Chapter 3

as Dr. Johnson. Of all kinds of robbery, that appears to me the lightest species which injures nobody. Dr. Johnson is so pious that in his journey to your country he flatters himself that all his readers will join him in enjoying the destruction of two Dutch crews, who were swallowed up by the ocean after they had robbed a church.'

[354] I am not sure whether the Duke was at home. But, not having the honour of being much known to his grace, I could not have presumed to enter his castle, though to introduce even so celebrated a stranger. We were at any rate in a hurry to get forward to the wildness which we came to see. Perhaps, if this noble family had still preserved that sequestered magnificence which they maintained when catholicks, corresponding with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, we might have been induced to have procured proper letters of introduction, and devoted some time to the contemplation of venerable superstitious state. BOSWELL. Burnet (_History of his own Times_, ii. 443, and iii. 23) mentions the Duke of Gordon, a papist, as holding Edinburgh Castle for James II. in 1689.

[355] 'In the way, we saw for the first time some houses with fruit-trees about them. The improvements of the Scotch are for immediate profit; they do not yet think it quite worth their while to plant what will not produce something to be eaten or sold in a very little time.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 121.

[356] 'This was the first time, and except one the last, that I found any reason to complain of a Scottish table.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 19.

[357] The following year Johnson told Hannah More that 'when he and Boswell stopt a night at the spot (as they imagined) where the Weird Sisters appeared to Macbeth, the idea so worked upon their enthusiasm, that it quite deprived them of rest. However they learnt the next morning, to their mortification, that they had been deceived, and were quite in another part of the country' H. More's _Memoirs_, i. 50.

[358] See _ante_, p. 76.

[359] Murphy (_Life_, p. 145) says that 'his manner of reciting verses was wonderfully impressive.' According to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 302), 'whoever once heard him repeat an ode of Horace would be long before they could endure to hear it repeated by another.'

[360] Then pronounced _Affléck_, though now often pronounced as it is written. Ante, ii. 413.

[361] At this stage of his journey Johnson recorded:--'There are more beggars than I have ever seen in England; they beg, if not silently, yet very modestly.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 122. See ante, p. 75, note 1.

[362] Duncan's monument; a huge column on the roadside near Fores, more than twenty feet high, erected in commemoration of the final retreat of the Danes from Scotland, and properly called Swene's Stone. WALTER SCOTT.

[363] Swift wrote to Pope on May 31, 1737:--'Pray who is that Mr. Glover, who writ the epick poem called _Leonidas_, which is reprinting here, and has great vogue?' Swift's _Works_ (1803), xx. 121. 'It passed through four editions in the first year of its publication (1737-8).' Lowndes's _Bibl. Man_. p. 902. Horace Walpole, in 1742, mentions _Leonidas_ Glover (_Letters_, i. 117); and in 1785 Hannah More writes (_Memoirs_, i. 405):--'I was much amused with hearing old Leonidas Glover sing his own fine ballad of _Hosier's Ghost_, which was very affecting. He is past eighty [he was seventy-three]. Mr. Walpole coming in just afterwards, I told him how highly I had been pleased. He begged me to entreat for a repetition of it. It was the satire conveyed in this little ballad upon the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole's ministry which is thought to have been a remote cause of his resignation. It was a very curious circumstance to see his son listening to the recital of it with so much complacency.'

[364] See ante, i. 125.

[365] See _ante_, i. 456, and _post_, Sept. 22.

[366] See _ante_, ii. 82, and _post_, Oct. 27.

[367] 'Nairne is the boundary in this direction between the highlands and lowlands; and until within a few years both English and Gaelic were spoken here. One of James VI.'s witticisms was to boast that in Scotland he had a town "sae lang that the folk at the tae end couldna understand the tongue spoken at the tother."' Murray's _Handbook for Scotland_, ed. 1867, p. 308. 'Here,' writes Johnson (_Works_, ix. 21), 'I first saw peat fires, and first heard the Erse language.' As he heard the girl singing Erse, so Wordsworth thirty years later heard The Solitary Reaper:--

'Yon solitary Highland Lass Reaping and singing by herself.'

[368]

'Verse softens toil, however rude the sound; She feels no biting pang the while she sings; Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitude of things.'

_Contemplation._ London: Printed for R. Dodsley in Pall-mall, and sold by M. Cooper, at the Globe in Paternoster-Row, 1753.

The author's name is not on the title-page. In the _Brit. Mus. Cata._ the poem is entered under its title. Mr. Nichols (_Lit. Illus._ v. 183) says that the author was the Rev. Richard Gifford [not Giffard] of Balliol College, Oxford. He adds that 'Mr. Gifford mentioned to him with much satisfaction the fact that Johnson quoted the poem in his _Dictionary_.' It was there very likely that Boswell had seen the lines. They are quoted under _wheel_ (with changes made perhaps intentionally by Johnson), as follows:

'Verse sweetens care however rude the sound; All at her work the village maiden sings; Nor, as she turns the giddy wheel around, Revolves the sad vicissitudes of things.'

_Contemplation_, which was published two years after Gray's _Elegy_, was suggested by it. The rising, not the parting day, is described. The following verse precedes the one quoted by Johnson:--

'Ev'n from the straw-roofed cot the note of joy Flows full and frequent, as the village-fair, Whose little wants the busy hour employ, Chanting some rural ditty soothes her care.'

Bacon, in his _Essay Of Vicissitude of Things_ (No. 58), says:--'It is not good to look too long upon these turning _wheels of vicissitude_ lest we become _giddy_' This may have suggested Gifford's last two lines. _Reflections on a Grave, &c._ (_ante_, ii. 26), published in 1766, and perhaps written in part by Johnson, has a line borrowed from this poem:--

'These all the hapless state of mortals show The sad vicissitude of things below.'

Cowper, _Table-Talk_, ed. 1786, i. 165, writes of

'The sweet vicissitudes of day and night.'

The following elegant version of these lines by Mr. A. T. Barton, Fellow and Tutor of Johnson's own College, will please the classical reader:--

Musa levat duros, quamvis rudis ore, labores; Inter opus cantat rustica Pyrrha suum; Nec meminit, secura rotam dum versat euntem, Non aliter nostris sortibus ire vices.

[369] He was the brother of the Rev. John M'Aulay (_post_, Oct. 25), the grandfather of Lord Macaulay.

[370] See _ante_, ii. 51.

[371] In Scotland, there is a great deal of preparation before administering the sacrament. The minister of the parish examines the people as to their fitness, and to those of whom he approves gives little pieces of tin, stamped with the name of the parish as _tokens_, which they must produce before receiving it. This is a species of priestly power, and sometimes may be abused. I remember a lawsuit brought by a person against his parish minister, for refusing him admission to that sacred ordinance. BOSWELL.

[372] See _ post_, Sept. 13 and 28.

[373] Mr. Trevelyan (_Life of Macaulay_, ed.1877, i. 6) says: 'Johnson pronounced that Mr. Macaulay was not competent to have written the book that went by his name; a decision which, to those who happen to have read the work, will give a very poor notion my ancestor's abilities.'

[374]

'The thane of Cawdor lives, A prosperous gentleman.'

_Macbeth_, act i. sc. 3.

[375] According to Murray's _Handbook,_ ed. 1867, p. 308, no part of the castle is older than the fifteenth century.

[376] See _post_, Nov. 5.

[377] The historian. _Ante_, p. 41.

[378] See _ante_, iii. 336, and _post_, Nov. 7.

[379] See _post_, Oct. 27.

[380] Baretti was the Italian. Boswell disliked him (_ante_, ii. 98 note), and perhaps therefore described him merely as 'a man of _some_ literature.' Baretti complained to Malone that 'the story as told gave an unfair representation of him.' He had, he said, 'observed to Johnson that the petition _lead us not into temptation_ ought rather to be addressed to the tempter of mankind than a benevolent Creator. "Pray, Sir," said Johnson, "do you know who was the author of the Lord's Prayer?" Baretti, who did not wish to get into any serious dispute and who appears to be an Infidel, by way of putting an end to the conversation, only replied:--"Oh, Sir, you know by _our_ religion (Roman Catholic) we are not permitted to read the Scriptures. You can't therefore expect an answer."' Prior's _Malone_, p. 399. Sir Joshua Reynolds, on hearing this from Malone, said:--'This turn which Baretti now gives to the matter was an after-thought; for he once said to me myself:--"There are various opinions about the writer of that prayer; some give it to St. Augustine, some to St. Chrysostom, &c. What is your opinion? "' _Ib_. p. 394. Mrs. Piozzi says that she heard 'Baretti tell a clergyman the story of Dives and Lazarus as the subject of a poem he once had composed in the Milanese district, expecting great credit for his powers of invention.' Hayward's _Piozzi_, ii. 348.

[381] Goldsmith (_Present Slate of Polite Learning_, chap. 13) thus wrote of servitorships: 'Surely pride itself has dictated to the fellows of our colleges the absurd passion of being attended at meals, and on other public occasions, by those poor men who, willing to be scholars, come in upon some charitable foundation. It implies a contradiction for men to be at once learning the _liberal_ arts, and at the same time treated as _slaves_; at once studying freedom and practising servitude.' Yet a young man like Whitefield was willing enough to be a servitor. He had been a waiter in his mother's inn; he was now a waiter in a college, but a student also. See my _Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his Critics_, p. 27.

[382] Dr. Johnson did not neglect what he had undertaken. By his interest with the Rev. Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke College, Oxford, where he was educated for some time, he obtained a servitorship for young M'Aulay. But it seems he had other views; and I believe went abroad. BOSWELL. See _ante_, ii. 380.

[383] 'I once drank tea,' writes Lamb, 'in company with two Methodist divines of different persuasions. Before the first cup was handed round, one of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with all due solemnity, whether he chose to _say anything_. It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon an explanation, with little less importance he made answer that it was not a custom known in his church.' _Essay on Grace before Meat_.

[384] He could not bear to have it thought that, in any instance whatever, the Scots are more pious than the English. I think grace as proper at breakfast as at any other meal. It is the pleasantest meal we have. Dr. Johnson has allowed the peculiar merit of breakfast in Scotland. BOSWELL. 'If an epicure could remove by a wish in quest of sensual gratification, wherever he had supped he would breakfast in Scotland.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 52.

[385] Bruce, the Abyssinian Traveller, found in the annals of that region a king named _Brus_, which he chooses to consider the genuine orthography of the name. This circumstance occasioned some mirth at the court of Gondar. WALTER SCOTT.

[386] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2, and _post_, Sept. 2. Johnson, so far as I have observed, spelt the name _Boswel_.

[387] Sir Eyre Coote was born in 1726. He took part in the battle of Plassey in 1757, and commanded at the reduction of Pondicherry in 1761. In 1770-71 he went by land to Europe. In 1780 he took command of the English army against Hyder Ali, whom he repeatedly defeated. He died in 1783. Chalmers's _Biog. Dict_. x. 236. There is a fine description of him in Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, iii. 385.

[388] See _ante_, iii. 361.

[389] Reynolds wrote of Johnson:--'He sometimes, it must be confessed, covered his ignorance by generals rather than appear ignorant' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 457.

[390] 'The barracks are very handsome, and form several regular and good streets.' Pennant's _Tour_, p. 144.

[391] See _ante_, p. 45.

[392] Here Dr. Johnson gave us part of a conversation held between a Great Personage and him, in the library at the Queen's Palace, in the course of which this contest was considered. I have been at great pains to get that conversation as perfectly preserved as possible. It may perhaps at some future time be given to the publick. BOSWELL. For 'a Great Personage' see _ante_, i. 219; and for the conversation, ii. 33.

[393] See _ante_, ii. 73, 228, 248; iii. 4 and June 15, 1784.

[394] See _ante_, i. 167, note 1.

[395] Booth acted _Cato_, and Wilks Juba when Addison's _Cato_ was brought out. Pope told Spence that 'Lord Bolingbroke's carrying his friends to the house, and presenting Booth with a purse of guineas for so well representing the character of a person "who rather chose to die than see a general for life," carried the success of the play much beyond what they ever expected.' Spence's _Anec_. p. 46. Bolingbroke alluded to the Duke of Marlborough. Pope in his _Imitations of Horace_, 2 Epist. i. 123 introduces 'well-mouth'd Booth.'

[396] See _ante_, iii. 35, and under Sept. 30, 1783.

[397] 'Garrick used to tell, that Johnson said of an actor who played Sir Harry Wildair at Lichfield, "There is a courtly vivacity about the fellow;" when, in fact, according to Garrick's account, "he was the most vulgar ruffian that ever went upon _boards_."' _Ante_, ii. 465.

[398] Mrs. Cibber was the sister of Dr. Arne the musical composer, and the wife of Theophilus Cibber, Colley Cibber's son. She died in 1766, and was buried in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. Baker's _Biog. Dram._ i. 123.

[399] See _ante_, under Sept. 30, 1783.

[400] See _ante_, i. 197, and ii. 348.

[401] Johnson had set him to repeat the ninth commandment, and had with great glee put him right in the emphasis. _Ante_, i. 168.

[402] Act iii. sc. 2.

[403] Boswell's suggestion is explained by the following passage in Johnson's _Works_, viii. 463:--'Mallet was by his original one of the Macgregors, a clan that became about sixty years ago, under the conduct of Robin Roy, so formidable and so infamous for violence and robbery, that the name was annulled by a legal abolition.'

[404] See _ante_, iii. 410, where he said to an Irish gentleman:--'Do not make an union with us, Sir. We should unite with you, only to rob you. We should have robbed the Scotch, if they had had anything of which we could have robbed them.'

[405] It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson read this gentle remonstrance, and took no notice of it to me. BOSWELL. See _post_, Oct. 12, note.

[406] _St. Matthew_, v. 44.

[407] It is odd that Boswell did not suspect the parson, who, no doubt, had learnt the evening before from Mr. Keith that the two travellers would be present at his sermon. Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, ii. 283) says that one day at Sir Joshua's dinner-table, when his host praised Malone very highly for his laborious edition of _Shakespeare_, he (Northcote) 'rather hastily replied, "What a very despicable creature must that man be who thus devotes himself, and makes another man his god;" when Boswell, who sat at my elbow, and was not in my thoughts at the time, cried out "Oh! Sir Joshua, then that is me!"'

[408] Johnson (_Works_, ix. 23) more cautiously says:--'Here is a castle, called the castle of Macbeth.'

[409] 'This short dialogue between Duncan and Banquo, whilst they are approaching the gates of Macbeth's castle, has always appeared to me a striking instance of what in painting is termed _repose_. Their conversation very naturally turns upon the beauty of its situation, and the pleasantness of the air; and Banquo, observing the martlet's nests in every recess of the cornice, remarks that where those birds most breed and haunt the air is delicate. The subject of this quiet and easy conversation gives that repose so necessary to the mind after the tumultuous bustle of the preceding scenes, and perfectly contrasts the scene of horror that immediately succeeds. It seems as if Shakespeare asked himself, what is a prince likely to say to his attendants on such an occasion? whereas the modern writers seem, on the contrary, to be always searching for new thoughts, such as would never occur to men in the situation which is represented. This also is frequently the practice of Homer, who from the midst of battles and horrors relieves and refreshes the mind of the reader by introducing some quiet rural image, or picture of familiar domestick life.' Johnson's _Shakespeare_. Northcote (_Life of Reynolds_, i. 144-151) quotes other notes by Reynolds.

[410] In the original _senses_. Act i, sc. 6.

[411] Act i. sc. 5.

[412] Boswell forgets _scoundrelism_, _ante_, p. 106, which, I suppose, Johnson coined.

[413] See _ante_, ii. 154, note 3. Peter Paragraph is one of the characters in Foote's Comedy of _The Orators_.

[414] When upon the subject of this _peregrinity_, he told me some particulars concerning the compilation of his _Dictionary_, and concerning his throwing off Lord Chesterfield's patronage, of which very erroneous accounts have been circulated. These particulars, with others which he afterwards gave me,--as also his celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield, which he dictated to me,--I reserve for his _Life._ BOSWELL. See _ante,_ i. 221, 261.

[415] See _ante,_ ii. 326, 371, and v. 18.

[416] It is the third edition, published in 1778, that first bears this title. The first edition was published in 1761, and the second in 1762.

[417] 'One of them was a man of great liveliness and activity, of whom his companion said that he would tire any horse in Inverness. Both of them were civil and ready-handed Civility seems part of the national character of Highlanders.' _Works,_ ix. 25.

[418] 'The way was very pleasant; the rock out of which the road was cut was covered with birch trees, fern, and heath. The lake below was beating its bank by a gentle wind.... In one part of the way we had trees on both sides for perhaps half a mile. Such a length of shade, perhaps, Scotland cannot shew in any other place.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 123. The travellers must have passed close by the cottage where James Mackintosh was living, a child of seven.

