logs and deals was but clumsy. Colman said it would soon be covered
by some trees planted before his windows. Sir Joshua Reynolds upon
this quoted the proverb, ‘You will not be able to see the _wood_ for
_trees_.’”
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS,
25th April, 1778.
* * * * *
“At Sir Joshua Reynolds’ table —— observed that in the Germanick
politicks at present the King of Prussia was a good attorney for
the ——. ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and he has a good power.’”
2nd May, 1778.
* * * * *
“In London you have an inexhaustible variety of company to enjoy with
superficial pleasure, and out of these you may always have a few chosen
friends for intimate cordiality. While you have a wide lake to sport
in, you may have a stewpond to fatten, cherishing to high friendship,
affection, and love, by feeding with attention and kindness. One must
have a friend, a wife, or a mistress much in private; must dwell upon
them, if that phrase may be used; must by reiterated habits of regard
feel the particular satisfaction of intimacy. There must be many coats
of the colour laid on to make a body substantial enough to last, for
the colour of ordinary agreeable acquaintance is so slight that every
feather can brush it off. One should be very careful in choosing
for the stewpond. Horace says, ‘_Qualem commendes etiam atque etiam
respice_.’ Such a recommendation is useful to put us on our guard to
preserve our character for discernment. It is as much so to make us
preserve our own comfort in friendship.”
London, April, 1778.
* * * * *
“If you wish to be very happy with your friend, or wife, or mistress,
be with them in London or Bath, or some place where you are both
enjoying pleasure; not in the country, where there is dulness and
weariness. You may, perhaps, bear up your spirits even in dreary cold
darkness in their company, but it is too severe trial to make the
experiment. There may be love enough, yet not of such a supreme degree
that warms amidst external disadvantages. It is not giving them fair
play. Be with them in the sunshine; let mutual gladness beam upon your
hearts; and let the ideas of pleasure be associated with the ideas of
your being together. If pity be akin to love, it is so to melancholy
love. Joy is the fond relation of delightful love of the sweet passion.”
London, April and May, 1778.
* * * * *
“General Paoli one day asked me to read to him something good out of
my journal of conversations, which he found me busy recording. I was
running my eye over the pages, muttering and long of bringing forth
anything, upon which the general observed with his usual metaphorical
fancy, _finesse d’esprit_, ‘Reason says I am a deer lost in a wood.
It is difficult to find me.’ I had nothing to answer at the time, but
afterwards—I forget how long—I said, ‘The wood is crowded with deer.
There are so many good things, one is at a loss which to choose.’”
London, April, 1778.
* * * * *
“Mr. Crosbie was the member of several clubs. I said to him, ‘Crosbie,
you are quite a club sawyer.’”
* * * * *
“Dr. Webster was rather late in coming to a dinner which I gave at
Fortune’s, 9th July, 1774. His apology was, that just as he was coming
out a man arrived who had money to pay him, and he stayed to receive
it. ‘You was very right,’ said I, ‘for money is not like fame, that if
you fly from it, it will pursue you as your shadow does.’”
* * * * *
“Harry Erskine[283] was observing that a certain agent would take it
amiss to have it mentioned that his grandfather was a bellman. ‘I don’t
think it,’ said I. ‘A bellman is a respectable title,’ said Peter
Murray;[284] ‘it is at least a sounding title.’”
* * * * *
“‘I was wondering one day how many times a lawyer walks backwards and
forwards in the outer house[285] in a forenoon,’ said Cosmo Gordon.
‘You must take a compound ratio of his idleness and his velocity.’”
* * * * *
“My wife said it would be much better to give salaries to members of
Parliament than to let them try what they can get off their country by
places and pensions. Said she, ‘They are like ostlers and postillions,
who have no wages, and must support themselves by vails.’”[286]
* * * * *
“One day when causes were called in the Inner House in an irregular
manner, and not according to the roll, I said to Crosbie, ‘The English
courts run straight out like a fox; ours double like a hare.’”
