We cannot but admire his spirit, when we know, that amidst a complication of bodily and mental distress, he was still animated with the desire of intellectual improvement. Various notes of his studies appear on different days, in his manuscript diary of this year; such as, "Inchoari lectionem Pentateuchi. Finivi lectionem Conf. Fab. Burdonum. Legi primum actum Troadum. Legi Dissertationem Clerici postremam de Pent. 2 of Clark's Sermons. L. Apollonii pugnam Betriciam. L. centum versus Homeri.” Let this serve as a specimen of what accessions of literature he was perpetually infusing into his mind, while he charged himself with idleness. This year died Mrs. Salusbury (mother of Mrs. Thrale), a lady whom he appears to have esteemed much, and whose memory he honoured with an epitaph.2 In a letter from Edinburgh, dated the 29th of May, I pressed him to persevere in his resolution to make this year the projected visit to the Hebrides, of which he and I had talked for many years, and which I was confident would afford us much entertainment. JOHNSON TO BOSWELL. "Johnson's Court, July 5. 1773. "Dear Sir, When your letter came to me, I was so darkened by an inflammation in my eye that I could not for some time read it. I can now write without trouble, and can read large prints. My eye is gradually growing stronger; and I hope will be able to take some delight in the survey of a Caledonian loch. "Chambers is going a judge, with six thousand a year, to Bengal. He and I shall come down together as far as Newcastle, and thence I shall easily get to Edinburgh. Let me know the exact time when your courts intermit. I must conform a little to Chambers's occasions, and he must conform a little to mine. The time which you shall fix must be the common point to which we will come as near as we can. Except this eye, I am very well. "Beattie is so caressed, and invited, and treated, and liked, and flattered by the great, that I can see nothing of him. I am in great hope that he will be well provided for, and then we will live upon him at the Marischal College, without pity or modesty. 1 Not six months before his death, he wished me to teach him the scale of music: " Dr. Burney, teach me at least the alphabet of your language."-BURNEY. 2 This event also furnished him with a subject of meditation for the evening of June the 18th, on which day this lady died: Friday, June 18. 1773. This day, after dinner, died Mrs. Salusbury; she had for some days almost lost the power of speaking. Yesterday, as I touched her hand, and kissed it, she pressed my hand between her two hands, which she pro. bably intended as the parting caress. At night her speech returned a little; and she said, among other things, to her 66 left the town without taking leave of me, and is gone in deep dudgeon to Is not this very childish? Where is now my legacy? "I hope your dear lady and her dear baby are both well. I shall see them too when I come; and I have that opinion of your choice, as to suspect that when I have seen Mrs. Boswell, I shall be less willing to go away. I am, dear Sir, your affectionate humble servant, SAM. JOHNSON. "Write to me as soon as you can. now at Oxford." Chambers is I again wrote to him, informing him that the court of session rose on the 12th of August, hoping to see him before that time, and expressing, perhaps in too extravagant terms, my admiration of him, and my expectation of pleasure from our intended tour. JOHNSON TO BOSWELL. "August 3. 1773. "DEAR SIR, -I shall set out from London on Friday the 6th of this month, and purpose not to loiter much by the way. Which day I shall be at Edinburgh, I cannot exactly tell. I suppose I must drive to an inn, and send a porter to find you. "I am afraid Beattie will not be at his college soon enough for us, and I shall be sorry to miss him; but there is no staying for the concurrence of all conveniences. We will do as well as we can. I am, Sir, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." JOHNSON TO BOSWELL. **August 3, 1773. "DEAR SIR, - Not being at Mr. Thrale's when your letter came, I had written the inclosed paper and sealed it; bringing it hither for a frank, I found yours. If any thing could repress my ardour, it would be such a letter as yours. To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed. Think only. when you see me, that you see a man who loves you, and is proud and glad that you love him. am, Sir, your most affectionate, "SAM. JOHNSON," daughter, I have had much time, and I hope I have used it This morning, being called about nine to feel her puist. 1 said, at parting, God bless you, for Jesus Christ's sake 82 smiled, as pleased. She had her senses perhaps to the dy the moment."[Pr. and Med., p. 127.] He complains, about the period, that his memory had been for a long time very mat confused; and that names, and persons, and events s'ale away strangely from him. "But," he adds, "I grow emirt" [16. p. 129.] CROKER. 34 Both these blanks must be filled with Langton. See last page.