[419] Boswell refers, I think, to a passage in act iv. sc. I of Farquhar's Comedy, where Archer says to Mrs. Sullen:--'I can't at this distance, Madam, distinguish the figures of the embroidery.' This passage is copied by Goldsmith in _She Stoops to Conquer_, act iii., where Marlow says to Miss Hardcastle: 'Odso! then you must shew me your embroidery.'

[420] Johnson (_Works_, ix. 28) gives a long account of this woman. 'Meal she considered as expensive food, and told us that in spring, when the goats gave milk, the children could live without it.'

[421] It is very odd, that when these roads were made, there was no care taken for _Inns_. The _King's House_, and the _General's Hut_, are miserable places; but the project and plans were purely military. WALTER SCOTT. Johnson found good entertainment here, 'We had eggs and bacon and mutton, with wine, rum, and whisky. I had water.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 124.

[422] 'Mr. Boswell, who between his father's merit and his own is sure of reception wherever he comes, sent a servant before,' &c. Johnson's _Works_, ix. 30.

[423] On April 6, 1777, Johnson noted down: 'I passed the night in such sweet uninterrupted sleep as I have not known since I slept at Fort Augustus.' _Pr. and Med._ p.159. On Nov. 21, 1778, he wrote to Boswell: 'The best night that I have had these twenty years was at Fort Augustus.' _Ante_, iii. 369.

[424] See _ante_, iii. 246.

[425] A McQueen is a Highland mode of expression. An Englishman would say _one_ McQueen. But where there are _clans_ or _tribes_ of men, distinguished by _patronymick_ surnames, the individuals of each are considered as if they were of different species, at least as much as nations are distinguished; so that a _McQueen_, a _McDonald_, a _McLean_, is said, as we say a Frenchman, an Italian, a Spaniard. BOSWELL.

[426] 'I praised the propriety of his language, and was answered that I need not wonder, for he had learnt it by grammar. By subsequent opportunities of observation I found that my host's diction had nothing peculiar. Those Highlanders that can speak English commonly speak it well, with few of the words and little of the tone by which a Scotchman is distinguished ... By their Lowland neighbours they would not willingly be taught; for they have long considered them as a mean and degenerate race.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 31. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale: 'This man's conversation we were glad of while we staid. He had been out, as they call it, in forty-five, and still retained his old opinions.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 130.

[427] By the Chevalier Ramsay.

[428] 'From him we first heard of the general dissatisfaction which is now driving the Highlanders into the other hemisphere; and when I asked him whether they would stay at home if they were well treated, he answered with indignation that no man willingly left his native country. Johnson's _Works_, ix. 33. See _ante_, p. 27.

[429] 'The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.' _Ib._ v. 49.

[430] Four years later, three years after Goldsmith's death, Johnson 'observed in Lord Scarsdale's dressing-room Goldsmith's _Animated Nature_; and said, "Here's our friend. The poor doctor would have been happy to hear of this."' _Ante_, iii.162.

[431] See _ante_, i. 348 and ii. 438 and _post_, Sept. 23. Mackintosh says: 'Johnson's idea that a ship was a prison with the danger of drowning is taken from Endymion Porter's _Consolation to Howell_ on his imprisonment in the _Fleet_, and was originally suggested by the pun.' _Life of Mackintosh_, ii. 83. The passage to which he refers is found in Howell's letter of Jan. 2, 1646 (book ii. letter 39), in which he writes to Porter:--'You go on to prefer my captivity in this _Fleet_ to that of a voyager at sea, in regard that he is subject to storms and springing of leaks, to pirates and picaroons, with other casualties.'

[432] See _ante_, iii. 242.

[433] This book has given rise to much enquiry, which has ended in ludicrous surprise. Several ladies, wishing to learn the kind of reading which the great and good Dr. Johnson esteemed most fit for a young woman, desired to know what book he had selected for this Highland nymph. 'They never adverted (said he) that I had no _choice_ in the matter. I have said that I presented her with a book which I _happened_ to have about me.' And what was this book? My readers, prepare your features for merriment. It was _Cocker's Arithmetick_!--Wherever this was mentioned, there was a loud laugh, at which Johnson, when present, used sometimes to be a little angry. One day, when we were dining at General Oglethorpe's, where we had many a valuable day, I ventured to interrogate him. 'But, Sir, is it not somewhat singular that you should _happen_ to have _Cocker's Arithmetick_ about you on your journey? What made you buy such a book at Inverness?' He gave me a very sufficient answer. 'Why, Sir, if you are to have but one book with you upon a journey, let it be a book of science. When you have read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible.' BOSWELL.

Johnson thus mentions his gift: 'I presented her with a book which I happened to have about me, and should not be pleased to think that she forgets me.' _Works_, ix. 32. The first edition of _Cocker's Arithmetic_ was published about 1660. _Brit. Mus. Cata._ Though Johnson says that 'a book of science is inexhaustible,' yet in _The Rambler_, No. 154, he asserts that 'the principles of arithmetick and geometry may be comprehended by a close attention in a few days.' Mrs. Piozzi says (_Anec_. p. 77) that 'when Mr. Johnson felt his fancy disordered, his constant recurrence was to arithmetic; and one day that he was confined to his chamber, and I enquired what he had been doing to divert himself, he shewed me a calculation which I could scarce be made to understand, so vast was the plan of it; no other indeed than that the national debt, computing it at £180,000,000, would, if converted into silver, serve to make a meridian of that metal, I forget how broad, for the globe of the whole earth.' See _ante_, iii. 207, and iv. 171, note 3.

[434] Swift's _Works_ (1803), xxiv. 63.

[435] 'We told the soldiers how kindly we had been treated at the garrison, and, as we were enjoying the benefit of their labours, begged leave to shew our gratitude by a small present.... They had the true military impatience of coin in their pockets, and had marched at least six miles to find the first place where liquor could be bought. Having never been before in a place so wild and unfrequented I was glad of their arrival, because I knew that we had made them friends; and to gain still more of their goodwill we went to them, where they were carousing in the barn, and added something to our former gift.' _Works_, ix. 31-2.

[436]

'Why rather sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee.' &c.

2 _Henry IV._ act iii. sc. 1.

[437] Spain, in 1719, sent a strong force under the Duke of Ormond to Scotland in behalf of the Chevalier. Owing to storms only a few hundred men landed. These were joined by a large body of Highlanders, but being attacked by General Wightman, the clansmen dispersed and the Spaniards surrendered. Smollett's _England_, ed. 1800, ii. 382.

[438] Boswell mentions this _ante_, i. 41, as a proof of Johnson's 'perceptive quickness.'

[439] Dr. Johnson, in his _Journey_, thus beautifully describes his situation here:--'I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had, indeed, no trees to whisper over my head; but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills, which, by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the hour well, I know not; for here I first conceived the thought of this narration.' The _Critical Reviewers_, with a spirit and expression worthy of the subject, say,--'We congratulate the publick on the event with which this quotation concludes, and are fully persuaded that the hour in which the entertaining traveller conceived this narrative will be considered, by every reader of taste, as a fortunate event in the annals of literature. Were it suitable to the task in which we are at present engaged, to indulge ourselves in a poetical flight, we would invoke the winds of the Caledonian Mountains to blow for ever, with their softest breezes, on the bank where our author reclined, and request of Flora, that it might be perpetually adorned with the gayest and most fragrant productions of the year.' BOSWELL. Johnson thus described the scene to Mrs. Thrale:--'I sat down to take notes on a green bank, with a small stream running at my feet, in the midst of savage solitude, with mountains before me and on either hand covered with heath. I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more affected, but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in motion.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 131.

[440] 'The villagers gathered about us in considerable numbers, I believe without any evil intention, but with a very savage wildness of aspect and manner.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 38.

[441] The M'Craas, or Macraes, were since that time brought into the king's army, by the late Lord Seaforth. When they lay in Edinburgh Castle in 1778, and were ordered to embark for Jersey, they with a number of other men in the regiment, for different reasons, but especially an apprehension that they were to be sold to the East-India Company, though enlisted not to be sent out of Great-Britain without their own consent, made a determined mutiny, and encamped upon the lofty mountain, _Arthur's seat_, where they remained three days and three nights; bidding defiance to all the force in Scotland. At last they came down, and embarked peaceably, having obtained formal articles of capitulation, signed by Sir Adolphus Oughton, commander in chief, General Skene, deputy commander, the Duke of Buccleugh, and the Earl of Dunmore, which quieted them. Since the secession of the Commons of Rome to the _Mons Sacer_, a more spirited exertion has not been made. I gave great attention to it from first to last, and have drawn up a particular account of it. Those brave fellows have since served their country effectually at Jersey, and also in the East-Indies, to which, after being better informed, they voluntarily agreed to go. BOSWELL. The line which Boswell quotes is from _The Chevalier's Muster Roll_:--

'The laird of M'Intosh is coming, M'Crabie & M'Donald's coming, M'Kenzie & M'Pherson's coming, And the wild M'Craw's coming. Little wat ye wha's coming, Donald Gun and a's coming.' Hogg's _Jacobite Relics_, i. 152.

Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii. 198) writing on May 9, 1779, tells how on May 1 'the French had attempted to land [on Jersey], but Lord Seaforth's new-raised regiment of 700 Highlanders, assisted by some militia and some artillery, made a brave stand and repelled the intruders.'

[442] 'One of the men advised her, with the cunning that clowns never can be without, to ask more; but she said that a shilling was enough. We gave her half a crown, and she offered part of it again.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 133.

[443] Of this part of the journey Johnson wrote:--'We had very little entertainment as we travelled either for the eye or ear. There are, I fancy, no singing birds in the Highlands.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 135. It is odd that he should have looked for singing birds on the first of September.

[444] Act iii. sc. 4.

[445] It is amusing to observe the different images which this being presented to Dr. Johnson and me. The Doctor, in his _Journey_, compares him to a Cyclops. BOSWELL. 'Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge.' _Works_, ix. 44. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'When we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed where one of us was to lie. Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got'. _Piozzi Letters_, i, 136. Macaulay (_Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 404) says: 'It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the _Journey to the Hebrides_ is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions.' Macaulay thereupon quotes these two passages. See _ante_, under Aug. 29, 1783.

[446] 'We had a lemon and a piece of bread, which supplied me with my supper.'_Piozzi Letters_, i, 136. Goldsmith, who in his student days had been in Scotland, thus writes of a Scotch inn:--'Vile entertainment is served up, complained of, and sent down; up comes worse, and that also is changed, and every change makes our wretched cheer more unsavoury.' _Present State of Polite Learning_, ch. 12.

[447] General Wolfe, in his letter from Head-quarters on Sept. 2, 1759, eleven days before his death wrote:--'In this situation there is such a choice of difficulties that I own myself at a loss how to determine.' _Ann. Reg._ 1759, p. 246.

[448] See _ante_, p. 89.

[449] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2.

[450] Boswell, in a note that he added to the second edition (see _post_, end of the _Journal_), says that he has omitted 'a few observations the publication of which might perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of a strict decorum,' In the first edition (p. 165) the next three paragraphs were as follows:--'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 in 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 Sky, 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 tamed 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.' Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'We saw the isle of Skie before us, darkening the horizon with its rocky coast. A boat was procured, and we launched into one of the straits of the Atlantick Ocean. We had a passage of about twelve miles to the point where ---- ---- resided, having come from his seat in the middle of the island to a small house on the shore, as we believe, that he might with less reproach entertain us meanly. If he aspired to meanness, his retrograde ambition was completely gratified... Boswell was very angry, and reproached him with his improper parsimony.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 137. A little later he wrote:--'I have done thinking of ---- whom we now call Sir Sawney; he has disgusted all mankind by injudicious parsimony, and given occasion to so many stories, that ---- has some thoughts of collecting them, and making a novel of his life.' _Ib_. p. 198. The last of Rowlandson's _Caricatures_ of Boswell's _Journal_ is entitled _Revising for the Second Edition_. Macdonald is represented as seizing Boswell by the throat and pointing with his stick to the _Journal_ that lies open at pages 168, 169. On the ground lie pages 165, 167, torn out. Boswell, in an agony of fear, is begging for mercy.

[451]

'Here, in Badenoch, here in Lochaber anon, in Lochiel, in Knoydart, Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, and Ardnamurchan, Here I see him and here: I see him; anon I lose him.'

Clough's _Bothie_, p. 125

[452] See his Latin verses addressed to Dr. Johnson, in this APPENDIX. BOSWELL.

[453] See _ante_, ii. 157.

[454] See _ante_, i. 449.

[455] See _ante_, ii. 99.

[456] See _ante_, iii 198, note 1.

[457] 'Such is the laxity of Highland conversation, that the inquirer is kept in continual suspense, and by a kind of intellectual retrogradation knows less as he hears more.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 47. 'They are not much accustomed to be interrogated by others, and seem never to have thought upon interrogating themselves; so that if they do not know what they tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false. Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries; and the result of his investigations was, that the answer to the second question was commonly such as nullified the answer to the first.' _Ib._, p. 114.

[458] Mr. Carruthers, in his edition of Boswell's _Hebrides_, says (p. xiv):--'The new management and high rents took the tacksmen, or larger tenants, by surprise. They were indignant at the treatment they received, and selling off their stock they emigrated to America. In the twenty years from 1772 to 1792, sixteen vessels with emigrants sailed from the western shores of Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, containing about 6400 persons, who carried with them in specie at least £38,400. A desperate effort was made by the tacksmen on the estate of Lord Macdonald. They bound themselves by a solemn oath not to offer for any farm that might become vacant. The combination failed of its object, but it appeared so formidable in the eyes of the "English-bred chieftain," that he retreated precipitately from Skye and never afterwards returned.'

[459] Dr. Johnson seems to have forgotten that a Highlander going armed at this period incurred the penalty of serving as a common soldier for the first, and of transportation beyond sea for a second offence. And as for 'calling out his clan,' twelve Highlanders and a bagpipe made a rebellion. WALTER SCOTT.

[460] Mackintosh (_Life_ ii. 62) says that in Mme. du Deffand's _Correspondence_ there is 'an extraordinary confirmation of the talents and accomplishments of our Highland Phoenix, Sir James Macdonald. A Highland chieftain, admired by Voltaire, could have been no ordinary man.'

[461] This extraordinary young man, whom I had the pleasure of knowing intimately, having been deeply regretted by his country, the most minute particulars concerning him must be interesting to many. I shall therefore insert his two last letters to his mother, Lady Margaret Macdonald, which her ladyship has been pleased to communicate to me. 'Rome, July 9th, 1766. 'My DEAR MOTHER, 'Yesterday's post brought me your answer to the first letter in which I acquainted you of my illness. Your tenderness and concern upon that account are the same I have always experienced, and to which I have often owed my life. Indeed it never was in so great danger as it has been lately; and though it would have been a very great comfort to me to have had you near me, yet perhaps I ought to rejoice, on your account, that you had not the pain of such a spectacle. I have been now a week in Rome, and wish I could continue to give you the same good accounts of my recovery as I did in my last; but I must own that, for three days past, I have been in a very weak and miserable state, which however seems to give no uneasiness to my physician. My stomach has been greatly out of order, without any visible cause; and the palpitation does not decrease. I am told that my stomach will soon recover its tone, and that the palpitation must cease in time. So I am willing to believe; and with this hope support the little remains of spirits which I can be supposed to have, on the forty-seventh day of such an illness. Do not imagine I have relapsed;--I only recover slower than I expected. If my letter is shorter than usual, the cause of it is a dose of physick, which has weakened me so much to-day, that I am not able to write a long letter. I will make up for it next post, and remain always 'Your most sincerely affectionate son, 'J. MACDONALD.' He grew gradually worse; and on the night before his death he wrote as follows from Frescati:--'MY DEAR MOTHER, 'Though I did not mean to deceive you in my last letter from Rome, yet certainly you would have very little reason to conclude of the very great and constant danger I have gone through ever since that time. My life, which is still almost entirely desperate, did not at that time appear to me so, otherwise I should have represented, in its true colours, a fact which acquires very little horror by that means, and comes with redoubled force by deception. There is no circumstance of danger and pain of which I have not had the experience, for a continued series of above a fortnight; during which time I have settled my affairs, after my death, with as much distinctness as the hurry and the nature of the thing could admit of. In case of the worst, the Abbé Grant will be my executor in this part of the world, and Mr. Mackenzie in Scotland, where my object has been to make you and my younger brother as independent of the eldest as possible.' BOSWELL. Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 291), in 1779, thus mentions this 'younger brother':--'Macdonald abused Lord North in very gross, yet too applicable, terms; and next day pleaded he had been drunk, recanted, and was all admiration and esteem for his Lordship's talents and virtues.'

[462] See _ante_, iii. 85, and _post_, Oct. 28.

[463] Cheyne's English Malady, ed. 1733, p. 229.

[464] 'Weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.' _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2. See _ante_, iii. 350, where Boswell is reproached by Johnson with 'bringing in gabble,' when he makes this quotation.

