_Garrick Corres_, ii. 561. Dr. Moore (_View of Society in France_, i.
29) writing in 1779 says:--'I am convinced there is no country in Europe
where royal favour, high birth, and the military profession could be
allowed such privileges as they have in France, and where there would be
so few instances of their producing rough and brutal behaviour to
inferiors.' Mrs. Piozzi, writing in 1784, though she did not publish her
book till 1789, said:--'The French are really a contented race of
mortals;--precluded almost from possibility of adventure, the low
Parisian leads gentle, humble life, nor envies that greatness he never
can obtain.' _Journey through France_, i. 13.
[326] He is the worthy son of a worthy father, the late Lord Strichen,
one of our judges, to whose kind notice I was much obliged. Lord
Strichen was a man not only honest, but highly generous; for after his
succession to the family estate, he paid a large sum of debts contracted
by his predecessor, which he was not under any obligation to pay. Let me
here, for the credit of Ayrshire, my own county, record a noble instance
of liberal honesty in William Hutchison, drover, in Lanehead, Kyle, who
formerly obtained a full discharge from his creditors upon a composition
of his debts; but upon being restored to good circumstances, invited his
creditors last winter to a dinner, without telling the reason, and paid
them their full sums, principal and interest. They presented him with a
piece of plate, with an inscription to commemorate this extraordinary
instance of true worth; which should make some people in Scotland blush,
while, though mean themselves, they strut about under the protection of
great alliance, conscious of the wretchedness of numbers who have lost
by them, to whom they never think of making reparation, but indulge
themselves and their families in most unsuitable expence. BOSWELL.
[327] See _ante_, ii. 194; iii. 353; and iv. June 30, 1784.
[328] Malone says that 'Lord Auchinleck told his son one day that it
would cost him more trouble to hide his ignorance in the Scotch and
English law than to show his knowledge. This Mr. Boswell owned he had
found to be true.' _European Magazine_, 1798, p. 376.
[329] See _ante_, iv. 8, note 3, and iv. 20.
[330] Colman had translated _Terence. Ante_, iv. 18.
[331] Dr. Nugent was Burke's father-in-law. _Ante_, i. 477.
[332] Lord Charlemont left behind him a _History of Italian Poetry_.
Hardy's _Charlemont_, i. 306, ii. 437.
[333] See _ante_, i. 250, and ii. 378, note 1.
[334] Since the first edition, it has been suggested by one of the club,
who knew Mr. Vesey better than Dr. Johnson and I, that we did not assign
him a proper place; for he was quite unskilled in Irish antiquities and
Celtick learning, but might with propriety have been made professor of
architecture, which he understood well, and has left a very good
specimen of his knowledge and taste in that art, by an elegant house
built on a plan of his own formation, at Lucan, a few miles from Dublin.
BOSWELL. See _ante_, iv. 28.
[335] Sir William Jones, who died at the age of forty-seven, had
'studied eight languages critically, eight less perfectly, but all
intelligible with a dictionary, and twelve least perfectly, but all
attainable.' Teignmouth's _Life of Sir W. Jones_, ed. 1815, p. 465. See
_ante_, iv. 69.
[336] See _ante_, i. 478.
[337] See _ante_, p. 16.
[338] Mackintosh in his _Life_, ii. 171, says:--'From the refinements of
abstruse speculation Johnson was withheld, partly perhaps by that
repugnance to such subtleties which much experience often inspires, and
partly also by a secret dread that they might disturb those prejudices
in which his mind had found repose from the agitations of doubt.'
[339] See _ante_, iv. 11, note 1.
[340] Our Club, originally at the Turk's Head, Gerrard-street, then at
Prince's, Sackville-street, now at Baxter's, Dover-street, which at Mr.
Garrick's funeral acquired a _name_ for the first time, and was called
THE LITERARY CLUB, was instituted in 1764, and now consists of
thirty-five members. It has, since 1773, been greatly augmented; and
though Dr. Johnson with justice observed, that, by losing Goldsmith,
Garrick, Nugent, Chamier, Beauclerk, we had lost what would make an
eminent club, yet when I mentioned, as an accession, Mr. Fox, Dr. George
Fordyce, Sir Charles Bunbury, Lord Ossory, Mr. Gibbon, Dr. Adam Smith,
Mr. R.B. Sheridan, the Bishops of Kilaloe and St. Asaph, Dean Marley,
Mr. Steevens, Mr. Dunning, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Scott of the Commons,
Earl Spencer, Mr. Windham of Norfolk, Lord Elliott, Mr. Malone, Dr.
Joseph Warton, the Rev. Thomas Warton, Lord Lucan, Mr. Burke junior,
Lord Palmerston, Dr. Burney, Sir William Hamilton, and Dr. Warren, it
will be acknowledged that we might establish a second university of high
reputation. BOSWELL. Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Jones wrote in 1780
(_Life_, p. 241):--'Of our club I will only say that there is no branch
of human knowledge on which some of our members are not capable of
giving information.'
[341] Here, unluckily, the windows had no pullies; and Dr. Johnson, who
was constantly eager for fresh air, had much struggling to get one of
them kept open. Thus he had a notion impressed upon him, that this
wretched defect was general in Scotland; in consequence of which he has
erroneously enlarged upon it in his _Journey_. I regretted that he did
not allow me to read over his book before it was printed. I should have
changed very little; but I should have suggested an alteration in a few
places where he has laid himself open to be attacked. I hope I should
have prevailed with him to omit or soften his assertion, that 'a
Scotsman must be a sturdy moralist, who does not prefer Scotland to
truth,' for I really think it is not founded; and it is harshly said.
