[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.
[213] 'I should scarcely have regretted my journey, had it afforded
nothing more than the sight of Aberbrothick.' _Works_, ix. 9.
[214] Johnson referred, I believe, to the last of Tillotson's _Sermons
preached upon Several Occasions_, ed. 1673, p. 316, where the preacher
says:--'Supposing the _Scripture_ to be a Divine Revelation, and that
these words (_This is My Body_), if they be in Scripture, must
necessarily be taken in the strict and literal sense, I ask now, What
greater evidence any man has that these words (_This is My Body_) are in
the Bible than every man has that the bread is not changed in the
sacrament? Nay, no man has so much, for we have only the evidence of
_one_ sense that these words are in the Bible, but that the bread is not
changed we have the concurring testimony of _several_ of our senses.'
[215] This also is Tillotson's argument. 'There is no more certain
foundation for it [transubstantiation] in Scripture than for our
Saviour's being substantially changed into all those things which are
said of him, as that he is a _rock_, a _vine_, a _door_, and a hundred
other things.' _Ib_. p. 313.
[216] Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, except
ye eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life
in you. See _St. John's Gospel_, chap. vi. 53, and following
verses. BOSWELL.
[217] See _ante_, p. 26.
[218] See _ante_, i. 140, note 5, and v. 50.
[219] Johnson, after saying that the inn was not so good as they
expected, continues:--'But Mr. Boswell desired me to observe that the
innkeeper was an Englishman, and I then defended him as well as I
could.' _Works_, ix. 9.
[220] Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale on July 29, 1775 (_Piozzi Letters_,
i. 292):--' I hope I shall quickly come to Streatham...and catch a little
gaiety among you.' On this Baretti noted in his copy:--'_That_ he never
caught. He thought and mused at Streatham as he did habitually
everywhere, and seldom or never minded what was doing about him.' On the
margin of i. 315 Baretti has written:--'Johnson mused as much on the road
to Paris as he did in his garret in London as much at a French opera as
in his room at Streatham.'
[221] _A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson,_ by Thomas Tyers,
Esq. See _ante_, iii. 308.
[222] This description of Dr. Johnson appears to have been borrowed from
Tom Jones, bk. xi. ch. ii. 'The other who, like a ghost, only wanted to
be spoke to, readily answered, '&c. BOSWELL.
[223] Perhaps he gave the 'shilling extraordinary' because he 'found a
church,' as he says, 'clean to a degree unknown in any other part of
Scotland.' _Works_, ix. 9.
[224] See _ante,_ iii. 22.
[225] See _ante,_ May 9, 1784. Yet Johnson says (_Works_, ix. 10):--'The
magnetism of Lord Monboddo's conversation easily drew us out of
our way.'
[226] There were several points of similarity between them; learning,
clearness of head, precision of speech, and a love of research on many
subjects which people in general do not investigate. Foote paid Lord
Monboddo the compliment of saying, that he was an Elzevir edition
of Johnson.
It has been shrewdly observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive,
or _pocket_ edition. BOSWELL. The latter part of this note is not in the
first edition.
[227] Lord Elibank (_post_, Sept. 12) said that he would go five hundred
miles to see Dr. Johnson; but Johnson never said more than he meant.
[228] _Works_, ix. 10. Of the road to Montrose he remarks:--'When I had
proceeded thus far I had opportunities of observing, what I had never
heard, that there were many beggars in Scotland. In Edinburgh the the
proportion is, I think, not less than in London, and in the smaller
places it is far greater than in English towns of the same extent. It
must, however, be allowed that they are not importunate, nor clamorous.
They solicit silently, or very modestly.' _Ib._ p. 9. See _post_, p.
116, note 2.
[229] James Mill was born on April 6, 1773, at Northwater Bridge, parish
of Logie Pert, Forfar. The bridge was 'on the great central line of
communication from the north of Scotland. The hamlet is right and left
of the high road.' Bain's _Life of James Mill_, p. 1. Boswell and
Johnson, on their road to Laurence Kirk, must have passed close to the
cottage in which he was lying, a baby not five months old.
[230] See _ante_, i. 211.
[231] There is some account of him in Chambers's _Traditions of
Edinburgh_, ed. 1825, ii. 173, and in Dr. A. Carlyle's _Auto._ p. 136.
[232] G. Chalmers (_Life of Ruddiman_, p. 270) says:--'In May, 1790, Lord
Gardenston declared that he still intended to erect a proper monument in
his village to the memory of the late learned and worthy Mr. Ruddiman.'
