Febriles aestus, victumque ardoribus orbem
Flevit, non tantis par Medicina malis.
Nam post mille artes, medicae tentamina curae,
Ardet adhuc Febris; nec velit arte regi.
Praeda sumus flammis; solum hoc speramus ab igne,
Ut restet paucus, quem capit urna, cinis.
Dum quaerit medicus febris caussamque, modumque,
Flammarum & tenebras, & sine luce faces;
Quas tractat patitur flammas, & febre calescens,
Corruit ipse suis victima rapta focis.
Qui tardos potuit morbos, artusque trementes,
Sistere, febrili se videt igne rapi.
Sic faber exesos fulsit tibicine muros;
Dum trahit antiquas lenta ruina domos.
Sed si flamma vorax miseras incenderit aedes,
Unica flagrantes tunc sepelire salus.
Fit fuga, tectonicas nemo tunc invocat artes;
Cum perit artificis non minus usta domus.
Se tandem _Sydenham_ febrisque Scholaeque furori
Opponens, morbi quaerit, & artis opem.
Non temere incusat tectae putedinis [putredinis] ignes;
Nec fictus, febres qui fovet, humor erit.
Non bilem ille movet, nulla hic pituita; Salutis
Quae spes, si fallax ardeat intus aqua?
Nec doctas magno rixas ostentat hiatu,
Quîs ipsis major febribus ardor inest.
Innocuas placide corpus jubet urere flammas,
Et justo rapidos temperat igne focos.
Quid febrim exstinguat, varius quid postulet usus,
Solari aegrotos, qua potes arte, docet,
Hactenus ipsa suum timuit Natura calorem,
Dum saepe incerto, quo calet, igne perit:
Dum reparat tacitos male provida sanguinis ignes,
Praslusit busto, fit calor iste rogus.
Jam secura suas foveant praecordia flammas,
Quem Natura negat, dat Medicina modum.
Nec solum faciles compescit sanguinis aestus,
Dum dubia est inter spemque metumque salus;
Sed fatale malum domuit, quodque astra malignum
Credimus, iratam vel genuisse _Stygem_.
Extorsit _Lachesi_ cultros, Pestique venenum
Abstulit, & tantos non sinit esse metus.
Quis tandem arte nova domitam mitescere Pestem
Credat, & antiquas ponere posse minas?
Post tot mille neces, cumulataque funera busto,
Victa jacet parvo vulnere dira Lues.
Aetheriae quanquam spargunt contagia flammae,
Quicquid inest istis ignibus, ignis erit.
Delapsae coelo flammae licet acrius urant
Has gelida exstingui non nisi morte putas?
Tu meliora paras victrix Medicina; tuusque,
Pestis quae superat cuncta, triumphus eris [erit].
Vive liber, victis febrilibus ignibus; unus
Te simul & mundum qui manet, ignis erit.
J. LOCK, A.M. Ex. Aede Christi, Oxon. BOSWELL.
[295] See _ante_, ii. 126, 298.
[296] 'One of its ornaments [i.e. of
Marischal College] is the picture of
Arthur Johnston, who was principal
of the college, and who holds among
the Latin Poets of Scotland the next
place to the elegant Buchanan.'
Johnson's _Works_, ix. 12. Pope
attacking Benson, who endeavoured
to raise himself to fame by erecting
monuments to Milton, and printing
editions of Johnson's version of
the _Psalms_, introduces the Scotch
Poet in the _Dunciad_:--
On two unequal crutches propped
he came,
Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's
name.'
_Dunciad_, bk. iv. l. III.
Johnson wrote to Boswell for a copy
of Johnston's _Poems_ (_ante_, iii. 104)
and for his likeness (_ante_, March 18,
1784).
[297] 'Education is here of the same price as at St. Andrews, only the
session is but from the 1st of November to the 1st of April' [five
months, instead of seven]. _Piozzi Letters_, i. 116. In his _Works_ (ix.
14) Johnson by mistake gives eight months to the St. Andrews session. On
p. 5 he gives it rightly as seven.
[298] Beattie, as an Aberdeen professor, was grieved at this saying when
he read the book. 'Why is it recorded?' he asked. 'For no reason that I
can imagine, unless it be in order to return evil for good.' Forbes's
_Beattie_, ed. 1824. p. 337.
[299] See _ante_, ii. 336, and iii. 209.
[300] See _ante_, iii. 65, and _post_, Nov. 2.
[301] See _ante_, i. 411. Johnson, no doubt, was reminded of this story
by his desire to get this book. Later on (_ante_, iii. 104) he asked
Boswell 'to be vigilant and get him Graham's _Telemachus_.'