BOSWELL. Johnson, after a half-apology for 'these diminutive
observations' on Scotch windows and fresh air, continues:--'The true
state of every nation is the state of common life.' _Works_, ix. 18.
Boswell a second time (_ante_, ii. 311) returns to Johnson's assertion
that 'a Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love
Scotland better than truth; he will always love it better than inquiry.'
_Works_, ix. 116.
[342] See _ante_, p. 40.
[343] A protest may be entered on the part of most Scotsmen against the
Doctor's taste in this particular. A Finnon haddock dried over the smoke
of the sea-weed, and sprinkled with salt water during the process,
acquires a relish of a very peculiar and delicate flavour, inimitable on
any other coast than that of Aberdeenshire. Some of our Edinburgh
philosophers tried to produce their equal in vain. I was one of a party
at a dinner, where the philosophical haddocks were placed in competition
with the genuine Finnon-fish. These were served round without
distinction whence they came; but only one gentleman, out of twelve
present, espoused the cause of philosophy. WALTER SCOTT.
[344] It is the custom in Scotland for the judges of the Court of
Session to have the title of _lords_, from their estates; thus Mr.
Burnett is Lord _Monboddo_, as Mr. Home was Lord _Kames_. There is
something a little awkward in this; for they are denominated in deeds by
their _names_, with the addition of 'one of the Senators of the College
of Justice;' and subscribe their Christian and surnames, as _James
Burnett_, _Henry Home_, even in judicial acts. BOSWELL. See _ante_, p.
77, note 4.
[345] See _ante_, ii. 344, where Johnson says:--'A judge may be a
farmer, but he is not to geld his own pigs.'
[346]
'Not to admire is all the art I know
To make men happy and to keep them so.'
Pope, _Imitations of Horace_, Epistles, i. vi. 1.
[347] See _ante_, i. 461.
[348] See _ante_, iv. 152.
[349] See _ante_, iii. 322.
[350] In the _Gent. Mag._ for 1755, p. 42, among the deaths is entered
'Sir James Lowther, Bart., reckoned the richest commoner in Great
Britain, and worth above a million.' According to Lord Shelburne, Lord
Sunderland, who had been advised 'to nominate Lowther one of his
Treasury on account of his great property,' appointed him to call on
him. After waiting for some time he rang to ask whether he had come,
'The servants answered that nobody had called; upon his repeating the
inquiry they said that there was an old man, somewhat wet, sitting by
the fireside in the hall, who they supposed had some petition to deliver
to his lordship. When he went out it proved to be Sir James Lowther.
Lord Sunderland desired him to be sent about his business, saying that
no such mean fellow should sit at his Treasury.' Fitzmaurice's
_Shelburne_, i. 34.
[351] I do not know what was at this time the state of the parliamentary
interest of the ancient family of Lowther; a family before the Conquest;
but all the nation knows it to be very extensive at present. A due
mixture of severity and kindness, oeconomy and munificence,
characterises its present Representative. BOSWELL. Boswell, most
unhappily not clearly seeing where his own genius lay, too often sought
to obtain fame and position by the favour of some great man. For some
years he courted in a very gross manner 'the present Representative,'
the first Earl of Lonsdale, who treated him with great brutality.
_Letters of Boswell_, pp. 271, 294, 324, and _ante_, iv. May 15, 1783.
In the _Ann. Reg._ 1771, p. 56, it is shewn how by this bad man 'the
whole county of Cumberland was thrown into a state of the greatest
terror and confusion; four hundred ejectments were served in one day.'
Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto._ p. 418) says that 'he was more detested than any
man alive, as a shameless political sharper, a domestic bashaw, and an
intolerable tyrant over his tenants and dependants.' Lord Albemarle
(_Memoirs of Rockingham,_ ii. 70) describes the 'bad Lord Lonsdale. He
exacted a serf-like submission from his poor and abject dependants. He
professed a thorough contempt for modern refinements. Grass grew in the
neglected approaches to his mansion.... Awe and silence pervaded the
inhabitants [of Penrith] when the gloomy despot traversed their streets.
He might have been taken for a Judge Jefferies about to open a royal
commission to try them as state criminals... In some years of his life
he resisted the payment of all bills.' Among his creditors was
Wordsworth's father, 'who died leaving the poet and four other helpless
children. The executors of the will, foreseeing the result of a legal
contest with _a millionaire,_ withdrew opposition, trusting to Lord
Lonsdale's sense of justice for payment. They leaned on a broken reed,
the wealthy debtor "Died and made no sign."' [2 _Henry VI,_ act iii. sc.
3.] See De Quincey's _Works,_ iii. 151.
[352] 'Let us not,' he says, 'make too much haste to despise our
neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded
dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the
time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence.' _Works_, ix. 20.
[353] Note by Lord _Hailes_. 'The cathedral of Elgin was burnt by the
Lord of Badenoch, because the Bishop of Moray had pronounced an award
not to his liking. The indemnification that the see obtained was, that
the Lord of Badenoch stood for three days bare-footed at the great gate
of the cathedral. The story is in the Chartulary of Elgin.' BOSWELL. The
cathedral was rebuilt in 1407-20, but the lead was stripped from the
roof by the Regent Murray, and the building went to ruin. Murray's
_Handbook_, ed. 1867, p. 303. 'There is,' writes Johnson (_Works_, ix.
20), 'still extant in the books of the council an order ... directing
that the lead, which covers the two cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen,
shall be taken away, and converted into money for the support of the
army.... The two churches were stripped, and the lead was shipped to be
sold in Holland. I hope every reader will rejoice that this cargo of
sacrilege was lost at sea.' On this Horace Walpole remarks (_Letters_,
vii. 484):--'I confess I have not quite so heinous an idea of sacrilege
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 _Affleck_, 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_
