Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 - Boswell
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I was elated by the thought of having been able to entice such a man to
this remote part of the world. A ludicrous, yet just image presented
itself to my mind, which I expressed to the company. I compared myself
to a dog who has got hold of a large piece of meat, and runs away with
it to a corner, where he may devour it in peace, without any fear of
others taking it from him. 'In London, Reynolds, Beauclerk, and all of
them, are contending who shall enjoy Dr. Johnson's conversation. We are
feasting upon it, undisturbed, at Dunvegan.'
It was still a storm of wind and rain. Dr. Johnson however walked out
with M'Leod, and saw Rorie More's cascade in full perfection. Colonel
M'Leod, instead of being all life and gaiety, as I have seen him, was at
present grave, and somewhat depressed by his anxious concern about
M'Leod's affairs, and by finding some gentlemen of the clan by no means
disposed to act a generous or affectionate part to their Chief in his
distress, but bargaining with him as with a stranger. However, he was
agreeable and polite, and Dr. Johnson said, he was a very pleasing man.
My fellow-traveller and I talked of going to Sweden[605]; and, while we
were settling our plan, I expressed a pleasure in the prospect of seeing
the king. JOHNSON. 'I doubt, Sir, if he would speak to us.' Colonel
M'Leod said, 'I am sure Mr. Boswell would speak to _him_.' But, seeing
me a little disconcerted by his remark, he politely added, 'and with
great propriety.' Here let me offer a short defence of that propensity
in my disposition, to which this gentleman alluded. It has procured me
much happiness. I hope it does not deserve so hard a name as either
forwardness or impudence. If I know myself, it is nothing more than an
eagerness to share the society of men distinguished either by their rank
or their talents, and a diligence to attain what I desire[606]. If a man
is praised for seeking knowledge, though mountains and seas are in his
way, may he not be pardoned, whose ardour, in the pursuit of the same
object, leads him to encounter difficulties as great, though of a
different kind?
After the ladies were gone from table, we talked of the Highlanders not
having sheets; and this led us to consider the advantage of wearing
linen. JOHNSON. 'All animal substances are less cleanly than vegetable.
Wool, of which flannel is made, is an animal substance; flannel
therefore is not so cleanly as linen. I remember I used to think tar
dirty; but when I knew it to be only a preparation of the juice of the
pine, I thought so no longer. It is not disagreeable to have the gum
that oozes from a plum-tree upon your fingers, because it is vegetable;
but if you have any candle-grease, any tallow upon your fingers, you are
uneasy till you rub it off. I have often thought, that if I kept a
seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns,--or cotton; I mean
stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silk; you cannot
tell when it is clean: It will be very nasty before it is perceived to
be so. Linen detects its own dirtiness.'
To hear the grave Dr. Samuel Johnson, 'that majestick teacher of moral
and religious wisdom,' while sitting solemn in an armchair in the Isle
of Sky, talk, _ex cathedra_, of his keeping a seraglio[607], and
acknowledge that the supposition had _often_ been in his thoughts,
struck me so forcibly with ludicrous contrast, that I could not but
laugh immoderately. He was too proud to submit, even for a moment, to be
the object of ridicule, and instantly retaliated with such keen
sarcastick wit, and such a variety of degrading images, of every one of
which I was the object, that, though I can bear such attacks as well as
most men, I yet found myself so much the sport of all the company, that
I would gladly expunge from my mind every trace of this severe retort.
Talking of our friend Langton's house in Lincolnshire, he said, 'the old
house of the family was burnt. A temporary building was erected in its
room; and to this day they have been always adding as the family
increased. It is like a shirt made for a man when he was a child, and
enlarged always as he grows older.'
We talked to-night of Luther's allowing the Landgrave of Hesse two
wives, and that it was with the consent of the wife to whom he was first
married. JOHNSON. 'There was no harm in this, so far as she was only
concerned, because _volenti non fit injuria_. But it was an offence
against the general order of society, and against the law of the Gospel,
by which one man and one woman are to be united. No man can have two
wives, but by preventing somebody else from having one.'
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17.
After dinner yesterday, we had a conversation upon cunning. M'Leod said
that he was not afraid of cunning people; but would let them play their
tricks about him like monkeys. 'But, (said I,) they'll scratch;' and Mr.
M'Queen added, 'they'll invent new tricks, as soon as you find out what
they do.' JOHNSON. 'Cunning has effect from the credulity of others,
rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no
extraordinary talents to lie and deceive[608].' This led us to consider
whether it did not require great abilities to be very wicked. JOHNSON.
