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 or stories from the ground upon the back elevation; 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,421 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: "Ha miseria nostra." 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."

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 sometime 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 public spirit in his power, that noble-minded citizen of Edinburgh, George Drummond, will be ever held in 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

We returned to my house, where there met him, at dinner, the Duchess of Douglas,422 Sir Adolphus Oughton, Lord Chief Baron, Sir William Forbes, Principal Robertson, Mr Cullen, advocate. Before dinner, he told us of 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 years.

a

How so, Sir!" said Dr Johnson, you must have a very great trade?" "No trade."-" Very rich mines?" "No mines."-"From whence, then, does all this money come?" "Come! why out of the blood and bowels of the poor people of Ireland !"

He seemed to me to have an unaccountable prejudice against Swift: for I once took the liberty to ask him, if Swift had personally offended him, and he told me, he had not. He said to-day, "Swift is clear, but he is shallow. In coarse humour, he is inferior to Arbuthnot; in delicate humour, he is inferior to Addison: So he is inferior to his contemporaries; without putting him against the whole world. I doubt if the Tale of a Tub' was his: it has so much more thinking, more knowledge, more power, more colour, than any of the works which are indisputably his. If it was his, I shall only say, he was impar sibi."

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 knew, had learned the Erse language, and expressed his belief in the authenticity of Ossian's Poetry. Dr Johnson took the opposite side of that perplexed question; and I was afraid the dispute would have run high between But Sir Adolphus, who had a very sweet temper, changed the discourse, grew playful, laughed at Lord Monboddo's notion of men having tails, and called him a judge, à posteriori, which amused Dr Johnson; and thus hostilities were prevented.

them.

* 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!"

:

At supper we had Dr Cullen, his son the advocate, Dr Adam Fergusson, and Mr Crosbie, advocate. Witchcraft was introduced. Mr Crosbie said, he thought it the greatest blasphemy to suppose evil spirits counteracting the Deity, and raising storms, for instance, to destroy his creatures.-JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, if moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not physical evil be also consistent with it? It is not more strange that there should be evil spirits, than evil men; evil unembodied spirits, than evil embodied spirits. And as to storms, we know there are such things and it is no worse that evil spirits raise them, than that they rise." CROSBIE: "But it is not creditable, that witches should have effected what they are said in stories to have done."-JOHNSON: "Sir, I am not defending their credibility. I am only saying, that your arguments are not good, and will not overturn the belief of witchcraft."-(Dr Fergusson said to me, aside, "He is right.") "And then, sir, you have all mankind, rude and civilised, agreeing in the belief of the agency of preternatural powers. You must take evidence: you must consider, that wise and great men have condemned witches to die."-CROSBIE: "But an act of parliament put an end to witchcraft."— JOHNSON: "No, Sir; witchcraft has ceased; and therefore an act of parliament was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased, we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many other things."

Dr Cullen, to keep up the gratification of mysterious disquisition, with the grave address for which he is remarkable in his companionable as in his professional hours, talked, in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep. I am very sorry I have no note of this. We talked of the Orang-Outang, and of Lord Monboddo's thinking that he might be taught to speak. Dr Johnson treated this with ridicule. Mr Crosbie said, that Lord Monboddo believed the existence of every thing possible; in short, that all which is in posse might be found in esse.-JOHNSON: "But, Sir, it is as possible that the OrangOutang does not speak, as that he speaks. However, I shall not contest the point. should have thought it not possible to find a Monboddo; yet he exists."—I again mentioned the stage.-JOHNSON: "The appearance of a player, with whom I have drunk tea, counteracts the imagination that he is the character he represents. Nay, you know, nobody imagines that he is the character he represents. They say, 'See Garrick! how he looks to-night! See how he'll clutch the dagger!' That is the buz of the theatre."

TUESDAY, 17th August.

