Twelve years later the poet Gay spent a few weeks in Edinburgh. He came in the cortège of his patroness, that witty and eccentric Duchess of Queensberry who had already been sung to and of by Pope and Prior. It is said that Gay lived in an attic opposite Queensberry House in the Canongate; but that he wrote the “Beggar’s Opera” there is denied by Mr. Robert Chambers as an “entirely gratuitous assumption.” But there was an alehouse as well as an attic opposite the home of his patroness, and Mr. Chambers evidently did not think it an entirely gratuitous assumption that the poet spent much of his time at “Jennie Ha’s,” drinking the claret from the butt for which she was so famed. On the first flat of “Creech’s Land,” at the end of the Luckenbooths, was Allan Ramsay’s circulating library, the rendezvous of all the Edinburgh literati. Here, during the weeks of Gay’s visit, might often have been seen “a pleasant little man in a tye wig.” This was the author of—
How happy could I be with either,
Were t’other dear charmer away!
who had walked up from the Canongate to enjoy a friendly interchange of ideas with the author of—
Wae’s me! For baith I canna get,
To ane by law we’re stented;
Then I’ll draw cuts, and take my fate,
And be with ane contented.
And Allan Ramsay would point out to Gay the leading citizens as they lounged and gossiped round the Cross opposite the library; and Gay in his turn would ask for explanations of Scottish words and customs, that he might, on his return, be able to enlighten Pope, who was already an admirer of the “Gentle Shepherd.”
In the middle of the eighteenth century Goldsmith was a medical student in Edinburgh, living, it is said, in College Wynd, and writing amusing accounts of the dulness and formality and drollery of the Assemblies. An Edinburgh tailor’s account for the year 1753, found by the late Mr. David Laing in the pages of an old ledger, allows one to imagine Goldie gracing Edinburgh in a suit of sky-blue satin and black velvet, and a “superfine small hatt” which bore “8s. worth of silver hatt lace.” Mr. Filby the tailor charged the modest sum of £3:6:6 for a “superfine high claret-coloured” cloth suit; but possibly he might have charged double that amount or half that amount with equal profit to himself, for the account was “carried over,” and no ledger remains to tell the tale.[54]
Tobias Smollett paid two visits to Edinburgh, the last in 1766, when he stayed with his sister, Mrs. Telfer of Scotstoun, in St. John Street. This street, then inhabited by some of the aristocracy of Edinburgh, still retains a distinguished look; and much of the fine old architecture remains, including Mrs. Telfer’s home, which was in the first floor of the house over the great archway through which the street is entered. This house, which was previously the residence of the Earl of Hopetoun, attracts the eye immediately by its turnpike stair, occupying the corner of the street, beside the arched entrance. Smollett was introduced by Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk to Edinburgh literary celebrities, among them Home, who had so scandalised his brother clergy by writing a play,—“The Douglas”; and, like Gay thirty years before, he haunted Allan Ramsay’s library,—in Smollett’s day the property of Alexander Kincaid the publisher. Humphrey Clinker contains all Smollett’s comments on Edinburgh society, men, and manners.
Three years later, in 1769, Benjamin Franklin visited Edinburgh. He was given the freedom of the city, and was accorded the usual hospitable welcome from all the chief people of the town.
On a Saturday evening in August 1773, Dr. Johnson’s huge figure filled the doorway of the old Whitehorse Inn in Boyd’s Close, and presently Boswell, in his house in James’s Court, received the following note:—
Saturday night.