Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 - Boswell
Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45
[423] On April 6, 1777, Johnson noted down: 'I passed the night in such
sweet uninterrupted sleep as I have not known since I slept at Fort
Augustus.' _Pr. and Med._ p.159. On Nov. 21, 1778, he wrote to Boswell:
'The best night that I have had these twenty years was at Fort
Augustus.' _Ante_, iii. 369.
[424] See _ante_, iii. 246.
[425] A McQueen is a Highland mode of expression. An Englishman would
say _one_ McQueen. But where there are _clans_ or _tribes_ of men,
distinguished by _patronymick_ surnames, the individuals of each are
considered as if they were of different species, at least as much as
nations are distinguished; so that a _McQueen_, a _McDonald_, a
_McLean_, is said, as we say a Frenchman, an Italian, a Spaniard.
BOSWELL.
[426] 'I praised the propriety of his language, and was answered that I
need not wonder, for he had learnt it by grammar. By subsequent
opportunities of observation I found that my host's diction had nothing
peculiar. Those Highlanders that can speak English commonly speak it
well, with few of the words and little of the tone by which a Scotchman
is distinguished ... By their Lowland neighbours they would not
willingly be taught; for they have long considered them as a mean and
degenerate race.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 31. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:
'This man's conversation we were glad of while we staid. He had been
out, as they call it, in forty-five, and still retained his old
opinions.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 130.
[427] By the Chevalier Ramsay.
[428] 'From him we first heard of the general dissatisfaction which is
now driving the Highlanders into the other hemisphere; and when I asked
him whether they would stay at home if they were well treated, he
answered with indignation that no man willingly left his native country.
Johnson's _Works_, ix. 33. See _ante_, p. 27.
[429] 'The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.' _Ib._
v. 49.
[430] Four years later, three years after Goldsmith's death, Johnson
'observed in Lord Scarsdale's dressing-room Goldsmith's _Animated
Nature_; and said, "Here's our friend. The poor doctor would have been
happy to hear of this."' _Ante_, iii.162.
[431] See _ante_, i. 348 and ii. 438 and _post_, Sept. 23. Mackintosh
says: 'Johnson's idea that a ship was a prison with the danger of
drowning is taken from Endymion Porter's _Consolation to Howell_ on his
imprisonment in the _Fleet_, and was originally suggested by the pun.'
_Life of Mackintosh_, ii. 83. The passage to which he refers is found in
Howell's letter of Jan. 2, 1646 (book ii. letter 39), in which he writes
to Porter:--'You go on to prefer my captivity in this _Fleet_ to that of
a voyager at sea, in regard that he is subject to storms and springing
of leaks, to pirates and picaroons, with other casualties.'
[432] See _ante_, iii. 242.
[433] This book has given rise to much enquiry, which has ended in
ludicrous surprise. Several ladies, wishing to learn the kind of reading
which the great and good Dr. Johnson esteemed most fit for a young
woman, desired to know what book he had selected for this Highland
nymph. 'They never adverted (said he) that I had no _choice_ in the
matter. I have said that I presented her with a book which I _happened_
to have about me.' And what was this book? My readers, prepare your
features for merriment. It was _Cocker's Arithmetick_!--Wherever this
was mentioned, there was a loud laugh, at which Johnson, when present,
used sometimes to be a little angry. One day, when we were dining at
General Oglethorpe's, where we had many a valuable day, I ventured to
interrogate him. 'But, Sir, is it not somewhat singular that you should
_happen_ to have _Cocker's Arithmetick_ about you on your journey? What
made you buy such a book at Inverness?' He gave me a very sufficient
answer. 'Why, Sir, if you are to have but one book with you upon a
journey, let it be a book of science. When you have read through a book
of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no more for you; but a book
of science is inexhaustible.' BOSWELL.
Johnson thus mentions his gift: 'I presented her with a book which I
happened to have about me, and should not be pleased to think that she
forgets me.' _Works_, ix. 32. The first edition of _Cocker's Arithmetic_
was published about 1660. _Brit. Mus. Cata._ Though Johnson says that 'a
book of science is inexhaustible,' yet in _The Rambler_, No. 154, he
asserts that 'the principles of arithmetick and geometry may be
comprehended by a close attention in a few days.' Mrs. Piozzi says
(_Anec_. p. 77) that 'when Mr. Johnson felt his fancy disordered, his
constant recurrence was to arithmetic; and one day that he was confined
to his chamber, and I enquired what he had been doing to divert himself,
he shewed me a calculation which I could scarce be made to understand,
so vast was the plan of it; no other indeed than that the national debt,
computing it at L180,000,000, would, if converted into silver, serve to
make a meridian of that metal, I forget how broad, for the globe of the
whole earth.' See _ante_, iii. 207, and iv. 171, note 3.