[302] I am sure I have related this story exactly as Dr. Johnson told it
to me; but a friend who has often heard him tell it, informs me that he
usually introduced a circumstance which ought not to be omitted. 'At
last, Sir, Graham, having now got to about the pitch of looking at one
man, and talking to another, said _Doctor_, &c.' 'What effect (Dr.
Johnson used to add) this had on Goldsmith, who was as irascible as a
hornet, may be easily conceived.' BOSWELL.
[303] Graham was of Eton College.
[304] It was to Johnson that the invitation was due. 'What I was at the
English Church at Aberdeen I happened to be espied by Lady Dr.
Middleton, whom I had sometime seen in London; she told what she had
seen to Mr. Boyd, Lord Errol's brother, who wrote us an invitation to
Lord Errol's house.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 118. Boswell, perhaps, was not
unwilling that the reader should think that it was to him that the
compliment was paid.
[305] 'In 1745 my friend, Tom Cumming the Quaker, said he would not
fight, but he would drive an ammunition cart.' _Ante_, April 28, 1783.
Smollett (_History of England_, iv. 293) describes how, in 1758, the
conquest of Senegal was due to this 'sensible Quaker,' 'this honest
Quaker,' as he calls him, who not only conceived the project, but 'was
concerned as a principal director and promoter of the expedition. If it
was the first military scheme of any Quaker, let it be remembered it was
also the first successful expedition of this war, and one of the first
that ever was carried on according to the pacifick system of the
Quakers, without the loss of a drop of blood on either side.' If there
was no bloodshed, it was by good luck, for 'a regular engagement was
warmly maintained on both sides.' It was a Quaker, then, who led the van
in the long line of conquests which have made Chatham's name so famous.
Mrs. Piozzi (_Anec_. p. 185) says:--'Dr. Johnson told me that Cummyns
(sic) the famous Quaker, whose friendship he valued very highly, fell a
sacrifice to the insults of the newspapers; having declared to him on
his death-bed, that the pain of an anonymous letter, written in some of
the common prints of the day, fastened on his heart, and threw him into
the slow fever of which he died.' Mr. Seward records (_Anec_. ii.
395):--'Mr. Cummins, the celebrated American Quaker, said of Mr. Pitt
(Lord Chatham):--"The first time I come to Mr. Pitt upon any business I
find him extremely ignorant; the second time I come to him, I find him
completely informed upon it."'
[306] See _ante_, i. 232.
[307] See _ante_, i. 46.
[308] 'From the windows the eye wanders over the sea that separates
Scotland from Norway, and when the winds beat with violence, must enjoy
all the terrifick grandeur of the tempestuous ocean. I would not for any
amusement wish for a storm; but as storms, whether wished or not, will
sometimes happen, I may say, without violation of humanity, that I
should willingly look out upon them from Slanes Castle.' Johnson's
_Works_, ix. 15.
[309] See _ante_, p. 68.
[310] Horace. _Odes_, i. 2.
[311] See _ante_, ii. 428.
[312] Perhaps the poverty of their host led to this talk. Sir Walter
Scott wrote in 1814:--'Imprudence, or ill-fortune as fatal as the sands
of Belhelvie [shifting sands that had swallowed up a whole parish], has
swallowed up the estate of Errol, excepting this dreary mansion-house
and a farm or two adjoining.' Lockhart's _Scott_, ed. 1839, iv. 187.
[313] See _ante_, ii. 421, note 1.
[314] Since the accession of George I. only one parliament had had so
few as five sessions, and it was dissolved before its time by his death.
One had six sessions, six seven sessions, (including the one that was
now sitting,) and one eight. There was therefore so little dread of a
sudden dissolution that for five years of each parliament the members
durst contradict the populace.
[315] To Miss Burney Johnson once said:--'Sir Joshua Reynolds possesses
the largest share of inoffensiveness of any man that I know.' _Memoirs
of Dr. Burney_, i. 343. 'Once at Mr. Thrale's, when Reynolds left the
room, Johnson observed:--"There goes a man not to be spoiled by
prosperity."' Northcote's _Reynolds_, i. 82. Burke wrote of him:--'He
had a strong turn for humour, and well saw the weak sides of things. He
enjoyed every circumstance of his good fortune, and had no affectation
on that subject. And I do not know a fault or weakness of his that he
did not convert into something that bordered on a virtue, instead of
pushing it to the confines of a vice.' Taylor's _Reynolds_, ii. 638.
[316] He visited Devonshire in 1762. _Ante_, i. 377.
