Part 23

N.B.—“Dr. Johnson[280] thought this an admirable double pun; and he will seldom allow any vent to that species of witticism.”

* * * * *

“General Paoli was in a boat at Portsmouth at the naval review in 17—. He seated himself close to the helm. They wanted to steer the vessel, and in the hurry of getting to the helm they overturned the general. He said, very pleasantly:—‘Darbord que je me metts au gouvernail ou men chasse.’”

GENERAL PAOLI, London, 1778.

* * * * *

“At the regatta on the Thames, Sir Joshua Reynolds said to Dunning,[281] ‘I wonder who is the Director of this show?’ Dunning, who delights in the ludicrous in an extreme degree, pointed to a blackguard who was sitting on one of the lamps on Westminster Bridge, and said, ‘There he is.’ Sir Joshua observing a fellow on a wooden post nearer the water answered, ‘I believe you are right, and there is one who has a post under him.’”

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, London, April 25th, 1778.

* * * * *

“Colman[282] had a house opposite to a timber yard. The prospect of logs and deals was but clumsy. Colman said it would soon be covered by some trees planted before his windows. Sir Joshua Reynolds upon this quoted the proverb, ‘You will not be able to see the _wood_ for _trees_.’”

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, 25th April, 1778.

* * * * *

“At Sir Joshua Reynolds’ table —— observed that in the Germanick politicks at present the King of Prussia was a good attorney for the ——. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and he has a good power.’”

2nd May, 1778.

* * * * *

“In London you have an inexhaustible variety of company to enjoy with superficial pleasure, and out of these you may always have a few chosen friends for intimate cordiality. While you have a wide lake to sport in, you may have a stewpond to fatten, cherishing to high friendship, affection, and love, by feeding with attention and kindness. One must have a friend, a wife, or a mistress much in private; must dwell upon them, if that phrase may be used; must by reiterated habits of regard feel the particular satisfaction of intimacy. There must be many coats of the colour laid on to make a body substantial enough to last, for the colour of ordinary agreeable acquaintance is so slight that every feather can brush it off. One should be very careful in choosing for the stewpond. Horace says, ‘_Qualem commendes etiam atque etiam respice_.’ Such a recommendation is useful to put us on our guard to preserve our character for discernment. It is as much so to make us preserve our own comfort in friendship.”

London, April, 1778.

* * * * *

“If you wish to be very happy with your friend, or wife, or mistress, be with them in London or Bath, or some place where you are both enjoying pleasure; not in the country, where there is dulness and weariness. You may, perhaps, bear up your spirits even in dreary cold darkness in their company, but it is too severe trial to make the experiment. There may be love enough, yet not of such a supreme degree that warms amidst external disadvantages. It is not giving them fair play. Be with them in the sunshine; let mutual gladness beam upon your hearts; and let the ideas of pleasure be associated with the ideas of your being together. If pity be akin to love, it is so to melancholy love. Joy is the fond relation of delightful love of the sweet passion.”

London, April and May, 1778.

* * * * *

“General Paoli one day asked me to read to him something good out of my journal of conversations, which he found me busy recording. I was running my eye over the pages, muttering and long of bringing forth anything, upon which the general observed with his usual metaphorical fancy, _finesse d’esprit_, ‘Reason says I am a deer lost in a wood. It is difficult to find me.’ I had nothing to answer at the time, but afterwards—I forget how long—I said, ‘The wood is crowded with deer. There are so many good things, one is at a loss which to choose.’”

London, April, 1778.

* * * * *

“Mr. Crosbie was the member of several clubs. I said to him, ‘Crosbie, you are quite a club sawyer.’”

* * * * *

“Dr. Webster was rather late in coming to a dinner which I gave at Fortune’s, 9th July, 1774. His apology was, that just as he was coming out a man arrived who had money to pay him, and he stayed to receive it. ‘You was very right,’ said I, ‘for money is not like fame, that if you fly from it, it will pursue you as your shadow does.’”

* * * * *

“Harry Erskine[283] was observing that a certain agent would take it amiss to have it mentioned that his grandfather was a bellman. ‘I don’t think it,’ said I. ‘A bellman is a respectable title,’ said Peter Murray;[284] ‘it is at least a sounding title.’”