* * * * *
“The pleasure of seeing Italy chiefly depends on the ideas which a man
carries thither. Take an ignorant mechanick or an unlearned country
squire to the banks of the Tiber. Show him Mount Soracte, the ruins
of Rome, and drive him on to Naples, he will have little enjoyment.
But a man whose mind is stored with classical knowledge feels a noble
enthusiasm. His ideas uniting with the objects before him catch fire,
and a flame is produced as in a chemical process by the mingling of
certain substances, while others remain quite tame. A man must have his
imagination charged with classical _particles_.”
* * * * *
“The severe measures taken against the Americans united them firmly by
a cement of blood.”
A. BRITON, _Pub. Advert._, 16th Sept., 1775.
* * * * *
“Parliament is now, instead of being the representative of the nation,
the echo of the Cabinet; and its acts are only wrappers to the ready
prepared pills of the court laboratory for the people to swallow—if
they do not stick in their throats.”
A. BRITON, _Pub. Advert._, 16th Sept., 1775.
* * * * *
“I said of a rich man who entertained us luxuriously, that although he
was exceedingly ridiculous, we restrained ourselves from talking of him
as we might do, lest we should lose his feasts. Said I, ‘he makes our
teeth sentinels upon our tongues.’”
* * * * *
“I said that a drunken fellow was not honest. ‘A stick,’ said I ‘kept
allways moist becomes rotten.’”
“If a man entertains his company himself, it is a great fatigue. It is
blowing a fire with his own breath. Whoever can afford it should have a
led captain of strong animal spirits, who may, like perpetual bellows,
keep up the social flame.”
* * * * *
“I told Nairne one afternoon that I had been taking an airing with our
solicitor-general. Said he, ‘Was you _learning_ to be solicitor?’ ‘No
no,’ said I; ‘solicitors-general are _non docti, sed facti_.’”
1777.
* * * * *
“Poor David Hamilton of Monkland, on account of his vote in
Lanarkshire, was made one of the macers of the Court of Session. He
had a constant hoarseness, so that he could scarcely be heard when
he called the causes and the lawyers, and was indeed as unfit for a
crier of court as a man could be. I said he had no voice but _at an
election_.”
* * * * *
“Sandie Maxwell, the wine merchant, told a story very well, and used to
heighten it by greater and greater degrees of strong humour, according
to the disposition of the company. I said he _blew_ a story to any
size, as a man blows figures in a glasshouse. A satirical fellow would
say, I warrant he shall not blow his own bottles to too large a size.”
* * * * *
“Lady Di Beauclerk[287] said to me she understood Mrs. V—— was an
idiot. I said I was told so too; but when I was introduced to her did
not find it be true. ‘Or perhaps,’ said I, ‘her being less an idiot
than I had imagined her to be may have made me think she was not an
idiot at all.’ ‘I think,’ said Lady Di, ‘she is bad enough, if that be
all that a lawyer has to say for her, that she is only less an idiot
than he imagined.’ Said I, ‘There are different kinds of idiots as of
dogs, water idiots and land idiots, and so on.’ ‘I think,’ said Lady
Di, ‘that is worth writing down.’”
Richmond, 27th April, 1781.
* * * * *
“Lady Di Beauclerk told me that Langton had never been to see her since
she came to Richmond, his head was so full of the militia and Greek.
‘Why,’ said I, ‘madam, he is of such a length, he is awkward, and not
easily moved.’ ‘But,’ said she, ‘if he had laid himself at his length,
his feet had been in London, and his head might have been here _eodem
die_.’”
* * * * *
“Lord Chesterfield could indulge himself in making any sort of pun at a
time. Dr. Barnard, now Bishop of Killaloe, was standing by his lordship
in the pump-room at Bath, when the late Duchess of Northumberland’s
father was brought in a chair very unwieldy. The musick was playing. My
lord said to Barnard, ‘We have a new sort of instrument this morning—a
dull Seymour[288] (dulcimer).’”
From DR. BARNARD, London, 1781.