[434] Swift's _Works_ (1803), xxiv. 63.
[435] 'We told the soldiers how kindly we had been treated at the
garrison, and, as we were enjoying the benefit of their labours, begged
leave to shew our gratitude by a small present.... They had the true
military impatience of coin in their pockets, and had marched at least
six miles to find the first place where liquor could be bought. Having
never been before in a place so wild and unfrequented I was glad of
their arrival, because I knew that we had made them friends; and to gain
still more of their goodwill we went to them, where they were carousing
in the barn, and added something to our former gift.' _Works_, ix. 31-2.
[436]
'Why rather sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee.' &c.
2 _Henry IV._ act iii. sc. 1.
[437] Spain, in 1719, sent a strong force under the Duke of Ormond to
Scotland in behalf of the Chevalier. Owing to storms only a few hundred
men landed. These were joined by a large body of Highlanders, but being
attacked by General Wightman, the clansmen dispersed and the Spaniards
surrendered. Smollett's _England_, ed. 1800, ii. 382.
[438] Boswell mentions this _ante_, i. 41, as a proof of Johnson's
'perceptive quickness.'
[439] Dr. Johnson, in his _Journey_, thus beautifully describes his
situation here:--'I sat down on a bank, such as a writer of romance
might have delighted to feign. I had, indeed, no trees to whisper over
my head; but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the
air soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on
either side, were high hills, which, by hindering the eye from ranging,
forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the
hour well, I know not; for here I first conceived the thought of this
narration.' The _Critical Reviewers_, with a spirit and expression
worthy of the subject, say,--'We congratulate the publick on the event
with which this quotation concludes, and are fully persuaded that the
hour in which the entertaining traveller conceived this narrative will
be considered, by every reader of taste, as a fortunate event in the
annals of literature. Were it suitable to the task in which we are at
present engaged, to indulge ourselves in a poetical flight, we would
invoke the winds of the Caledonian Mountains to blow for ever, with
their softest breezes, on the bank where our author reclined, and
request of Flora, that it might be perpetually adorned with the gayest
and most fragrant productions of the year.' BOSWELL. Johnson thus
described the scene to Mrs. Thrale:--'I sat down to take notes on a
green bank, with a small stream running at my feet, in the midst of
savage solitude, with mountains before me and on either hand covered
with heath. I looked around me, and wondered that I was not more
affected, but the mind is not at all times equally ready to be put in
motion.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 131.
[440] 'The villagers gathered about us in considerable numbers, I
believe without any evil intention, but with a very savage wildness of
aspect and manner.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 38.
[441] The M'Craas, or Macraes, were since that time brought into the
king's army, by the late Lord Seaforth. When they lay in Edinburgh
Castle in 1778, and were ordered to embark for Jersey, they with a
number of other men in the regiment, for different reasons, but
especially an apprehension that they were to be sold to the East-India
Company, though enlisted not to be sent out of Great-Britain without
their own consent, made a determined mutiny, and encamped upon the lofty
mountain, _Arthur's seat_, where they remained three days and three
nights; bidding defiance to all the force in Scotland. At last they came
down, and embarked peaceably, having obtained formal articles of
capitulation, signed by Sir Adolphus Oughton, commander in chief,
General Skene, deputy commander, the Duke of Buccleugh, and the Earl of
Dunmore, which quieted them. Since the secession of the Commons of Rome
to the _Mons Sacer_, a more spirited exertion has not been made. I gave
great attention to it from first to last, and have drawn up a particular
account of it. Those brave fellows have since served their country
effectually at Jersey, and also in the East-Indies, to which, after
being better informed, they voluntarily agreed to go. BOSWELL. The line
which Boswell quotes is from _The Chevalier's Muster Roll_:--
'The laird of M'Intosh is coming,
M'Crabie & M'Donald's coming,
M'Kenzie & M'Pherson's coming,
And the wild M'Craw's coming.
Little wat ye wha's coming,
Donald Gun and a's coming.'
Hogg's _Jacobite Relics_, i. 152.
Horace Walpole (_Letters_, vii. 198) writing on May 9, 1779, tells how
on May 1 'the French had attempted to land [on Jersey], but Lord
Seaforth's new-raised regiment of 700 Highlanders, assisted by some
militia and some artillery, made a brave stand and repelled the
intruders.'