* * * * *

“‘I was wondering one day how many times a lawyer walks backwards and forwards in the outer house[285] in a forenoon,’ said Cosmo Gordon. ‘You must take a compound ratio of his idleness and his velocity.’”

* * * * *

“My wife said it would be much better to give salaries to members of Parliament than to let them try what they can get off their country by places and pensions. Said she, ‘They are like ostlers and postillions, who have no wages, and must support themselves by vails.’”[286]

* * * * *

“One day when causes were called in the Inner House in an irregular manner, and not according to the roll, I said to Crosbie, ‘The English courts run straight out like a fox; ours double like a hare.’”

* * * * *

“The pleasure of seeing Italy chiefly depends on the ideas which a man carries thither. Take an ignorant mechanick or an unlearned country squire to the banks of the Tiber. Show him Mount Soracte, the ruins of Rome, and drive him on to Naples, he will have little enjoyment. But a man whose mind is stored with classical knowledge feels a noble enthusiasm. His ideas uniting with the objects before him catch fire, and a flame is produced as in a chemical process by the mingling of certain substances, while others remain quite tame. A man must have his imagination charged with classical _particles_.”

* * * * *

“The severe measures taken against the Americans united them firmly by a cement of blood.”

A. BRITON, _Pub. Advert._, 16th Sept., 1775.

* * * * *

“Parliament is now, instead of being the representative of the nation, the echo of the Cabinet; and its acts are only wrappers to the ready prepared pills of the court laboratory for the people to swallow—if they do not stick in their throats.”

A. BRITON, _Pub. Advert._, 16th Sept., 1775.

* * * * *

“I said of a rich man who entertained us luxuriously, that although he was exceedingly ridiculous, we restrained ourselves from talking of him as we might do, lest we should lose his feasts. Said I, ‘he makes our teeth sentinels upon our tongues.’”

* * * * *

“I said that a drunken fellow was not honest. ‘A stick,’ said I ‘kept allways moist becomes rotten.’”

“If a man entertains his company himself, it is a great fatigue. It is blowing a fire with his own breath. Whoever can afford it should have a led captain of strong animal spirits, who may, like perpetual bellows, keep up the social flame.”

* * * * *

“I told Nairne one afternoon that I had been taking an airing with our solicitor-general. Said he, ‘Was you _learning_ to be solicitor?’ ‘No no,’ said I; ‘solicitors-general are _non docti, sed facti_.’”

1777.

* * * * *

“Poor David Hamilton of Monkland, on account of his vote in Lanarkshire, was made one of the macers of the Court of Session. He had a constant hoarseness, so that he could scarcely be heard when he called the causes and the lawyers, and was indeed as unfit for a crier of court as a man could be. I said he had no voice but _at an election_.”

* * * * *

“Sandie Maxwell, the wine merchant, told a story very well, and used to heighten it by greater and greater degrees of strong humour, according to the disposition of the company. I said he _blew_ a story to any size, as a man blows figures in a glasshouse. A satirical fellow would say, I warrant he shall not blow his own bottles to too large a size.”

* * * * *

“Lady Di Beauclerk[287] said to me she understood Mrs. V—— was an idiot. I said I was told so too; but when I was introduced to her did not find it be true. ‘Or perhaps,’ said I, ‘her being less an idiot than I had imagined her to be may have made me think she was not an idiot at all.’ ‘I think,’ said Lady Di, ‘she is bad enough, if that be all that a lawyer has to say for her, that she is only less an idiot than he imagined.’ Said I, ‘There are different kinds of idiots as of dogs, water idiots and land idiots, and so on.’ ‘I think,’ said Lady Di, ‘that is worth writing down.’”

Richmond, 27th April, 1781.

* * * * *

“Lady Di Beauclerk told me that Langton had never been to see her since she came to Richmond, his head was so full of the militia and Greek. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘madam, he is of such a length, he is awkward, and not easily moved.’ ‘But,’ said she, ‘if he had laid himself at his length, his feet had been in London, and his head might have been here _eodem die_.’”

* * * * *

“Lord Chesterfield could indulge himself in making any sort of pun at a time. Dr. Barnard, now Bishop of Killaloe, was standing by his lordship in the pump-room at Bath, when the late Duchess of Northumberland’s father was brought in a chair very unwieldy. The musick was playing. My lord said to Barnard, ‘We have a new sort of instrument this morning—a dull Seymour[288] (dulcimer).’”

