[1002] The unwilling gratitude of base mankind. POPE. [_Imitations of
Horace_, 2 _Epis_. i. 14.] BOSWELL.
[1003] Dr. Franklin (_Memoirs_, i. 246-253) gives a curious account of
Lord Loudoun, who was general in America about the year 1756.
'Indecision,' he says, 'was one of the strongest features of his
character.' He kept back the packet-boats from day to day because he
could not make up his mind to send his despatches. At one time there
were three boats waiting, one of which was kept with cargo and
passengers on board three months beyond its time. Pitt at length
recalled him, because 'he never heard from him, and could not know what
he was doing.'
[1004] See Chalmers's _Biog. Dict._ xi. 161 for an account of a
controversy about the identity of this writer with an historian of the
same name.
[1005] He had paid but little attention to his own rule. See _ante_, ii.
119.
[1006] 'I believe that for all the castles which I have seen beyond the
Tweed, the ruins yet remaining of some one of those which the English
built in Wales would supply Materials.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 152.
[1007] See _ante_, p. 40, note 4.
[1008] Johnson described her as 'a lady who for many years gave the laws
of elegance to Scotland.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 200. Allan Ramsay
dedicated to her his _Gentle Shepherd_, and W. Hamilton, of Bangour,
wrote to her verses on the presentation of Ramsay's poem. Hamilton's
_Poems_, p. 23.
[1009] See _ante_, ii. 66, and iii. 188.
[1010] 'She called Boswell the boy: "yes, Madam," said I, "we will send
him to school." "He is already," said she, "in a good school;" and
expressed her hope of his improvement. At last night came, and I was
sorry to leave her.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 200. See _ante_, iii. 366.
[1011] See _ante_, pp. 318, 362.
[1012] Burns, who was in his fifteenth year, was at this time living at
Ayr, about twelve miles away. When later on he moved to Mauchline, he
and Boswell became much nearer neighbours.
[1013] He had, however, married again. _Ante_, ii. 140, note I. It is
curious that Boswell in this narrative does not mention his step-mother.
[1014]
'Asper
Incolumi gravitate jocum tentavit.'
'Though rude his mirth, yet laboured to maintain
The solemn grandeur of the tragic scene.'
FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars Poet_. l. 221.
[1015] See _ante_, iii. 65, and v. 97.
[1016] See _ante_, iv. 163, 241.
[1017] Johnson (_Works_, vii. 425) says of Addison's dedication of the
opera of _Rosamond_ to the Duchess of Marlborough, that 'it was an
instance of servile absurdity, to be exceeded only by Joshua Barnes's
dedication of a Greek _Anacreon_ to the Duke.' For Barnes see _ante_,
iii. 284, and iv. 19.
[1018] William Baxter, the editor of _Anacreon_, was the nephew of
Richard Baxter, the nonconformist divine.
[1019] He says of Auchinleck (_Works_, ix. 158) that 'like all the
western side of Scotland, it is _incommoded_ by very frequent rain.' 'In
all September we had, according to Boswell's register, only one day and
a half of fair weather; and in October perhaps not more.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 182.
[1020] 'By-the-bye,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, 'I am far from being of the
number of those angry Scotsmen who imputed to Johnson's national
prejudices all or a great part of the report he has given of our country
in his _Voyage to the Hebrides_. I remember the Highlands ten or twelve
years later, and no one can conceive of 'how much that could have been
easily remedied travellers had to complain.' _Croker Corres_. ii. 34
[1021] 'Of these islands it must be confessed, that they have not many
allurements but to the mere lover of naked nature. The inhabitants are
thin, provisions are scarce, and desolation and penury give little
pleasure.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 153. In an earlier passage (p. 138),
in describing a rough ride in Mull, he says:--'We were now long enough
acquainted with hills and heath to have lost the emotion that they once
raised, whether pleasing or painful, and had our minds employed only on
our own fatigue.'
[1022] See _ante_, ii. 225.
[1023] In like manner Wesley said of Rousseau:--'Sure a more consummate
coxcomb never saw the sun.... He is a cynic all over. So indeed is his
brother-infidel, Voltaire; and well-nigh as great a coxcomb.' Wesley's
_Journal,_, ed. 1830, iii. 386.
[1024] This gentleman, though devoted to the study of grammar and
dialecticks, was not so absorbed in it as to be without a sense of
pleasantry, or to be offended at his favourite topicks being treated
lightly. I one day met him in the street, as I was hastening to the
House of Lords, and told him, I was sorry I could not stop, being rather
too late to attend an appeal of the Duke of Hamilton against Douglas. 'I
thought (said he) their contest had been over long ago.' I answered,
'The contest concerning Douglas's filiation was over long ago; but the
contest now is, who shall have the estate.' Then, assuming the air of
'an ancient sage philosopher,' I proceeded thus: 'Were I to _predicate_
concerning him, I should say, the contest formerly was, What _is_ he?