[465] VARIOUS READINGS. Line 2. In the manuscript, Dr. Johnson, instead of _rupibus obsita_, had written _imbribus uvida_, and _uvida nubibus_, but struck them both out. Lines 15 and 16. Instead of these two lines, he had written, but afterwards struck out, the following:--

Parare posse, utcunque jactet Grandiloquus nimis alta Zeno.

BOSWELL. In Johnson's _Works_, i. 167, these lines are given with some variations, which perhaps are in part due to Mr. Langton, who, we are told (_ante_, Dec. 1784), edited some, if not indeed all, of Johnson's Latin poems.

[466] Cowper wrote to S. Rose on May 20, 1789:--'Browne was an entertaining companion when he had drunk his bottle, but not before; this proved a snare to him, and he would sometimes drink too much.' Southey's _Cowper_, vi. 237. His _De Animi Immortalitate_ was published in 1754. He died in 1760, aged fifty-four. See _ante_, ii. 339.

[467] Boswell, in one of his _Hypochondriacks_ (_ante_, iv. 179) says:--'I do fairly acknowledge that I love Drinking; that I have a constitutional inclination to indulge in fermented liquors, and that if it were not for the restraints of reason and religion, I am afraid I should be as constant a votary of Bacchus as any man.... Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living. Were we so framed that it were possible by perpetual supplies of wine to keep ourselves for ever gay and happy, there could be no doubt that drinking would be the _summum bonum_, the chief good, to find out which philosophers have been so variously busied. But we know from humiliating experience that men cannot be kept long in a state of elevated drunkenness.'

[468] That my readers may have my narrative in the style of the country through which I am travelling, it is proper to inform them, that the chief of a clan is denominated by his _surname_ alone, as M'Leod, M'Kinnon, M'lntosh. To prefix _Mr._ to it would be a degradation from _the_ M'Leod, &c. My old friend, the Laird of M'Farlane, the great antiquary, took it highly amiss, when General Wade called him Mr. M'Farlane. Dr. Johnson said, he could not bring himself to use this mode of address; it seemed to him to be too familiar, as it is the way in which, in all other places, intimates or inferiors are addressed. When the chiefs have _titles_ they are denominated by them, as _Sir James Grant_, _Sir Allan M'Lean_. The other Highland gentlemen, of landed property, are denominated by their _estates_, as _Rasay_, _Boisdale_; and the wives of all of them have the title of _ladies_. The _tacksmen_, or principal tenants, are named by their farms, as _Kingsburgh_, _Corrichatachin_; and their wives are called the _mistress_ of Kingsburgh, the _mistress_ of Corrichatachin.--Having given this explanation, I am at liberty to use that mode of speech which generally prevails in the Highlands and the Hebrides. BOSWELL.

[469] See _ante_, iii. 275.

[470] Boswell implies that Sir A. Macdonald's table had not been furnished plentifully. Johnson wrote:--'At night we came to a tenant's house of the first rank of tenants, where we were entertained better than at the landlord's.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 141.

[471] 'Little did I once think,' he wrote to her the same day, 'of seeing this region of obscurity, and little did you once expect a salutation from this verge of European life. I have now the pleasure of going where nobody goes, and seeing what nobody sees.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 120. About fourteen years since, I landed in Sky, with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was the first idea on every one's mind at landing. All answered separately that it was this Ode. WALTER SCOTT.

[472] See Appendix B.

[473] 'I never was in any house of the islands, where I did not find books in more languages than one, if I staid long enough to want them, except one from which the family was removed.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 50. He is speaking of 'the higher rank of the Hebridians,' for on p. 61 he says:--'The greater part of the islanders make no use of books.'

[474] There was a Mrs. Brooks, an actress, the daughter of a Scotchman named Watson, who had forfeited his property by 'going out in the '45.' But according to _The Thespian Dictionary_ her first appearance on the stage was in 1786.

[475] Boswell mentions, _post_, Oct. 5, 'the famous Captain of Clanranald, who fell at Sherrif-muir.'

[476] See _ante_, p. 95.

[477] By John Macpherson, D.D. See _post_, Sept. 13.

[478] Sir Walter Scott, when in Sky in 1814, wrote:--'We learn that most of the Highland superstitions, even that of the second sight, are still in force.' Lockhart's _Scott_, ed. 1839, iv. 305. See _.ante_, ii. 10, 318.

[479] Of him Johnson wrote:--'One of the ministers honestly told me that he came to Sky with a resolution not to believe it.' _Works_, ix. 106.

[480] 'By the term _second sight_ seems to be meant a mode of seeing superadded to that which nature generally bestows. In the Erse it is called _Taisch_; which signifies likewise a spectre or a vision.' _Johnson's Works_, ix. 105.

[481] Gray's _Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College_, 1. 44.

[482] A tonnage bounty of thirty shillings a ton was at this time given to the owners of busses or decked vessels for the encouragement of the white herring fishery. Adam Smith (_Wealth of Nations_, iv. 5) shews how mischievous was its effect.

[483] The Highland expression for Laird of Rasay. BOSWELL.

[484] 'In Sky I first observed the use of brogues, a kind of artless shoes, stitched with thongs so loosely, that, though they defend the foot from stones, they do not exclude water.' Johnson's _Works_, ix 46.

[485] To evade the law against the tartan dress, the Highlanders used to dye their variegated plaids and kilts into blue, green, or any single colour. WALTER SCOTT.

[486] See _post_, Oct. 5.

[487] The Highlanders were all well inclined to the episcopalian form, _proviso_ that the right _king_ was prayed for. I suppose Malcolm meant to say, 'I will come to your church because you are honest folk,' viz. _Jacobites_. WALTER SCOTT.

[488] See _ante_, i. 450, and ii. 291.

[489] Perhaps he was thinking of Johnson's letter of June 20, 1771 (_ante_, ii. 140), where he says:--'I hope the time will come when we may try our powers both with cliffs and water.'

[490] 'The wind blew enough to give the boat a kind of dancing agitation.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 142. 'The water was calm and the rowers were vigorous; so that our passage was quick and pleasant.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 54.

[491]

'Caught in the wild Aegean seas, The sailor bends to heaven for ease.'

FRANCIS. Horace, 2, _Odes_, xvi. 1.

[492] See _ante_, iv. Dec. 9, 1784, note.

[493] Such spells are still believed in. A lady of property in Mull, a friend of mine, had a few years since much difficulty in rescuing from the superstitious fury of the people, an old woman, who used a _charm_ to injure her neighbour's cattle. It is now in my possession, and consists of feathers, parings of nails, hair, and such like trash, wrapt in a lump of clay. WALTER SCOTT.

[494] Sir Walter Scott, writing in Skye in 1814, says:--'Macleod and Mr. Suter have both heard a tacksman of Macleod's recite the celebrated Address to the Sun; and another person repeat the description of Cuchullin's car. But all agree as to the gross infidelity of Macpherson as a translator and editor.' Lockhart's _Scott_, iv. 308.

[495] See _post_, Nov. 10.

[496] 'The women reaped the corn, and the men bound up the sheaves. The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulation of the harvest-song, in which all their voices were united.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 58.

[497] 'The money which he raises annually by rent from all his dominions, which contain at least 50,000 acres, is not believed to exceed £250; but as he keeps a large farm in his own hands, he sells every year great numbers of cattle ... The wine circulates vigorously, and the tea, chocolate, and coffee, however they are got, are always at hand.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 142. 'Of wine and punch they are very liberal, for they get them cheap; but as there is no custom-house on the island, they can hardly be considered as smugglers.' _Ib_. p. 160. 'Their trade is unconstrained; they pay no customs, for there is no officer to demand them; whatever, therefore, is made dear only by impost is obtained here at an easy rate.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 52.

[498] 'No man is so abstemious as to refuse the morning dram, which they call a _skalk_.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. p. 51.

[499] Alexander Macleod, of Muiravenside, advocate, became extremely obnoxious to government by his zealous personal efforts to engage his chief Macleod, and Macdonald of Sky, in the Chevalier's attempts of 1745. Had he succeeded, it would have added one third at least to the Jacobite army. Boswell has oddly described _M'Cruslick_, the being whose name was conferred upon this gentleman, as something between Proteus and Don Quixote. It is the name of a species of satyr, or _esprit follet_, a sort of mountain Puck or hobgoblin, seen among the wilds and mountains, as the old Highlanders believed, sometimes mirthful, sometimes mischievous. Alexander Macleod's precarious mode of life and variable spirits occasioned the _soubriquet_. WALTER SCOTT.

[500] Johnson also complained of the cheese. 'In the islands they do what I found it not very easy to endure. They pollute the tea-table by plates piled with large slices of Cheshire cheese, which mingles its less grateful odours with the fragrance of the tea.' _Works_, ix. 52.

[501] 'The estate has not, during four hundred years, gained or lost a single acre.' _Ib_. p. 55.

[502] Lord Stowell told me, that on the road from Newcastle to Berwick, Dr. Johnson and he passed a cottage, at the entrance of which were set up two of those great bones of the whale, which are not unfrequently seen in maritime districts. Johnson expressed great horror at the sight of these bones; and called the people, who could use such relics of mortality as an ornament, mere savages. CROKER.

[503] In like manner Boswell wrote:--'It is divinely cheering to me to think that there is a Cathedral so near Auchinleck [as Carlisle].' _Ante_, iii. 416.

[504] 'It is not only in Rasay that the chapel is unroofed and useless; through the few islands which we visited we neither saw nor heard of any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins. The malignant influence of Calvinism has blasted ceremony and decency together... It has been for many years popular to talk of the lazy devotion of the Romish clergy; over the sleepy laziness of men that erected churches we may indulge our superiority with a new triumph, by comparing it with the fervid activity of those who suffer them to fall.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 61. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'By the active zeal of Protestant devotion almost all the chapels have sunk into ruin.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 152.

[505] 'Not many years ago,' writes Johnson, 'the late Laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition.' _Works_, ix. 59. What the expedition was he is careful not to state.

[506] 'I considered this rugged ascent as the consequence of a form of life inured to hardships, and therefore not studious of nice accommodations. But I know not whether for many ages it was not considered as a part of military policy to keep the country not easily accessible. The rocks are natural fortifications.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. p. 54.

[507] See _post_ Sept. 17.

[508] In Sky a price was set 'upon the heads of foxes, which, as the number was diminished, has been gradually raised from three shillings and sixpence to a guinea, a sum so great in this part of the world, that, in a short time, Sky may be as free from foxes as England from wolves. The fund for these rewards is a tax of sixpence in the pound, imposed by the farmers on themselves, and said to be paid with great willingness.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 57.

[509] Boswell means that the eastern coast of Sky is westward of Rasay. CROKER.

[510] 'The Prince was hidden in his distress two nights in Rasay, and the King's troops burnt the whole country, and killed some of the cattle. You may guess at the opinions that prevail in this country; they are, however, content with fighting for their King; they do not drink for him. We had no foolish healths', _Piozzi Letters_, i. 145.

[511] See _ante_, iv. 217, where he said:--'You have, perhaps, no man who knows as much Greek and Latin as Bentley.'

[512] See _ante_, ii. 61, and _post_, Oct. 1.

[513] See _ante_, i. 268, note 1.

[514] Steele had had the Duke of Marlborough's papers, and 'in some of his exigencies put them in pawn. They then remained with the old Duchess, who, in her will, assigned the task to Glover [the author of _Leonidas_] and Mallet, with a reward of a thousand pounds, and a prohibition to insert any verses. Glover rejected, I suppose with disdain, the legacy, and devolved the whole work upon Mallet; who had from the late Duke of Marlborough a pension to promote his industry, and who talked of the discoveries which he had made; but left not, when he died, any historical labours behind him.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 466. The Duchess died in 1744 and Mallet in 1765. For more than twenty years he thus imposed more or less successfully on the world. About the year 1751 he played on Garrick's vanity. 'Mallet, in a familiar conversation with Garrick, discoursing of the diligence which he was then exerting upon the _Life of Marlborough_, let him know, that in the series of great men quickly to be exhibited, he should _find a niche_ for the hero of the theatre. Garrick professed to wonder by what artifice he could be introduced; but Mallet let him know, that by a dexterous anticipation he should fix him in a conspicuous place. "Mr. Mallet," says Garrick in his gratitude of exultation, "have you left off to write for the stage?" Mallet then confessed that he had a drama in his hands. Garrick promised to act it; and _Alfred_ was produced.' _Ib_. p. 465. See _ante_, iii. 386.

[515] According to Dr. Warton (_Essay on Pope_, ii. 140) he received £5000. 'Old Marlborough,' wrote Horace Walpole in March, 1742 (Letters, i. 139), 'has at last published her _Memoirs_; they are digested by one Hooke, who wrote a Roman history; but from her materials, which are so womanish that I am sure the man might sooner have made a gown and petticoat with them.'

[516] See _ante_, i. 153

[517] 'Hooke,' says Dr. Warton (_Essay on Pope_, ii. 141), 'was a Mystic and a Quietist, and a warm disciple of Fénelon. It was he who brought a Catholic priest to take Pope's confession on his death-bed.'

[518] See Cumberland's _Memoirs_, i. 344.

[519] Mr. Croker says that 'though he sold a great tract of land in Harris, he left at his death in 1801 the original debt of £50,000 [Boswell says £40,000] increased to £70,000.' When Johnson visited Macleod at Dunvegan, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Here, though poor Macleod had been left by his grandfather overwhelmed with debts, we had another exhibition of feudal hospitality. There were two stags in the house, and venison came to the table every day in its various forms. Macleod, besides his estate in Sky, larger I suppose than some English counties, is proprietor of nine inhabited isles; and of his isles uninhabited I doubt if he very exactly knows the number, I told him that he was a mighty monarch. Such dominions fill an Englishman with envious wonder; but when he surveys the naked mountain, and treads the quaking moor; and wanders over the wild regions of gloomy barrenness, his wonder may continue, but his envy ceases. The unprofitableness of these vast domains can be conceived only by the means of positive instances. The heir of Col, an island not far distant, has lately told me how wealthy he should be if he could let Rum, another of his islands, for twopence halfpenny an acre; and Macleod has an estate which the surveyor reports to contain 80,000 acres, rented at £600 a year.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 154.

[520] They were abolished by an act passed in 1747, being 'reckoned among the principal sources of the rebellions. They certainly kept the common people in subjection to their chiefs. By this act they were legally emancipated from slavery; but as the tenants enjoyed no leases, and were at all times liable to be ejected from their farms, they still depended on the pleasure of their lords, notwithstanding this interposition of the legislature, which granted a valuable consideration in money to every nobleman and petty baron, who was thus deprived of one part of his inheritance.' Smollett's _England_, iii. 206. See _ante_, p. 46, note 1, and _post_, Oct. 22.

[521] 'I doubt not but that since the regular judges have made their circuits through the whole country, right has been everywhere more wisely and more equally distributed; the complaint is, that litigation is grown troublesome, and that the magistrates are too few and therefore often too remote for general convenience... In all greater questions there is now happily an end to all fear or hope from malice or from favour. The roads are secure in those places through which forty years ago no traveller could pass without a convoy...No scheme of policy has in any country yet brought the rich and poor on equal terms to courts of judicature. Perhaps experience improving on experience may in time effect it.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 90.

[522] He described Rasay as 'the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 152.

[523] 'We heard the women singing as they _waulked_ the cloth, by rubbing it with their hands and feet, and screaming all the while in a sort of chorus. At a distance the sound was wild and sweet enough, but rather discordant when you approached too near the performers.' Lockhart's _Scott_, iv. 307.

[524] She had been some time at Edinburgh, to which she again went, and was married to my worthy neighbour, Colonel Mure Campbell, now Earl of Loudoun, but she died soon afterwards, leaving one daughter. BOSWELL. 'She is a celebrated beauty; has been admired at Edinburgh; dresses her head very high; and has manners so lady-like that I wish her head-dress was lower.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 144. See _ante_, iii. 118.

[525]

'Yet hope not life from _grief_ or danger free, _Nor_ think the doom of man reversed for thee.'

_The Vanity of Human Wishes_.

[526] 'Rasay accompanied us in his six-oared boat, which he said was his coach and six. It is indeed the vehicle in which the ladies take the air and pay their visits, but they have taken very little care for accommodations. There is no way in or out of the boat for a woman but by being carried; and in the boat thus dignified with a pompous name there is no seat but an occasional bundle of straw.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 152. In describing the distance of one family from another, Johnson writes:--'Visits last several days, and are commonly paid by water; yet I never saw a boat furnished with benches.' _Works_, ix. 100.

[527] See _ante_, ii. 106, and iii. 154.

[528] 'They which forewent us did leave a Roome for us, and should wee grieve to doe the same to these which should come after us? Who beeing admitted to see the exquisite rarities of some antiquaries cabinet is grieved, all viewed, to have the courtaine drawen, and give place to new pilgrimes?' _A Cypresse Grove_, by William Drummond of Hawthorne-denne, ed. 1630, p. 68.

