiar domestick life.' Johnson's Shakespeare. Northcote (Life of Reynolds, i. 144-151) quotes other notes by Reynolds.

[410] In the original senses. Act i, sc. 6.

[411] Act i. sc. 5.

[412] Boswell forgets scoundrelism, ante, p. 106, which, I suppose, Johnson coined.

[413] See ante, ii. 154, note 3. Peter Paragraph is one of the characters in Foote's Comedy of The Orators.

[414] When upon the subject of this peregrinity, he told me some particulars concerning the compilation of his Dictionary, and concerning his throwing off Lord Chesterfield's patronage, of which very erroneous accounts have been circulated. These particulars, with others which he afterwards gave me,—as also his celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield, which he dictated to me,—I reserve for his Life. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 221, 261.

[415] See ante, ii. 326, 371, and v. 18.

[416] It is the third edition, published in 1778, that first bears this title. The first edition was published in 1761, and the second in 1762.

[417] 'One of them was a man of great liveliness and activity, of whom his companion said that he would tire any horse in Inverness. Both of them were civil and ready-handed Civility seems part of the national character of Highlanders.' Works, ix. 25.

[418] 'The way was very pleasant; the rock out of which the road was cut was covered with birch trees, fern, and heath. The lake below was beating its bank by a gentle wind.... In one part of the way we had trees on both sides for perhaps half a mile. Such a length of shade, perhaps, Scotland cannot shew in any other place.' Piozzi Letters, i. 123. The travellers must have passed close by the cottage where James Mackintosh was living, a child of seven.

[419] Boswell refers, I think, to a passage in act iv. sc. I of Farquhar's Comedy, where Archer says to Mrs. Sullen:—'I can't at this distance, Madam, distinguish the figures of the embroidery.' This passage is copied by Goldsmith in She Stoops to Conquer, act iii., where Marlow says to Miss Hardcastle: 'Odso! then you must shew me your embroidery.'

[420] Johnson (Works, ix. 28) gives a long account of this woman. 'Meal she considered as expensive food, and told us that in spring, when the goats gave milk, the children could live without it.'

[421] It is very odd, that when these roads were made, there was no care taken for Inns. The King's House, and the General's Hut, are miserable places; but the project and plans were purely military. WALTER SCOTT. Johnson found good entertainment here, 'We had eggs and bacon and mutton, with wine, rum, and whisky. I had water.' Piozzi Letters, i. 124.

[422] 'Mr. Boswell, who between his father's merit and his own is sure of reception wherever he comes, sent a servant before,' &c. Johnson's Works, ix. 30.

[423] On April 6, 1777, Johnson noted down: 'I passed the night in such sweet uninterrupted sleep as I have not known since I slept at Fort Augustus.' Pr. and Med. p.159. On Nov. 21, 1778, he wrote to Boswell: 'The best night that I have had these twenty years was at Fort Augustus.' Ante, iii. 369.

[424] See ante, iii. 246.

[425] A McQueen is a Highland mode of expression. An Englishman would say one McQueen. But where there are clans or tribes of men, distinguished by patronymick surnames, the individuals of each are considered as if they were of different species, at least as much as nations are distinguished; so that a McQueen, a McDonald, a McLean, is said, as we say a Frenchman, an Italian, a Spaniard. BOSWELL.

[426] 'I praised the propriety of his language, and was answered that I need not wonder, for he had learnt it by grammar. By subsequent opportunities of observation I found that my host's diction had nothing peculiar. Those Highlanders that can speak English commonly speak it well, with few of the words and little of the tone by which a Scotchman is distinguished ... By their Lowland neighbours they would not willingly be taught; for they have long considered them as a mean and degenerate race.' Johnson's Works, ix. 31. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale: 'This man's conversation we were glad of while we staid. He had been out, as they call it, in forty-five, and still retained his old opinions.' Piozzi Letters, i. 130.

[427] By the Chevalier Ramsay.

[428] 'From him we first heard of the general dissatisfaction which is now driving the Highlanders into the other hemisphere; and when I asked him whether they would stay at home if they were well treated, he answered with indignation that no man willingly left his native country. Johnson's Works, ix. 33. See ante, p. 27.

[429] 'The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.' Ib. v. 49.

[430] Four years later, three years after Goldsmith's death, Johnson 'observed in Lord Scarsdale's dressing-room Goldsmith's Animated Nature; and said, "Here's our friend. The poor doctor would have been happy to hear of this."' Ante, iii.162.

[431] See ante, i. 348 and ii. 438 and post, Sept. 23. Mackintosh says: 'Johnson's idea that a ship was a prison with the danger of drowning is taken from Endymion Porter's Consolation to Howell on his imprisonment in the Fleet, and was originally suggested by the pun.' Life of Mackintosh, ii. 83. The passage to which he refers is found in Howell's letter of Jan. 2, 1646 (book ii. letter 39), in which he writes to Porter:—'You go on to prefer my captivity in this Fleet to that of a voyager at sea, in regard that he is subject to storms and springing of leaks, to pirates and picaroons, with other casualties.'

[432] See ante, iii. 242.

[433] This book has given rise to much enquiry, which has ended in ludicrous surprise. Several ladies, wishing to learn the kind of reading which the great and good Dr. Johnson esteemed most fit for a young woman, desired to know what book he had selected for this Highland nymph. 'They never adverted (said he) that I had no choice in the matter. I have said that I presented her with a book which I happened to have about me.' And what was this book? My readers, prepare your features for merriment. It was Cocker's Arithmetick!—Wherever this was mentioned, there was a loud laugh, at which Johnson, when present, used sometimes to be a little angry. One day, when we were dining at General Oglethorpe's, where we had many a valuable day, I ventured to interrogate him. 'But, Sir, is it not somewhat singular that you should happen to have Cocker's Arithmetick about you on your journey? What made you buy such a book at Inverness?' He gave me a very sufficient answer. 'Why, Sir, if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you have read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible.' BOSWELL.

Johnson thus mentions his gift: 'I presented her with a book which I happened to have about me, and should not be pleased to think that she forgets me.' Works, ix. 32. The first edition of Cocker's Arithmetic was published about 1660. Brit. Mus. Cata. Though Johnson says that 'a book of science is inexhaustible,' yet in The Rambler, No. 154, he asserts that 'the principles of arithmetick and geometry may be comprehended by a close attention in a few days.' Mrs. Piozzi says (Anec. p. 77) that 'when Mr. Johnson felt his fancy disordered, his constant recurrence was to arithmetic; and one day that he was confined to his chamber, and I enquired what he had been doing to divert himself, he shewed me a calculation which I could scarce be made to understand, so vast was the plan of it; no other indeed than that the national debt, computing it at £180,000,000, would, if converted into silver, serve to make a meridian of that metal, I forget how broad, for the globe of the whole earth.' See ante, iii. 207, and iv. 171, note 3.

[434] Swift's Works (1803), xxiv. 63.

[435] 'We told the soldiers how kindly we had been treated at the garrison, and, as we were enjoying the benefit of their labours, begged leave to shew our gratitude by a small present.... They had the true military impatience of coin in their pockets, and had marched at least six miles to find the first place where liquor could be bought. Having never been before in a place so wild and unfrequented I was glad of their arrival, because I knew that we had made them friends; and to gain still more of their goodwill we went to them, where they were carousing in the barn, and added something to our former gift.' Works, ix. 31-2.

[436]

'Why rather sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee.' &c. 2 Henry IV. act iii. sc. 1.

[437] Spain, in 1719, sent a strong force under the Duke of Ormond to Scotland in behalf of the Chevalier. Owing to storms only a few hundred men landed. These were joined by a large body of Highlanders, but being attacked by General Wightman, the clansmen dispersed and the Spaniards surrendered. Smollett's England, ed. 1800, ii. 382.

[438] Boswell mentions this ante, i. 41, as a proof of Johnson's 'perceptive quickness.'

[439] Dr. Johnson, in his Journey, thus beautifully describes his situation here:—'I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had, indeed, no trees to whisper over my head; but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills, which, by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the hour well, I know not; for here I first conceived the thought of this narration.' The Critical Reviewers, with a spirit and expression worthy of the subject, say,—'We congratulate the publick on the event with which this quotation concludes, and are fully persuaded that the hour in which the entertaining traveller conceived this narrative will be considered, by every reader of taste, as a fortunate event in the annals of literature. Were it suitable to the task in which we are at present engaged, to indulge ourselves in a poetical flight, we would invoke the winds of the Caledonian Mountains to blow for ever, with their softest breezes, on the bank where our author reclined, and request of Flora, that it might be perpetually adorned with the gayest and most fragrant productions of the year.' BOSWELL. Johnson thus described the scene to Mrs. Thrale:—'I sat down to take notes on a green bank, with a small stream running at my feet, in the midst of savage solitude, with mountains before me and on either hand covered with heath. I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected, but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in motion.' Piozzi Letters, i. 131.

[440] 'The villagers gathered about us in considerable numbers, I believe without any evil intention, but with a very savage wildness of aspect and manner.' Johnson's Works, ix. 38.

[441] The M'Craas, or Macraes, were since that time brought into the king's army, by the late Lord Seaforth. When they lay in Edinburgh Castle in 1778, and were ordered to embark for Jersey, they with a number of other men in the regiment, for different reasons, but especially an apprehension that they were to be sold to the East-India Company, though enlisted not to be sent out of Great-Britain without their own consent, made a determined mutiny, and encamped upon the lofty mountain, Arthur's seat, where they remained three days and three nights; bidding defiance to all the force in Scotland. At last they came down, and embarked peaceably, having obtained formal articles of capitulation, signed by Sir Adolphus Oughton, commander in chief, General Skene, deputy commander, the Duke of Buccleugh, and the Earl of Dunmore, which quieted them. Since the secession of the Commons of Rome to the Mons Sacer, a more spirited exertion has not been made. I gave great attention to it from first to last, and have drawn up a particular account of it. Those brave fellows have since served their country effectually at Jersey, and also in the East-Indies, to which, after being better informed, they voluntarily agreed to go. BOSWELL. The line which Boswell quotes is from The Chevalier's Muster Roll:—

'The laird of M'Intosh is coming, M'Crabie & M'Donald's coming, M'Kenzie & M'Pherson's coming, And the wild M'Craw's coming. Little wat ye wha's coming, Donald Gun and a's coming.' Hogg's Jacobite Relics, i. 152.

Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 198) writing on May 9, 1779, tells how on May 1 'the French had attempted to land [on Jersey], but Lord Seaforth's new-raised regiment of 700 Highlanders, assisted by some militia and some artillery, made a brave stand and repelled the intruders.'

[442] 'One of the men advised her, with the cunning that clowns never can be without, to ask more; but she said that a shilling was enough. We gave her half a crown, and she offered part of it again.' Piozzi Letters, i. 133.

[443] Of this part of the journey Johnson wrote:—'We had very little entertainment as we travelled either for the eye or ear. There are, I fancy, no singing birds in the Highlands.' Piozzi Letters, i. 135. It is odd that he should have looked for singing birds on the first of September.

[444] Act iii. sc. 4.

[445] It is amusing to observe the different images which this being presented to Dr. Johnson and me. The Doctor, in his Journey, compares him to a Cyclops. BOSWELL. 'Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge.' Works, ix. 44. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'When we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed where one of us was to lie. Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got'. Piozzi Letters, i, 136. Macaulay (Essays, ed. 1843, i. 404) says: 'It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions.' Macaulay thereupon quotes these two passages. See ante, under Aug. 29, 1783.

[446] 'We had a lemon and a piece of bread, which supplied me with my supper.'Piozzi Letters, i, 136. Goldsmith, who in his student days had been in Scotland, thus writes of a Scotch inn:—'Vile entertainment is served up, complained of, and sent down; up comes worse, and that also is changed, and every change makes our wretched cheer more unsavoury.' Present State of Polite Learning, ch. 12.

[447] General Wolfe, in his letter from Head-quarters on Sept. 2, 1759, eleven days before his death wrote:—'In this situation there is such a choice of difficulties that I own myself at a loss how to determine.' Ann. Reg. 1759, p. 246.

[448] See ante, p. 89.

[449] See ante, ii. 169, note 2.

[450] Boswell, in a note that he added to the second edition (see post, end of the Journal), says that he has omitted 'a few observations the publication of which might perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of a strict decorum,' In the first edition (p. 165) the next three paragraphs were as follows:—'Instead of finding the head of the Macdonalds surrounded with his clan, and a festive entertainment, we had a small company, and cannot boast of our cheer. The particulars are minuted in my Journal, but I shall not trouble the publick with them. I shall mention but one characteristick circumstance. My shrewd and hearty friend Sir Thomas (Wentworth) Blacket, Lady Macdonald's uncle, who had preceded us in a visit to this chief, upon being asked by him if the punch-bowl then upon the table was not a very handsome one, replied, "Yes—if it were full." 'Sir Alexander Macdonald having been an Eton scholar, Dr. Johnson had formed an opinion of him which was much diminished when he beheld him in the isle of Sky, where we heard heavy complaints of rents racked, and the people driven to emigration. Dr. Johnson said, "It grieves me to see the chief of a great clan appear to such disadvantage. This gentleman has talents, nay some learning; but he is totally unfit for this situation. Sir, the Highland chiefs should not be allowed to go farther south than Aberdeen. A strong-minded man, like his brother Sir James, may be improved by an English education; but in general they will be tamed into insignificance." 'I meditated an escape from this house the very next day; but Dr. Johnson resolved that we should weather it out till Monday.' Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'We saw the isle of Skie before us, darkening the horizon with its rocky coast. A boat was procured, and we launched into one of the straits of the Atlantick Ocean. We had a passage of about twelve miles to the point where —— —— resided, having come from his seat in the middle of the island to a small house on the shore, as we believe, that he might with less reproach entertain us meanly. If he aspired to meanness, his retrograde ambition was completely gratified... Boswell was very angry, and reproached him with his improper parsimony.' Piozzi Letters, i. 137. A little later he wrote:—'I have done thinking of —— whom we now call Sir Sawney; he has disgusted all mankind by injudicious parsimony, and given occasion to so many stories, that —— has some thoughts of collecting them, and making a novel of his life.' Ib. p. 198. The last of Rowlandson's Caricatures of Boswell's Journal is entitled Revising for the Second Edition. Macdonald is represented as seizing Boswell by the throat and pointing with his stick to the Journal that lies open at pages 168, 169. On the ground lie pages 165, 167, torn out. Boswell, in an agony of fear, is begging for mercy.

[451]

'Here, in Badenoch, here in Lochaber anon, in Lochiel, in Knoydart, Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, and Ardnamurchan, Here I see him and here: I see him; anon I lose him.' Clough's Bothie, p. 125

[452] See his Latin verses addressed to Dr. Johnson, in this APPENDIX. BOSWELL.

[453] See ante, ii. 157.

[454] See ante, i. 449.

[455] See ante, ii. 99.

[456] See ante, iii 198, note 1.

[457] 'Such is the laxity of Highland conversation, that the inquirer is kept in continual suspense, and by a kind of intellectual retrogradation knows less as he hears more.' Johnson's Works, ix. 47. 'They are not much accustomed to be interrogated by others, and seem never to have thought upon interrogating themselves; so that if they do not know what they tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false. Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries; and the result of his investigations was, that the answer to the second question was commonly such as nullified the answer to the first.' Ib., p. 114.

[458] Mr. Carruthers, in his edition of Boswell's Hebrides, says (p. xiv):—'The new management and high rents took the tacksmen, or larger tenants, by surprise. They were indignant at the treatment they received, and selling off their stock they emigrated to America. In the twenty years from 1772 to 1792, sixteen vessels with emigrants sailed from the western shores of Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, containing about 6400 persons, who carried with them in specie at least £38,400. A desperate effort was made by the tacksmen on the estate of Lord Macdonald. They bound themselves by a solemn oath not to offer for any farm that might become vacant. The combination failed of its object, but it appeared so formidable in the eyes of the "English-bred chieftain," that he retreated precipitately from Skye and never afterwards returned.'

[459] Dr. Johnson seems to have forgotten that a Highlander going armed at this period incurred the penalty of serving as a common soldier for the first, and of transportation beyond sea for a second offence. And as for 'calling out his clan,' twelve Highlanders and a bagpipe made a rebellion. WALTER SCOTT.

[460] Mackintosh (Life ii. 62) says that in Mme. du Deffand's Correspondence there is 'an extraordinary confirmation of the talents and accomplishments of our Highland Phoenix, Sir James Macdonald. A Highland chieftain, admired by Voltaire, could have been no ordinary man.'

[461] This extraordinary young man, whom I had the pleasure of knowing intimately, having been deeply regretted by his country, the most minute particulars concerning him must be interesting to many. I shall therefore insert his two last letters to his mother, Lady Margaret Macdonald, which her ladyship has been pleased to communicate to me. 'Rome, July 9th, 1766. 'My DEAR MOTHER, 'Yesterday's post brought me your answer to the first letter in which I acquainted you of my illness. Your tenderness and concern upon that account are the same I have always experienced, and to which I have often owed my life. Indeed it never was in so great danger as it has been lately; and though it would have been a very great comfort to me to have had you near me, yet perhaps I ought to rejoice, on your account, that you had not the pain of such a spectacle. I have been now a week in Rome, and wish I could continue to give you the same good accounts of my recovery as I did in my last; but I must own that, for three days past, I have been in a very weak and miserable state, which however seems to give no uneasiness to my physician. My stomach has been greatly out of order, without any visible cause; and the palpitation does not decrease. I am told that my stomach will soon recover its tone, and that the palpitation must cease in time. So I am willing to believe; and with this hope support the little remains of spirits which I can be supposed to have, on the forty-seventh day of such an illness. Do not imagine I have relapsed;—I only recover slower than I expected. If my letter is shorter than usual, the cause of it is a dose of physick, which has weakened me so much to-day, that I am not able to write a long letter. I will make up for it next post, and remain always 'Your most sincerely affectionate son, 'J. MACDONALD.' He grew gradually worse; and on the night before his death he wrote as follows from Frescati:—'MY DEAR MOTHER, 'Though I did not mean to deceive you in my last letter from Rome, yet certainly you would have very little reason to conclude of the very great and constant danger I have gone through ever since that time. My life, which is still almost entirely desperate, did not at that time appear to me so, otherwise I should have represented, in its true colours, a fact which acquires very little horror by that means, and comes with redoubled force by deception. There is no circumstance of danger and pain of which I have not had the experience, for a continued series of above a fortnight; during which time I have settled my affairs, after my death, with as much distinctness as the hurry and the nature of the thing could admit of. In case of the worst, the Abbé Grant will be my executor in this part of the world, and Mr. Mackenzie in Scotland, where my object has been to make you and my younger brother as independent of the eldest as possible.' BOSWELL. Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 291), in 1779, thus mentions this 'younger brother':—'Macdonald abused Lord North in very gross, yet too applicable, terms; and next day pleaded he had been drunk, recanted, and was all admiration and esteem for his Lordship's talents and virtues.'

[462] See ante, iii. 85, and post, Oct. 28.

[463] Cheyne's English Malady, ed. 1733, p. 229.

[464] 'Weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.' Hamlet, act i. sc. 2. See ante, iii. 350, where Boswell is reproached by Johnson with 'bringing in gabble,' when he makes this quotation.

[465] VARIOUS READINGS. Line 2. In the manuscript, Dr. Johnson, instead of rupibus obsita, had written imbribus uvida, and uvida nubibus, but struck them both out. Lines 15 and 16. Instead of these two lines, he had written, but afterwards struck out, the following:—

Parare posse, utcunque jactet Grandiloquus nimis alta Zeno.

BOSWELL. In Johnson's Works, i. 167, these lines are given with some variations, which perhaps are in part due to Mr. Langton, who, we are told (ante, Dec. 1784), edited some, if not indeed all, of Johnson's Latin poems.

[466] Cowper wrote to S. Rose on May 20, 1789:—'Browne was an entertaining companion when he had drunk his bottle, but not before; this proved a snare to him, and he would sometimes drink too much.' Southey's Cowper, vi. 237. His De Animi Immortalitate was published in 1754. He died in 1760, aged fifty-four. See ante, ii. 339.

[467] Boswell, in one of his Hypochondriacks (ante, iv. 179) says:—'I do fairly acknowledge that I love Drinking; that I have a constitutional inclination to indulge in fermented liquors, and that if it were not for the restraints of reason and religion, I am afraid I should be as constant a votary of Bacchus as any man.... Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living. Were we so framed that it were possible by perpetual supplies of wine to keep ourselves for ever gay and happy, there could be no doubt that drinking would be the summum bonum, the chief good, to find out which philosophers have been so variously busied. But we know from humiliating experience that men cannot be kept long in a state of elevated drunkenness.'

[468] That my readers may have my narrative in the style of the country through which I am travelling, it is proper to inform them, that the chief of a clan is denominated by his surname alone, as M'Leod, M'Kinnon, M'lntosh. To prefix Mr. to it would be a degradation from the M'Leod, &c. My old friend, the Laird of M'Farlane, the great antiquary, took it highly amiss, when General Wade called him Mr. M'Farlane. Dr. Johnson said, he could not bring himself to use this mode of address; it seemed to him to be too familiar, as it is the way in which, in all other places, intimates or inferiors are addressed. When the chiefs have titles they are denominated by them, as Sir James Grant, Sir Allan M'Lean. The other Highland gentlemen, of landed property, are denominated by their estates, as Rasay, Boisdale; and the wives of all of them have the title of ladies. The tacksmen, or principal tenants, are named by their farms, as Kingsburgh, Corrichatachin; and their wives are called the mistress of Kingsburgh, the mistress of Corrichatachin.—Having given this explanation, I am at liberty to use that mode of speech which generally prevails in the Highlands and the Hebrides. BOSWELL.

[469] See ante, iii. 275.

[470] Boswell implies that Sir A. Macdonald's table had not been furnished plentifully. Johnson wrote:—'At night we came to a tenant's house of the first rank of tenants, where we were entertained better than at the landlord's.' Piozzi Letters, i. 141.

[471] 'Little did I once think,' he wrote to her the same day, 'of seeing this region of obscurity, and little did you once expect a salutation from this verge of European life. I have now the pleasure of going where nobody goes, and seeing what nobody sees.' Piozzi Letters, i. 120. About fourteen years since, I landed in Sky, with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was the first idea on every one's mind at landing. All answered separately that it was this Ode. WALTER SCOTT.

[472] See Appendix B.

[473] 'I never was in any house of the islands, where I did not find books in more languages than one, if I staid long enough to want them, except one from which the family was removed.' Johnson's Works, ix. 50. He is speaking of 'the higher rank of the Hebridians,' for on p. 61 he says:—'The greater part of the islanders make no use of books.'

[474] There was a Mrs. Brooks, an actress, the daughter of a Scotchman named Watson, who had forfeited his property by 'going out in the '45.' But according to The Thespian Dictionary her first appearance on the stage was in 1786.

[475] Boswell mentions, post, Oct. 5, 'the famous Captain of Clanranald, who fell at Sherrif-muir.'

[476] See ante, p. 95.

[477] By John Macpherson, D.D. See post, Sept. 13.

[478] Sir Walter Scott, when in Sky in 1814, wrote:—'We learn that most of the Highland superstitions, even that of the second sight, are still in force.' Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iv. 305. See .ante, ii. 10, 318.

[479] Of him Johnson wrote:—'One of the ministers honestly told me that he came to Sky with a resolution not to believe it.' Works, ix. 106.

[480] 'By the term second sight seems to be meant a mode of seeing superadded to that which nature generally bestows. In the Erse it is called Taisch; which signifies likewise a spectre or a vision.' Johnson's Works, ix. 105.

[481] Gray's Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College, 1. 44.

[482] A tonnage bounty of thirty shillings a ton was at this time given to the owners of busses or decked vessels for the encouragement of the white herring fishery. Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, iv. 5) shews how mischievous was its effect.

[483] The Highland expression for Laird of Rasay. BOSWELL.

[484] 'In Sky I first observed the use of brogues, a kind of artless shoes, stitched with thongs so loosely, that, though they defend the foot from stones, they do not exclude water.' Johnson's Works, ix 46.

[485] To evade the law against the tartan dress, the Highlanders used to dye their variegated plaids and kilts into blue, green, or any single colour. WALTER SCOTT.

[486] See post, Oct. 5.

[487] The Highlanders were all well inclined to the episcopalian form, proviso that the right king was prayed for. I suppose Malcolm meant to say, 'I will come to your church because you are honest folk,' viz. Jacobites. WALTER SCOTT.

[488] See ante, i. 450, and ii. 291.

[489] Perhaps he was thinking of Johnson's letter of June 20, 1771 (ante, ii. 140), where he says:—'I hope the time will come when we may try our powers both with cliffs and water.'

[490] 'The wind blew enough to give the boat a kind of dancing agitation.' Piozzi Letters, i. 142. 'The water was calm and the rowers were vigorous; so that our passage was quick and pleasant.' Johnson's Works, ix. 54.

[491]

'Caught in the wild Aegean seas, The sailor bends to heaven for ease.'

FRANCIS. Horace, 2, Odes, xvi. 1.

[492] See ante, iv. Dec. 9, 1784, note.

[493] Such spells are still believed in. A lady of property in Mull, a friend of mine, had a few years since much difficulty in rescuing from the superstitious fury of the people, an old woman, who used a charm to injure her neighbour's cattle. It is now in my possession, and consists of feathers, parings of nails, hair, and such like trash, wrapt in a lump of clay. WALTER SCOTT.

[494] Sir Walter Scott, writing in Skye in 1814, says:—'Macleod and Mr. Suter have both heard a tacksman of Macleod's recite the celebrated Address to the Sun; and another person repeat the description of Cuchullin's car. But all agree as to the gross infidelity of Macpherson as a translator and editor.' Lockhart's Scott, iv. 308.

[495] See post, Nov. 10.

[496] 'The women reaped the corn, and the men bound up the sheaves. The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulation of the harvest-song, in which all their voices were united.' Johnson's Works, ix. 58.

[497] 'The money which he raises annually by rent from all his dominions, which contain at least 50,000 acres, is not believed to exceed £250; but as he keeps a large farm in his own hands, he sells every year great numbers of cattle ... The wine circulates vigorously, and the tea, chocolate, and coffee, however they are got, are always at hand.' Piozzi Letters, i. 142. 'Of wine and punch they are very liberal, for they get them cheap; but as there is no custom-house on the island, they can hardly be considered as smugglers.' Ib. p. 160. 'Their trade is unconstrained; they pay no customs, for there is no officer to demand them; whatever, therefore, is made dear only by impost is obtained here at an easy rate.' Johnson's Works, ix. 52.

[498] 'No man is so abstemious as to refuse the morning dram, which they call a skalk.' Johnson's Works, ix. p. 51.

[499] Alexander Macleod, of Muiravenside, advocate, became extremely obnoxious to government by his zealous personal efforts to engage his chief Macleod, and Macdonald of Sky, in the Chevalier's attempts of 1745. Had he succeeded, it would have added one third at least to the Jacobite army. Boswell has oddly described M'Cruslick, the being whose name was conferred upon this gentleman, as something between Proteus and Don Quixote. It is the name of a species of satyr, or esprit follet, a sort of mountain Puck or hobgoblin, seen among the wilds and mountains, as the old Highlanders believed, sometimes mirthful, sometimes mischievous. Alexander Macleod's precarious mode of life and variable spirits occasioned the soubriquet. WALTER SCOTT.

[500] Johnson also complained of the cheese. 'In the islands they do what I found it not very easy to endure. They pollute the tea-table by plates piled with large slices of Cheshire cheese, which mingles its less grateful odours with the fragrance of the tea.' Works, ix. 52.

[501] 'The estate has not, during four hundred years, gained or lost a single acre.' Ib. p. 55.

[502] Lord Stowell told me, that on the road from Newcastle to Berwick, Dr. Johnson and he passed a cottage, at the entrance of which were set up two of those great bones of the whale, which are not unfrequently seen in maritime districts. Johnson expressed great horror at the sight of these bones; and called the people, who could use such relics of mortality as an ornament, mere savages. CROKER.

[503] In like manner Boswell wrote:—'It is divinely cheering to me to think that there is a Cathedral so near Auchinleck [as Carlisle].' Ante, iii. 416.

