Life of Johnson Volume V Part 65

[1031] _Ante_, p. 51.

[1032] He repeated this advice in 1777. _Ante_, iii. 207.

[1033] 'Of their black cattle some are without horns, called by the Scots _humble_ cows, as we call a bee, an _humble_ bee, that wants a sting. Whether this difference be specifick, or accidental, though we inquired with great diligence, we could not be informed.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 78.

Johnson, in his _Dictionary_, gives the right derivation of humble-bee, from _hum_ and _bee_. The word _Humble-cow_ is found in _Guy Mannering_, ed. 1860, iii. 91:--'"Of a surety," said Sampson, "I deemed I heard his horse's feet." "That," said John, with a broad grin, "was Grizzel chasing the humble-cow out of the close."'

[1034] 'Even the cattle have not their usual beauty or n.o.ble head.'

Church and Brodribb's _Tacitus_.

[1035] 'The peace you seek is here--where is it not? If your own mind be equal to its lot.' CROKER. Horace, I _Epistles_, xi. 29.

[1036] Horace, I _Epistles_, xviii. 112.

[1037] This and the next paragraph are not in the first edition. The paragraph that follows has been altered so as to hide the fact that the minister spoken of was Mr. Dun. Originally it stood:--'Mr. Dun, though a man of sincere good principles as a presbyterian divine, discovered,'

&c. First edition, p. 478.

[1038] See _ante_, p. 120.

[1039] Old Lord Auchinleck was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient family; and, moreover, he was a strict presbyterian and Whig of the old Scottish cast. This did not prevent his being a terribly proud aristocrat; and great was the contempt he entertained and expressed for his son James, for the nature of his friendships and the character of the personages of whom he was _engoue_ one after another. 'There's nae hope for Jamie, mon,' he said to a friend. 'Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, mon? He's done wi'

Paoli--he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon?' Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. 'A _dominie_, mon--an auld dominie: he keeped a schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy.' Probably if this had been reported to Johnson, he would have felt it more galling, for he never much liked to think of that period of his life [_ante_, i.97, note 2]; it would have aggravated his dislike of Lord Auchinleck's Whiggery and presbyterianism. These the old lord carried to such a height, that once, when a countryman came in to state some justice business, and being required to make his oath, declined to do so before his lordship, because he was not a _covenanted_ magistrate. 'Is that a'your objection, mon?' said the judge; 'come your ways in here, and we'll baith of us tak the solemn league and covenant together.' The oath was accordingly agreed and sworn to by both, and I dare say it was the last time it ever received such homage. It may be surmised how far Lord Auchinleck, such as he is here described, was likely to suit a high Tory and episcopalian like Johnson. As they approached Auchinleck, Boswell conjured Johnson by all the ties of regard, and in requital of the services he had rendered him upon his tour, that he would spare two subjects in tenderness to his father's prejudices; the first related to Sir John Pringle, president of the Royal Society, about whom there was then some dispute current: the second concerned the general question of Whig and Tory. Sir John Pringle, as Boswell says, escaped, but the controversy between Tory and Covenanter raged with great fury, and ended in Johnson's pressing upon the old judge the question, what good Cromwell, of whom he had said something derogatory, had ever done to his country; when, after being much tortured, Lord Auchinleck at last spoke out, 'G.o.d, Doctor! he gart kings ken that they had a _lith_ in their neck'--he taught kings they had a _joint_ in their necks. Jamie then set to mediating between his father and the philosopher, and availing himself of the judge's sense of hospitality, which was punctilious, reduced the debate to more order. WALTER SCOTT. Paoli had visited Auchinleck. Boswell wrote to Garrick on Sept. 18, 1771:--'I have just been enjoying the very great happiness of a visit from my ill.u.s.trious friend, Pascal Paoli. He was two nights at Auchinleck, and you may figure the joy of my worthy father and me at seeing the Corsican hero in our romantic groves.' _Garrick Corres_. i. 436. Johnson was not blind to Cromwell's greatness, for he says (_Works_, vii. 197), that 'he wanted nothing to raise him to heroick excellence but virtue.' Lord Auchinleck's famous saying had been antic.i.p.ated by Quin, who, according to Davies (_Life of Garrick_, ii. 115), had said that 'on a thirtieth of January every king in Europe would rise with a crick in his neck.'

[1040] See _ante_, p. 252.

[1041] James Durham, born 1622, died 1658, wrote many theological works.

Chalmers's _Biog. Dict_. In the _Brit. Mus. Cata_. I can find no work by him on the _Galatians_; Lord Auchinleck's triumph therefore was, it seems, more artful than honest.

[1042] Gray, it should seem, had given the name earlier. His friend Bonstetten says that about the year 1769 he was walking with him, when Gray 'exclaimed with some bitterness, "Look, look, Bonstetten! the great bear! There goes _Ursa Major_!" This was Johnson. Gray could not abide him.' Sir Egerton Brydges, quoted in Gosse's _Gray_, iii. 371. For the epithet _bear_ applied to Johnson see _ante_, ii. 66, 269, note i, and iv. 113, note 2. Boswell wrote on June 19, 1775:--'My father harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think, how shockingly erroneous!), and wandering (or some such phrase) to London.' _Letters of Boswell_, p. 207.

[1043] It is remarkable that Johnson in his _Life of Blackmore_ [_Works_, viii. 42] calls the imaginary Mr. Johnson of the _Lay Monastery_ 'a constellation of excellence.' CROKER.