I

Sir William Forbes came to breakfast, and brought with him Dr Blacklock, whom he introduced to Dr Johnson, who received him with a most humane complacency; "Dear Dr Blacklock, I am glad to see you !"-Blacklock seemed

to be much surprised, when Dr Johnson said, "it was easier to him to te poetry than to compose his Dictionary. tis mind was less on the stretch in doing the ne than the other. Besides; composing a Dictionary requires books and a desk: you can make a poem walking in the fields, or lying in bed." Dr Blacklock spoke of scepticism in morals and religion, with apparent uneasiness, as if he wished for more certainty.* Dr Johnson, who had thought it all over, and whose vigorous understanding was fortified by much experience, thus encouraged the blind Bard to apply to higher speculations what we all willingly submit to in common life: in short, he gave him more familiarly the able and fair reasoning of Butler's Analogy": "Why, Sir, the greatest concern we have in this world, the choice of our profession, must be determined without demonstrative reasoning. Human life is not yet so well known, as that we can have it. And take the case of a man who is ill. I call two physicians: they differ in opinion. I am not to lie down, and die between them: I must do something." -The conversation then turned on Atheism, on that horrible book, "Systéme de la Nature:"423 and on the supposition of an eternal necessity, without design, without a governing mind.— JOHNSON: "If it were so, why has it ceased? Why don't we see men thus produced around us now? Why, at least, does it not keep pace, in some measure, with the progress of time? If it stops because there is now no need of it, then it is plain there is, and ever has been, an all-powerful intelligence. But stay!" said he, with one of his satiric laughs, “Ha! ha! hal I shall suppose Scotchmen made necessarily, and Englishmen by choice."

At dinner this day, we had Sir Alexander Dick, whose amiable character, and ingenious and cultivated mind, are so generally known; (he was then on the verge of seventy, and is now (1785) eighty-one, with his faculties entire, his heart warm, and his temper gay; Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes; Mr Maclaurin, advocate; Dr Gregory, who now worthily fills his father's medical chair; and my uncle, Dr Boswell. This was one of Dr Johnson's best days. He was quite in his element. All was literature and taste, without any interruption. Lord Hailes, who is one of the best philologists in Great Britain, who has written papers in the "World," and a variety of other works in prose and in verse, both Latin and English, pleased him highly. He told him, he had discovered the Life of "Cheynel," in the "Student," to be his. JOHNSON: "No one else knows it." Dr Johnson had, before this, dictated to me a law-paper, upon a question purely in the law of Scotland, concerning vicious intromission, that is to say, intermeddling with the effects of a deceased person, without a regular title; which formerly was understood to subject the intermeddler to payment of all the defunct's debts. The principle has of late been relaxed. Dr Johnson's * See his letter on this subject in the APPENDIX.

argument was, for a renewal of its strictness. The paper was printed, with additions by me, and given into the Court of Session. Lord Hailes knew Dr Johnson's part not to be mine, and pointed out exactly where it began, and where it ended. Dr Johnson said, "It is much, now, that his lordship can distinguish so."

In Dr Johnson's "Vanity of Human Wishes," there is the following passage:

"The teeming mother, anxious for her race,
Begs, for each birth, the fortune of a face:
Yet Vane could tell, what ills from beauty spring;
And Sedley curs'd the charms which pleased a king."

Lord Hailes told him, he was mistaken in the instances he had given of unfortunate fair ones; for neither Vane nor Sedley had a title to that description. His lordship has since been so obliging as to send me a note of this, for the communication of which I am sure my readers will thank me.

"The lines in the tenth Satire of Juvenal, according to my alteration, should have run thus: "Yet Shore could tell

And Valieret curs'd--.'

"The first was a penitent by compulsion, the second by sentiment; though the truth is, Mademoiselle de la Valiere threw herself (but still from sentiment) in the King's way.

"Our friend chose Vane, who was far from being well-looked; and Sedley, who was so ugly that Charles II. said, his brother had her by way of penance."