'It requires great abilities to have the _power_ of being very wicked;
but not to _be_ very wicked. A man who has the power, which great
abilities procure him, may use it well or ill; and it requires more
abilities to use it well, than to use it ill. Wickedness is always
easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to every thing. It is
much easier to steal a hundred pounds, than to get it by labour, or any
other way. Consider only what act of wickedness requires great abilities
to commit it, when once the person who is to do it has the power; for
_there_ is the distinction. It requires great abilities to conquer an
army, but none to massacre it after it is conquered.'
The weather this day was rather better than any that we had since we
came to Dunvegan. Mr. M'Queen had often mentioned a curious piece of
antiquity near this, which he called a temple of the Goddess ANAITIS.
Having often talked of going to see it, he and I set out after
breakfast, attended by his servant, a fellow quite like a savage. I must
observe here, that in Sky there seems to be much idleness; for men and
boys follow you, as colts follow passengers upon a road. The usual
figure of a Sky-boy, is a _lown_ with bare legs and feet, a dirty
_kilt_, ragged coat and waistcoat, a bare head, and a stick in his hand,
which, I suppose, is partly to help the lazy rogue to walk, partly to
serve as a kind of a defensive weapon. We walked what is called two
miles, but is probably four, from the castle, till we came to the sacred
place. The country around is a black dreary moor on all sides, except to
the sea-coast, towards which there is a view through a valley; and the
farm of _Bay_ shews some good land. The place itself is green ground,
being well drained by means of a deep glen on each side, in both of
which there runs a rivulet with a good quantity of water, forming
several cascades, which make a considerable appearance and sound. The
first thing we came to was an earthen mound, or dyke, extending from the
one precipice to the other. A little farther on was a strong stone-wall,
not high, but very thick, extending in the same manner. On the outside
of it were the ruins of two houses, one on each side of the entry or
gate to it. The wall is built all along of uncemented stones, but of so
large a size as to make a very firm and durable rampart. It has been
built all about the consecrated ground, except where the precipice is
steep enough to form an inclosure of itself. The sacred spot contains
more than two acres. There are within it the ruins of many houses, none
of them large,--a _cairn_,--and many graves marked by clusters of
stones. Mr. M'Queen insisted that the ruin of a small building, standing
east and west, was actually the temple of the Goddess ANAITIS, where her
statue was kept, and from whence processions were made to wash it in one
of the brooks. There is, it must be owned, a hollow road, visible for a
good way from the entrance; but Mr. M'Queen, with the keen eye of an
antiquary, traced it much farther than I could perceive it. There is not
above a foot and a half in height of the walls now remaining; and the
whole extent of the building was never, I imagine, greater than an
ordinary Highland house. Mr. M'Queen has collected a great deal of
learning on the subject of the temple of ANAITIS; and I had endeavoured,
in my _Journal_, to state such particulars as might give some idea of
it, and of the surrounding scenery; but from the great difficulty of
describing visible objects[609], I found my account so unsatisfactory,
that my readers would probably have exclaimed
'And write about it, _Goddess_, and about it[610];'
and therefore I have omitted it.
When we got home, and were again at table with Dr. Johnson, we first
talked of portraits. He agreed in thinking them valuable in families. I
wished to know which he preferred, fine portraits, or those of which the
merit was resemblance. JOHNSON. 'Sir, their chief excellence is being
like.' BOSWELL. 'Are you of that opinion as to the portraits of
ancestors, whom one has never seen?' JOHNSON. 'It then becomes of more
consequence that they should be like; and I would have them in the dress
of the times, which makes a piece of history. One should like to see how
_Rorie More_ looked. Truth, Sir, is of the greatest value in these
things[611].' Mr. M'Queen observed, that if you think it of no
consequence whether portraits are like, if they are but well painted,
you may be indifferent whether a piece of history is true or not, if
well told.
Dr. Johnson said at breakfast to-day, 'that it was but of late that
historians bestowed pains and attention in consulting records, to attain
to accuracy[1]. Bacon, in writing his history of Henry VII, does not
seem to have consulted any, but to have just taken what he found in
other histories, and blended it with what he learnt by tradition.' He
agreed with me that there should be a chronicle kept in every
considerable family, to preserve the characters and transactions of
successive generations.