The contest now is, What _has_ he?'--'Right, (replied Mr. Harris,
smiling,) you have done with _quality_, and have got into
_quantity_.' BOSWELL.
[1025] Most likely Sir A. Macdonald. _Ante_, p. 148.
[1026] Boswell wrote on March 18,1775:--'Mr. Johnson, when enumerating
our Club, observed of some of us, that they talked from books,--Langton
in particular. "Garrick," he said, "would talk from books, if he talked
seriously." "_I_," said he, "do not talk from books; _you_ do not talk
from books." This was a compliment to my originality; but I am afraid I
have not read books enough to be able to talk from them.' _Letters of
Boswell_, p. 181. See _ante_, ii. 360, where Johnson said to Boswell:--
'I don't believe you have borrowed from Waller. I wish you would enable
yourself to borrow more;' and i. 105, where he described 'a man of a
great deal of knowledge of the world, fresh from life, not strained
through books.'
[1027] 'Lord Auchinleck has built a house of hewn stone, very stately
and durable, and has advanced the value of his lands with great
tenderness to his tenants. I was, however, less delighted with the
elegance of the modern mansion, than with the sullen dignity of the old
castle.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 159. 'The house is scarcely yet
finished, but very magnificent and very convenient.' _Piozzi Letters_,
i. 201. See _ante_, i. 462.
[1028] See _ante_, ii. 413, and v. 91.
[1029] The relation, it should seem, was remote even for Scotland. Their
common ancestor was Robert Bruce, some sixteen generations back.
Boswell's mother's grandmother was a Bruce of the Earl of Kincardine's
family, and so also was his father's mother. Rogers's _Boswelliana_,
pp. 4, 5.
[1030] He refers to Johnson's pension, which was given nearly two years
after George Ill's accession. _Ante_, i. 372.
[1031] _Ante_, p. 51.
[1032] He repeated this advice in 1777. _Ante_, iii. 207.
[1033] 'Of their black cattle some are without horns, called by the
Scots _humble_ cows, as we call a bee, an _humble_ bee, that wants a
sting. Whether this difference be specifick, or accidental, though we
inquired with great diligence, we could not be informed.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 78.
Johnson, in his _Dictionary_, gives the right derivation of humble-bee,
from _hum_ and _bee_. The word _Humble-cow_ is found in _Guy Mannering_,
ed. 1860, iii. 91:--'"Of a surety," said Sampson, "I deemed I heard his
horse's feet." "That," said John, with a broad grin, "was Grizzel
chasing the humble-cow out of the close."'
[1034] 'Even the cattle have not their usual beauty or noble head.'
Church and Brodribb's _Tacitus_.
[1035] 'The peace you seek is here--where is it not? If your own mind
be equal to its lot.' CROKER. Horace, I _Epistles_, xi. 29.
[1036] Horace, I _Epistles_, xviii. 112.
[1037] This and the next paragraph are not in the first edition. The
paragraph that follows has been altered so as to hide the fact that the
minister spoken of was Mr. Dun. Originally it stood:--'Mr. Dun, though a
man of sincere good principles as a presbyterian divine, discovered,'
&c. First edition, p. 478.
[1038] See _ante_, p. 120.
