126 Lord Monboddo. [August 26. did; that it was plain to him, the girl confounded what she imagined with what she remembered: that, besides, she perceived Condamine and Lord Monboddo forming theories, and she adapted her story to them. Dr. Johnson said, 'It is a pity to see Lord Monboddo publish such notions as he has done; a man of sense, and of so much elegant learning. There would be little in a fool doing it; we should only laugh; but when a wise man does it, we are sorry. Other people have strange notions; but they conceal them. If they have tails, they hide them; but Monboddo is as jealous of his tail as a squirrel.' I shall here put down some more remarks of Dr. Johnson's on Lord Monboddo, which were not made exactly at this time, but come in well from connection. He said, he did not approve of a judge's calling himself Farmer Burnett', and going about with a little round hat. He laughed heartily at his lordship's saying he was an enthusiastical farmer; for, (said he,) what can he do in farming by his enthusiasm?' Here, however, I think Dr. Johnson mistaken. He who wishes to be successful, or happy, ought to be enthusiastical, that is to say, very keen in all the occupations or diversions of life. An ordinary gentleman-farmer will be satisfied with looking at his fields once or twice a day: an enthusiastical farmer will be constantly employed on them; will have his mind earnestly engaged; will talk perpetually of them. But Dr. Johnson has much of the nil admirari' in smaller concerns. It is the custom in Scotland for the judges of the Court of Session to have the title of lords, from their estates; thus Mr. Burnett is Lord Monboddo, as Mr. Home was Lord Kames. There is something a little awkward in this; for they are denominated in deeds by their names, with the addition of 'one of the Senators of the College of Justice;' and subscribe their christian and surnames, as James Burnett, Henry Home, even in judicial acts. BOSWELL. See ante, p. 87, note 3. • See ante, ii. 393, where Johnson says:—‘A judge may be a farmer, but he is not to geld his own pigs.' 3 'Not to admire is all the art I know To make men happy and to keep them so.' That August 26.] The influence of wealth. 127 That survey of life which gave birth to his Vanity of Human Wishes early sobered his mind. Besides, so great a mind as his cannot be moved by inferior objects; an elephant does not run and skip like lesser animals. Mr. Robertson sent a servant with us, to shew us through Lord Findlater's wood, by which our way was shortened, and we saw some part of his domain, which is indeed admirably laid out. Dr. Johnson did not choose to walk through it. He always said, that he was not come to Scotland to see fine places, of which there were enough in England; but wild objects, -mountains,—waterfalls,waterfalls, peculiar manners; in short, things which he had not seen before. I have a notion that he at no time has had much taste for rural beauties. I have myself very little'. Dr. Johnson said, there was nothing more contemptible than a country gentleman living beyond his income, and every year growing poorer and poorer'. He spoke strongly of the influence which a man has by being rich. A man, (said he,) who keeps his money, has in reality more use from it, than he can have by spending it.' I observed that this looked very like a paradox; but he explained it thus: 'If it were certain that a man would keep his money locked up for ever, to be sure he would have no influence; but, as so many want money, and he has the power of giving it, and they know not but by gaining his favour they may obtain it, the rich man will always have the greatest influence. He again who lavishes his money, is laughed at as foolish, and in a great degree with justice, considering how much is spent from vanity. Even those who partake of a man's hospitality, have but a transient kindness for him. If he has not the command of money, people know he cannot help them, if he would; whereas the rich man always can, if he will, and for the chance of that, will have much weight.' BOSWELL. 'But philosophers and satirists have all treated a miser as contemptible.' JOHNSON. 'He is so philosophically; but not in the practice of life'.' BOSWELL. 'Let me see now :— See ante, iii. 366. See ante, i. 533. See ante, iv. 175. 128 The Lowther family. [August 26. I do not know the instances of misers in England, so as to examine into their influence. JOHNSON. 'We have had few misers in England.' BosWELL. 'There was Lowther'.' JOHNSON. Why, Sir, Lowther, by keeping his money, had the command of the county, which the family has now lost, by spending it'; I take it, he lent a great deal; and that is 'In the Gent. Mag. for 1755, p. 42, among the deaths is entered 'Sir James Lowther, Bart., reckoned the richest commoner in Great Britain, and worth above a million.' According to Lord Shelburne, Lord Sunderland, who had been advised 'to nominate Lowther one of his Treasury on account of his great property,' appointed him to call on him. After waiting for some time he rang to ask whether he had come. The servants answered that nobody had called; upon his repeating the inquiry they said there was an old man, somewhat wet, sitting by the fireside in the hall, who they supposed had some petition to deliver to his lordship. When he went out it proved to be Sir James Lowther. Lord Sunderland desired him to be sent about his business, saying that no such mean fellow should sit at his Treasury.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, i. 34. 