[504] 'It is not only in Rasay that the chapel is unroofed and useless; through the few islands which we visited we neither saw nor heard of any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins. The malignant influence of Calvinism has blasted ceremony and decency together... It has been for many years popular to talk of the lazy devotion of the Romish clergy; over the sleepy laziness of men that erected churches we may indulge our superiority with a new triumph, by comparing it with the fervid activity of those who suffer them to fall.' Johnson's Works, ix. 61. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'By the active zeal of Protestant devotion almost all the chapels have sunk into ruin.' Piozzi Letters, i. 152.

[505] 'Not many years ago,' writes Johnson, 'the late Laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition.' Works, ix. 59. What the expedition was he is careful not to state.

[506] 'I considered this rugged ascent as the consequence of a form of life inured to hardships, and therefore not studious of nice accommodations. But I know not whether for many ages it was not considered as a part of military policy to keep the country not easily accessible. The rocks are natural fortifications.' Johnson's Works, ix. p. 54.

[507] See post Sept. 17.

[508] In Sky a price was set 'upon the heads of foxes, which, as the number was diminished, has been gradually raised from three shillings and sixpence to a guinea, a sum so great in this part of the world, that, in a short time, Sky may be as free from foxes as England from wolves. The fund for these rewards is a tax of sixpence in the pound, imposed by the farmers on themselves, and said to be paid with great willingness.' Johnson's Works, ix. 57.

[509] Boswell means that the eastern coast of Sky is westward of Rasay. CROKER.

[510] 'The Prince was hidden in his distress two nights in Rasay, and the King's troops burnt the whole country, and killed some of the cattle. You may guess at the opinions that prevail in this country; they are, however, content with fighting for their King; they do not drink for him. We had no foolish healths', Piozzi Letters, i. 145.

[511] See ante, iv. 217, where he said:—'You have, perhaps, no man who knows as much Greek and Latin as Bentley.'

[512] See ante, ii. 61, and post, Oct. 1.

[513] See ante, i. 268, note 1.

[514] Steele had had the Duke of Marlborough's papers, and 'in some of his exigencies put them in pawn. They then remained with the old Duchess, who, in her will, assigned the task to Glover [the author of Leonidas] and Mallet, with a reward of a thousand pounds, and a prohibition to insert any verses. Glover rejected, I suppose with disdain, the legacy, and devolved the whole work upon Mallet; who had from the late Duke of Marlborough a pension to promote his industry, and who talked of the discoveries which he had made; but left not, when he died, any historical labours behind him.' Johnson's Works, viii. 466. The Duchess died in 1744 and Mallet in 1765. For more than twenty years he thus imposed more or less successfully on the world. About the year 1751 he played on Garrick's vanity. 'Mallet, in a familiar conversation with Garrick, discoursing of the diligence which he was then exerting upon the Life of Marlborough, let him know, that in the series of great men quickly to be exhibited, he should find a niche for the hero of the theatre. Garrick professed to wonder by what artifice he could be introduced; but Mallet let him know, that by a dexterous anticipation he should fix him in a conspicuous place. "Mr. Mallet," says Garrick in his gratitude of exultation, "have you left off to write for the stage?" Mallet then confessed that he had a drama in his hands. Garrick promised to act it; and Alfred was produced.' Ib. p. 465. See ante, iii. 386.

[515] According to Dr. Warton (Essay on Pope, ii. 140) he received £5000. 'Old Marlborough,' wrote Horace Walpole in March, 1742 (Letters, i. 139), 'has at last published her Memoirs; they are digested by one Hooke, who wrote a Roman history; but from her materials, which are so womanish that I am sure the man might sooner have made a gown and petticoat with them.'

[516] See ante, i. 153

[517] 'Hooke,' says Dr. Warton (Essay on Pope, ii. 141), 'was a Mystic and a Quietist, and a warm disciple of Fénelon. It was he who brought a Catholic priest to take Pope's confession on his death-bed.'

[518] See Cumberland's Memoirs, i. 344.

[519] Mr. Croker says that 'though he sold a great tract of land in Harris, he left at his death in 1801 the original debt of £50,000 [Boswell says £40,000] increased to £70,000.' When Johnson visited Macleod at Dunvegan, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'Here, though poor Macleod had been left by his grandfather overwhelmed with debts, we had another exhibition of feudal hospitality. There were two stags in the house, and venison came to the table every day in its various forms. Macleod, besides his estate in Sky, larger I suppose than some English counties, is proprietor of nine inhabited isles; and of his isles uninhabited I doubt if he very exactly knows the number, I told him that he was a mighty monarch. Such dominions fill an Englishman with envious wonder; but when he surveys the naked mountain, and treads the quaking moor; and wanders over the wild regions of gloomy barrenness, his wonder may continue, but his envy ceases. The unprofitableness of these vast domains can be conceived only by the means of positive instances. The heir of Col, an island not far distant, has lately told me how wealthy he should be if he could let Rum, another of his islands, for twopence halfpenny an acre; and Macleod has an estate which the surveyor reports to contain 80,000 acres, rented at £600 a year.' Piozzi Letters, i. 154.

[520] They were abolished by an act passed in 1747, being 'reckoned among the principal sources of the rebellions. They certainly kept the common people in subjection to their chiefs. By this act they were legally emancipated from slavery; but as the tenants enjoyed no leases, and were at all times liable to be ejected from their farms, they still depended on the pleasure of their lords, notwithstanding this interposition of the legislature, which granted a valuable consideration in money to every nobleman and petty baron, who was thus deprived of one part of his inheritance.' Smollett's England, iii. 206. See ante, p. 46, note 1, and post, Oct. 22.

[521] 'I doubt not but that since the regular judges have made their circuits through the whole country, right has been everywhere more wisely and more equally distributed; the complaint is, that litigation is grown troublesome, and that the magistrates are too few and therefore often too remote for general convenience... In all greater questions there is now happily an end to all fear or hope from malice or from favour. The roads are secure in those places through which forty years ago no traveller could pass without a convoy...No scheme of policy has in any country yet brought the rich and poor on equal terms to courts of judicature. Perhaps experience improving on experience may in time effect it.' Johnson's Works, ix. 90.

[522] He described Rasay as 'the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness.' Piozzi Letters, i. 152.

[523] 'We heard the women singing as they waulked the cloth, by rubbing it with their hands and feet, and screaming all the while in a sort of chorus. At a distance the sound was wild and sweet enough, but rather discordant when you approached too near the performers.' Lockhart's Scott, iv. 307.

[524] She had been some time at Edinburgh, to which she again went, and was married to my worthy neighbour, Colonel Mure Campbell, now Earl of Loudoun, but she died soon afterwards, leaving one daughter. BOSWELL. 'She is a celebrated beauty; has been admired at Edinburgh; dresses her head very high; and has manners so lady-like that I wish her head-dress was lower.' Piozzi Letters, i. 144. See ante, iii. 118.

[525]

'Yet hope not life from grief or danger free, Nor think the doom of man reversed for thee.'

The Vanity of Human Wishes.

[526] 'Rasay accompanied us in his six-oared boat, which he said was his coach and six. It is indeed the vehicle in which the ladies take the air and pay their visits, but they have taken very little care for accommodations. There is no way in or out of the boat for a woman but by being carried; and in the boat thus dignified with a pompous name there is no seat but an occasional bundle of straw.' Piozzi Letters, i. 152. In describing the distance of one family from another, Johnson writes:—'Visits last several days, and are commonly paid by water; yet I never saw a boat furnished with benches.' Works, ix. 100.

[527] See ante, ii. 106, and iii. 154.

[528] 'They which forewent us did leave a Roome for us, and should wee grieve to doe the same to these which should come after us? Who beeing admitted to see the exquisite rarities of some antiquaries cabinet is grieved, all viewed, to have the courtaine drawen, and give place to new pilgrimes?' A Cypresse Grove, by William Drummond of Hawthorne-denne, ed. 1630, p. 68.

[529] See ante, iii. 153, 295.

[530]

'While hoary Nestor, by experience wise, To reconcile the angry monarch tries.'

FRANCIS. Horace, i Epis. ii. II.

[531] See ante, p. 16.

[532] Lord Elibank died Aug. 3, 1778, aged 75. Gent. Mag. 1778, p. 391.

[533] A term in Scotland for a special messenger, such as was formerly sent with dispatches by the lords of the council.

[534] Yet he said of him:—'There is nothing conclusive in his talk.' Ante iii. 57.

[535] 'I believe every man has found in physicians great liberality and dignity of sentiment, very prompt effusion of beneficence, and willingness to exert a lucrative art where there is no hope of lucre.' Johnson's Works, vii. 402. See ante, iv. 263.

[536] Johnson says (ib. ix. 156) that when the military road was made through Glencroe, 'stones were placed to mark the distances, which the inhabitants have taken away, resolved, they said, "to have no new miles."'

[537]

'The lawland lads think they are fine, But O they're vain and idly gawdy; How much unlike that graceful mien And manly look of my highland laddie.'

From 'The Highland Laddie, written long since by Allan Ramsay, and now sung at Ranelagh and all the other gardens; often fondly encored, and sometimes ridiculously hissed.' Gent. Mag. 1750, p. 325.

[538] 'She is of a pleasing person and elegant behaviour. She told me that she thought herself honoured by my visit; and I am sure that whatever regard she bestowed on me was liberally repaid.' Piozzi Letters, i. 153. In his Journey (Works, ix. 63) Johnson speaks of Flora Macdonald, as 'a name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.'

[539] This word, which meant much the same as, fop or dandy, is found in Bk. x. ch. 2 of Fielding's Amelia (published in 1751):—'A large assembly of young fellows, whom they call bucks.' Less than forty years ago, in the neighbourhood of London, it was, I remember, still commonly applied by the village lads to the boys of a boarding-school.

[540] This word was at this time often used in a loose sense, though Johnson could not have so used it. Thus Horace Walpole, writing on May 16, 1759 (Letters, iii. 227), tells a story of the little Prince Frederick. 'T'other day as he was with the Prince of Wales, Kitty Fisher passed by, and the child named her; the Prince, to try him, asked who that was? "Why, a Miss." "A Miss," said the Prince of Wales, "why are not all girls Misses?" "Oh! but a particular sort of Miss—a Miss that sells oranges."' Mr. Cunningham in a note on this says:—'Orange-girls at theatres were invariably courtesans.'

[541] Governor was the term commonly given to a tutor, especially a travelling tutor. Thus Peregrine Pickle was sent first to Winchester and afterwards abroad 'under the immediate care and inspection of a governor.' Peregrine Pickle, ch. xv.

[542] He and his wife returned before the end of the War of Independence. On the way back she showed great spirit when their ship was attacked by a French man of war. Chambers's Rebellion in Scotland, ii. 329.

[543] I do not call him the Prince of Wales, or the Prince, because I am quite satisfied that the right which the House of Stuart had to the throne is extinguished. I do not call him, the Pretender, because it appears to me as an insult to one who is still alive, and, I suppose, thinks very differently. It may be a parliamentary expression; but it is not a gentlemanly expression. I know, and I exult in having it in my power to tell, that THE ONLY PERSON in the world who is intitled to be offended at this delicacy, thinks and feels as I do; and has liberality of mind and generosity of sentiment enough to approve of my tenderness for what even has been Blood Royal. That he is a prince by courtesy, cannot be denied; because his mother was the daughter of Sobiesky, king of Poland. I shall, therefore, on that account alone, distinguish him by the name of Prince Charles Edward. BOSWELL. To have called him the Pretender in the presence of Flora Macdonald would have been hazardous. In her old age, 'such is said to have been the virulence of the Jacobite spirit in her composition, that she would have struck any one with her fist who presumed, in her hearing, to call Charles the Pretender.' Chambers's Rebellion in Scotland, ii. 330.

[544] This, perhaps, was said in allusion to some lines ascribed to Pope, on his lying, at John Duke of Argyle's, at Adderbury, in the same bed in which Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, had slept:

'With no poetick ardour fir'd, I press [press'd] the bed where Wilmot lay; That here he liv'd [lov'd], or here expir'd, Begets no numbers, grave or gay.' BOSWELL.

[545] See ante, iv. 60, 187.

[546] See ante, iv. 113 and 315.

[547] 'This was written while Mr. Wilkes was Sheriff of London, and when it was to be feared he would rattle his chain a year longer as Lord Mayor.' Note to Campbell's British Poets, p. 662. By 'here' the poet means at Tyburn.

[548] With virtue weigh'd, what worthless trash is gold! BOSWELL.

[549] Since the first edition of this book, an ingenious friend has observed to me, that Dr. Johnson had probably been thinking on the reward which was offered by government for the apprehension of the grandson of King James II, and that he meant by these words to express his admiration of the Highlanders, whose fidelity and attachment had resisted the golden temptation that had been held out to them. BOSWELL.

[550] On the subject of Lady Margaret Macdonald, it is impossible to omit an anecdote which does much honour to Frederick, Prince of Wales. By some chance Lady Margaret had been presented to the princess, who, when she learnt what share she had taken in the Chevalier's escape, hastened to excuse herself to the prince, and exlain to him that she was not aware that Lady Margaret was the person who had harboured the fugitive. The prince's answer was noble: 'And would you not have done the same, madam, had he come to you, as to her, in distress and danger? I hope—I am sure you would!' WALTER SCOTT.

[551] This old Scottish member of parliament, I am informed, is still living (1785). BOSWELL.

[552] I cannot find that this account was ever published. Mr. Lumisden is mentioned ante, ii. 401, note 2.

[553] This word is not in Johnson's Dictionary.

[554] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 153) describes him in 1745 as 'a good-looking man of about five feet ten inches; his hair was dark red, and his eyes black. His features were regular, his visage long, much sunburnt and freckled, and his countenance thoughtful and melancholy.' When the Pretender was in London in 1750, 'he came one evening,' writes Dr. W. King (Anec. p. 199) 'to my lodgings, and drank tea with me; my servant, after he was gone, said to me, that he thought my new visitor very like Prince Charles. "Why," said I, "have you ever seen Prince Charles?" "No, Sir," said the fellow, "but this gentleman, whoever he may be, exactly resembles the busts which are sold in Red Lionstreet, and are said to be the busts of Prince Charles." The truth is, these busts were taken in plaster of Paris from his face. He has an handsome face and good eyes.'

[555] Sir Walter Scott, writing of his childhood, mentions 'the stories told in my hearing of the cruelties after the battle of Culloden. One or two of our own distant relations had fallen, and I remember of (sic) detesting the name of Cumberland with more than infant hatred.' Lockhart's Scott, i. 24. 'I was,' writes Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto, p. 190), 'in the coffee-house with Smollett when the news of the battle of Culloden arrived, and when London all over was in a perfect uproar of joy.' On coming out into the street, 'Smollett,' he continues, 'cautioned me against speaking a word, lest the mob should discover my country, and become insolent, "for John Bull," says he; "is as haughty and valiant to-night as he was abject and cowardly on the Black Wednesday when the Highlanders were at Derby." I saw not Smollett again for some time after, when he shewed me his manuscript of his Tears of Scotland. Smollett, though a Tory, was not a Jacobite, but he had the feelings of a Scotch gentleman on the reported cruelties that were said to be exercised after the battle of Culloden.' See ante, ii. 374, for the madman 'beating his straw, supposing it was the Duke of Cumberland, whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland in 1746.'

[556] 'He was obliged to trust his life to the fidelity of above fifty individuals, and many of these were in the lowest paths of fortune. They knew that a price of £30,000 was set upon his head, and that by betraying him they should enjoy wealth and affluence.' Smollett's Hist. of England, iii. 184.

[557] 'Que les hommes privés, qui se plaignent de leurs petites infortunes, jettent les yeux sur ce prince et sur ses ancêtres.' Siècle de Louis XV, ch. 25.

[558] 'I never heard him express any noble or benevolent sentiments, or discover any sorrow or compassion for the misfortunes of so many worthy men who had suffered in his cause. But the most odious part of his character is his love of money, a vice which I do not remember to have been imputed by our historians to any of his ancestors, and is the certain index of a base and little mind. I have known this gentleman, with 2000 Louis d'ors in his strong box, pretend he was in great distress, and borrow money from a lady in Paris, who was not in affluent circumstances.' Dr. W. King's Anec. p. 201. 'Lord Marischal,' writes Hume, 'had a very bad opinion of this unfortunate prince; and thought there was no vice so mean or atrocious of which he was not capable; of which he gave me several instances.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 464.

[559] Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. 15. The accentuation of this passage, which was very incorrect as quoted by Boswell, I have corrected.

[560] By banishment he meant, I conjecture, transportation as a convict-slave to the American plantations.

[561] Wesley in his Journal—the reference I have mislaid—seemed from this consideration almost to regret a reprieve that came to a penitent convict.

[562] Hume describes how in 1753 (? 1750) the Pretender, on his secret visit to London, 'came to the house of a lady (who I imagined to be Lady Primrose) without giving her any preparatory information; and entered the room where she had a pretty large company with her, and was herself playing at cards. He was announced by the servant under another name. She thought the cards would have dropped from her hands on seeing him. But she had presence enough of mind to call him by the name he assumed.' J.H. Burton's Hume, ii. 462. Mr. Croker (Croker's Boswell, p. 331) prints an autograph letter from Flora Macdonald which shows that Lady Primrose in 1751 had lodged £627 in a friend's hands for her behoof, and that she had in view to add more.

[563] It seems that the Pretender was only once in London, and that it was in 1750. Ante, i. 279, note 5. I suspect that 1759 is Boswell's mistake or his printer's. From what Johnson goes on to say it is clear that George II. was in Germany at the time of the Prince's secret visit. He was there the greater part of 1750, but not in 1753 or 1759. In 1750, moreover, 'the great army of the King of Prussia overawed Hanover.' Smollett's England, iii. 297. This explains what Johnson says about the King of Prussia stopping the army in Germany.

[564] See ante, iv. 165, 170.

[565] COMMENTARIES on the laws of England, book 1. chap. 3. BOSWELL.

[566] B. VI. chap. 3. Since I have quoted Mr. Archdeacon Paley upon one subject, I cannot but transcribe, from his excellent work, a distinguished passage in support of the Christian Revelation.—After shewing, in decent but strong terms, the unfairness of the indirect attempts of modern infidels to unsettle and perplex religious principles, and particularly the irony, banter, and sneer, of one whom he politely calls 'an eloquent historian,' the archdeacon thus expresses himself:—

'Seriousness is not constraint of thought; nor levity, freedom. Every mind which wishes the advancement of truth and knowledge, in the most important of all human researches, must abhor this licentiousness, as violating no less the laws of reasoning than the rights of decency. There is but one description of men to whose principles it ought to be tolerable. I mean that class of reasoners who can see little in christianity even supposing it to be true. To such adversaries we address this reflection.—Had Jesus Christ delivered no other declaration than the following, "The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth,—they that have done well [good] unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation," [St. John v. 25] he had pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his mission was introduced and attested:—a message in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries. It is idle to say that a future state had been discovered already.—It had been discovered as the Copernican System was;—it was one guess amongst many. He alone discovers who proves, and no man can prove this point but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from GOD.'—Book V. chap. 9.

If infidelity be disingenuously dispersed in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination,—in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem,—in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history,—as Mr. Paley has well observed,—I hope it is fair in me thus to meet such poison with an unexpected antidote, which I cannot doubt will be found powerful. BOSWELL. The 'eloquent historian' was Gibbon. See Paley's Principles, ed. 1786, p. 395.

[567] In The Life of Johnson (ante, iii. 113), Boswell quotes these words, without shewing that they are his own; but italicises not fervour, but loyalty.

[568] 'Whose service is perfect freedom.' Book of Common Prayer.

[569] See ante, i. 353, note 1.

[570] Ovid, Ars Amatoria, iii. 121.

[571]

'This facile temper of the beauteous sex Great Agamemnon, brave Pelides proved.'

These two lines follow the four which Boswell quotes. Agis, act iv.

[572] Agis, a tragedy, by John Home. BOSWELL.

[573] See ante, p. 27.

[574] A misprint, I suppose, for designing.

[575] 'Next in dignity to the laird is the tacksman; a large taker or leaseholder of land, of which he keeps part as a domain in his own hand, and lets part to under-tenants. The tacksman is necessarily a man capable of securing to the laird the whole rent, and is commonly a collateral relation.' Johnson's Works, ix. 82.

[576] A lettre de cachet.

[577] Ante, p. 159.

[578] 'It is related that at Dunvegan Lady Macleod, having poured out for Dr. Johnson sixteen cups of tea, asked him if a small basin would not save him trouble, and be more agreeable. "I wonder, Madam," answered he roughly, "why all the ladies ask me such questions. It is to save yourselves trouble, Madam, and not me." The lady was silent and resumed her task.' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 81.

[579] 'In the garden-or rather the orchard which was formerly the garden-is a pretty cascade, divided into two branches, and called Rorie More's Nurse, because he loved to be lulled to sleep by the sound of it.' Lockhart's Scott, iv. 304.

[580] It has been said that she expressed considerable dissatisfaction at Dr. Johnson's rude behaviour at Dunvegan. Her grandson, the present Macleod, assures me that it was not so: 'they were all,' he says emphatically, 'delighted with him.' CROKER. Mr. Croker refers, I think, to a communication from Sir Walter Scott, published in the Croker Corres. ii. 33. Scott writes:—'When wind-bound at Dunvegan, Johnson's temper became most execrable, and beyond all endurance, save that of his guide. The Highlanders, who are very courteous in their way, held him in great contempt for his want of breeding, but had an idea at the same time there was something respectable about him, they could not tell what, and long spoke of him as the Sassenach mohr, or large Saxon.'

[581] 'I long to be again in civilized life.' Ante, p. 183.

[582] See ante, iii. 406.

[583] Johnson refers, I think, to a passage in L'Esprit des Lois, Book xvi. chap. 4, where Montesquieu says:—'J'avoue que si ce que les relations nous disent était vrai, qu'à Bantam il y a dix femmes pour un homme, ce serait un cas bien particulier de la polygamie. Dans tout ceci je ne justifie pas les usages, mais j'en rends les raisons.'

[584] What my friend treated as so wild a supposition, has actually happened in the Western islands of Scotland, if we may believe Martin, who tells it of the islands of Col and Tyr-yi, and says that it is proved by the parish registers. BOSWELL. 'The Isle of Coll produces more boys than girls, and the Isle of Tire-iy more girls than boys; as if nature intended both these isles for mutual alliances, without being at the trouble of going to the adjacent isles or continent to be matched. The parish-book in which the number of the baptised is to be seen, confirms this observation.' Martin's Western Islands, p. 271.

[585] A Dissertation on the Gout, by W. Cadogan, M.D., 1771. It went through nine editions in its first year.

[586] This was a general reflection against Dr. Cadogan, when his very popular book was first published. It was said, that whatever precepts he might give to others, he himself indulged freely in the bottle. But I have since had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with him, and, if his own testimony may be believed, (and I have never heard it impeached,) his course of life has been conformable to his doctrine. BOSWELL.

[587] 'April 7, 1765. I purpose to rise at eight, because, though I shall not yet rise early, it will be much earlier than I now rise, for I often lie till two.' Pr. and Med. p. 62. 'Sept. 18, 1771. My nocturnal complaints grow less troublesome towards morning; and I am tempted to repair the deficiencies of the night. I think, however, to try to rise every day by eight, and to combat indolence as I shall obtain strength.' Ib. p. 105. 'April 14, 1775. As my life has from my earliest years been wasted in a morning bed, my purpose is from Easter day to rise early, not later than eight.' Ib. p. 139.

[588] See post, Oct. 25.

[589] See ante, iv. under Dec. 2, 1784.

[590] Miss Mulso (Mrs. Chapone) wrote in 1753:—'I had the assurance to dispute with Mr. Johnson on the subject of human malignity, and wondered to hear a man, who by his actions shews so much benevolence, maintain that the human heart is naturally malevolent, and that all the benevolence we see in the few who are good is acquired by reason and religion.' Life of Mrs. Chapone, p.73. See post, p. 214.

[591] This act was passed in 1746.

[592] Isaiah, ii. 4.

[593] Sir Walter Scott, after mentioning Lord Orford's (Horace Walpole) History of His Own Time, continues:—'The Memoirs of our Scots Sir George Mackenzie are of the same class—both immersed in little political detail, and the struggling skirmish of party, seem to have lost sight of the great progressive movements of human affairs.' Lockhart's Scott vii. 12.

[594] 'Illum jura potius ponere quam de jure respondere dixisses; eique appropinquabant clientes tanquam judici potius quam advocato.' Mackenzie's Works, ed. 1716, vol. i. part 2, p. 7.

[595] 'Opposuit ei providentia Nisbetum: qui summâ doctrinâ consummatâque eloquentiâ causas agebat, ut justitiae scalae in aequilibrio essent; nimiâ tamen arte semper utens artem suam suspectam reddebat. Quoties ergo conflixerunt, penes Gilmorum gloria, penes Nisbetum palma fuit; quoniam in hoc plus artis et cultus, in illo naturae et virium.' Ib.

[596] He often indulged himself in every species of pleasantry and wit. BOSWELL.

[597] But like the hawk, having soared with a lofty flight to a height which the eye could not reach, he was wont to swoop upon his quarry with wonderful rapidity. BOSWELL. These two quotations are part of the same paragraph, and are not even separated by a word. Ib. p. 6.

[598] See ante, i. 453; iii. 323; iv. 276; and v. 32.

[599] Some years later he said that 'when Burke lets himself down to jocularity he is in the kennel.' Ante, iv. 276.

[600] Cicero and Demosthenes, no doubt, were brought in by the passage about Nicholson. Mackenzie continues:—'Hic primus nos a Syllogismorum servitute manumisit et Aristotelem Demostheni potius quam Ciceroni forum concedere coegit.' P. 6.

[601] See ante ii. 435 and iv. 149, note 3.

[602] See ante, i. 103.

[603] See ante ii 436

[604] See ante, i. 65.

[605] On Sept. 13, 1777, Johnson wrote:—'Boswell shrinks from the Baltick expedition, which, I think, is the best scheme in our power.' Ante, iii. 134, note 1.

[606] See ante, ii. 59, note 1.

[607] See ante, iii. 368.

[608] 'Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning ... nor is caution ever so necessary as with associates or opponents of feeble minds.' The Idler, No. 92. In a letter to Dr. Taylor Johnson says:—'To help the ignorant commonly requires much patience, for the ignorant are always trying to be cunning.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 462. Churchill, in The Journey (Poems, ed. 1766, ii. 327), says:—

''Gainst fools be guarded; 'tis a certain rule, Wits are safe things, there's danger in a fool.'

[609] See ante, p. 173.

[610]

'For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read; For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it.'

The Dunciad, iv. 249.

[611] Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures; and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in life; what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.' The Idler, No. 45. 'Southey wrote thirty years later:—'I find daily more and more reason to wonder at the miserable ignorance of English historians, and to grieve with a sort of despondency at seeing how much that has been laid up among the stores of knowledge has been neglected and utterly forgotten.' Southey's Life, ii. 264. On another occasion he said of Robertson:—'To write his introduction to Charles V, without reading these Laws [the Laws of Alonso the Wise], is one of the thousand and one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue, as long as his volumes last. Ib. p. 318

[612]

'That eagle's fate and mine are one, Which on the shaft that made him die, Espy'd a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high.' Epistle to a Lady.

Anderson's Poets, v. 480.

[613] See ante, iii. 271.

[614] 'In England there may be reason for raising the rents (in a certain degree) where the value of lands is increased by accession of commerce, ...but here (contrary to all policy) the great men begin at the wrong end, with squeezing the bag, before they have helped the poor tenant to fill it; by the introduction of manufactures.' Pennant's Scotland, ed. 1772, p. 191.

[615] Boswell refers, not to a passage in Pennant, but to Johnson's admission that in his dispute with Monboddo, 'he might have taken the side of the savage, had anybody else taken the side of the shopkeeper.' Ante, p. 83.

[616] 'Boswell, with some of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family and reminded me that the 18th of September is my birthday. The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.' Piozzi Letters, i. 134. See ante, iii. 157.

[617] 'At Dunvegan I had tasted lotus, and was in danger of forgetting that I was ever to depart, till Mr. Boswell sagely reproached me with my sluggishness and softness.' Johnson's Works, ix. 67.

[618] Johnson wrote of the ministers:—'I saw not one in the islands whom I had reason to think either deficient in learning, or irregular in life; but found several with whom I could not converse without wishing, as my respect increased, that they had not been Presbyterians.' Ib. p. 102.