* * * * *
“Parnell[289] was miserably addicted to drinking. He could not refrain
even the morning that Swift introduced him to Lord Oxford.[290] My lord
pressed through the crowd to get to Parnell. But he soon perceived his
situation. He in a little said to Swift, ‘your friend, I fear, is not
very well.’ Swift answered, ‘He is troubled with a great shaking.’ ‘I
am sorry,’ said the Earl, ‘that he should have such a distemper, but
especially that it should attack him in the morning.’”
From DR. BARNARD, Bishop of Killaloe,
who had it from DR. DELANY.
* * * * *
“In spring, 1781, Dr. Franklin[291] wrote from Paris to a freind in
London, with indignation against one who had been entrusted with money
belonging to the American prisoners, and had run off with it. One
expression in his letters was singularly strong, and indeed wild:—‘If
that fellow is not damned, it is not worth while to keep a devil.’”
MR. SUARD.[292]
* * * * *
“Lord Foley,[293] whose extravagance frequently brought his creditors
upon him so as to have executions in his house, was rallying George
Selwyn on his particular curiosity for spectacles of death. ‘You go,’
said he, ‘I understand, to see all executions.’ ‘No my lord,’ answered
George, ‘I don’t go to see your executions.’”
MR. SUARD.
* * * * *
“The Honourable Mrs. Stuart[294] was one day talking to me with just
severity against drunkenness (the sin which doth most easily beset me).
I attempted to apologise, and said that intoxication might happen at a
time to any man. ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘to any man but a Scotsman, for what
with another man is an accident is in him a habit.’”
* * * * *
“At Sir John Dick’s, Sunday, 8th May, 1785, I made the gentlemen
sit and drink out some capital old hock after the ladies left us.
When I came into the drawing-room, and was seated by the lady of Sir
Matthew White Ridley,[295] she said to me, ‘We ladies don’t like you
when you have drunk a bottle of hock, because you then tell us only
plain truth.’ ‘Bravo!’ cried I; ‘Lady Ridley, this shall go into my
_Boswelliana_. It is one of the best _bon mots_ I have heard for a
long time. It goes deep into human nature.’”
* * * * *
“M. D’Ankerville (9th May, 1785) at General Paoli’s paid me the
compliment that I was the man of genius who had the best heart he had
ever known.”
* * * * *
“The king cannot give to Langton because he is not in the political
sphere. He cannot take a handful of the gold upon the faro table, and
give it to any man, however worthy, who is only looking on or stalking
round the room. Let him play, let him part, and take his chance. The
king is but the marker at the great billiard-table of the state. He can
mark a man three, four, or five, or whatever number according to his
play, and if he goes off the table into opposition, can rub out the
chalk; like the marker, he can give what money he has for himself as he
pleases, and employ his own tailor or shoemaker, and buy his own snuff
and ballads, take a walk or a ride at his idle hours where he pleases.”
* * * * *
“The first time Suard saw Burke, who was at Reynolds’s, Johnson touched
him on the shoulder and said, ‘Le grande Burke.’”
* * * * *
“My journal is ready; it is in the larder, only to be sent to the
kitchen, or perhaps trussed and larded a little.”
* * * * *
“Mrs. Cosway[296] said she had often expressed a wish to see me.
General (Paoli) did not tell me this. He has been affraid of making me
too vain and turning the head of his friend. No, he knows the value of
things—it was not worth telling.”
* * * * *
“At Mr. Aubrey’s, 19th April, Wilkes and I hard at it. I warm on
monarchy. ‘Po, your’n old Tory.’ _Boswell._ ‘And you’re a new Tory. Let
that stand for that.’”
* * * * *
“I mentioned my having been in Tothill Fields Bridewell; how the
keeper had let me in, &c. _Wilkes_, ‘I don’t wonder at your getting
in, but that you got out.’ _Bos._ ‘O no, I have no propensity to be
a jail-bird; I never had the honour you have had[297] [he looking a
little disconcerted, as the pill rather too strong]—I mean being Lord
Mayor of London; I mean the golden _chain_. I never had the honour to
have a chain of any sort.’”