From DR. BARNARD, London, 1781.

* * * * *

“Parnell[289] was miserably addicted to drinking. He could not refrain even the morning that Swift introduced him to Lord Oxford.[290] My lord pressed through the crowd to get to Parnell. But he soon perceived his situation. He in a little said to Swift, ‘your friend, I fear, is not very well.’ Swift answered, ‘He is troubled with a great shaking.’ ‘I am sorry,’ said the Earl, ‘that he should have such a distemper, but especially that it should attack him in the morning.’”

From DR. BARNARD, Bishop of Killaloe, who had it from DR. DELANY.

* * * * *

“In spring, 1781, Dr. Franklin[291] wrote from Paris to a freind in London, with indignation against one who had been entrusted with money belonging to the American prisoners, and had run off with it. One expression in his letters was singularly strong, and indeed wild:—‘If that fellow is not damned, it is not worth while to keep a devil.’”

MR. SUARD.[292]

* * * * *

“Lord Foley,[293] whose extravagance frequently brought his creditors upon him so as to have executions in his house, was rallying George Selwyn on his particular curiosity for spectacles of death. ‘You go,’ said he, ‘I understand, to see all executions.’ ‘No my lord,’ answered George, ‘I don’t go to see your executions.’”

MR. SUARD.

* * * * *

“The Honourable Mrs. Stuart[294] was one day talking to me with just severity against drunkenness (the sin which doth most easily beset me). I attempted to apologise, and said that intoxication might happen at a time to any man. ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘to any man but a Scotsman, for what with another man is an accident is in him a habit.’”

* * * * *

“At Sir John Dick’s, Sunday, 8th May, 1785, I made the gentlemen sit and drink out some capital old hock after the ladies left us. When I came into the drawing-room, and was seated by the lady of Sir Matthew White Ridley,[295] she said to me, ‘We ladies don’t like you when you have drunk a bottle of hock, because you then tell us only plain truth.’ ‘Bravo!’ cried I; ‘Lady Ridley, this shall go into my _Boswelliana_. It is one of the best _bon mots_ I have heard for a long time. It goes deep into human nature.’”

* * * * *

“M. D’Ankerville (9th May, 1785) at General Paoli’s paid me the compliment that I was the man of genius who had the best heart he had ever known.”

* * * * *

“The king cannot give to Langton because he is not in the political sphere. He cannot take a handful of the gold upon the faro table, and give it to any man, however worthy, who is only looking on or stalking round the room. Let him play, let him part, and take his chance. The king is but the marker at the great billiard-table of the state. He can mark a man three, four, or five, or whatever number according to his play, and if he goes off the table into opposition, can rub out the chalk; like the marker, he can give what money he has for himself as he pleases, and employ his own tailor or shoemaker, and buy his own snuff and ballads, take a walk or a ride at his idle hours where he pleases.”

* * * * *

“The first time Suard saw Burke, who was at Reynolds’s, Johnson touched him on the shoulder and said, ‘Le grande Burke.’”

* * * * *

“My journal is ready; it is in the larder, only to be sent to the kitchen, or perhaps trussed and larded a little.”

* * * * *

“Mrs. Cosway[296] said she had often expressed a wish to see me. General (Paoli) did not tell me this. He has been affraid of making me too vain and turning the head of his friend. No, he knows the value of things—it was not worth telling.”

* * * * *

“At Mr. Aubrey’s, 19th April, Wilkes and I hard at it. I warm on monarchy. ‘Po, your’n old Tory.’ _Boswell._ ‘And you’re a new Tory. Let that stand for that.’”

* * * * *

“I mentioned my having been in Tothill Fields Bridewell; how the keeper had let me in, &c. _Wilkes_, ‘I don’t wonder at your getting in, but that you got out.’ _Bos._ ‘O no, I have no propensity to be a jail-bird; I never had the honour you have had[297] [he looking a little disconcerted, as the pill rather too strong]—I mean being Lord Mayor of London; I mean the golden _chain_. I never had the honour to have a chain of any sort.’”