[619] See ante, p. 142.

[620] See ante, ii. 28.

[621]

'So horses they affirm to be Mere engines made by geometry, And were invented first from engines, As Indian Britons were from penguins.'

Hudibras, part i. canto 2, line 57. Z. Gray, in a note on these lines, quotes Selden's note on Drayton's Polyolbion:—'About the year 1570, Madoc, brother to David Ap Owen, Prince of Wales, made a sea-voyage to Florida; and by probability those names of Capo de Breton in Norimberg, and Penguin in part of the Northern America, for a white rock and a white-headed bird, according to the British, were relicts of this discovery.'

[622] Published in Edinburgh in 1763.

[623] See ante, ii. 76. 'Johnson used to say that in all family disputes the odds were in favour of the husband from his superior knowledge of life and manners.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 210.

[624] He wrote to Dr. Taylor:—' Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 342.

[625] As I have faithfully recorded so many minute particulars, I hope I shall be pardoned for inserting so flattering an encomium on what is now offered to the publick. BOSWELL.

[626] See ante, iv. 109, note 1.

[627] 'The islanders of all degrees, whether of rank or understanding, universally admit it, except the ministers, who universally deny it, and are suspected to deny it in consequence of a system, against conviction.' Johnson's Works, ix. 106.

[628] The true story of this lady, which happened in this century, is as frightfully romantick as if it had been the fiction of a gloomy fancy. She was the wife of one of the Lords of Session in Scotland, a man of the very first blood of his country. For some mysterious reasons, which have never been discovered, she was seized and carried off in the dark, she knew not by whom, and by nightly journeys was conveyed to the Highland shores, from whence she was transported by sea to the remote rock of St. Kilda, where she remained, amongst its few wild inhabitants, a forlorn prisoner, but had a constant supply of provisions, and a woman to wait on her. No inquiry was made after her, till she at last found means to convey a letter to a confidential friend, by the daughter of a Catechist, who concealed it in a clue of yarn. Information being thus obtained at Edinburgh, a ship was sent to bring her off; but intelligence of this being received, she was conveyed to M'Leod's island of Herries, where she died.

In CARSTARE'S STATE PAPERS we find an authentick narrative of Connor [Conn], a catholick priest, who turned protestant, being seized by some of Lord Seaforth's people, and detained prisoner in the island of Herries several years; he was fed with bread and water, and lodged in a house where he was exposed to the rains and cold. Sir James Ogilvy writes (June 18, 1667 [1697]), that the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Advocate, and himself, were to meet next day, to take effectual methods to have this redressed. Connor was then still detained; p. 310.—This shews what private oppression might in the last century be practised in the Hebrides.

In the same collection [in a letter dated Sept. 15, 1700], the Earl of Argyle gives a picturesque account of an embassy from the great M'Neil of Barra, as that insular Chief used to be denominated:—'I received a letter yesterday from M'Neil of Barra, who lives very far off, sent by a gentleman in all formality, offering his service, which had made you laugh to see his entry. His style of his letter runs as if he were of another kingdom.'—Page 643. BOSWELL.

Sir Walter Scott says:—'I have seen Lady Grange's Journal. She had become privy to some of the Jacobite intrigues, in which her husband, Lord Grange (an Erskine, brother of the Earl of Mar, and a Lord of Session), and his family were engaged. Being on indifferent terms with her husband, she is said to have thrown out hints that she knew as much as would cost him his life. The judge probably thought with Mrs. Peachum, that it is rather an awkward state of domestic affairs, when the wife has it in her power to hang the husband. Lady Grange was the more to be dreaded, as she came of a vindictive race, being the grandchild [according to Mr. Chambers, the child] of that Chiesley of Dalry, who assassinated Sir George Lockhart, the Lord President. Many persons of importance in the Highlands were concerned in removing her testimony. The notorious Lovat, with a party of his men, were the direct agents in carrying her off; and St. Kilda, belonging then to Macleod, was selected as the place of confinement. The name by which she was spoken or written of was Corpach, an ominous distinction, corresponding to what is called subject in the lecture-room of an anatomist, or shot in the slang of the Westport murderers' [Burke and Hare]. Sir Walter adds that 'it was said of M'Neil of Barra, that when he dined, his bagpipes blew a particular strain, intimating that all the world might go to dinner.' Croker's Boswell, p. 341.

[629] I doubt the justice of my fellow-traveller's remark concerning the French literati, many of whom, I am told, have considerable merit in conversation, as well as in their writings. That of Monsieur de Buffon, in particular, I am well assured, is highly instructive and entertaining. BOSWELL. See ante, iii. 253.

[630] Horace Walpole, writing of 1758, says:—'Prize-fighting, in which we had horribly resembled the most barbarous and most polite nations, was suppressed by the legislature.' Memoirs of the Reign of George II, iii. 99. According to Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 5), Johnson said that his 'father's brother, Andrew, kept the ring in Smithfield (where they wrestled and boxed) for a whole year, and never was thrown or conquered. Mr. Johnson was,' she continues, 'very conversant in the art of boxing.' She had heard him descant upon it 'much to the admiration of those who had no expectation of his skill in such matters.'

[631] See ante, ii. 179, 226, and iv. 211.

[632] See ante, p. 98.

[633] See ante, i, 110.

[634] See ante, i. 398, and ii. 15, 35, 441.

[635] Gibbon, thirteen years later, writing to Lord Sheffield about the commercial treaty with France, said (Misc. Works, ii. 399):—'I hope both nations are gainers; since otherwise it cannot be lasting; and such double mutual gain is surely possible in fair trade, though it could not easily happen in the mischievous amusements of war and gaming.'

[636] Johnson (Works, viii. 139), writing of gratitude and resentment, says:—'Though there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will never be wanting multitudes that will indulge an easy vice.'

[637] Aul. Gellius, lib. v. c. xiv. BOSWELL.

[638] 'The difficulties in princes' business are many and great; but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind. For it is common with princes, saith Tacitus, to will contradictories. Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, et inter se contrariae. For it is the solecism of power to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean.' Bacon's Essays, No. xix.

[639] Yet Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 30:—'I am now no longer pleased with the delay; you can hear from me but seldom, and I cannot at all hear from you. It comes into my mind that some evil may happen.' Piozzi Letters, i. 148. On Oct. 15 he wrote to Mr. Thrale:—'Having for many weeks had no letter, my longings are very great to be informed how all things are at home, as you and mistress allow me to call it.... I beg to have my thoughts set at rest by a letter from you or my mistress.' Ib. p. 166. See ante, iii. 4.

[640] Sir Walter Scott thus describes Dunvegan in 1814:—'The whole castle occupies a precipitous mass of rock overhanging the lake, divided by two or three islands in that place, which form a snug little harbour under the walls. There is a court-yard looking out upon the sea, protected by a battery, at least a succession of embrasures, for only two guns are pointed, and these unfit for service. The ancient entrance rose up a flight of steps cut in the rock, and passed into this court-yard through a portal, but this is now demolished. You land under the castle, and walking round find yourself in front of it. This was originally inaccessible, for a brook coming down on the one side, a chasm of the rocks on the other, and a ditch in front, made it impervious. But the late Macleod built a bridge over the stream, and the present laird is executing an entrance suitable to the character of this remarkable fortalice, by making a portal between two advanced towers, and an outer court, from which he proposes to throw a draw-bridge over to the high rock in front of the castle.' Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iv. 303.

[641]

'Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube; Quae dat Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.'

[642] Johnson says of this castle:—'It is so nearly entire, that it might have easily been made habitable, were there not an ominous tradition in the family, that the owner shall not long outlive the reparation. The grandfather of the present laird, in defiance of prediction, began the work, but desisted in a little time, and applied his money to worse uses.' Works, ix. 64.

[643] Macaulay (Essays, ed. 1843, i. 365) ends a lively piece of criticism on Mr. Croker by saying:—'It requires no Bentley or Casaubon to perceive that Philarchus is merely a false spelling for Phylarchus, the chief of a tribe.'

[644] See ante, i. 180.

[645] Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1814:—'The monument is now nearly ruinous, and the inscription has fallen down.' Lockhart's Scott, iv. 308.

[646] 'Wheel carriages they have none, but make a frame of timber, which is drawn by one horse, with the two points behind pressing on the ground. On this they sometimes drag home their sheaves, but often convey them home in a kind of open pannier, or frame of sticks, upon the horse's back.' Johnson's Works, ix. 76. 'The young Laird of Col has attempted what no islander perhaps ever thought on. He has begun a road capable of a wheel-carriage. He has carried it about a mile.' Ib. p. 128.

[647] Captain Phipps had sailed in May of this year, and in the neighbourhood of Spitzbergen had reached the latitude of more than 80°. He returned to England in the end of September. Gent. Mag. 1774, p. 420.

[648] Aeneid, vi. II.

[649] 'In the afternoon, an interval of calm sunshine courted us out to see a cave on the shore, famous for its echo. When we went into the boat, one of our companions was asked in Erse by the boatmen, who they were that came with him. He gave us characters, I suppose to our advantage, and was asked, in the spirit of the Highlands, whether I could recite a long series of ancestors. The boatmen said, as I perceived afterwards, that they heard the cry of an English ghost. This, Boswell says, disturbed him.... There was no echo; such is the fidelity of report.' Piozzi Letters, i. 156.

[650] 'Law or low signifies a hill: ex. gr. Wardlaw, guard hill, Houndslow, the dog's hill.' Blackie's Etymological Geography, p. 103.

[651] Pepys often mentions them. At first he praises them highly, but of one of the later ones—Tryphon—he writes:—'The play, though admirable, yet no pleasure almost in it, because just the very same design, and words, and sense, and plot, as every one of his plays have, any one of which would be held admirable, whereas so many of the same design and fancy do but dull one another.' Pepys's Diary, ed. 1851, v. 63.

[652] The second and third earls are passed over by Johnson. It was the fourth earl who, as Charles Boyle, had been Bentley's antagonist. Of this controversy a full account is given in Lord Macaulay's Life of Atterbury.

[653] The fifth earl, John. See ante, i. 185, and iii. 249.

[654] See ante, i. 9, and iii. 154.

[655] See ante, ii. 129, and iii. 183.

[656] The young lord was married on the 8th of May, 1728, and the father's will is dated the 6th of Nov. following. 'Having,' says the testator, 'never observed that my son hath showed much taste or inclination, either for the entertainment or knowledge which study and learning afford, I give and bequeath all my books and mathematical instruments [with certain exceptions] to Christchurch College, in Oxford.' CROKER.

[657] His Life of Swift is written in the form of Letters to his Son, the Hon. Hamilton Boyle. The fifteenth Letter, in which he finishes his criticism of Gulliver's Travels, affords a good instance of this 'studied variety of phrase.' 'I may finish my letter,' he writes, 'especially as the conclusion of it naturally turns my thoughts from Yahoos to one of the dearest pledges I have upon earth, yourself, to whom I am a most

Affectionate Father, 'ORRERY.'

See ante, i. 275-284, for Johnson's letters to Thomas Warton, many of which end 'in studied varieties of phrase.'

[658] The Conquest of Granada was dedicated to the Duke of York. The conclusion is as follows:—'If at any time Almanzor fulfils the parts of personal valour and of conduct, of a soldier and of a general; or, if I could yet give him a character more advantageous that what he has, of the most unshaken friend, the greatest of subjects, and the best of masters; I should then draw all the world a true resemblance of your worth and virtues; at least as far as they are capable of being copied by the mean abilities of,

'Sir,

'Your Royal Highness's

'Most humble, and most

'Obedient servant,

'J. DRYDEN.'

[659] On the day of his coronation he was asked to pardon four young men who had broken the law against carrying arms. 'So long as I live,' he replied, 'every criminal must die.' 'He was inexorable in individual cases; he adhered to his laws with a rigour that amounted to cruelty, while in the framing of general rules we find him mild, yielding, and placable.' Ranke's Popes, ed. 1866, i. 307, 311.

[660] See ante, iii. 239, where he discusses the question of shooting a highwayman.

[661] In The Rambler, No. 78, he says:—'I believe men may be generally observed to grow less tender as they advance in age.'

[662] He passed over his own Life of Savage.

[663] 'When I was a young fellow, I wanted to write the Life of Dryden' Ante, iii. 71.

[664] See ante, p. 117.

[665] 'I asked a very learned minister in Sky, who had used all arts to make me believe the genuineness of the book, whether at last he believed it himself; but he would not answer. He wished me to be deceived for the honour of his country; but would not directly and formally deceive me. Yet has this man's testimony been publickly produced, as of one that held Fingal to be the work of Ossian.' Johnson's Works, ix. 115.

[666] A young lady had sung to him an Erse song. He asked her, 'What is that about? I question if she conceived that I did not understand it. For the entertainment of the company, said she. But, Madam, what is the meaning of it? It is a love song. This was all the intelligence that I could obtain; nor have I been able to procure the translation of a single line of Erse.' Piozzi Letters, i. 146. See post, Oct. 16

[667] This droll quotation, I have since found, was from a song in honour of the Earl of Essex, called Queen Elisabeth's Champion, which is preserved in a collection of Old Ballads, in three volumes, published in London in different years, between 1720 and 1730. The full verse is as follows:—

'Oh! then bespoke the prentices all, Living in London, both proper and tall, In a kind letter sent straight to the Queen, For Essex's sake they would fight all. Raderer too, tandaro te, Raderer, tandorer, tan do re.' BOSWELL.

[668] La Condamine describes a tribe called the Tameos, on the north side of the river Tiger in South America, who have a word for three. He continues:—'Happily for those who have transactions with them, their arithmetic goes no farther. The Brazilian tongue, a language spoken by people less savage, is equally barren; the people who speak it, where more than three is to be expressed, are obliged to use the Portuguese.' Pinkerton's Voyages, xiv. 225.

[669] 'It was Addison's practice, when he found any man invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions by acquiescence, and sink him yet deeper in absurdity. This artifice of mischief was admired by Stella; and Swift seems to approve her admiration.' Johnson's Works, vii. 450. Swift, in his Character of Mrs. Johnson (Stella), says:—'Whether this proceeded from her easiness in general, or from her indifference to persons, or from her despair of mending them, or from the same practice which she much liked in Mr. Addison, I cannot determine; but when she saw any of the company very warm in a wrong opinion, she was more inclined to confirm them in it than oppose them. The excuse she commonly gave, when her friends asked the reason, was, "That it prevented noise and saved time." Swift's Works, xiv. 254.

[670] In the Appendix to Blair's Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian Macqueen is mentioned as one of his authorities for his statements.

[671] See ante, iv. 262, note.

[672] I think it but justice to say, that I believe Dr. Johnson meant to ascribe Mr. M'Queen's conduct to inaccuracy and enthusiasm, and did not mean any severe imputation against him. BOSWELL.

[673] In Baretti's trial (ante, ii. 97, note I) he seems to have given his evidence clearly. What he had to say, however, was not much.

[674] Boswell had spoken before to Johnson about this omission. Ante, ii. 92.

[675] It has been triumphantly asked, 'Had not the plays of Shakspeare lain dormant for many years before the appearance of Mr. Garrick? Did he not exhibit the most excellent of them frequently for thirty years together, and render them extremely popular by his own inimitable performance?' He undoubtedly did. But Dr. Johnson's assertion has been misunderstood. Knowing as well as the objectors what has been just stated, he must necessarily have meant, that 'Mr. Garrick did not as a critick make Shakspeare better known; he did not illustrate any one passage in any of his plays by acuteness of disquisition, or sagacity of conjecture: and what had been done with any degree of excellence in that way was the proper and immediate subject of his preface. I may add in support of this explanation the following anecdote, related to me by one of the ablest commentators on Shakspeare, who knew much of Dr. Johnson: 'Now I have quitted the theatre, cries Garrick, I will sit down and read Shakspeare.' ''Tis time you should, exclaimed Johnson, for I much doubt if you ever examined one of his plays from the first scene to the last.' BOSWELL. According to Davies (Life of Garrick, i. 120) during the twenty years' management of Drury Lane by Booth, Wilks and Cibber (about 1712-1732) not more than eight or nine of Shakspeare's plays were acted, whereas Garrick annually gave the public seventeen or eighteen. Romeo and Juliet had lain neglected near 80 years, when in 1748-9 Garrick brought it out, or rather a hash of it. 'Otway had made some alteration in the catastrophe, which Mr. Garrick greatly improved by the addition of a scene, which was written with a spirit not unworthy of Shakespeare himself.' Ib. p. 125. Murphy (Life of Garrick, p. 100), writing of this alteration, says:—'The catastrophe, as it now stands, is the most affecting in the whole compass of the drama.' Davies says (p. 20) that shortly before Garrick's time 'a taste for Shakespeare had been revived. The ladies had formed themselves into a society under the title of The Shakespeare Club. They bespoke every week some favourite play of his.' This revival was shown in the increasing number of readers of Shakespeare. It was in 1741 that Garrick began to act. In the previous sixteen years there had been published four editions of Pope's Shakespeare and two of Theobald's. In the next ten years were published five editions of Hanmer's Shakespeare, and two of Warburton's, besides Johnson's Observations on Macbeth. Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. 1871, p. 2270.

[676] In her foolish Essay on Shakespeare, p. 15. See ante, ii. 88.

[677] No man has less inclination to controversy than I have, particularly with a lady. But as I have claimed, and am conscious of being entitled to credit for the strictest fidelity, my respect for the publick obliges me to take notice of an insinuation which tends to impeach it.

Mrs. Piozzi (late Mrs. Thrale), to her Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson, added the following postscript:—

'Naples, Feb. 10, 1786.

'Since the foregoing went to the press, having seen a passage from Mr. Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, in which it is said, that I could not get through Mrs. Montague's "Essay on Shakspeare," I do not delay a moment to declare, that, on the contrary, I have always commended it myself, and heard it commended by every one else; and few things would give me more concern than to be thought incapable of tasting, or unwilling to testify my opinion of its excellence.'

It is remarkable that this postscript is so expressed, as not to point out the person who said that Mrs. Thrale could not get through Mrs. Montague's book; and therefore I think it necessary to remind Mrs. Piozzi, that the assertion concerning her was Dr. Johnson's, and not mine. The second observation that I shall make on this postscript is, that it does not deny the fact asserted, though I must acknowledge from the praise it bestows on Mrs. Montague's book, it may have been designed to convey that meaning.

What Mrs. Thrale's opinion is or was, or what she may or may not have said to Dr. Johnson concerning Mrs. Montague's book, it is not necessary for me to enquire. It is only incumbent on me to ascertain what Dr. Johnson said to me. I shall therefore confine myself to a very short state of the fact. The unfavourable opinion of Mrs. Montague's book, which Dr. Johnson, is here reported to have given, is, known to have been that which he uniformly expressed, as many of his friends well remember. So much, for the authenticity of the paragraph, as far as it relates to his own sentiments. The words containing the assertion, to which Mrs. Piozzi objects, are printed from my manuscript Journal, and were taken down at the time. The Journal was read by Dr. Johnson, who pointed out some inaccuracies, which I corrected, but did not mention any inaccuracy in the paragraph in question: and what is still more material, and very flattering to me, a considerable part of my Journal, containing this paragraph, was read several years ago by, Mrs. Thrale herself [see ante, ii. 383], who had it for some time in her possession, and returned it to me, without intimating that Dr. Johnson had mistaken her sentiments.

When the first edition of my Journal was passing through the press, it occurred to me that a peculiar delicacy was necessary to be observed in reporting the opinion of one literary lady concerning the performance of another; and I had such scruples on that head, that in the proof sheet I struck out the name of Mrs. Thrale from the above paragraph, and two or three hundred copies of my book were actually printed and published without it; of these Sir Joshua Reynolds's copy happened to be one. But while the sheet was working off, a friend, for whose opinion I have great respect, suggested that I had no right to deprive Mrs. Thrale of the high honour which Dr. Johnson had done her, by stating her opinion along with that of Mr. Beauclerk, as coinciding with, and, as it were, sanctioning his own. The observation appeared to me so weighty and conclusive, that I hastened to the printing-house, and, as a piece of justice, restored Mrs. Thrale to that place from which a too scrupulous delicacy had excluded her. On this simple state of facts I shall make no observation whatever. BOSWELL. This note was first published in the form of a letter to the Editor of The Gazetteer on April 17, 1786.

[678] See ante, p. 215, for his knowledge of coining and brewing, and post, p. 263, for his knowledge of threshing and thatching. Now and then, no doubt, 'he talked ostentatiously,' as he had at Fort George about Gunpowder (ante, p. 124). In the Gent. Mag. for 1749, p. 55, there is a paper on the Construction of Fireworks, which I have little doubt is his. The following passage is certainly Johnsonian:—'The excellency of a rocket consists in the largeness of the train of fire it emits, the solemnity of its motion (which should be rather slow at first, but augmenting as it rises), the straightness of its flight, and the height to which it ascends.'

[679] Perhaps Johnson refers to Stephen Hales's Statical Essays (London, 1733), in which is an account of experiments made on the blood and blood-vessels of animals.

[680] Evidence was given at the Tichborne Trial to shew that it takes some years to learn the trade.

[681] Not the very tavern, which was burned down in the great fire. P. CUNNINGHAM.

[682] I do not see why I might not have been of this club without lessening my character. But Dr. Johnson's caution against supposing one's self concealed in London, may be very useful to prevent some people from doing many things, not only foolish, but criminal. BOSWELL.

[683] See ante, iii. 318.

[684] Johnson defines airy as gay, sprightly, full of mirth, &c.

[685] 'A man would be drowned by claret before it made him drunk.' Ante, iii. 381.

[686] Ante, p. 137.

[687] See ante ii. 261.

[688] Lord Chesterfield wrote in 1747 (Misc. Works, iv. 231):— Drinking is a most beastly vice in every country, but it is really a ruinous one to Ireland; nine gentlemen in ten in Ireland are impoverished by the great quantity of claret, which from mistaken notions of hospitality and dignity, they think it necessary should be drunk in their houses. This expense leaves them no room to improve their estates by proper indulgence upon proper conditions to their tenants, who must pay them to the full, and upon the very day, that they may pay their wine-merchants.' In 1754 he wrote (ib.p.359):—If it would but please God by his lightning to blast all the vines in the world, and by his thunder to turn all the wines now in Ireland sour, as I most sincerely wish he would, Ireland would enjoy a degree of quiet and plenty that it has never yet known.'

[689] See ante, p. 95.

[690] 'The sea being broken by the multitude of islands does not roar with so much noise, nor beat the storm with such foamy violence as I have remarked on the coast of Sussex. Though, while I was in the Hebrides, the wind was extremely turbulent, I never saw very high billows.' Johnson's Works, ix. 65.

[691] Johnson this day thus wrote of Mr. M'Queen to Mrs. Thrale:—'You find that all the islanders even in these recesses of life are not barbarous. One of the ministers who has adhered to us almost all the time is an excellent scholar.' Piozzi Letters, i. 157.

[692] See post, Nov. 6.

[693] This was a dexterous mode of description, for the purpose of his argument; for what he alluded to was, a Sermon published by the learned Dr. William Wishart, formerly principal of the college at Edinburgh, to warn men against confiding in a death-bed repentance of the inefficacy of which he entertained notions very different from those of Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL.

[694] The Rev. Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 441) thus writes of the English clergy whom he met at Harrogate in 1763:—'I had never seen so many of them together before, and between this and the following year I was able to form a true judgment of them. They are, in general—I mean the lower order—divided into bucks and prigs; of which the first, though inconceivably ignorant, and sometimes indecent in their morals, yet I held them to be most tolerable, because they were unassuming, and had no other affectation but that of behaving themselves like gentlemen. The other division of them, the prigs, are truly not to be endured, for they are but half learned, are ignorant of the world, narrow-minded, pedantic, and overbearing. And now and then you meet with a rara avis who is accomplished and agreeable, a man of the world without licentiousness, of learning without pedantry, and pious without sanctimony; but this is a rara avis'.

[695] See ante, i. 446, note 1.

[696] Johnson defines manage in this sense to train a horse to graceful action, and quotes Young:—

'They vault from hunters to the managed steed.'

[697] Of Sir William Forbes of a later generation, Lockhart (Life of Scott, ix. 179) writes as follows:—'Sir William Forbes, whose banking-house was one of Messrs. Ballantyne's chief creditors, crowned his generous efforts for Scott's relief by privately paying the whole of Abud's demand (nearly £2000) out of his own pocket.'

[698] This scarcity of cash still exists on the islands, in several of which five shilling notes are necessarily issued to have some circulating medium. If you insist on having change, you must purchase something at a shop. WALTER SCOTT.

[699] 'The payment of rent in kind has been so long disused in England that it is totally forgotten. It was practised very lately in the Hebrides, and probably still continues, not only in St. Kilda, where money is not yet known, but in others of the smaller and remoter islands.' Johnson's Works, ix. 110.

[700] 'A place where the imagination is more amused cannot easily be found. The mountains about it are of great height, with waterfalls succeeding one another so fast, that as one ceases to be heard another begins.' Piozzi Letters, i. 157.

[701] See ante, i. 159.

[702] Johnson seems to be speaking of Hailes's Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain in the reign of James I and of Charles I.

[703] See ante, ii. 341.

[704] See ante, iii. 91.

[705] 'In all ages of the world priests have been enemies to liberty, and it is certain that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking and of expressing our thoughts is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.... Hence it must happen in such a government as that of Britain, that the established clergy, while things are in their natural situation, will always be of the Court-party; as, on the contrary, dissenters of all kinds will be of the Country-party.' Hume's Essays, Part 1, No. viii.

[706] In the original Every island's but a prison. The song is by a Mr. Coffey, and is given in Ritson's English Songs (1813), ii. 122. It begins:—

'Welcome, welcome, brother debtor, To this poor but merry place, Where no bailiff, dun, nor setter, Dares to show his frightful face.'

See ante, iii. 269.

[707] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale the day before (perhaps it was this day, and the copyist blundered):—' I am still in Sky. Do you remember the song—

We have at one time no boat, and at another may have too much wind; but of our reception here we have no reason to complain.' Piozzi Letters, i. 143.

[708] My ingenuously relating this occasional instance of intemperance has I find been made the subject both of serious criticism and ludicrous banter. With the banterers I shall not trouble myself, but I wonder that those who pretend to the appellation of serious criticks should not have had sagacity enough to perceive that here, as in every other part of the present work, my principal object was to delineate Dr. Johnson's manners and character. In justice to him I would not omit an anecdote, which, though in some degree to my own disadvantage, exhibits in so strong a light the indulgence and good humour with which he could treat those excesses in his friends, of which he highly disapproved.

In some other instances, the criticks have been equally wrong as to the true motive of my recording particulars, the objections to which I saw as clearly as they. But it would be an endless task for an authour to point out upon every occasion the precise object he has in view, Contenting himself with the approbation of readers of discernment and taste, he ought not to complain that some are found who cannot or will not understand him. BOSWELL.

[709] In the original, 'wherein is excess.'

[710] See Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time, i. 231.

[711] See ante, iii. 383.

[712] see ante, p. 184.

[713] See ante, ii. 120, where he took upon his knee a young woman who came to consult him on the subject of Methodism.

[714] See ante, pp. 215, 246.

[715] See ante, iv. 176.

[716]

'If ev'ry wheel of that unwearied mill That turned ten thousand verses now stands still.'

Imitations of Horace, 2 Epis. ii. 78.

[717] Ante, p. 206.

[718]

'Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine captos Ducit.'—Ovid, Ex Pont. i. 3. 35.

[719] Lift up your hearts.

[720] Mr. Croker prints the following letter written to Macleod the day before:—

'Ostig, 28th Sept. 1773.

'DEAR SIR,—We are now on the margin of the sea, waiting for a boat and a wind. Boswell grows impatient; but the kind treatment which I find wherever I go, makes me leave, with some heaviness of heart, an island which I am not very likely to see again. Having now gone as far as horses can carry us, we thankfully return them. My steed will, I hope, be received with kindness;—he has borne me, heavy as I am, over ground both rough and steep, with great fidelity; and for the use of him, as for your other favours, I hope you will believe me thankful, and willing, at whatever distance we may be placed, to shew my sense of your kindness, by any offices of friendship that may fall within my power.

'Lady Macleod and the young ladies have, by their hospitality and politeness, made an impression on my mind, which will not easily be effaced. Be pleased to tell them, that I remember them with great tenderness, and great respect.—I am, Sir, your most obliged and most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'P.S.—We passed two days at Talisker very happily, both by the pleasantness of the place and elegance of our reception.'

