“Bardarrock[208] was one evening drinking with a company of gentlemen. When it came to his toast he gave Miss De Hood. ‘Miss De Hood,’ said they, ‘we never heard of her.’ ‘Neither,’ said he, ‘did I ever hear of ony o’ yours.’”
Lord Auchinleck.
“David Hume used to say that he did not find it an irksome task to him to go through a great many dull books when writing his history. ‘I then read,’ said he, ‘not for pleasure, but in order to find out facts.’ He compared it to a sportsman seeking hares, who does not mind what sort of ground it is that he goes over farther than as he may find hares in it.”
From himself.
“As it was said that French cooks will make admirable dishes of things which others throw away as useless, so the French in general can cook up a ragoût of vanity from the most trivial circumstances; nay, from circumstances which naturally ought to humble them. Instance the soldier running before the King of Prussia, who said, ‘Ma fois, c’est un brave homme, ce Roi de Prusse. Je crois qu’il a servi en France.’ And the Chevalier de Malte, who told me that if Lord George Sackville[209] had advanced at Minden, the French army would have turned, ‘et il aurroit ete le plus illustre jour que la France jamais ont.’”
“Mr. William Auld,[210] the minister of Mauchline, took his Sunday’s supper with me one night when I lived in the Canongate. He had provided himself with a large new wig, with the greatest number of curls in it that I almost ever saw. As he walked up the street in his way home some drunken fellows passed him, and his wig having attracted their attention, one of them called out, ‘There’s a wig like the hundred and nineteenth Psalm,’—a droll comparison of the number of curls in the wig to the number of verses in the psalm, very apropos (apposite) to a minister.”
Mr. Brown, my clerk, who was present.
“Mr. Charles Cochrane liked to have a number of curious mortals about him at Ochiltree. Richmond of Bardarrock was one of them, but had more education and genius than most of them. One day they made a kind of butt of Bardarrock, and were all laughing at him, upon which he very gravely said, ‘It’s a changed world now; the lairds of this place were wont to keep hawks, but this laird has an unco’ taste,—he keeps gowks.’”
Lord Auchinleck.