-CROKER. DR. JOHNSON had', for many years, given me hopes that we should go together and visit the Hebrides. Martin's account of those islands had impressed us with a notion, that we might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to see; and to find simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of remote time or place, so near to our native great islands, was an object within the reach of reasonable curiosity. Dr. Johnson has said in his "Journey," that "he scarcely remembered how the wish to visit the Hebrides was excited;" but he told me, in summer, 1763, that his father put Martin's account into his hands when he was very young, and that he was much pleased with it. We reckoned there would be some inconveniences and hardships, and perhaps a little danger; but these, we were persuaded, were magnified in the imagination of every body. When I was at Ferney, in 1754, I mentioned our design to Voltaire. He looked at me, as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and said, "You do not insist on my accompanying you?"-"No, sir." "Then I am very willing you should go." I was not afraid that our curious expedition would be prevented by such apprehensions; but I doubted that it would not be possible to prevail on Dr. Johnson to relinquish, for some time, the felicity of a London life, which, to a man who can enjoy it with full intellectual relish, is apt to make existence in any narrower sphere seem insipid ! Here begins the Journal of the Tour to the Hebrides, to which Mr. Boswell had prefixed two mottos, the first in the title-page, from Pope: "O! while along the stream of time thy name The other on a fly-leaf, from Baker's Chronicle: "He was of an admirable pregnancy of wit, and that Pregnancy much improved by continual study from his childhood; by which he had gotten such a promptness in expressing his mind, that his extemporal speeches were little inferior to his premeditated writings. Many, no doubt, had read as much, and perhaps more than he; but scarce ever any concocted his reading into judgment as he did." Mr. Boswell tells us that Johnson read this journal as it proceeded, which, strange as the reader will think it, when he comes to read some passages of it, Johnson himself conarms; for he says to Mrs. Thrale, " You never told me, and I omitted to inquire, how you were entertained by Boswell's Journal. One would think the man had been hired to be a spy upon me. He was very diligent, and caught oppor or irksome. I doubted that he would not be willing to come down from his elevated state of philosophical dignity; from a superiority of wisdom among the wise, and of learning among the learned; and from flashing his wit upon minds bright enough to reflect it. He had disappointed my expectations so long, that I began to despair; but, in spring, 1773, he talked of coming to Scotland that year with so much firmness, that I hoped he was at last in earnest. I knew that, if he were once launched from the metropolis, he would go forward very well; and I got our common friends there to assist in setting him afloat. To Mrs. Thrale, in particular, whose enchantment over him seldom failed, I was much obliged.3 It was, "I'll give thee a wind."-"Thou art kind." To attract him, we had invitations from the chiefs Macdonald and Macleod; and, for additional aid, I wrote to Lord Elibank, Dr. William Robertson, and Dr. Beattie. To Dr. Robertson, so far as my letter concerned the present subject, I wrote as follows: "Our friend, Mr. Samuel Johnson, is in great health and spirits; and, I do think, has a serious resolution to visit Scotland this year. The more attraction, however, the better; and, therefore, though I know he will be happy to meet you there, this, you express yourself concerning it with that it will forward the scheme, if, in your answer to power of which you are so happily possessed, and which may be so directed as to operate strongly upon him." quite as I could have wished. It was written His answer to that part of my letter was with the address and persuasion of the histo rian of America. "When I saw you last, you gave us some hopes that you might prevail with Mr. Johnson to make tion of which we have long flattered ourselves. If out that excursion to Scotland, with the expectahe could order matters so as to pass some time in Edinburgh, about the close of the summer season, and then visit some of the Highland scenes, I am confident he would be pleased with the grand features of nature in many parts of this country: he will meet with many persons here who respect tunities of writing from time to time. You may now conceive yourself tolerably well acquainted with the expedition."Letters, vol. i. p. 233. CROKER. 2 It is entitled, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, by M. Martin, Gent., 1703. A second edition appeared in 1761. On a copy of Martin in the Advocates' Library I found, last summer (1834), the following note in the handwriting of Mr. Boswell: This very book accompanied Mr. Samuel Johnson and me in our Tour to the Hebrides, in autumn 1773. Mr. Johnson told me that he had read Martin when he was very young. Martin was a native of the Isle of Sky, where a number of his relatives still remain. His book is a very imperfect performance, and he is erroneous as to many particulars, even some concerning his own island. Yet, as it is the only book upon the subject, it is very generally known. I have seen a second edition of it. I cannot but have a kindness for him, notwithstanding his defects. James Boswell." — UPCOTT. 