[721] Johnson (Works, viii. 409), after describing how Shenstone laid out the Leasowes, continues:—'Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden, demands any great powers of mind, I will not inquire: perhaps a surly and sullen speculator may think such performances rather the sport than the business of human reason.'

[722] Johnson quotes this and the two preceding stanzas as 'a passage, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature.' Ib. p. 413.

[723] 'His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated.' Ib. p. 411.

[724] In the preface to vol. iii. of Shenstone's Works, ed. 1773, a quotation is given (p. vi) from one of the poet's letters in which he complains of this burning. He writes:—'I look upon my Letters as some of my chef-d'auvres.' On p. 301, after mentioning Rasselas, he continues:—'Did I tell you I had a letter from Johnson, inclosing Vernon's Parish-clerk?'

[725] 'The truth is these elegies have neither passion, nature, nor manners. Where there is fiction, there is no passion: he that describes himself as a shepherd, and his Neaera or Delia as a shepherdess, and talks of goats and lambs, feels no passion. He that courts his mistress with Roman imagery deserves to lose her; for she may with good reason suspect his sincerity.' Johnson's Works, viii. 91. See ante, iv. 17.

[726] His lines on Pulteney, Earl of Bath, still deserve some fame:—

'Leave a blank here and there in each page To enrol the fair deeds of his youth! When you mention the acts of his age, Leave a blank for his honour and truth.'

From The Statesman, H. C. Williams's Odes, p. 47.

[727] Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2.

[728] He did not mention the name of any particular person; but those who are conversant with the political world will probably recollect more persons than one to whom this observation may be applied. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker thinks that Lord North was meant. For his ministry Johnson certainly came to have a great contempt (ante, iv. 139). If Johnson was thinking of him, he differed widely in opinion from Gibbon, who describes North as 'a consummate master of debate, who could wield with equal dexterity the arms of reason and of ridicule.' Gibbon's Misc. Works, i. 221. On May 2, 1775, he wrote:—' If they turned out Lord North to-morrow, they would still leave him one of the best companions in the kingdom.' Ib. ii. 135.

[729] Horace Walpole is speaking of this work, when he wrote on May 16, 1759 (Letters, iii. 227):—'Dr. Young has published a new book, on purpose, he says himself, to have an opportunity of telling a story that he has known these forty years. Mr. Addison sent for the young Lord Warwick, as he was dying, to shew him in what peace a Christian could die—unluckily he died of brandy—nothing makes a Christian die in peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath, where you are.'

[730] 'His [Young's] plan seems to have started in his mind at the present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.... His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear. But with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.' Johnson's Works, viii. 458, 462. Mrs. Piozzi (Synonymy, ii. 371) tells why 'Dr. Johnson despised Young's quantity of common knowledge as comparatively small. 'Twas only because, speaking once upon the subject of metrical composition, he seemed totally ignorant of what are called rhopalick verses, from the Greek word, a club—verses in which each word must be a syllable longer than that which goes before, such as:

Spes deus aeternae stationis conciliator.'

[731] He had said this before. Ante, ii. 96.

[732]

'Brunetta's wise in actions great and rare, But scorns on trifles to bestow her care. Thus ev'ry hour Brunetta is to blame, Because th' occasion is beneath her aim. Think nought a trifle, though it small appear; Small sands the mountains, moments make the year, And trifles life. Your care to trifles give, Or you may die before you truly live.'

Love of Fame, Satire vi. Johnson often taught that life is made up of trifles. See ante, i. 433.

[733]

"But hold," she cries, "lampooner, have a care; Must I want common sense, because I'm fair?" O no: see Stella; her eyes shine as bright, As if her tongue was never in the right; And yet what real learning, judgment, fire! She seems inspir'd, and can herself inspire: How then (if malice rul'd not all the fair) Could Daphne publish, and could she forbear? We grant that beauty is no bar to sense, Nor is't a sanction for impertinence.

Love of Fame, Satire v.

[734] Johnson called on Young's son at Welwyn in June, 1781. Ante, iv. 119. Croft, in his Life of Young (Johnson's Works, viii. 453), says that 'Young and his housekeeper were ridiculed with more ill-nature than wit in a kind of novel published by Kidgell in 1755, called The Card, under the name of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.'

[735] Memoirs of Philip Doddridge, ed. 1766, p. 171.

[736] So late as 1783 he said 'this Hanoverian family is isolée here.' Ante, iv. 165.

[737] See ante, ii. 81, where he hoped that 'this gloom of infidelity was only a transient cloud.'

[738] Boswell has recorded this saying, ante, iv. 194.

[739] In 1755 an English version of this work had been published. Gent. Mag. 1755, p. 574. In the Chronological Catalogue on p. 343 in vol. 66 of Voltaire's Works, ed. 1819, it is entered as 'Histoire de la Guerre de 1741, fondue en partie dans le Précis du siècle de Louis XV.'

[740] Boswell is here merely repeating Johnson's words, who on April 11 of this year, advising him to keep a journal, had said, 'The great thing to be recorded is the state of your own mind.' Ante, ii. 217.

[741] This word is not in his Dictionary.

[742] See ante, i. 498.

[743] See ante, ii. 61, 335; iii. 375, and post, under Nov. 11.

[744] Beattie had attacked Hume in his Essay on Truth (ante, ii. 201 and v. 29). Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his Essay under his arm. 'The angel of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy, Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very indignant at it, and said:—"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's Reynolds, i. 300. Another of the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes (Life of Beattie, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire. Beattie's Essay is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his Life of Hume. Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie's side:—

'Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung His Minstrel lays; Or tore, with noble ardour stung, The Sceptic's bays.'

(The Vision, part ii.)

[745] See ante, ii. 441.

[746] William Tytler published in 1759 an Examination of the Histories of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume with respect to Mary Queen of Scots. It was reviewed by Johnson. Ante, i. 354.

[747] Johnson's Rasselas was published in either March or April, and Goldsmith's Polite Learning in April of 1759.I do not find that they published any other works at the same time. If these are the works meant, we have a proof that the two writers knew each other earlier than was otherwise known.

[748] 'A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of Phalaris; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of criticism (the Answer to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be discouraged at this run upon him, for tho' they had got the laughers on their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a work of so much merit. To which the other replied, "Indeed Dr. S. [Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter. For I hold it as certain, that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."' Warburton on Pope, iv. 159, quoted in Person's Tracts, p. 345. 'Against personal abuse,' says Hawkins (Life, p. 348), 'Johnson was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:—"Alas! reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' He wrote to Baretti:—'A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.' Ante, i. 381. Voltaire in his Essay Sur les inconvéniens attachés à la Littérature (Works, ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win the favour of the critics, continues:—'Tous vos soins n'empêchent pas que quelque journaliste ne vous déchire. Vous lui répondez; il réplique; vous avez un procès par écrit devant le public, qui condamne les deux parties au ridicule.' See ante, ii. 61, note 4.

[749] However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he says:—'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' Tom Jones, bk. xi. ch. 1.

[750] It is strange that Johnson should not have known that the Adventures of a Guinea was written by a namesake of his own, Charles Johnson. Being disqualified for the bar, which was his profession, by a supervening deafness, he went to India, and made some fortune, and died there about 1800. WALTER SCOTT.

[751] Salusbury, not Salisbury.

[752] Horace Walpole (Letters, .ii 57) mentions in 1746 his cousin Sir John Philipps, of Picton Castle; 'a noted Jacobite.'... He thus mentions Lady Philipps in 1788 when she was 'very aged.' 'They have a favourite black, who has lived with them a great many years, and is remarkably sensible. To amuse Lady Philipps under a long illness, they had read to her the account of the Pelew Islands. Somebody happened to say we were sending a ship thither; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, "Then there is an end of their happiness." What a satire on Europe!' Ib. ix. 157.

Lady Philips was known to Johnson through Miss Williams, to whom, as a note in Croker's Boswell (p. 74) shews, she made a small yearly allowance.

[753] 'To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of Manners, and Castiglione in his Courtier; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance.' Johnson's Works, vii. 428. The Courtier was translated into English so early as 1561. Lowndes's Bibl. Man. ed. 1871, p. 386.

[754] Burnet (History of His Own Time, ii. 296) mentions Whitby among the persons who both managed and directed the controversial war' against Popery towards the end of Charles II's reign. 'Popery,' he says, 'was never so well understood by the nation as it came to be upon this occasion.' Whitby's Commentary on the New Testament was published in 1703-9.

[755] By Henry Mackenzie, the author of The Man of Feeling. Ante, i. 360. It had been published anonymously this spring. The play of the same name is by Macklin. It was brought out in 1781.

[756] No doubt Sir A. Macdonald. Ante, p. 148. This 'penurious gentleman' is mentioned again, p. 315.

[757] Molière's play of L'Avare.

[758]

'...facit indignatio versum.'

Juvenal, Sat. i. 79.

[759] See ante, iii. 252.

[760] He was sixty-four.

[761] Still, perhaps, in the Western Isles, 'It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.' Tennyson's Ulysses.

[762] See ante, ii, 51.

[763] See ante, ii. 150.

[764] Sir Alexander Macdonald.

[765] 'To be or not to be: that is the question.' Hamlet, act iii. sc. 1.

[766] Virgil, Eclogues, iii. III.

[767] 'The stormy Hebrides.' Milton's Lycidas, 1. 156.

[768] Boswell was thinking of the passage (p. xxi.) in which Hawkesworth tells how one of Captain Cook's ships was saved by the wind falling. 'If,' he writes, 'it was a natural event, providence is out of the question; at least we can with no more propriety say that providentially the wind ceased, than that providentially the sun rose in the morning. If it was not,' &c. According to Malone the attacks made on Hawkesworth in the newspapers for this passage 'affected him so much that from low spirits he was seized with a nervous fever, which on account of the high living he had indulged in had the more power on him; and he is supposed to have put an end to his life by intentionally taking an immoderate dose of opium.' Prior's Malone, p. 441. Mme. D'Arblay says that these attacks shortened his life. Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 278. He died on Nov. 17 of this year. See ante, i. 252, and ii. 247.

[769] 'After having been detained by storms many days at Sky we left it, as we thought, with a fair wind; but a violent gust, which Bos had a great mind to call a tempest, forced us into Col.' Piozzi Letters, i. 167. 'The wind blew against us in a short time with such violence, that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest... The master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties might, perhaps, have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr. Maclean of Col... piloted us safe into his own harbour.' Johnson's Works, ix. 117. Sir Walter Scott says, 'Their risque, in a sea full of islands, was very considerable. Indeed, the whole expedition was highly perilous, considering the season of the year, the precarious chance of getting sea-worthy boats, and the ignorance of the Hebrideans, who, notwithstanding the opportunities, I may say the necessities, of their situation, are very careless and unskilful sailors.' Croker's Boswell, p. 362.

[770] For as the tempest drives, I shape my way. FRANCIS. [Horace, Epistles, i. 1. 15.] BOSWELL.

[771]

'Imberbus juvenis, tandem custode remoto, Gaudet equis canibusque, et aprici gramine campi.' 'The youth, whose will no froward tutor bounds, Joys in the sunny field, his horse and hounds.'

FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. 1. 161.

[772] Henry VI, act i. sc. 2.

[773] See ante, i. 468, and iii. 306.

[774] Johnson describes him as 'a gentleman who has lived some time in the East Indies, but, having dethroned no nabob, is not too rich to settle in his own country.' Johnson's Works, ix. 117.

[775] This curious exhibition may perhaps remind some of my readers of the ludicrous lines, made, during Sir Robert Walpole's administration, on Mr. George (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, though the figures of the two personages must be allowed to be very different:—

'But who is this astride the pony; So long, so lean, so lank, so bony? Dat be de great orator, Littletony.' BOSWELL.

These lines were beneath a caricature called The Motion, described by Horace Walpole in his letter of March 25, 1741, and said by Mr. Cunningham to be 'the earliest good political caricature that we possess.' Walpole's Letters, i. 66. Mr. Croker says that 'the exact words are:— bony? O he be de great orator Little-Tony.'

[776] See ante, ii. 213.

[777] In 1673 Burnet, who was then Professor of Theology in Glasgow, dedicated to Lauderdale A Vindication of the Authority, &c., of the Church and State of Scotland. In it he writes of the Duke's 'noble character, and more lasting and inward characters of his princely mind.'

[778] See ante, i. 450.

[779] See ante, p. 250.

[780] 'Others have considered infinite space as the receptacle, or rather the habitation of the Almighty; but the noblest and most exalted way of considering this infinite space, is that of Sir Isaac Newton, who calls it the sensorium of the Godhead. Brutes and men have their sensoriola, or little sensoriums, by which they apprehend the presence, and perceive the actions, of a few objects that lie contiguous to them. Their knowledge and observation turn within a very narrow circle. But as God Almighty cannot but perceive and know everything in which he resides, infinite space gives room to infinite knowledge, and is, as it were, an organ to Omniscience.' Addison, The Spectator, No. 565.

[781] 'Le célèbre philosophe Leibnitz ... attaqua ces expressions du philosophe anglais, dans une lettre qu'il écrivit en 1715 à la feue reine d'Angleterre, épouse de George II. Cette princesse, digne d'être en commerce avec Leibnitz et Newton, engagea une dispute reglée par lettres entre les deux parties. Mais Newton, ennemi de toute dispute et avare de son temps, laissa le docteur Clarke, son disciple en physique, et pour le moins son égal en métaphysique, entrer pour lui dans la lice. La dispute roula sur presque toutes les idées métaphysiques de Newton, et c'est peut-être le plus beau monument que nous ayons des combats littéraires.' Voltaire's Works, ed. 1819, xxviii. 44.

[782] See ante, iii. 248.

[783] See ante, iv. 295, where Boswell asked Johnson 'if he would not have done more good if he had been more gentle.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; I have done more good as I am. Obscenity and impiety have always been repressed in my company.'

[784] 'Mr. Maclean has the reputation of great learning: he is seventy-seven years old, but not infirm, with a look of venerable dignity, excelling what I remember in any other man. His conversation was not unsuitable to his appearance. I lost some of his good will by treating a heretical writer with more regard than in his opinion a heretick could deserve. I honoured his orthodoxy, and did not much censure his asperity. A man who has settled his opinions does not love to have the tranquillity of his conviction disturbed; and at seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.' Johnson's Works, ix. 118.

[785] 'Mr. Maclean has no publick edifice for the exercise of his ministry, and can officiate to no greater number than a room can contain; and the room of a hut is not very large... The want of churches is not the only impediment to piety; there is likewise a want of ministers. A parish often contains more islands than one... All the provision made by the present ecclesiastical constitution for the inhabitants of about a hundred square miles is a prayer and sermon in a little room once in three weeks.' Johnson's Works, ix. 118.

[786]

'Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds what we have taught her. I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter. For she must have both hoods and gowns, and hoops to swell her pride, With scarfs and stays, and gloves and lace; and she will have men beside; And when she's drest with care and cost, all-tempting, fine and gay, As men should serve a cucumber, she flings herself away.'

Air vii.

[787] See ante, p. 162.

[788] In 1715.

[789]

'When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow.'

Pope, Essay on Criticism, l. 370.

[790] Johnson's remark on these stones is curious as shewing that he had not even a glimpse of the discoveries to be made by geology. After saying that 'no account can be given' of the position of one of the stones, he continues:—'There are so many important things of which human knowledge can give no account, that it may be forgiven us if we speculate no longer on two stones in Col.' Works, ix. 122. See ante, ii. 468, for his censure of Brydone's 'anti-mosaical remark.'

[791]

'Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella.' 'My Phillis me with pelted apples plies.'

DRYDEN. Virgil, Eclogues, iii. 64.

[792]

'The helpless traveller, with wild surprise, Sees the dry desert all around him rise, And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies.'

Cato act ii. sc. 6.

[793] Johnson seems unwilling to believe this. 'I am not of opinion that by any surveys or land-marks its [the sand's] limits have been ever fixed, or its progression ascertained. If one man has confidence enough to say that it advances, nobody can bring any proof to support him in denying it.' Works, ix. 122. He had seen land in like manner laid waste north of Aberdeen; where 'the owner, when he was required to pay the usual tax, desired rather to resign the ground.' Ib. p. 15.

[794] Box, in this sense, is not in Johnson's Dictionary.

[795] See ante, ii. 100, and iv. 274.

[796] In the original, Rich windows. A Long Story, l. 7.

[797] 'And this according to the philosophers is happiness.' Boswell says of Crabbe's poem The Village, that 'its sentiments as to the false notions of rustick happiness and rustick virtue were quite congenial with Johnson's own.' Ante, iv. 175.

[798] 'This innovation was considered by Mr. Macsweyn as the idle project of a young head, heated with English fancies; but he has now found that turnips will really grow, and that hungry sheep and cows will really eat them.' Johnson's Works, ix. 121. 'The young laird is heir, perhaps, to 300 square miles of land, which, at ten shillings an acre, would bring him £96,000 a year. He is desirous of improving the agriculture of his country; and, in imitation of the Czar, travelled for improvement, and worked with his own hands upon a farm in Hertfordshire.' Piozzi Letters, i. 168.

[799] 'In more fruitful countries the removal of one only makes room for the succession of another; but in the Hebrides the loss of an inhabitant leaves a lasting vacuity; for nobody born in any other parts of the world will choose this country for his residence.' Johnson's Works, ix. 93.

[800] 'In 1628 Daillé wrote his celebrated book, De l'usage des Pères, or Of the Use of the Fathers. Dr. Fleetwood, Bishop of Ely, said of it that he thought the author had pretty sufficiently proved they were of no use at all.' Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xi. 209.

[801] Enquiry after Happiness, by Richard Lucas, D.D., 1685.

[802] Divine Dialogues, by Henry More, D.D. See ante, ii. 162, note I.

[803] By David Gregory, the second of the sixteen professors which the family of Gregory gave to the Universities. Ante, p. 48.

[804] 'Johnson's landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court.' Ante, iii. 141.

[805] 'Cuper's Gardens, near the south bank of the Thames, opposite to Somerset House. The gardens were illuminated, and the company entertained by a band of music and fireworks; but this, with other places of the same kind, has been lately discontinued by an act that has reduced the number of these seats of luxury and dissipation.' Dodsley's London and its Environs, ed. 1761, ii. 209. The Act was the 25th George II, for 'preventing robberies and regulating places of public entertainment.' Parl. Hist. xiv. 1234.

[806] 'Mr. Johnson,' according to Mr. Langton, 'used to laugh at a passage in Carte's Life of the Duke of Ormond, where he gravely observes "that he was always in full dress when he went to court; too many being in the practice of going thither with double lapells."' Boswelliana, p. 274. The following is the passage:—'No severity of weather or condition of health served him for a reason of not observing that decorum of dress which he thought a point of respect to persons and places. In winter time people were allowed to come to court with double-breasted coats, a sort of undress. The duke would never take advantage of that indulgence; but let it be never so cold, he always came in his proper habit, and indeed the king himself always did the same, though too many neglected his example to make use of the liberty he was pleased to allow.' Carte's Life of Ormond, iv. 693. See ante, i. 42. It was originally published in three volumes folio in 1735-6.

[807] Seneca's two epigrams on Corsica are quoted in Boswell's Corsica, first edition, p. 13. Boswell, in one of his Hypochondriacks (London Mag. 1778, p. 173), says:—'For Seneca I have a double reverence, both for his own worth, and because he was the heathen sage whom my grandfather constantly studied.'

[808] 'Very near the house of Maclean stands the castle of Col, which was the mansion of the Laird till the house was built.... On the wall was, not long ago, a stone with an inscription, importing, that if any man of the clan of Maclonich shall appear before this castle, though he come at midnight, with a man's head in his hand, he shall there find safety and protection against all but the king. This is an old Highland treaty made upon a very memorable occasion. Maclean, the son of John Gerves, who recovered Col, and conquered Barra, had obtained, it is said, from James the Second, a grant of the lands of Lochiel, forfeited, I suppose, by some offence against the state. Forfeited estates were not in those days quietly resigned; Maclean, therefore, went with an armed force to seize his new possessions, and, I know not for what reason, took his wife with him. The Camerons rose in defence of their chief, and a battle was fought at Loch Ness, near the place where Fort Augustus now stands, in which Lochiel obtained the victory, and Maclean, with his followers, was defeated and destroyed. The lady fell into the hands of the conquerors, and, being found pregnant, was placed in the custody of Maclonich, one of a tribe or family branched from Cameron, with orders, if she brought a boy, to destroy him, if a girl, to spare her. Maclonich's wife, who was with child likewise, had a girl about the same time at which Lady Maclean brought a boy; and Maclonich, with more generosity to his captive than fidelity to his trust, contrived that the children should be changed. Maclean, being thus preserved from death, in time recovered his original patrimony; and, in gratitude to his friend, made his castle a place of refuge to any of the clan that should think himself in danger; and, as a proof of reciprocal confidence, Maclean took upon himself and his posterity the care of educating the heir of Maclonich.' Johnson's Works, ix. 130.

[809] 'Mr. Croker tells us that the great Marquis of Montrose was beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650. There is not a forward boy at any school in England who does not know that the Marquis was hanged.' Macaulay's Essays, ed. 1843, i. 357

[810] It is observable that men of the first rank spelt very ill in the last century. In the first of these letters I have preserved the original spelling. BOSWELL.

[811] See ante, i., 127.

[812] Muir-fowl is grouse. Ante p. 44.

[813] See ante, p. 162, note 1.

[814] 'In Col only two houses pay the window tax; for only two have six windows, which, I suppose, are the laird's and Mr. Macsweyn's.' Johnson's Works, ix. 125. 'The window tax, as it stands at present (January 1775)...lays a duty upon every window, which in England augments gradually from twopence, the lowest rate upon houses with not more than seven windows, to two shillings, the highest rate upon houses with twenty-five windows and upwards.' Wealth of Nations, v. 2. 2 .1. The tax was first imposed in 1695, as a substitute for hearth money. Macaulay's England, ed. 1874, vii. 271. It was abolished in 1851.

[815] Thomas Carlyle was not fourteen when, one 'dark frosty November morning,' he set off on foot for the University at Edinburgh—a distance of nearly one hundred miles. Froude's Carlyle, i. 22.

[816] Ante, p. 290.

[817] Of the Nature and Use of Lots: a Treatise historicall and theologicall. By Thomas Gataker. London, 1619. The Spirituall Watch, or Christ's Generall Watch-word. By Thomas Gataker. London, 1619.

[818] See ante, p. 264.

[819] He visited it with the Thrales on Sept. 22, 1774, when returning from his tour to Wales, and with Boswell in 1776 (ante, ii. 451).

[820] Mr. Croker says that 'this, no doubt, alludes to Jacob Bryant, the secretary or librarian at Blenheim, with whom Johnson had had perhaps some coolness now forgotten.' The supposition of the coolness seems needless. With so little to go upon, guessing is very hazardous.

[821] Topham Beauclerk, who had married the Duke's sister, after she had been divorced for adultery with him from her first husband Viscount Bolingbroke. Ante, ii. 246, note 1.

[822] See post, Dempster's Letter of Feb. 16, 1775.

[823] See ante, ii. 340, where Johnson said that 'if he were a gentleman of landed property, he would turn out all his tenants who did not vote for the candidate whom he supported.'

[824] See ante, iii. 378.

[825] 'They have opinions which cannot be ranked with superstition, because they regard only natural effects. They expect better crops of grain by sowing their seed in the moon's increase. The moon has great influence in vulgar philosophy. In my memory it was a precept annually given in one of the English almanacks, "to kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would prove the better in boiling."' Johnson's Works, ix. 104. Bacon, in his Natural History(No.892) says:—'For the increase of moisture, the opinion received is, that seeds will grow soonest if they be set in the increase of the moon.'

[826] The question which Johnson asked with such unusual warmth might have been answered, 'by sowing the bent, or couch grass.' WALTER SCOTT.

[827] See ante, i. 484.

[828] See ante, i. 483.

[829] It is remarkable, that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying any thing on the subject, which I hoped he would have done. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 128, note 2, and iv. 183, where Boswell 'observed he must have been a bold laugher who would have ventured to tell Dr. Johnson of any of his peculiarities.'

[830] In this he was very unlike Swift, who, in his youth, when travelling in England, 'generally chose to dine with waggoners, hostlers, and persons of that rank; and he used to lie at night in houses where he found written of the door Lodgings for a penny. He delighted in scenes of low life.' Lord Orrery's Swift, ed. 1752, p. 33.

[831] This is from the Jests of Hierocles. CROKER.

[832] 'The grave a gay companion shun.' FRANCIS. Horace, 1 Epis. xviii. 89.

[833] Boswell in 1776 found that 'oats were much used as food in Dr. Johnson's own town.' Ante, ii. 463.

[834] Ante, i. 294.

[835] See ante, ii. 258.

[836] 'The richness of the round steep green knolls, clothed with copse, and glancing with cascades, and a pleasant peep at a small fresh-water loch embosomed among them—the view of the bay, surrounded and guarded by the island of Colvay—the gliding of two or three vessels in the more distant Sound—and the row of the gigantic Ardnamurchan mountains closing the scene to the north, almost justify the eulogium of Sacheverell, [post, p. 336] who, in 1688, declared the bay of Tobermory might equal any prospect in Italy.' Lockhart's Scott, iv. 338.

[837] 'The saying of the old philosopher who observes, that he who wants least is most like the gods who want nothing, was a favourite sentence with Dr. Johnson, who, on his own part, required less attendance, sick or well, than ever I saw any human creature. Conversation was all he required to make him happy.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 275.

[838] Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (ante, ii. 346). Johnson (Works, vii. 424) says of these Travels:—'Of many parts it is not a very severe censure to say that they might have been written at home.' He adds that 'the book, though awhile neglected, became in time so much the favourite of the publick, that before it was reprinted it rose to five times its price.'

[839] See ante, iii. 254, and iv. 237.

[840] Johnson (Works, viii. 320) says of Pope that 'he had before him not only what his own meditation suggested, but what he had found in other writers that might be accomodated to his present purpose.' Boswell's use of the word is perhaps derived, as Mr. Croker suggests, from accommoder, in the sense of dressing up or cooking meats. This word occurs in an amusing story that Boswell tells in one of his Hypochondriacks (London Mag. 1779, p. 55):—'A friend of mine told me that he engaged a French cook for Sir B. Keen, when ambassador in Spain, and when he asked the fellow if he had ever dressed any magnificent dinners the answer was:—"Monsieur, j'ai accommodé un dîner qui faisait trembler toute la France."' Scott, in Guy Mannering (ed. 1860, iii. 138), describes 'Miss Bertram's solicitude to soothe and accommodate her parent.' See ante, iv. 39, note 1, for 'accommodated the ladies.' To sum up, we may say with Justice Shallow:—'Accommodated! it comes of accommodo; very good; a good phrase.' 2 Henry IV, act iii. sc. 2.

[841] 'Louis Moréri, né en Provence, en 1643. On ne s'attendait pas que l'auteur du Pays d'amour, et le traducteur de Rodriguez, entreprît dans sa jeunesse le premier dictionnaire de faits qu'on eût encore vu. Ce grand travail lui coûta la vie... Mort en 1680.' Voltaire's Works, ed. 1819, xvii. 133.

[842] Johnson looked upon Ana as an English word, for he gives it in his Dictionary.

[843] I take leave to enter my strongest protest against this judgement. Bossuet I hold to be one of the first luminaries of religion and literature. If there are who do not read him, it is full time they should begin. BOSWELL.

[844]

Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell; And pale diseases, and repining age; Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage; Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep, Forms terrible to view their sentry keep.

Dryden, Aeneid, vi. 273. BOSWELL. Voltaire, in his Essay Sur les inconvéniens attachés à la Littérature (Works, xliii. 173), says:—'Enfin, après un an de refus et de négociations, votre ouvrage s'imprime; c'est alors qu'il faut ou assoupir les Cerbères de la littérature ou les faire aboyer en votre faveur.' He therefore carries on the resemblance one step further,—

'Cerberus haec ingens latratu regna trifauci Personat.' Aeneid, vi. 417.

[845] It was in 1763 that Boswell made Johnson's acquaintance. Ante, i. 391.