Mr Maclaurin's learning and talents enabled him to do his part very well in Dr Johnson's company. He produced two epitaphs upon his father, the celebrated mathematician. One was in English, of which Dr Johnson did not change one word. In the other, which was in Latin, he made several alterations. In place of the very words of Virgil, "Ubi luctus et pavor et plurima mortis imago," he wrote, "Ubi luctus regnant et pavor." He introduced the word prorsus into the line "Mortalibus prorsus non absit solatium," and after" Hujus enim scripta evolve," he added, "Mentemque tantarum rerum capacem corpori caduco superstitem crede;" which is quite applicable to Dr Johnson himself. ‡

Mr Murray, advocate, who married a niece of Lord Mansfield's, and is now one of the Judges

At supper we had Dr Alexander Webster, who, though not learned, had such a knowledge of mankind, such a fund of information and entertainment, so clear a head and such accommodating manners, that Dr Johnson found him a very agreeable companion.

When Dr Johnson and I were left by ourselves, I read to him my notes of the Opinions of our Judges upon the questions of Literary Property.424 He did not like them; and said, "they make me think of your Judges not with that respect which I should wish to do." To the argument of one of them, that there can be no property in blasphemy or nonsense, he answered, "then your rotten sheep are mine!-By that rule, when a man's house falls into decay, he must lose it." -I mentioned an argument of mine, that literary performances are not taxed. As Churchill says

"No statesman yet has thought it worth his pains To tax our labours, or excise our brains; " and therefore they are not property. "Yet," said he, " we hang a man for stealing a horse, and horses are not taxed."-Mr Pitt has since put an end to that argument.

WEDNESDAY, 18th August.

On this day we set out from Edinburgh. We should gladly have had Mr Scott to go with us; but he was obliged to return to England.-I have given a sketch of Dr Johnson: my readers may wish to know a little of his fellow-traveller. Think then, of a gentleman of ancient blood, the pride of which was his predominant passion. He was then in his thirty-third year, and had been about four years happily married. His inclination was to be a soldier; but his father, a respectable Judge, had pressed him into the profession of the law. He had travelled a good deal, and seen many varieties of human life. He had thought more than anybody supposed, and had a pretty good stock of general learning and knowledge. He had all Dr Johnson's principles, with some degree of relaxation. He had rather too little, than too much prudence; and, his imagination being lively, he often said things of which the effect was very different from the intention. He resembled sometimes

"The best good man, with the worst natured muse." He cannot deny himself the vanity of finishing with the encomium of Dr Johnson, whose friendly partiality to the companion of his Tour represents him as one, "whose acuteness would help my inquiry, and whose gaiety of conversation, and civility of manners, are sufficient to counteract the inconveniences of travel, in countries less hospitable than we have passed."

Dr Johnson thought it unnecessary to put

haps we shall find trade travel westward on a great scale, as well as a small.

From an erroneous apprehension of violence, Dr Johnson had provided a pair of pistols, some gunpowder, and a quantity of bullets: but upon being assured we should run no risk of meeting any robbers, he left his arms and ammunition in an open drawer, of which he gave my wife the charge. He also left in that drawer one volume of a pretty full and curious Diary of his Life, of which I have a few fragments; but the book has been destroyed. I wish female curiosity had been strong enough to have had it all transcribed, which might easily have been done; and I should think the theft, being pro bono publico, might have been forgiven. But I may be wrong. My wife told me she never once looked into it.She did not seem quite easy when we left her : but away we went!

Mr Nairne, advocate, was to go with us as far as St Andrews. It gives me pleasure that, by mentioning his name, I connect his title to the just and handsome compliment paid him by Dr Johnson, in his book: "A gentleman who could stay with us only long enough to make us know how much we lost by his leaving us." When we came to Leith, I talked with perhaps too boasting an air, how pretty the Frith of Forth looked; as indeed, after the prospect from Constantinople, of which I have been told, and that from Naples, which I have seen, I believe the view of that Frith and its environs, from the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, is the finest prospect in Europe. Ay," said Dr Johnson, 'that is the state of the world. Water is the same everywhere.

