Life of Johnson Volume V Part 49

[454] See _ante_, i. 449.

[455] See _ante_, ii. 99.

[456] See _ante_, iii 198, note 1.

[457] 'Such is the laxity of Highland conversation, that the inquirer is kept in continual suspense, and by a kind of intellectual retrogradation knows less as he hears more.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 47. 'They are not much accustomed to be interrogated by others, and seem never to have thought upon interrogating themselves; so that if they do not know what they tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be false. Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries; and the result of his investigations was, that the answer to the second question was commonly such as nullified the answer to the first.' _Ib._, p. 114.

[458] Mr. Carruthers, in his edition of Boswell's _Hebrides_, says (p.

xiv):--'The new management and high rents took the tacksmen, or larger tenants, by surprise. They were indignant at the treatment they received, and selling off their stock they emigrated to America. In the twenty years from 1772 to 1792, sixteen vessels with emigrants sailed from the western sh.o.r.es of Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, containing about 6400 persons, who carried with them in specie at least 38,400. A desperate effort was made by the tacksmen on the estate of Lord Macdonald. They bound themselves by a solemn oath not to offer for any farm that might become vacant. The combination failed of its object, but it appeared so formidable in the eyes of the "English-bred chieftain,"

that he retreated precipitately from Skye and never afterwards returned.'

[459] Dr. Johnson seems to have forgotten that a Highlander going armed at this period incurred the penalty of serving as a common soldier for the first, and of transportation beyond sea for a second offence. And as for 'calling out his clan,' twelve Highlanders and a bagpipe made a rebellion. WALTER SCOTT.

[460] Mackintosh (_Life_ ii. 62) says that in Mme. du Deffand's _Correspondence_ there is 'an extraordinary confirmation of the talents and accomplishments of our Highland Phoenix, Sir James Macdonald. A Highland chieftain, admired by Voltaire, could have been no ordinary man.'

[461] This extraordinary young man, whom I had the pleasure of knowing intimately, having been deeply regretted by his country, the most minute particulars concerning him must be interesting to many. I shall therefore insert his two last letters to his mother, Lady Margaret Macdonald, which her ladyship has been pleased to communicate to me.

'Rome, July 9th, 1766. 'My DEAR MOTHER, 'Yesterday's post brought me your answer to the first letter in which I acquainted you of my illness.

Your tenderness and concern upon that account are the same I have always experienced, and to which I have often owed my life. Indeed it never was in so great danger as it has been lately; and though it would have been a very great comfort to me to have had you near me, yet perhaps I ought to rejoice, on your account, that you had not the pain of such a spectacle. I have been now a week in Rome, and wish I could continue to give you the same good accounts of my recovery as I did in my last; but I must own that, for three days past, I have been in a very weak and miserable state, which however seems to give no uneasiness to my physician. My stomach has been greatly out of order, without any visible cause; and the palpitation does not decrease. I am told that my stomach will soon recover its tone, and that the palpitation must cease in time.

So I am willing to believe; and with this hope support the little remains of spirits which I can be supposed to have, on the forty-seventh day of such an illness. Do not imagine I have relapsed;--I only recover slower than I expected. If my letter is shorter than usual, the cause of it is a dose of physick, which has weakened me so much to-day, that I am not able to write a long letter. I will make up for it next post, and remain always 'Your most sincerely affectionate son, 'J. MACDONALD.' He grew gradually worse; and on the night before his death he wrote as follows from Frescati:--'MY DEAR MOTHER, 'Though I did not mean to deceive you in my last letter from Rome, yet certainly you would have very little reason to conclude of the very great and constant danger I have gone through ever since that time. My life, which is still almost entirely desperate, did not at that time appear to me so, otherwise I should have represented, in its true colours, a fact which acquires very little horror by that means, and comes with redoubled force by deception. There is no circ.u.mstance of danger and pain of which I have not had the experience, for a continued series of above a fortnight; during which time I have settled my affairs, after my death, with as much distinctness as the hurry and the nature of the thing could admit of. In case of the worst, the Abbe Grant will be my executor in this part of the world, and Mr. Mackenzie in Scotland, where my object has been to make you and my younger brother as independent of the eldest as possible.' BOSWELL. Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 291), in 1779, thus mentions this 'younger brother':--'Macdonald abused Lord North in very gross, yet too applicable, terms; and next day pleaded he had been drunk, recanted, and was all admiration and esteem for his Lordship's talents and virtues.'

[462] See _ante_, iii. 85, and _post_, Oct. 28.

[463] Cheyne's English Malady, ed. 1733, p. 229.

[464] 'Weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.' _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2. See _ante_, iii. 350, where Boswell is reproached by Johnson with 'bringing in gabble,' when he makes this quotation.

[465] VARIOUS READINGS. Line 2. In the ma.n.u.script, Dr. Johnson, instead of _rupibus obsita_, had written _imbribus uvida_, and _uvida nubibus_, but struck them both out. Lines 15 and 16. Instead of these two lines, he had written, but afterwards struck out, the following:--

Parare posse, utcunque jactet Grandiloquus nimis alta Zeno.

BOSWELL. In Johnson's _Works_, i. 167, these lines are given with some variations, which perhaps are in part due to Mr. Langton, who, we are told (_ante_, Dec. 1784), edited some, if not indeed all, of Johnson's Latin poems.

[466] Cowper wrote to S. Rose on May 20, 1789:--'Browne was an entertaining companion when he had drunk his bottle, but not before; this proved a snare to him, and he would sometimes drink too much.'

Southey's _Cowper_, vi. 237. His _De Animi Immortalitate_ was published in 1754. He died in 1760, aged fifty-four. See _ante_, ii. 339.