After dinner I started the subject of the temple of ANAITIS. Mr. M'Queen
had laid stress on the name given to the place by the country
people,--_Ainnit_; and added, 'I knew not what to make of this piece of
antiquity, till I met with the _Anaitidis delubrum_ in Lydia, mentioned
by Pausanias and the elder Pliny.' Dr. Johnson, with his usual
acuteness, examined Mr. M'Queen as to the meaning of the word _Ainnit_,
in Erse; and it proved to be a _water-place_, or a place near water,
'which,' said Mr. M'Queen, 'agrees with all the descriptions of the
temples of that goddess, which were situated near rivers, that there
might be water to wash the statue.' JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, the argument
from the name is gone. The name is exhausted by what we see. We have no
occasion to go to a distance for what we can pick up under our feet. Had
it been an accidental name, the similarity between it and Anaitis might
have had something in it; but it turns out to be a mere physiological
name.' Macleod said, Mr. M'Queen's knowledge of etymology had destroyed
his conjecture. JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir; Mr. M'Queen is like the eagle
mentioned by Waller, who was shot with an arrow feather'd from his own
wing[612].' Mr. M'Queen would not, however, give up his conjecture.
JOHNSON. 'You have one possibility for you, and all possibilities
against you. It is possible it may be the temple of Anaitis. But it is
also possible that it may be a fortification; or it may be a place of
Christian worship, as the first Christians often chose remote and wild
places, to make an impression on the mind; or, if it was a heathen
temple, it may have been built near a river, for the purpose of
lustration; and there is such a multitude of divinities, to whom it may
have been dedicated, that the chance of its being a temple of _Anaitis_
is hardly any thing. It is like throwing a grain of sand upon the
sea-shore to-day, and thinking you may find it to-morrow. No, Sir, this
temple, like many an ill-built edifice, tumbles down before it is roofed
in.' In his triumph over the reverend antiquarian, he indulged himself
in a _conceit_; for, some vestige of the _altar_ of the goddess being
much insisted on in support of the hypothesis, he said, 'Mr. M'Queen is
fighting _pro_ aris _et focis'_.
It was wonderful how well time passed in a remote castle, and in dreary
weather. After supper, we talked of Pennant. It was objected that he was
superficial. Dr. Johnson defended him warmly[613]. He said, 'Pennant has
greater variety of enquiry than almost any man, and has told us more
than perhaps one in ten thousand could have done, in the time that he
took. He has not said what he was to tell; so you cannot find fault with
him, for what he has not told. If a man comes to look for fishes, you
cannot blame him if he does not attend to fowls.' 'But,' said Colonel
M'Leod, 'he mentions the unreasonable rise of rents in the Highlands,
and says, "the gentlemen are for emptying the bag, without filling
it[614];" for that is the phrase he uses. Why does he not tell how to
fill it?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no end of negative criticism. He tells
what he observes, and as much as he chooses. If he tells what is not
true, you may find fault with him; but, though he tells that the land is
not well cultivated, he is not obliged to tell how it may be well
cultivated. If I tell that many of the Highlanders go bare-footed, I am
not obliged to tell how they may get shoes. Pennant tells a fact. He
need go no farther, except he pleases. He exhausts nothing; and no
subject whatever has yet been exhausted. But Pennant has surely told a
great deal. Here is a man six feet high, and you are angry because he is
not seven.' Notwithstanding this eloquent _Oratio pro Pennantio_, which
they who have read this gentleman's _Tours_, and recollect the _Savage_
and the _Shopkeeper_ at _Monboddo_[615], will probably impute to the
spirit of contradiction, I still think that he had better have given
more attention to fewer things, than have thrown together such a number
of imperfect accounts.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18.
Before breakfast, Dr. Johnson came up to my room to forbid me to mention
that this was his birthday; but I told him I had done it already; at
which he was displeased[616]; I suppose from wishing to have nothing
particular done on his account. Lady M'Leod and I got into a warm
dispute. She wanted to build a house upon a farm which she has taken,
about five miles from the castle, and to make gardens and other
ornaments there; all of which I approved of; but insisted that the seat
of the family should always be upon the rock of Dunvegan. JOHNSON. 'Ay,
in time we'll build all round this rock. You may make a very good house
at the farm; but it must not be such as to tempt the Laird of M'Leod to
go thither to reside. Most of the great families in England have a
secondary residence, which is called a jointure-house: let the new house
be of that kind.' The lady insisted that the rock was very inconvenient;
that there was no place near it where a good garden could be made; that
it must always be a rude place; that it was a _Herculean_ labour to make
a dinner here. I was vexed to find the alloy of modern refinement in a
lady who had so much old family spirit. 'Madam, (said I,) if once you
quit this rock, there is no knowing where you may settle. You move five
miles first;--then to St. Andrews, as the late Laird did;--then to
Edinburgh;--and so on till you end at Hampstead, or in France. No, no;
keep to the rock: it is the very jewel of the estate. It looks as if it
had been let down from heaven by the four corners, to be the residence
of a Chief. Have all the comforts and conveniences of life upon it, but
never leave Rorie More's cascade.' 'But, (said she,) is it not enough if
we keep it? Must we never have more convenience than Rorie More had? he
had his beef brought to dinner in one basket, and his bread in another.
