Hebrid. ment of Scotland sat, and where the ordinary lords Tour to of session hold their courts, and to the new sessionhouse adjoining to it, where our court of fifteen (the fourteen ordinaries, with the lord president at their head) sit as a court of review. We went to the advocates' library, of which Dr. Johnson took a cursory view, and then to what is called the Laigh (or under) parliament-house, where the records of Scotland, which has an universal security by register, are deposited, till the great register office be finished. I was pleased to behold Dr. Samuel Johnson rolling about in this old magazine of antiquities. There was, by this time, a pretty numerous circle of us attending upon him. Somebody talked of happy moments for composition, and how a man can write at one time, and not at another. Nay," said Dr. Johnson," a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly' to it." 66 I here began to indulge old Scottish sentiments, and to express a warm regret, that, by our union with England, we were no more; our independent kingdom was lost. JOHNSON. "Sir, never talk of your independency, who could let your queen remain twenty years in captivity, and then be put to death, without even a pretence of justice, without your ever attempting to rescue her; and such a queen too! as every man of any gallantry of spirit would have sacrificed his life for." Worthy MR. JAMES KERR, keeper of the records. "Half our nation was bribed by English money." JOHNSON." Sir, that is no defence that makes you worse." Good MR. BROWN, keeper of the advocates' library. "We had better say nothing about it." BOSWELL. "You This word is commonly used to signify sullenly, gloomily; and in that sense alone it appears in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary. I suppose he meant by it, "with an obstinate resolution, similar to that of a sullen man."-Boswell. Tour to would have been glad, however, to have had us last Hebrid. war, sir, to fight your battles!" JOHNSON. “We should have had you for the same price, though there had been no union, as we might have had Swiss, or other troops. No, no, I shall agree to a separation. You have only to go home." Just as he had said this, I, to divert the subject, showed him the signed assurances of the three successive kings of the Hanover family, to maintain the presbyterian establishment in Scotland. "We'll give you that," said he, "into the bargain'." We next went to the great church of St. Giles, which has lost its original magnificence in the inside, by being divided into four places of presbyterian worship. "Come," said Dr. Johnson jocularly to Principal Robertson, "let me see what was once a church!" We entered that division which was formerly called the New Church, and of late the High Church, so well known by the eloquence of Dr. Hugh Blair. It is now very elegantly fitted up; but it was then shamefully dirty. Dr. Johnson said nothing at the time; but when we came to the great door of the royal infirmary, where, upon a board, was this inscription, " Clean your feet!" he turned about slyly, and said, "There is no occasion for putting this at the doors of your churches!" We then conducted him down the Posthouse-stairs, Parliament-close, and made him look up from the Cowgate to the highest building in Edinburgh (from which he had just descended), being thirteen floors [The meaning seems to be that, in a fit of jacobite jocularity, Johnson was willing, in consideration of the dissolution of the Union, to allow the Hanover family to reign in Scotland, inferring, of course, that the Stuarts were to reign in England ED.] 2 I have hitherto called him Dr. William Robertson, to distinguish him from Dr. James Robertson, who is soon to make his appearance; but Principal, from his being the head of our college, is his usual designation, and is shorter: so I shall use it hereafter.-BoSWELL. Hebrid. or stories from the ground upon the back elevation; Tour to the front wall being built upon the edge of the hill, and the back wall rising from the bottom of the hill several stories before it comes to a level with the front wall. We proceeded to the college, with the principal at our head. Dr. Adam Fergusson, whose " Essay on the History of Civil Society" gives him a respectable place in the ranks of literature, was with us. As the college buildings are indeed very mean, the principal said to Dr. Johnson, that he must give them the same epithet that a jesuit did when showing a poor college abroad: "He miseriæ nostræ." Dr. Johnson was, however, much pleased with the library, and with the conversation of Dr. James Robertson, professor of oriental languages, the librarian. We talked of Kennicot's edition of the Hebrew Bible, and hoped it would be quite faithful. JOHNSON. "Sir, I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit, as poisoning the sources of eternal truth." 