3 She gives, in one of her letters to Dr. Johnson, the reasons which induced her to approve this excursion:--"Fatigue is profitable to your health, upon the whole, and keeps fancy from playing foolish tricks. Exercise for your body, and exertion for your mind, will contribute more than all the medicine in the universe to preserve that life we all consider as invaluable."— Letters, vol. i. p. 190. — CROKER. him, and some whom I am persuaded he will think not unworthy of his esteem. I wish he would make the experiment. He sometimes cracks his jokes upon us; but he will find that we can distinguish between the stabs of malevolence and the rebukes of the righteous, which are like excellent oil', and break not the head. Offer my best compliments to him, and assure him that I shall be happy to have the satisfaction of seeing him under my roof." To Dr. Beattie I wrote, "The chief intention of this letter is to inform you, that I now seriously believe Mr. Samuel Johnson will visit Scotland this year: but I wish that every power of attraction may be employed to secure our having so valuable an acquisition, and therefore I hope you will, without delay, write to me what I know you think, that I may read it to the mighty sage, with proper emphasis, before I leave London, which I must do soon. He talks of you with the same warmth that he did last year. We are to see as much of Scotland as we can, in the months of August and September. We shall not be long of being at Marischal College. He is particularly desirous of seeing some of the Western Islands." Dr. Beattie did better: ipse venit. He was, however, so polite as to wave his privilege of nil mihi rescribas, and wrote from Edinburgh as follows: "Your very kind and agreeable favour of the 20th of April overtook me here yesterday, after having gone to Aberdeen, which place I left about a week ago. I am to set out this day for London, and hope to have the honour of paying my respects to Mr. Johnson and you, about a week or ten days hence. I shall then do what I can to enforce the topic you mention; but at present I cannot enter upon it, as I am in a very great hurry, for I intend to begin my journey within an hour or two." He was as good as his word, and threw some pleasing motives into the northern scale. But, indeed, Mr. Johnson loved all that he heard, from one whom he tells us, in his Lives of the Poets, Gray found a poet, a philosopher, and a good man." 66 My Lord Elibank did not answer my letter to his lordship for some time. The reason will appear when we come to the Isle of Sky. I shall then insert my letter, with letters from his lordship, both to myself and Mr. Johnson. I beg it may be understood, that I insert my own letters, as I relate my own sayings, rather as keys to what is valuable belonging to others, than for their own sake. Luckily Mr. Justice (now Sir Robert) Chambers, who was about to sail for the East Indies, was going to take leave of his relations at Newcastle, and he conducted Dr. Johnson 1 Our friend Edmund Burke, who, by this time, had received some pretty severe strokes from Dr. Johnson, on account of the unhappy difference in their politics, upon my repeating this passage to him, exclaimed, "Oil of vitriol!" - BOSWELL. Mr. Scott, of University College, Oxford, afterwards Sir William Scott and Lord Stowell, accompanied him from thence to Edinburgh. With such propitious convoys did he proceed to my native city. But, lest metaphor should make it be supposed he actually went by sea, I choose to mention that he travelled in post-chaises, of which the rapid motion was one of his most favourite amusements. Dr. Samuel Johnson's character, religious, moral, political, and literary, nay, his figure and manner, are, I believe, more generally known than those of almost any man; yet may not be superfluous here to attempt a sketch of him. Let my readers, then, remember that he was a sincere and zealous Christian, of high church of England and monarchical principles, which he would not tamely suffer to be ques tioned; steady and inflexible in maintaining the obligations of piety and virtue, both from a regard to the order of society, and from a veneration for the Great Source of all order; correct, nay, stern in his taste; hard to please, and easily offended; impetuous and irritable in his temper, but of a most humane and benevolent heart; having a mind stored with a vast and various collection of learning and liar perspicuity and force, in rich and choice knowledge, which he communicated with pecuexpression. He united a most logical head with a most fertile imagination, which gave him an extraordinary advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he saw best for the moment. He could, when he chose it, be the greatest sophist that ever wielded a weapon in the schools of declamation, but he indulged this only in conversation; for he owned he sometimes talked for victory; he was too conscientious to make error permanent and pernicious, by deliberately writing it. He was conscious of his superiority. He loved praise when it was brought to him; but was too proud to seek for it. He was somewhat susceptible of flattery. His mind was so full of imagery, that he might have been perpetually a poet. It has often been remarked, that in his poetical pieces, which it is to be regretted are so few, because so excellent, his style is easier than in his prose. There is 2 This, I find, is a Scotticism. I should have said, “It will not be long before we shall be at Marischal College."BOSWELL. In