[1039] Old Lord Auchinleck was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the
manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of
good estate and ancient family; and, moreover, he was a strict
presbyterian and Whig of the old Scottish cast. This did not prevent his
being a terribly proud aristocrat; and great was the contempt he
entertained and expressed for his son James, for the nature of his
friendships and the character of the personages of whom he was _engoue_
one after another. 'There's nae hope for Jamie, mon,' he said to a
friend. 'Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, mon? He's done wi'
Paoli--he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose
tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon?' Here the old judge
summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. 'A _dominie_, mon--an
auld dominie: he keeped a schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy.' Probably if
this had been reported to Johnson, he would have felt it more galling,
for he never much liked to think of that period of his life [_ante_,
i.97, note 2]; it would have aggravated his dislike of Lord Auchinleck's
Whiggery and presbyterianism. These the old lord carried to such a
height, that once, when a countryman came in to state some justice
business, and being required to make his oath, declined to do so before
his lordship, because he was not a _covenanted_ magistrate. 'Is that
a'your objection, mon?' said the judge; 'come your ways in here, and
we'll baith of us tak the solemn league and covenant together.' The oath
was accordingly agreed and sworn to by both, and I dare say it was the
last time it ever received such homage. It may be surmised how far Lord
Auchinleck, such as he is here described, was likely to suit a high Tory
and episcopalian like Johnson. As they approached Auchinleck, Boswell
conjured Johnson by all the ties of regard, and in requital of the
services he had rendered him upon his tour, that he would spare two
subjects in tenderness to his father's prejudices; the first related to
Sir John Pringle, president of the Royal Society, about whom there was
then some dispute current: the second concerned the general question of
Whig and Tory. Sir John Pringle, as Boswell says, escaped, but the
controversy between Tory and Covenanter raged with great fury, and ended
in Johnson's pressing upon the old judge the question, what good
Cromwell, of whom he had said something derogatory, had ever done to his
country; when, after being much tortured, Lord Auchinleck at last spoke
out, 'God, Doctor! he gart kings ken that they had a _lith_ in their
neck'--he taught kings they had a _joint_ in their necks. Jamie then
set to mediating between his father and the philosopher, and availing
himself of the judge's sense of hospitality, which was punctilious,
reduced the debate to more order. WALTER SCOTT. Paoli had visited
Auchinleck. Boswell wrote to Garrick on Sept. 18, 1771:--'I have just
been enjoying the very great happiness of a visit from my illustrious
friend, Pascal Paoli. He was two nights at Auchinleck, and you may
figure the joy of my worthy father and me at seeing the Corsican hero in
our romantic groves.' _Garrick Corres_. i. 436. Johnson was not blind to
Cromwell's greatness, for he says (_Works_, vii. 197), that 'he wanted
nothing to raise him to heroick excellence but virtue.' Lord
Auchinleck's famous saying had been anticipated by Quin, who, according
to Davies (_Life of Garrick_, ii. 115), had said that 'on a thirtieth of
January every king in Europe would rise with a crick in his neck.'
[1040] See _ante_, p. 252.
[1041] James Durham, born 1622, died 1658, wrote many theological works.
Chalmers's _Biog. Dict_. In the _Brit. Mus. Cata_. I can find no work by
him on the _Galatians_; Lord Auchinleck's triumph therefore was, it
seems, more artful than honest.
[1042] Gray, it should seem, had given the name earlier. His friend
Bonstetten says that about the year 1769 he was walking with him, when
Gray 'exclaimed with some bitterness, "Look, look, Bonstetten! the great
bear! There goes _Ursa Major_!" This was Johnson. Gray could not abide
him.' Sir Egerton Brydges, quoted in Gosse's _Gray_, iii. 371. For the
epithet _bear_ applied to Johnson see _ante_, ii. 66, 269, note i, and
iv. 113, note 2. Boswell wrote on June 19, 1775:--'My father harps on my
going over Scotland with a brute (think, how shockingly erroneous!), and
wandering (or some such phrase) to London.' _Letters of Boswell_,
p. 207.
[1043] It is remarkable that Johnson in his _Life of Blackmore_
[_Works_, viii. 42] calls the imaginary Mr. Johnson of the _Lay
Monastery_ 'a constellation of excellence.' CROKER.
[1044] Page 121. BOSWELL. See also _ante_, iii. 336.
[1045] 'The late Sir Alexander Boswell,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, 'was a
proud man, and, like his grandfather, thought that his father lowered
himself by his deferential suit and service to Johnson. I have observed
he disliked any allusion to the book or to Johnson himself, and I have
heard that Johnson's fine picture by Sir Joshua was sent upstairs out of
the sitting apartments at Auchinleck.' _Croker Corres_. ii. 32. This
portrait, which was given by Sir Joshua to Boswell (Taylor's _Reynolds_,
i. 147), is now in the possession of Mr. Charles Morrison.
[1046] 'I have always said that first Whig was the devil.' _Ante_, iii.
326
[1047] See _ante_, ii. 26.
[1048] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 266) has paid this tribute. 'Lord
Elibank,' he writes, 'had a mind that embraced the greatest variety of
topics, and produced the most original remarks. ... He had been a
lieutenant-colonel in the army and was at the siege of Carthagena, of
which he left an elegant account (which I'm afraid is lost). He was a
Jacobite, and a member of the famous Cocoa-tree Club, and resigned his
commission on some disgust.' Dr. Robertson and John Home were his
neighbours in the country, 'who made him change or soften down many of
his original opinions, and prepared him for becoming a most agreeable
member of the Literary Society of Edinburgh.' Smollett in _Humphry
Clinker_ (Letter of July 18), describes him as 'a nobleman whom I have
long revered for his humanity and universal intelligence, over and above
the entertainment arising from the originality of his character.'