[846] It is no small satisfaction to me to reflect, that Dr. Johnson read this, and, after being apprized of my intention, communicated to me, at subsequent periods, many particulars of his life, which probably could not otherwise have been preserved. BOSWELL. See ante, i. 26.

[847] Though Mull is, as Johnson says, the third island of the Hebrides in extent, there was no post there. Piozzi Letters, i. 170.

[848] This observation is very just. The time for the Hebrides was too late by a month or six weeks. I have heard those who remembered their tour express surprise they were not drowned. WALTER SCOTT.

[849] The Charmer, a Collection of Songs Scotch and English. Edinburgh, 1749.

[850] By Thomas Willis, M.D. It was published in 1672. 'In this work he maintains that the soul of brutes is like the vital principle in man, that it is corporeal in its nature and perishes with the body. Although the book was dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury, his orthodoxy, a matter that Willis regarded much, was called in question.' Knight's Eng. Cyclo. vi. 741. Burnet speaks of him as 'Willis, the great physician.' History of his Own Time, ed. 1818, i. 254. See Wood's Athenae, iii. 1048.

[851] See ante, ii. 409 and iii. 242, where he said:—'Had I learnt to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.'

[852] Ante, p. 277.

[853] Ante, p. 181.

[854] Mr. Langton thinks this must have been the hasty expression of a splenetick moment, as he has heard Dr. Johnson speak of Mr. Spence's judgment in criticism with so high a degree of respect, as to shew that this was not his settled opinion of him. Let me add that, in the preface to the Preceptor, he recommends Spence's Essay on Papers Odyssey, and that his admirable Lives of the English Poets are much enriched by Spence's Anecdotes of Pope. BOSWELL. For the Preceptor see ante, i. 192, and Johnson's Works, v. 240. Johnson, in his Life of Pope (ib. viii. 274), speaks of Spence as 'a man whose learning was not very great, and whose mind was not very powerful. His criticism, however, was commonly just; what he thought he thought rightly; and his remarks were recommended by his coolness and candour.' See ante, iv. 9, 63.

[855] 'She was the only interpreter of Erse poetry that I could ever find.' Johnson's Works, ix. 134. See ante, p. 241.

[856] 'After a journey difficult and tedious, over rocks naked and valleys untracked, through a country of barrenness and solitude, we came, almost in the dark, to the sea-side, weary and dejected, having met with nothing but waters falling from the mountains that could raise any image of delight.' Piozzi Letters, i. 170. 'It is natural, in traversing this gloom of desolation, to inquire, whether something may not be done to give nature a more cheerful face.' Johnson's Works, ix. 136.

[857] Ante, p. 19.

[858] See ante, i. 521.

[859] See ante, p. 212.

[860] Sir William Blackstone says, in his Commentaries, that 'he cannot find that ever this custom prevailed in England;' and therefore he is of opinion that it could not have given rise to Borough-English. BOSWELL. 'I cannot learn that ever this custom prevailed in England, though it certainly did in Scotland (under the name of mercketa or marcheta), till abolished by Malcolm III.' Commentaries, ed. 1778, ii. 83. Sir H. Maine, in his Early History of Institutions, p. 222, writes:—'Other authors, as Blackstone tells us, explained it ["Borough English">[ by a supposed right of the Seigneur or lord, now very generally regarded as apocryphal, which raised a presumption of the eldest son's illegitimacy.'

[861] 'Macquarry was used to demand a sheep, for which he now takes a crown, by that inattention to the uncertain proportion between the value and the denomination of money, which has brought much disorder into Europe. A sheep has always the same power of supplying human wants, but a crown will bring, at one time more, at another less'. Johnson's Works, ix. 139.

[862] 'The house and the furniture are not always nicely suited. We were driven once, by missing a passage, to the hut of a gentleman, where, after a very liberal supper, when I was conducted to my chamber, I found an elegant bed of Indian cotton, spread with fine sheets. The accommodation was flattering; I undressed myself, and felt my feet in the mire. The bed stood upon the bare earth, which a long course of rain had softened to a puddle.' Works, ix. 98.

[863] Inchkenneth is a most beautiful little islet, of the most verdant green, while all the neighbouring shore of Greban, as well as the large islands of Colinsay and Ulva, are as black as heath and moss can make them. But Ulva has a good anchorage, and Inchkenneth is surrounded by shoals. It is now uninhabited. The ruins of the huts, in which Dr. Johnson was received by Sir Allan M'Lean, were still to be seen, and some tatters of the paper hangings were to be seen on the walls. Sir G. O. Paul was at Inchkenneth with the same party of which I was a member. [See Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iii. 285.] He seemed to suspect many of the Highland tales which he heard, but he showed most incredulity on the subject of Johnson's having been entertained in the wretched huts of which we saw the ruins. He took me aside, and conjured me to tell him the truth of the matter. 'This Sir Allan,' said he, 'was he a regular baronet, or was his title such a traditional one as you find in Ireland?' I assured my excellent acquaintance that, 'for my own part, I would have paid more respect to a knight of Kerry, or knight of Glynn; yet Sir Allan M'Lean was a regular baronet by patent;' and, having giving him this information, I took the liberty of asking him, in return, whether he would not in conscience prefer the worst cell in the jail at Gloucester (which he had been very active in overlooking while the building was going on) to those exposed hovels where Johnson had been entertained by rank and beauty. He looked round the little islet, and allowed Sir Allan had some advantage in exercising ground; but in other respects he thought the compulsory tenants of Gloucester had greatly the advantage. Such was his opinion of a place, concerning which Johnson has recorded that 'it wanted little which palaces could afford.' WALTER SCOTT.

[864] 'Sir Allan's affairs are in disorder by the fault of his ancestors, and while he forms some scheme for retrieving them he has retreated hither.' Piozzi Letters i. 172.

[865] By Francis Gastrell, Bishop of Chester, published in 1707.

[866] Travels through different cities of Germany, &c.,, by Alexander Drummond. Horace Walpole, on April 24, 1754 (Letters, ii. 381), mentions 'a very foolish vulgar book of travels, lately published by one Drummond, consul at Aleppo.'

[867] Physico-Theology; or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works of Creation. By William Derham, D.D., 1713. Voltaire, in Micromégas, ch. I, speaking of 'l'illustre vicaire Derham' says:—'Malheureusement, lui et ses imitateurs se trompent souvent dans l'exposition de ces merveilles; ils s'extasient sur la sagesse qui se montre dans l'ordre d'un phénomène et on découvre que ce phénomène est tout différent de ce qu'ils ont supposé; alors c'est ce nouvel ordre qui leur paraît un chef d'oeuvre de sagesse.'

[868] This work was published in 1774. Johnson said on March 20, 1776 (ante, ii. 447), 'that he believed Campbell's disappointment on account of the bad success of that work had killed him.'

[869] Johnson said of Campbell:—'I am afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years; but he never passes a church without pulling off his hat. This shows that he has good principles.' Ante, i. 418.

[870] New horse-shoeing Husbandry, by Jethro Tull, 1733.

[871] 'He owned he sometimes talked for victory.' Ante, iv. 111, and v. 17.

[872] 'They said that a great family had a bard and a senachi, who were the poet and historian of the house; and an old gentleman told me that he remembered one of each. Here was a dawn of intelligence.... Another conversation informed me that the same man was both bard and senachi. This variation discouraged me.... Soon after I was told by a gentleman, who is generally acknowledged the greatest master of Hebridian antiquities, that there had, indeed, once been both bards and senachies; and that senachi signified the man of talk, or of conversation; but that neither bard nor senachi had existed for some centuries.' Johnson's Works, ix. 109.

[873] See ante, iii. 41, 327

[874] 'Towards evening Sir Allan told us that Sunday never passed over him like another day. One of the ladies read, and read very well, the evening service;—"and Paradise was opened in the wild."' Piozzi Letters, i. 173. The quotation is from Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, l. 134:—

'You raised these hallowed walls; the desert smil'd, And Paradise was open'd in the wild.'

[875] He sent these verses to Boswell in 1775. Ante ii. 293.

[876] Boswell wrote to Johnson on Feb. 2, 1775, (ante, ii. 295):—'Lord Hailes bids me tell you he doubts whether—

"Legitimas faciunt pectora pura preces,"

be according to the rubrick, but that is your concern; for you know, he is a Presbyterian.'

[877] In Johnson's Works, i. 167, these lines are given with amendments and additions, mostly made by Johnson, but some, Mr. Croker believes, by Mr. Langton. In the following copy the variations are marked in italics.

INSULA KENNETHI, INTER HEBRIDAS. Parva quidem regio sed religione priorum Clara Caledonias panditur inter aquas. Voce ubi Cennethus populos domuisse feroces Dicitur, et vanos dedocuisse deos. Huc ego delatus placido per caerula cursu, Scire locus volui quid daret iste novi. Illic Leniades humili regnabat in aula, Leniades, magnis nobilitatus avis. Una duas cepit casa cum genitore puellas, Quas Amor undarum crederet esse deas. Nec tamen inculti gelidis latuere sub antris, Accola Danubii qualia saevus habet. Mollia non desunt vacuae solatia vitae Sive libros poscant otia, sive lyram. Fulserat illa dies, legis qua docta supernae Spes hominum et curas gens procul esse jubet. Ut precibus justas avertat numinis iras, Et summi accendat pectus amore boni. Ponti inter strepitus non sacri munera cultus Cessarunt, pietas hic quoque cura fuit. Nil opus est oeris sacra de turre sonantis Admonitu, ipsa suas nunciat hora vices. Quid, quod sacrifici versavit foemina libros? Sint pro legitimis pura labella sacris. Quo vagor ulterius? quod ubique requiritur hic est, Hic secura quies, hic et honestus amor.

Mr. Croker says of the third line from the end, that in a copy of these verses in Johnson's own hand which he had seen, 'Johnson had first written

Sunt pro legitimis pectora pura sacris.

He then wrote

Legitimas faciunt pura labella preces.

That line was erased, and the line as it stands in the Works is substituted in Mr. Langton's hand, as is also an alteration in the 16th line, velit into jubet.' Jubet however is in the copy as printed by Boswell. Mr. Langton edited some, if not all, of Johnson's Latin poems. (Ante, iv. 384.)

[878] 'Boswell, who is very pious, went into the chapel at night to perform his devotions, but came back in haste for fear of spectres.' Piozzi Letters, i. 173.

[879] Ante p. 169.

[880] John Gerves, or John the Giant, of whom Dr. Johnson relates a curious story; Works ix. 119.

[881] Lord Chatham in the House of Lords, on Nov. 22, 1770, speaking of 'the honest, industrious tradesman, who holds the middle rank, and has given repeated proofs that he prefers law and liberty to gold,' had said:—'I love that class of men. Much less would I be thought to reflect upon the fair merchant, whose liberal commerce is the prime source of national wealth. I esteem his occupation, and respect his character.' Parl. Hist. xvi. 1107.

[882] See ante, iii. 382.

[883] He was born in Nordland in Sweden, in 1736. In 1768 he and Mr. Banks accompanied Captain Cook in his first voyage round the world. He died in 1782. Knight's Eng. Cyclo. v. 578. Miss Burney wrote of him in 1780:—'My father has very exactly named him, in calling him a philosophical gossip.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 305. Horace Walpole the same year, just after the Gordon Riots, wrote (Letters, vii. 403):—'Who is secure against Jack Straw and a whirlwind? How I abominate Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander, who routed the poor Otaheitans out of the centre of the ocean, and carried our abominable passions amongst them! not even that poor little speck could escape European restlessness.' See ante ii. 148.

[884] Boswell tells this story again, ante, ii. 299. Mrs. Piozzi's account (Anec. p. 114) is evidently so inaccurate that it does not deserve attention; she herself admits that Beauclerk was truthful. In a marginal note on Wraxall's Memoirs, she says:—'Topham Beauclerk (wicked and profligate as he wished to be accounted), was yet a man of very strict veracity. Oh Lord! how I did hate that horrid Beauclerk!' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 348. Johnson testified to 'the correctness of Beauclerk's memory and the fidelity of his narrative.' Ante, ii. 405.

[885] 'Mr. Maclean of Col, having a very numerous family, has for some time past resided at Aberdeen, that he may superintend their education, and leaves the young gentleman, our friend, to govern his dominions with the full power of a Highland chief.' Johnson's Works, ix. 117.

[886] This is not spoken of hare-coursing, where the game is taken or lost before the dog gets out of wind; but in chasing deer with the great Highland greyhound, Col's exploit is feasible enough. WALTER SCOTT.

[887] See ante, pp. 45, III, for Monboddo's notion.

[888] Mme. Riccoboni in 1767 wrote to Garrick of the French:—'Un mensonge grossier les révolte. Si on voulait leur persuader que les Anglais vivent de grenouilles, meurent de faim, que leurs femmes sont barbouillées, et jurent par toutes les lettres de l'alphabet, ils leveraient les épaules, et s'écriraient, quel sot ose écrire ces misères-là? mais à Londres, diantre cela prend!' Garrick Corres. ii. 524.

[889] Just opposite to M'Quarrie's house the boat was swamped by the intoxication of the sailors, who had partaken too largely of M'Quarrie's wonted hospitality. WALTER SCOTT. Johnson wrote from Lichfield on June 13, 1775;—'There is great lamentation here for the death of Col. Lucy [Miss Porter] is of opinion that he was wonderfully handsome.' Piozzi Letters, i. 235. See ante, ii. 287.

[890] Iona.

[891] See ante, p. 237.

[892] See ante, 111. 229.

[893] Sir James Mackintosh says (Life, ii. 257):—'Dr. Johnson visited Iona without looking at Staffa, which lay in sight, with that indifference to natural objects, either of taste or scientific curiosity, which characterised him.' This is a fair enough sample of much of the criticism under which Johnson's reputation has suffered.

[894] Smollett in Humphry Clinker (Letter of Sept. 3) describes a Highland funeral. 'Our entertainer seemed to think it a disparagement to his family that not above a hundred gallons of whisky had been drunk upon such a solemn occasion.

[895] 'We then entered the boat again; the night came upon us; the wind rose; the sea swelled; and Boswell desired to be set on dry ground: we, however, pursued our navigation, and passed by several little islands in the silent solemnity of faint moon-shine, seeing little, and hearing only the wind and water.' Piozzi Letters, i. 176.

[896] Cicero De Finibus, ii. 32.

[897] I have lately observed that this thought has been elegantly expressed by Cowley:—

'Things which offend when present, and affright, In memory, well painted, move delight.' BOSWELL.

The lines are found in the Ode upon His Majesty's Restoration and Return, stanza 12. They may have been suggested by Virgil's lines—

'Revocate animos, maestumque timorem Mittite; forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit.'

Aeneid, i. 202.

[898] Had our Tour produced nothing else but this sublime passage, the world must have acknowledged that it was not made in vain. The present respectable President of the Royal Society was so much struck on reading it, that he clasped his hands together, and remained for some time in an attitude of silent admiration, BOSWELL. Boswell again quotes this passage (which is found in Johnson's Works, ix. 145), ante, iii. 173. The President was Sir Joseph Banks, Johnson says in Rasselas, ch. xi:—'That the supreme being may be more easily propitiated in one place than in another is the dream of idle superstition; but that some places may operate upon our own minds in an uncommon manner is an opinion which hourly experience will justify. He who supposes that his vices may be more successfully combated in Palestine will, perhaps, find himself mistaken, yet he may go thither without folly; he who thinks they will be more freely pardoned dishonours at once his reason and religion.'

[899] 'Sir Allan went to the headman of the island, whom fame, but fame delights in amplifying, represents as worth no less than fifty pounds. He was, perhaps, proud enough of his guests, but ill prepared for our entertainment; however he soon produced more provision than men not luxurious require.' Johnson's Works, ix. 146.

[900] An Account of the Isle of Man. With a voyage to I-Columb-Kill. By W. Sacheverell, Esq., late Governour of Man. 1702.

[901] 'He that surveys it [the church-yard] attended by an insular antiquary may be told where the kings of many nations are buried, and if he loves to soothe his imagination with the thoughts that naturally rise in places where the great and the powerful lie mingled with the dust, let him listen in submissive silence; for if he asks any questions his delight is at an end.' Johnson's Works, ix. 148.

[902] On quitting the island Johnson wrote: 'We now left those illustrious ruins, by which Mr. Boswell was much affected, nor would I willingly be thought to have looked upon them without some emotion.' Ib. p. 150.

[903] Psalm xc. 4.

[904] Boswell wrote on Nov. 9, 1767:—'I am always for fixing some period for my perfection as far as possible. Let it be when my account of Corsica is published; I shall then have a character which I must support.' Letters of Boswell, p. 122. Five weeks later he wrote:—'I have been as wild as ever;' and then comes a passage which the Editor has thought it needful to suppress. Ib.p.128.

[905] Boswell here speaks as an Englishman. He should have written 'a M'Ginnis.' See ante, p. 135, note 3.

[906] 'The fruitfulness of Iona is now its whole prosperity. The inhabitants are remarkably gross, and remarkably neglected; I know not if they are visited by any minister. The island, which was once the metropolis of learning and piety, has now no school for education, nor temple for worship, only two inhabitants that can speak English, and not one that can write or read.' Johnson's Works, ix. 149. Scott, who visited it in 1810, writes:—'There are many monuments of singular curiosity, forming a strange contrast to the squalid and dejected poverty of the present inhabitants.' Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, iii. 285. In 1814, on a second visit, he writes:—'Iona, the last time I saw it, seemed to me to contain the most wretched people I had anywhere seen. But either they have got better since I was here, or my eyes, familiarized with the wretchedness of Zetland and the Harris, are less shocked with that of Iona.' He found a schoolmaster there. Ib. iv. 324.

[907] Johnson's Jacobite friend, Dr. King (ante, i. 279), says of Pulteney, on his being made Earl of Bath:—'He deserted the cause of his country; he betrayed his friends and adherents; he ruined his character, and from a most glorious eminence sunk down to a degree of contempt. The first time Sir Robert (who was now Earl of Orford) met him in the House of Lords, he threw out this reproach:—"My Lord Bath, you and I are now two as insignificant men as any in England." In which he spoke the truth of my Lord Bath, but not of himself. For my Lord Orford was consulted by the ministers to the last day of his life.' King's Anec. p. 43.

[908] See ante, i. 431, and iii. 326.

[909] 'Sir Robert Walpole detested war. This made Dr. Johnson say of him, "He was the best minister this country ever had, as, if we would have let him (he speaks of his own violent faction), he would have kept the country in perpetual peace."' Seward's Biographiana, p. 554. See ante, i. 131.

[910] See ante, iii. Appendix C.

[911] I think it incumbent on me to make some observation on this strong satirical sally on my classical companion, Mr. Wilkes. Reporting it lately from memory, in his presence, I expressed it thus:—'They knew he would rob their shops, if he durst; they knew he would debauch their daughters, if he could;' which, according to the French phrase, may be said renchérir on Dr. Johnson; but on looking into my Journal, I found it as above, and would by no means make any addition. Mr. Wilkes received both readings with a good humour that I cannot enough admire. Indeed both he and I (as, with respect to myself, the reader has more than once had occasion to observe in the course of this Journal,) are too fond of a bon mot, not to relish it, though we should be ourselves the object of it.

Let me add, in justice to the gentleman here mentioned, that at a subsequent period, he was elected chief magistrate of London [in 1774], and discharged the duties of that high office with great honour to himself, and advantage to the city. Some years before Dr. Johnson died, I was fortunate enough to bring him and Mr. Wilkes together; the consequence of which was, that they were ever afterwards on easy and not unfriendly terms. The particulars I shall have great pleasure in relating at large in my Life of Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL. In the copy of Boswell's Letter to the People of Scotland in the British Museum is entered in Boswell's own hand—

'Comes jucundus in via pro vehiculo est.

To John Wilkes, Esq.: as pleasant a companion as ever lived. From the Author.

—will my Wilkes retreat, And see, once seen before, that ancient seat, etc.'

See ante, iii. 64, 183; iv. 101, 224, note 2.

[912] See ante, iv. 199.

[913] Our afternoon journey was through a country of such gloomy desolation that Mr. Boswell thought no part of the Highlands equally terrifick.' Johnson's Works, ix. 150.

[914] Johnson describes Lochbuy as 'a true Highland laird, rough and haughty, and tenacious of his dignity: who, hearing my name, inquired whether I was of the Johnstons of Glencoe (sic) or of Ardnamurchan.' Ib.

[915] Boswell totally misapprehended Lochbuy's meaning. There are two septs of the powerful clan of M'Donaid, who are called Mac-Ian, that is John's-son; and as Highlanders often translate their names when they go to the Lowlands,—as Gregor-son for Mac-Gregor, Farquhar-son for Mac-Farquhar,—Lochbuy supposed that Dr. Johnson might be one of the Mac-Ians of Ardnamurchan, or of Glencro. Boswell's explanation was nothing to the purpose. The Johnstons are a clan distinguished in Scottish border history, and as brave as any Highland clan that ever wore brogues; but they lay entirely out of Lochbuy's knowledge—nor was he thinking of them. WALTER SCOTT.

[916] This maxim, however, has been controverted. See Blackstone's Commentaries, vol. ii. p. 291; and the authorities there quoted. BOSWELL. 'Blackstone says:—From these loose authorities, which Fitzherbert does not hesitate to reject as being contrary to reason, the maxim that a man shall not stultify himself hath been handed down as settled law; though later opinions, feeling the inconvenience of the rule, have in many points endeavoured to restrain it.' Ib. p. 292.

[917] Begging pardon of the Doctor and his conductor, I have often seen and partaken of cold sheep's head at as good breakfast-tables as ever they sat at. This protest is something in the manner of the late Culrossie, who fought a duel for the honour of Aberdeen butter. I have passed over all the Doctor's other reproaches upon Scotland, but the sheep's head I will defend totis viribus. Dr. Johnson himself must have forgiven my zeal on this occasion; for if, as he says, dinner be the thing of which a man thinks oftenest during the day, breakfast must be that of which he thinks first in the morning. WALTER SCOTT. I do not know where Johnson says this. Perhaps Scott was thinking of a passage in Mrs. Piozzi's Anec. p. 149, where she writes that he said: 'A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of any thing than he does of his dinner.'

[918] A horrible place it was. Johnson describes it (Works, ix. 152) as 'a deep subterraneous cavity, walled on the sides, and arched on the top, into which the descent is through a narrow door, by a ladder or a rope.'

[919] See ante, p. 177.

[920] Sir Allan M'Lean, like many Highland chiefs, was embarrassed in his private affairs, and exposed to unpleasant solicitations from attorneys, called, in Scotland, writers (which indeed was the chief motive of his retiring to Inchkenneth). Upon one occasion he made a visit to a friend, then residing at Carron lodge, on the banks of the Carron, where the banks of that river are studded with pretty villas: Sir Allan, admiring the landscape, asked his friend, whom that handsome seat belonged to. 'M—-, the writer to the signet,' was the reply. 'Umph!' said Sir Allan, but not with an accent of assent, 'I mean that other house.' 'Oh ! that belongs to a very honest fellow Jamie—-, also a writer to the signet.' 'Umph!' said the Highland chief of M'Lean with more emphasis than before, 'And yon smaller house?' 'That belongs to a Stirling man; I forget his name, but I am sure he is a writer too; for—-.' Sir Allan who had recoiled a quarter of a circle backward at every response, now wheeled the circle entire and turned his back on the landscape, saying, 'My good friend, I must own you have a pretty situation here; but d—n your neighbourhood.' WALTER SCOTT.

[921] Loch Awe.

[922] 'Pope's talent lay remarkably in what one may naturally enough term the condensation of thoughts. I think no other English poet ever brought so much sense into the same number of lines with equal smoothness, ease, and poetical beauty. Let him who doubts of this peruse his Essay on Man with attention.' Shenstone's Essays on Men and Manners. [Works, 4th edit. ii. 159.] 'He [Gray] approved an observation of Shenstone, that "Pope had the art of condensing a thought."' Nicholls' Reminiscences of Gray, p. 37. And Swift [in his Lines on the death of Dr. Swift], himself a great condenser, says—

'In Pope I cannot read a line But with a sigh I wish it mine; When he can in one couplet fix More sense than I can do in six.' P. CUNNINGHAM.

[923] He is described by Walpole in his Letters, viii. 5.

[924] 'The night came on while we had yet a great part of the way to go, though not so dark but that we could discern the cataracts which poured down the hills on one side, and fell into one general channel, that ran with great violence on the other. The wind was loud, the rain was heavy, and the whistling of the blast, the fall of the shower, the rush of the cataracts, and the roar of the torrent, made a nobler chorus of the rough musick of nature than it had ever been my chance to hear before.' Johnson's Works, ix. 155. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'All the rougher powers of nature except thunder were in motion, but there was no danger. I should have been sorry to have missed any of the inconveniencies, to have had more light or less rain, for their co-operation crowded the scene and filled the mind.' Piozzi Letters, i. 177.

[925] I never tasted whiskey except once for experiment at the inn in Inverary, when I thought it preferable to any English malt brandy. It was strong, but not pungent, and was free from the empyreumatick taste or smell. What was the process I had no opportunity of inquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant.' Johnson's Works, ix. 52. Smollett, medical man though he was, looked upon whisky as anything but poison. 'I am told that it is given with great success to infants, as a cordial in the confluent small-pox.' Humphry Clinker. Letter of Sept. 3.

[926] Regale in this sense is not in Johnson's Dictionary. It was, however, a favourite word at this time. Thus, Mrs. Piozzi, in her Journey through France, ii. 297, says:—'A large dish of hot chocolate thickened with bread and cream is a common afternoon's regale here.' Miss Burney often uses the word.

[927] Boswell, in answering Garrick's letter seven months later, improved on this comparison. 'It was,' he writes, 'a pine-apple of the finest flavour, which had a high zest indeed among the heath-covered mountains of Scotia.' Garrick Corres. i. 621.

[928] See ante, p. 115.

[929] See ante, i. 97.

[930] 'Though Birnam wood be come to Dunsinane.' Macbeth, act v. sc. 8.

[931]

'From his first entrance to the closing scene Let him one equal character maintain.' FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. l. 126.

[932] I took the liberty of giving this familiar appellation to my celebrated friend, to bring in a more lively manner to his remembrance the period when he was Dr. Johnson's pupil. BOSWELL.

[933] See ante, p. 129.

[934] Boswell is here quoting the Preface to the third edition of his Corsica:—'Whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy.'

[935] See ante, i. 148, and post, Nov. 21.

[936] I have suppressed my friend's name from an apprehension of wounding his sensibility; but I would not withhold from my readers a passage which shews Mr. Garrick's mode of writing as the Manager of a Theatre, and contains a pleasing trait of his domestick life. His judgment of dramatick pieces, so far as concerns their exhibition on the stage, must be allowed to have considerable weight. But from the effect which a perusal of the tragedy here condemned had upon myself, and from the opinions of some eminent criticks, I venture to pronounce that it has much poetical merit; and its authour has distinguished himself by several performances which shew that the epithet poetaster was, in the present instance, much misapplied. BOSWELL. Johnson mentioned this quarrel between Garrick and the poet on March 25, 1773 (Piozzi Letters, i. 80). 'M—— is preparing a whole pamphlet against G——, and G—— is, I suppose, collecting materials to confute M——.' M—— was Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad and author of the Ballad of Cumnor Hall (ante, ii. 182). Had it not been for this 'poetaster,' Kenilworth might never have been written. Scott, in the preface, tells how 'the first stanza of Cunmor Hall had a peculiar species of enchantment for his youthful ear, the force of which is not even now entirely spent.' The play that was refused was the Siege of Marseilles. Ever since the success of Hughes's Siege of Damascus 'a siege had become a popular title' (ante, iii. 259, note 1).

[937] She could only have been away for the day; for in 1776 Garrick wrote:—'As I have not left Mrs. Garrick one day since we were married, near twenty-eight years, I cannot now leave her.' Garrick Corres. ii. 150.

[938] Dr. Morell once entered the school-room at Winchester College, 'in which some junior boys were writing their exercises, one of whom, struck no less with his air and manner than with the questions he put to them, whispered to his school-fellows, "Is he not a fine old Grecian?" The Doctor, overhearing this, turned hastily round and exclaimed, "I am indeed an old Grecian, my little man. Did you never see my head before my Thesaurus?"' The Praepostors, learning the dignity of their visitor, in a most respectful manner showed him the College. Wooll's Life of Dr. Warton, p. 329. Mason writing to Horace Walpole about some odes, says:—'They are so lopped and mangled, that they are worse now than the productions of Handel's poet, Dr. Morell.' Walpole's Letters, v. 420. Morell compiled the words for Handel's Oratorios.

