other end. Burke, Sir, is such a man, that if you met him for the first time in the street, where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner, that, when you parted, you would say, This is an extraordinary man. Now, you may be long enough with me, without finding any, thing extraordinary.” He said, he believed Burke was intended for the law; but either had not money enough to follow it, or had not diligence enough. He said, he could not understand how a man could apply to one thing, and not to another. Robertson said, one man had more judgment, another more imagination. JOHNSON. "No, Sir; it is only, one man has more mind than another. He may direct it differently; he may, by accident, see the success of one kind of study, and take a desire to excel in it. I am persuaded that had Sir Isaac Newton applied to poetry, he would have made a very fine epic poem. I could as easily apply to law as to tragic poetry." BosWELL. "Yet, Sir, you did apply to tragic poetry, not to law." JOHNSON. "Because, Sir, I had not money to study law. Sir, the man who has vigour may walk to the east, just as well as to the west, if he happens to turn his head that way." BOSWELL. 66 But, Sir, 'tis like walking up and down a hill; one man may naturally do the one better than the other. A hare will run up a hill best, from her fore-legs being short; a dog down." JOHNSON. Nay, Sir; that is from mechanical powers. If you make mind mechanical, you may argue in that manner. One mind is a vice, and holds fast; there's a good memory. Another is a file; and he is a disputant, a controversialist. Another is a razor; and he is sarcastical." We talked of Whitfield. He said he was at the same college with him, and knew him before he

66

How much a man deceives himself! Of all Johnson's literary efforts, his tragic poetry was the least successful. — CROKER. Dryden says, "The same parts and the same application which have made me a poet, might have raised me to any honours of the gown, which are often given to men of as little learning and less honesty than myself. Ded. of the Third Miscellany. - P. CUNNINGHAM.

That cannot be said now, after the flagrant part which Mr. John Wesley took against our American brethren, when, in his own name, he threw amongst his enthusiastic flock the very individual combustibles of Dr. Johnson's "Taration no Tyranny;" and after the intolerant spirit which he manifested against our fellow Christians of the Roman Catholic communion, for which that able champion, Father O'Leary, has given him so hearty a drubbing. But I should think my. self very unworthy, if I did not at the same time acknowledge Mr. John Wesley's merit, as a veteran "soldier of Jesus Christ," who has, I do believe, turned many from darkness into light, and from the power of Satan to the living God. — BOSWELL.

3 Mr. Burke. See antè, p. 249. CROKER.

4 If due attention were paid to this observation, there would be more virtue even in politics. What Dr. Johnson justly condemned has, I am sorry to say, greatly increased in the present reign. At the distance of four years from this conversation, 21st of February, 1777, my Lord Archbishop of York, in his "Sermon before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," thus indignantly describes the then state of parties:-"Parties once had a principle belonging to them, absurd, perhaps, and indefensible, but still carrying a notion of duty, by which honest minds might easily be caught. But they are now combinations of individuals, who, instead of being the sons and

began to be better than other people (smiling); that he believed he sincerely meant well, but had a mixture of politics and ostentation: whereas Wesley thought of religion only? Robertson said, Whitfield had strong natural eloquence, which, if cultivated, would have done great things. JOHNSON. “Why, Sir, I take it he was at the height of what his abilities could do, and was sensible of it. He had the ordinary advantages of education; but he chose to pursue that oratory which is for the mob." BOSWELL. "He had great effect on the passions." JOHNSON. “Why, Sir, I don't think so. He could not represent a succession of pathetic images. He vociferated, and made an impression. There, again, was a mind like a hammer." Dr. Johnson now said, a certain eminent political friend of ours was wrong in his maxim of sticking to a certain set of men on all occasions. "I can see that a man may do right to stick to a party," said he, "that is to say, he is a Whig, or he is a Tory, and he thinks one of those parties upon the whole the best, and that to make it prevail, it must be generally supported, though, in particulars, it may be wrong. He takes its faggot of principles, in which there are fewer rotten sticks than in the other, though some rotten sticks, to be sure; and they cannot well be separated. But, to bind one's self to one man, or one set of men (who may be right to-day, and wrong to-morrow), without any general preference of system, I must disapprove.'

4

He told us of Cooke, who translated Hesiod, and lived twenty years on a translation of Plautus, for which he was always taking subscriptions; and that he presented Foote to a club in the following singular manner: "This is the nephew of the gentleman who was lately hung in chains for murdering his brother."5

servants of the community, make a league for advancing their private interests. It is their business to hold high the notion of political honour. I believe and trust, it is not injurious to say, that such a bond is no better than that by which the lowest and wickedest combinations are held together; and that it denotes the last stage of political depravity."