[317] Horace Walpole, describing the coronation of George III, writes:--
'One there was ... the noblest figure I ever saw, the high-constable of
Scotland, Lord Errol; as one saw him in a space capable of containing
him, one admired him. At the wedding, dressed in tissue, he looked like
one of the Giants in Guildhall, new gilt. It added to the energy of his
person, that one considered him acting so considerable a part in that
very Hall, where so few years ago one saw his father, Lord Kilmarnock,
condemned to the block.' _Letters_, iii. 438. Sir William Forbes
says:--'He often put me in mind of an ancient Hero, and I remember Dr.
Johnson was positive that he resembled Homer's character of Sarpedon.'
_Life of Beattie_, ed. 1824, Appendix D. Mrs. Piozzi says:--'The Earl
dressed in his robes at the coronation and Mrs. Siddons in the character
of Murphy's Euphrasia were the noblest specimens of the human race I
ever saw.' _Synonymy_, i.43. He sprang from a race of rebels. 'He united
in his person,' says Forbes, 'the four earldoms of Errol, Kilmarnock,
Linlithgow, and Callander.' The last two were attainted in 1715, and
Kilmarnock in 1745. _Life of Beattie_, Appendix D.
[318] Lord Chesterfield, in his letters to his son [iii. 130], complains
of one who argued in an indiscriminate manner with men of all ranks,
Probably the noble lord had felt with some uneasiness what it was to
encounter stronger abilities than his own. If a peer will engage at
foils with his inferior in station, he must expect that his inferior in
station will avail himself of every advantage; otherwise it is not a
fair trial of strength and skill. The same will hold in a contest of
reason, or of wit.--A certain king entered the lists of genius with
Voltaire. The consequence was, that, though the king had great and
brilliant talents, Voltaire had such a superiority that his majesty
could not bear it; and the poet was dismissed, or escaped, from that
court.--In the reign of James I. of England, Crichton, Lord Sanquhar, a
peer of Scotland, from a vain ambition to excel a fencing-master in his
own art, played at rapier and dagger with him. The fencing-master, whose
fame and bread were at stake, put out one of his lordship's eyes.
Exasperated at this, Lord Sanquhar hired ruffians, and had the
fencing-master assassinated; for which his lordship was capitally tried,
condemned, and hanged. Not being a peer of England, he was tried by the
name of Robert Crichton, Esq.; but he was admitted to be a baron of
three hundred years' standing.--See the _State Trials_; and the _History
of England_ by Hume, who applauds the impartial justice executed upon a
man of high rank. BOSWELL. The 'stronger abilities' that Chesterfield
encountered were Johnson's. Boswell thought wrongly that it was of
Johnson that his Lordship complained in his letters to his son. _Ante_,
i. 267, note 2. 'A certain King' was Frederick the Great. _Ante_, i.
434. The fencing-master was murdered in his own house in London, five
years after Sanquhar (or Sanquire) had lost his eye. Bacon, who was
Solicitor-General, said:--'Certainly the circumstance of time is heavy
unto you; it is now five years since this unfortunate man, Turner, be it
upon accident or despight, gave the provocation which was the seed of
your malice.' _State Trials_, ii. 743, and Hume's _History_, ed.
1802, vi. 61.
[319] _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2.
[320] Perhaps Lord Errol was the Scotch Lord mentioned _ante_, iii. 170,
and the nobleman mentioned _ib_. p. 329.
[321] 'Pitied by gentle minds Kilmarnock died.' _Ante_. i. 180.
[322] Sir Walter Scott describes the talk that he had in 1814 near
Slains Castle with an old fisherman. 'The old man says Slains is now
inhabited by a Mr. Bowles, who comes so far from the southward that
naebody kens whare he comes frae. "Was he frae the Indies?" "Na; he did
not think he came that road. He was far frae the Southland. Naebody ever
heard the name of the place; but he had brought more guid out o'
Peterhead than a' the Lords he had seen in Slains, and he had seen
three."' Lockhart's _Scott_, ed. 1839, iv. 188. The first of the three
was Johnson's host.
[323] See _ante_, ii. 153, and iii. 1, note 2.
[324] Smollett, in _Humphry Clinker_ (Letter of Sept. 6), writing of the
Highlanders and their chiefs, says:--'The original attachment is
founded on something prior to the _feudal system_, about which the
writers of this age have made such a pother, as if it was a new
discovery, like the _Copernican system_ ... For my part I expect to see
the use of trunk-hose and buttered ale ascribed to the influence of the
_feudal system_.' See _ante_, ii. 177.
[325] Mme. Riccoboni wrote to Garrick on May 3, 1769:--'Vous conviendrez
que les nobles sont peu ménagés par vos auteurs; le sot, le fat, ou le
malhonnête homme mêlé dans l'intrigue est presque toujours un lord.'
_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 _Affléck_, 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.'