[529] See _ante_, iii. 153, 295.

[530]

'While hoary Nestor, by experience wise, To reconcile the angry monarch tries.'

FRANCIS. Horace, i _Epis_. ii. II.

[531] _See ante_, p. 16.

[532] Lord Elibank died Aug. 3, 1778, aged 75. _Gent. Mag._ 1778, p. 391.

[533] A term in Scotland for a special messenger, such as was formerly sent with dispatches by the lords of the council.

[534] Yet he said of him:--'There is nothing _conclusive_ in his talk.' _Ante_ iii. 57.

[535] 'I believe every man has found in physicians great liberality and dignity of sentiment, very prompt effusion of beneficence, and willingness to exert a lucrative art where there is no hope of lucre.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 402. See _ante_, iv. 263.

[536] Johnson says (_ib_. ix. 156) that when the military road was made through Glencroe, 'stones were placed to mark the distances, which the inhabitants have taken away, resolved, they said, "to have no new miles."'

[537]

'The lawland lads think they are fine, But O they're vain and idly gawdy; How much unlike that graceful mien And manly look of my highland laddie.'

From '_The Highland Laddie_, written long since by Allan Ramsay, and now sung at Ranelagh and all the other gardens; often fondly encored, and sometimes ridiculously hissed.' _Gent. Mag_. 1750, p. 325.

[538] 'She is of a pleasing person and elegant behaviour. She told me that she thought herself honoured by my visit; and I am sure that whatever regard she bestowed on me was liberally repaid.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 153. In his _Journey_ (_Works_, ix. 63) Johnson speaks of Flora Macdonald, as 'a name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour.'

[539] This word, which meant much the same as, _fop_ or _dandy_, is found in Bk. x. ch. 2 of Fielding's _Amelia_ (published in 1751):--'A large assembly of young fellows, whom they call bucks.' Less than forty years ago, in the neighbourhood of London, it was, I remember, still commonly applied by the village lads to the boys of a boarding-school.

[540] This word was at this time often used in a loose sense, though Johnson could not have so used it. Thus Horace Walpole, writing on May 16, 1759 (_Letters_, iii. 227), tells a story of the little Prince Frederick. 'T'other day as he was with the Prince of Wales, Kitty Fisher passed by, and the child named her; the Prince, to try him, asked who that was? "Why, a Miss." "A Miss," said the Prince of Wales, "why are not all girls Misses?" "Oh! but a particular sort of Miss--a Miss that sells oranges."' Mr. Cunningham in a note on this says:--'Orange-girls at theatres were invariably courtesans.'

[541] _Governor_ was the term commonly given to a tutor, especially a travelling tutor. Thus Peregrine Pickle was sent first to Winchester and afterwards abroad 'under the immediate care and inspection of a governor.' _Peregrine Pickle_, ch. xv.

[542] He and his wife returned before the end of the War of Independence. On the way back she showed great spirit when their ship was attacked by a French man of war. Chambers's _Rebellion in Scotland_, ii. 329.

[543] I do not call him _the Prince of Wales_, or _the Prince_, because I am quite satisfied that the right which the _House of Stuart_ had to the throne is extinguished. I do not call him, the _Pretender_, because it appears to me as an insult to one who is still alive, and, I suppose, thinks very differently. It may be a parliamentary expression; but it is not a gentlemanly expression. I _know_, and I exult in having it in my power to tell, that THE ONLY PERSON in the world who is intitled to be offended at this delicacy, thinks and feels as I do; and has liberality of mind and generosity of sentiment enough to approve of my tenderness for what even _has been_ Blood Royal. That he is a _prince_ by _courtesy_, cannot be denied; because his mother was the daughter of Sobiesky, king of Poland. I shall, therefore, _on that account alone_, distinguish him by the name of _Prince Charles Edward_. BOSWELL. To have called him the _Pretender_ in the presence of Flora Macdonald would have been hazardous. In her old age, 'such is said to have been the virulence of the Jacobite spirit in her composition, that she would have struck any one with her fist who presumed, in her hearing, to call Charles _the Pretender_.' Chambers's _Rebellion in Scotland_, ii. 330.

[544] This, perhaps, was said in allusion to some lines ascribed to _Pope_, on his lying, at John Duke of Argyle's, at Adderbury, in the same bed in which Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, had slept:

'With no poetick ardour fir'd, I press [press'd] the bed where Wilmot lay; That here he liv'd [lov'd], or here expir'd, Begets no numbers, grave or gay.'

BOSWELL.

[545] See _ante_, iv. 60, 187.

[546] See _ante_, iv. 113 and 315.

[547] 'This was written while Mr. Wilkes was Sheriff of London, and when it was to be feared he would rattle his chain a year longer as Lord Mayor.' Note to Campbell's _British Poets_, p. 662. By 'here' the poet means at _Tyburn_.

[548] With virtue weigh'd, what worthless trash is gold! BOSWELL.

[549] Since the first edition of this book, an ingenious friend has observed to me, that Dr. Johnson had probably been thinking on the reward which was offered by government for the apprehension of the grandson of King James II, and that he meant by these words to express his admiration of the Highlanders, whose fidelity and attachment had resisted the golden temptation that had been held out to them. BOSWELL.

[550] On the subject of Lady Margaret Macdonald, it is impossible to omit an anecdote which does much honour to Frederick, Prince of Wales. By some chance Lady Margaret had been presented to the princess, who, when she learnt what share she had taken in the Chevalier's escape, hastened to excuse herself to the prince, and exlain to him that she was not aware that Lady Margaret was the person who had harboured the fugitive. The prince's answer was noble: 'And would _you_ not have done the same, madam, had he come to you, as to her, in distress and danger? I hope--I am sure you would!' WALTER SCOTT.

[551] This old Scottish _member of parliament_, I am informed, is still living (1785). BOSWELL.

[552] I cannot find that this account was ever published. Mr. Lumisden is mentioned _ante_, ii. 401, note 2.

[553] This word is not in Johnson's _Dictionary_.

[554] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 153) describes him in 1745 as 'a good-looking man of about five feet ten inches; his hair was dark red, and his eyes black. His features were regular, his visage long, much sunburnt and freckled, and his countenance thoughtful and melancholy.' When the Pretender was in London in 1750, 'he came one evening,' writes Dr. W. King (_Anec_. p. 199) 'to my lodgings, and drank tea with me; my servant, after he was gone, said to me, that he thought my new visitor very like Prince Charles. "Why," said I, "have you ever seen Prince Charles?" "No, Sir," said the fellow, "but this gentleman, whoever he may be, exactly resembles the busts which are sold in Red Lionstreet, and are said to be the busts of Prince Charles." The truth is, these busts were taken in plaster of Paris from his face. He has an handsome face and good eyes.'

[555] Sir Walter Scott, writing of his childhood, mentions 'the stories told in my hearing of the cruelties after the battle of Culloden. One or two of our own distant relations had fallen, and I remember of (sic) detesting the name of Cumberland with more than infant hatred.' Lockhart's _Scott_, i. 24. 'I was,' writes Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_, p. 190), 'in the coffee-house with Smollett when the news of the battle of Culloden arrived, and when London all over was in a perfect uproar of joy.' On coming out into the street, 'Smollett,' he continues, 'cautioned me against speaking a word, lest the mob should discover my country, and become insolent, "for John Bull," says he; "is as haughty and valiant to-night as he was abject and cowardly on the Black Wednesday when the Highlanders were at Derby." I saw not Smollett again for some time after, when he shewed me his manuscript of his _Tears of Scotland_. Smollett, though a Tory, was not a Jacobite, but he had the feelings of a Scotch gentleman on the reported cruelties that were said to be exercised after the battle of Culloden.' See _ante_, ii. 374, for the madman 'beating his straw, supposing it was the Duke of Cumberland, whom he was punishing for his cruelties in Scotland in 1746.'

[556] 'He was obliged to trust his life to the fidelity of above fifty individuals, and many of these were in the lowest paths of fortune. They knew that a price of £30,000 was set upon his head, and that by betraying him they should enjoy wealth and affluence.' Smollett's _Hist. of England_, iii. 184.

[557] 'Que les hommes privés, qui se plaignent de leurs petites infortunes, jettent les yeux sur ce prince et sur ses ancêtres.' _Siècle de Louis XV_, ch. 25.

[558] 'I never heard him express any noble or benevolent sentiments, or discover any sorrow or compassion for the misfortunes of so many worthy men who had suffered in his cause. But the most odious part of his character is his love of money, a vice which I do not remember to have been imputed by our historians to any of his ancestors, and is the certain index of a base and little mind. I have known this gentleman, with 2000 Louis d'ors in his strong box, pretend he was in great distress, and borrow money from a lady in Paris, who was not in affluent circumstances.' Dr. W. King's _Anec._ p. 201. 'Lord Marischal,' writes Hume, 'had a very bad opinion of this unfortunate prince; and thought there was no vice so mean or atrocious of which he was not capable; of which he gave me several instances.' J. H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 464.

[559] _Siècle de Louis XIV_, ch. 15. The accentuation of this passage, which was very incorrect as quoted by Boswell, I have corrected.

[560] By banishment he meant, I conjecture, transportation as a convict-slave to the American plantations.

[561] Wesley in his _Journal_--the reference I have mislaid--seemed from this consideration almost to regret a reprieve that came to a penitent convict.

[562] Hume describes how in 1753 (? 1750) the Pretender, on his secret visit to London, 'came to the house of a lady (who I imagined to be Lady Primrose) without giving her any preparatory information; and entered the room where she had a pretty large company with her, and was herself playing at cards. He was announced by the servant under another name. She thought the cards would have dropped from her hands on seeing him. But she had presence enough of mind to call him by the name he assumed.' J.H. Burton's _Hume_, ii. 462. Mr. Croker (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 331) prints an autograph letter from Flora Macdonald which shows that Lady Primrose in 1751 had lodged £627 in a friend's hands for her behoof, and that she had in view to add more.

[563] It seems that the Pretender was only once in London, and that it was in 1750. _Ante_, i. 279, note 5. I suspect that 1759 is Boswell's mistake or his printer's. From what Johnson goes on to say it is clear that George II. was in Germany at the time of the Prince's secret visit. He was there the greater part of 1750, but not in 1753 or 1759. In 1750, moreover, 'the great army of the King of Prussia overawed Hanover.' Smollett's _England_, iii. 297. This explains what Johnson says about the King of Prussia stopping the army in Germany.

[564] See _ante_, iv. 165, 170.

[565] COMMENTARIES on the laws of England, book 1. chap. 3. BOSWELL.

[566] B. VI. chap. 3. Since I have quoted Mr. Archdeacon Paley upon one subject, I cannot but transcribe, from his excellent work, a distinguished passage in support of the Christian Revelation.--After shewing, in decent but strong terms, the unfairness of the _indirect_ attempts of modern infidels to unsettle and perplex religious principles, and particularly the irony, banter, and sneer, of one whom he politely calls 'an eloquent historian,' the archdeacon thus expresses himself:--

'Seriousness is not constraint of thought; nor levity, freedom. Every mind which wishes the advancement of truth and knowledge, in the most important of all human researches, must abhor this licentiousness, as violating no less the laws of reasoning than the rights of decency. There is but one description of men to whose principles it ought to be tolerable. I mean that class of reasoners who can see _little_ in christianity even supposing it to be true. To such adversaries we address this reflection.--Had _Jesus Christ_ delivered no other declaration than the following, "The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth,--they that have done well [good] unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation," [_St. John_ v. 25] he had pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with which his mission was introduced and attested:--a message in which the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, and rest to their inquiries. It is idle to say that a future state had been discovered already.--It had been discovered as the Copernican System was;--it was one guess amongst many. He alone discovers who _proves_, and no man can prove this point but the teacher who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from GOD.'--Book V. chap. 9.

If infidelity be disingenuously dispersed in every shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination,--in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem,--in books of travels, of philosophy, of natural history,--as Mr. Paley has well observed,--I hope it is fair in me thus to meet such poison with an unexpected antidote, which I cannot doubt will be found powerful. BOSWELL. The 'eloquent historian' was Gibbon. See Paley's _Principles_, ed. 1786, p. 395.

[567] In _The Life of Johnson (ante_, iii. 113), Boswell quotes these words, without shewing that they are his own; but italicises not fervour, but loyalty.

[568] 'Whose service is perfect freedom.' _Book of Common Prayer._

[569] See _ante_, i. 353, note 1.

[570] Ovid, _Ars Amatoria_, iii. 121.

[571]

'This facile temper of the beauteous sex Great Agamemnon, brave Pelides proved.'

These two lines follow the four which Boswell quotes. _Agis_, act iv.

[572] _Agis_, a tragedy, by John Home. BOSWELL.

[573] See _ante_, p. 27.

[574] A misprint, I suppose, for _designing_.

[575] 'Next in dignity to the laird is the tacksman; a large taker or leaseholder of land, of which he keeps part as a domain in his own hand, and lets part to under-tenants. The tacksman is necessarily a man capable of securing to the laird the whole rent, and is commonly a collateral relation.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 82.

[576] A _lettre de cachet_.

[577] _Ante_, p. 159.

[578] 'It is related that at Dunvegan Lady Macleod, having poured out for Dr. Johnson sixteen cups of tea, asked him if a small basin would not save him trouble, and be more agreeable. "I wonder, Madam," answered he roughly, "why all the ladies ask me such questions. It is to save yourselves trouble, Madam, and not me." The lady was silent and resumed her task.' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 81.

[579] 'In the garden-or rather the orchard which was formerly the garden-is a pretty cascade, divided into two branches, and called Rorie More's Nurse, because he loved to be lulled to sleep by the sound of it.' Lockhart's _Scott_, iv. 304.

[580] It has been said that she expressed considerable dissatisfaction at Dr. Johnson's rude behaviour at Dunvegan. Her grandson, the present Macleod, assures me that it was not so: 'they were all,' he says emphatically, '_delighted_ with him.' CROKER. Mr. Croker refers, I think, to a communication from Sir Walter Scott, published in the _Croker Corres_. ii. 33. Scott writes:--'When wind-bound at Dunvegan, Johnson's temper became most execrable, and beyond all endurance, save that of his guide. The Highlanders, who are very courteous in their way, held him in great contempt for his want of breeding, but had an idea at the same time there was something respectable about him, they could not tell what, and long spoke of him as the Sassenach _mohr_, or large Saxon.'

[581] 'I long to be again in civilized life.' _Ante_, p. 183.

[582] See _ante_, iii. 406.

[583] Johnson refers, I think, to a passage in _L'Esprit des Lois_, Book xvi. chap. 4, where Montesquieu says:--'J'avoue que si ce que les relations nous disent était vrai, qu'à Bantam il y a dix femmes pour un homme, ce serait un cas bien particulier de la polygamie. Dans tout ceci je ne justifie pas les usages, mais j'en rends les raisons.'

[584] What my friend treated as so wild a supposition, has actually happened in the Western islands of Scotland, if we may believe Martin, who tells it of the islands of Col and Tyr-yi, and says that it is proved by the parish registers. BOSWELL. 'The Isle of Coll produces more boys than girls, and the Isle of Tire-iy more girls than boys; as if nature intended both these isles for mutual alliances, without being at the trouble of going to the adjacent isles or continent to be matched. The parish-book in which the number of the baptised is to be seen, confirms this observation.' Martin's _Western Islands,_ p. 271.

[585] _A Dissertation on the Gout_, by W. Cadogan, M.D., 1771. It went through nine editions in its first year.

[586] This was a general reflection against Dr. Cadogan, when his very popular book was first published. It was said, that whatever precepts he might give to others, he himself indulged freely in the bottle. But I have since had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with him, and, if his own testimony may be believed, (and I have never heard it impeached,) his course of life has been conformable to his doctrine. BOSWELL.

[587] 'April 7, 1765. I purpose to rise at eight, because, though I shall not yet rise early, it will be much earlier than I now rise, for I often lie till two.' _Pr. and Med._ p. 62. 'Sept. 18, 1771. My nocturnal complaints grow less troublesome towards morning; and I am tempted to repair the deficiencies of the night. I think, however, to try to rise every day by eight, and to combat indolence as I shall obtain strength.' _Ib._ p. 105. 'April 14, 1775. As my life has from my earliest years been wasted in a morning bed, my purpose is from Easter day to rise early, not later than eight.' _Ib._ p. 139.

[588] See _post_, Oct. 25.

[589] See _ante_, iv. under Dec. 2, 1784.

[590] Miss Mulso (Mrs. Chapone) wrote in 1753:--'I had the assurance to dispute with Mr. Johnson on the subject of human malignity, and wondered to hear a man, who by his actions shews so much benevolence, maintain that the human heart is naturally malevolent, and that all the benevolence we see in the few who are good is acquired by reason and religion.' _ Life of Mrs. Chapone_, p.73. See _post_, p. 214.

