Life of Johnson Volume V Part 4

"Beauclerk has a keenness of mind which is very uncommon." JOHNSON.

'Yes, Sir; and everything comes from him so easily. It appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' BOSWELL. 'You are loud, Sir; but it is not an effort of mind[237].'

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. 'In such houses (said he,) our ancestors lived, who were better men than we.' 'No, no, my lord (said Dr. Johnson). We are as strong as they, and a great deal wiser[238].' This was an a.s.sault upon one of Lord Monboddo's capital dogmas, and I was afraid there would have been a violent altercation in the very close, before we got into the house. But his lordship is distinguished not only for 'ancient metaphysicks,' but for ancient _politesse_, '_la vieille cour_' and he made no reply[239].

His lordship was dressed in a rustick suit, and wore a little round hat; he told us, we now saw him as _Farmer Burnet_[240], and we should have his family dinner, a farmer's dinner. He said, 'I should not have forgiven Mr. Boswell, had he not brought you here, Dr. Johnson.' He produced a very long stalk of corn, as a specimen of his crop, and said, 'You see here the _loetas segetes_[241];' he added, that _Virgil_ seemed to be as enthusiastick a farmer as he[242], and was certainly a practical one. JOHNSON. 'It does not always follow, my lord, that a man who has written a good poem on an art, has practised it. Philip Miller told me, that in Philips's _Cyder_, a poem, all the precepts were just, and indeed better than in books written for the purpose of instructing; yet Philips had never made cyder[243].'

I started the subject of emigration[244]. JOHNSON. 'To a man of mere animal life, you can urge no argument against going to America, but that it will be some time before he will get the earth to produce. But a man of any intellectual enjoyment will not easily go and immerse himself and his posterity for ages in barbarism.'

He and my lord spoke highly of Homer. JOHNSON. 'He had all the learning of his age. The shield of Achilles shews a nation in war, a nation in peace; harvest sport, nay, stealing[245].' MONBODDO. 'Ay, and what we (looking to me) would call a parliament-house scene[246]; a cause pleaded.' JOHNSON. 'That is part of the life of a nation in peace. And there are in Homer such characters of heroes, and combinations of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind ever since have not produced any but what are to be found there.' MONBODDO. 'Yet no character is described.' JOHNSON. 'No; they all develope themselves.

Agamemnon is always a gentleman-like character; he has always [Greek: Basilikon ti]. That the ancients held so, is plain from this; that Euripides, in his _Hecuba_, makes him the person to interpose[247].'

MONBODDO. 'The history of manners is the most valuable. I never set a high value on any other history.' JOHNSON. 'Nor I; and therefore I esteem biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn to use[248].' BOSWELL. 'But in the course of general history, we find manners. In wars, we see the dispositions of people, their degrees of humanity, and other particulars.' JOHNSON. 'Yes; but then you must take all the facts to get this; and it is but a little you get.'

MONBODDO. 'And it is that little which makes history valuable.' Bravo!

thought I; they agree like two brothers. MONBODDO. 'I am sorry, Dr.

Johnson, you were not longer at Edinburgh to receive the homage of our men of learning.' JOHNSON. 'My lord, I received great respect and great kindness.' BOSWELL. 'He goes back to Edinburgh after our tour.' We talked of the decrease of learning in Scotland, and of the _Muses'

Welcome_[249]. JOHNSON. 'Learning is much decreased in England, in my remembrance[250].' MONBODDO. 'You, Sir, have lived to see its decrease in England, I its extinction in Scotland.' However, I brought him to confess that the High School of Edinburgh did well. JOHNSON. 'Learning has decreased in England, because learning will not do so much for a man as formerly. There are other ways of getting preferment. Few bishops are now made for their learning. To be a bishop, a man must be learned in a learned age,--factious in a factious age; but always of eminence[251].

Warburton is an exception; though his learning alone did not raise him.

He was first an antagonist to Pope, and helped Theobald to publish his _Shakspeare_; but, seeing Pope the rising man, when Crousaz attacked his _Essay on Man_, for some faults which it has, and some which it has not, Warburton defended it in the Review of that time[252]. This brought him acquainted with Pope, and he gained his friendship. Pope introduced him to Allen, Allen married him to his niece: so, by Allen's interest and his own, he was made a bishop[253]. But then his learning was the _sine qua non_: he knew how to make the most of it; but I do not find by any dishonest means.' MONBODDO. 'He is a great man.' JOHNSON. 'Yes; he has great knowledge,--great power of mind. Hardly any man brings greater variety of learning to bear upon his point[254].' MONBODDO. 'He is one of the greatest lights of your church.' JOHNSON. 'Why, we are not so sure of his being very friendly to us[255]. He blazes, if you will, but that is not always the steadiest light. Lowth is another bishop who has risen by his learning.'

