[143] The Scottish peers on occasions of election of representatives
to the House of Lords frequently brought their meetings to a close by
dining at Fortune’s Tavern.
[144] See note, p. 157.
[145] ‘The wags of the eighteenth century used to tell of a certain
city treasurer who, on being applied to for a new rope to the Tron Kirk
bell, summoned the Council to deliberate on the demand; an adjournment
to Clerihugh’s Tavern, it was hoped, might facilitate the settlement
of so weighty a matter, but one dinner proved insufficient, and it was
not till their third banquet that the application was referred to a
committee, who spliced the old rope, and settled the bill!’—Wilson’s
_Memorials of Old Edinburgh_.
[146] Since this was written, the whole group of buildings has been
taken down, and new ones substituted (1868).
[147] The ‘White Horse’ is introduced in _The Abbot_—it was the scene
of Roland Græme’s encounter with young Seton.
[148] The Corsican patriot whose acquaintance Boswell made on his tour
abroad. Johnson characterised him as having ‘the loftiest port of any
man he had ever seen.’
[149] Peter Ramsay was a brother of William Ramsay of Barnton, the
well-known sporting character of the early part of the nineteenth
century.
[150] A punning friend, remarking on the old Scottish practice of
styling elderly landladies by the term _Lucky_, said: ‘Why not?—_Felix
qui pot_——’
[151] The following curious advertisement, connected with an inn in
the Canongate, appeared in the _Edinburgh Evening Courant_ for July
1, 1754. The advertisement is surmounted by a woodcut representing
the stage-coach, a towering vehicle, protruding at top—the coachman
a stiff-looking, antique little figure, who holds the reins with both
hands, as if he were afraid of the horses running away—a long whip
streaming over his head and over the top of the coach, and falling down
behind—six horses, like starved rats in appearance—a postillion upon
one of the leaders, with a whip:
‘The Edinburgh Stage-Coach, for the better accommodation of Passengers,
will be altered to a new genteel two-end Glass Machine, hung on Steel
Springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and
twelve in winter; to set out the first Tuesday in March, and continue
it from Hosea Eastgate’s, the _Coach and Horses_ in Dean Street, Soho,
London, and from John Somerville’s in the Canongate, Edinburgh, every
other Tuesday, and meet at Burrowbridge on Saturday night, and set
out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London and Edinburgh on
Friday. In the winter to set out from London and Edinburgh every other
[alternate] Monday morning, and to go to Burrowbridge on Saturday
night; and to set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to London
and Edinburgh on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed,
if God permits, by your dutiful servant,