[154] Johnson's _Works_, ix. i. See _ante_, ii. 278, where he wrote to
Boswell:--'I have endeavoured to do you some justice in the first
paragraph [of the _Journey_].' The day before he started for Scotland he
wrote to Dr. Taylor:--'Mr. Boswell, an active lively fellow, is to
conduct me round the country.' _Notes and Queries_, 6th S. v. 422. 'His
inquisitiveness,' he said, 'is seconded by great activity.' _Works_, ix.
8. On Oct. 7 he wrote from Skye:--'Boswell will praise my resolution and
perseverance; and I shall in return celebrate his good humour and
perpetual cheerfulness.... It is very convenient to travel with him, for
there is no house where he is not received with kindness and respect.'
_Piozzi Letters_, i. 198. He told Mrs. Knowles that 'Boswell was the
best travelling companion in the world.' _Ante_, iii. 294. Mr. Croker
says (_Croker's Boswell_, p. 280):--'I asked Lord Stowell in what
estimation he found Boswell amongst his countrymen. "Generally liked as
a good-natured jolly fellow," replied his lordship. "But was he
respected?" "Well, I think he had about the proportion of respect that
you might guess would be shown to a jolly fellow." His lordship thought
there was more regard than respect.' _Hebrides,_ p. 40.
[155] See _ante_, ii. 103, 411.
[156] There were two quarto volumes of this Diary; perhaps one of them
Johnson took with him. Boswell had 'accidently seen them and had read a
great deal in them,' as he owned to Johnson (_ante_, under Dec. 9,
1784), and moreover had, it should seem, copied from them (_ante_, i.
251). The 'few fragments' he had received from Francis Barber
(_ante_, i. 27).
[157] In the original 'how much we lost _at separation_' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. I. Mr. William Nairne was afterwards a Judge of the Court
of Sessions by the title of Lord Dunsinnan. Sir Walter Scott wrote of
him:--'He was a man of scrupulous integrity. When sheriff depute of
Perthshire, he found upon reflection, that he had decided a poor man's
case erroneously; and as the only remedy, supplied the litigant
privately with money to carry the suit to the supreme court, where his
judgment was reversed.' Croker's _Boswell_, p. 280.
[158]
'Non illic urbes, non tu mirabere silvas:
Una est injusti caerula forma maris.
_Ovid. Amor._ L. II. El. xi.
Nor groves nor towns the ruthless ocean shows;
Unvaried still its azure surface flows.
BOSWELL.
[159] See _ante_. ii. 229.
[160] My friend, General Campbell, Governour of Madras, tells me, that
they made _speldings_ in the East-Indies, particularly at Bombay, where
they call them _Bambaloes_. BOSWELL. Johnson had told Boswell that he
was 'the most _unscottified_ of his countrymen.'_Ante_, ii. 242.
[161] 'A small island, which neither of my companions had ever visited,
though, lying within their view, it had all their lives solicited their
notice.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 1.
[162] 'The remains of the fort have been removed to assist in
constructing a very useful lighthouse upon the island. WALTER SCOTT.
[163]
'Unhappy queen!
Unwilling I forsook your friendly state.'
Dryden. [_Aeneid_, vi. 460.] BOSWELL.
[164] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 331) says of his journey to London in
1758:--'It is to be noted that we could get no four-wheeled chaise
till we came to Durham, those conveyances being then only in their
infancy. Turnpike roads were only in their commencement in the north.'
'It affords a southern stranger,' wrote Johnson (_Works_ ix. 2), 'a new
kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption of
toll-gates.'
[165] See _ante_, iii. 265, for Lord Shelburne's statement on this
subject.
[166] See _ante_, ii. 339, and iii. 205, note 4.
[167] See _ante_, iii. 46.
[168] The passage quoted by Dr. Johnson is in the _Character of the
Assembly-man_; Butler's _Remains_, p. 232, edit. 1754:--'He preaches,
indeed, both in season and out of season; for he rails at Popery, when
the land is almost lost in Presbytery; and would cry Fire! Fire! in
Noah's flood.'
