“Whatever might have been your pleasure or mine, I know not how I could have honestly advised you to come hither with borrowed money. Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity. Poverty takes away so many means of doing good, and produces so much inability to resist evil, both natural and moral, that it is by all virtuous means to be avoided. Consider a man whose fortune is very narrow; whatever be his rank by birth, or whatever his reputation by intellectual excellence, what can he do, or what evil can he prevent? That he cannot help the needy is evident; he has nothing to spare. But perhaps his advice or admonition may be useful. His poverty will destroy his influence; many more can find that he is poor than that he is wise; and few will reverence the understanding that is of so little advantage to its owner. I say nothing of the personal wretchedness of a debtor, which, however, has passed into a proverb.”
After a long illness, patiently borne, Lord Auchinleck died at Edinburgh on the 31st August. He had settled on his eldest son the ancestral estate, with an unencumbered rental of £1,600 a year. On receipt of the tidings, Dr. Johnson wrote to Boswell as follows:—
“Your father’s death had every circumstance that could enable you to bear it; it was at a mature age, and it was expected; and as his general life had been pious, his thoughts had doubtless for many years past been turned upon eternity. That you did not find him sensible must doubtless grieve you; his disposition towards you was undoubtedly that of a kind, though not of a fond father. Kindness, at least actual, is in our power, but fondness is not; and if by negligence or imprudence you had extinguished his fondness, he could not at will rekindle it. Nothing then remained for you but mutual forgiveness of each other’s faults, and mutual desire of each other’s happiness. I shall long to know his final disposition of his fortune.”
At Auchinleck the deceased judge was deeply revered. In the Kirk-Session Records of that parish, Mr. David Murdoch,[70] schoolmaster and session clerk, has accompanied the entry of his death with the following lines, entitled “Essay towards a character of Lord Auchinleck:”—
“For every sovereign virtue much renowned,
Of judgment steady, and in wisdom sound,
Through a long life in active bus’ness spent,
For justice and for prudence eminent;
Well qualified to occupy the line
Allotted him by Providence divine;
Employed with indefatigable pains
In very num’rous and important scenes;
And as his fame for justice was well known,
His clemency no less conspicuous shone;
Reliever of the needful and opprest,
The gen’rous benefactor of distrest,
Ready to hear and rectify a wrong,
To re-establish harmony among
Contending friends, or such as disagreed,
And of his interposing aid had need;
Successfully he laboured much and long
As healer of the breaches us among;
And still from jarring order brought about,
Carefully searching unknown causes out.
A foe to vice, detesting liars much,
Of shrewd acuteness in discerning such;
Averse to flattery, hating all deceit,
Though in resentment mod’rate and discreet;
And ready still, with sympathizing grace,
To wipe the tear from every mourning face.
Whether we see him talking at the Bar,
Or on the Bench, a step exalted far,
Display the spirit of his country’s laws,
Or ruminate the merits of a cause;
Or in retirement from such legal strife
View him a gentleman in private life,—
In all connections, and in him we find
The husband loving and the parent kind,
The easy master and the faithful friend,
The honest counsellor, as all will own,
And most indulgent landlord ever known.
In all departments on the earthly stage,
In every scene in which he did engage,
Such steadiness, such truth and candour shone,
As equalled is by few, surpassed by none;
In everything important less or more,
Supporting well the character he bore.
A person thus disposed and thus endowed
Must have been universally allowed
The tribute of our praises heretofore,
And claims our tears when now he is no more.
All ranks in him a mighty loss sustain,
Both rich and poor, the noble and the mean;
For why? his services did far extend
Through town and country to the kingdom’s end;
The whole to him in obligations bound,
As to his honour ever will redound.