spite of this warning, Walter Scott fell into the same error, "The light foot of Mordaunt was not long of bearing him to Jarlok." Pirate, c. viii. - CROKER, 1846. deception in this: it is not easier, but better suited to the dignity of verse; as one may dance with grace, whose motions, in ordinary walking, in the common step, are awkward. He had a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking: yet, though grave and awful in his deportment, when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himself in pleasantry and sportive sallies. He was prone to superstition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous and the mysterious, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy. He had a loud voice, and a slow, deliberate utterance, which no doubt gave some additional weight to the sterling metal of his conversation. Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, with a happy pleasantry, and some truth, that "Dr. Johnson's sayings would not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bow-wow way." But I admit the truth of this, only on some occasions. The Messiah played upon the Canterbury organ is more sublime than when played on an inferior instrument; but very slight music will seem grand, when conveyed to the ear through that majestic medium. While, therefore, Dr. Johnson's sayings are read, let his manner be taken along with them. Let it, however, be observed, that the sayings themselves are generally great; that, though he might be an ordinary composer at times, he was for the most part a Handel. His person was large, robust, I may say approaching to the gigantic, and grown unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was naturally of the cast of an ancient statue, but somewhat disfigured by the scars of that evil, which, it was formerly imagined, the royal touch could cure. He was now in his sixtyfourth year, and was become a little dull of hearing. His sight had always been somewhat weak; yet, so much does mind govern, and even supply the deficiency of organs, that his perceptions were uncommonly quick and accurate. His head, and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions', of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus's dance. He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted hair-buttons of the same colour, a large bushy greyish wig, a plain shirt, black worsted stockings, and silver buckles. Upon his tour, when journeying, he wore boots, and a very wide brown cloth great coat, with pockets which might have almost held the two volumes of his folio Dictionary; and he carried in his hand a large English oak stick. Let me not be censured for mentioning such minute particulars: every thing relative to so great a man is worth observing. I remember Dr. Adam Smith, in his rhetorical lectures at Glasgow, told us he was glad to know that Milton wore latchets in his shoes instead of buckles.2 When I mention the oak stick, it is but letting Hercules have his club; and, by-and-by, my readers will find this stick will bud, and produce a good joke. This imperfect sketch of "the combination and the form" of that wonderful man, whom I venerated and loved while in this world, and after whom I gaze with humble hope, now that it has pleased Almighty God to call him to a better world, will serve to introduce to the fancy of my readers the capital object of the following journal, in the course of which I trust they will attain to a considerable degree of acquaintance with him. His prejudice against Scotland was announced almost as soon as he began to appear in the world of letters. In his "London," a poem, are the following nervous lines: "For who could leave, unbribed, Hibernia's land? The truth is, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, he allowed himself to look upon all nations but his own as barbarians: not only Hibernia and Scotland, but Spain, Italy, and France, are attacked in the same poem. If he was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because they were more in his way; because he thought their success in England rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit; and because he could not but see in them that nationality which I believe no liberal-minded Scotsman will deny. He was, indeed, if I may be allowed the phrase, at bottom much of a John Bull: much of a blunt true-born Englishman. There was a stratum of common clay under the rock of marble. He was voraciously fond of good eating; and he had a great deal of that quality called humour, which gives an oiliness and a gloss to every other quality. I am, I flatter myself, completely a citizen of the world. In my travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica, France, I never felt myself from home; and I sincerely Such they appeared to me; but, since the first edition, Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, that "Dr. Johnson's extraordinary gestures were only habits, in which he indulged himself at certain times. When in company, where he was Dot free, or when engaged earnestly in conversation, he never gave way to such habits, which proves that they were not involuntary" I still, however, think that these gestures were involuntary; for surely, had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in the public streets.