Dr. Johnson examined young Arthur, Lord Monboddo's son, in Latin. He answered very well; upon which he said, with complacency, 'Get you gone!

When King James comes back[256], you shall be in the _Muses Welcome_!'

My lord and Dr. Johnson disputed a little, whether the Savage or the London Shopkeeper had the best existence; his lordship, as usual, preferring the Savage. My lord was extremely hospitable, and I saw both Dr. Johnson and him liking each other better every hour.

Dr. Johnson having retired for a short time, his lordship spoke of his conversation as I could have wished. Dr. Johnson had said, 'I have done greater feats with my knife than this;' though he had eaten a very hearty dinner. My lord, who affects or believes he follows an abstemious system, seemed struck with Dr. Johnson's manner of living. I had a particular satisfaction in being under the roof of Monboddo, my lord being my father's old friend, and having been always very good to me. We were cordial together. He asked Dr. Johnson and me to stay all night. When I said we _must_ be at Aberdeen, he replied, 'Well, I am like the Romans: I shall say to you, "Happy to come;--happy to depart!"'

He thanked Dr. Johnson for his visit.

JOHNSON. 'I little thought, when I had the honour to meet your Lordship in London, that I should see you at Monboddo.'

After dinner, as the ladies[257] were going away, Dr. Johnson would stand up. He insisted that politeness was of great consequence in society. 'It is, (said he,) fict.i.tious benevolence[258]. It supplies the place of it amongst those who see each other only in publick, or but little. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. I have always applied to good breeding, what Addison in his _Cato_[259] says of honour:--

"Honour's a sacred tie; the law of Kings; The n.o.ble mind's distinguishing perfection, That aids and strengthens Virtue where it meets her; And imitates her actions where she is not."'

When he took up his large oak stick, he said, 'My lord, that's _Homerick_[260];' thus pleasantly alluding to his lordship's favourite writer.

Gory, my lord's black servant, was sent as our guide, to conduct us to the high road. The circ.u.mstance of each of them having a black servant was another point of similarity between Johnson and Monboddo. I observed how curious it was to see an African in the North of Scotland, with little or no difference of manners from those of the natives. Dr.

Johnson laughed to see Gory and Joseph riding together most cordially.

'Those two fellows, (said he,) one from Africa, the other from Bohemia, seem quite at home.' He was much pleased with Lord Monboddo to-day. He said, he would have pardoned him for a few paradoxes, when he found he had so much that was good: but that, from his appearance in London, he thought him all paradox; which would not do. He observed that his lordship had talked no paradoxes to-day. 'And as to the savage and the London shopkeeper, (said he,) I don't know but I might have taken the side of the savage equally, had any body else taken the side of the shopkeeper.[261]' He had said to my lord, in opposition to the value of the savage's courage, that it was owing to his limited power of thinking, and repeated Pope's verses, in which 'Macedonia's madman' is introduced, and the conclusion is,

'Yet ne'er looks forward farther than his nose[262].'

I objected to the last phrase, as being low. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is intended to be low: it is satire. The expression is debased, to debase the character.'

When Gory was about to part from us, Dr. Johnson called to him, 'Mr.

Gory, give me leave to ask you a question! are you baptised?' Gory told him he was, and confirmed by the Bishop of Durham. He then gave him a shilling.

We had tedious driving this afternoon, and were somewhat drowsy. Last night I was afraid Dr. Johnson was beginning to faint in his resolution; for he said, 'If we must ride much, we shall not go; and there's an end on't.' To-day, when he talked of _Sky_ with spirit, I said, 'Why, Sir, you seemed to me to despond yesterday. You are a delicate Londoner;--you are a maccaroni[263]; you can't ride.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I shall ride better than you. I was only afraid I should not find a horse able to carry me.' I hoped then there would be no fear of getting through our wild Tour.

We came to Aberdeen at half an hour past eleven. The New Inn, we were told, was full. This was comfortless. The waiter, however, asked, if one of our names was Boswell, and brought me a letter left at the inn: it was from Mr. Thrale, enclosing one to Dr. Johnson[264]. Finding who I was, we were told they would contrive to lodge us by putting us for a night into a room with two beds. The waiter said to me in the broad strong Aberdeenshire dialect, 'I thought I knew you by your likeness to your father.' My father puts up at the New Inn, when on his circuit.

Little was said to-night. I was to sleep in a little press-bed in Dr.

Johnson's room. I had it wheeled out into the dining-room, and there I lay very well.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22.

I sent a message to Professor Thomas Gordon, who came and breakfasted with us. He had secured seats for us at the English chapel. We found a respectable congregation, and an admirable organ, well played by Mr. Tait.

