BOSWELLIANA.
The following anecdotes are related by, or relate to, the well-known James Boswell, who conducted Dr. Johnson to the Highlands of Scotland.
It may be recollected that when Boswell took the doctor to his father’s house, the old laird of Auchinleck remarked, that “Jamie had brought an odd kind o’ a chiel’ wi’ him.” “Sir,” said Boswell, “he is the grand luminary of our hemisphere,—quite a constellation, sir.”—“Ursa Major, (the Great Bear,) I suppose,” said the laird.
Some snip-snap wit was wont to pass between sire and son. “Jamie” was bred an advocate, and sometimes pleaded at the bar. Pleading, on a particular occasion, before his father, who, at that time, was “Ordinary on the bills,” and saying something which his lordship did not like, he exclaimed to Jamie, “Ye’re an ass, mon.”—“No, my lord,” replied Jamie, “I am not an ass, but I am a colt, the foal of an ass!”
In 1785, Boswell addressed “a Letter to the People of Scotland” on a proposed alteration in the court of session. He says in this pamphlet, “When a man of probity and spirit, a lord Newhall, whose character is ably drawn in prose by the late lord president Arniston, and elegantly in verse by Mr. Hamilton of Bangour,—when such a man sits among our judges, should they be disposed to do wrong, he can make them hear and tremble. My honoured father told me, (the late lord Auchinleck,) that sir Walter Pringle ‘spoke as one having authority’—even when he was at the bar, ‘he would cram a decision down their throats.’”
Boswell tells, in the same “Letter,” that “Duncan Forbes of Culloden, when lord president of the court, gave every day as a toast at his table, ‘Here’s to every lord of session who does not deserve to be hanged!’ Lord Auchinleck and lord Monboddo, both judges, but since his time, are my authority,” says Boswell, “for this.—I do not say that the toast was very delicate, or even quite decent, but it may give some notion what sort of judges there may be.”
It is further related by Boswell, that a person was executed to please his laird. “Before the heritable jurisdictions were abolished, a man was tried for his life in the court of one of the chieftains. The jury were going to bring him in ‘not guilty,’ but somebody whispered them, that ‘the young laird had never seen an execution,’ upon which their verdict was—‘death;’ and the man was hanged accordingly.”
This is only to be paralleled by the story of the highland dame, whose sense of submission to the chief of her clan induced her to insinuate want of proper respect in her husband, who had been condemned, and showed some reluctance to the halter. “Git up, Donald,” said the “guid wife,” to her “ain guid man,” “Git up, Donald, and be hangit, an’ dinna anger the laird.”
BOWEL COMPLAINTS.
A Recipe.
The writer of a letter to the editor of the “Times,” signed “W.” in August, 1827, communicates the following prescription, as particularly useful in diarrhœa, accompanied by inflammation of the bowels:—
Take of confection of catechu 2 drachms; simple cinnamon water 4 ounces; and syrup of white poppies 1 ounce. Mix them together, and give one or two table-spoonfuls twice or thrice a day as required. To children under ten years of age give a single dessert-spoon, and under two years a tea-spoonful, two or three times, as above stated.
This mixture is very agreeable, and far preferable to the spirituous and narcotic preparations usually administered. In the course of a few hours it abates the disorder, and in almost every instance infallibly cures the patient. During the fruit season it is especially valuable.
Epitaph
ON A MARINE OFFICER
Here lies retired from busy scenes
A First Lieutenant of Marines;
Who lately lived in peace and plenty
On board the ship the Atalanta:
Now, stripp’d of all his warlike show,
And laid in box of elm below,
Confined to earth in narrow borders,
He rises not till further orders.[337]
[337] From the “Notes of a Bookworm.”