Boswell, in the _London Mag._ 1779, p. 179, thus mentions the Cocoa-tree
Club:--'But even at Court, though I see much external obeisance, I do
not find congenial sentiments to warm my heart; and except when I have
the conversation of a very few select friends, I am never so well as
when I sit down to a dish of coffee in the Cocoa Tree, sacred of old to
loyalty, look round me to men of ancient families, and please myself
with the consolatory thought that there is perhaps more good in the
nation than I know.'
[1049] Johnson's _Works_, vii. 380. See _ante_, i. 81.
[1050] See _ante_, p. 53.
[1051] The Mitre tavern. _Ante_, i. 425.
[1052] Of this Earl of Kelly Boswell records the following pun:--'At a
dinner at Mr. Crosbie's, when the company were very merry, the Rev. Dr.
Webster told them he was sorry to go away so early, but was obliged to
catch the tide, to cross the Firth of Forth. "Better stay a little,"
said Thomas Earl of Kelly, "till you be half-seas over."' Rogers's
_Boswelliana_, p. 325.
[1053] See _ante_, i. 354.
[1054] In the first edition, _and his son the advocate_. Under this son,
A. F. Tytler, afterwards a Lord of Session by the title of Lord
Woodhouselee, Scott studied history at Edinburgh College. Lockhart's
_Scott_, ed. 1839, i. 59, 278.
[1055] See _ante_, i. 396, and ii. 296.
[1056] 'If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, let us not fill
the vacuity with Ossian. If we have not searched the Magellanick
regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 116. Horace Walpole wrote on May 22, 1766 (_Letters_, iv.
500):--'Oh! but we have discovered a race of giants! Captain Byron has
found a nation of Brobdignags on the coast of Patagonia; the inhabitants
on foot taller than he and his men on horseback. I don't indeed know how
he and his sailors came to be riding in the South Seas. However, it is a
terrible blow to the Irish, for I suppose all our dowagers now will be
for marrying Patagonians.'
[1057] I desire not to be understood as agreeing _entirely_ with the
opinions of Dr. Johnson, which I relate without any remark. The many
imitations, however, of _Fingal_, that have been published, confirm this
observation in a considerable degree. BOSWELL. Johnson said to Sir
Joshua of Ossian:--'Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever, if he
would _abandon_ his mind to it.' _Ante_, iv. 183.
[1058] In the first edition (p. 485) this paragraph ran thus:--'Young
Mr. Tytler stepped briskly forward, and said, "_Fingal_ is certainly
genuine; for I have heard a great part of it repeated in the
original."--Dr. Johnson indignantly asked him, "Sir, do you understand
the original?"--_Tytler_. "No, Sir."--_Johnson_. "Why, then, we see to
what this testimony comes:--Thus it is."--He afterwards said to me, "Did
you observe the wonderful confidence with which young Tytler advanced,
with his front already _brased_?"'
[1059] For _in company_ we should perhaps read _in the company_.
[1060] In the first edition, _this gentleman's talents and integrity
are_, &c.
[1061] 'A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love
Scotland better than truth: he will always love it better than inquiry;
and if falsehood flatters his vanity, will not be very diligent to
detect it.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 116. See _ante_, ii. 311.
[1062] See _ante_, p. 164.
[1063] See _ante_, p. 242.
[1064] See _ante_, iv. 253.
[1065] Lord Chief Baron Geoffrey Gilbert published in 1760 a book on the
Law of Evidence.
[1066] See _ante_, ii. 302.
[1067] Three instances, _ante_, pp. 160, 320.
[1068] See _ante_, ii. 318.
[1069] An instance is given in Sacheverell's _Account of the Isle of
Man_, ed. 1702, p. 14.
[1070] Mr. J. T. Clark, the Keeper of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh,
obligingly informs me that in the margin of the copy of Boswell's
_Journal_ in that Library it is stated that this cause was _Wilson
versus Maclean_.
[1071] See _ante_, iv. 74, note 3.
[1072] See _ante_, iii 69, 183.
[1073] He is described in _Guy Mannering_, ed. 1860, iv. 98.
[1074] See _ante_, p. 50.
[1075] See _ante_, i. 458.
[1076] 'We now observe that the Methodists, where they scatter their
opinions, represent themselves as preaching the Gospel to unconverted
nations; and enthusiasts of all kinds have been inclined to disguise
their particular tenets with pompous appellations, and to imagine
themselves the great instruments of salvation.' Johnson's _Works_,
vi. 417.
[1077]
Through various hazards and events we move.
Dryden, [_Aeneid_, I. 204]. BOSWELL.
[1078]
Long labours both by sea and land he bore.
Dryden, [_Aeneid_, I. 3]. BOSWELL.