[442] 'One of the men advised her, with the cunning that clowns never
can be without, to ask more; but she said that a shilling was enough. We
gave her half a crown, and she offered part of it again.' _Piozzi
Letters_, i. 133.
[443] Of this part of the journey Johnson wrote:--'We had very little
entertainment as we travelled either for the eye or ear. There are, I
fancy, no singing birds in the Highlands.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 135. It
is odd that he should have looked for singing birds on the first of
September.
[444] Act iii. sc. 4.
[445] It is amusing to observe the different images which this being
presented to Dr. Johnson and me. The Doctor, in his _Journey_, compares
him to a Cyclops. BOSWELL. 'Out of one of the beds on which we were to
repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the
forge.' _Works_, ix. 44. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'When we were
taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed where one of us
was to lie. Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got'. _Piozzi
Letters_, i, 136. Macaulay (_Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 404) says: 'It is
clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he
wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple,
energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his
sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides
to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the _Journey to
the Hebrides_ is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two
versions.' Macaulay thereupon quotes these two passages. See _ante_,
under Aug. 29, 1783.
[446] 'We had a lemon and a piece of bread, which supplied me with my
supper.'_Piozzi Letters_, i, 136. Goldsmith, who in his student days had
been in Scotland, thus writes of a Scotch inn:--'Vile entertainment is
served up, complained of, and sent down; up comes worse, and that also
is changed, and every change makes our wretched cheer more unsavoury.'
_Present State of Polite Learning_, ch. 12.
[447] General Wolfe, in his letter from Head-quarters on Sept. 2, 1759,
eleven days before his death wrote:--'In this situation there is such a
choice of difficulties that I own myself at a loss how to determine.'
_Ann. Reg._ 1759, p. 246.
[448] See _ante_, p. 89.
[449] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2.
[450] Boswell, in a note that he added to the second edition (see
_post_, end of the _Journal_), says that he has omitted 'a few
observations the publication of which might perhaps be considered as
passing the bounds of a strict decorum,' In the first edition (p. 165)
the next three paragraphs were as follows:--'Instead of finding the head
of the Macdonalds surrounded with his clan, and a festive entertainment,
we had a small company, and cannot boast of our cheer. The particulars
are minuted in my Journal, but I shall not trouble the publick with
them. I shall mention but one characteristick circumstance. My shrewd
and hearty friend Sir Thomas (Wentworth) Blacket, Lady Macdonald's
uncle, who had preceded us in a visit to this chief, upon being asked by
him if the punch-bowl then upon the table was not a very handsome one,
replied, "Yes--if it were full." 'Sir Alexander Macdonald having been an
Eton scholar, Dr. Johnson had formed an opinion of him which was much
diminished when he beheld him in the isle of Sky, where we heard heavy
complaints of rents racked, and the people driven to emigration. Dr.
Johnson said, "It grieves me to see the chief of a great clan appear to
such disadvantage. This gentleman has talents, nay some learning; but he
is totally unfit for this situation. Sir, the Highland chiefs should not
be allowed to go farther south than Aberdeen. A strong-minded man, like
his brother Sir James, may be improved by an English education; but in
general they will be tamed into insignificance." 'I meditated an escape
from this house the very next day; but Dr. Johnson resolved that we
should weather it out till Monday.' Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'We
saw the isle of Skie before us, darkening the horizon with its rocky
coast. A boat was procured, and we launched into one of the straits of
the Atlantick Ocean. We had a passage of about twelve miles to the point
where ---- ---- resided, having come from his seat in the middle of the
island to a small house on the shore, as we believe, that he might with
less reproach entertain us meanly. If he aspired to meanness, his
retrograde ambition was completely gratified... Boswell was very angry,
and reproached him with his improper parsimony.' _Piozzi Letters_, i.
137. A little later he wrote:--'I have done thinking of ---- whom we now
call Sir Sawney; he has disgusted all mankind by injudicious parsimony,
and given occasion to so many stories, that ---- has some thoughts of
collecting them, and making a novel of his life.' _Ib_. p. 198. The last
of Rowlandson's _Caricatures_ of Boswell's _Journal_ is entitled
_Revising for the Second Edition_. Macdonald is represented as seizing
Boswell by the throat and pointing with his stick to the _Journal_ that
lies open at pages 168, 169. On the ground lie pages 165, 167, torn out.
Boswell, in an agony of fear, is begging for mercy.
