Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland)

In the present drawing-room a small portrait of Johnson, ascribed to Reynolds, but, as I was told, by Zoffany, hangs in a place of honour. Here, too, is kept his letter of thank...

Late in the afternoon our travellers drove on to Aberdeen. “We had tedious driving,” writes Boswell, “and were somewhat drowsy.” Though they “travelled with the gentle pace of a...

Taking leave of these inoffensive, if wild-looking people, our travellers rode on, much refreshed by their repast. They had, as Johnson complained, “very little entertainment, a...

On Thursday, October 28, a postchaise which Boswell had ordered from Glasgow, “came for us,” he says, “and we drove on in high spirits.” On their way they stopped at Dunbarton,...

In Dr. Watson’s house the two travellers “found very comfortable and genteel accommodation.” The host “wondered at Johnson’s total inattention to established manners;” but he do...

That pride in his ancient blood, which Boswell boasted was his predominant passion, was very strong in the old lord. In the son, if it really existed in any strength, it was hap...

Boswell hesitated, or affected to hesitate, about calling on the Duke of Argyle. “I had reason to think,” he writes, “that the duchess disliked me on account of my zeal in the D...

The French writer, Faujas de Saint Fond, who visited the Highlands about the year 1780, was touched with the same unromantic gloom. When on his way from the barren mountains of...

According to Dr. Robert Chambers “a story was told of his once making a serious objection to a law-paper, and in consequence to the whole suit, on account of the word _justice_...

In the rebellion of 1745, Lord Errol, following a plan not unknown among the Scotch nobility, had served on the opposite side from his father. At Culloden he had seen him brough...

Entering Edinburgh by the road which goes near Holyrood House, and driving along the Canongate, they alighted at the entrance to White Horse Close, at the end of which stood the...

In the same great pile of buildings as the Law Courts is the Advocates’ Library, “of which Dr. Johnson took a cursory view.” He, no doubt, “respectfully remembered” there its fo...

Smollett, who in national prejudice did not yield even to him, has strongly upheld the opposite opinion. In his _History_ he describes Lord Belhaven’s speech against the Union i...

“My father,” writes Boswell, “was as sanguine a Whig and Presbyterian as Dr. Johnson was a Tory and Church-of-England man: and as he had not much leisure to be informed of Dr. J...

It is surprising that he should have thought that there could ever have been a moat on a rock high above the river. Johnson nevertheless also mentions it. What they mistook for...

While Johnson in the voyage to Raasay “sat high on the stern of the boat like a magnificent Triton,” old Malcolm, no less magnificent through his attire, took his turn at tuggin...

Every Scotchman, it was said long ago, thought it his duty once in his life to visit “the city of the scarlet gown” and to see the ruins of the great cathedral.[487] No longer,...

The people he praises no less than their ministers. “Civility,” he says, “seems part of the national character of Highlanders. Every chieftain is a monarch, and politeness, the...

That “felicity” which England had in its taverns and inns was not equally enjoyed in Scotland. Certainly it was not in Edinburgh that was to be found “that throne of human felic...

The age which I am attempting to describe was looked upon by Lord Cockburn as “the last purely Scotch age that Scotland was destined to see. The whole country had not begun to b...

Boswell had counted “fifteen different waterfalls near the house in the space of about a quarter of a mile.” “They succeeded one another so fast,” said Johnson, “that as one cea...

Had our travellers ridden the whole distance from Kingsburgh to Dunvegan they would have travelled a weary way in rounding Lochs Snizort and Grishinish. But they sent their hors...

Though in 1759 the castle was described as ruinous, nevertheless it had been inhabited by the laird a few years earlier. Over the entrance of the house in which he received John...

It was dark when our travellers reached “the wretched inn” at Fort Augustus. Happily it was not in it that they were to lodge, for the governor invited them to sleep in his hous...

The “patriotic Knox,” as Boswell calls him, the author of _A Tour through the Highlands and Hebride Isles in 1786_, a man freer from prejudices than the common run, and one who...

His portrait, which I saw in the Loan Exhibition of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, shows a cold conceited face. Dr. Carlyle gives an unpleasing account of him. After re...

Our travellers made their way so slowly over this rough country that though they started at eleven, they did not reach the coast till seven at night. Yet they had been told that...

In Iona, however, there was no need of threats. The poor people were devoted to their former chief. “He went,” says Johnson, “to the headman of the island whom fame, but fame de...

[307] According to Arnot, for many years preceding 1763, the average number of executions for the whole of Scotland was only three. There were four succeeding years in which the...

SCOTCH, boastful, 14; clannish, 14; combination, 14, 39; decencies of life neglected, 41-8; English abuse, 38; English ignorance of them, 24, 36; English imitated, 7, 60-3; hist...

Dr. Johnson’s Bedroom, Dunvegan 1 Mam Rattachan 3 Sound of Ulva 5 Glencroe 13 Armidale 23 Loch Ness, near Foyers 27 Loch Lomond 31 The Tolbooth 55 Hume’s House 57 White Horse Cl...

At the beginning of last year, at the request of Messrs. Sampson Low and Co., I began to prepare a work in which, under the title of _Footsteps of Dr. Johnson_, I was to describ...

[631] Johnson seems to use this word in much the same sense as Caliban does when he speaks of Prospero’s “brave utensils” (_The Tempest_, act iii. sc. 2). In his _Journey_, he s...