We walked down to the sh.o.r.e: Dr. Johnson laughed to hear that Cromwell's soldiers taught the Aberdeen people to make shoes and stockings, and to plant cabbages[265]. He asked, if weaving the plaids[266] was ever a domestick art in the Highlands, like spinning or knitting. They could not inform him here. But he conjectured probably, that where people lived so remote from each other, it was likely to be a domestick art; as we see it was among the ancients, from Penelope. I was sensible to-day, to an extraordinary degree, of Dr. Johnson's excellent English p.r.o.nunciation. I cannot account for its striking me more now than any other day: but it was as if new to me; and I listened to every sentence which he spoke, as to a musical composition. Professor Gordon gave him an account of the plan of education in his college. Dr. Johnson said, it was similar to that at Oxford. Waller the poet's great-grandson was studying here. Dr. Johnson wondered that a man should send his son so far off, when there were so many good schools in England[267]. He said, 'At a great school there is all the splendour and illumination of many minds; the radiance of all is concentrated in each, or at least reflected upon each. But we must own that neither a dull boy, nor an idle boy, will do so well at a great school as at a private one. For at a great school there are always boys enough to do well easily, who are sufficient to keep up the credit of the school; and after whipping being tried to no purpose, the dull or idle boys are left at the end of a cla.s.s, having the appearance of going through the course, but learning nothing at all[268]. Such boys may do good at a private school, where constant attention is paid to them, and they are watched. So that the question of publick or private education is not properly a general one; but whether one or the other is best for _my son_.' We were told the present Mr. Waller was a plain country gentleman; and his son would be such another. I observed, a family could not expect a poet but in a hundred generations. 'Nay, (said Dr. Johnson,) not one family in a hundred can expect a poet in a hundred generations.' He then repeated Dryden's celebrated lines,

'Three poets in three distant ages born,' &c.

and a part of a Latin translation of it done at Oxford[269]: he did not then say by whom.

He received a card from Sir Alexander Gordon, who had been his acquaintance twenty years ago in London, and who, 'if forgiven for not answering a line from him,' would come in the afternoon. Dr. Johnson rejoiced to hear of him, and begged he would come and dine with us. I was much pleased to see the kindness with which Dr. Johnson received his old friend Sir Alexander[270]; a gentleman of good family, _Lismore_, but who had not the estate. The King's College here made him Professor of Medicine, which affords him a decent subsistence. He told us that the value of the stockings exported from Aberdeen was, in peace, a hundred thousand pounds; and amounted, in time of war, to one hundred and seventy thousand pounds. Dr. Johnson asked, What made the difference?

Here we had a proof of the comparative sagacity of the two professors.

Sir Alexander answered, 'Because there is more occasion for them in war.' Professor Thomas Gordon answered, 'Because the Germans, who are our great rivals in the manufacture of stockings, are otherwise employed in time of war.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you have given a very good solution.'

At dinner, Dr. Johnson ate several plate-fulls of Scotch broth, with barley and peas in it, and seemed very fond of the dish. I said, 'You never ate it before.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; but I don't care how soon I eat it again[271].' My cousin, Miss Dallas, formerly of Inverness, was married to Mr. Riddoch, one of the ministers of the English chapel here.

He was ill, and confined to his room; but she sent us a kind invitation to tea, which we all accepted. She was the same lively, sensible, cheerful woman as ever. Dr. Johnson here threw out some jokes against Scotland. He said, 'You go first to Aberdeen; then to _Enbru_ (the Scottish p.r.o.nunciation of Edinburgh); then to Newcastle, to be polished by the colliers; then to York; then to London.' And he laid hold of a little girl, Stuart Dallas, niece to Mrs. Riddoch, and, representing himself as a giant, said, he would take her with him! telling her, in a hollow voice, that he lived in a cave, and had a bed in the rock, and she should have a little bed cut opposite to it!

He thus treated the point, as to prescription of murder in Scotland[272]. 'A jury in England would make allowance for deficiencies of evidence, on account of lapse of time; but a general rule that a crime should not be punished, or tried for the purpose of punishment, after twenty years, is bad. It is cant to talk of the King's advocate delaying a prosecution from malice. How unlikely is it the King's advocate should have malice against persons who commit murder, or should even know them at all. If the son of the murdered man should kill the murderer who got off merely by prescription, I would help him to make his escape; though, were I upon his jury, I would not acquit him. I would not advise him to commit such an act. On the contrary, I would bid him submit to the determination of society, because a man is bound to submit to the inconveniences of it, as he enjoys the good: but the young man, though politically wrong, would not be morally wrong. He would have to say, 'here I am amongst barbarians, who not only refuse to do justice, but encourage the greatest of all crimes. I am therefore in a state of nature: for, so far as there is no law, it is a state of nature: and consequently, upon the eternal and immutable law of justice, which requires that he who sheds man's blood should have his blood shed[273], I will stab the murderer of my father.'

