I sent a message to Professor Thomas Gordon, who came and breakfasted
with us. He had secured seats for us at the English chapel. We found a
respectable congregation, and an admirable organ, well played by
Mr. Tait.
We walked down to the shore: Dr. Johnson laughed to hear that Cromwell's
soldiers taught the Aberdeen people to make shoes and stockings, and to
plant cabbages[265]. He asked, if weaving the plaids[266] was ever a
domestick art in the Highlands, like spinning or knitting. They could
not inform him here. But he conjectured probably, that where people
lived so remote from each other, it was likely to be a domestick art; as
we see it was among the ancients, from Penelope. I was sensible to-day,
to an extraordinary degree, of Dr. Johnson's excellent English
pronunciation. I cannot account for its striking me more now than any
other day: but it was as if new to me; and I listened to every sentence
which he spoke, as to a musical composition. Professor Gordon gave him
an account of the plan of education in his college. Dr. Johnson said, it
was similar to that at Oxford. Waller the poet's great-grandson was
studying here. Dr. Johnson wondered that a man should send his son so
far off, when there were so many good schools in England[267]. He said,
'At a great school there is all the splendour and illumination of many
minds; the radiance of all is concentrated in each, or at least
reflected upon each. But we must own that neither a dull boy, nor an
idle boy, will do so well at a great school as at a private one. For at
a great school there are always boys enough to do well easily, who are
sufficient to keep up the credit of the school; and after whipping being
tried to no purpose, the dull or idle boys are left at the end of a
class, having the appearance of going through the course, but learning
nothing at all[268]. Such boys may do good at a private school, where
constant attention is paid to them, and they are watched. So that the
question of publick or private education is not properly a general one;
but whether one or the other is best for _my son_.' We were told the
present Mr. Waller was a plain country gentleman; and his son would be
such another. I observed, a family could not expect a poet but in a
hundred generations. 'Nay, (said Dr. Johnson,) not one family in a
hundred can expect a poet in a hundred generations.' He then repeated
Dryden's celebrated lines,
'Three poets in three distant ages born,' &c.
and a part of a Latin translation of it done at Oxford[269]: he did not
then say by whom.
He received a card from Sir Alexander Gordon, who had been his
acquaintance twenty years ago in London, and who, 'if forgiven for not
answering a line from him,' would come in the afternoon. Dr. Johnson
rejoiced to hear of him, and begged he would come and dine with us. I
was much pleased to see the kindness with which Dr. Johnson received his
old friend Sir Alexander[270]; a gentleman of good family, _Lismore_,
but who had not the estate. The King's College here made him Professor
of Medicine, which affords him a decent subsistence. He told us that the
value of the stockings exported from Aberdeen was, in peace, a hundred
thousand pounds; and amounted, in time of war, to one hundred and
seventy thousand pounds. Dr. Johnson asked, What made the difference?
Here we had a proof of the comparative sagacity of the two professors.
Sir Alexander answered, 'Because there is more occasion for them in
war.' Professor Thomas Gordon answered, 'Because the Germans, who are
our great rivals in the manufacture of stockings, are otherwise employed
in time of war.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you have given a very good solution.'
At dinner, Dr. Johnson ate several plate-fulls of Scotch broth, with
barley and peas in it, and seemed very fond of the dish. I said, 'You
never ate it before.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; but I don't care how soon I eat
it again[271].' My cousin, Miss Dallas, formerly of Inverness, was
married to Mr. Riddoch, one of the ministers of the English chapel here.
He was ill, and confined to his room; but she sent us a kind invitation
to tea, which we all accepted. She was the same lively, sensible,
cheerful woman as ever. Dr. Johnson here threw out some jokes against
Scotland. He said, 'You go first to Aberdeen; then to _Enbru_ (the
Scottish pronunciation of Edinburgh); then to Newcastle, to be polished
by the colliers; then to York; then to London.' And he laid hold of a
little girl, Stuart Dallas, niece to Mrs. Riddoch, and, representing
himself as a giant, said, he would take her with him! telling her, in a
hollow voice, that he lived in a cave, and had a bed in the rock, and
she should have a little bed cut opposite to it!