[1044] Page 121. BOSWELL. See also _ante_, iii. 336.

[1045] 'The late Sir Alexander Boswell,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, 'was a proud man, and, like his grandfather, thought that his father lowered himself by his deferential suit and service to Johnson. I have observed he disliked any allusion to the book or to Johnson himself, and I have heard that Johnson's fine picture by Sir Joshua was sent upstairs out of the sitting apartments at Auchinleck.' _Croker Corres_. ii. 32. This portrait, which was given by Sir Joshua to Boswell (Taylor's _Reynolds_, i. 147), is now in the possession of Mr. Charles Morrison.

[1046] 'I have always said that first Whig was the devil.' _Ante_, iii.

326

[1047] See _ante_, ii. 26.

[1048] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 266) has paid this tribute. 'Lord Elibank,' he writes, 'had a mind that embraced the greatest variety of topics, and produced the most original remarks. ... He had been a lieutenant-colonel in the army and was at the siege of Carthagena, of which he left an elegant account (which I'm afraid is lost). He was a Jacobite, and a member of the famous Cocoa-tree Club, and resigned his commission on some disgust.' Dr. Robertson and John Home were his neighbours in the country, 'who made him change or soften down many of his original opinions, and prepared him for becoming a most agreeable member of the Literary Society of Edinburgh.' Smollett in _Humphry Clinker_ (Letter of July 18), describes him as 'a n.o.bleman whom I have long revered for his humanity and universal intelligence, over and above the entertainment arising from the originality of his character.'

Boswell, in the _London Mag._ 1779, p. 179, thus mentions the Cocoa-tree Club:--'But even at Court, though I see much external obeisance, I do not find congenial sentiments to warm my heart; and except when I have the conversation of a very few select friends, I am never so well as when I sit down to a dish of coffee in the Cocoa Tree, sacred of old to loyalty, look round me to men of ancient families, and please myself with the consolatory thought that there is perhaps more good in the nation than I know.'

[1049] Johnson's _Works_, vii. 380. See _ante_, i. 81.

[1050] See _ante_, p. 53.

[1051] The Mitre tavern. _Ante_, i. 425.

[1052] Of this Earl of Kelly Boswell records the following pun:--'At a dinner at Mr. Crosbie's, when the company were very merry, the Rev. Dr.

Webster told them he was sorry to go away so early, but was obliged to catch the tide, to cross the Firth of Forth. "Better stay a little,"

said Thomas Earl of Kelly, "till you be half-seas over."' Rogers's _Boswelliana_, p. 325.

[1053] See _ante_, i. 354.

[1054] In the first edition, _and his son the advocate_. Under this son, A. F. Tytler, afterwards a Lord of Session by the t.i.tle of Lord Woodhouselee, Scott studied history at Edinburgh College. Lockhart's _Scott_, ed. 1839, i. 59, 278.

[1055] See _ante_, i. 396, and ii. 296.

[1056] 'If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, let us not fill the vacuity with Ossian. If we have not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 116. Horace Walpole wrote on May 22, 1766 (_Letters_, iv.

500):--'Oh! but we have discovered a race of giants! Captain Byron has found a nation of Brobdignags on the coast of Patagonia; the inhabitants on foot taller than he and his men on horseback. I don't indeed know how he and his sailors came to be riding in the South Seas. However, it is a terrible blow to the Irish, for I suppose all our dowagers now will be for marrying Patagonians.'

[1057] I desire not to be understood as agreeing _entirely_ with the opinions of Dr. Johnson, which I relate without any remark. The many imitations, however, of _Fingal_, that have been published, confirm this observation in a considerable degree. BOSWELL. Johnson said to Sir Joshua of Ossian:--'Sir, a man might write such stuff for ever, if he would _abandon_ his mind to it.' _Ante_, iv. 183.

[1058] In the first edition (p. 485) this paragraph ran thus:--'Young Mr. Tytler stepped briskly forward, and said, "_Fingal_ is certainly genuine; for I have heard a great part of it repeated in the original."--Dr. Johnson indignantly asked him, "Sir, do you understand the original?"--_Tytler_. "No, Sir."--_Johnson_. "Why, then, we see to what this testimony comes:--Thus it is."--He afterwards said to me, "Did you observe the wonderful confidence with which young Tytler advanced, with his front already _brased_?"'

[1059] For _in company_ we should perhaps read _in the company_.

[1060] In the first edition, _this gentleman's talents and integrity are_, &c.

[1061] 'A Scotchman must be a very st.u.r.dy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth: he will always love it better than inquiry; and if falsehood flatters his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 116. See _ante_, ii. 311.

[1062] See _ante_, p. 164.

[1063] See _ante_, p. 242.

[1064] See _ante_, iv. 253.

[1065] Lord Chief Baron Geoffrey Gilbert published in 1760 a book on the Law of Evidence.

[1066] See _ante_, ii. 302.

[1067] Three instances, _ante_, pp. 160, 320.

[1068] See _ante_, ii. 318.

[1069] An instance is given in Sacheverell's _Account of the Isle of Man_, ed. 1702, p. 14.

[1070] Mr. J. T. Clark, the Keeper of the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, obligingly informs me that in the margin of the copy of Boswell's _Journal_ in that Library it is stated that this cause was _Wilson versus Maclean_.

[1071] See _ante_, iv. 74, note 3.

[1072] See _ante_, iii 69, 183.

[1073] He is described in _Guy Mannering_, ed. 1860, iv. 98.

[1074] See _ante_, p. 50.