[591] This act was passed in 1746.

[592] _Isaiah_, ii. 4.

[593] Sir Walter Scott, after mentioning Lord Orford's (Horace Walpole) _History of His Own Time_, continues:--'The Memoirs of our Scots Sir George Mackenzie are of the same class--both immersed in little political detail, and the struggling skirmish of party, seem to have lost sight of the great progressive movements of human affairs.' Lockhart's _Scott_ vii. 12.

[594] 'Illum jura potius ponere quam de jure respondere dixisses; eique appropinquabant clientes tanquam judici potius quam advocato.' Mackenzie's _Works_, ed. 1716, vol. i. part 2, p. 7.

[595] 'Opposuit ei providentia Nisbetum: qui summâ doctrinâ consummatâque eloquentiâ causas agebat, ut justitiae scalae in aequilibrio essent; nimiâ tamen arte semper utens artem suam suspectam reddebat. Quoties ergo conflixerunt, penes Gilmorum gloria, penes Nisbetum palma fuit; quoniam in hoc plus artis et cultus, in illo naturae et virium.' _Ib._

[596] He often indulged himself in every species of pleasantry and wit. BOSWELL.

[597] But like the hawk, having soared with a lofty flight to a height which the eye could not reach, he was wont to swoop upon his quarry with wonderful rapidity. BOSWELL. These two quotations are part of the same paragraph, and are not even separated by a word. _Ib._ p. 6.

[598] See _ante_, i. 453; iii. 323; iv. 276; and v. 32.

[599] Some years later he said that 'when Burke lets himself down to jocularity he is in the kennel.' _Ante_, iv. 276.

[600] Cicero and Demosthenes, no doubt, were brought in by the passage about Nicholson. Mackenzie continues:--'Hic primus nos a Syllogismorum servitute manumisit et Aristotelem Demostheni potius quam Ciceroni forum concedere coegit.' P. 6.

[601] See _ante_ ii. 435 and iv. 149, note 3.

[602] See _ante_, i. 103.

[603] See _ante_ ii 436

[604] See _ante_, i. 65.

[605] On Sept. 13, 1777, Johnson wrote:--'Boswell shrinks from the Baltick expedition, which, I think, is the best scheme in our power.' _Ante_, iii. 134, note 1.

[606] See _ante_, ii. 59, note 1.

[607] See _ante_, iii. 368.

[608] 'Every man wishes to be wise, and they who cannot be wise are almost always cunning ... nor is caution ever so necessary as with associates or opponents of feeble minds.' _The Idler_, No. 92. In a letter to Dr. Taylor Johnson says:--'To help the ignorant commonly requires much patience, for the ignorant are always trying to be cunning.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 462. Churchill, in _The Journey_ (_Poems_, ed. 1766, ii. 327), says:--

''Gainst fools be guarded; 'tis a certain rule, Wits are safe things, there's danger in a fool.'

[609] See _ante_, p. 173.

[610]

'For thee we dim the eyes, and stuff the head With all such reading as was never read; For thee explain a thing till all men doubt it, And write about it, goddess, and about it.'

_The Dunciad_, iv. 249.

[611] Genius is chiefly exerted in historical pictures; and the art of the painter of portraits is often lost in the obscurity of his subject. But it is in painting as in life; what is greatest is not always best. I should grieve to see Reynolds transfer to heroes and to goddesses, to empty splendour and to airy fiction, that art which is now employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead.' _The Idler_, No. 45. 'Southey wrote thirty years later:--'I find daily more and more reason to wonder at the miserable ignorance of English historians, and to grieve with a sort of despondency at seeing how much that has been laid up among the stores of knowledge has been neglected and utterly forgotten.' Southey's _Life_, ii. 264. On another occasion he said of Robertson:--'To write his introduction to _Charles V_, without reading these _Laws_ [the _Laws_ of Alonso the Wise], is one of the thousand and one omissions for which he ought to be called rogue, as long as his volumes last. _Ib_. p. 318

[612]

'That eagle's fate and mine are one, Which on the shaft that made him die, Espy'd a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high.' _Epistle to a Lady._

Anderson's _Poets_, v. 480.

[613] See _ante_, iii. 271.

[614] 'In England there may be reason for raising the rents (in a certain degree) where the value of lands is increased by accession of commerce, ...but here (contrary to all policy) the great men begin at the wrong end, with squeezing the bag, before they have helped the poor tenant to fill it; by the introduction of manufactures.' Pennant's _Scotland_, ed. 1772, p. 191.

[615] Boswell refers, not to a passage in _Pennant_, but to Johnson's admission that in his dispute with Monboddo, 'he might have taken the side of the savage, had anybody else taken the side of the shopkeeper.' _Ante_, p. 83.

[616] 'Boswell, with some of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family and reminded me that the 18th of September is my birthday. The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 134. See _ante_, iii. 157.

[617] 'At Dunvegan I had tasted lotus, and was in danger of forgetting that I was ever to depart, till Mr. Boswell sagely reproached me with my sluggishness and softness.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 67.

[618] Johnson wrote of the ministers:--'I saw not one in the islands whom I had reason to think either deficient in learning, or irregular in life; but found several with whom I could not converse without wishing, as my respect increased, that they had not been Presbyterians.' _Ib_. p. 102.

[619] See _ante_, p. 142.

[620] See _ante_, ii. 28.

[621]

'So horses they affirm to be Mere engines made by geometry, And were invented first from engines, As Indian Britons were from penguins.'

_Hudibras_, part i. canto 2, line 57. Z. Gray, in a note on these lines, quotes Selden's note on Drayton's _Polyolbion_:--'About the year 1570, Madoc, brother to David Ap Owen, Prince of Wales, made a sea-voyage to Florida; and by probability those names of Capo de Breton in Norimberg, and Penguin in part of the Northern America, for a white rock and a white-headed bird, according to the British, were relicts of this discovery.'

[622] Published in Edinburgh in 1763.

[623] See ante, ii. 76. 'Johnson used to say that in all family disputes the odds were in favour of the husband from his superior knowledge of life and manners.' Johnson's Works (1787), xi. 210.

[624] He wrote to Dr. Taylor:--' Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 342.

[625] As I have faithfully recorded so many minute particulars, I hope I shall be pardoned for inserting so flattering an encomium on what is now offered to the publick. BOSWELL.

[626] See _ante_, iv. 109, note 1.

[627] 'The islanders of all degrees, whether of rank or understanding, universally admit it, except the ministers, who universally deny it, and are suspected to deny it in consequence of a system, against conviction.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 106.

[628] The true story of this lady, which happened in this century, is as frightfully romantick as if it had been the fiction of a gloomy fancy. She was the wife of one of the Lords of Session in Scotland, a man of the very first blood of his country. For some mysterious reasons, which have never been discovered, she was seized and carried off in the dark, she knew not by whom, and by nightly journeys was conveyed to the Highland shores, from whence she was transported by sea to the remote rock of St. Kilda, where she remained, amongst its few wild inhabitants, a forlorn prisoner, but had a constant supply of provisions, and a woman to wait on her. No inquiry was made after her, till she at last found means to convey a letter to a confidential friend, by the daughter of a Catechist, who concealed it in a clue of yarn. Information being thus obtained at Edinburgh, a ship was sent to bring her off; but intelligence of this being received, she was conveyed to M'Leod's island of Herries, where she died.

In CARSTARE'S STATE PAPERS we find an authentick narrative of Connor [Conn], a catholick priest, who turned protestant, being seized by some of Lord Seaforth's people, and detained prisoner in the island of Herries several years; he was fed with bread and water, and lodged in a house where he was exposed to the rains and cold. Sir James Ogilvy writes (June 18, 1667 [1697]), that the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Advocate, and himself, were to meet next day, to take effectual methods to have this redressed. Connor was then still detained; p. 310.--This shews what private oppression might in the last century be practised in the Hebrides.

In the same collection [in a letter dated Sept. 15, 1700], the Earl of Argyle gives a picturesque account of an embassy from the _great_ M'Neil _of Barra_, as that insular Chief used to be denominated:--'I received a letter yesterday from M'Neil of Barra, who lives very far off, sent by a gentleman in all formality, offering his service, which had made you laugh to see his entry. His style of his letter runs as if he were of another kingdom.'--Page 643 [648]. BOSWELL.

Sir Walter Scott says:--'I have seen Lady Grange's Journal. She had become privy to some of the Jacobite intrigues, in which her husband, Lord Grange (an Erskine, brother of the Earl of Mar, and a Lord of Session), and his family were engaged. Being on indifferent terms with her husband, she is said to have thrown out hints that she knew as much as would cost him his life. The judge probably thought with Mrs. Peachum, that it is rather an awkward state of domestic affairs, when the wife has it in her power to hang the husband. Lady Grange was the more to be dreaded, as she came of a vindictive race, being the grandchild [according to Mr. Chambers, the child] of that Chiesley of Dalry, who assassinated Sir George Lockhart, the Lord President. Many persons of importance in the Highlands were concerned in removing her testimony. The notorious Lovat, with a party of his men, were the direct agents in carrying her off; and St. Kilda, belonging then to Macleod, was selected as the place of confinement. The name by which she was spoken or written of was _Corpach_, an ominous distinction, corresponding to what is called _subject_ in the lecture-room of an anatomist, or _shot_ in the slang of the Westport murderers' [Burke and Hare]. Sir Walter adds that 'it was said of M'Neil of Barra, that when he dined, his bagpipes blew a particular strain, intimating that all the world might go to dinner.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 341.

[629] I doubt the justice of my fellow-traveller's remark concerning the French literati, many of whom, I am told, have considerable merit in conversation, as well as in their writings. That of Monsieur de Buffon, in particular, I am well assured, is highly instructive and entertaining. BOSWELL. See _ante_, iii. 253.

[630] Horace Walpole, writing of 1758, says:--'Prize-fighting, in which we had horribly resembled the most barbarous and most polite nations, was suppressed by the legislature.' _Memoirs of the Reign of George II_, iii. 99. According to Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec._ p. 5), Johnson said that his 'father's brother, Andrew, kept the ring in Smithfield (where they wrestled and boxed) for a whole year, and never was thrown or conquered. Mr. Johnson was,' she continues, 'very conversant in the art of boxing.' She had heard him descant upon it 'much to the admiration of those who had no expectation of his skill in such matters.'

[631] See _ante_, ii. 179, 226, and iv. 211.

[632] See _ante_, p. 98.

[633] See _ante_, i, 110.

[634] See _ante_, i. 398, and ii. 15, 35, 441.

[635] Gibbon, thirteen years later, writing to Lord Sheffield about the commercial treaty with France, said (_Misc. Works_, ii. 399):--'I hope both nations are gainers; since otherwise it cannot be lasting; and such double mutual gain is surely possible in fair trade, though it could not easily happen in the mischievous amusements of war and gaming.'

[636] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 139), writing of gratitude and resentment, says:--'Though there are few who will practise a laborious virtue, there will never be wanting multitudes that will indulge an easy vice.'

[637] _Aul. Gellius_, lib. v. c. xiv. BOSWELL.

[638] 'The difficulties in princes' business are many and great; but the greatest difficulty is often in their own mind. For it is common with princes, saith Tacitus, to will contradictories. _Sunt plerumque regum voluntates vehementes, et inter se contrariae_. For it is the solecism of power to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the mean.' Bacon's _Essays_, No. xix.

[639] Yet Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on Sept. 30:--'I am now no longer pleased with the delay; you can hear from me but seldom, and I cannot at all hear from you. It comes into my mind that some evil may happen.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 148. On Oct. 15 he wrote to Mr. Thrale:--'Having for many weeks had no letter, my longings are very great to be informed how all things are at home, as you and mistress allow me to call it.... I beg to have my thoughts set at rest by a letter from you or my mistress.' _Ib_. p. 166. See _ante_, iii. 4.

[640] Sir Walter Scott thus describes Dunvegan in 1814:--'The whole castle occupies a precipitous mass of rock overhanging the lake, divided by two or three islands in that place, which form a snug little harbour under the walls. There is a court-yard looking out upon the sea, protected by a battery, at least a succession of embrasures, for only two guns are pointed, and these unfit for service. The ancient entrance rose up a flight of steps cut in the rock, and passed into this court-yard through a portal, but this is now demolished. You land under the castle, and walking round find yourself in front of it. This was originally inaccessible, for a brook coming down on the one side, a chasm of the rocks on the other, and a ditch in front, made it impervious. But the late Macleod built a bridge over the stream, and the present laird is executing an entrance suitable to the character of this remarkable fortalice, by making a portal between two advanced towers, and an outer court, from which he proposes to throw a draw-bridge over to the high rock in front of the castle.' Lockhart's _Scott_, ed. 1839, iv. 303.

[641]

'Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube; Quae dat Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus.'

[642] Johnson says of this castle:--'It is so nearly entire, that it might have easily been made habitable, were there not an ominous tradition in the family, that the owner shall not long outlive the reparation. The grandfather of the present laird, in defiance of prediction, began the work, but desisted in a little time, and applied his money to worse uses.' _Works_, ix. 64.

[643] Macaulay (_Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 365) ends a lively piece of criticism on Mr. Croker by saying:--'It requires no Bentley or Casaubon to perceive that Philarchus is merely a false spelling for Phylarchus, the chief of a tribe.'

[644] See _ante_, i. 180.

[645] Sir Walter Scott wrote in 1814:--'The monument is now nearly ruinous, and the inscription has fallen down.' Lockhart's _Scott_, iv. 308.

[646] 'Wheel carriages they have none, but make a frame of timber, which is drawn by one horse, with the two points behind pressing on the ground. On this they sometimes drag home their sheaves, but often convey them home in a kind of open pannier, or frame of sticks, upon the horse's back.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 76. 'The young Laird of Col has attempted what no islander perhaps ever thought on. He has begun a road capable of a wheel-carriage. He has carried it about a mile.' _Ib_. p. 128.

[647] Captain Phipps had sailed in May of this year, and in the neighbourhood of Spitzbergen had reached the latitude of more than 80°. He returned to England in the end of September. _Gent. Mag_. 1774, p. 420.

[648] _Aeneid_, vi. II.

[649] 'In the afternoon, an interval of calm sunshine courted us out to see a cave on the shore, famous for its echo. When we went into the boat, one of our companions was asked in Erse by the boatmen, who they were that came with him. He gave us characters, I suppose to our advantage, and was asked, in the spirit of the Highlands, whether I could recite a long series of ancestors. The boatmen said, as I perceived afterwards, that they heard the cry of an English ghost. This, Boswell says, disturbed him.... There was no echo; such is the fidelity of report.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 156.

[650] '_Law_ or _low_ signifies a hill: _ex. gr._ Wardlaw, guard hill, Houndslow, the dog's hill.' Blackie's _Etymological Geography_, p. 103.

[651] Pepys often mentions them. At first he praises them highly, but of one of the later ones--_Tryphon_--he writes:--'The play, though admirable, yet no pleasure almost in it, because just the very same design, and words, and sense, and plot, as every one of his plays have, any one of which would be held admirable, whereas so many of the same design and fancy do but dull one another.' Pepys's _Diary_, ed. 1851, v. 63.

[652] The second and third earls are passed over by Johnson. It was the fourth earl who, as Charles Boyle, had been Bentley's antagonist. Of this controversy a full account is given in Lord Macaulay's _Life of Atterbury_.

[653] The fifth earl, John. See _ante_, i. 185, and iii. 249.

[654] See _ante_, i. 9, and iii. 154.

[655] See _ante_, ii. 129, and iii. 183.

[656] The young lord was married on the 8th of May, 1728, and the father's will is dated the 6th of Nov. following. 'Having,' says the testator, 'never observed that my son hath showed much taste or inclination, either for the entertainment or knowledge which study and learning afford, I give and bequeath all my books and mathematical instruments [with certain exceptions] to Christchurch College, in Oxford.' CROKER.

[657] His _Life of Swift_ is written in the form of _Letters to his Son, the Hon. Hamilton Boyle._ The fifteenth Letter, in which he finishes his criticism of _Gulliver's Travels_, affords a good instance of this 'studied variety of phrase.' 'I may finish my letter,' he writes, 'especially as the conclusion of it naturally turns my thoughts from Yahoos to one of the dearest pledges I have upon earth, yourself, to whom I am a most

Affectionate Father,

'ORRERY.'

See _ante_, i. 275-284, for Johnson's letters to Thomas Warton, many of which end 'in studied varieties of phrase.'

[658] _The Conquest of Granada_ was dedicated to the Duke of York. The conclusion is as follows:--'If at any time Almanzor fulfils the parts of personal valour and of conduct, of a soldier and of a general; or, if I could yet give him a character more advantageous that what he has, of the most unshaken friend, the greatest of subjects, and the best of masters; I should then draw all the world a true resemblance of your worth and virtues; at least as far as they are capable of being copied by the mean abilities of,

'Sir,

'Your Royal Highness's

'Most humble, and most

'Obedient servant,

'J. DRYDEN.'