'Una est injusti cærula forma maris.'” *

I told him the port here was the mouth of the river or water of Leith. "Not Lethe," said Mr Nairne. "Why, Sir," said Dr Johnson, "when a Scotchman sets out from this port for England, he forgets his native country.' NAIRNE: "I hope, Sir, you will forget England here." JOHNSON: "Then t'will be still more Lethe." He observed of the pier or quay, "you have no occasion for so large a one: your trade does not require it: but you are like a shopkeeper who takes a shop, not only for what he has to put into it, but that it may be believed he has a great deal to put into it." It is very true, that there is now, comparatively, little trade upon the eastern coast of Scotland. The riches of Glasgow

"Non illic urbes, non tu mirabere silvas:
Una est injusti cærula forma maris."
Ovid. Amor. L. II. El. xi.
"Nor groves nor towns the ruthless ocean shows;
Unvaried still its azure surface flows."

We talked of a man's drowning himself.JOHNSON: "I should never think it time to make away with myself." I put the case of Eustace Budgell, who was accused of forging a will, and sunk himself in the Thames, befor the trial of its authenticity came on. "Suppose, Sir," said I, "that a man is absolutely sure, that, if he lives a few days longer, he shall be detected in a fraud, the consequence of which will be utter disgrace and expulsion from society." JOHNSON: "Then, Sir, let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don't let him go to the devil where he is known !"

He then said, "I see a number of people bare-footed here: I suppose you all went so before the Union. Boswell, your ancestors went so, when they had as much land as your family has now. Yet Auchinleck is the Field of Stones; there would be bad going bare-footed there. The Lairds, however, did it." I bought some speldings, fish (generally whitings) salted and dried in a particular manner, being dipped in the sea and dried in the sun, and eaten by the Scots by way of a relish. He had never seen them, though they were sold in London. I insisted on scottifying his palate; but he was very reluctant. With difficulty I prevailed with him to let a bit of one of them lie in his mouth. He did not like it.

In crossing the Frith, Dr Johnson determined that we should land upon Inchkeith. On approaching it, we first observed a high rocky shore. We coasted about, and put into a little bay on the north-west. We clambered up a very steep ascent, on which was very good grass, but rather a profusion of thistles. There were sixteen head of black cattle grazing upon the island. Lord Hailes observed to me, that Brantome calls it L'isle des Chevaux, and that it was probably "a safer stable" than many others in his time. The fort, with an inscription on it, Maria Re 1564, is strongly built. Dr Johnson examined it with much attention. He stalked like a giant among the luxuriant thistles and nettles. There are three wells in the island; but we could not find one in the fort. There must probably have been one, though now filled up, as a garrison could not subsist without it. But I have dwelt too long on this little spot. Dr Johnson afterwards bade me try to write a description of our discovering Inchkeith, in the usual style of travellers, describing fully every particular; stating the grounds on which we concluded that it must have once been inhabited, and introducing many sage reflections; and we should see how a thing might be covered in words, so as to induce people to come and survey it. All that was told might be true, and yet in reality there might be nothing to see.

*My friend, General Campbell, Governor of Madras, tells me, that they make speldings in the East Indies, particularly at Bombay, where they call them Bambaloes.

He said, "I'd have this island. I'd build a house, make a good landing-place, have a garden, and vines, and all sorts of trees. A rich man, of a hospitable turn, here, would have many visitors from Edinburgh." When we had got into our boat again, he called to me, "Come, now, pay a classical compliment to the island on quitting it." I happened luckily, in allusion to the beautiful Queen Mary, whose name is upon the fort, to think of what Virgil makes Eneas say, on having left the country of his charming Dido:

"Invitus, regina, tuo de littore cessi." "Very well hit off!" said he.

We dined at Kinghorn, and then got into a post-chaise. Mr Nairne and his servant, and Joseph, rode by us. We stopped at Cupar, and drank tea. We talked of Parliament; and I said I supposed very few of the members knew much of what was going on, as indeed very few gentlemen know much of their private affairs. JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, if a man is not of a sluggish mind, he may be his own steward. If he will look into his affairs, he will soon learn. So it is as to public affairs. There must always be a certain number of men of business in Parliament." BOSWELL:

"But consider, Sir; what is the House of Commons? Is not a great part of it chosen by peers? Do you think, Sir, they ought to have such an influence?" JOHNSON: "Yes, Sir, influence must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should." BOSWELL: "But is there not reason to fear that the common people may be oppressed?" JOHNSON: "No, Sir, our great fear is from want of power in government. Such a storm of vulgar force has broke in." BOSWELL: "It has only roared." JOHNSON: "Sir, it has roared, till the Judges in Westminster Hall have been afraid to pronounce sentence in opposition to the popular cry. You are frightened by what is no longer dangerous, like Presbyterians by Popery." He then repeated a passage, I think, in Butler's "Remains," which ends, "And would cry, Fire! Fire! in Noah's flood." +

We had a dreary drive, in a dusky night, to St Andrews, where we arrived late. We found

* "Unhappy queen!