In 1792 Gardenston, in his _Miscellanies_, p. 257, attacked Ruddiman.
'It has of late become fashionable,' he wrote, 'to speak of Ruddiman in
terms of the highest respect.' The monument was never raised.
[233] _A Letter to the Inhabitants of Laurence Kirk_, by F. Garden.
[234] 'Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have
entertained angels unawares.' _Hebrews_ xiii, 2.
[235] This, I find, is considered as obscure. I suppose Dr. Johnson
meant, that I assiduously and earnestly recommended myself to some of
the members, as in a canvass for an election into parliament. BOSWELL.
See _ante_, ii, 235.
[236] Goldsmith in _Retaliation_, a few months later, wrote of William
Burke:--'Would you ask for his merits? alas! he had none; What was good
was spontaneous, his faults were his own.' See _ante_, iii 362, note 2.
[237] See _ante_, iii. 260, 390, 425.
[238] Hannah More (_Memoirs_, i. 252) wrote of Monboddo in 1782:--'He is
such an extravagant adorer of the ancients, that he scarcely allows the
English language to be capable of any excellence, still less the French.
He said we moderns are entirely degenerated. I asked in what? "In
everything," was his answer. He loves slavery upon principle. I asked
him how he could vindicate such an enormity. He owned it was because
Plutarch justified it. He is so wedded to system that, as Lord
Barrington said to me the other day, rather than sacrifice his favourite
opinion that men were born with tails, he would be contented to wear
one himself.'
[239] Scott, in a note on _Guy Mannering_, ed. 1860, iv. 267, writes of
Monboddo:--'The conversation of the excellent old man, his high,
gentleman-like, chivalrous spirit, the learning and wit with which he
defended his fanciful paradoxes, the kind and liberal spirit of his
hospitality, must render these _noctes coenaeque_ dear to all who, like
the author (though then young), had the honour of sitting at his board.'
[240] Lord Cockburn, writing of the title that Jeffrey took when he was
raised to the Bench in 1834, said:--'The Scotch Judges are styled
_Lords_; a title to which long usage has associated feelings of
reverence in the minds of the people, who could not now be soon made to
respect or understand _Mr. Justice_. During its strongly feudalised
condition, the landholders of Scotland, who were almost the sole judges,
were really known only by the names of their estates. It was an insult,
and in some parts of the country it is so still, to call a laird by his
personal, instead of his territorial, title. But this assumption of two
names, one official and one personal, and being addressed by the one and
subscribing by the other, is wearing out, and will soon disappear
entirely.' Cockburn's _Jeffrey_, i. 365. See _post_, p. 111, note 1.
[241] _Georgics_, i. 1.
[242] Walter Scott used to tell an instance of Lord Monboddo's
agricultural enthusiasm, that returning home one night after an absence
(I think) on circuit, he went out with a candle to look at a field of
turnips, then a novelty in Scotland. CROKER.
[243] Johnson says the same in his _Life of John Philips_, and adds:--
'This I was told by Miller, the great gardener and botanist, whose
experience was, that "there were many books written on the same subject
in prose, which do not contain so much truth as that poem."' _Works_,
vii. 234. Miller is mentioned in Walpole's _Letters_, ii. 352:--'There is
extreme taste in the park [Hagley]: the seats are not the best, but
there is not one absurdity. There is a ruined castle built by Miller,
that would get him his freedom, even of Strawberry: it has the true rust
of the Barons' Wars.'
[244] See _ante_, p. 27.
[245] My note of this is much too short. _Brevis esse laboro, obscurus
fio_. ['I strive to be concise, I prove obscure.' FRANCIS. Horace, _Ars
Poet_. l. 25.] Yet as I have resolved that _the very Journal which Dr.
Johnson read_, shall be presented to the publick, I will not expand the
text in any considerable degree, though I may occasionally supply a word
to complete the sense, as I fill up the blanks of abbreviation, in the
writing; neither of which can be said to change the genuine _Journal_.
One of the best criticks of our age conjectures that the imperfect
passage above was probably as follows: 'In his book we have an accurate
display of a nation in war, and a nation in peace; the peasant is
delineated as truly as the general; nay, even harvest-sport, and the
modes of ancient theft are described.' BOSWELL. 'One of the best
criticks is, I believe, Malone, who had 'perused the original
manuscript.' See _ante_, p. 1; and _post_, Oct. 26, and under Nov. 11.
