[Sidenote: MONTROSE.]
The road along which Johnson and Boswell drove as they journeyed
from Dundee through Arbroath to Montrose, is described by Defoe as a
“pleasant way through a country fruitful and bespangled, as the sky in
a clear night with stars of the biggest magnitude, with gentlemen’s
houses, thick as they can be supposed to stand with pleasure and
conveniency.”[493] Our travellers in the latter part of the drive saw
nothing of all this, for the sun had set before they left the great
Abbey; it was not till eleven at night that they arrived at Montrose.
There they found but a sorry inn, where, writes Boswell, “I myself saw
another waiter put a lump of sugar with his fingers into Dr. Johnson’s
lemonade, for which he called him ‘rascal!’ It put me in great glee
that our landlord was an Englishman. I rallied the Doctor upon this
and he grew quiet.” The town Johnson praised as “neat”—“neat” last
century stood very high among the terms of commendation, though it
is now supplanted by “elegant” among Americans, and by “nice” among
English people. At the time of the Rebellion of 1745, the townsfolk had
been described as “very genteel, but disaffected.”[494] To the clerk of
the English chapel Johnson gave “a shilling extraordinary, saying, ‘He
belongs to an honest church.’” He had the great merit also of keeping
his church “clean to a degree unknown in any other part of Scotland,”
so that his shilling was well earned.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO MONTROSE.]
[Illustration: GARDENSTON ARMS.]
From Montrose the road led through a country rich with an abundant
harvest that was almost ripe for the sickle, but bare of everything
but crops. Even the hedges, said Johnson, were of stone. Boswell
calls this a ludicrous description, but it could have been easily
defended as good Scotch, for in the _Scots Magazine_ for January of
the previous year, we read of “the stone hedges of Scotland.”[495] It
is strange that Johnson had not noticed these roughly-built walls in
Northumberland, for in the northern part of that county, according
to Pennant, “hedges were still in their infancy.”[496] [Sidenote:
LAURENCEKIRK.] At Laurencekirk our travellers stopped to dine, and
“respectfully remembered that great grammarian Ruddiman,” who had spent
four years there as schoolmaster. More than seventy years before their
visit, Dr. Pitcairne, the author of that Latin epitaph on Dundee which
Dryden translated, being weather-bound at the village inn, “inquired if
there were no persons who could interchange conversation and partake
of his dinner.” The hostess mentioned Ruddiman. He came, pleased
Pitcairne, and was by him brought to Edinburgh.[497] [Sidenote: A
VILLAGE LIBRARY.] Francis Garden, one of the Scotch judges, under the
title of Lord Gardenston, the laird and almost the founder of this
thriving village, “had furnished the inn with a collection of books,
that travellers might have entertainment for the mind as well as the
body. Dr. Johnson praised the design, but wished there had been more
books, and those better chosen.” The inn still stands with the library
adjoining it. Round the room is hanging a series of portraits in French
chalk of Gardenston’s “feuars,” or tenants, who, after the laird, were
the chief people of the place when Johnson and Boswell passed through.
Many of the books remain on the shelves, though some have been lost
through carelessness or the dishonesty of travellers. There are among
them a few works of light literature such as Dryden’s _Virgil_, and
_Gil Blas_ in French, but the solid reading which most of them afford
makes us think with a feeling of respect that almost amounts to awe, of
the learning of the Scotch travellers in those good old days. Tavern
chairs were no thrones of human felicity in Laurencekirk if such works
as the following were commonly perused by those who chanced to fill
them:
Magno’s _Observations on Anatomy_, in Latin.
Keill’s _Introduction to the Study of Astronomy_.
_Aristophanes_, with Latin notes.
Boerhaave’s _Commentaries on the Aphorisms of Diseases,
naturalized into English_.
Tull’s _Horse-hoeing Husbandry_.
Watt’s _Logic_.
Newton’s _Principia_.
Clarke’s _Sermons_.
_Machiavelli_, in Italian.[498]
In Marischal College, Aberdeen, there is a portrait of Lord Gardenston
in his judge’s robes. He has a somewhat conceited look, such as we
might expect in a man who “wrote a pamphlet upon his village, as if he
had founded Thebes,” and who provided such improving reading for his
weary fellow-creatures.
[Sidenote: LORD MONBODDO.]