Unwilling I forsook your friendly state."-Dryden. The passage quoted by Dr Johnson is in the "Character of the Assembly-man" Butler's "Remains," p. 232, edit. 1754.-"He preaches, indeed, both in season and out of season; for he rails at Popery, when the land is almost lost in Presbytery; and would cry Fire! Fire! in Noah's flood."

There is reason to believe that this piece was not written by Butler, but by Sir John Birkenhead; for Wood, in his "Athenæ Oxoniensis," vol. ií. p. 640, enumerates it among that gentleman's works, and gives the following account of it:

"The Assembly-Man' (or the character of an Assembly-man) written 1647, Lond. 1662-3, in three sheets in qu. The copy of it was taken from the author by those who said they could not rob, because all was theirs; so excised what they liked not; and so mangled and reformed it, that it was no character of an Assembly, but of themselves. At length, after it had slept several years, the author published it to avoid false copies. It is also reprinted in a book entitled "Wit and Loyalty revived," in a collection of some smart satires in verse and prose on the late times. Lond. 1682, qu., said to be written by Abr. Cowley, Sir John Birkenhead, and Hudibras, alias Sam. Butler."-For this Information I am indebted to Mr Reed, of Staple Inn.

a good supper at Glass's Inn, and Dr Johnson revived agreeably. He said, "The collection called 'The Muses' Welcome to King James' (first of England, and sixth of Scotland), on his return to his native kingdom, showed that there was then abundance of learning in Scotland; and that the conceits in that collection, with which people find fault, were mere mode." He added, "We could not now entertain a sovereign so; that Buchanan had spread the spirit of learning amongst us, but we had lost it during the civil wars." He did not allow the Latin Poetry of Pitcairne so much merit as has been usually attributed to it; though he owned that one of his pieces, which he mentioned, but which I am sorry is not specified in my notes, was "very well." It is not improbable that it was the poem which Prior has so elegantly translated.

After supper, we made a procession to Saint Leonard's College, the landlord walking before us with a candle, and the waiter with a lantern. That college had some time before been dissolved; and Dr Watson, a professor here (the historian of Phillip II.), had purchased the ground, and what buildings remained. When we entered his court, it seemed quite academical; and we found in his house very comfortable and genteel accommodation.*

THURSDAY, 19t: August.

We rose much refreshed. I had with me a map of Scotland, a Bible, which was given me by Lord Mountstuart when we were together in Italy, and Ogden's "Sermons on Prayer." Mr Nairne introduced us to Dr Watson, whom we found a well-informed man, of very amiable manners. Dr Johnson, after they were acquainted, said, "I take great delight in him." His daughter, a very pleasing young lady, made breakfast. Dr Watson observed, that Glasgow University had fewer home-students, since trade increased, as learning was rather incompatible with it. JOHNSON: "Why, Sir, as trade is now carried on by subordinate hands, men in trade have as much leisure as others; and now learning itself is a trade. A man goes to a bookseller, and gets what he can. have done with patronage. In the infancy of learning, we find some great man praised for it. This diffused it among others. When it becomes general, an author leaves the great, and applies to the multitude." BOSWELL: "It is a shame that authors are not now better patronized." JOHNSON: "No, Sir. If learning cannot support a man, if he must sit with his hands across till somebody feeds him, it is as to him a bad thing and it is better as it is. With patronage, what flattery! what falsehood! While a man is in equilibrio, he throws truth among the multitude, and lets them take it as they please in patronage, he must say what pleases his patron, and it is an equal chance

We

* My Journal, from this day inclusive, was read by Dr John.

son.