'I do not know what was at this time the state of the parliamentary interest of the ancient family of Lowther; a family before the Conquest; but all the nation knows it to be very extensive at present. A due mixture of severity and kindness, œconomy and munificence, characterises its present Representative. BOSWELL. Boswell, most unhappily not clearly seeing where his own genius lay, too often sought to obtain fame and position by the favour of some great man. For some years he courted in a very gross manner the present Representative,' the first Earl of Lonsdale, who treated him with great brutality. Letters of Boswell, pp. 271, 294, 324, and ante, iv. May 15, 1783. In the Ann. Reg. 1771, p. 56, it is shewn how by this bad man 'the whole county of Cumberland was thrown into a state of the greatest terror and confusion; four hundred ejectments were served in one day.' Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 418) says that he was more detested than any man alive, as a shameless political sharper, a domestic bashaw, and an intolerable tyrant over his tenants and dependants.' Lord Albemarle (Memoirs of Rockingham, ii. 70) describes the 'bad Lord Lonsdale. He exacted a serf-like submission from his poor and abject dependants. He professed a thorough contempt for modern refinements. Grass grew in the neglected approaches to his mansion. ... Awe and silence pervaded the inhabitants [of Penrith] when the gloomy despot traversed their streets. He might have been taken for a Judge Jefferies about to open a royal commission to try them as the August 26.] The cathedral of Elgin. 129 the way to have influence, and yet preserve one's wealth. A man may lend his money upon very good security, and yet have his debtor much under his power.' BOSWELL. 'No doubt, Sir. He can always distress him for the money; as no man borrows, who is able to pay on demand quite conveniently.' We dined at Elgin, and saw the noble ruins of the cathedral. Though it rained much, Dr. Johnson examined them with a most patient attention. He could not here feel any abhorrence at the Scottish reformers', for he had been told by Lord Hailes, that it was destroyed before the Reformation, by the Lord of Badenoch', who had a quarrel with the state criminals. . . . In some years of his life he resisted the payment of all bills.' Among his creditors was Wordsworth's father, 'who died leaving the poet and four other helpless children. The executors of the will, foreseeing the result of a legal contest with a millionaire, withdrew opposition, trusting to Lord Lonsdale's sense of justice for payment. They leaned on a broken reed, the wealthy debtor "Died and made no sign."' See De Quincey's Works, iii. 151. [2 Henry VI, act iii. sc. 3.] ''Let us not,' he says, 'make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence.' Works, ix. 20. Note by Lord Hailes. 'The cathedral of Elgin was burnt by the Lord of Badenoch, because the Bishop of Moray had pronounced an award not to his liking. The indemnification that the see obtained was, that the Lord of Badenoch stood for three days barefooted at the great gate of the cathedral. The story is in the Chartulary of Elgin.' BOSWELL. The cathedral was rebuilt in 1407-20, but the lead was stripped from the roof by the Regent Murray, and the building went to ruin. Murray's Handbook, ed. 1867, p. 303. There is,' writes Johnson (Works, ix. 20), 'still extant in the books of the council an order. . . directing that the lead, which covers the two cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen, shall be taken away, and converted into money for the support of the army. . . . The two churches were stripped, and the lead was shipped to be sold in Holland. I hope every reader will rejoice that this cargo of sacrilege was lost at sea.' On this Horace Walpole remarks (Letters, vii. 484) :—' I confess I have not quite so heinous an idea of bishop. V.-9 130 The piazzas of Elgin. [August 26. bishop. The bishop's house, and those of the other clergy, which are still pretty entire, do not seem to have been proportioned to the magnificence of the cathedral, which has been of great extent, and had very fine carved work. The ground within the walls of the cathedral is employed as a burying-place. The family of Gordon have their vault here; but it has nothing grand. We passed Gordon Castle' this forenoon, which has a princely appearance. Fochabers, the neighbouring village, is a poor place, many of the houses being ruinous; but it is remarkable, they have in general orchards well stored with apple-trees. Elgin has what in England are called piazzas, that run in many places on each side of the street. It must have been a much better place formerly. Probably it had piazzas all along the town, as I have seen at Bologna. I approved much of such structures in a town, on account of their conveniency in wet weather. Dr. Johnson disapproved of them, 'because (said he) it makes the under story of a sacrilege as Dr. Johnson. Of all kinds of robbery, that appears to me the lightest species which injures nobody. Dr. Johnson is so pious that in his journey to your country he flatters himself that all his readers will join him in enjoying the destruction of two Dutch crews, who were swallowed up by the ocean after they had robbed a church.' I am not sure whether the Duke was at home. But, not having the honour of being much known to his grace, I could not have presumed to enter his castle, though to introduce even so celebrated a stranger. We were at any rate in a hurry to get forward to the wildness which we came to see. Perhaps, if this noble family had still preserved that sequestered magnificence which they maintained when catholicks, corresponding with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, we might have been induced to have procured proper letters of introduction, and devoted some time to the contemplation of venerable superstitious state. BoSWELL. Burnet (History of his own Times, ii. 443, and iii. 23) mentions the Duke of Gordon, a papist, as holding Edinburgh Castle for James II. in 1689. 2 In the way, we saw for the first time some houses with fruit-trees about them. The improvements of the Scotch are for immediate profit; they do not yet think it quite worth their while to plant what will not produce something to be eaten or sold in a very little time.' Piozzi Letters, i. 121. house |