66 I pointed out to him where there formerly stood an old wall enclosing part of the college, which I remember bulged out in a threatening manner, and of which there was a common tradition similar to that concerning Bacon's study at Oxford, that it would fall upon some very learned man. It had some time before this been taken down, that the street might be widened, and a more convenient wall built. Dr. Johnson, glad of an opportunity to have a pleasant hit at Scottish learning, said," they have been afraid it never would fall." We showed him the royal infirmary, for which, and for every other exertion of generous publick spirit in his power, that noble-minded citizen of Edinburgh, George Drummond, will be ever held in [See ante, vol. i. p. 386.—ED.] Hebrid. Tour to honourable remembrance. And we were too proud not to carry him to the abbey of Holyrood House, that beautiful piece of architecture, but, alas! that deserted mansion of royalty, which Hamilton of Bangour, in one of his elegant poems', calls "A virtuous palace, where no monarch dwells." I was much entertained while Principal Robertson fluently harangued to Dr. Johnson, upon the spot, concerning scenes of his celebrated History of Scotland. We surveyed that part of the palace appropriated to the Duke of Hamilton, as keeper, in which our beautiful Queen Mary lived, and in which David Rizzio was murdered, and also the state rooms. Dr. Johnson was a great reciter of all sorts of things, serious or comical. I overheard him repeating here, in a kind of muttering tone, a line of the old ballad, Johnny Armstrong's Last Good Night." 66 "And ran him through the fair body?!" We returned to my house, where there met him, at dinner, the Duchess of Douglas3, Sir Adolphus Oughton, Lord Chief Baron [Orde], Sir William Forbes, Principal Robertson, Mr. Cullen, advocate. Before dinner, he told us of a curious conversation between the famous George Faulkner and him. George said, that England had drained Ireland of fifty thousand pounds in specie, annually, for fifty [We may suspect that Mr. Boswell's admiration of Hamilton was enhanced by something even stronger than mere nationality. Mr. Hamilton was a gentleman of Ayrshire, Mr. Boswell's own county, and actually bore arms at Culloden for the jacobite cause. The poem from which this line is quoted is called an epitaph, and is filled with alternate satire and eulogy on persons now forgotten. The line itself appears to be nonsense; a virtuous hovel, where no shepherd dwells," would have just as much meaning.-ED.] The stanza from which he took this line is, "But then rose up all Edinburgh, They rose up by thousands three; A cowardly Scot came John behind, And ran him through the fair body!"-BOSWELL. 3 [Margaret, daughter of James Douglas, esq. of the Mains. "An old lady," writes Dr. Johnson," who talks broad Scotch with a paralytic voice, and is scarce understood by her own countrymen."-Letters, v. i. 209.-ED.] years. How so, sir?" said Dr. Johnson: "you Tour to "No trade." "Very "From whence, then, "Come! why out of must have very great trade?" clear, but he is shallow. In coarse humour he is We gave him as good a dinner as we could. Our Scotch muir-fowl, or grouse, were then abundant, and quite in season; and, so far as wisdom and wit can be aided by administering agreeable sensations to the palate, my wife took care that our great guest should not be deficient. Sir Adolphus Oughton, then our deputy commander in chief, who was not only an excellent officer, but one of the most universal scholars I ever [There probably was no opportunity for what could be, in strictness, called personal offence, as there was no personal intercourse between Swift and Johnson; but the editor agrees with Mr. Boswell in suspecting that there was some such cause for Johnson's otherwise "unaccountable prejudice" (see unte, vol. i. p. 103). What could Johnson mean by calling Swift "shallow ?" If he be shallow, who, in his department of literature, is profound? Without admitting that Swift was "inferior in coarse humour to Arbuthnot" (of whose precise share in the works to which he is supposed to have contributed, we know little or nothing), it may be observed, that he who is second to the greatest masters of different styles may be said to be the first on the whole. See as to the Tale of a Tub, ante, vol. i. p. 464.-ED.] 2 [Lord Stowell remembers with pleasure the elegance and extent of Sir Adolphus Oughton's literature, and the suavity of his manners.—ED.] Hebrid. |