A mile or two off the road from Laurencekirk to Aberdeen lived the
famous old Scotch judge, James Burnett, Lord Monboddo. “I knew,” wrote
Boswell, “that he and Dr. Johnson did not love each other; yet I was
unwilling not to visit his Lordship, and was also curious to see them
together. I mentioned my doubts to Dr. Johnson, who said he would go
two miles out of his way to see Lord Monboddo.” The two men had not
much in common except their love of learning, and their precision
of speech. Monboddo, according to Foote, was an Elzevir edition of
Johnson. In a letter to Mrs. Thrale Johnson thus describes him:
“He has lately written a strange book about the origin of
language, in which he traces monkeys up to men, and says that
in some countries the human species have tails like other
beasts. He inquired for these long-tailed men of Banks, and
was not well-pleased that they had not been found in all his
peregrinations. He talked nothing of this to me, and I hope we
parted friends; for we agreed pretty well, only we disputed in
adjusting the claims of merit between a shopkeeper of London
and a savage of the American wildernesses. Our opinions were,
I think, maintained on both sides without full conviction;
Monboddo declared boldly for the savage, and I perhaps for that
reason sided with the citizen.”
Johnson a few years earlier had contrasted Monboddo with Rousseau, “who
talked nonsense so well that he must know he was talking nonsense;”
whereas, he added, “chuckling and laughing, ‘I am afraid Monboddo does
not know that he is talking nonsense.’” He was undoubtedly a man of
great learning, but he was almost destitute of the critical faculty.
In the six volumes of his _Ancient Metaphysics_ we come across such
strange passages as the following:
“Not only are there tailed men extant, but men such as the
ancients describe Satyrs have been found, who had not only
tails, but the feet of goats, and horns on their heads.... We
have the authority of a father of the Church for a greater
singularity of the human form, and that is of men without heads
but with eyes in their breasts.... There is another singularity
as great or greater than any I have hitherto mentioned, and
that is of men with the heads of dogs.”[499]
After stating his readiness to believe that “a tame and gentle animal”
once existed, “having the head of a man and the body of a lion,” he
continues:
“The variety of nature is so great that I am convinced of the
truth of what Aristotle says, that everything exists, or did at
some time exist, which is possible to exist.”[500]
The orang-outang he describes as being “of a character mild and
gentle, affectionate, too, and capable of friendship, with the sense
also of what is decent and becoming.”[501] The ancients, he stoutly
maintained, were in every respect better and stronger than their
descendants. He shocked Hannah More by telling her that “he loved
slavery upon principle.” When she asked him “how he could vindicate
such an enormity, he owned it was because Plutarch justified it.”[502]
In one respect he was wise in following the example of the ancients.
In an age when bathing was very uncommon even among the wealthy, he
constantly urged the daily use of the cold bath. He reminded “our fine
gentlemen and ladies that the Otaheite man, Omai, who came from a
country where the inhabitants bathed twice a day,” complained of the
offensive smell of all the people of England.[503] It was believed,
however, that Monboddo impaired the health of his children by the hardy
treatment to which he exposed them. He despised Johnson because “he had
compiled a dictionary of a barbarous language, a work which a man of
real genius rather than undertake would choose to die of hunger.”[504]
In the latter part of his life he used every year to pay a visit to
London, and he always went on horseback, even after he had passed his
eightieth year. “A carriage, a vehicle that was not in common use among
the ancients, he considered as an engine of effeminacy and sloth. To
be dragged at the tail of horses seemed in his eyes to be a ludicrous
degradation of the genuine dignity of human nature. In Court he never
sat on the Bench with the other judges, but within the Bar, on the seat
appropriated for Peers.”[505] Yet with all his singularities he was a
fine old fellow. There was no kinder landlord in all Scotland. While
around him the small farms were disappearing, and farmers and cottagers
were making room for sheep, it was his boast that on his estate no
change had been made. Neither he nor his father before him had ever
turned off a single cottager.