There is reason to believe that this piece was not written by Butler,
but by Sir John Birkenhead; for Wood, in his _Athenae Oxonienses_, vol.
ii. p. 640, enumerates it among that gentleman's works, and gives the
following account of it:
_'The Assembly-man_ (or the character of an assembly-man) written 1647,
_Lond._ 1662-3, in three sheets in qu. The copy of it was taken from the
author by those who said they could not rob, because all was theirs; so
excised what they liked not; and so mangled and reformed it, that it was
no character of an Assembly, but of themselves. At length, after it had
slept several years, the author published it to avoid false copies. It
is also reprinted in a book entit. _Wit and Loyalty revived_, in a
collection of some smart satyrs in verse and prose on the late times.
_Lond._ 1682, qu. said to be written by Abr. Cowley, Sir John
Birkenhead, and Hudibras, alias Sam. Butler.'--For this information I am
indebted to Mr. Reed, of Staple Inn. BOSWELL. This tract is in the
_Harleian Misc_., ed. 1810, vi. 57. Mr. Reed's quotation differs
somewhat from it.
[169] 'When a Scotchman was talking against Warburton, Johnson said he
had more literature than had been imported from Scotland since the days
of Buchanan. Upon the other's mentioning other eminent writers of the
Scotch; "These will not do," said Johnson, "Let us have some more of
your northern lights; these are mere farthing candles."' Johnson's
_Works_ (1787), xi. 208. Dr. T. Campbell records (_Diary_, p. 61) that
at the dinner at Mr. Dilly's, described _ante_, ii. 338, 'Dr. Johnson
compared England and Scotland to two lions, the one saturated with his
belly full, and the other prowling for prey. He defied any one to
produce a classical book written in Scotland since Buchanan. Robertson,
he said, used pretty words, but he liked Hume better; and neither of
them would he allow to be more to Clarendon than a rat to a cat. "A
Scotch surgeon may have more learning than an English one, and all
Scotland could not muster learning enough for Lowth's _Prelections_."'
See _ante_, ii. 363, and March 30, 1783.
[170] The poem is entitled _Gualterus Danistonus ad Amicos_. It
begins:--
'Dum studeo fungi fallentis munere vitae'
Which Prior imitates:--
'Studious the busy moments to deceive.'
Sir Walter Scott thought that the poem praised by Johnson was 'more
likely the fine epitaph on John, Viscount of Dundee, translated by
Dryden, and beginning _Ultime Scotoruml_' Archibald Pitcairne, M.D., was
born in 1652, and died in 1713.
[171] My Journal, from this day inclusive, was read by Dr. Johnson.
BOSWELL. It was read by Johnson up to the second paragraph of Oct. 26.
Boswell, it should seem, once at least shewed Johnson a part of the
Journal from which he formed his _Life_. See _ante_, iii. 260, where he
says:--'It delighted him on a review to find that his conversation
teemed with point and imagery.'
[172] See _ante_, ii. 20, note 4.
[173] Goldsmith, in his _Present State of Polite Learning_, published in
1759, says, (ch. x):--'When the great Somers was at the helm, patronage
was fashionable among our nobility ... Since the days of a certain prime
minister of inglorious memory [Sir Robert Walpole] the learned have been
kept pretty much at a distance. ... The author, when unpatronised by the
Great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller. There cannot be perhaps
imagined a combination more prejudicial to taste than this. It is the
interest of the one to allow as little for writing, and of the other to
write as much as possible; accordingly tedious compilations and
periodical magazines are the result of their joint endeavours.'
[174] In the first number of _The Rambler_, Johnson shews how attractive
to an author is the form of publication which he was himself then
adopting:--'It heightens his alacrity to think in how many places he
shall have what he is now writing read with ecstacies to-morrow.'
