Scarce by North Britons now esteem’d a Scot?
Who to the sage devoted from his youth
Imbib’d from him the sacred love of truth;
The keen research, the exercise of mind,
And that best art, the art to know mankind.”
Much as his performance was appreciated by friendly persons, it was impossible that Boswell’s morbid egotism should escape ridicule. Thomas Rowlandson, the noted caricaturist, issued twenty cartoons, presenting the unguarded tourist in absurd and grotesque scenes and attitudes, founded on descriptions in his book. They were placed in the shop windows and hawked about the streets, while the laughter-rousing Peter Pindar[77] addressed Boswell in a “Poetical and Congratulatory Epistle,” mercilessly castigating him in sarcastic and crushing rhymes. Here is a specimen:—
“At length, ambitious Thane, thy rage
To give one spark to Fame’s bespangled page
Is amply gratified. A thousand eyes
Survey thy book with rapture and surprize!
Loud of thy tour, a thousand tongues have spoken,
And wonder’d that thy bones were never broken.
*****
Nay, though thy Johnson ne’er had bless’d thine eyes,
Paoli’s deeds had rais’d thee to the skies;
Yes! his broad wing had rais’d thee (no bad luck)
A tomtit twitt’ring on an eagle’s back.”
Equally pungent was the savage Pindar in a subsequent poem, entitled “Bozzy and Piozzi.” He wrote:—
“For thee, James Boswell, may the hand of Fate
Arrest thy goose-quill and confine thy prate!
Thine egotism the world disgusted hears—
Then load with vanities no more our ears.
Like some lone puppy, yelping all night long,
That tires the very echoes with his tongue.
Yet, should it lie beyond the pow’rs of Fate
To stop thy pen, and still thy darling prate;
To live in solitude, oh! be thy luck
A chattering magpie on the Isle of Muck.”
Than the shafts of ridicule, Boswell experienced even more substantial discomfort. Respecting Sir Alexander Macdonald, Bart., chief of the Macdonalds, he had written thus unguardedly:—
“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 on 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 Skye, 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 turned 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.”