* * * * *

“‘I’ll have some of the other soup too. Were there a hundred soups, I should eat of them all.’ _Mrs. Aubrey_ (very pleasantly): ‘I am sorry ours comes so far short of your number.’”

* * * * *

“Old Hutton[298] talked of men of phlegm and men of fancy. Said H., ‘Men of phlegm punish the beef, the solid parts of dinner; men of fancy, the dessert.’ ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘men of fancy would have nothing to work upon were there not men of phlegm. Men of phlegm perform the actions, compile the histories, discover the arts and sciences upon which poetry is founded.’”

* * * * *

“Dr. Burney[299] said he hoped I was now come to plant myself in London. ‘I’ll bring the watering pan,’ said he.”

* * * * *

“I told Lord Galloway,[300] April, 1785, that I called Lord Daer Darius.[301] ‘What,’ said he, ‘do you think him the son of Cyrus?’ laughing at Lord Selkirk. I did not think he’d have said this, though a distinguished law lord.”

* * * * *

“When Pitt the second made his first appearance in the House of Commons in opposition to Fox, Gibbon[302] said, ‘There is a beautiful painted pinnace just going to be run down by a black collier.’ He never was more mistaken. Pitt has more forcible indignation in him than Fox.”

WILKES.

* * * * *

“As a playful instance of the proverb, I said, ‘Every man has his price. Lord Shelburne[303] has his price [meaning Dr. Price],[304] whom I love and call _Pretium affectionis_.’”

Monday, 18th April, 1785, at DR. BROCKLESBY’S.[305]

* * * * *

“General Paoli said more good things than almost anybody, yet he talks of them with contempt. I told him he had always _bon mots_ about him, which he used like footballs—he threw them down and gave them a kick.” 24th April, 1785.

* * * * *

“April, 1785, at Mr. Osborne’s. Sir Joseph Banks told me he was sure he had a soul. He felt it high within him, as a woman does a child.”

* * * * *

“25th April, 1785. Dining on guard with Colonel Lord Cathcart,[306] Cataline was mentioned. ‘Who was he?’ said George[307] Hanger, ‘for I know no ancient history.’ ‘I’ll tell you what he was,’ said Colonel Tarleton. ‘_Alieni cupidus, sui profusus_.’ ‘Very fair!’ said Hanger. In a little talking of fellows going carelessly to execution, Tarleton said, ‘We’re told Sir Thomas More smiled all the way.’”

* * * * *

“Mrs. Heron[308] being at her parish church, the name of the minister being Stot,[309] as it was a very bad day, and the wind and rain were driving through the windows, a lady observed that it was like a _guarde mange_. ‘I think so too, madam,’ said she; ‘but if that were the case I should think it would be better to have a dead stot than a living one.’”

From herself.

* * * * *

“Houstoun Stewart[310] was one night in Drury Lane playhouse very shabbily dressed. A surly-looking, boorish fellow comes up to him: ‘Pray, sir, whose seat do you keep?’ Houstoun replied with an ironical complaisance, ‘Yours, sir.’ As he was rising the fellow observed his sword, was much confused, and asked ten thousand pardons. ‘From this,’ says Stewart, ‘we see the value of a sword. Had I wanted it I might have been taken for a real footman.’”

MR. G. GOLDIE.

* * * * *

“A comical fellow was telling that Raploch sat upon turkey eggs and brought out birds, which made the company laugh extremely. ‘Stay, stay, gentlemen!’ says Harry Barclay;[311] ‘you don’t know that these turkeys are all my cousins german, for Raploch is my uncle.’”

LADY KAMES.[312]

* * * * *

“A gentleman was one night talking of the Nile. An ignorant boobie who was present asked him with great eagerness, ‘Pray, what fellow was that?’ ‘Why, troth, sir,’ says he, ‘it was a fellow that took a conceit to hide his head so that it could not be found again.’”

MRS. HERON.

* * * * *

“A dog one day jumped upon Miss Bruce[313] of Kinross’s lap at a tea-table. ‘I wonder,’ says she, ‘if dogs can see anything particularly agreeable about me?’ ‘Indeed, madam,’ replied a gentleman, ‘he would be a very sad dog that did not.’”

MRS. G. GOLDIE.