[451]
'Here, in Badenoch, here in Lochaber anon, in Lochiel, in
Knoydart, Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, and Ardnamurchan,
Here I see him and here: I see him; anon I lose him.'
Clough's _Bothie_, p. 125
[452] See his Latin verses addressed to Dr. Johnson, in this APPENDIX.
BOSWELL.
[453] See _ante_, ii. 157.
[454] See _ante_, i. 449.
[455] See _ante_, ii. 99.
[456] See _ante_, iii 198, note 1.
[457] 'Such is the laxity of Highland conversation, that the inquirer is
kept in continual suspense, and by a kind of intellectual retrogradation
knows less as he hears more.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 47. 'They are not
much accustomed to be interrogated by others, and seem never to have
thought upon interrogating themselves; so that if they do not know what
they tell to be true, they likewise do not distinctly perceive it to be
false. Mr. Boswell was very diligent in his inquiries; and the result of
his investigations was, that the answer to the second question was
commonly such as nullified the answer to the first.' _Ib._, p. 114.
[458] Mr. Carruthers, in his edition of Boswell's _Hebrides_, says (p.
xiv):--'The new management and high rents took the tacksmen, or larger
tenants, by surprise. They were indignant at the treatment they
received, and selling off their stock they emigrated to America. In the
twenty years from 1772 to 1792, sixteen vessels with emigrants sailed
from the western shores of Inverness-shire and Ross-shire, containing
about 6400 persons, who carried with them in specie at least L38,400. A
desperate effort was made by the tacksmen on the estate of Lord
Macdonald. They bound themselves by a solemn oath not to offer for any
farm that might become vacant. The combination failed of its object, but
it appeared so formidable in the eyes of the "English-bred chieftain,"
that he retreated precipitately from Skye and never afterwards
returned.'
[459] Dr. Johnson seems to have forgotten that a Highlander going armed
at this period incurred the penalty of serving as a common soldier for
the first, and of transportation beyond sea for a second offence. And as
for 'calling out his clan,' twelve Highlanders and a bagpipe made a
rebellion. WALTER SCOTT.
[460] Mackintosh (_Life_ ii. 62) says that in Mme. du Deffand's
_Correspondence_ there is 'an extraordinary confirmation of the talents
and accomplishments of our Highland Phoenix, Sir James Macdonald. A
Highland chieftain, admired by Voltaire, could have been no
ordinary man.'
[461] This extraordinary young man, whom I had the pleasure of knowing
intimately, having been deeply regretted by his country, the most minute
particulars concerning him must be interesting to many. I shall
therefore insert his two last letters to his mother, Lady Margaret
Macdonald, which her ladyship has been pleased to communicate to me.
'Rome, July 9th, 1766. 'My DEAR MOTHER, 'Yesterday's post brought me
your answer to the first letter in which I acquainted you of my illness.
Your tenderness and concern upon that account are the same I have always
experienced, and to which I have often owed my life. Indeed it never was
in so great danger as it has been lately; and though it would have been
a very great comfort to me to have had you near me, yet perhaps I ought
to rejoice, on your account, that you had not the pain of such a
spectacle. I have been now a week in Rome, and wish I could continue to
give you the same good accounts of my recovery as I did in my last; but
I must own that, for three days past, I have been in a very weak and
miserable state, which however seems to give no uneasiness to my
physician. My stomach has been greatly out of order, without any visible
cause; and the palpitation does not decrease. I am told that my stomach
will soon recover its tone, and that the palpitation must cease in time.
So I am willing to believe; and with this hope support the little
remains of spirits which I can be supposed to have, on the forty-seventh
day of such an illness. Do not imagine I have relapsed;--I only recover
slower than I expected. If my letter is shorter than usual, the cause of
it is a dose of physick, which has weakened me so much to-day, that I am
not able to write a long letter. I will make up for it next post, and
remain always 'Your most sincerely affectionate son, 'J. MACDONALD.' He
grew gradually worse; and on the night before his death he wrote as
follows from Frescati:--'MY DEAR MOTHER, 'Though I did not mean to
deceive you in my last letter from Rome, yet certainly you would have
very little reason to conclude of the very great and constant danger I
have gone through ever since that time. My life, which is still almost
entirely desperate, did not at that time appear to me so, otherwise I
should have represented, in its true colours, a fact which acquires very
little horror by that means, and comes with redoubled force by
deception. There is no circumstance of danger and pain of which I have
not had the experience, for a continued series of above a fortnight;
during which time I have settled my affairs, after my death, with as
much distinctness as the hurry and the nature of the thing could admit
of. In case of the worst, the Abbe Grant will be my executor in this
part of the world, and Mr. Mackenzie in Scotland, where my object has
been to make you and my younger brother as independent of the eldest as
possible.' BOSWELL. Horace Walpole (Letters, vii. 291), in 1779, thus
mentions this 'younger brother':--'Macdonald abused Lord North in very
gross, yet too applicable, terms; and next day pleaded he had been
drunk, recanted, and was all admiration and esteem for his Lordship's
talents and virtues.'