[175] Yet he said 'the inhabitants of Lichfield were the most sober,
decent people in England.' _Ante_, ii. 463.
[176] At the beginning of the eighteenth century, says Goldsmith,
'smoking in the rooms [at Bath] was permitted.' When Nash became King of
Bath he put it down. Goldsmith's _Works_, ed. 1854, iv. 51. 'Johnson,'
says Boswell (_ante_, i. 317), 'had a high opinion of the sedative
influence of smoking.'
[177] Dr. Johnson used to practise this himself very much. BOSWELL.
[178] In _The Tatler_, for May 24, 1709, we are told that 'rural
esquires wear shirts half a week, and are drunk twice a day.' In the
year 1720, Fenton urged Gay 'to sell as much South Sea stock as would
purchase a hundred a year for life, "which will make you sure of a clean
shirt and a shoulder of mutton every day."' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 65.
In _Tristram Shandy_, ii. ch. 4, published in 1759, we read:--'It was in
this year [about 1700] that my uncle began to break in upon the daily
regularity of a clean shirt.' In _the Spiritual Quixote_, published in
1773 (i. 51), Tugwell says to his master:--'Your Worship belike has been
used to shift you twice a week.' Mrs. Piozzi (_Journey_, i. 105, date of
1789) says that she heard in Milan 'a travelled gentleman telling his
auditors how all the men in London, _that were noble_, put on a clean
shirt every day.' Johnson himself owned that he had 'no passion for
clean linen.' _Ante_, i. 397.
[179] Scott, in _Old Mortality_, ed. 1860, ix. 352, says:--'It was a
universal custom in Scotland, that, when the family was at dinner, the
outer-gate of the court-yard, if there was one, and if not, the door of
the house itself, was always shut and locked.' In a note on this he
says:--'The custom of keeping the door of a house or chateau locked
during the time of dinner probably arose from the family being anciently
assembled in the hall at that meal, and liable to surprise.'
[180] Johnson, writing of 'the chapel of the alienated college,'
says:--'I was always by some civil excuse hindered from entering it.'
_Works_, ix. 4.
[181] George Marline's _Reliquiae divi Andreae_ was published in 1797.
[182] See _ante_, ii. 171, and iv. 75.
[183] Mr. Chambers says that Knox was buried in a place which soon after
became, and ever since has been, a high-way; namely, the old church-yard
of St. Giles in Edinburgh. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 283.
[184] In _The Rambler_, No. 82, Johnson makes a virtuoso write:--'I
often lamented that I was not one of that happy generation who
demolished the convents and monasteries, and broke windows by law.' He
had in 1754 'viewed with indignation the ruins of the Abbeys of Oseney
and Rewley near Oxford.' Ante, i. 273. Smollett, in _Humphry Clinker_
(Letrer of Aug. 8), describes St. Andrews as 'the skeleton of a
venerable city.'
[185] 'Some talked of the right of society to the labour of individuals,
and considered retirement as a desertion of duty. Others readily allowed
that there was a time when the claims of the publick were satisfied, and
when a man might properly sequester himself to review his life and
purify his heart.' _Rasselas_, ch. 22.
[186] See _ante_, ii. 423.
[187] See _ante_, iv. 5, note 2, and v. 27.
[188] 'He that lives well in the world is better than he that lives well
in a monastery. But, perhaps, every one is not able to stem the
temptations of publick life, and, if he cannot conquer, he may properly
retreat.' _Rasselas_, ch. 47. See _ante_, ii. 435.
[189] 'A youthful passion for abstracted devotion should not be
encouraged.' _Ante_, ii. 10. The hermit in _Rasselas_ (ch. 21)
says:--'The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not
certainly devout.' In Johnson's _Works_ (1787), xi. 203, we read that
'Johnson thought worse of the vices of retirement than of those of
society.' Southey (_Life of Wesley_, i. 39) writes:--'Some time before
John Wesley's return to the University, he had travelled many miles to
see what is called "a serious man." This person said to him, "Sir, you
wish to serve God and go to heaven. Remember, you cannot serve Him
alone; you must therefore find companions or make them; the Bible knows
nothing of solitary religion." Wesley never forgot these words.'