[659] On the day of his coronation he was asked to pardon four young men who had broken the law against carrying arms. 'So long as I live,' he replied, 'every criminal must die.' 'He was inexorable in individual cases; he adhered to his laws with a rigour that amounted to cruelty, while in the framing of general rules we find him mild, yielding, and placable.' Ranke's _Popes_, ed. 1866, i. 307, 311.

[660] See _ante_, iii. 239, where he discusses the question of shooting a highwayman.

[661] In _The Rambler_, No. 78, he says:--'I believe men may be generally observed to grow less tender as they advance in age.'

[662] He passed over his own _Life of Savage_.

[663] 'When I was a young fellow, I wanted to write the _Life of Dryden' Ante_, iii. 71.

[664] See _ante_, p. 117.

[665] 'I asked a very learned minister in Sky, who had used all arts to make me believe the genuineness of the book, whether at last he believed it himself; but he would not answer. He wished me to be deceived for the honour of his country; but would not directly and formally deceive me. Yet has this man's testimony been publickly produced, as of one that held _Fingal_ to be the work of Ossian.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 115.

[666] A young lady had sung to him an Erse song. He asked her, 'What is that about? I question if she conceived that I did not understand it. For the entertainment of the company, said she. But, Madam, what is the meaning of it? It is a love song. This was all the intelligence that I could obtain; nor have I been able to procure the translation of a single line of Erse.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 146. See _post_, Oct. 16

[667] This droll quotation, I have since found, was from a song in honour of the Earl of Essex, called _Queen Elisabeth's Champion_, which is preserved in a collection of Old Ballads, in three volumes, published in London in different years, between 1720 and 1730. The full verse is as follows:--

'Oh! then bespoke the prentices all, Living in London, both proper and tall, In a kind letter sent straight to the Queen, For Essex's sake they would fight all. Raderer too, tandaro te, Raderer, tandorer, tan do re.'

BOSWELL.

[668] La Condamine describes a tribe called the Tameos, on the north side of the river Tiger in South America, who have a word for _three_. He continues:--'Happily for those who have transactions with them, their arithmetic goes no farther. The Brazilian tongue, a language spoken by people less savage, is equally barren; the people who speak it, where more than three is to be expressed, are obliged to use the Portuguese.' Pinkerton's _Voyages_, xiv. 225.

[669] 'It was Addison's practice, when he found any man invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions by acquiescence, and sink him yet deeper in absurdity. This artifice of mischief was admired by Stella; and Swift seems to approve her admiration.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 450. Swift, in his _Character of Mrs. Johnson _ (Stella), says:--'Whether this proceeded from her easiness in general, or from her indifference to persons, or from her despair of mending them, or from the same practice which she much liked in Mr. Addison, I cannot determine; but when she saw any of the company very warm in a wrong opinion, she was more inclined to confirm them in it than oppose them. The excuse she commonly gave, when her friends asked the reason, was, "That it prevented noise and saved time." Swift's _Works_, xiv. 254.

[670] In the Appendix to Blair's _Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian_ Macqueen is mentioned as one of his authorities for his statements.

[671] See _ante_, iv. 262, note.

[672] I think it but justice to say, that I believe Dr. Johnson meant to ascribe Mr. M'Queen's conduct to inaccuracy and enthusiasm, and did not mean any severe imputation against him. BOSWELL.

[673] In Baretti's trial (_ante_, ii. 97, note I) he seems to have given his evidence clearly. What he had to say, however, was not much.

[674] Boswell had spoken before to Johnson about this omission. _Ante_, ii. 92.

[675] It has been triumphantly asked, 'Had not the plays of Shakspeare lain dormant for many years before the appearance of Mr. Garrick? Did he not exhibit the most excellent of them frequently for thirty years together, and render them extremely popular by his own inimitable performance?' He undoubtedly did. But Dr. Johnson's assertion has been misunderstood. Knowing as well as the objectors what has been just stated, he must necessarily have meant, that 'Mr. Garrick did not as _a critick_ make Shakspeare better known; he did not _illustrate_ any one _passage_ in any of his plays by acuteness of disquisition, or sagacity of conjecture: and what had been done with any degree of excellence in _that_ way was the proper and immediate subject of his preface. I may add in support of this explanation the following anecdote, related to me by one of the ablest commentators on Shakspeare, who knew much of Dr. Johnson: 'Now I have quitted the theatre, cries Garrick, I will sit down and read Shakspeare.' ''Tis time you should, exclaimed Johnson, for I much doubt if you ever examined one of his plays from the first scene to the last.' BOSWELL. According to Davies (_Life of Garrick_, i. 120) during the twenty years' management of Drury Lane by Booth, Wilks and Cibber (about 1712-1732) not more than eight or nine of Shakspeare's plays were acted, whereas Garrick annually gave the public seventeen or eighteen. _Romeo and Juliet_ had lain neglected near 80 years, when in 1748-9 Garrick brought it out, or rather a hash of it. 'Otway had made some alteration in the catastrophe, which Mr. Garrick greatly improved by the addition of a scene, which was written with a spirit not unworthy of Shakespeare himself.' _Ib_. p. 125. Murphy (_Life of Garrick_, p. 100), writing of this alteration, says:--'The catastrophe, as it now stands, is the most affecting in the whole compass of the drama.' Davies says (p. 20) that shortly before Garrick's time 'a taste for Shakespeare had been revived. The ladies had formed themselves into a society under the title of The Shakespeare Club. They bespoke every week some favourite play of his.' This revival was shown in the increasing number of readers of Shakespeare. It was in 1741 that Garrick began to act. In the previous sixteen years there had been published four editions of Pope's _Shakespeare_ and two of Theobald's. In the next ten years were published five editions of Hanmer's _Shakespeare_, and two of Warburton's, besides Johnson's _Observations on Macbeth. _Lowndes's _Bibl. Man._ ed. 1871, p. 2270.

[676] In her foolish _Essay on Shakespeare_, p. 15. See _ante_, ii. 88.

[677] No man has less inclination to controversy than I have, particularly with a lady. But as I have claimed, and am conscious of being entitled to credit for the strictest fidelity, my respect for the publick obliges me to take notice of an insinuation which tends to impeach it.

Mrs. Piozzi (late Mrs. Thrale), to her _Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson_, added the following postscript:--

'_Naples, Feb._ 10, 1786.

'Since the foregoing went to the press, having seen a passage from Mr. Boswell's _Tour to the Hebrides,_ in which it is said, that _I could not get through Mrs. Montague's "Essay on Shakspeare,"_ I do not delay a moment to declare, that, on the contrary, I have always commended it myself, and heard it commended by every one else; and few things would give me more concern than to be thought incapable of tasting, or unwilling to testify my opinion of its excellence.'

It is remarkable that this postscript is so expressed, as not to point out the person who said that Mrs. Thrale could not get through Mrs. Montague's book; and therefore I think it necessary to remind Mrs. Piozzi, that the assertion concerning her was Dr. Johnson's, and not mine. The second observation that I shall make on this postscript is, that it does not deny the fact asserted, though I must acknowledge from the praise it bestows on Mrs. Montague's book, it may have been designed to convey that meaning.

What Mrs. Thrale's opinion is or was, or what she may or may not have said to Dr. Johnson concerning Mrs. Montague's book, it is not necessary for me to enquire. It is only incumbent on me to ascertain what Dr. Johnson said to me. I shall therefore confine myself to a very short state of the fact. The unfavourable opinion of Mrs. Montague's book, which Dr. Johnson, is here reported to have given, is, known to have been that which he uniformly expressed, as many of his friends well remember. So much, for the authenticity of the paragraph, as far as it relates to his own sentiments. The words containing the assertion, to which Mrs. Piozzi objects, are printed from my manuscript Journal, and were taken down at the time. The Journal was read by Dr. Johnson, who pointed out some inaccuracies, which I corrected, but did not mention any inaccuracy in the paragraph in question: and what is still more material, and very flattering to me, a considerable part of my Journal, containing this paragraph, _was read several years ago by, Mrs. Thrale herself _[see _ante_, ii. 383], who had it for some time in her possession, and returned it to me, without intimating that Dr. Johnson had mistaken her sentiments.

When the first edition of my Journal was passing through the press, it occurred to me that a peculiar delicacy was necessary to be observed in reporting the opinion of one literary lady concerning the performance of another; and I had such scruples on that head, that in the proof sheet I struck out the name of Mrs. Thrale from the above paragraph, and two or three hundred copies of my book were actually printed and published without it; of these Sir Joshua Reynolds's copy happened to be one. But while the sheet was working off, a friend, for whose opinion I have great respect, suggested that I had no right to deprive Mrs. Thrale of the high honour which Dr. Johnson had done her, by stating her opinion along with that of Mr. Beauclerk, as coinciding with, and, as it were, sanctioning his own. The observation appeared to me so weighty and conclusive, that I hastened to the printing-house, and, as a piece of justice, restored Mrs. Thrale to that place from which a too scrupulous delicacy had excluded her. On this simple state of facts I shall make no observation whatever. BOSWELL. This note was first published in the form of a letter to the Editor of _The Gazetteer_ on April 17, 1786.

[678] See _ante_, p. 215, for his knowledge of coining and brewing, and _post_, p. 263, for his knowledge of threshing and thatching. Now and then, no doubt, 'he talked ostentatiously,' as he had at Fort George about Gunpowder (_ante_, p. 124). In the _Gent. Mag._ for 1749, p. 55, there is a paper on the _Construction of Fireworks_, which I have little doubt is his. The following passage is certainly Johnsonian:--'The excellency of a rocket consists in the largeness of the train of fire it emits, the solemnity of its motion (which should be rather slow at first, but augmenting as it rises), the straightness of its flight, and the height to which it ascends.'

[679] Perhaps Johnson refers to Stephen Hales's _Statical Essays_ (London, 1733), in which is an account of experiments made on the blood and blood-vessels of animals.

[680] Evidence was given at the Tichborne Trial to shew that it takes some years to learn the trade.

[681] Not the very tavern, which was burned down in the great fire. P. CUNNINGHAM.

[682] I do not see why I might not have been of this club without lessening my character. But Dr. Johnson's caution against supposing one's self concealed in London, may be very useful to prevent some people from doing many things, not only foolish, but criminal. BOSWELL.

[683] See _ante_, iii. 318.

[684] Johnson defines _airy_ as _gay, sprightly, full of mirth_, &c.

[685] 'A man would be drowned by claret before it made him drunk.' _Ante_, iii. 381.

[686] _Ante_, p. 137.

[687] See _ante_ ii. 261.

[688] Lord Chesterfield wrote in 1747 (_Misc. Works_, iv. 231):-- Drinking is a most beastly vice in every country, but it is really a ruinous one to Ireland; nine gentlemen in ten in Ireland are impoverished by the great quantity of claret, which from mistaken notions of hospitality and dignity, they think it necessary should be drunk in their houses. This expense leaves them no room to improve their estates by proper indulgence upon proper conditions to their tenants, who must pay them to the full, and upon the very day, that they may pay their wine-merchants.' In 1754 he wrote (_ib._p.359):--If it would but please God by his lightning to blast all the vines in the world, and by his thunder to turn all the wines now in Ireland sour, as I most sincerely wish he would, Ireland would enjoy a degree of quiet and plenty that it has never yet known.'

[689] See _ante_, p. 95.

[690] 'The sea being broken by the multitude of islands does not roar with so much noise, nor beat the storm with such foamy violence as I have remarked on the coast of Sussex. Though, while I was in the Hebrides, the wind was extremely turbulent, I never saw very high billows.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 65.

[691] Johnson this day thus wrote of Mr. M'Queen to Mrs. Thrale:--'You find that all the islanders even in these recesses of life are not barbarous. One of the ministers who has adhered to us almost all the time is an excellent scholar.' _Piozzi Letters,_ i. 157.

[692] See _post_, Nov. 6.

[693] This was a dexterous mode of description, for the purpose of his argument; for what he alluded to was, a Sermon published by the learned Dr. William Wishart, formerly principal of the college at Edinburgh, to warn men _against_ confiding in a death-bed _repentance_ of the inefficacy of which he entertained notions very different from those of Dr. Johnson. BOSWELL.

[694] The Rev. Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 441) thus writes of the English clergy whom he met at Harrogate in 1763:--'I had never seen so many of them together before, and between this and the following year I was able to form a true judgment of them. They are, in general--I mean the lower order--divided into bucks and prigs; of which the first, though inconceivably ignorant, and sometimes indecent in their morals, yet I held them to be most tolerable, because they were unassuming, and had no other affectation but that of behaving themselves like gentlemen. The other division of them, the prigs, are truly not to be endured, for they are but half learned, are ignorant of the world, narrow-minded, pedantic, and overbearing. And now and then you meet with a _rara avis_ who is accomplished and agreeable, a man of the world without licentiousness, of learning without pedantry, and pious without sanctimony; but this _is_ a _rara avis_'.

[695] See _ante_, i. 446, note 1.

[696] Johnson defines _manage_ in this sense _to train a horse to graceful action_, and quotes Young:--

'They vault from hunters to the managed steed.'

[697] Of Sir William Forbes of a later generation, Lockhart (_Life of Scott_, ix. 179) writes as follows:--'Sir William Forbes, whose banking-house was one of Messrs. Ballantyne's chief creditors, crowned his generous efforts for Scott's relief by privately paying the whole of Abud's demand (nearly £2000) out of his own pocket.'

[698] This scarcity of cash still exists on the islands, in several of which five shilling notes are necessarily issued to have some circulating medium. If you insist on having change, you must purchase something at a shop. WALTER SCOTT.

[699] 'The payment of rent in kind has been so long disused in England that it is totally forgotten. It was practised very lately in the Hebrides, and probably still continues, not only in St. Kilda, where money is not yet known, but in others of the smaller and remoter islands.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 110.

[700] 'A place where the imagination is more amused cannot easily be found. The mountains about it are of great height, with waterfalls succeeding one another so fast, that as one ceases to be heard another begins.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 157.

[701] See _ante_, i. 159.

[702] Johnson seems to be speaking of Hailes's _Memorials and Letters relating to the History of Britain in the reign of James I and of Charles I_.

[703] See _ante_, ii. 341.

[704] See _ante_, iii. 91.

[705] 'In all ages of the world priests have been enemies to liberty, and it is certain that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking and of expressing our thoughts is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded.... Hence it must happen in such a government as that of Britain, that the established clergy, while things are in their natural situation, will always be of the _Court_-party; as, on the contrary, dissenters of all kinds will be of the _Country_-party.' Hume's _Essays_, Part 1, No. viii.

[706] In the original _Every island's but a prison._ The song is by a Mr. Coffey, and is given in Ritson's _English Songs_ (1813), ii. 122. It begins:--

'Welcome, welcome, brother debtor, To this poor but merry place, Where no bailiff, dun, nor setter, Dares to show his frightful face.'

See _ante_, iii. 269.

[707] He wrote to Mrs. Thrale the day before (perhaps it was this day, and the copyist blundered):--' I am still in Sky. Do you remember the song--

We have at one time no boat, and at another may have too much wind; but of our reception here we have no reason to complain.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 143.

[708] My ingenuously relating this occasional instance of intemperance has I find been made the subject both of serious criticism and ludicrous banter. With the banterers I shall not trouble myself, but I wonder that those who pretend to the appellation of serious criticks should not have had sagacity enough to perceive that here, as in every other part of the present work, my principal object was to delineate Dr. Johnson's manners and character. In justice to him I would not omit an anecdote, which, though in some degree to my own disadvantage, exhibits in so strong a light the indulgence and good humour with which he could treat those excesses in his friends, of which he highly disapproved.

In some other instances, the criticks have been equally wrong as to the true motive of my recording particulars, the objections to which I saw as clearly as they. But it would be an endless task for an authour to point out upon every occasion the precise object he has in view, Contenting himself with the approbation of readers of discernment and taste, he ought not to complain that some are found who cannot or will not understand him. BOSWELL.

[709] In the original, 'wherein is excess.'

[710] See Chappell's _Popular Music of the Olden Time_, i. 231.

[711] See _ante_, iii. 383.

[712] see _ante_, p. 184.

[713] See _ante_, ii. 120, where he took upon his knee a young woman who came to consult him on the subject of Methodism.

[714] See _ante_, pp. 215, 246.

[715] See _ante_, iv. 176.

[716]

'If ev'ry wheel of that unwearied mill That turned ten thousand verses now stands still.'

_Imitations of Horace, 2 Epis._ ii. 78.

[717] _Ante_, p. 206.

[718]

'Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine captos Ducit.'--Ovid, _Ex Pont_. i. 3. 35.

[719] Lift up your hearts.

[720] Mr. Croker prints the following letter written to Macleod the day before:--

'Ostig, 28th Sept. 1773.