He thus treated the point, as to prescription of murder in
Scotland[272]. 'A jury in England would make allowance for deficiencies
of evidence, on account of lapse of time; but a general rule that a
crime should not be punished, or tried for the purpose of punishment,
after twenty years, is bad. It is cant to talk of the King's advocate
delaying a prosecution from malice. How unlikely is it the King's
advocate should have malice against persons who commit murder, or should
even know them at all. If the son of the murdered man should kill the
murderer who got off merely by prescription, I would help him to make
his escape; though, were I upon his jury, I would not acquit him. I
would not advise him to commit such an act. On the contrary, I would bid
him submit to the determination of society, because a man is bound to
submit to the inconveniences of it, as he enjoys the good: but the
young man, though politically wrong, would not be morally wrong. He
would have to say, 'here I am amongst barbarians, who not only refuse to
do justice, but encourage the greatest of all crimes. I am therefore in
a state of nature: for, so far as there is no law, it is a state of
nature: and consequently, upon the eternal and immutable law of justice,
which requires that he who sheds man's blood should have his blood
shed[273], I will stab the murderer of my father.'
We went to our inn, and sat quietly. Dr. Johnson borrowed, at Mr.
Riddoch's, a volume of _Massillon's Discourses on the Psalms_: but I
found he read little in it. Ogden too he sometimes took up, and glanced
at; but threw it down again. I then entered upon religious conversation.
Never did I see him in a better frame: calm, gentle, wise, holy. I said,
'Would not the same objection hold against the Trinity as against
Transubstantiation?' 'Yes, (said he,) if you take three and one in the
same sense. If you do so, to be sure you cannot believe it: but the
three persons in the Godhead are Three in one sense, and One in another.
We cannot tell how; and that is the mystery!'
I spoke of the satisfaction of Christ. He said his notion was, that it
did not atone for the sins of the world; but, by satisfying divine
justice, by shewing that no less than the Son of God suffered for sin,
it shewed to men and innumerable created beings, the heinousness of it,
and therefore rendered it unnecessary for divine vengeance to be
exercised against sinners, as it otherwise must have been; that in this
way it might operate even in favour of those who had never heard of it:
as to those who did hear of it, the effect it should produce would be
repentance and piety, by impressing upon the mind a just notion of sin:
that original sin was the propensity to evil, which no doubt was
occasioned by the fall. He presented this solemn subject in a new light
to me[274], and rendered much more rational and clear the doctrine of
what our Saviour has done for us;--as it removed the notion of imputed
righteousness in co-operating; whereas by this view, Christ has done all
already that he had to do, or is ever to do for mankind, by making his
great satisfaction; the consequences of which will affect each
individual according to the particular conduct of each. I would
illustrate this by saying, that Christ's satisfaction resembles a sun
placed to shew light to men, so that it depends upon themselves whether
they will walk the right way or not, which they could not have done
without that sun, '_the sun of righteousness_[275]' There is, however,
more in it than merely giving light--_a light to lighten the
Gentiles_[276]: for we are told, there _is healing under his
wings_[277]. Dr. Johnson said to me, 'Richard Baxter commends a
treatise by Grotius, _De Satisfactione Christi_. I have never read it:
but I intend to read it; and you may read it.' I remarked, upon the
principle now laid down, we might explain the difficult and seemingly
hard text, 'They that believe shall be saved; and they that believe not
shall be damned[278]:' They that believe shall have such an impression
made upon their minds, as will make them act so that they may be
accepted by GOD.
We talked of one of our friends[279] taking ill, for a length of time, a
hasty expression of Dr. Johnson's to him, on his attempting to prosecute
a subject that had a reference to religion, beyond the bounds within
which the Doctor thought such topicks should be confined in a mixed
company. JOHNSON. 'What is to become of society, if a friendship of
twenty years is to be broken off for such a cause?' As Bacon says,
'Who then to frail mortality shall trust,
But limns the water, or but writes in dust[280].'
I said, he should write expressly in support of Christianity; for that,
although a reverence for it shines through his works in several places,
that is not enough. 'You know, (said I,) what Grotius has done, and what
Addison has done[281].--You should do also.' He replied, 'I hope
I shall.'