[939] Ante, i. 148.

[940] I doubt whether any other instance can be found of love being sent to Johnson.

[941] The passage begins:—'A servant or two from a revering distance cast many a wishful look, and condole their honoured master in the language of sighs.' Hervey's Meditations, ed. 1748, i. 40.

[942] Ib. ii. 84.

[943] The Meditation was perhaps partly suggested by Swift's Meditation upon a Broomstick. Swift's Works (1803), iii. 275.

[944] Thomas Burnet of the Charterhouse, in his Sacred Theory of the Earth, ed. 1722, i. 85.

[945] See ante, i. 476, and ii. 73.

[946] Elizabeth Gunning, celebrated (like her sister, Lady Coventry) for her personal charms, had been previously Duchess of Hamilton, and was mother of Douglas, Duke of Hamilton, the competitor for the Douglas property with the late Lord Douglas: she was, of course, prejudiced against Boswell, who had shewn all the bustling importance of his character in the Douglas cause, and it was said, I know not on what authority, that he headed the mob which broke the windows of some of the judges, and of Lord Auchinleck, his father, in particular. WALTER SCOTT. See ante, ii. 50.

[947] See ante, i. 408, and ii. 329.

[948] She married the Earl of Derby, and was the great-grandmother of the present Earl. Burke's Peerage.

[949] See ante, iv. 248.

[950] Lord Macaulay's grandfather, Trevelyan's Macaulay, i. 6.

[951] See ante, p. 118.

[952] On reflection, at the distance of several years, I wonder that my venerable fellow-traveller should have read this passage without censuring my levity. BOSWELL.

[953] Ante, p. 151.

[954] See ante, i. 240.

[955] As this book is now become very scarce, I shall subjoin the title, which is curious:—The Doctrines of a Middle State between Death and the Resurrection: Of Prayers for the Dead: And the Necessity of Purification; plainly proved from the holy Scriptures, and the Writings of the Fathers of the Primitive Church: and acknowledged by several learned Fathers and Great Divines of the Church of England and others since the Reformation. To which is added, an Appendix concerning the Descent of the Soul of Christ into Hell, while his Body lay in the Grave. Together with the Judgment of the Reverend Dr. Hickes concerning this Book, so far as relates to a Middle State, particular Judgment, and Prayers for the Dead as it appeared in the first Edition. 'And a Manuscript of the Right Reverend Bishop Overall upon the Subject of a Middle State, and never before printed. Also, a Preservative against several of the Errors of the Roman Church, in six small Treatises. By the Honourable Archibald Campbell. Folio, 1721. BOSWELL.

[956] The release gained for him by Lord Townshend must have been from his last imprisonment after the accession of George I; for, as Mr. Croker points out, Townshend was not Secretary of State till 1714.

[957] See ante, iv. 286.

[958] He was the grandson of the first Marquis, who was beheaded by Charles II in 1661, and nephew of the ninth Earl, who was beheaded by James II in 1685. Burke's Peerage. He died on June 15, 1744, according to the Gent. Mag. xiv. 339; where he is described as 'the consecrated Archbishop of St. Andrews.' See ante, ii. 216.

[959] George Hickes, 1642-1715. A non-juror, consecrated in 1693 suffragan bishop of Thetford by three of the deprived non-juror bishops. Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xvii. 450. Burnet (Hist. of his own Time, iv. 303) describes him as 'an ill-tempered man, who was now [1712] at the head of the Jacobite party, and who had in several books promoted a notion, that there was a proper sacrifice made in the Eucharist.' Boswell mentions him, ante, iv. 287.

[960] See ante, ii. 458.

[961] This must be a mistake for He died.

[962] 'It is generally supposed that life is longer in places where there are few opportunities of luxury; but I found no instance here of extraordinary longevity. A cottager grows old over his oaten cakes like a citizen at a turtle feast. He is, indeed, seldom incommoded by corpulence, Poverty preserves him from sinking under the burden of himself, but he escapes no other injury of time.' Johnson's Works, ix. 81.

[963] Lady Lucy Graham, daughter of the second Duke of Montrose, and wife of Mr. Douglas, the successful claimant: she died in 1780, whence Boswell calls her 'poor Lady Lucy.' CROKER

[964] Her first husband was the sixth Duke of Hamilton and Brandon. On his death she refused the Duke of Bridgewater. She was the mother of four dukes—two of Hamilton and two of Argyle. Her sister married the Earl of Coventry. Walpole's Letters, ii. 259, note. Walpole, writing on Oct. 9, 1791, says that their story was amazing. 'The two beautiful sisters were going on the stage, when they were at once exalted almost as high as they could be, were Countessed and double-Duchessed.' Ib. ix. 358. Their maiden name was Gunning. The Duchess of Argyle was alive when Boswell published his Journal.

[965] See ante, iv. 397, and v. 210. It was Lord Macaulay's grandfather who was thus reprimanded. Mr. Trevelyan remarks (Life of Macaulay, i. 7), 'When we think what well-known ground this [subject] was to Lord Macaulay, it is impossible to suppress a wish that the great talker had been at hand to avenge his grandfather.' The result might well have been, however, that the great talker would have been reduced to silence—one of those brilliant flashes of silence for which Sydney Smith longed, but longed in vain.

[966] See ante, ii. 264, note 2.

[967] See ante, iv. 8, for his use of 'O brave!'

[968] Having mentioned, more than once, that my Journal was perused by Dr. Johnson, I think it proper to inform my readers that this is the last paragraph which he read. BOSWELL. He began to read it on August 18 (ante, p. 58, note 2).

[969] See ante, ii. 320.

[970] Act i. sc. 1. The best known passage in Douglas is the speech beginning 'My name is Norval.' Act ii. The play affords a few quotations more or less known, as:—

'I found myself As women wish to be who love their lords.' Act i. 'He seldom errs Who thinks the worse he can of womankind.' Act iii. 'Honour, sole judge and umpire of itself.' Act iv. 'Unknown I die; no tongue shall speak of me. Some noble spirits, judging by themselves, May yet conjecture what I might have proved, And think life only wanting to my fame.' Act v. 'An honest guardian, arbitrator just Be thou; thy station deem a sacred trust. With thy good sword maintain thy country's cause; In every action venerate its laws: The lie suborn'd if falsely urg'd to swear, Though torture wait thee, torture firmly bear; To forfeit honour, think the highest shame, And life too dearly bought by loss of fame; Nor to preserve it, with thy virtue give That for which only man should wish to live.'

[Satires, viii. 79.]

For this and the other translations to which no signature is affixed, I am indebted to the friend whose observations are mentioned in the notes, pp. 78 and 399. BOSWELL. Sir Walter Scott says, 'probably Dr. Hugh Blair.' I have little doubt that it was Malone. 'One of the best criticks of our age,' Boswell calls this friend in the other two passages. This was a compliment Boswell was likely to pay to Malone, to whom he dedicated this book. Malone was a versifier. See Prior's Malone, p. 463.

[971] I am sorry that I was unlucky in my quotation. But notwithstanding the acuteness of Dr. Johnson's criticism, and the power of his ridicule, The Tragedy of Douglas sill continues to be generally and deservedly admired. BOSWELL. Johnson's scorn was no doubt returned, for Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 295) says of Home:—'as John all his life had a thorough contempt for such as neglected his poetry, he treated all who approved of his works with a partiality which more than approached to flattery.' Carlyle tells (pp. 301-305) how Home started for London with his tragedy in one pocket of his great coat and his clean shirt and night-cap in the other, escorted on setting out by six or seven Merse ministers. 'Garrick, after reading his play, returned it as totally unfit for the stage.' It was brought out first in Edinburgh, and in the year 1757 in Covent Garden, where it had great success. 'This tragedy,' wrote Carlyle forty-five years later, 'still maintains its ground, has been more frequently acted, and is more popular than any tragedy in the English language.' Ib. p. 325. Hannah More recorded in 1786 (Memoirs, ii. 22), 'I had a quarrel with Lord Monboddo one night lately. He said Douglas was a better play than Shakespeare could have written. He was angry and I was pert. Lord Mulgrave sat spiriting me up, but kept out of the scrape himself, and Lord Stormont seemed to enjoy the debate, but was shabby enough not to help me out.'

[972] See ante, ii. 230, note 1.

[973] See ante, p. 318.

[974] See ante, iii. 54

[975] See ante, p. 356.

[976] See ante, iii. 241, note 2.

[977] As a remarkable instance of his negligence, I remember some years ago to have found lying loose in his study, and without the cover, which contained the address, a letter to him from Lord Thurlow, to whom he had made an application as Chancellor, in behalf of a poor literary friend. It was expressed in such terms of respect for Dr. Johnson, that, in my zeal for his reputation, I remonstrated warmly with him on his strange inattention, and obtained his permission to take a copy of it; by which probably it has been preserved, as the original I have reason to suppose is lost. BOSWELL. See ante, iii. 441.

[978] 'The islets, which court the gazer at a distance, disgust him at his approach, when he finds, instead of soft lawns and shady thickets, nothing more than uncultivated ruggedness.' Johnson's Works, ix. 156.

[979] See ante, i. 200, and iv. 179.

[980] In these arguments he says:—'Reason and truth will prevail at last. The most learned of the Scottish doctors would now gladly admit a form of prayer, if the people would endure it. The zeal or rage of congregations has its different degrees. In some parishes the Lord's Prayer is suffered: in others it is still rejected as a form; and he that should make it part of his supplication would be suspected of heretical pravity.' Johnson's Works, ix. 102. See ante, p. 121.

[981] 'A very little above the source of the Leven, on the lake, stands the house of Cameron, belonging to Mr. Smollett, so embosomed in an oak wood that we did not see it till we were within fifty yards of the door.' Humphry Clinker, Letter of Aug. 28.

[982] Boswell himself was at times one of 'those absurd visionaries.' Ante, ii. 73.

[983] See ante, p. 117.

[984] Lord Kames wrote one, which is published in Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ed. 1825, i. 280. In it he bids the traveller to 'indulge the hope of a Monumental Pillar.'

[985] See ante, iii. 85; and v. 154.

[986] This address does not offend against the rule that Johnson lays down in his Essay on Epitaphs (Works, v. 263), where he says:—'It is improper to address the epitaph to the passenger.' The impropriety consists in such an address in a church. He however did break through his rule in his epitaph in Streatham Church on Mr. Thrale, where he says:—'Abi viator.' Ib. i. 154.

[987] In Humphry Clinker (Letter of Aug. 28), which was published a few months before Smollett's death, is his Ode on Leven-Water.

[988] The epitaph which has been inscribed on the pillar erected on the banks of the Leven, in honour of Dr. Smollett, is as follows. The part which was written by Dr. Johnson, it appears, has been altered; whether for the better, the reader will judge. The alterations are distinguished by Italicks.

Siste viator! Si lepores ingeniique venam benignam, Si morum callidissimum pictorem, Unquam es miratus, Immorare paululum memoriae TOBIAE SMOLLET, M.D. Viri virtutibus hisce Quas in homine et cive Et laudes et imiteris, Haud mediocriter ornati: Qui in literis variis versatus, Postquam felicitate sibi propria Sese posteris commendaverat, Morte acerba raptus Anno aetatis 51, Eheu: quam procul a patria! Prope Liburni portum in Italia, Jacet sepultres. Tali tantoque viro, patrueli suo, Cui in decursu lampada Se potius tradidisse decuit, Hanc Columnam, Amoris, eheu! inane monumentum In ipsis Leviniae ripis, Quas versiculis sub exitu vitae illustratas Primis infans vagitibus personuit, Ponendam curavit JACOBUS SMOLLET de Bonhill. Abi et reminiscere, Hoc quidem honore, Non modo defuncti memoriae, Verum etiam exemplo, prospectum esse; Aliis enim, si modo digni sint, Idem erit virtutis praemium! BOSWELL.

[989] Baretti told Malone that, having proposed to teach Johnson Italian, they went over a few stanzas of Ariosto, and Johnson then grew weary. 'Some years afterwards Baretti said he would give him another lesson, but added, "I suppose you have forgotten what we read before." "Who forgets, Sir?" said Johnson, and immediately repeated three or four stanzas of the poem.' Baretti took down the book to see if it had been lately opened, but the leaves were covered with dust. Prior's Malone, p. 160. Johnson had learnt to translate Italian before he knew Baretti. Ante, i. 107, 156. For other instances of his memory, see ante, i. 39, 48; iii. 318, note 1; and iv. 103, note 2.

[990] For sixty-eight days he received no letter—from August 21 (ante, p. 84) to October 28.

[991] Among these professors might possibly have been either Burke or Hume had not a Mr. Clow been the successful competitor in 1751 as the successor to Adam Smith in the chair of Logic. 'Mr. Clow has acquired a curious title to fame, from the greatness of the man to whom he succeeded, and of those over whom he was triumphant.' J.H. Burton's Hume, i. 351.

[992] Dr. Reid, the author of the Inquiry into the Human Mind, had in 1763 succeeded Adam Smith as Professor of Moral Philosophy. Dugald Stewart was his pupil the winter before Johnson's visit. Stewart's Reid, ed. 1802, p. 38.

[993] See ante, iv. 186.

[994] Mr. Boswell has chosen to omit, for reasons which will be presently obvious, that Johnson and Adam Smith met at Glasgow; but I have been assured by Professor John Miller that they did so, and that Smith, leaving the party in which he had met Johnson, happened to come to another company where Miller was. Knowing that Smith had been in Johnson's society, they were anxious to know what had passed, and the more so as Dr. Smith's temper seemed much ruffled. At first Smith would only answer, 'He's a brute—he's a brute;' but on closer examination, it appeared that Johnson no sooner saw Smith than he attacked him for some point of his famous letter on the death of Hume (ante, p. 30). Smith vindicated the truth of his statement. 'What did Johnson say?' was the universal inquiry. 'Why, he said,' replied Smith, with the deepest impression of resentment, 'he said, you lie!' 'And what did you reply?' 'I said, you are a son of a———!' On such terms did these two great moralists meet and part, and such was the classical dialogue between two great teachers of philosophy. WALTER SCOTT. This story is erroneous in the particulars of the time, place, and subject of the alleged quarrel; for Hume did not die for [nearly] three years after Johnson's only visit to Glasgow; nor was Smith then there. Johnson, previous to 1763 (see ante, i. 427, and iii. 331), had an altercation with Adam Smith at Mr. Strahan's table. This may have been the foundation of Professor Miller's misrepresentation. But, even then, nothing of this offensive kind could have passed, as, if it had, Smith could certainly not have afterwards solicited admission to the Club of which Johnson was the leader, to which he was admitted 1st Dec. 1775, and where he and Johnson met frequently on civil terms. I, therefore, disbelieve the whole story. CROKER.

[995] 'His appearance,' says Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 68), 'was that of an ascetic, reduced by fasting and prayer.' See ante, p. 68.

[996] See ante, ii. 27, 279.

[997] See ante, p. 92.

[998] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'I was not much pleased with any of the Professors.' Piozzi Letters, i. 199. Mme. D'Arblay says:— 'Whenever Dr. Johnson did not make the charm of conversation he only marred it by his presence, from the general fear he incited, that if he spoke not, he might listen; and that if he listened, he might reprove.' Memoirs of Dr. Burney, ii. 187. See ante, ii. 63

[999] Boswell has not let us see this caution. When Robertson first came in, 'there began,' we are told, 'some animated dialogue' (ante, p.32). The next day we read that 'he fluently harangued to Dr. Johnson' (ante, p.43).

[1000] See ante, iii. 366.

[1001] He was Ambassador at Paris in the beginning of the reign of George I., and Commander-in-Chief in 1744. Lord Mahon's England, ed. 1836, i. 201 and iii. 275.

[1002] The unwilling gratitude of base mankind. POPE. [Imitations of Horace, 2 Epis. i. 14.] BOSWELL.

[1003] Dr. Franklin (Memoirs, i. 246-253) gives a curious account of Lord Loudoun, who was general in America about the year 1756. 'Indecision,' he says, 'was one of the strongest features of his character.' He kept back the packet-boats from day to day because he could not make up his mind to send his despatches. At one time there were three boats waiting, one of which was kept with cargo and passengers on board three months beyond its time. Pitt at length recalled him, because 'he never heard from him, and could not know what he was doing.'

[1004] See Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xi. 161 for an account of a controversy about the identity of this writer with an historian of the same name.

[1005] He had paid but little attention to his own rule. See ante, ii. 119.

[1006] 'I believe that for all the castles which I have seen beyond the Tweed, the ruins yet remaining of some one of those which the English built in Wales would supply Materials.' Johnson's Works, ix. 152.

[1007] See ante, p. 40, note 4.

[1008] Johnson described her as 'a lady who for many years gave the laws of elegance to Scotland.' Piozzi Letters, i. 200. Allan Ramsay dedicated to her his Gentle Shepherd, and W. Hamilton, of Bangour, wrote to her verses on the presentation of Ramsay's poem. Hamilton's Poems, p. 23.

[1009] See ante, ii. 66, and iii. 188.

[1010] 'She called Boswell the boy: "yes, Madam," said I, "we will send him to school." "He is already," said she, "in a good school;" and expressed her hope of his improvement. At last night came, and I was sorry to leave her.' Piozzi Letters, i. 200. See ante, iii. 366.

[1011] See ante, pp. 318, 362.

[1012] Burns, who was in his fifteenth year, was at this time living at Ayr, about twelve miles away. When later on he moved to Mauchline, he and Boswell became much nearer neighbours.

[1013] He had, however, married again. Ante, ii. 140, note I. It is curious that Boswell in this narrative does not mention his step-mother.

[1014] 'Asper Incolumi gravitate jocum tentavit.' 'Though rude his mirth, yet laboured to maintain The solemn grandeur of the tragic scene.' FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet. l. 221.

[1015] See ante, iii. 65, and v. 97.

[1016] See ante, iv. 163, 241.

[1017] Johnson (Works, vii. 425) says of Addison's dedication of the opera of Rosamond to the Duchess of Marlborough, that 'it was an instance of servile absurdity, to be exceeded only by Joshua Barnes's dedication of a Greek Anacreon to the Duke.' For Barnes see ante, iii. 284, and iv. 19.

[1018] William Baxter, the editor of Anacreon, was the nephew of Richard Baxter, the nonconformist divine.

[1019] He says of Auchinleck (Works, ix. 158) that 'like all the western side of Scotland, it is incommoded by very frequent rain.' 'In all September we had, according to Boswell's register, only one day and a half of fair weather; and in October perhaps not more.' Piozzi Letters, i. 182.

[1020] 'By-the-bye,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, 'I am far from being of the number of those angry Scotsmen who imputed to Johnson's national prejudices all or a great part of the report he has given of our country in his Voyage to the Hebrides. I remember the Highlands ten or twelve years later, and no one can conceive of 'how much that could have been easily remedied travellers had to complain.' Croker Corres. ii. 34

[1021] 'Of these islands it must be confessed, that they have not many allurements but to the mere lover of naked nature. The inhabitants are thin, provisions are scarce, and desolation and penury give little pleasure.' Johnson's Works, ix. 153. In an earlier passage (p. 138), in describing a rough ride in Mull, he says:—'We were now long enough acquainted with hills and heath to have lost the emotion that they once raised, whether pleasing or painful, and had our minds employed only on our own fatigue.'

[1022] See ante, ii. 225.

[1023] In like manner Wesley said of Rousseau:—'Sure a more consummate coxcomb never saw the sun.... He is a cynic all over. So indeed is his brother-infidel, Voltaire; and well-nigh as great a coxcomb.' Wesley's Journal,, ed. 1830, iii. 386.

[1024] This gentleman, though devoted to the study of grammar and dialecticks, was not so absorbed in it as to be without a sense of pleasantry, or to be offended at his favourite topicks being treated lightly. I one day met him in the street, as I was hastening to the House of Lords, and told him, I was sorry I could not stop, being rather too late to attend an appeal of the Duke of Hamilton against Douglas. 'I thought (said he) their contest had been over long ago.' I answered, 'The contest concerning Douglas's filiation was over long ago; but the contest now is, who shall have the estate.' Then, assuming the air of 'an ancient sage philosopher,' I proceeded thus: 'Were I to predicate concerning him, I should say, the contest formerly was, What is he? The contest now is, What has he?'—'Right, (replied Mr. Harris, smiling,) you have done with quality, and have got into quantity.' BOSWELL.

[1025] Most likely Sir A. Macdonald. Ante, p. 148.

[1026] Boswell wrote on March 18,1775:—'Mr. Johnson, when enumerating our Club, observed of some of us, that they talked from books,—Langton in particular. "Garrick," he said, "would talk from books, if he talked seriously." "I," said he, "do not talk from books; you do not talk from books." This was a compliment to my originality; but I am afraid I have not read books enough to be able to talk from them.' Letters of Boswell, p. 181. See ante, ii. 360, where Johnson said to Boswell:— 'I don't believe you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable yourself to borrow more;' and i. 105, where he described 'a man of a great deal of knowledge of the world, fresh from life, not strained through books.'

[1027] 'Lord Auchinleck has built a house of hewn stone, very stately and durable, and has advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his tenants. I was, however, less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old castle.' Johnson's Works, ix. 159. 'The house is scarcely yet finished, but very magnificent and very convenient.' Piozzi Letters, i. 201. See ante, i. 462.

[1028] See ante, ii. 413, and v. 91.

[1029] The relation, it should seem, was remote even for Scotland. Their common ancestor was Robert Bruce, some sixteen generations back. Boswell's mother's grandmother was a Bruce of the Earl of Kincardine's family, and so also was his father's mother. Rogers's Boswelliana, pp. 4, 5.

[1030] He refers to Johnson's pension, which was given nearly two years after George Ill's accession. Ante, i. 372.

[1031] Ante, p. 51.

[1032] He repeated this advice in 1777. Ante, iii. 207.

[1033] 'Of their black cattle some are without horns, called by the Scots humble cows, as we call a bee, an humble bee, that wants a sting. Whether this difference be specifick, or accidental, though we inquired with great diligence, we could not be informed.' Johnson's Works, ix. 78.

Johnson, in his Dictionary, gives the right derivation of humble-bee, from hum and bee. The word Humble-cow is found in Guy Mannering, ed. 1860, iii. 91:—'"Of a surety," said Sampson, "I deemed I heard his horse's feet." "That," said John, with a broad grin, "was Grizzel chasing the humble-cow out of the close."'

[1034] 'Even the cattle have not their usual beauty or noble head.' Church and Brodribb's Tacitus.

[1035] 'The peace you seek is here—where is it not? If your own mind be equal to its lot.' CROKER. Horace, I Epistles, xi. 29.

[1036] Horace, I Epistles, xviii. 112.

[1037] This and the next paragraph are not in the first edition. The paragraph that follows has been altered so as to hide the fact that the minister spoken of was Mr. Dun. Originally it stood:—'Mr. Dun, though a man of sincere good principles as a presbyterian divine, discovered,' &c. First edition, p. 478.

[1038] See ante, p. 120.

[1039] Old Lord Auchinleck was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient family; and, moreover, he was a strict presbyterian and Whig of the old Scottish cast. This did not prevent his being a terribly proud aristocrat; and great was the contempt he entertained and expressed for his son James, for the nature of his friendships and the character of the personages of whom he was engoué one after another. 'There's nae hope for Jamie, mon,' he said to a friend. 'Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, mon? He's done wi' Paoli—he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon?' Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. 'A dominie, mon—an auld dominie: he keeped a schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy.' Probably if this had been reported to Johnson, he would have felt it more galling, for he never much liked to think of that period of his life [ante, i.97, note 2]; it would have aggravated his dislike of Lord Auchinleck's Whiggery and presbyterianism. These the old lord carried to such a height, that once, when a countryman came in to state some justice business, and being required to make his oath, declined to do so before his lordship, because he was not a covenanted magistrate. 'Is that a'your objection, mon?' said the judge; 'come your ways in here, and we'll baith of us tak the solemn league and covenant together.' The oath was accordingly agreed and sworn to by both, and I dare say it was the last time it ever received such homage. It may be surmised how far Lord Auchinleck, such as he is here described, was likely to suit a high Tory and episcopalian like Johnson. As they approached Auchinleck, Boswell conjured Johnson by all the ties of regard, and in requital of the services he had rendered him upon his tour, that he would spare two subjects in tenderness to his father's prejudices; the first related to Sir John Pringle, president of the Royal Society, about whom there was then some dispute current: the second concerned the general question of Whig and Tory. Sir John Pringle, as Boswell says, escaped, but the controversy between Tory and Covenanter raged with great fury, and ended in Johnson's pressing upon the old judge the question, what good Cromwell, of whom he had said something derogatory, had ever done to his country; when, after being much tortured, Lord Auchinleck at last spoke out, 'God, Doctor! he gart kings ken that they had a lith in their neck'—he taught kings they had a joint in their necks. Jamie then set to mediating between his father and the philosopher, and availing himself of the judge's sense of hospitality, which was punctilious, reduced the debate to more order. WALTER SCOTT. Paoli had visited Auchinleck. Boswell wrote to Garrick on Sept. 18, 1771:—'I have just been enjoying the very great happiness of a visit from my illustrious friend, Pascal Paoli. He was two nights at Auchinleck, and you may figure the joy of my worthy father and me at seeing the Corsican hero in our romantic groves.' Garrick Corres. i. 436. Johnson was not blind to Cromwell's greatness, for he says (Works, vii. 197), that 'he wanted nothing to raise him to heroick excellence but virtue.' Lord Auchinleck's famous saying had been anticipated by Quin, who, according to Davies (Life of Garrick, ii. 115), had said that 'on a thirtieth of January every king in Europe would rise with a crick in his neck.'

[1040] See ante, p. 252.

[1041] James Durham, born 1622, died 1658, wrote many theological works. Chalmers's Biog. Dict. In the Brit. Mus. Cata. I can find no work by him on the Galatians; Lord Auchinleck's triumph therefore was, it seems, more artful than honest.

[1042] Gray, it should seem, had given the name earlier. His friend Bonstetten says that about the year 1769 he was walking with him, when Gray 'exclaimed with some bitterness, "Look, look, Bonstetten! the great bear! There goes Ursa Major!" This was Johnson. Gray could not abide him.' Sir Egerton Brydges, quoted in Gosse's Gray, iii. 371. For the epithet bear applied to Johnson see ante, ii. 66, 269, note i, and iv. 113, note 2. Boswell wrote on June 19, 1775:—'My father harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think, how shockingly erroneous!), and wandering (or some such phrase) to London.' Letters of Boswell, p. 207.

[1043] It is remarkable that Johnson in his Life of Blackmore [Works, viii. 42] calls the imaginary Mr. Johnson of the Lay Monastery 'a constellation of excellence.' CROKER.

[1044] Page 121. BOSWELL. See also ante, iii. 336.

[1045] 'The late Sir Alexander Boswell,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, 'was a proud man, and, like his grandfather, thought that his father lowered himself by his deferential suit and service to Johnson. I have observed he disliked any allusion to the book or to Johnson himself, and I have heard that Johnson's fine picture by Sir Joshua was sent upstairs out of the sitting apartments at Auchinleck.' Croker Corres. ii. 32. This portrait, which was given by Sir Joshua to Boswell (Taylor's Reynolds, i. 147), is now in the possession of Mr. Charles Morrison.

[1046] 'I have always said that first Whig was the devil.' Ante, iii. 326

[1047] See ante, ii. 26.

[1048] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 266) has paid this tribute. 'Lord Elibank,' he writes, 'had a mind that embraced the greatest variety of topics, and produced the most original remarks. ... He had been a lieutenant-colonel in the army and was at the siege of Carthagena, of which he left an elegant account (which I'm afraid is lost). He was a Jacobite, and a member of the famous Cocoa-tree Club, and resigned his commission on some disgust.' Dr. Robertson and John Home were his neighbours in the country, 'who made him change or soften down many of his original opinions, and prepared him for becoming a most agreeable member of the Literary Society of Edinburgh.' Smollett in Humphry Clinker (Letter of July 18), describes him as 'a nobleman whom I have long revered for his humanity and universal intelligence, over and above the entertainment arising from the originality of his character.' Boswell, in the London Mag. 1779, p. 179, thus mentions the Cocoa-tree Club:—'But even at Court, though I see much external obeisance, I do not find congenial sentiments to warm my heart; and except when I have the conversation of a very few select friends, I am never so well as when I sit down to a dish of coffee in the Cocoa Tree, sacred of old to loyalty, look round me to men of ancient families, and please myself with the consolatory thought that there is perhaps more good in the nation than I know.'