'DEAR SIR,--We are now on the margin of the sea, waiting for a boat and a wind. Boswell grows impatient; but the kind treatment which I find wherever I go, makes me leave, with some heaviness of heart, an island which I am not very likely to see again. Having now gone as far as horses can carry us, we thankfully return them. My steed will, I hope, be received with kindness;--he has borne me, heavy as I am, over ground both rough and steep, with great fidelity; and for the use of him, as for your other favours, I hope you will believe me thankful, and willing, at whatever distance we may be placed, to shew my sense of your kindness, by any offices of friendship that may fall within my power.

'Lady Macleod and the young ladies have, by their hospitality and politeness, made an impression on my mind, which will not easily be effaced. Be pleased to tell them, that I remember them with great tenderness, and great respect.--I am, Sir, your most obliged and most humble servant,

'SAM. JOHNSON.'

'P.S.--We passed two days at Talisker very happily, both by the pleasantness of the place and elegance of our reception.'

[721] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 409), after describing how Shenstone laid out the Leasowes, continues:--'Whether to plant a walk in undulating curves, and to place a bench at every turn where there is an object to catch the view; to make water run where it will be heard, and to stagnate where it will be seen; to leave intervals where the eye will be pleased, and to thicken the plantation where there is something to be hidden, demands any great powers of mind, I will not inquire: perhaps a surly and sullen speculator may think such performances rather the sport than the business of human reason.'

[722] Johnson quotes this and the two preceding stanzas as 'a passage, to which if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with love or nature.' _Ib_. p. 413.

[723] 'His mind was not very comprehensive, nor his curiosity active; he had no value for those parts of knowledge which he had not himself cultivated.' _Ib._ p. 411.

[724] In the preface to vol. iii. of Shenstone's _Works_, ed. 1773, a quotation is given (p. vi) from one of the poet's letters in which he complains of this burning. He writes:--'I look upon my Letters as some of my _chef-d'auvres_.' On p. 301, after mentioning _Rasselas_, he continues:--'Did I tell you I had a letter from Johnson, inclosing Vernon's _Parish-clerk_?'

[725] 'The truth is these elegies have neither passion, nature, nor manners. Where there is fiction, there is no passion: he that describes himself as a shepherd, and his Neaera or Delia as a shepherdess, and talks of goats and lambs, feels no passion. He that courts his mistress with Roman imagery deserves to lose her; for she may with good reason suspect his sincerity.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 91. See _ante_, iv. 17.

[726] His lines on Pulteney, Earl of Bath, still deserve some fame:--

'Leave a blank here and there in each page To enrol the fair deeds of his youth! When you mention the acts of his age, Leave a blank for his honour and truth.'

From _The Statesman_, H. C. Williams's _Odes_, p. 47.

[727] Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2.

[728] He did not mention the name of any particular person; but those who are conversant with the political world will probably recollect more persons than one to whom this observation may be applied. BOSWELL. Mr. Croker thinks that Lord North was meant. For his ministry Johnson certainly came to have a great contempt (_ante_, iv. 139). If Johnson was thinking of him, he differed widely in opinion from Gibbon, who describes North as 'a consummate master of debate, who could wield with equal dexterity the arms of reason and of ridicule.' Gibbon's _Misc. Works_, i. 221. On May 2, 1775, he wrote:--' If they turned out Lord North to-morrow, they would still leave him one of the best companions in the kingdom.' _Ib._ ii. 135.

[729] Horace Walpole is speaking of this work, when he wrote on May 16, 1759 (_Letters_, iii. 227):--'Dr. Young has published a new book, on purpose, he says himself, to have an opportunity of telling a story that he has known these forty years. Mr. Addison sent for the young Lord Warwick, as he was dying, to shew him in what peace a Christian could die--unluckily he died of brandy--nothing makes a Christian die in peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath, where you are.'

[730] 'His [Young's] plan seems to have started in his mind at the present moment; and his thoughts appear the effect of chance, sometimes adverse, and sometimes lucky, with very little operation of judgment.... His verses are formed by no certain model; he is no more like himself in his different productions than he is like others. He seems never to have studied prosody, nor to have had any direction but from his own ear. But with all his defects, he was a man of genius and a poet.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 458, 462. Mrs. Piozzi (_Synonymy_, ii. 371) tells why 'Dr. Johnson despised Young's quantity of common knowledge as comparatively small. 'Twas only because, speaking once upon the subject of metrical composition, he seemed totally ignorant of what are called rhopalick verses, from the Greek word, a club--verses in which each word must be a syllable longer than that which goes before, such as:

Spes deus aeternae stationis conciliator.'

[731] He had said this before. _Ante_, ii. 96.

[732]

'Brunetta's wise in actions great and rare, But scorns on trifles to bestow her care. Thus ev'ry hour Brunetta is to blame, Because th' occasion is beneath her aim. Think nought a trifle, though it small appear; Small sands the mountains, moments make the year, And trifles life. Your care to trifles give, Or you may die before you truly live.'

_Love of Fame_, Satire vi. Johnson often taught that life is made up of trifles. See _ante_, i. 433.

[733]

"But hold," she cries, "lampooner, have a care; Must I want common sense, because I'm fair?" O no: see Stella; her eyes shine as bright, As if her tongue was never in the right; And yet what real learning, judgment, fire! She seems inspir'd, and can herself inspire: How then (if malice rul'd not all the fair) Could Daphne publish, and could she forbear? We grant that beauty is no bar to sense, Nor is't a sanction for impertinence.

_Love of Fame_, Satire v.

[734] Johnson called on Young's son at Welwyn in June, 1781. _Ante_, iv. 119. Croft, in his _Life of Young_ (Johnson's _Works_, viii. 453), says that 'Young and his housekeeper were ridiculed with more ill-nature than wit in a kind of novel published by Kidgell in 1755, called _The Card_, under the name of Dr. Elwes and Mrs. Fusby.'

[735] _Memoirs of Philip Doddridge_, ed. 1766, p. 171.

[736] So late as 1783 he said 'this Hanoverian family is isolée here.' _Ante_, iv. 165.

[737] See _ante_, ii. 81, where he hoped that 'this gloom of infidelity was only a transient cloud.'

[738] Boswell has recorded this saying, _ante_, iv. 194.

[739] In 1755 an English version of this work had been published. _Gent. Mag_. 1755, p. 574. In the Chronological Catalogue on p. 343 in vol. 66 of Voltaire's _Works_, ed. 1819, it is entered as _'Histoire de la Guerre de_ 1741, fondue en partie dans le _Précis du siècle de Louis XV_.'

[740] Boswell is here merely repeating Johnson's words, who on April 11 of this year, advising him to keep a journal, had said, 'The great thing to be recorded is the state of your own mind.' _Ante_, ii. 217.

[741] This word is not in his _Dictionary_.

[742] See _ante_, i. 498.

[743] See _ante_, ii. 61, 335; iii. 375, and _post_, under Nov. 11.

[744] Beattie had attacked Hume in his _Essay on Truth_ (_ante_, ii. 201 and v. 29). Reynolds this autumn had painted Beattie in his gown of an Oxford Doctor of Civil Law, with his _Essay_ under his arm. 'The angel of Truth is going before him, and beating down the Vices, Envy, Falsehood, &c., which are represented by a group of figures falling at his approach, and the principal head in this group is made an exact likeness of Voltaire. When Dr. Goldsmith saw this picture, he was very indignant at it, and said:--"It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character, Sir Joshua, to condescend to be a mean flatterer, or to wish to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before so mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer."' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 300. Another of the figures was commonly said to be a portrait of Hume; but Forbes (_Life of Beattie_, ed. 1824, p. 158) says he had reason to believe that Sir Joshua had no thought either of Hume or Voltaire. Beattie's _Essay_ is so much a thing of the past that Dr. J. H. Burton does not, I believe, take the trouble ever to mention it in his _Life of Hume_. Burns did not hold with Goldsmith, for he took Beattie's side:--

'Hence sweet harmonious Beattie sung His _Minstrel_ lays; Or tore, with noble ardour stung, The _Sceptic's_ bays.'

(_The Vision_, part ii.)

[745] See _ante_, ii. 441.

[746] William Tytler published in 1759 an _Examination of the Histories of Dr. Robertson and Mr. Hume with respect to Mary Queen of Scots_. It was reviewed by Johnson. _Ante_, i. 354.

[747] Johnson's _Rasselas_ was published in either March or April, and Goldsmith's _Polite Learning_ in April of 1759.I do not find that they published any other works at the same time. If these are the works meant, we have a proof that the two writers knew each other earlier than was otherwise known.

[748] 'A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of _Phalaris_; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of criticism (the _Answer_ to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be discouraged at this run upon him, for tho' they had got the laughers on their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a work of so much merit. To which the other replied, "Indeed Dr. S. [Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter. For I hold it as certain, that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."' _Warburton on Pope_, iv. 159, quoted in Person's _Tracts_, p. 345. 'Against personal abuse,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 348), 'Johnson was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:--"Alas! reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' He wrote to Baretti:--'A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.' _Ante_, i. 381. Voltaire in his _Essay Sur les inconvéniens attachés à la Littérature_ (_Works_, ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win the favour of the critics, continues:--'Tous vos soins n'empêchent pas que quelque journaliste ne vous déchire. Vous lui répondez; il réplique; vous avez un procès par écrit devant le public, qui condamne les deux parties au ridicule.' See _ante_, ii. 61, note 4.

[749] However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he says:--'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' _Tom Jones_, bk. xi. ch. 1.

[750] It is strange that Johnson should not have known that the _Adventures of a Guinea_ was written by a namesake of his own, Charles Johnson. Being disqualified for the bar, which was his profession, by a supervening deafness, he went to India, and made some fortune, and died there about 1800. WALTER SCOTT.

[751] Salusbury, not Salisbury.

[752] Horace Walpole (_Letters_, .ii 57) mentions in 1746 his cousin Sir John Philipps, of Picton Castle; 'a noted Jacobite.'... He thus mentions Lady Philipps in 1788 when she was 'very aged.' 'They have a favourite black, who has lived with them a great many years, and is remarkably sensible. To amuse Lady Philipps under a long illness, they had read to her the account of the Pelew Islands. Somebody happened to say we were sending a ship thither; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, "Then there is an end of their happiness." What a satire on Europe!' _Ib_. ix. 157.

Lady Philips was known to Johnson through Miss Williams, to whom, as a note in Croker's _Boswell_ (p. 74) shews, she made a small yearly allowance.

[753] 'To teach the minuter decencies and inferiour duties, to regulate the practice of daily conversation, to correct those depravities which are rather ridiculous than criminal, and remove those grievances which, if they produce no lasting calamities, impress hourly vexation, was first attempted by Casa in his book of _Manners_, and Castiglione in his _Courtier_; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance.' Johnson's _Works_, vii. 428. _The Courtier_ was translated into English so early as 1561. Lowndes's _Bibl. Man_. ed. 1871, p. 386.

[754] Burnet (_History of His Own Time_, ii. 296) mentions Whitby among the persons who both managed and directed the controversial war' against Popery towards the end of Charles II's reign. 'Popery,' he says, 'was never so well understood by the nation as it came to be upon this occasion.' Whitby's Commentary _on the New Testament_ was published in 1703-9.

[755] By Henry Mackenzie, the author of _The Man of Feeling. Ante_, i. 360. It had been published anonymously this spring. The play of the same name is by Macklin. It was brought out in 1781.

[756] No doubt Sir A. Macdonald. _Ante_, p. 148. This 'penurious gentleman' is mentioned again, p. 315.

[757] Molière's play of _L'Avare_.

[758]

'...facit indignatio versum.'

Juvenal, _Sat_. i. 79.

[759] See _ante_, iii. 252.

[760] He was sixty-four.

[761] Still, perhaps, in the _Western Isles_, 'It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles.' Tennyson's _Ulysses._

[762] See _ante_, ii, 51.

[763] See _ante_, ii. 150.

[764] Sir Alexander Macdonald.

[765] 'To be or not to be: that is the question.' _Hamlet_, act iii. sc. 1.

[766] Virgil, _Eclogues_, iii. III.

[767] 'The stormy Hebrides.' Milton's _Lycidas_, 1. 156.

[768] Boswell was thinking of the passage (p. xxi.) in which Hawkesworth tells how one of Captain Cook's ships was saved by the wind falling. 'If,' he writes, 'it was a natural event, providence is out of the question; at least we can with no more propriety say that providentially the wind ceased, than that providentially the sun rose in the morning. If it was not,' &c. According to Malone the attacks made on Hawkesworth in the newspapers for this passage 'affected him so much that from low spirits he was seized with a nervous fever, which on account of the high living he had indulged in had the more power on him; and he is supposed to have put an end to his life by intentionally taking an immoderate dose of opium.' Prior's _Malone_, p. 441. Mme. D'Arblay says that these attacks shortened his life. _Memoirs of Dr. Burney_, i. 278. He died on Nov. 17 of this year. See _ante_, i. 252, and ii. 247.

[769] 'After having been detained by storms many days at Sky we left it, as we thought, with a fair wind; but a violent gust, which Bos had a great mind to call a tempest, forced us into Col.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 167. 'The wind blew against us in a short time with such violence, that we, being no seasoned sailors, were willing to call it a tempest... The master knew not well whither to go; and our difficulties might, perhaps, have filled a very pathetick page, had not Mr. Maclean of Col... piloted us safe into his own harbour.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 117. Sir Walter Scott says, 'Their risque, in a sea full of islands, was very considerable. Indeed, the whole expedition was highly perilous, considering the season of the year, the precarious chance of getting sea-worthy boats, and the ignorance of the Hebrideans, who, notwithstanding the opportunities, I may say the _necessities_, of their situation, are very careless and unskilful sailors.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 362.

[770] For as the tempest drives, I shape my way. FRANCIS. [Horace, _Epistles_, i. 1. 15.] BOSWELL.

[771]

'Imberbus juvenis, tandem custode remoto, Gaudet equis canibusque, et aprici gramine campi.' 'The youth, whose will no froward tutor bounds, Joys in the sunny field, his horse and hounds.'

FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. 1. 161.

[772] _Henry VI_, act i. sc. 2.

[773] See _ante_, i. 468, and iii. 306.

[774] Johnson describes him as 'a gentleman who has lived some time in the East Indies, but, having dethroned no nabob, is not too rich to settle in his own country.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 117.

[775] This curious exhibition may perhaps remind some of my readers of the ludicrous lines, made, during Sir Robert Walpole's administration, on Mr. George (afterwards Lord) Lyttelton, though the figures of the two personages must be allowed to be very different:--

'But who is this astride the pony; So long, so lean, so lank, so bony? Dat be de great orator, Littletony.'

BOSWELL.

These lines were beneath a caricature called _The Motion_, described by Horace Walpole in his letter of March 25, 1741, and said by Mr. Cunningham to be 'the earliest good political caricature that we possess.' Walpole's _Letters_, i. 66. Mr. Croker says that 'the exact words are:--

bony? O he be de great orator Little-Tony.'

[776] See _ante_, ii. 213.

[777] In 1673 Burnet, who was then Professor of Theology in Glasgow, dedicated to Lauderdale _A Vindication of the Authority, &c., of the Church and State of Scotland_. In it he writes of the Duke's 'noble character, and more lasting and inward characters of his princely mind.'

[778] See _ante_, i. 450.

[779] See _ante_, p. 250.

[780] 'Others have considered infinite space as the receptacle, or rather the habitation of the Almighty; but the noblest and most exalted way of considering this infinite space, is that of Sir Isaac Newton, who calls it the _sensorium_ of the Godhead. Brutes and men have their _sensoriola_, or little _sensoriums_, by which they apprehend the presence, and perceive the actions, of a few objects that lie contiguous to them. Their knowledge and observation turn within a very narrow circle. But as God Almighty cannot but perceive and know everything in which he resides, infinite space gives room to infinite knowledge, and is, as it were, an organ to Omniscience.' Addison, _The Spectator_, No. 565.

[781] 'Le célèbre philosophe Leibnitz ... attaqua ces expressions du philosophe anglais, dans une lettre qu'il écrivit en 1715 à la feue reine d'Angleterre, épouse de George II. Cette princesse, digne d'être en commerce avec Leibnitz et Newton, engagea une dispute reglée par lettres entre les deux parties. Mais Newton, ennemi de toute dispute et avare de son temps, laissa le docteur Clarke, son disciple en physique, et pour le moins son égal en métaphysique, entrer pour lui dans la lice. La dispute roula sur presque toutes les idées métaphysiques de Newton, et c'est peut-être le plus beau monument que nous ayons des combats littéraires.' Voltaire's _Works_, ed. 1819, xxviii. 44.

[782] See _ante_, iii. 248.

[783] See _ante_, iv. 295, where Boswell asked Johnson 'if he would not have done more good if he had been more gentle.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; I have done more good as I am. Obscenity and impiety have always been repressed in my company.'