* * * * *
“‘I’ll have some of the other soup too. Were there a hundred soups, I
should eat of them all.’ _Mrs. Aubrey_ (very pleasantly): ‘I am sorry
ours comes so far short of your number.’”
* * * * *
“Old Hutton[298] talked of men of phlegm and men of fancy. Said H.,
‘Men of phlegm punish the beef, the solid parts of dinner; men of
fancy, the dessert.’ ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘men of fancy would have nothing
to work upon were there not men of phlegm. Men of phlegm perform the
actions, compile the histories, discover the arts and sciences upon
which poetry is founded.’”
* * * * *
“Dr. Burney[299] said he hoped I was now come to plant myself in
London. ‘I’ll bring the watering pan,’ said he.”
* * * * *
“I told Lord Galloway,[300] April, 1785, that I called Lord Daer
Darius.[301] ‘What,’ said he, ‘do you think him the son of Cyrus?’
laughing at Lord Selkirk. I did not think he’d have said this, though a
distinguished law lord.”
* * * * *
“When Pitt the second made his first appearance in the House of Commons
in opposition to Fox, Gibbon[302] said, ‘There is a beautiful painted
pinnace just going to be run down by a black collier.’ He never was
more mistaken. Pitt has more forcible indignation in him than Fox.”
WILKES.
* * * * *
“As a playful instance of the proverb, I said, ‘Every man has his
price. Lord Shelburne[303] has his price [meaning Dr. Price],[304] whom
I love and call _Pretium affectionis_.’”
Monday, 18th April, 1785, at
DR. BROCKLESBY’S.[305]
* * * * *
“General Paoli said more good things than almost anybody, yet he talks
of them with contempt. I told him he had always _bon mots_ about him,
which he used like footballs—he threw them down and gave them a kick.”
24th April, 1785.
* * * * *
“April, 1785, at Mr. Osborne’s. Sir Joseph Banks told me he was sure he
had a soul. He felt it high within him, as a woman does a child.”
* * * * *
“25th April, 1785. Dining on guard with Colonel Lord Cathcart,[306]
Cataline was mentioned. ‘Who was he?’ said George[307] Hanger, ‘for
I know no ancient history.’ ‘I’ll tell you what he was,’ said Colonel
Tarleton. ‘_Alieni cupidus, sui profusus_.’ ‘Very fair!’ said Hanger.
In a little talking of fellows going carelessly to execution, Tarleton
said, ‘We’re told Sir Thomas More smiled all the way.’”
* * * * *
“Mrs. Heron[308] being at her parish church, the name of the minister
being Stot,[309] as it was a very bad day, and the wind and rain were
driving through the windows, a lady observed that it was like a _guarde
mange_. ‘I think so too, madam,’ said she; ‘but if that were the case I
should think it would be better to have a dead stot than a living one.’”
From herself.
* * * * *
“Houstoun Stewart[310] was one night in Drury Lane playhouse very
shabbily dressed. A surly-looking, boorish fellow comes up to him:
‘Pray, sir, whose seat do you keep?’ Houstoun replied with an ironical
complaisance, ‘Yours, sir.’ As he was rising the fellow observed his
sword, was much confused, and asked ten thousand pardons. ‘From this,’
says Stewart, ‘we see the value of a sword. Had I wanted it I might
have been taken for a real footman.’”
MR. G. GOLDIE.
* * * * *
“A comical fellow was telling that Raploch sat upon turkey eggs and
brought out birds, which made the company laugh extremely. ‘Stay, stay,
gentlemen!’ says Harry Barclay;[311] ‘you don’t know that these turkeys
are all my cousins german, for Raploch is my uncle.’”
LADY KAMES.[312]
* * * * *
“A gentleman was one night talking of the Nile. An ignorant boobie who
was present asked him with great eagerness, ‘Pray, what fellow was
that?’ ‘Why, troth, sir,’ says he, ‘it was a fellow that took a conceit
to hide his head so that it could not be found again.’”
MRS. HERON.