[246] It was in the Parliament-house that 'the ordinary Lords of
Session,' the Scotch Judges, that is to say, held their courts.
_Ante_, p. 39.
[247] Dr. Johnson modestly said, he had not read Homer so much as he
wished he had done. But this conversation shews how well he was
acquainted with the Maeonian bard; and he has shewn it still more in his
criticism upon Pope's _Homer_, in his _Life_ of that Poet. My excellent
friend, Mr. Langton, told me, he was once present at a dispute between
Dr. Johnson and Mr. Burke, on the comparative merits of Homer and
Virgil, which was carried on with extraordinary abilities on both sides.
Dr. Johnson maintained the superiority of Homer. BOSWELL. Johnson told
Windham that he had never read through the Odyssey in the original.
Windham's _Diary_, p. 17. See _ante_, iii. 193, and May 1, 1783.
[248] Johnson ten years earlier told Boswell that he loved most 'the
biographical part of literature.' _Ante_, i. 425. Goldsmith said of
biography:--'It furnishes us with an opportunity of giving advice freely
and without offence.... Counsels as well as compliments are best
conveyed in an indirect and oblique manner, and this renders biography
as well as fable a most convenient vehicle for instruction. An ingenious
gentleman was asked what was the best lesson for youth; he answered,
"The life of a good man." Being again asked what was the next best, he
replied, "The life of a bad one."' Prior's _Goldsmith_, i. 395.
[249] See _ante_, p. 57.
[250] Ten years later he said:--'There is now a great deal more
learning in the world than there was formerly; for it is universally
diffused.' _Ante_, April 29,1783. Windham (_Diary_, p. 17) records
'Johnson's opinion that I could not name above five of my college
acquaintances who read Latin with sufficient ease to make it
pleasurable.'
[251] See _ante_, ii. 352.
[252] 'Warburton, whatever was his motive, undertook without
solicitation to rescue Pope from the talons of Crousaz, by freeing him
from the imputation of favouring fatality, or rejecting revelation; and
from month to month continued a vindication of the _Essay on Man_ in the
literary journal of that time, called the _Republick of Letters'_
Johnson's _Works_, viii. 289. Pope wrote to Warburton of the _Essay on
Man_:--'You understand my work better than I do myself.' Pope's _Works_,
ed. 1886, ix. 211.
[253] See _ante_, ii. 37, note I, and Pope's _Works_, ed. 1886, ix. 220.
Allen was Ralph Allen of Prior Park near Bath, to whom Fielding
dedicated _Amelia_, and who is said to have been the original of
Allworthy in _Tom Jones_. It was he of whom Pope wrote:--
'Let low-born Allen, with an awkward shame,
Do good by stealth and blush to find it fame.'
_Epilogue to the Satires_, i. 135.
_Low-born_ in later editions was changed to _humble_. Warburton not only
married his niece, but, on his death, became in her right owner of
Prior Park.
[254] Mr. Mark Pattison (_Satires of Pope_, p. 158) points out
Warburton's 'want of penetration in that subject [metaphysics] which he
considered more peculiarly his own.' He said of 'the late Mr. Baxter'
(Andrew Baxter, not Richard Baxter), that 'a few pages of his reasoning
have not only more sense and substance than all the elegant discourses
of Dr. Berkeley, but infinitely better entitle him to the character of a
great genius.'
[255] It is of Warburton that Churchill wrote in _The Duellist (Poems,_
ed. 1766, ii. 82):--
'To prove his faith which all admit
Is at least equal to his wit,
And make himself a man of note,
He in defence of Scripture wrote;
So long he wrote, and long about it,
That e'en believers 'gan to doubt it.'
[256] I find some doubt has been entertained concerning Dr. Johnson's
meaning here. It is to be supposed that he meant, 'when a king shall
again be entertained in Scotland.' BOSWELL.
[257] Perhaps among these ladies was the Miss Burnet of Monboddo, on
whom Burns wrote an elegy.
[258] In the _Rambler_, No. 98, entitled _The Necessity of Cultivating
Politeness_, Johnson says:--'The universal axiom in which all
complaisance is included, and from which flow all the formalities which
custom has established in civilized nations, is, _That no man shall give
any preference to himself.'_ In the same paper, he says that
'unnecessarily to obtrude unpleasing ideas is a species of oppression.'
[259] Act ii. sc. 5.
[260] Perhaps he was referring to Polyphemus's club, which was
'Of height and bulk so vast
The largest ship might claim it for a mast.'
Pope's _Odyssey_, ix. 382.