[784] 'Mr. Maclean has the reputation of great learning: he is seventy-seven years old, but not infirm, with a look of venerable dignity, excelling what I remember in any other man. His conversation was not unsuitable to his appearance. I lost some of his good will by treating a heretical writer with more regard than in his opinion a heretick could deserve. I honoured his orthodoxy, and did not much censure his asperity. A man who has settled his opinions does not love to have the tranquillity of his conviction disturbed; and at seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 118.

[785] 'Mr. Maclean has no publick edifice for the exercise of his ministry, and can officiate to no greater number than a room can contain; and the room of a hut is not very large... The want of churches is not the only impediment to piety; there is likewise a want of ministers. A parish often contains more islands than one... All the provision made by the present ecclesiastical constitution for the inhabitants of about a hundred square miles is a prayer and sermon in a little room once in three weeks.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 118.

[786]

'Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds what we have taught her. I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter. For she must have both hoods and gowns, and hoops to swell her pride, With scarfs and stays, and gloves and lace; and she will have men beside; And when she's drest with care and cost, all-tempting, fine and gay, As men should serve a cucumber, she flings herself away.'

Air vii.

[787] See _ante_, p. 162.

[788] In 1715.

[789]

'When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labours, and the words move slow.'

Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, l. 370.

[790] Johnson's remark on these stones is curious as shewing that he had not even a glimpse of the discoveries to be made by geology. After saying that 'no account can be given' of the position of one of the stones, he continues:--'There are so many important things of which human knowledge can give no account, that it may be forgiven us if we speculate no longer on two stones in Col.' _Works_, ix. 122. See _ante_, ii. 468, for his censure of Brydone's 'anti-mosaical remark.'

[791]

'Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella.' 'My Phillis me with pelted apples plies.'

DRYDEN. Virgil, _Eclogues_, iii. 64.

[792]

'The helpless traveller, with wild surprise, Sees the dry desert all around him rise, And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies.'

_Cato_ act ii. sc. 6.

[793] Johnson seems unwilling to believe this. 'I am not of opinion that by any surveys or land-marks its [the sand's] limits have been ever fixed, or its progression ascertained. If one man has confidence enough to say that it advances, nobody can bring any proof to support him in denying it.' _Works_, ix. 122. He had seen land in like manner laid waste north of Aberdeen; where 'the owner, when he was required to pay the usual tax, desired rather to resign the ground.' _Ib_. p. 15.

[794] _Box_, in this sense, is not in Johnson's _Dictionary_.

[795] See _ante_, ii. 100, and iv. 274.

[796] In the original, _Rich windows. A Long Story_, l. 7.

[797] 'And this according to the philosophers is happiness.' Boswell says of Crabbe's poem _The Village_, that 'its sentiments as to the false notions of rustick happiness and rustick virtue were quite congenial with Johnson's own.' _Ante_, iv. 175.

[798] 'This innovation was considered by Mr. Macsweyn as the idle project of a young head, heated with English fancies; but he has now found that turnips will really grow, and that hungry sheep and cows will really eat them.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 121. 'The young laird is heir, perhaps, to 300 square miles of land, which, at ten shillings an acre, would bring him £96,000 a year. He is desirous of improving the agriculture of his country; and, in imitation of the Czar, travelled for improvement, and worked with his own hands upon a farm in Hertfordshire.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 168.

[799] 'In more fruitful countries the removal of one only makes room for the succession of another; but in the Hebrides the loss of an inhabitant leaves a lasting vacuity; for nobody born in any other parts of the world will choose this country for his residence.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 93.

[800] 'In 1628 Daillé wrote his celebrated book, _De l'usage des Pères_, or _Of the Use of the Fathers_. Dr. Fleetwood, Bishop of Ely, said of it that he thought the author had pretty sufficiently proved they were of _no use_ at all.' Chalmers's _Biog. Dict_. xi. 209.

[801] _Enquiry after Happiness_, by Richard Lucas, D.D., 1685.

[802] _Divine Dialogues_, by Henry More, D.D. See _ante_, ii. 162, note I.

[803] By David Gregory, the second of the sixteen professors which the family of Gregory gave to the Universities. _Ante_, p. 48.

[804] 'Johnson's landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court.' _Ante_, iii. 141.

[805] 'Cuper's Gardens, near the south bank of the Thames, opposite to Somerset House. The gardens were illuminated, and the company entertained by a band of music and fireworks; but this, with other places of the same kind, has been lately discontinued by an act that has reduced the number of these seats of luxury and dissipation.' Dodsley's _London and its Environs_, ed. 1761, ii. 209. The Act was the 25th George II, for 'preventing robberies and regulating places of public entertainment.' _Parl. Hist_. xiv. 1234.

[806] 'Mr. Johnson,' according to Mr. Langton, 'used to laugh at a passage in Carte's _Life of the Duke of Ormond,_ where he gravely observes "that he was always in full dress when he went to court; too many being in the practice of going thither with double lapells."' _Boswelliana_, p. 274. The following is the passage:--'No severity of weather or condition of health served him for a reason of not observing that decorum of dress which he thought a point of respect to persons and places. In winter time people were allowed to come to court with double-breasted coats, a sort of undress. The duke would never take advantage of that indulgence; but let it be never so cold, he always came in his proper habit, and indeed the king himself always did the same, though too many neglected his example to make use of the liberty he was pleased to allow.' Carte's _Life of Ormond_, iv. 693. See _ante_, i. 42. It was originally published in _three_ volumes folio in 1735-6.

[807] Seneca's two epigrams on Corsica are quoted in Boswell's _Corsica_, first edition, p. 13. Boswell, in one of his _Hypochondriacks (London Mag._ 1778, p. 173), says:--'For Seneca I have a double reverence, both for his own worth, and because he was the heathen sage whom my grandfather constantly studied.'

[808] 'Very near the house of Maclean stands the castle of Col, which was the mansion of the Laird till the house was built.... On the wall was, not long ago, a stone with an inscription, importing, that if any man of the clan of Maclonich shall appear before this castle, though he come at midnight, with a man's head in his hand, he shall there find safety and protection against all but the king. This is an old Highland treaty made upon a very memorable occasion. Maclean, the son of John Gerves, who recovered Col, and conquered Barra, had obtained, it is said, from James the Second, a grant of the lands of Lochiel, forfeited, I suppose, by some offence against the state. Forfeited estates were not in those days quietly resigned; Maclean, therefore, went with an armed force to seize his new possessions, and, I know not for what reason, took his wife with him. The Camerons rose in defence of their chief, and a battle was fought at Loch Ness, near the place where Fort Augustus now stands, in which Lochiel obtained the victory, and Maclean, with his followers, was defeated and destroyed. The lady fell into the hands of the conquerors, and, being found pregnant, was placed in the custody of Maclonich, one of a tribe or family branched from Cameron, with orders, if she brought a boy, to destroy him, if a girl, to spare her. Maclonich's wife, who was with child likewise, had a girl about the same time at which Lady Maclean brought a boy; and Maclonich, with more generosity to his captive than fidelity to his trust, contrived that the children should be changed. Maclean, being thus preserved from death, in time recovered his original patrimony; and, in gratitude to his friend, made his castle a place of refuge to any of the clan that should think himself in danger; and, as a proof of reciprocal confidence, Maclean took upon himself and his posterity the care of educating the heir of Maclonich.' Johnson's _Works,_ ix. 130.

[809] 'Mr. Croker tells us that the great Marquis of Montrose was beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650. There is not a forward boy at any school in England who does not know that the Marquis was hanged.' Macaulay's _Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 357

[810] It is observable that men of the first rank spelt very ill in the last century. In the first of these letters I have preserved the original spelling. BOSWELL.

[811] See _ante,_ i., 127.

[812] Muir-fowl is grouse. _Ante_ p. 44.

[813] See ante, p. 162, note 1.

[814] 'In Col only two houses pay the window tax; for only two have six windows, which, I suppose, are the laird's and Mr. Macsweyn's.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 125. 'The window tax, as it stands at present (January 1775)...lays a duty upon every window, which in England augments gradually from twopence, the lowest rate upon houses with not more than seven windows, to two shillings, the highest rate upon houses with twenty-five windows and upwards.' _Wealth of Nations,_ v. 2. 2 .1. The tax was first imposed in 1695, as a substitute for hearth money. Macaulay's _England,_ ed. 1874, vii. 271. It was abolished in 1851.

[815] Thomas Carlyle was not fourteen when, one 'dark frosty November morning,' he set off on foot for the University at Edinburgh--a distance of nearly one hundred miles. Froude's _Carlyle_, i. 22.

[816] _Ante_, p. 290.

[817] _Of the Nature and Use of Lots: a Treatise historicall and theologicall._ By Thomas Gataker. London, 1619. _The Spirituall Watch, or Christ's Generall Watch-word._ By Thomas Gataker. London, 1619.

[818] See _ante_, p. 264.

[819] He visited it with the Thrales on Sept. 22, 1774, when returning from his tour to Wales, and with Boswell in 1776 (_ante_, ii. 451).

[820] Mr. Croker says that 'this, no doubt, alludes to Jacob Bryant, the secretary or librarian at Blenheim, with whom Johnson had had perhaps some coolness now forgotten.' The supposition of the coolness seems needless. With so little to go upon, guessing is very hazardous.

[821] Topham Beauclerk, who had married the Duke's sister, after she had been divorced for adultery with him from her first husband Viscount Bolingbroke. _Ante_, ii. 246, note 1.

[822] See _post_, Dempster's Letter of Feb. 16, 1775.

[823] See _ante_, ii. 340, where Johnson said that 'if he were a gentleman of landed property, he would turn out all his tenants who did not vote for the candidate whom he supported.'

[824] See _ante_, iii. 378.

[825] 'They have opinions which cannot be ranked with superstition, because they regard only natural effects. They expect better crops of grain by sowing their seed in the moon's increase. The moon has great influence in vulgar philosophy. In my memory it was a precept annually given in one of the English almanacks, "to kill hogs when the moon was increasing, and the bacon would prove the better in boiling."' Johnson's _Works,_ ix. 104. Bacon, in his _Natural History_(No.892) says:--'For the increase of moisture, the opinion received is, that seeds will grow soonest if they be set in the increase of the moon.'

[826] The question which Johnson asked with such unusual warmth might have been answered, 'by sowing the bent, or couch grass.' WALTER SCOTT.

[827] See _ante,_ i. 484.

[828] See _ante_, i. 483.

[829] It is remarkable, that Dr. Johnson should have read this account of some of his own peculiar habits, without saying any thing on the subject, which I hoped he would have done. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p. 128, note 2, and iv. 183, where Boswell 'observed he must have been a bold laugher who would have ventured to tell Dr. Johnson of any of his peculiarities.'

[830] In this he was very unlike Swift, who, in his youth, when travelling in England, 'generally chose to dine with waggoners, hostlers, and persons of that rank; and he used to lie at night in houses where he found written of the door _Lodgings for a penny_. He delighted in scenes of low life.' Lord Orrery's _Swift_, ed. 1752, p. 33.

[831] This is from the _Jests of Hierocles._ CROKER.

[832] 'The grave a gay companion shun.' FRANCIS. Horace, 1 _Epis._ xviii. 89.

[833] Boswell in 1776 found that 'oats were much used as food in Dr. Johnson's own town.' _Ante_, ii. 463.

[834] _Ante_, i. 294.

[835] See _ante_, ii. 258.

[836] 'The richness of the round steep green knolls, clothed with copse, and glancing with cascades, and a pleasant peep at a small fresh-water loch embosomed among them--the view of the bay, surrounded and guarded by the island of Colvay--the gliding of two or three vessels in the more distant Sound--and the row of the gigantic Ardnamurchan mountains closing the scene to the north, almost justify the eulogium of Sacheverell, [_post,_ p. 336] who, in 1688, declared the bay of Tobermory might equal any prospect in Italy.' Lockhart's _Scott,_ iv. 338.

[837] 'The saying of the old philosopher who observes, that he who wants least is most like the gods who want nothing, was a favourite sentence with Dr. Johnson, who, on his own part, required less attendance, sick or well, than ever I saw any human creature. Conversation was all he required to make him happy.' Piozzi's _Anec._ p. 275.

[838] _Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_ (_ante_, ii. 346). Johnson (_Works_, vii. 424) says of these _Travels_:--'Of many parts it is not a very severe censure to say that they might have been written at home.' He adds that 'the book, though awhile neglected, became in time so much the favourite of the publick, that before it was reprinted it rose to five times its price.'

[839] See _ante_, iii. 254, and iv. 237.

[840] Johnson (_Works_, viii. 320) says of Pope that 'he had before him not only what his own meditation suggested, but what he had found in other writers that might be _accomodated_ to his present purpose.' Boswell's use of the word is perhaps derived, as Mr. Croker suggests, from _accommoder_, in the sense of _dressing up or cooking meats_. This word occurs in an amusing story that Boswell tells in one of his Hypochondriacks (_London Mag_. 1779, p. 55):--'A friend of mine told me that he engaged a French cook for Sir B. Keen, when ambassador in Spain, and when he asked the fellow if he had ever dressed any magnificent dinners the answer was:--"Monsieur, j'ai accommodé un dîner qui faisait trembler toute la France."' Scott, in _Guy Mannering_ (ed. 1860, iii. 138), describes 'Miss Bertram's solicitude to soothe and _accommodate_ her parent.' See _ante_, iv. 39, note 1, for '_accommodated_ the ladies.' To sum up, we may say with Justice Shallow:--'Accommodated! it comes of _accommodo_; very good; a good phrase.' 2 _Henry IV_, act iii. sc. 2.

[841] 'Louis Moréri, né en Provence, en 1643. On ne s'attendait pas que l'auteur du _Pays d'amour_, et le traducteur de _Rodriguez_, entreprît dans sa jeunesse le premier dictionnaire de faits qu'on eût encore vu. Ce grand travail lui coûta la vie... Mort en 1680.' Voltaire's _Works_, ed. 1819, xvii. 133.

[842] Johnson looked upon _Ana_ as an English word, for he gives it in his _Dictionary_.

[843] I take leave to enter my strongest protest against this judgement. _Bossuet_ I hold to be one of the first luminaries of religion and literature. If there are who do not read him, it is full time they should begin. BOSWELL.

[844]

Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell; And pale diseases, and repining age; Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage; Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep, Forms terrible to view their sentry keep.

Dryden, _Aeneid_, vi. 273. BOSWELL. Voltaire, in his Essay _Sur les inconvéniens attachés à la Littérature_ (_Works_, xliii. 173), says:--'Enfin, après un an de refus et de négociations, votre ouvrage s'imprime; c'est alors qu'il faut ou assoupir les _Cerbères_ de la littérature ou les faire aboyer en votre faveur.' He therefore carries on the resemblance one step further,--

'Cerberus haec ingens latratu regna trifauci Personat.' _Aeneid_, vi. 417.

[845] It was in 1763 that Boswell made Johnson's acquaintance. _Ante_, i. 391.

[846] It is no small satisfaction to me to reflect, that Dr. Johnson read this, and, after being apprized of my intention, communicated to me, at subsequent periods, many particulars of his life, which probably could not otherwise have been preserved. BOSWELL. See _ante_, i. 26.

[847] Though Mull is, as Johnson says, the third island of the Hebrides in extent, there was no post there. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 170.

[848] This observation is very just. The time for the Hebrides was too late by a month or six weeks. I have heard those who remembered their tour express surprise they were not drowned. WALTER SCOTT.

[849] _ The Charmer, a Collection of Songs Scotch and English._ Edinburgh, 1749.

[850] By Thomas Willis, M.D. It was published in 1672. 'In this work he maintains that the soul of brutes is like the vital principle in man, that it is corporeal in its nature and perishes with the body. Although the book was dedicated to the Archbishop of Canterbury, his orthodoxy, a matter that Willis regarded much, was called in question.' Knight's _Eng. Cyclo_. vi. 741. Burnet speaks of him as 'Willis, the great physician.' _History of his Own Time_, ed. 1818, i. 254. See _Wood's Athenae_, iii. 1048.

[851] See _ante_, ii. 409 and iii. 242, where he said:--'Had I learnt to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.'

[852] _Ante_, p. 277.

[853] _Ante_, p. 181.

[854] Mr. Langton thinks this must have been the hasty expression of a splenetick moment, as he has heard Dr. Johnson speak of Mr. Spence's judgment in criticism with so high a degree of respect, as to shew that this was not his settled opinion of him. Let me add that, in the preface to the _Preceptor_, he recommends Spence's _Essay on Papers Odyssey_, and that his admirable _Lives of the English Poets_ are much enriched by Spence's Anecdotes of Pope. BOSWELL. For the _Preceptor_ see _ante_, i. 192, and Johnson's _Works_, v. 240. Johnson, in his _Life of Pope (ib_.