[1049] Johnson's Works, vii. 380. See ante, i. 81.

[1050] See ante, p. 53.

[1051] The Mitre tavern. Ante, i. 425.

[1052] Of this Earl of Kelly Boswell records the following pun:—'At a dinner at Mr. Crosbie's, when the company were very merry, the Rev. Dr. Webster told them he was sorry to go away so early, but was obliged to catch the tide, to cross the Firth of Forth. "Better stay a little," said Thomas Earl of Kelly, "till you be half-seas over."' Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 325.

[1053] See ante, i. 354.

[1054] In the first edition, and his son the advocate. Under this son, A. F. Tytler, afterwards a Lord of Session by the title of Lord Woodhouselee, Scott studied history at Edinburgh College. Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, i. 59, 278.

[1055] See ante, i. 396, and ii. 296.

[1056] 'If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, let us not fill the vacuity with Ossian. If we have not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons.' Johnson's Works, ix. 116. Horace Walpole wrote on May 22, 1766 (Letters, iv. 500):—'Oh! but we have discovered a race of giants! Captain Byron has found a nation of Brobdignags on the coast of Patagonia; the inhabitants on foot taller than he and his men on horseback. I don't indeed know how he and his sailors came to be riding in the South Seas. However, it is a terrible blow to the Irish, for I suppose all our dowagers now will be for marrying Patagonians.'

[1057] I desire not to be understood as agreeing entirely with the opinions of Dr. Johnson, which I relate without any remark. The many imitations, however, of Fingal, that have been published, confirm this observation in a considerable degree. BOSWELL. Johnson said to Sir Joshua of Ossian:—'Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.' Ante, iv. 183.

[1058] In the first edition (p. 485) this paragraph ran thus:—'Young Mr. Tytler stepped briskly forward, and said, "Fingal is certainly genuine; for I have heard a great part of it repeated in the original."—Dr. Johnson indignantly asked him, "Sir, do you understand the original?"—Tytler. "No, Sir."—Johnson. "Why, then, we see to what this testimony comes:—Thus it is."—He afterwards said to me, "Did you observe the wonderful confidence with which young Tytler advanced, with his front already brased?"'

[1059] For in company we should perhaps read in the company.

[1060] In the first edition, this gentleman's talents and integrity are, &c.

[1061] 'A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth: he will always love it better than inquiry; and if falsehood flatters his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it.' Johnson's Works, ix. 116. See ante, ii. 311.

[1062] See ante, p. 164.

[1063] See ante, p. 242.

[1064] See ante, iv. 253.

[1065] Lord Chief Baron Geoffrey Gilbert published in 1760 a book on the Law of Evidence.

[1066] See ante, ii. 302.

[1067] Three instances, ante, pp. 160, 320.

[1068] See ante, ii. 318.

[1069] An instance is given in Sacheverell's Account of the Isle of Man, ed. 1702, p. 14.

[1070] Mr. J. T. Clark, the Keeper of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, obligingly informs me that in the margin of the copy of Boswell's Journal in that Library it is stated that this cause was Wilson versus Maclean.

[1071] See ante, iv. 74, note 3.

[1072] See ante, iii 69, 183.

[1073] He is described in Guy Mannering, ed. 1860, iv. 98.

[1074] See ante, p. 50.

[1075] See ante, i. 458.

[1076] 'We now observe that the Methodists, where they scatter their opinions, represent themselves as preaching the Gospel to unconverted nations; and enthusiasts of all kinds have been inclined to disguise their particular tenets with pompous appellations, and to imagine themselves the great instruments of salvation.' Johnson's Works, vi. 417.

[1077]

Through various hazards and events we move.

Dryden, [Aeneid, I. 204]. BOSWELL.

[1078]

Long labours both by sea and land he bore.

Dryden, [Aeneid, I. 3]. BOSWELL.

[1079] The Jesuits, headed by Francis Xavier, made their appearance in Japan in 1549. The first persecution was in 1587; it was followed by others in 1590, 1597, 1637, 1638. Encyclo. Brit. 8th edit. xii. 697.

[1080] 'They congratulate our return as if we had been with Phipps or Banks; I am ashamed of their salutations.' Piozzi Letters, i. 203. Phipps had gone this year to the Arctic Ocean (ante, p. 236), and Banks had accompanied Captain Cook in 1768-1771. Johnson says however (Works, ix. 84), that 'to the southern inhabitants of Scotland the state of the mountains and the islands is equally unknown with that of Borneo or Sumatra.' See ante, p. 283, note 1, where Scott says that 'the whole expedition was highly perilous.' Smollett, in Humphry Clinker (Letter of July 18), says of Scotland in general:—'The people at the other end of the island know as little of Scotland as of Japan.'

[1081] In sailing from Sky to Col. Ante, p. 280.

[1082] Johnson, four years later, suggested to Boswell that he should write this history. Ante, iii. 162, 414.

[1083] Voltaire was born in 1694; his Louis XIV. was published in 1751 or 1752.

[1084] A society for debate in Edinburgh, consisting of the most eminent men. BOSWELL. It was founded in 1754 by Allan Ramsay the painter, aided by Robertson, Hume, and Smith. Dugald Stewart (Life of Robertson, ed. 1802, p. 5) says that 'it subsisted in vigour for six or seven years' and produced debates, such as have not often been heard in modern assemblies.' See also Dr. A. Carlyle's Auto. p. 297.

[1085] 'As for Maclaurin's imitation of a made dish, it was a wretched attempt.' Ante, i. 469.

[1086] It was of Lord Elibank's French cook 'that he exclaimed with vehemence, "I'd throw such a rascal into the river."'Ib.

[1087] 'He praised Gordon's palates with a warmth of expression which might have done honour to more important subjects.' Ib.

[1088] For the alarm he gave to Mrs. Boswell before this supper, see ib.

[1089] On Dr. Boswell's death, in 1780, Boswell wrote of him:—'He was a very good scholar, knew a great many things, had an elegant taste, and was very affectionate; but he had no conduct. His money was all gone. And do you know he was not confined to one woman. He had a strange kind of religion; but I flatter myself he will be ere long, if he is not already, in Heaven.' Letters of Boswell, p. 258.

[1090] Johnson had written the Life of 'the great Boerhaave,' as he called him. Works, vi. 292.

[1091] 'At Edinburgh,' he wrote, 'I passed some days with men of learning, whose names want no advancement from my commemoration, or with women of elegance, which, perhaps, disclaims a pedant's praise.' Johnson's Works, ix. 159.

[1092] See ante, iv. 178.

[1093] 'My acquaintance,' wrote Richardson (Corres. iv. 317), 'lies chiefly among the ladies; I care not who knows it.' Mrs. Piozzi, in a marginal note on her own copy of the Piozzi Letters, says:—'Dr. Johnson said, that if Mr. Richardson had lived till I came out, my praises would have added two or three years to his life. "For," says Dr. Johnson, "that fellow died merely from want of change among his flatterers: he perished for want of more, like a man obliged to breathe the same air till it is exhausted."' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 311. In her Journey, i. 265, she says:—'Richardson had seen little, and Johnson has often told me that he had read little.' See ante, iv. 28.

[1094] He may live like a gentleman, but he must not 'call himself Farmer, and go about with a little round hat.' Ante, p. 111.

[1095] Boswell italicises this word, I think, because Johnson objected to the misuse of it. '"Sir," said Mr. Edwards, "I remember you would not let us say prodigious at college."' Ante, iii. 303.

[1096] As I have been scrupulously exact in relating anecdotes concerning other persons, I shall not withhold any part of this story, however ludicrous.—I was so successful in this boyish frolick, that the universal cry of the galleries was, 'Encore the cow! Encore the cow!' In the pride of my heart, I attempted imitations of some other animals, but with very inferior effect. My reverend friend, anxious for my fame, with an air of the utmost gravity and earnestness, addressed me thus: 'My dear sir, I would confine myself to the cow.' BOSWELL. Blair's advice was expressed more emphatically, and with a peculiar burr—'Stick to the cow, mon.' WALTER SCOTT. Boswell's record, which moreover is far more humorous, is much more trustworthy than Scott's tradition.

[1097] Mme. de Sévigné in describing a death wrote:—'Cela nous fit voir qu'on joue long-temps la comédie, et qu'à la mort on dit la vérité.' Letter of June 24, 1672. Addison says:—'The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well-written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate is which they undergo.... That innocent mirth which had been so conspicuous in Sir Thomas More's life did not forsake him to the last. His death was of a piece with his life. There was nothing in it new, forced, or affected.' The Spectator, No. 349. Young also thought, or at least, wrote differently.

'A death-bed's a detector of the heart. Here tired dissimulation drops her mask.'

Night Thoughts, ii.

'"Mirabeau dramatized his death" was the happy expression of the Bishop of Autun (Talleyrand).' Dumont's Mirabeau, p. 251. See ante, iii. 154.

[1098] See ante, i. 408, 447; and ii. 219, 329.

[1099] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 291) says of Blair's conversation that 'it was so infantine that many people thought it impossible, at first sight, that he could be a man of sense or genius. He was as eager about a new paper to his wife's drawing-room, or his own new wig, as about a new tragedy or a new epic poem.' He adds, that he was 'capable of the most profound conversation, when circumstances led to it. He had not the least desire to shine, but was delighted beyond measure to shew other people in their best guise to his friends. "Did not I shew you the lion well to-day?" used he to say after the exhibition of a remarkable stranger.' He had no wit, and for humour hardly a relish. Robertson's reputation for wisdom may have been easily won. Dr. A. Carlyle says (ib. p. 287):—'Robertson's translations and paraphrases on other people's thoughts were so beautiful and so harmless that I never saw anybody lay claim to their own.' He may have flattered Johnson by dexterously echoing his sentiments.

[1100] In the Marmor Norfolciense (ante, i. 141) Johnson says:—'I know that the knowledge of the alphabet is so disreputable among these gentlemen [of the army], that those who have by ill-fortune formerly been taught it have partly forgot it by disuse, and partly concealed it from the world, to avoid the railleries and insults to which their education might make them liable.' Johnson's Works, vi. III. See ante, iii. 265.

[1101] 'One of the young ladies had her slate before her, on which I wrote a question consisting of three figures to be multiplied by two figures. She looked upon it, and quivering her fingers in a manner which I thought very pretty, but of which I knew not whether it was art or play, multiplied the sum regularly in two lines, observing the decimal place; but did not add the two lines together, probably disdaining so easy an operation.' Johnson's Works, ix. 161.

[1102]

'Words gigantic.'

FRANCIS. Horace, Ars Poet.. 1. 97.

[1103] One of the best criticks of our age 'does not wish to prevent the admirers of the incorrect and nerveless style which generally prevailed for a century before Dr. Johnson's energetick writings were known, from enjoying the laugh that this story may produce, in which he is very ready to join them.' He, however, requests me to observe, that 'my friend very properly chose a long word on this occasion, not, it is believed, from any predilection for polysyllables, (though he certainly had a due respect for them,) but in order to put Mr. Braidwood's skill to the strictest test, and to try the efficacy of his instruction by the most difficult exertion of the organs of his pupils.' BOSWELL. 'One of the best critics of our age' is, I believe, Malone. See ante, p. 78, note 5.

[1104] It was here that Lord Auchinleck called him Ursa Major. Ante, p. 384.

[1105] See ante, iii. 266, and v. 20, where 'Mr. Crosbie said that the English are better animals than the Scots.'

[1106] Johnson himself had laughed at them (ante, ii. 210) and accused them of foppery (ante, ii. 237).

[1107] Johnson said, 'I never think I have hit hard, unless it rebounds (ante, ii. 335), and, 'I would rather be attacked than unnoticed' (ante, iii. 375). When he was told of a caricature 'of the nine muses flogging him round Parnassus,' he said, 'Sir, I am very glad to hear this. I hope the day will never arrive when I shall neither be the object of calumny or ridicule, for then I shall be neglected and forgotten.' Croker's Boswell, p. 837. See ante, ii. 61, and pp. 174, 273. 'There was much laughter when M. de Lesseps mentioned that on his first visit to England the publisher who brought out the report of his meeting charged, as the first item of his bill, "£50 for attacking the book in order to make it succeed." "Since then," observed M. de Lesseps, "I have been attacked gratuitously, and have got on without paying."' The Times, Feb. 19, 1884.

[1108]

'To wing my flight to fame.'

DRYDEN. Virgil, Georgics, iii. 9.

[1109] On Nov. 12 he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'We came hither (to Edinburgh) on the ninth of this month. I long to come under your care, but for some days cannot decently get away.' Piozzi Letters, i. 202.

[1110] He would have been astonished had he known that a few miles from Edinburgh he had passed through two villages of serfs. The coal-hewers and salt-makers of Tranent and Preston-Pans were still sold with the soil. 'In Scotland domestic slavery is unknown, except so far as regards the coal-hewers and salt-makers, whose condition, it must be confessed, bears some resemblance to slavery; because all who have once acted in either of the capacities are compellable to serve, and fixed to their respective places of employment during life.' Hargrave's Argument in the case of James Sommersett, 1772. Had Johnson known this he might have given as his toast when in company with some very grave men at Edinburgh:—'Here's to the next insurrection of the slaves in Scotland.' Ante, iii. 200.

[1111] The year following in the House of Commons he railed at the London booksellers, 'who, he positively asserted, entirely governed the newspapers.' 'For his part,' he added, 'he had ordered that no English newspaper should come within his doors for three months.' Parl. Hist. xvii. 1090.

[1112] See ante, iii. 373.

[1113] 'At the latter end of 1630 Ben Jonson went on foot into Scotland, on purpose to visit Drummond. His adventures in this journey he wrought into a poem; but that copy, with many other pieces, was accidentally burned.' Whalley's Ben Jonson, Preface, p. xlvi.

[1114] Perhaps the same woman showed the chapel who was there 29 years later, when Scott visited it. One of his friends 'hoped that they might, as habitual visitors, escape hearing the usual endless story of the silly old woman that showed the ruins'; but Scott answered, 'There is a pleasure in the song which none but the songstress knows, and by telling her we know it all ready we should make the poor devil unhappy.' Lockharts Scott, ed. 1839, ii. 106.

[1115] O rare Ben Jonson is on Jonson's tomb in Westminster Abbey.

[1116] See ante, ii. 365.

[1117] 'Essex was at that time confined to the same chamber of the Tower from which his father Lord Capel had been led to death, and in which his wife's grandfather had inflicted a voluntary death upon himself. When he saw his friend carried to what he reckoned certain fate, their common enemies enjoying the spectacle, and reflected that it was he who had forced Lord Howard upon the confidence of Russel, he retired, and, by a Roman death, put an end to his misery.' Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. i. p. 36. BOSWELL. In the original after 'his wife's grandfather,' is added 'Lord Northumberland.' It was his wife's great-grandfather, the eighth Earl of Northumberland. He killed himself in 1585. Burke's Peerage.

[1118] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 293) says of Robertson and Blair:—'Having been bred at a time when the common people thought to play with cards or dice was a sin, and everybody thought it an indecorum in clergymen, they could neither of them play at golf or bowls, and far less at cards or backgammon, and on that account were very unhappy when from home in friends' houses in the country in rainy weather. As I had set the first example of playing at cards at home with unlocked door [Carlyle was a minister], and so relieved the clergy from ridicule on that side, they both learned to play at whist after they were sixty.' See ante, iii. 23.

[1119] See ante, i. 149, and v. 350.

[1120] See ante, iv. 54.

[1121] He wrote to Boswell on Nov. 16, 1776 (ante, iii. 93):—'The expedition to the Hebrides was the most pleasant journey that I ever made.' In his Diary he recorded on Jan. 9, 1774:—'In the autumn I took a journey to the Hebrides, but my mind was not free from perturbation.' Pr. and Med. p. 136. The following letter to Dr. Taylor I have copied from the original in the possession of my friend Mr. M. M. Holloway:—

'DEAR SIR,

'When I was at Edinburgh I had a letter from you, telling me that in answer to some enquiry you were informed that I was in the Sky. I was then I suppose in the western islands of Scotland; I set out on the northern expedition August 6, and came back to Fleet-street, November 26. I have seen a new region.

'I have been upon seven of the islands, and probably should have visited many more, had we not begun our journey so late in the year, that the stormy weather came upon us, and the storms have I believe for about five months hardly any intermission.

'Your Letter told me that you were better. When you write do not forget to confirm that account. I had very little ill health while I was on the journey, and bore rain and wind tolerably well. I had a cold and deafness only for a few days, and those days I passed at a good house. I have traversed the east coast of Scotland from south to north from Edinburgh to Inverness, and the west coast from north to south, from the Highlands to Glasgow, and am come back as I went,

'Sir,

'Your affectionate humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'Jan. 15, 1774.

'To the Reverend Dr. Taylor,

'in Ashbourn,

'Derbyshire.'

[1122] Johnson speaking of this tour on April 10, 1783, said:—'I got an acquisition of more ideas by it than by anything that I remember.' Ante, iv. 199.

[1123] See ante, p. 48.

[1124] See ante, i. 408, 443, note 2, and ii. 303.

[1125] 'It may be doubted whether before the Union any man between Edinburgh and England had ever set a tree.' Johnson's Works, ix. 8.

[1126] See ante, p. 69.

[1127] Lord Balmerino's estate was forfeited to the Crown on his conviction for high treason in 1746 (ante, i. 180).

[1128] 'I know not that I ever heard the wind so loud in any other place; and Mr. Boswell observed that its noise was all its own, for there were no trees to increase it.' Johnson's Works, ix. 122. See ante, p. 304.

[1129] See ante, ii. 300.

[1130] 'Strong reasons for incredulity will readily occur. This faculty of seeing things out of sight is local and commonly useless. It is a breach of the common order of things, without any visible reason or perceptible benefit.' Johnson's Works, ix. 106.

[1131] 'To the confidence of these objections it may be replied... that second sight is only wonderful because it is rare, for, considered in itself, it involves no more difficulty than dreams.' Ib.

[1132] The fossilist of last century is the geologist of this. Neither term is in Johnson's Dictionary, but Johnson in his Journey (Works, ix. 43) speaks of 'Mr. Janes the fossilist.'

[1133] Ib. p. 157.

[1134] Ib. p. 6. I do not see anything silly in the story. It is however better told in a letter to Mrs. Thrale. Piozzi Letters, i. 112.

[1135] Mr. Orme, one of the ablest historians of this age, is of the same opinion. He said to me, 'There are in that book thoughts, which, by long revolution in the great mind of Johnson, have been formed and polished—like pebbles rolled in the ocean.' BOSWELL. See ante, ii. 300, and iii. 284.

[1136] See ante, iii. 301.

[1137] Johnson (Works, ix. 158) mentions 'a national combination so invidious that their friends cannot defend it.' See ante, ii. 307, 311.

[1138] See ante, p. 269, note 1.

[1139] Every reader will, I am sure, join with me in warm admiration of the truly patriotic writer of this letter. I know not which most to applaud—that good sense and liberality of mind, which could see and admit the defects of his native country, to which no man is a more zealous friend:—or that candour, which induced him to give just praise to the minister whom he honestly and strenuously opposed. BOSWELL.

[1140] The original MS. is now in my possession. BOSWELL.

[1141] The passage that gave offence was as follows:—'Mr. Macleod is the proprietor of the islands of Raasay, Rona, and Fladda, and possesses an extensive district in Sky. The estate has not during four hundred years gained or lost a single acre. He acknowledges Macleod of Dunvegan as his chief, though his ancestors have formerly disputed the pre-eminence.' First edition, p. 132. The second edition was not published till the year after Johnson's death. In it the passage remains unchanged. To it the following note was prefixed: 'Strand, Oct. 26, 1785. Since this work was printed off, the publisher, having been informed that the author some years ago had promised the Laird of Raasay to correct in a future edition a passage concerning him, thinks it a justice due to that gentleman to insert here the advertisement relative to this matter, which was published by Dr. Johnson's desire in the Edinburgh newspapers in the year 1775, and which has been lately reprinted in Mr. Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides.' (It is not unlikely that the publication of Boswell's Tour occasioned a fresh demand for Johnson's Journey.) In later editions all the words after 'a single acre' are silently struck out. Johnson's Works, ix. 55. See ante, ii. 382.

[1142] Rasay was highly gratified, and afterwards visited and dined with Dr. Johnson at his house in London. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote on May 12, 1775:—'I have offended; and what is stranger, have justly offended, the nation of Rasay. If they could come hither, they would be as fierce as the Americans. Rasay has written to Boswell an account of the injury done him by representing his house as subordinate to that of Dunvegan. Boswell has his letter, and, I believe, copied my answer. I have appeased him, if a degraded chief can possibly be appeased: but it will be thirteen days—days of resentment and discontent—before my recantation can reach him. Many a dirk will imagination, during that interval, fix in my heart. I really question if at this time my life would not be in danger, if distance did not secure it. Boswell will find his way to Streatham before he goes, and will detail this great affair.' Piozzi Letters, i. 216.

[1143] In like manner he communicated to Sir William Forbes part of his journal from which he made the Life of Johnson. Ante, iii. 208.

[1144] In justice both to Sir William Forbes, and myself, it is proper to mention, that the papers which were submitted to his perusal contained only an account of our Tour from the time that Dr. Johnson and I set out from Edinburgh (p. 58), and consequently did not contain the elogium on Sir William Forbes, (p. 24), which he never saw till this book appeared in print; nor did he even know, when he wrote the above letter, that this Journal was to be published. BOSWELL. This note is not in the first edition.

[1145] Hamlet, act iii. sc. 1.

[1146] Both Nonpareil and Bon Chretien are in Johnson's Dictionary; Nonpareil, is defined as a kind of apple, and Bon Chretien as a species of pear.

[1147] See ante, p. 311.

[1148] See ante, iv. 9.

[1149] 'Dryden's contemporaries, however they reverenced his genius, left his life unwritten; and nothing therefore can be known beyond what casual mention and uncertain tradition have supplied.' Johnson's Works, vii. 245. See ante, iii. 71.

[1150]

'Before great Agamemnon reign'd Reign'd kings as great as he, and brave Whose huge ambition's now contain'd In the small compass of a grave; In endless night they sleep, unwept, unknown, No bard had they to make all time their own.'

FRANCIS. Horace, Odes, iv. 9. 25.

[1151] Having found, on a revision of the first edition of this work, that, notwithstanding my best care, a few observations had escaped me, which arose from the instant impression, the publication of which might perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of a strict decorum, I immediately ordered that they should be omitted in the subsequent editions. I was pleased to find that they did not amount in the whole to a page. If any of the same kind are yet left, it is owing to inadvertence alone, no man being more unwilling to give pain to others than I am.

A contemptible scribbler, of whom I have learned no more than that, after having disgraced and deserted the clerical character, he picks up in London a scanty livelihood by scurrilous lampoons under a feigned name, has impudently and falsely asserted that the passages omitted were defamatory, and that the omission was not voluntary, but compulsory. The last insinuation I took the trouble publickly to disprove; yet, like one of Pope's dunces, he persevered in 'the lie o'erthrown.' [Prologue to the Satires, l. 350.] As to the charge of defamation, there is an obvious and certain mode of refuting it. Any person who thinks it worth while to compare one edition with the other, will find that the passages omitted were not in the least degree of that nature, but exactly such as I have represented them in the former part of this note, the hasty effusion of momentary feelings, which the delicacy of politeness should have suppressed. BOSWELL. In the second edition this note ended at the first paragraph, the latter part being added in the third. For the 'few observations omitted' see ante, pp. 148, 381, 388.

The 'contemptible scribbler' was, I believe, John Wolcot, better known by his assumed name of Peter Pindar. He had been a clergyman. In his Epistle to Boswell (Works, i. 219), he says in reference to the passages about Sir A. Macdonald (afterwards Lord Macdonald):—'A letter of severe remonstrance was sent to Mr. B., who, in consequence, omitted in the second edition of his Journal what is so generally pleasing to the public, viz., the scandalous passages relative to that nobleman.' It was in a letter to the Gent. Mag. 1786, p. 285, that Boswell 'publickly disproved the insinuation' made 'in a late scurrilous publication' that these passages 'were omitted in consequence of a letter from his Lordship. Nor was any application,' he continues, 'made to me by the nobleman alluded to at any time to make any alteration in my Journal.'

[1152]

'Nothing extenuate Nor set down aught in malice.'

Othello, act v. sc. 2.

[1153] See ante, i. 189, note 2, 296, 297; and Johnson's Works, v. 23.

[1154] Of his two imitations Boswell means The Vanity of Human Wishes, of which one hundred lines were written in a day. Ante, i. 192, and ii. 15.

[1155] Johnson, it should seem, did not allow that there was any pleasure in writing poetry. 'It has been said there is pleasure in writing, particularly in writing verses. I allow you may have pleasure from writing after it is over, if you have written well; but you don't go willingly to it again.' Ante, iv. 219. What Johnson always sought was to sufficiently occupy the mind. So long as that was done, that labour would, I believe, seem to him the pleasanter which required the less thought.

[1156] Nathan Bailey published his English Dictionary in 1721.

[1157]

'Woolston, the scourge of scripture, mark with awe! And mighty Jacob, blunderbuss of law.'

The Dunciad, first ed., bk. iii. l. 149. Giles Jacob published a Law Dictionary in 1729.

[1158] Ante, p. 393.

[1159] A writer in the Gent. Mag. 1786, p. 388, with some reason says:—'I heartily wish Mr. Boswell would get this Latin poem translated.'

[1160] Boswell, briefly mentioning the tour which Johnson made to Wales in the year 1774 with Mr. and Mrs. Thrale, says:—'I do not find that he kept any journal or notes of what he saw there' (ante, ii. 285). A journal had been kept however, which in 1816 was edited and published by Mr. Duppa. Mrs. Piozzi, writing in October of that year, says that three years earlier she had been shewn the MS. by a Mr. White, and that it was genuine. 'The gentleman who possessed it seemed shy of letting me read the whole, and did not, as it appeared, like being asked how it came into his hands.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 177. According to Mr. Croker (Croker's Boswell, p. 415) 'it was preserved by Johnson's servant, Barber. How it escaped Boswell's research is not known.' A fragment of Johnson's Annals, also preserved by Barber, had in like manner never been seen by Boswell; ante, i. 35, note 1. The editor of these Annals says (Preface, p. v):—'Francis Barber, unwilling that all the MSS. of his illustrious master should be utterly lost, preserved these relicks from the flames. By purchase from Barber's widow they came into the possession of the editor.' It seems likely that Barber was afraid to own what he had done; though as he was the residuary legatee he was safe from all consequences, unless the executors of the will who were to hold the residue of the estate in trust for him had chosen to proceed against him. Mr. Duppa in editing this Journal received assistance from Mrs. Piozzi, 'who,' he says (Preface, p. xi), 'explained many facts which could not otherwise have been understood.' A passage in one of her letters dated Bath, Oct. 11, 1816, shows how unfriendly were the relations between her and her eldest daughter, Johnson's Queeny, who had married Admiral Lord Keith. 'I am sadly afraid,' she writes, 'of Lady K.'s being displeased, and fancying I promoted this publication. Could I have caught her for a quarter-of-an-hour, I should have proved my innocence, and might have shown her Duppa's letter; but she left neither note, card, nor message, and when my servant ran to all the inns in chase of her, he learned that she had left the White Hart at twelve o'clock. Vexatious! but it can't be helped. I hope the pretty little girl my people saw with her will pay her more tender attention.' Three days later she wrote:—'Johnson's Diary is selling rapidly, though the contents are bien maigre, I must confess. Mr. Duppa has politely suppressed some sarcastic expressions about my family, the Cottons, whom we visited at Combermere, and at Lleweney.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 176-9. Mr. Croker in 1835 was able to make 'a collation of the original MS., which has supplied many corrections and some omissions in Mr. Duppa's text.' Mr. Croker's text I have generally followed.