- BOSWELL. See antè, p. 42. Sir Joshua's reasoning at large. Notwithstanding which, it seems the better opinion that these gestures were the consequence of nervous affections, and not of trick or habit. CROKER. 2 This was no great discovery; the fashion of shoe-buckles was long posterior to Milton's day. — CROKER. 1 love "every kindred and tongue and people and nation." I subscribe to what my late truly learned and philosophical friend Mr. Crosbie said, that the English are better animals than the Scots; they are nearer the sun; their blood is richer, and more mellow: but when I humour any of them in an outrageous contempt of Scotland, I fairly own I treat them as children. And thus I have, at some moments, found myself obliged to treat even Dr. Johnson. To Scotland, however, he ventured; and he returned from it in great good humour, with his prejudices much lessened, and with very grateful feelings of the hospitality with which he was treated; as is evident from that admirable work, his "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,” which, to my utter astonishment, has been misapprehended, even to rancour, by many of my countrymen. To have the company of Chambers and Scott, he delayed his journey so long, that the court of session, which rises on the 11th of August, was broke up before he got to Edinburgh. On Saturday, the 14th of August, 1773, late in the evening, I received a note from him, that he was arrived at Boyd's inn2, at the head of the Canongate. I went to him directly. He embraced me cordially; and I exulted in the thought that I now had him actually in Caledonia. Mr. Scott's amiable manners, and attachment to our Socrates, at once united me to him. He told me that, before I came in, the Doctor had unluckily had a bad specimen of Scottish cleanliness. He then drank no fermented liquor. He asked to have his lemonade made sweeter; upon which the waiter, with his greasy fingers, lifted a lump of sugar, and put it into it. The Doctor, in indignation, threw it out of the window. Scott said he was afraid he would have knocked the waiter down. Mr. Johnson [has since] told me that such another trick was played him at the house of a lady in Paris. He was to do me the honour to lodge under my roof. I regretted sincerely that I had not also a room for Mr. Scott. Mr. Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm, up the High Street, to my house in James's Court; it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. | I heard a late baronet, of some distinction in the political world in the beginning of the present reign, observe, that "walking the streets of Edinburgh at night was pretty perilous, and a good deal odoriferous." The peril is much abated, by the care which the magistrates have taken to enforce the city laws against throwing foul water from the windows; but, from the structure of the houses in the old town, which consist of many stories, in each of which a different family lives, and there being no covered sewers, the odour still continues. A zealous Scotsman | would have wished Mr. Johnson to be without one of his five senses upon this occasion. As we marched slowly along, he grumbled in my ear, "I smell you in the dark?" But he acknowledged that the breadth of the street, and the loftiness of the buildings on each side, made a noble appearance. My wife had tea ready for him, which it is well known he delighted to drink at all hours, particularly when sitting up late, and of which his able defence against Mr. Jonas Hanway should have obtained him a magnificent reward much complacency upon finding that the from the East India Company. He showed mistress of the house was so attentive to his singular habit; and as no man could be more polite when he chose to be so, his address to her was most courteous and engaging; and his conversation soon charmed her into a forgetfulness of his external appearance. I did not begin to keep a regular full journal till some days after we had set ou from Edinburgh; but I have luckily preserved a good many fragments of his Memorabi from his very first evening in Scotland. We had a little before this had a trial for murder, in which the judges had allowed the lapse of twenty years since its commission as a plea in bar, in conformity with the doctrine of prescription in the civil law, which Scot land and several other countries in Europe have adopted. He at first disapproved of this; but then he thought there was something in it if there had been for twenty years a 1 Mr. Crosbie, one of the most eminent advocates then at the Scotch bar. Lord Stowell recollects that Johnson was treated by the Scottish literati with a degree of deference bordering on pusillanimity; but he excepts from that observation Mr. Crosbie, whom he characterises as an intrepid talker, and the only man who was disposed to stand up (as the phrase is) to Johnson. — CROKER. 2 The sign of the White Horse It continued a place from which coaches used to start till the end of the eighteenth century, some twelve or fifteen years ago it was a carrier's inn, and has since been held unworthy even of that occupation, and the sign is taken down. It was a base hovel. WALTER SCOTT. It was the best of the only three inns in Edinburgh, where, at that time, people of any condition could be accommodated. The room in which Johnson had sat used to be pointed out by its later occupants.- CHAMBERS. |