* * * * *
“A dog one day jumped upon Miss Bruce[313] of Kinross’s lap at a
tea-table. ‘I wonder,’ says she, ‘if dogs can see anything particularly
agreeable about me?’ ‘Indeed, madam,’ replied a gentleman, ‘he would be
a very sad dog that did not.’”
MRS. G. GOLDIE.
* * * * *
“Mr. Heron[314] was one day reproving a servant at table for
negligence. ‘What have you been thinking of, Peter, that you have
forgot spoons?’ ‘I suppose, my dear,’ says his lady, ‘that he has been
thinking of knives and forks.’”
I was present.
* * * * *
“We are apt to imagine that the Turks are a brutal sort of people,
totally given up to gross sensuality, and altogether void of gay fancy
or the finer feelings. As an instance to the contrary, my Lord Galloway
tells that he was sitting at Constantinople with a Turkish gentleman,
who, although a true Mussulman, took a glass of wine. The custom there
is not for a company to drink all at once, like a regiment going
through their evolutions, but as the intention of drinking is to cheer
the spirits, they take a cup of the liquor which stands before them
just as they feel themselves in need of it. This Turk, after having
taken three or four bumpers of champagne, pointed to a lamp which hung
above their heads, as they never use candles. ‘This,’ says he, ‘my
lord, is to me as the oil is to that lamp.’ A pretty allusion, as if it
lighted him up.”
LORD KENMORE.[315]
* * * * *
“My lord having shown to the same gentleman a picture of Lady
Garlies,[316] he looked at it a long time very attentively, and then
asked my lord, with a good deal of emotion, whose picture it was. My
lord answered that it was the picture of his lady, who had died just
before he left his native country. ‘My lord,’ said the Turk, ‘you have
the strongest constitution, and have a chance to live longer than
any man I ever met with.’ And being asked his reason for saying so,
‘Because, my lord, you have been able to survive so fine a woman.’ A
noble expression of a feeling heart.”
LORD KENMORE.
* * * * *
“Silinger, a gentleman of Ireland, remarkable for humour and spirit,
had got himself drunk one night, and had broke windows in St. James’s
Street. Next morning at White’s they were all talking of and abusing
him most confoundedly. Lord Coke,[317] a most worthless fellow, stood
up with great warmth for Mr. Silinger, who a little after came in!
‘Silinger,’ cried my lord, ‘you are much obliged to me this morning,
for I have been losing my character in defence of yours.’ ‘Have you so,
my lord?’ says he, ‘then you are much obliged to me, for you have lost
the worst character in all England.’”
MR. MURRAY, of Broughtoun.
* * * * *
“Colonel Chartres,[318] who knew mankind too well to be ignorant of the
power of flattery, said to John,[319] Duke of Argyle, ‘Good heaven,
my lord, what would I give to have your character! I would give ten
thousand pounds.’ ‘Indeed, Chartres,’ replied the duke, ‘it would be
the worst bargain you ever made, for you would lose it again in a day.’”
LORD KAMES.
* * * * *
“A gentleman was one day making that common serious reflection, ‘Time
runs.’ ‘Very well,’ replied Boswell, ‘let it run there, for I am sure I
shall never try to pursue it.’”
* * * * *
“Lady Katie Murray[320] having shown her full-length portrait to Lord
Eglintoune, ‘O such vanity, such vanity!’ cried he, ‘do you really take
that for you?’ ‘Indeed, my lord,’ says she, Mr. Reynolds says that it
is me; so I can’t help it.’”
From herself.
* * * * *
“Colonel Folly came to wait upon old Jerviswood,[321] who was very
deaf; and being very finically dressed, the old gentleman asked with
great curiosity, ‘Who’s that? who’s that?’ and being answered, Colonel
Folly, ‘I see,’ says he, ‘he’s a fool, but what is his name?’”
LORD AUCHINLECK.
* * * * *
“Sir Alexander Dick passed an evening at Rome with a number of
gentlemen, who had been obliged to fly Scotland on account of the
rebellion, 1715. One of them sung ‘The Broom of the Cowdenknowes,’[322]
with which the whole company were so much affected as to burst into
tears and cry with great bitterness.”
From himself.