[467] Boswell, in one of his _Hypochondriacks_ (_ante_, iv. 179) says:--'I do fairly acknowledge that I love Drinking; that I have a const.i.tutional inclination to indulge in fermented liquors, and that if it were not for the restraints of reason and religion, I am afraid I should be as constant a votary of Bacchus as any man.... Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living. Were we so framed that it were possible by perpetual supplies of wine to keep ourselves for ever gay and happy, there could be no doubt that drinking would be the _summum bonum_, the chief good, to find out which philosophers have been so variously busied. But we know from humiliating experience that men cannot be kept long in a state of elevated drunkenness.'

[468] That my readers may have my narrative in the style of the country through which I am travelling, it is proper to inform them, that the chief of a clan is denominated by his _surname_ alone, as M'Leod, M'Kinnon, M'lntosh. To prefix _Mr._ to it would be a degradation from _the_ M'Leod, &c. My old friend, the Laird of M'Farlane, the great antiquary, took it highly amiss, when General Wade called him Mr.

M'Farlane. Dr. Johnson said, he could not bring himself to use this mode of address; it seemed to him to be too familiar, as it is the way in which, in all other places, intimates or inferiors are addressed. When the chiefs have _t.i.tles_ they are denominated by them, as _Sir James Grant_, _Sir Allan M'Lean_. The other Highland gentlemen, of landed property, are denominated by their _estates_, as _Rasay_, _Boisdale_; and the wives of all of them have the t.i.tle of _ladies_. The _tacksmen_, or princ.i.p.al tenants, are named by their farms, as _Kingsburgh_, _Corrichatachin_; and their wives are called the _mistress_ of Kingsburgh, the _mistress_ of Corrichatachin.--Having given this explanation, I am at liberty to use that mode of speech which generally prevails in the Highlands and the Hebrides. BOSWELL.

[469] See _ante_, iii. 275.

[470] Boswell implies that Sir A. Macdonald's table had not been furnished plentifully. Johnson wrote:--'At night we came to a tenant's house of the first rank of tenants, where we were entertained better than at the landlord's.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 141.

[471] 'Little did I once think,' he wrote to her the same day, 'of seeing this region of obscurity, and little did you once expect a salutation from this verge of European life. I have now the pleasure of going where n.o.body goes, and seeing what n.o.body sees.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 120. About fourteen years since, I landed in Sky, with a party of friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was the first idea on every one's mind at landing. All answered separately that it was this Ode.

WALTER SCOTT.

[472] See Appendix B.

[473] 'I never was in any house of the islands, where I did not find books in more languages than one, if I staid long enough to want them, except one from which the family was removed.' Johnson's _Works_, ix.

50. He is speaking of 'the higher rank of the Hebridians,' for on p. 61 he says:--'The greater part of the islanders make no use of books.'

[474] There was a Mrs. Brooks, an actress, the daughter of a Scotchman named Watson, who had forfeited his property by 'going out in the '45.'

But according to _The Thespian Dictionary_ her first appearance on the stage was in 1786.

[475] Boswell mentions, _post_, Oct. 5, 'the famous Captain of Clanra.n.a.ld, who fell at Sherrif-muir.'

[476] See _ante_, p. 95.

[477] By John Macpherson, D.D. See _post_, Sept. 13.

[478] Sir Walter Scott, when in Sky in 1814, wrote:--'We learn that most of the Highland superst.i.tions, even that of the second sight, are still in force.' Lockhart's _Scott_, ed. 1839, iv. 305. See _.ante_, ii.

10, 318.

[479] Of him Johnson wrote:--'One of the ministers honestly told me that he came to Sky with a resolution not to believe it.' _Works_, ix. 106.

[480] 'By the term _second sight_ seems to be meant a mode of seeing superadded to that which nature generally bestows. In the Erse it is called _Taisch_; which signifies likewise a spectre or a vision.'

_Johnson's Works_, ix. 105.

[481] Gray's _Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College_, 1. 44.

[482] A tonnage bounty of thirty shillings a ton was at this time given to the owners of busses or decked vessels for the encouragement of the white herring fishery. Adam Smith (_Wealth of Nations_, iv. 5) shews how mischievous was its effect.

[483] The Highland expression for Laird of Rasay. BOSWELL.

[484] 'In Sky I first observed the use of brogues, a kind of artless shoes, st.i.tched with thongs so loosely, that, though they defend the foot from stones, they do not exclude water.' Johnson's _Works_, ix 46.

[485] To evade the law against the tartan dress, the Highlanders used to dye their variegated plaids and kilts into blue, green, or any single colour. WALTER SCOTT.

[486] See _post_, Oct. 5.

[487] The Highlanders were all well inclined to the episcopalian form, _proviso_ that the right _king_ was prayed for. I suppose Malcolm meant to say, 'I will come to your church because you are honest folk,' viz.

_Jacobites_. WALTER SCOTT.

[488] See _ante_, i. 450, and ii. 291.

[489] Perhaps he was thinking of Johnson's letter of June 20, 1771 (_ante_, ii. 140), where he says:--'I hope the time will come when we may try our powers both with cliffs and water.'

[490] 'The wind blew enough to give the boat a kind of dancing agitation.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 142. 'The water was calm and the rowers were vigorous; so that our pa.s.sage was quick and pleasant.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 54.

[491]

'Caught in the wild Aegean seas, The sailor bends to heaven for ease.'

FRANCIS. Horace, 2, _Odes_, xvi. 1.

[492] See _ante_, iv. Dec. 9, 1784, note.