[462] See _ante_, iii. 85, and _post_, Oct. 28.
[463] Cheyne's English Malady, ed. 1733, p. 229.
[464] 'Weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.' _Hamlet_, act i. sc. 2. See
_ante_, iii. 350, where Boswell is reproached by Johnson with 'bringing
in gabble,' when he makes this quotation.
[465] VARIOUS READINGS. Line 2. In the manuscript, Dr. Johnson, instead
of _rupibus obsita_, had written _imbribus uvida_, and _uvida nubibus_,
but struck them both out. Lines 15 and 16. Instead of these two lines,
he had written, but afterwards struck out, the following:--
Parare posse, utcunque jactet
Grandiloquus nimis alta Zeno.
BOSWELL. In Johnson's _Works_, i. 167, these lines are given with some
variations, which perhaps are in part due to Mr. Langton, who, we are
told (_ante_, Dec. 1784), edited some, if not indeed all, of Johnson's
Latin poems.
[466] Cowper wrote to S. Rose on May 20, 1789:--'Browne was an
entertaining companion when he had drunk his bottle, but not before;
this proved a snare to him, and he would sometimes drink too much.'
Southey's _Cowper_, vi. 237. His _De Animi Immortalitate_ was published
in 1754. He died in 1760, aged fifty-four. See _ante_, ii. 339.
[467] Boswell, in one of his _Hypochondriacks_ (_ante_, iv. 179)
says:--'I do fairly acknowledge that I love Drinking; that I have a
constitutional inclination to indulge in fermented liquors, and that if
it were not for the restraints of reason and religion, I am afraid I
should be as constant a votary of Bacchus as any man.... Drinking is in
reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time
of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable
manner is one of the great arts of living. Were we so framed that it
were possible by perpetual supplies of wine to keep ourselves for ever
gay and happy, there could be no doubt that drinking would be the
_summum bonum_, the chief good, to find out which philosophers have been
so variously busied. But we know from humiliating experience that men
cannot be kept long in a state of elevated drunkenness.'
[468] That my readers may have my narrative in the style of the country
through which I am travelling, it is proper to inform them, that the
chief of a clan is denominated by his _surname_ alone, as M'Leod,
M'Kinnon, M'lntosh. To prefix _Mr._ to it would be a degradation from
_the_ M'Leod, &c. My old friend, the Laird of M'Farlane, the great
antiquary, took it highly amiss, when General Wade called him Mr.
M'Farlane. Dr. Johnson said, he could not bring himself to use this mode
of address; it seemed to him to be too familiar, as it is the way in
which, in all other places, intimates or inferiors are addressed. When
the chiefs have _titles_ they are denominated by them, as _Sir James
Grant_, _Sir Allan M'Lean_. The other Highland gentlemen, of landed
property, are denominated by their _estates_, as _Rasay_, _Boisdale_;
and the wives of all of them have the title of _ladies_. The _tacksmen_,
or principal tenants, are named by their farms, as _Kingsburgh_,
_Corrichatachin_; and their wives are called the _mistress_ of
Kingsburgh, the _mistress_ of Corrichatachin.--Having given this
explanation, I am at liberty to use that mode of speech which generally
prevails in the Highlands and the Hebrides. BOSWELL.
[469] See _ante_, iii. 275.
[470] Boswell implies that Sir A. Macdonald's table had not been
furnished plentifully. Johnson wrote:--'At night we came to a tenant's
house of the first rank of tenants, where we were entertained better
than at the landlord's.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 141.
[471] 'Little did I once think,' he wrote to her the same day, 'of
seeing this region of obscurity, and little did you once expect a
salutation from this verge of European life. I have now the pleasure of
going where nobody goes, and seeing what nobody sees.' _Piozzi Letters_,
i. 120. About fourteen years since, I landed in Sky, with a party of
friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was the first idea on every
one's mind at landing. All answered separately that it was this Ode.
WALTER SCOTT.