* * * * *
“When John McKie[323] was in Prussia, one of the sentinels petitioned
him and some other gentlemen who were with him for their charity to
a poor Briton, who had been seized by the advanced guards while in
the Dutch service, and had now but very poor pay. ‘Pray, sir,’ said
Mr. McKie, ‘what is your name?’ ‘John McKie, sir,’ said he, ‘from the
Laird of Balgowan’s estate, in the parish of Monigaff, in Galloway.’
Surprised and pleased at the discovery, they collected all the silver
they had about them and threw to him.”
SIR ROBERT MAXWELL, 3rd hand.
* * * * *
“Jerviswood carried his whole family to travel with him through Italy.
The first night of their being in Rome they went to an assembly, and
were surprised to find them dancing to the tune of ‘The Lads of Dunse.’
The history of the thing was this:—the Italians have no country
dances; but Miss Edwin, sister to Lady Charlotte’s husband, was very
fond of the Scots country dances, and as her family were opulent people
when they were abroad, she had influence enough with the Italians to
introduce these dances, which they still remain fond of.”
LORD KAMES.
* * * * *
“It is a tradition believed in the family of Carnwath[324] that one
of the old earls, who was a very zealous Catholic, took it into his
head to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre. As he was entering
one of the gates of Constantinople he saw a woman sitting on a balcony
spinning and singing, ‘O the broom,’ &c.”
LORD KENMORE.[325]
* * * * *
“A man had heard that Dempster was very clever, and therefore expected
that he could say nothing but good things. Being brought acquainted,
Mr. Dempster said to him with much politeness, ‘I hope, sir, your lady
and family are well.’ ‘Ay, ay, man,’ said he, ‘pray where is the great
wit in that speech?’”
LADY ANN ERSKINE.
* * * * *
“A gentleman was complaining that he had done good to another who had
made him no grateful return. ‘Well, well,’ said Boswell, ‘you are so
far lucky, that if you did good to your neighbour you have your reward,
whether he will or not.’”
* * * * *
“Boswell and John Home met with a man in their walk one morning, who
said that he was a hundred and three. ‘What a stupid fellow,’ said
Boswell, ‘must that be who has lived so long!’”
* * * * *
“Boswell was one day complaining that he was sometimes dull. ‘Yes,
yes,’ cried Lord Kames, ‘_aliquando dormitat Homerus_’ (Homer sometimes
nods). Boswell being too much elated with this, my lord added, ‘Indeed,
sir, it is the only chance you had of resembling Homer.’”
* * * * *
“A countryman came one day and told Lady Machermore,[326] ‘Oh,
madam, you have lost a great enemy this morning—the auld bear of
Kirouchtree’s dead.’ ‘Ay, ay,’ says she, ‘the auld Heron dead? give the
honest man a dram.’ The fellow took his dram very contentedly, and then
said, ‘Na, God be thanked, madam, Heron’s not dead, for I mean the old
boar-sow that used to destroy your potatoes.’”
MR. HERON.
* * * * *
“At an execution in the Grass Mercat, Boswell was observing that if you
will consider it abstractly there is nothing terrible in it. ‘No doubt,
sir,’ replied Mr. Love, ‘if you will abstract everything terrible that
it has about it, nothing terrible will remain.’”
* * * * *
“When Lord Galloway was in Constantinople, an old Turk of sixty was
dining one day with a company of the English, with whose ease and
freedom and mirth he was so much transported as to exclaim, ‘Good God,
am I come to this age, and have lived but one day!’”
LORD GALLOWAY.
* * * * *
“Lord Mark Ker[327] was playing at backgammon with Lord Stair in a
coffee-house in London; an impudent fellow was saying some rude things
against Scotland. ‘Come, my Lord Stair,’ said Lord Mark, ‘let us have a
throw of the dice, which of us two kicks this scoundrel down-stairs.’
Lord Stair had the highest throw, and accordingly used the fellow as he
deserved. ‘Well,’ said Lord Mark, ‘I allways am unlucky at play.’”
LORD AUCHINLECK.
* * * * *