“One of my tenants (he wrote) who pays me no more than £30
of rent has no less than thirteen cottagers living upon his
farm. I have on one part of my estate seven tenants, each of
whom possesses no more than three acres of arable land, and
some moorish land for pasture, and they pay me no more than
twelve shillings for each acre, and nothing for the moor. I
am persuaded I could more than double the rent of their land
by letting it off to one tenant; but I should be sorry to
increase my rent by depopulating any part of the country; and
I keep these small tenants as a monument of the way in which I
believe a great part of the Lowlands was cultivated in ancient
times.”[506]
He befriended Burns, who repaid his kindness by celebrating his
daughter’s beauty in his _Address to Edinburgh_, and by the elegy
which he wrote on her untimely death. In a note to _Guy Mannering_
Sir Walter Scott describes his supper parties, “where there was a
circulation of excellent Bordeaux in flasks garlanded with roses, which
were also strewed on the table after the manner of Horace. The best
society, whether in respect of rank or literary distinction, was always
to be found in St. John’s Street, Canongate. 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
cænæque_ dear to all who, like the author (though then young), had the
honour of sitting at his board.”
[Sidenote: MONBODDO HOUSE.]
Boswell’s man-servant, who had been sent on to ascertain whether Lord
Monboddo was at home, awaited the travellers’ arrival at the turn in
the road, with the news that they were expected to dinner.
“We drove,” says Boswell, “over a wild moor. It rained, and the
scene was somewhat dreary. Dr. Johnson repeated with solemn
emphasis Macbeth’s speech on meeting the witches.... Monboddo
is a wretched place, wild and naked, with a poor old house;
though, if I recollect right, there are two turrets, which mark
an old baron’s residence. Lord Monboddo received us at his gate
most courteously, pointed to the Douglas arms upon his house,
and told us that his great-grandmother was of that family.”
The old arms are still above the door, with the inscription:
“R. I.
E. D.
1635.”
“R. I.” was Robert Irvine, a colonel in the army of Gustavus Adolphus,
the Lion of the North, and possibly the superior officer of Major
Dugald Dalgetty. “E. D.” was Elizabeth Douglas. Their daughter married
one of the Burnetts, of Crathes Castle. There is nothing wretched,
wild, or naked about Monboddo in the present day. As I saw it, no
thought of a “blasted heath,” and of Macbeth’s witches could by any
freak of the imagination have entered the mind. The land all round
has been brought into cultivation, and there is no moor within five
miles. The road along which I drove was bordered by a row of beech
trees, which might have been planted by Lord Monboddo or his father.
The ancient part of the house, which remains much as Boswell saw it,
though large additions have been made, so far from striking one as poor
and wretched, has a picturesque, old-fashioned look of decent comfort.
Close to it stand a holly and a yew, which have seen the lapse of more
centuries than one. The lawns are wide and soft, and very pleasant.
Hard by a brook prattles along, almost hidden by rhododendrons and
firs. The distant view of the Grampians; the pure, bracing air, whether
the wind blows it from the sea on the east or from the mountains on
the west; the lawns, the trees, the old house, picturesque in itself,
and interesting in its associations, render Monboddo a most pleasant
abode. In the time of the old judge it was no doubt bare enough. Where
there are now lawns and flower-beds there most likely corn and turnips
grew, for he was almost as fond of farming as he was of the ancients.
When he received our travellers, “he was dressed,” says Boswell, “in
a rustic suit, and wore a little round hat. He told us we now saw him
as _Farmer Burnett_, and we should have his family dinner—a farmer’s
dinner. He produced a very long stalk of corn as a specimen of his
crop, and said, ‘You see here the _lætas segetes_.’” An instance of his
“agricultural enthusiasm” used to be recounted by Sir Walter Scott:
“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.”[507] He had a glimpse, it should seem, of some of the
wonders which chemistry was soon to work in agriculture, for being one
day at Court, he told George III. that the time would come when a man
would be able to carry in his waistcoat pocket manure enough for an
acre of land.[508]
[Illustration: MONBODDO.]
The “farmer’s dinner” was good enough to satisfy Dr. Johnson, for he
made a very hearty meal. Yet with all the pride of a man who has a
vigorous appetite, he said, “I have done greater feats with my knife
than this.” The low, square, panelled room in which they dined is much
as they saw it, with its three windows with deep recesses looking on to
the lawns and trees. It is a solid, comfortable apartment, which might
have recalled to Johnson’s memory an Oxford Common-Room, and which
harmonized well with the solid talk he had with his host. In it there
is a curious clock, so old that it might have told the hours to Colonel
Irvine and his wife Elizabeth Douglas, and have attracted Johnson’s
notice by its antiquity.