To find a thought, which just showed itself to us from the mind of Johnson, thus appearing again at such a distance of time, and without any communication between them, enlarged to full growth in the mind of Markham, is a curious object of philosophical contemplation. That two such great and luminous minds should have been so dark in one corner; that they should have held it to be "wicked rebellion " in the British subjects established in America, to resist the abject condition of holding all their property at the mercy of British subjects remaining at home, while their allegiance to our common lord the king was to be preserved inviolate, is a striking proof, to me, either that he who sitteth in heaven" scorns the loftiness of human pride, or that the evil spirit, whose personal existence I strongly believe, and even in this age am confirmed in that belief by a Fell, nay, by a Hurd, has more power than some choose to allow. BoSWELL. It may be suspected that Archbishop Markham's observations were covertly aimed at Mr. Burke's doctrine of party allegiance (antè, p. 253. n. 3). Markham and Burke had been intimate political as well as private friends, but when the prospect of high church preferment opened upon Markham, he seems to have broken off from Mr. Burke as too violent a politician. See Burke's Correspondence. - CROKER, 1846, 5 Mr. Foote's mother was the sister of Sir J. Dinely Goodere, Bart, and of Captain Goodere, who commanded H. M. S. Ruby, on board which, when lying in King's Road,

In the evening I introduced to Mr. Johnson 1 two good friends of mine, Mr. William Nairne, advocate, and Mr. Hamilton of Sundrum, my neighbour in the country, both of whom supped with us. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Dr. Johnson displayed another of his heterodox opinions- a contempt of tragic acting. He said, the action of all players in tragedy is bad. It should be a man's study to repress those signs of emotion and passion, as they are called." He was of a directly contrary opinion to that of Fielding, in his Tom Jones;" who makes Partridge say of Garrick, "Why, I could act as well as he myself. I am sure, if I had seen a ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did." For, when I asked him, "Would not you, Sir, start as Mr. Garrick does, if you saw a ghost?" he answered, "I hope not. If I did, I should frighten the ghost."

Monday, August 16th.-DR. WILLIAM ROBERTSON came to breakfast. We talked of Ogden on Prayer. Dr. Johnson said, "The same arguments which are used against God's hearing prayer, will serve against his rewarding good, and punishing evil. He has resolved, he has declared, in the former case as in the latter." He had last night looked into Lord Hailes's "Remarks on the History of Scotland." Dr. Robertson and I said, it was a pity Lord Hailes did not write greater things. His lordship had not then published his

Bristol, in January, 1741, the captain caused his brother to be forciby carried, and there barbarously murdered. Captain Goodere was, with two of his accomplices, executed for this crime in the April following. The circumstances of this extravagant case, and some other facts connnected with this family, lead to an opinion that Captain Goodere was insane; and some unhappy circumstances in Foote's life render it probable that he had not wholly escaped this hereditary irregularity of mind. The last baronet, who called himself Sir John Dinely, died in 1809, a poor Knight of Windsor -insane and in indigence. - CROKER. Foote's first publication was a pamphlet in defence of his uncle's memory.WALTER SCOTT.

It may be observed, that I sometimes call my great friend Mr. Johnson, sometimes Dr. Johnson; though he had at this time a Doctor's degree from Trinity College, Dublin. The University of Oxford afterwards conferred it upon him by a diploma, in very honourable terms. It was some

"Annals of Scotland." JOHNSON. "I remember I was once on a visit at the house of a lady for whom I had a high respect. There was a good deal of company in the room. When they were gone, I said to this lady, 'What foolish talking have we had!'-'Yes,' said she, but while they talked, you said nothing.' I was struck with the reproof. How much better is the man who does any thing that is innocent, than he who does nothing! Besides, I love anecdotes. I fancy mankind may come, in time, to write all aphoristically, except in narrative; grow weary of preparation, and connection, and illustration, and all those arts by which a big book is made. If a man is to wait till he weaves anecdotes into a system, we may be long in getting them, and get but few, in comparison of what we might get."

Dr. Robertson said, the notions of Eupham Macallan, a fanatic woman, of whom Lord Hailes gives a sketch, were still prevalent among some of the presbyterians; and therefore, it was right in Lord Hailes, a man of known piety, to undeceive them.