[190] [Erga neon, boulai de meson euchai de gerunton. _Hesiodi
Fragmenta_, Lipsiae 1840, p. 371]
Let youth in deeds, in counsel man engage;
Prayer is the proper duty of old age.
BOSWELL.
[191] One 'sorrowful scene' Johnson was perhaps too late in the year to
see. Wesley, who visited St. Andrews on May 27, 1776, during the
vacation, writes (_Journal_, iv. 75):--'What is left of St. Leonard's
College is only a heap of ruins. Two colleges remain. One of them has a
tolerable square; but all the windows are broke, like those of a
brothel. We were informed the students do this before they leave
the college.'
[192] 'He was murdered by the ruffians of reformation, in the manner of
which Knox has given what he himself calls a merry narrative.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 3. In May 1546 the Cardinal had Wishart the Reformer
killed, and at the end of the same month he got killed himself.
[193] Johnson says (_Works_, ix. 5):--'The doctor, by whom it was
shown, hoped to irritate or subdue my English vanity by telling me that
we had no such repository of books in England.' He wrote to Mrs. Thrale
(_Piozzi Letters_, i. 113):--'For luminousness and elegance it may vie
at least with the new edifice at Streatham.' 'The new edifice' was, no
doubt, the library of which he took the touching farewell. _Ante_,
iv. 158.
[194] 'Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires
are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an
incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a
tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession which we
have lost, and which no endeavours can possibly regain.' _The Rambler_,
No. 47. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale on the death of her son:--'Do not
indulge your sorrow; try to drive it away by either pleasure or pain;
for, opposed to what you are feeling, many pains will become pleasures.'
_Piozzi Letters_, i. 310.
[195] See ante, ii. 151.
[196] The Pembroke College grace was written by Camden. It was as
follows:--'Gratias tibi agimus, Deus misericors, pro acceptis a tua
bonitate alimentis; enixe comprecantes ut serenissimum nostrum Regem
Georgium, totam regiam familiam, populumque tuum universum tuta in pace
semper custodies.'
[197] Sharp was murdered on May 3, 1679, in a moor near St. Andrews.
Burnet's _History of his Own time_, ed. 1818, ii. 82, and Scott's _Old
Mortality_, ed, 1860, ix. 297, and x. 203.
[198] 'One of its streets is now lost; and in those that remain there is
the silence and solitude of inactive indigence and gloomy
depopulation.... St. Andrews seems to be a place eminently adapted to
study and education.... The students, however, are represented as, at
this time, not exceeding a hundred. I saw no reason for imputing their
paucity to the present professors.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 4. A student,
he adds, of lower rank could get his board, lodging, and instruction for
less than ten pounds for the seven months of residence. Stockdale says
(_Memoirs_, i. 238) that 'in St. Andrews, in 1756, for a good bedroom,
coals, and the attendance of a servant I paid one shilling a week.'
[199] _The Compleat Fencing-Master_, by Sir William Hope. London, 1691.
[200] 'In the whole time of our stay we were gratified by every mode of
kindness, and entertained with all the elegance of lettered hospitality'
Johnson's _Works_, ix. 3.
[201] Dugald Stewart (_Life of Adam Smith_, p. 107) writes:--'Mr. Smith
observed to me not long before his death, that after all his practice in
writing he composed as slowly, and with as great difficulty as at first.
He added at the same time that Mr. Hume had acquired so great a facility
in this respect, that the last volumes of his _History_ were printed
from his original copy, with a few marginal corrections.' See _ante_,
iii. 437 and iv. 12.
[202] Of these only twenty-five have been published: Johnson's _Works_,
ix. 289-525. See _ante_, iii. 19, note 3, and 181. Johnson wrote on
April 20, 1778:--'I have made sermons, perhaps as readily as formerly.'