* * * * *

“Mr. Heron[314] was one day reproving a servant at table for negligence. ‘What have you been thinking of, Peter, that you have forgot spoons?’ ‘I suppose, my dear,’ says his lady, ‘that he has been thinking of knives and forks.’”

I was present.

* * * * *

“We are apt to imagine that the Turks are a brutal sort of people, totally given up to gross sensuality, and altogether void of gay fancy or the finer feelings. As an instance to the contrary, my Lord Galloway tells that he was sitting at Constantinople with a Turkish gentleman, who, although a true Mussulman, took a glass of wine. The custom there is not for a company to drink all at once, like a regiment going through their evolutions, but as the intention of drinking is to cheer the spirits, they take a cup of the liquor which stands before them just as they feel themselves in need of it. This Turk, after having taken three or four bumpers of champagne, pointed to a lamp which hung above their heads, as they never use candles. ‘This,’ says he, ‘my lord, is to me as the oil is to that lamp.’ A pretty allusion, as if it lighted him up.”

LORD KENMORE.[315]

* * * * *

“My lord having shown to the same gentleman a picture of Lady Garlies,[316] he looked at it a long time very attentively, and then asked my lord, with a good deal of emotion, whose picture it was. My lord answered that it was the picture of his lady, who had died just before he left his native country. ‘My lord,’ said the Turk, ‘you have the strongest constitution, and have a chance to live longer than any man I ever met with.’ And being asked his reason for saying so, ‘Because, my lord, you have been able to survive so fine a woman.’ A noble expression of a feeling heart.”

LORD KENMORE.

* * * * *

“Silinger, a gentleman of Ireland, remarkable for humour and spirit, had got himself drunk one night, and had broke windows in St. James’s Street. Next morning at White’s they were all talking of and abusing him most confoundedly. Lord Coke,[317] a most worthless fellow, stood up with great warmth for Mr. Silinger, who a little after came in! ‘Silinger,’ cried my lord, ‘you are much obliged to me this morning, for I have been losing my character in defence of yours.’ ‘Have you so, my lord?’ says he, ‘then you are much obliged to me, for you have lost the worst character in all England.’”

MR. MURRAY, of Broughtoun.

* * * * *

“Colonel Chartres,[318] who knew mankind too well to be ignorant of the power of flattery, said to John,[319] Duke of Argyle, ‘Good heaven, my lord, what would I give to have your character! I would give ten thousand pounds.’ ‘Indeed, Chartres,’ replied the duke, ‘it would be the worst bargain you ever made, for you would lose it again in a day.’”

LORD KAMES.

* * * * *

“A gentleman was one day making that common serious reflection, ‘Time runs.’ ‘Very well,’ replied Boswell, ‘let it run there, for I am sure I shall never try to pursue it.’”

* * * * *

“Lady Katie Murray[320] having shown her full-length portrait to Lord Eglintoune, ‘O such vanity, such vanity!’ cried he, ‘do you really take that for you?’ ‘Indeed, my lord,’ says she, Mr. Reynolds says that it is me; so I can’t help it.’”

From herself.

* * * * *

“Colonel Folly came to wait upon old Jerviswood,[321] who was very deaf; and being very finically dressed, the old gentleman asked with great curiosity, ‘Who’s that? who’s that?’ and being answered, Colonel Folly, ‘I see,’ says he, ‘he’s a fool, but what is his name?’”

LORD AUCHINLECK.

* * * * *

“Sir Alexander Dick passed an evening at Rome with a number of gentlemen, who had been obliged to fly Scotland on account of the rebellion, 1715. One of them sung ‘The Broom of the Cowdenknowes,’[322] with which the whole company were so much affected as to burst into tears and cry with great bitterness.”

From himself.

* * * * *

“When John McKie[323] was in Prussia, one of the sentinels petitioned him and some other gentlemen who were with him for their charity to a poor Briton, who had been seized by the advanced guards while in the Dutch service, and had now but very poor pay. ‘Pray, sir,’ said Mr. McKie, ‘what is your name?’ ‘John McKie, sir,’ said he, ‘from the Laird of Balgowan’s estate, in the parish of Monigaff, in Galloway.’ Surprised and pleased at the discovery, they collected all the silver they had about them and threw to him.”

SIR ROBERT MAXWELL, 3rd hand.

* * * * *