We went to our inn, and sat quietly. Dr. Johnson borrowed, at Mr.

Riddoch's, a volume of _Ma.s.sillon's Discourses on the Psalms_: but I found he read little in it. Ogden too he sometimes took up, and glanced at; but threw it down again. I then entered upon religious conversation.

Never did I see him in a better frame: calm, gentle, wise, holy. I said, 'Would not the same objection hold against the Trinity as against Transubstantiation?' 'Yes, (said he,) if you take three and one in the same sense. If you do so, to be sure you cannot believe it: but the three persons in the G.o.dhead are Three in one sense, and One in another.

We cannot tell how; and that is the mystery!'

I spoke of the satisfaction of Christ. He said his notion was, that it did not atone for the sins of the world; but, by satisfying divine justice, by shewing that no less than the Son of G.o.d suffered for sin, it shewed to men and innumerable created beings, the heinousness of it, and therefore rendered it unnecessary for divine vengeance to be exercised against sinners, as it otherwise must have been; that in this way it might operate even in favour of those who had never heard of it: as to those who did hear of it, the effect it should produce would be repentance and piety, by impressing upon the mind a just notion of sin: that original sin was the propensity to evil, which no doubt was occasioned by the fall. He presented this solemn subject in a new light to me[274], and rendered much more rational and clear the doctrine of what our Saviour has done for us;--as it removed the notion of imputed righteousness in co-operating; whereas by this view, Christ has done all already that he had to do, or is ever to do for mankind, by making his great satisfaction; the consequences of which will affect each individual according to the particular conduct of each. I would ill.u.s.trate this by saying, that Christ's satisfaction resembles a sun placed to shew light to men, so that it depends upon themselves whether they will walk the right way or not, which they could not have done without that sun, '_the sun of righteousness_[275]' There is, however, more in it than merely giving light--_a light to lighten the Gentiles_[276]: for we are told, there _is healing under his wings_[277]. Dr. Johnson said to me, 'Richard Baxter commends a treatise by Grotius, _De Satisfactione Christi_. I have never read it: but I intend to read it; and you may read it.' I remarked, upon the principle now laid down, we might explain the difficult and seemingly hard text, 'They that believe shall be saved; and they that believe not shall be d.a.m.ned[278]:' They that believe shall have such an impression made upon their minds, as will make them act so that they may be accepted by G.o.d.

We talked of one of our friends[279] taking ill, for a length of time, a hasty expression of Dr. Johnson's to him, on his attempting to prosecute a subject that had a reference to religion, beyond the bounds within which the Doctor thought such topicks should be confined in a mixed company. JOHNSON. 'What is to become of society, if a friendship of twenty years is to be broken off for such a cause?' As Bacon says,

'Who then to frail mortality shall trust, But limns the water, or but writes in dust[280].'

I said, he should write expressly in support of Christianity; for that, although a reverence for it shines through his works in several places, that is not enough. 'You know, (said I,) what Grotius has done, and what Addison has done[281].--You should do also.' He replied, 'I hope I shall.'

MONDAY, AUGUST 23.

Princ.i.p.al Campbell, Sir Alexander Gordon, Professor Gordon, and Professor Ross, visited us in the morning, as did Dr. Gerard, who had come six miles from the country on purpose. We went and saw the Marischal College[282], and at one o'clock we waited on the magistrates in the town hall, as they had invited us in order to present Dr. Johnson with the freedom of the town, which Provost Jopp did with a very good grace. Dr. Johnson was much pleased with this mark of attention, and received it very politely. There was a pretty numerous company a.s.sembled. It was striking to hear all of them drinking 'Dr. Johnson!

Dr. Johnson!' in the town-hall of Aberdeen, and then to see him with his burgess-ticket, or diploma[283], in his hat, which he wore as he walked along the street, according to the usual custom. It gave me great satisfaction to observe the regard, and indeed fondness too, which every body here had for my father.

While Sir Alexander Gordon conducted Dr. Johnson to old Aberdeen, Professor Gordon and I called on Mr. Riddoch, whom I found to be a grave worthy clergyman. He observed, that, whatever might be said of Dr.

Johnson while he was alive, he would, after he was dead, be looked upon by the world with regard and astonishment, on account of his _Dictionary_.

Professor Gordon and I walked over to the Old College, which Dr. Johnson had seen by this time. I stepped into the chapel, and looked at the tomb of the founder, Archbishop Elphinston[284], of whom I shall have occasion to write in my _History of James IV. of Scotland_, the patron of my family[285]. We dined at Sir Alexander Gordon's. The Provost, Professor Ross, Professor Dunbar, Professor Thomas Gordon, were there.

After dinner came in Dr. Gerard, Professor Leslie[286], Professor Macleod. We had little or no conversation in the morning; now we were but barren. The professors seemed afraid to speak[287].