Why not as well be Rorie More all over, as live upon his rock? And
should not we tire, in looking perpetually on this rock? It is very well
for you, who have a fine place, and every thing easy, to talk thus, and
think of chaining honest folks to a rock. You would not live upon it
yourself.' 'Yes, Madam, (said I,) I would live upon it, were I Laird of
M'Leod, and should be unhappy if I were not upon it.' JOHNSON. (with a
strong voice, and most determined manner), 'Madam, rather than quit the
old rock, Boswell would live in the pit; he would make his bed in the
dungeon.' I felt a degree of elation, at finding my resolute feudal
enthusiasm thus confirmed by such a sanction. The lady was puzzled a
little. She still returned to her pretty farm,--rich ground,--fine
garden. 'Madam, (said Dr. Johnson,) were they in Asia, I would not leave
the rock.' My opinion on this subject is still the same. An ancient
family residence ought to be a primary object; and though the situation
of Dunvegan be such that little can be done here in gardening, or
pleasure-ground, yet, in addition to the veneration required by the
lapse of time, it has many circumstances of natural grandeur, suited to
the seat of a Highland Chief: it has the sea--islands--rocks,--hills,
--a noble cascade; and when the family is again in opulence, something
may be done by art. Mr. Donald M'Queen went away to-day, in order to
preach at Bracadale next day. We were so comfortably situated at
Dunvegan, that Dr. Johnson could hardly be moved from it. I proposed to
him that we should leave it on Monday. 'No, Sir, (said he,) I will not
go before Wednesday. I will have some more of this good[617].' However,
as the weather was at this season so bad, and so very uncertain, and we
had a great deal to do yet, Mr. M'Queen and I prevailed with him to
agree to set out on Monday, if the day should be good. Mr. M'Queen,
though it was inconvenient for him to be absent from his harvest,
engaged to wait on Monday at Ulinish for us. When he was going away, Dr.
Johnson said, 'I shall ever retain a great regard for you[618];' then
asked him if he had _The Rambler_. Mr. M'Queen said, 'No; but my brother
has it.' JOHNSON. 'Have you _The Idler_? M'QUEEN. 'No, Sir.' JOHNSON.
'Then I will order one for you at Edinburgh, which you will keep in
remembrance of me.' Mr. M'Queen was much pleased with this. He expressed
to me, in the strongest terms, his admiration of Dr. Johnson's wonderful
knowledge, and every other quality for which he is distinguished. I
asked Mr. M'Queen, if he was satisfied with being a minister in Sky. He
said he was; but he owned that his forefathers having been so long
there, and his having been born there, made a chief ingredient in
forming his contentment. I should have mentioned that on our left hand,
between Portree and Dr. Macleod's house, Mr. M'Queen told me there had
been a college of the Knights Templars; that tradition said so; and that
there was a ruin remaining of their church, which had been burnt: but I
confess Dr. Johnson has weakened my belief in remote tradition. In the
dispute about _Anaitis_, Mr. M'Queen said, Asia Minor was peopled by
Scythians, and, as they were the ancestors of the Celts, the same
religion might be in Asia Minor and Sky. JOHNSON. 'Alas! Sir, what can a
nation that has not letters tell of its original. I have always
difficulty to be patient when I hear authours gravely quoted, as giving
accounts of savage nations, which accounts they had from the savages
themselves. What can the _M'Craas_[619] tell about themselves a thousand
years ago? There is no tracing the connection of ancient nations, but by
language; and therefore I am always sorry when any language is lost,
because languages are the pedigree of nations[620]. If you find the same
language in distant countries, you may be sure that the inhabitants of
each have been the same people; that is to say, if you find the
languages a good deal the same; for a word here and there being the
same, will not do. Thus Butler, in his _Hudibras_, remembering that
_Penguin_, in the Straits of Magellan, signifies a bird with a white
head, and that the same word has, in Wales, the signification of a
white-headed wench, (_pen_ head, and _guin_ white,) by way of ridicule,
concludes that the people of those Straits are Welsh[621].'