_Pr. and Med._ p. 170. 'I should think,' said Lord Eldon, 'that no
clergyman ever wrote as many sermons as Lord Stowell. I advised him to
burn all his manuscripts of that kind. It is not fair to the clergymen
to have it known he wrote them.' Twiss's _Eldon_, iii. 286. Johnson, we
may be sure, had no copy of any of his sermons. That none of them should
be known but those he wrote for Taylor is strange.
[203] He made the same statement on June 3, 1781 (_ante_, iv. 127),
adding, 'I should be glad to see it [the translation] now.' This shows
that he was not speaking of his translation of _Lobo_, as Mr. Croker
maintains in a note on this passage. I believe he was speaking of his
translation of Courayer's _Life of Paul Sarpi. Ante_, i. 135.
[204] 'As far as I am acquainted with modern architecture, I am aware of
no streets which, in simplicity and manliness of style, or general
breadth and brightness of effect, equal those of the New Town of
Edinburgh. But, etc.' Ruskin's _Lectures on Architecture and
Painting_, p. 2.
[205] Horace, _Odes_, ii. 14. 1.
[206] John Abernethy, a Presbyterian divine. His works in 7 vols. 8vo.
were published in 1740-51.
[207] Leechman was principal of Glasgow University (_post_, Oct. 29). On
his appointment to the Chair of Theology he had been prosecuted for
heresy for having, in his _Sermon on Prayer_, omitted to state the
obligation to pray in the name of Christ. Dr. A. Carlyle's _Auto_. p.
69. One of his sermons was placed in Hume's hands, apparently that the
author might have his suggestions in preparing a second edition. Hume
says:--'First the addressing of our virtuous withes and desires to the
Deity, since the address has no influence on him, is only a kind of
rhetorical figure, in order to render these wishes more ardent and
passionate. This is Mr. Leechman's doctrine. Now the use of any figure
of speech can never be a duty. Secondly, this figure, like most figures
of rhetoric, has an evident impropriety in it, for we can make use of no
expression, or even thought, in prayers and entreaties, which does not
imply that these prayers have an influence. Thirdly, this figure is very
dangerous, and leads directly, and even unavoidably, to impiety and
blasphemy,' etc. J.H. Burton's _Hume_, i. 161.
[208] Nichols (_Lit. Anec._ ii. 555) records:--'During the whole of my
intimacy with Dr. Johnson he rarely permitted me to depart without some
sententious advice.... His words at parting were, "Take care of your
eternal salvation. Remember to observe the Sabbath. Let it never be a
day of business, nor wholly a day of dissipation." He concluded his
solemn farewell with, "Let my words have their due weight. They are the
words of a dying man." I never saw him more.'
[209] See _ante_, ii. 72.
[210] 'From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a
single tree which I did not believe to have grown up far within the
present century.... The variety of sun and shade is here utterly
unknown.... A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice.
At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my
notice: I told him that it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought
so. "This," said he, "is nothing to another a few miles off." I was still
less delighted to hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer.
"Nay," said a gentleman that stood by, "I know but of this and that tree
in the county."' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 7 'In all this journey [so far
as Slains Castle] I have not travelled an hundred yards between hedges,
or seen five trees fit for the carpenter.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.120. See
_ante_, ii. 301.
[211] One of the Boswells of this branch was, in 1798, raised to the
bench under the title of Lord Balmuto. It was his sister who was
Boswell's step-mother. Rogers's _Boswelliana,_ pp. 4, 82.
[212] 'The colony of Leuchars is a vain imagination concerning a certain
fleet of Danes wrecked on Sheughy Dikes.' WALTER SCOTT. 'The fishing
people on that coast have, however, all the appearance of being a
different race from the inland population, and their dialect has many
peculiarities.' LOCKHART. Croker's _Boswell_, p. 286.