[1161] 'When I went with Johnson to Lichfield, and came down to breakfast at the inn, my dress did not please him, and he made me alter it entirely before he would stir a step with us about the town, saying most satirical things concerning the appearance I made in a riding-habit; and adding, "'Tis very strange that such eyes as yours cannot discern propriety of dress; if I had a sight only half as good, I think I should see to the centre."' Piozzi's Anec. p. 288.

[1162] For Mrs. (Miss) Porter, Mrs. (Miss) Aston, Mr. Green, Mrs. Cobb, Mr. (Peter) Garrick, Miss Seward, and Dr. Taylor, see ante, ii. 462-473.

[1163] Dr. Erasmus Darwin, the physiologist and poet, grandfather of Charles Darwin. Mrs. Piozzi when at Florence wrote:—'I have no roses equal to those at Lichfield, where on one tree I recollect counting eighty-four within my own reach; it grew against the house of Dr. Darwin.' Piozzi's Journey, i. 278.

[1164] See ante, iii. 124, for mention of her father and brother.

[1165] The verse in Martial is:—

'Defluat, et lento splendescat turbida limo.'

In the common editions it has the number 45, and not 44. DUPPA.

[1166] See ante, iii. 187.

[1167] Johnson wrote on Nov. 27, 1772, 'I was yesterday at Chatsworth. They complimented me with playing the fountain and opening the cascade. But I am of my friend's opinion, that when one has seen the ocean cascades are but little things.' Piozzi Letters, i.69.

[1168] 'A water-work with a concealed spring, which, upon touching, spouted out streams from every bough of a willow-tree.' Piozzi MS. CROKER.

[1169] A race-horse, which attracted so much of Dr. Johnson's attention, that he said, 'of all the Duke's possessions, I like Atlas best.' DUPPA.

[1170] For Johnson's last visit to Chatsworth, see ante, iv. 357, 367.

[1171] 'From the Muses, Sir Thomas More bore away the first crown, Erasmus the second, and Micyllus has the third.' In the MS. Johnson has introduced [Greek: aeren] by the side of [Greek: eilen], DUPPA. 'Jacques Moltzer, en Latin Micyllus. Ce surnom lui fut donné le jour où il remplissait avec le plus grand succès le rôle de Micyllus dans Le Songe de Lucien qui, arrange en drame, fut représenté au collège de Francfort. Né en 1503, mort en 1558.' Nouv. Biog. Gén. xxxv. 922.

[1172] See ante, ii. 324, note I, and iii. 138.

[1173] Mr. Gilpin was an undergraduate at Oxford. DUPPA.

[1174] John Parker, of Brownsholme, in Lancashire [Browsholme, in Yorkshire], Esq. DUPPA.

[1175] Mrs. Piozzi 'rather thought' that this was Capability Brown [ante, iii. 400]. CROKER.

[1176] Mr. Gell, of Hopton Hall, father of Sir William Gell, well known for his topography of Troy. DUPPA.

[1177] See ante, iii. 160, for a visit paid by Johnson and Boswell to Kedleston in 1777.

[1178] See ante, iii. 164.

[1179] The parish of Prestbury. DUPPA.

[1180] At this time the seat of Sir Lynch Salusbury Cotton [Mrs. Thrale's relation], now, of Lord Combermere, his grandson, from which place he takes his title. DUPPA.

[1181] Shavington Hall, in Shropshire. DUPPA.

[1182] 'To guard. To adorn with lists, laces or ornamental borders. Obsolete.' Johnson's Dictionary.

[1183] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Nov. 13, 1783:—'You seem to mention Lord Kilmurrey (sic) as a stranger. We were at his house in Cheshire [Shropshire].... Do not you remember how he rejoiced in having no park? He could not disoblige his neighbours by sending them no venison.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 326.

[1184] This remark has reference to family conversation. Robert was the eldest son of Sir L.S. Cotton, and lived at Lleweney. DUPPA.

[1185] Paradise Lost, book xi. v. 642. DUPPA.

[1186] See Mrs. Piozzi's Synonymy, i. 323, for an anecdote of this walk.

[1187] Lleweney Hall was the residence of Robert Cotton, Esq., Mrs. Thrale's cousin german. Here Mr. and Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson staid three weeks. DUPPA. Mrs. Piozzi wrote in 1817:—'Poor old Lleweney Hall! pulled down after standing 1000 years in possession of the Salusburys.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 206.

[1188] Johnson's name for Mrs. Thrale. Ante, i. 494.

[1189] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 13, 1777:—'Boswell wants to see Wales; but except the woods of Bachycraigh, what is there in Wales? What that can fill the hunger of ignorance, or quench the thirst of curiosity?' Piozzi Letters, i. 367. Ante, iii. 134, note 1.

[1190] Pennant gives a description of this house, in a tour he made into North Wales in 1780:—'Not far from Dymerchion, lies half buried in woods the singular house of Bâch y Graig. It consists of a mansion of three sides, enclosing a square court. The first consists of a vast hall and parlour: the rest of it rises into six wonderful stories, including the cupola; and forms from the second floor the figure of a pyramid: the rooms are small and inconvenient. The bricks are admirable, and appear to have been made in Holland; and the model of the house was probably brought from Flanders, where this kind of building is not unfrequent. It was built by Sir Richard Clough, an eminent merchant, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The initials of his name are in iron on the front, with the date 1567, and on the gateway 1569.' DUPPA.

[1191] Bishop Shipley, whom Johnson described as 'knowing and convertible' Ante, iv. 246. Johnson, in his Dictionary, says that 'conversable is sometimes written conversible, but improperly.'

[1192] William Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph and afterwards of Worcester. He was one of the seven Bishops who were sent to the Tower in 1688. His character is drawn by Burnet, History of His Own Time, ed. 1818, i. 210. It was he of whom Bishop Wilkins said that 'Lloyd had the most learning in ready cash of any he ever knew.' Ante, ii. 256, note 3.

[1193] A curious account of Dodwell and 'the paradoxes after which he seemed to hunt' is given in Burnet, iv. 303. He was Camden Professor of Ancient History in the University of Oxford. 'It was about him that William III uttered those memorable words: "He has set his heart on being a martyr; and I have set mine on disappointing him."' Macaulay's England, ed. 1874, iv. 226. See Hearne in Leland's Itin., 3rd ed. v. 136.

[1194] By Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in 1579. DUPPA.

[1195] See ante, iii. 357, and v. 42.

[1196] Perhaps Johnson wrote mere.

[1197] Humphry Llwyd was a native of Denbigh, and practised there as a physician, and also represented the town in Parliament. He died 1568, aged 41. DUPPA.

[1198] Mrs. Thrale's father. DUPPA.

[1199] Cowper wrote a few years later in the first book of The Task, in his description of the grounds at Weston Underwood:—

'Not distant far a length of colonnade Invites us. Monument of ancient taste, Now scorned, but worthy of a better fate. Our fathers knew the value of a screen From sultry suns, and in their shaded walks And long-protracted bowers enjoyed at noon The gloom and coolness of declining day. We bear our shades about us: self-deprived Of other screen, the thin umbrella spread, And range an Indian waste without a tree. Thanks to Benevolus [A]—he spares me yet These chestnuts ranged in corresponding lines, And though himself so polished still reprieves The obsolete prolixity of shade.'

[1200] Such a passage as this shews that Johnson was not so insensible to nature as is often asserted. Mrs. Piozzi (Anec. p. 99) says:—'Mr. Thrale loved prospects, and was mortified that his friend could not enjoy the sight of those different dispositions of wood and water, hill and valley, that travelling through England and France affords a man. But when he wished to point them out to his companion: "Never heed such nonsense," would he reply; "a blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another. Let us, if we do talk, talk about something; men and women are my subjects of enquiry; let us see how these differ from those we have left behind."' She adds (p. 265):— 'Walking in a wood when it rained was, I think, the only rural image he pleased his fancy with; "for," says he, "after one has gathered the apples in an orchard, one wishes them well baked, and removed to a London eating-house for enjoyment."' See ante, pp. 132, note 1, 141, note 2, 333, note i, and 346, note i, for Johnson's descriptions of scenery. Passages in his letters shew that he had some enjoyment of country life. Thus he writes:—'I hope to see standing corn in some part of the earth this summer, but I shall hardly smell hay or suck clover flowers.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 140. 'What I shall do next I know not; all my schemes of rural pleasure have been some way or other disappointed.' Ib. p. 372. 'I hope Mrs. ——— when she came to her favourite place found her house dry, and her woods growing, and the breeze whistling, and the birds singing, and her own heart dancing.' Ib. p. 401. In this very trip to Wales, after describing the high bank of a river 'shaded by gradual rows of trees,' he writes:—'The gloom, the stream, and the silence generate thoughtfulness.' Post, p. 454.

[A] Mr. Throckmorton the owner.

[1201] In the MS. in Dr. Johnson's handwriting, he has first entered in his diary, 'The old Clerk had great appearance of joy at seeing his Mistress, and foolishly said that he was now willing to die:' he afterwards wrote in a separate column, on the same leaf, under the head of notes and omissions, 'He had a crown;' and then he appears to have read over his diary at a future time, and interlined the paragraph with the words 'only'—'given him by my Mistress,' which is written in ink of a different colour. DUPPA. 'If Mr. Duppa,' wrote Mrs. Piozzi, 'does not send me a copy of Johnson's Diary, he is as shabby as it seems our Doctor thought me, when I gave but a crown to the old clerk. The poor clerk had probably never seen a crown in his possession before. Things were very distant A.D. 1774 from what they are 1816.' Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 178. Mrs. Piozzi writes as if Johnson's censure had been passed in 1816 and not in 1774.

[1202] Mrs. Piozzi has the following MS. note on this:—'He said I flattered the people to whose houses we went. I was saucy, and said I was obliged to be civil for two, meaning himself and me. He replied nobody would thank me for compliments they did not understand. At Gwaynynog he was flattered, and was happy of course.' Hayward's Piozzi, i. 75. Sept. 21, 1778. Mrs. Thrale. 'I remember, Sir, when we were travelling in Wales, how you called me to account for my civility to the people. "Madam," you said, "let me have no more of this idle commendation of nothing. Why is it that whatever you see, and whoever you see, you are to be so indiscriminately lavish of praise?" "Why I'll tell you, Sir," said I, "when I am with you, and Mr. Thrale, and Queeny [Miss Thrale], I am obliged to be civil for four."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, i. 132. On June 11, 1775, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale from Lichfield:—'Everybody remembers you all: you left a good impression behind you. I hope you will do the same at———. Do not make them speeches. Unusual compliments, to which there is no stated and prescriptive answer, embarrass the feeble, who know not what to say, and disgust the wise, who knowing them to be false suspect them to be hypocritical.' Piozzi Letters, i. 232. She records that he once said to her:—'You think I love flattery, and so I do, but a little too much always disgusts me. That fellow Richardson [the novelist] on the contrary could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 184. See ante, iii. 293, for Johnson's rebuke of Hannah More's flattery.

[1203] Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines calamine or lapis calaminaris as a kind of fossile bituminous earth, which being mixed with copper changes it into brass. It is native siliceous oxide of zinc. The Imperial Dictionary.

[1204] See ante, iii. 164.

[1205] 'No' or 'little' is here probably omitted. CROKER.

[1206] The name of this house is Bodryddan; formerly the residence of the Stapyltons, the parents of five co-heiresses, of whom Mrs. Cotton, afterwards Lady Salusbury Cotton, was one. DUPPA.

[1207] 'Dr. Johnson, whose ideas of anything not positively large were ever mingled with contempt, asked of one of our sharp currents in North Wales, "Has this brook e'er a name?" and received for answer, "Why, dear Sir, this is the River Ustrad." "Let us," said he, turning to his friend, "jump over it directly, and shew them how an Englishman should treat a Welsh river."' Piozzi's Synonymy, i. 82.

[1208] See ante, i. 313, note 4.

[1209] On Aug. 16 he wrote to Mr. Levett:—'I have made nothing of the Ipecacuanha.' Ante, ii. 282. Mr. Croker suggests that up is omitted after 'I gave.'

[1210] See post, p. 453.

[1211] F.G. are the printer's signatures, by which it appears that at this time four sheets (B, C, D, E), or 64 pages had already been printed. The MS. was 'put to the press' on June 20. Ante, ii. 278.

[1212] The English version Psalm 36 begins,—'My heart sheweth me the wickedness of the ungodly,' which has no relation to 'Dixit injustus.'

[1213] This alludes to 'A prayer by R.W., (evidently Robert Wisedom) which Sir Henry Ellis, of the British Museum, has found among the Hymns which follow the old version of the singing Psalms, at the end of Barker's Bible of 1639. It begins,

'Preserve us, Lord, by thy deare word, From Turk and Pope, defend us Lord, Which both would thrust out of his throne Our Lord Jesus Christ, thy deare son.' CROKER.

[1214] 'Proinde quum dominus Matth. 6 docet discipulos suos ne in orando multiloqui sint, nihil aliud docet quam ne credant deum inani verborum strepitu flecti rem eandem subinde flagitantium. Nam Graecis est [Greek: battologaesate]. [Greek: Battologein] autem illis dicitur qui voces easdem frequenter iterant sine causa, vel loquacitatis, vel naturae, vel consuetudinis vitio. Alioqui juxta precepta rhetorum nonnunquam laudis est iterare verba, quemadmodum et Christus in cruce clamitat. Deus meus, deus meus: non erat illa [Greek: battologia], sed ardens ac vehemens affectus orantis.' Erasmus's Works, ed. 1540, v. 927.

[1215] This alludes to Southwell's stanzas 'Upon the Image of Death,' in his Maeonia, [Maeoniae] a collection of spiritual poems:—

'Before my face the picture hangs, That daily should put me in mind Of those cold names and bitter pangs That shortly I am like to find: But, yet, alas! full little I Do thinke hereon that I must die.' &c.

Robert Southwell was an English Jesuit, who was imprisoned, tortured, and finally, in Feb. 1598 [1595] executed for teaching the Roman Catholic tenets in England. CROKER.

[1216] This work, which Johnson was now reading, was, most probably, a little book, entitled Baudi Epistolae. In his Life of Milton [Works, vii. 115], he has made a quotation from it. DUPPA.

[1217] Bishop Shipley had been an Army Chaplain. Ante, iii. 251.

[1218] The title of the poem is [Greek: Poiaema nouthetikon]. DUPPA.

[1219] This entry refers to the following passage in Leland's Itinerary, published by Thomas Hearne, ed. 1744, iv. 112. 'B. Smith in K.H.7. dayes, and last Bishop of Lincolne, beganne a new Foundation at this place settinge up a Mr. there with 2. Preistes, and 10. poore Men in an Hospitall. He sett there alsoe a Schoole-Mr. to teach Grammer that hath 10.l. by the yeare, and an Under-Schoole-Mr. that hath 5.l. by the yeare. King H.7. was a great Benefactour to this new Foundation, and gave to it an ould Hospitall called Denhall in Wirhall in Cheshire.'

[1220] A Journey to Meqwinez, the Residence of the present Emperor of Fez and Morocco, on the Occasion of Commodore Stewart's Embassy thither, for the Redemption of the British captives, in the Year 1721. DUPPA.

[1221] The Bibliotheca Literaria was published in London, 1722-4, in 4to numbers, but only extended to ten numbers. DUPPA.

[1222] By this expression it would seem, that on this day Johnson ate sparingly. DUPPA.

[1223] 'A weakness of the knees, not without some pain in walking, which I feel increased after I have dined.' DUPPA.

[1224] Penmaen Mawr is a huge rock, rising nearly 1550 feet perpendicular above the sea. Along a shelf of this precipice, is formed an excellent road, well guarded, toward the sea, by a strong wall, supported in many parts by arches turned underneath it. Before this wall was built, travellers sometimes fell down the precipices. DUPPA.

[1225] See post, p. 453.

[1226] 'Johnson said that one of the castles in Wales would contain all the castles that he had seen in Scotland.' Ante, ii. 285.

[1227] This gentleman was a lieutenant in the Navy. DUPPA.

[1228] Lady Catharine Percival, daughter of the second Earl of Egmont: this was, it appears, the lady of whom Mrs. Piozzi relates, that 'For a lady of quality, since dead, who received us at her husband's seat in Wales with less attention than he had long been accustomed to, he had a rougher denunciation:—"That woman," cried Johnson, "is like sour small beer, the beverage of her table, and produce of the wretched country she lives in: like that, she could never have been a good thing, and even that bad thing is spoiled."' [Anec. p. 171.] And it is probably of her, too, that another anecdote is told:—'We had been visiting at a lady's house, whom, as we returned, some of the company ridiculed for her ignorance:—"She is not ignorant," said he, "I believe, of any thing she has been taught, or of any thing she is desirous to know; and I suppose if one wanted a little run tea, she might be a proper person enough to apply to.'" [Ib. p. 219.] Mrs. Piozzi says, in her MS. letters, 'that Lady Catharine comes off well in the diary. He said many severe things of her, which he did not commit to paper.' She died in 1782. CROKER.

[1229] Johnson described in 1762 his disappointment on his return to Lichfield. Ante, i. 370.

[1230] 'It was impossible not to laugh at the patience Doctor Johnson shewed, when a Welsh parson of mean abilities, though a good heart, struck with reverence at the sight of Dr. Johnson, whom he had heard of as the greatest man living, could not find any words to answer his inquiries concerning a motto round somebody's arms which adorned a tomb-stone in Ruabon church-yard. If I remember right, the words were,

Heb Dw, Heb Dym, Dw o' diggon.

And though of no very difficult construction, the gentleman seemed wholly confounded, and unable to explain them; till Mr. Johnson, having picked out the meaning by little and little, said to the man, "Heb is a preposition, I believe, Sir, is it not?" My countryman recovering some spirits upon the sudden question, cried out, "So I humbly presume, Sir," very comically.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 238. The Welsh words, which are the Myddelton motto, mean, 'Without God, without all. God is all-sufficient.' Piozzi MS. Croker's Boswell, p. 423.

[1231] In 1809 the whole income for Llangwinodyl, including surplice fees, amounted to forty-six pounds two shillings and twopence, and for Tydweilliog, forty-three pounds nineteen shillings and tenpence; so that it does not appear that Mr. Thrale carried into effect his good intention. DUPPA.

[1232] Mr. Thrale was near-sighted, and could not see the goats browsing on Snowdon, and he promised his daughter, who was a child of ten years old, a penny for every goat she would shew him, and Dr. Johnson kept the account; so that it appears her father was in debt to her one hundred and forty-nine pence. Queeny was the epithet, which had its origin in the nursery, by which Miss Thrale was always distinguished by Johnson. DUPPA. Her name was Esther. The allusion was to Queen Esther. Johnson often pleasantly mentions her in his letters to her mother. Thus on July 27, 1780, he writes:—'As if I might not correspond with my Queeney, and we might not tell one another our minds about politicks or morals, or anything else. Queeney and I are both steady and may be trusted; we are none of the giddy gabblers, we think before we speak.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 169. Four days later he wrote:—'Tell my pretty dear Queeney, that when we meet again, we will have, at least for some time, two lessons in a day. I love her and think on her when I am alone; hope we shall be very happy together and mind our books.' Ib. p. 173.

[1233] See ante, iv. 421, for the inscription on an urn erected by Mr. Myddelton 'on the banks of a rivulet where Johnson delighted to stand and repeat verses.' On Sept. 18, 1777, Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale: —'Mr. ——'s erection of an urn looks like an intention to bury me alive; I would as willingly see my friend, however benevolent and hospitable, quietly inurned. Let him think for the present of some more acceptable memorial.' Piozzi Letters, i. 371.

[1234] Johnson wrote on Oct. 24, 1778:—'My two clerical friends Darby and Worthington have both died this month. I have known Worthington long, and to die is dreadful. I believe he was a very good man.' Piozzi Letters, ii. 26.

[1235] Thomas, the second Lord Lyttelton. DUPPA.

[1236] Mr. Gwynn the architect was a native of Shrewsbury, and was at this time completing a bridge across the Severn, called the English Bridge: besides this bridge, he built one at Acham, over the Severn, near to Shrewsbury; and the bridges at Worcester, Oxford [Magdalen Bridge], and Henley. DUPPA. He was also the architect of the Oxford Market, which was opened in 1774. Oxford during the Last Century, ed. 1859, p. 45. Johnson and Boswell travelled to Oxford with him in March, 1776. Ante, ii. 438. In 1778 he got into some difficulties, in which Johnson tried to help him, as is shewn by the following autograph letter in the possession of my friend Mr. M. M. Holloway:—

'SIR,

'Poor Mr. Gwyn is in great distress under the weight of the late determination against him, and has still hopes that some mitigation may be obtained. If it be true that whatever has by his negligence been amiss, may be redressed for a sum much less than has been awarded, the remaining part ought in equity to be returned, or, what is more desirable, abated. When the money is once paid, there is little hope of getting it again.

'The load is, I believe, very hard upon him; he indulges some flattering opinions that by the influence of his academical friends it may be lightened, and will not be persuaded but that some testimony of my kindness may be beneficial. I hope he has been guilty of nothing worse than credulity, and he then certainly deserves commiseration. I never heard otherwise than that he was an honest man, and I hope that by your countenance and that of other gentlemen who favour or pity him some relief may be obtained.

'I am, Sir, 'Your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Bolt Court, Fleet-street, 'Jan. 30, 1778.'

[1237] An ancestor of mine, a nursery-gardener, Thomas Wright by name, after whom my grandfather, Thomas Wright Hill, was called, planted this walk. The tradition preserved in my family is that on his wedding-day he took six men with him and planted these trees. When blamed for keeping the wedding-dinner waiting, he answered, that if what he had been doing turned out well, it would be of far more value than a wedding-dinner.

[1238] The Rector of St. Chad's, in Shrewsbury. He was appointed Master of Pembroke College, Oxford, in the following year. See ante, ii. 441.

[1239] 'I have heard Dr. Johnson protest that he never had quite as much as he wished of wall-fruit except once in his life, and that was when we were all together at Ombersley.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 103. Mrs. Thrale wrote to him in 1778:—'Mr. Scrase gives us fine fruit; I wished you my pear yesterday; but then what would one pear have done for you?' Piozzi Letters, ii. 36. It seems unlikely that Johnson should not at Streatham have had all the wall-fruit that he wished.

[1240] This visit was not to Lord Lyttelton, but to his uncle [afterwards by successive creations, Lord Westcote, and Lord Lyttelton], the father of the present Lord Lyttelton, who lived at a house called Little Hagley. DUPPA. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1771:—'I would have been glad to go to Hagley in compliance with Mr. Lyttelton's kind invitation, for beside the pleasure of his conversation I should have had the opportunity of recollecting past times, and wandering per montes notos et flumina nota, of recalling the images of sixteen, and reviewing my conversations with poor Ford.' Piozzi Letters, i. 42. He had been at school at Stourbridge, close by Hagley. Ante, i. 49. See Walpole's Letters, ix. 123, for an anecdote of Lord Westcote.

[1241] Horace Walpole, writing of Hagley in Sept. 1753 (Letters, ii. 352), says:—'There is extreme taste in the park: the seats are not the best, but there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle, built by Miller, that would get him his freedom even of Strawberry [Walpole's own house at Twickenham]: it has the true rust of the Barons' Wars.'

[1242] 'Mrs. Lyttelton forced me to play at whist against my liking, and her husband took away Johnson's candle that he wanted to read by at the other end of the room. Those, I trust, were the offences.' PiozziMS. CROKER.

[1243] Johnson (Works, viii. 409) thus writes of Shenstone and the Leasowes:—'He began to point his prospects, to diversify his surface, to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful; a place to be visited by travellers and copied by designers. .... For awhile the inhabitants of Hagley affected to tell their acquaintance of the little fellow that was trying to make himself admired; but when by degrees the Leasowes forced themselves into notice, they took care to defeat the curiosity which they could not suppress by conducting their visitants perversely to inconvenient points of view, and introducing them at the wrong end of a walk to detect a deception; injuries of which Shenstone would heavily complain. Where there is emulation there will be vanity; and where there is vanity there will be folly. The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye: he valued what he valued merely for its looks; nothing raised his indignation more than to ask if there were any fishes in his water.' See ante, p. 345.

[1244] See ante, iii. 187, and v. 429.

[1245] 'He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It is said that if he had lived a little longer he would have been assisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more properly bestowed.' Johnson's Works, viii. 410. His friend, Mr. Graves, the author of The Spiritual Quixote, in a note on this passage says that, if he was sometimes distressed for money, yet he was able to leave legacies and two small annuities.

[1246] Mr. Duppa—without however giving his authority—says that this was Dr. Wheeler, mentioned ante, iii. 366. The Birmingham Directory for the year 1770 shews that there were two tradesmen in the town of that name, one having the same Christian name, Benjamin, as Dr. Wheeler.

[1247] Boswell visited these works in 1776. Ante, ii. 459.

[1248] Burke in the House of Commons on Jan. 25, 1771, in a debate on Falkland's Island, said of the Spanish Declaration:—'It was made, I admit, on the true principles of trade and manufacture. It puts me in mind of a Birmingham button which has passed through an hundred hands, and after all is not worth three-halfpence a dozen.' Parl. Hist. xvi. 1345.

[1249] Johnson and Boswell drove through the Park in 1776. Ante, ii. 451.

[1250] 'My friend the late Lord Grosvenor had a house at Salt Hill, where I usually spent a part of the summer, and thus became acquainted with that great and good man, Jacob Bryant. Here the conversation turned one morning on a Greek criticism by Dr. Johnson in some volume lying on the table, which I ventured (for I was then young) to deem incorrect, and pointed it out to him. I could not help thinking that he was somewhat of my opinion, but he was cautious and reserved. "But, Sir," said I, willing to overcome his scruples, "Dr. Johnson himself admitted that he was not a good Greek scholar." "Sir," he replied, with a serious and impressive air, "it is not easy for us to say what such a man as Johnson would call a good Greek scholar." I hope that I profited by that lesson—certainly I never forgot it.' Gifford's Works of Ford, vol. i. p. lxii. Croker's Boswell, p. 794. 'So notorious is Mr. Bryant's great fondness for studying and proving the truths of the creation according to Moses, that he told me himself, and with much quaint humour, a pleasantry of one of his friends in giving a character of him:—"Bryant," said he, "is a very good scholar, and knows all things whatever up to Noah, but not a single thing in the world beyond the Deluge."' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, iii. 229.

[1251] This is a work written by William Durand, Bishop of Mende, and printed on vellum, in folio, by Fust and Schoeffer, in Mentz, 1459. It is the third book that is known to be printed with a date. DUPPA. It is perhaps the first book with a date printed in movable metal type. Brunei, ed. 1861, ii. 904. See ante, ii. 397.

[1252] Dr. Johnson, in another column of his Diary, has put down, in a note, 'First printed book in Greek, Lascaris's Grammar, 4to, Mediolani, 1476.' The imprint of this book is, Mediolani Impressum per Magistrum Dionysium Paravisinum. M.CCCC.LXXVI. Die xxx Januarii. The first book printed in the English language was the Historyes of Troye, printed in 1471. DUPPA. A copy of the Historyes of Troy is exhibited in the Bodleian Library with the following superscription:—'Lefevre's Recuyell of the historyes of Troye. The first book printed in the English language. Issued by Caxton at Bruges about 1474.'

[1253] The Battle of the Frogs and Mice. The first edition was printed by Laonicus Cretensis, 1486. DUPPA.

[1254] Mr. Coulson was a Senior Fellow of University College. Lord Stowell informed me that he was very eccentric. He would on a fine day hang out of the college windows his various pieces of apparel to air, which used to be universally answered by the young men hanging out from all the other windows, quilts, carpets, rags, and every kind of trash, and this was called an illumination. His notions of the eminence and importance of his academic situation were so peculiar, that, when he afterwards accepted a college living, he expressed to Lord Stowell his doubts whether, after living so long in the great world, he might not grow weary of the comparative retirement of a country parish. CROKER. See ante, ii. 382, note.

[1255] Dr. Robert Vansittart, Fellow of All Souls, and Regius Professor of Law. DUPPA. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Nov. 3, 1773:—'Poor V———! There are not so many reasons as he thinks why he should envy me, but there are some; he wants what I have, a kind and careful mistress; and wants likewise what I shall want at my return. He is a good man, and when his mind is composed a man of parts.' Piozzi Letters, i. 197. See ante, i. 348.

[1256] See ante, ii. 285, note 3.

THE END OF THE FIFTH VOLUME.