A young gentleman of the name of M'Lean, nephew to the Laird of the isle
of Muck, came this morning; and, just as we sat down to dinner, came the
Laird of the isle, of Muck himself, his lady, sister to Talisker, two
other ladies their relations, and a daughter of the late M'Leod of
Hamer, who wrote a treatise on the second sight, under the designation
of THEOPHILUS INSULANUS[622]. It was somewhat droll to hear this Laird
called by his title. _Muck_ would have sounded ill; so he was called
_Isle of Muck_, which went off with great readiness. The name, as now
written, is unseemly, but it is not so bad in the original Erse, which
is _Mouach_, signifying the Sows' Island. Buchanan calls it INSULA
PORCORUM. It is so called from its form. Some call it Isle of _Monk_.
The Laird insists that this is the proper name. It was formerly
church-land belonging to Icolmkill, and a hermit lived in it. It is two
miles long, and about three quarters of a mile broad. The Laird said, he
had seven score of souls upon it. Last year he had eighty persons
inoculated, mostly children, but some of them eighteen years of age. He
agreed with the surgeon to come and do it, at half a crown a head. It is
very fertile in corn, of which they export some; and its coasts abound
in fish. A taylor comes there six times in a year. They get a good
blacksmith from the isle of Egg.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 19.
It was rather worse weather than any that we had yet. At breakfast Dr.
Johnson said, 'Some cunning men choose fools for their wives, thinking
to manage them, but they always fail. There is a spaniel fool and a mule
fool. The spaniel fool may be made to do by beating. The mule fool will
neither do by words or blows; and the spaniel fool often turns mule at
last: and suppose a fool to be made do pretty well, you must have the
continual trouble of making her do. Depend upon it, no woman is the
worse for sense and knowledge.[623]' Whether afterwards he meant merely
to say a polite thing, or to give his opinion, I could not be sure; but
he added, 'Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore
they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they
never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.'[624] In
justice to the sex, I think it but candid to acknowledge, that, in a
subsequent conversation, he told me that he was serious in what he
had said.
He came to my room this morning before breakfast, to read my Journal,
which he has done all along. He often before said, 'I take great delight
in reading it.' To-day he said, 'You improve: it grows better and
better.' I observed, there was a danger of my getting a habit of writing
in a slovenly manner. 'Sir,' said he, 'it is not written in a slovenly
manner. It might be printed, were the subject fit for printing[625].'
While Mr. Beaton preached to us in the dining-room, Dr. Johnson sat in
his own room, where I saw lying before him a volume of Lord Bacon's
works, _The Decay of Christian Piety_, Monboddo's _Origin of Language_,
and Sterne's _Sermons_[626]. He asked me to-day how it happened that we
were so little together: I told him, my Journal took up much time. Yet,
on reflection, it appeared strange to me, that although I will run from
one end of London to another to pass an hour with him, I should omit to
seize any spare time to be in his company, when I am settled in the same
house with him. But my Journal is really a task of much time and labour,
and he forbids me to contract it.
I omitted to mention, in its place, that Dr. Johnson told Mr. M'Queen
that he had found the belief of the second sight universal in Sky,
except among the clergy, who seemed determined against it. I took the
liberty to observe to Mr. M'Queen, that the clergy were actuated by a
kind of vanity. 'The world, (say they,) takes us to be credulous men in
a remote corner. We'll shew them that we are more enlightened than they
think.' The worthy man said, that his disbelief of it was from his not
finding sufficient evidence; but I could perceive that he was prejudiced
against it[627].
After dinner to-day, we talked of the extraordinary fact of Lady
Grange's being sent to St. Kilda, and confined there for several years,
without any means of relief[628]. Dr. Johnson said, if M'Leod would let
it be known that he had such a place for naughty ladies, he might make
it a very profitable island. We had, in the course of our tour, heard of
St. Kilda poetry. Dr. Johnson observed, 'it must be very poor, because
they have very few images.' BOSWELL. 'There may be a poetical genius
shewn in combining these, and in making poetry of them.' JOHNSON. 'Sir,
a man cannot make fire but in proportion as he has fuel. He cannot coin
guineas but in proportion as he has gold.' At tea he talked of his
intending to go to Italy in 1775. M'Leod said, he would like Paris
better. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; there are none of the French literati now
alive, to visit whom I would cross a sea. I can find in Buffon's book
all that he can say[629].'