We walked out, that Dr. Johnson might see some of the things which we have to show at Edinburgh. We went to the Parliamenthouse, where the parliament of Scotland sat, and where the ordinary lords of session hold their courts, and to the new session-house 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 advocate's 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."4"

I here began to indulge old Scottish sentiments, and to express a warm regret, that, by

time before I could bring myself to call him Doctor; but, as he has been long known by that title, I shall give it to him in the rest of this Journal. - BOSWELL. Johnson never, it seems, called himself Doctor. See antè, p. 168.CROKER.

2 It was on this visit to the parliament-house, that Mr. Henry Erskine (brother of Lord Buchan and Lord Erskine), after being presented to Dr. Johnson by Mr. Boswell, and having made his bow, slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it was for the sight of his bear.- WALTER SCOTT. This was the subject of a cotemporary caricature. WRIGHT.

3 This great Register Office is now one of the architectural beauties of Edinburgh.- CROKER.

4 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.

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 would have been glad, however, to have had us last 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 2, "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!"

us.

Dr. Adam Fergusson, whose "Essay on the History of Civil Society" gives him a respectable place in the ranks of literature, was with 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 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."

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 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,

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.

1 This seems to have been a touch of Jacobite jocularity, meaning that Johnson would be 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. - CROKER, Perhaps, Johnson meant that they, the Scotch, were welcome not only to stay at home, but to keep their kirk too-as inferior to the church as Scotland to England.LOCKHART.

21 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.

"And ran him through the fair body!"5 We returned to my house, where there met

3 This lofty house was burnt down in 1824. The site is now occupied by Sir William Forbes's bank. — CHAMBERS. 4 This excellent magistrate died in 1766. Some years after his death, a bust of him, by Nollekens, was placed in the public hall of the hospital, with this inscription from the pen of Robertson:-" George Drummond, to whom this country is indebted for all the benefit which it derives from the royal infirmary."- BoswELL.

5 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.

him, at dinner, the Duchess of Douglas, 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 years. How so, Sir?" said Dr. Johnson: "you must have 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 course 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 them. 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.

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

(Dr.

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 credible 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. 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 had 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 ouran-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 ouran-outang does not speak, as that he speaks. However, I shall not contest the point. I 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

1 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. CROKER.

2 There probably was no opportunity for what could be in strictness called personal offence, as they had never met; but I suspect that the affair of the Dublin degree (antè, p. 37.) may have created this prejudice. But 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. It is as certain that the Tale of a Tub was Swift's as that the Rambler was Johnson's.CROKER.

3 Lord Stowell remembered with pleasure the elegance and extent of Sir Adolphus Oughton's literature, and the suavity of his manners. -- CROKER.

4 A question perplexed only by national prejudices, heightened, in a few cases, by individual obstinacy. See post, Sept. 23. 1773.-CROKER.

5 There is in the Life of Blacklock, in Anderson's Brit. Poets, an anecdote of Dr. Blacklock's somnambulism, which may very probably have been one of the topics on this occasion.CROKER.

Garrick! how he looks he'll clutch the dagger!' the theatre."

to-night! See how That is the buzz of

Tuesday, Aug. 17. 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 write poetry than to compose his Dictionary. His mind was less on the stretch in doing the one than the other.1 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

2

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, Système de la Nature; and on the supposition of an eternal necessity without design, without a governing mind. JOHN"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! ha! I shall suppose Scotchmen made necessarily, and Englishmen by choice."

SON.

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) 3; Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes; Mr. Maclaurin, advocate; Dr. Gregory, who now

4

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 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 cursed the charms which pleased a king."

Lord Hailes told me 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 run thus:

There is hardly any operation of the intellect which requires nicer and deeper consideration than definition. A thousand men may write verses, for one who has the power of defining and discriminating the exact meaning of words and the principles of grammatical arrangement. CROKER.

2 See his Letter on this subject in the Appendix.BOSWELL

3 Sir A. Dick was born in 1703; died Nov. 10. 1785.WRIGHT.

4 See antè, p. 244., and Appendix.-C.

5 Mistress of Edward IV. - BOSWELL.

6 Mistress of Louis XIV. -BOSWELL. 7 See antè, p. 60. — C.

8 Catherine Sedley, created Countess of Dorchester for life. Her father, Sir Charles, resenting the seduction of his daughter, joined in the Whig measures of the Revolution, and excused his revolt from James under an ironical profession of gratitude. "His Majesty," said he," having done me the unlooked-for honour of making my daughter a countess, I cannot do less in return than endeavour to make his daughter a queen.” — CROKER.

9 Lord Hailes was hypercritical. Vane was handsome, or,