which we will come as near as we can. Except this eye, I am very well. "Beattie is so caressed, and invited, and treated, and liked, and flattered by the great, that I can see nothing of him. I am in great hope that he will be well provided for, and then we will live upon him at the Marischal College, without pity or modesty. I left the town without taking leave of me, and is gone in deep dudgeon to. Is not this very childish? Where is now my legacy? "I hope your dear lady and her dear baby are both well. I shall see them too when I come; and I have that opinion of your choice, as to suspect that when I have seen Mrs. Boswell, I shall be less willing to go away. I am, dear sir, your affectionate humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON. "Write to me as soon as you can. Chambers is now at Oxford." I again wrote to him, informing him that the court of session rose on the twelfth of August, hoping to see him before that time, and expressing, perhaps in too extravagant terms, my admiration of him, and my expectation of pleasure from our intended tour. "TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "3d August, 1778. "DEAR SIR,-I shall set out from London on Friday the sixth of this month, and purpose not to loiter much by the way. Which day I shall be at Edinburgh, I cannot exactly tell. I suppose I must drive to an inn, and send a porter to find you. "I am afraid Beattie will not be at his college soon enough for us, and I shall be sorry to miss him; but there is no staying for the concurrence of all conveniences. We will do as well as we can. I am, sir, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." "8d August, 1773. "DEAR SIR,-Not being at Mr. Thrale's when your letter came, I had written the inclosed paper and sealed it; bringing it hither for a frank, I found yours. If any thing could repress my ardour, it would be such a letter as yours. To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed. Think only when you see me, that you see a man who loves you, and is proud and glad that you love him. I am, sir, your most affectionate, "SAM. JOHNSON." 1 [Both these blanks must be filled with LangSee ante, p. 321.-ED.] ton. 2 [Here begins the Journal of the Tour to the Hebrides, to which Mr. Boswell had prefixed two mottos, the first in the title-page, from Pope: "O! while along the stream of time thy name Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame, Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, Pursue the triumph and partake the gale?" The other on a fly-leaf, from Baker's Chronicle: "He was of an admirable pregnancy of wit, and that pregnancy much improved by continual study from his childhood; by which he had gotten such a promptness in expressing his mind, that his extemporal speeches were little inferior to his premeditated writings. Many, no doubt, had read as much, and perhaps more than he; but scarce ever any concocted his reading into judgment as he did." Mr. Boswell tells us that Johnson read this journal as it proceeded, which, strange as the reader will think it, when he comes to read some passages of it, Johnson himself confirms; for he says to Mrs. Thrale, " You never told me, and omitted to inquire, how you were entertained by Boswell's Journal. One would think the man had been hired to be a spy upon me. He was very diligent, and caught opportunities of writing from time to time. You may now conceive your self tolerably well acquainted with the expedition."-Letters, v. l. p. 233.-ED.] had impressed us with a notion, that we might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to see; and to find simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of remote time or place, so near to our native great island, was an object within the reach of reasonable curiosity. Dr. Johnson has said in his "Journey," "that he scarcely remembered how the wish to visit the Hebrides was excited;" but he told me, in summer, 1763, that his father put Martin's account into his hands when he was very young, and that he was much pleased with it. We reckoned there would be some inconveniences and hardships, and perhaps a little danger; but these, we were persuaded, were magnified in the imagination of every body. When I was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned our design to Voltaire. He looked at me, as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and said, "You do not insist on my accompanying you?" "No, sir." "Then I am very willing you should go." I was not afraid that our curious expedition would be prevented it would not be possible to prevail on Dr. by such apprehensions; but I doubted that Johnson to relinquish, for some time, the felicity of a London life, which, to a man who can enjoy it with full intellectual relish, is apt to make existence in any narrower sphere seem insipid or irksome. I doubted that he would not be willing to come down from his elevated state of philosophical digni ty; from a superiority of wisdom among the wise, and of learning among the learned; and from flashing his wit upon minds bright enough to reflect it. eous, which are like excellent oil2, and break not the head. Offer my best compliments to him, and assure him that I shall be happy to have the satisfaction of seeing him under my roof." He had disappointed my expectations so ong, that I began to despair; but, in spring, To Dr. Beattie I wrote, "The chief 1773, he talked of coming to Scotland that intention of this letter is to inform you, that year with so much firmness, that I hoped he I now seriously believe Mr. Samuel Johnwas at last in earnest. I knew that, if he son will visit Scotland this year: but I wish were once launched from the metropolis, he that every power of attraction may be emwould go forward very well; and I got our ployed to secure our having so valuable an common friends there to assist in setting him acquisition, and therefore I hope you will, afloat. To Mrs. Thrale, in particular, without delay, write to me what I know whose enchantment over him seldom failed, you think, that I may read it to the mighty I was much obliged. It was, "I'll give sage, with proper emphasis, before I leave thee a wind." "Thou art kind." To at- London, which I must do soon. He talks tract him, we had invitations from the chiefs of you with the same warmth that he did Macdonald and Macleod; and, for addition- | last year. We are to see as much of Scotal aid, I wrote to Lord Élibank, Dr. Will-land as we can, in the months of August iam Robertson, and Dr. Beattie. To Dr. Robertson, so far as my letter concerned the present subject, I wrote as follows: "Our friend, Mr. Samuel Johnson, is in great health and spirits; and, I do think, has a serious resolution to visit Scotland this year. The more attraction, however, the better; and, therefore, though I know he will be happy to meet you there, it will forward the scheme, if, in your answer to this, you express yourself concerning it with that power of which you are so happily possessed, and which may be so directed as to operate strongly upon him." His answer to that part of my letter was quite as I could have wished. It was written with the address and persuasion of the historian of America. "When I saw you last, you gave us some hopes that you might prevail with Mr. Johnson to make out that excursion to Scotland, with the expectation of which we have long flattered ourselves. If he could order matters so as to pass some time in Edinburgh, about the close of the summer season, and then visit some of the Highland scenes, I am confident he would be pleased with the grand features of nature in many parts of this country: he will meet with many persons here who respect him, and some whom I am persuaded he will think not unworthy of his esteem. I wish he would make the experiment. He sometimes cracks his jokes upon us; but he will find that we can distinguish between the stabs of malevolence and the rebukes of the right and September. We shall not be long of being at Marischal College 3. He is particularly desirous of seeing some of the Western Islands." Dr. Beattie did better: ipse venit. He was, however, so polite as to wave his privilege of nil mihi rescribas, and wrote from Edinburgh as follows: "Your very kind and agreeable favour of the 20th of April overtook me here yesterday, after having gone to Aberdeen, which place I left about a week ago. I am to set out this day for London, and hope to have the honour of paying my respects to Mr. Johnson and you, about a week or ten days hence. I shall then do what I can to enforce the topick you mention; but at present I cannot enter upon it, as I am in a very great hurry, for I intend to begin my journey within an hour or two." He was as good as his word, and threw some pleasing motives into the northern scale. But, indeed, Mr. Johnson loved all that he heard, from one whom he tells us, in his Lives of the Poets, Gray found "a poet, a philosopher, and a good man." My Lord Elibank did not answer my letter to his lordship for some time. The reason will appear when we come to the Isle of Sky. I shall then insert my letter, with letters from his lordship, both to myself and Mr. Johnson. I beg it may be understood, that I insert my own letters, as I relate my own sayings, rather as keys to what is valuable belonging to others, than for their own sake. Luckily, Mr. Justice (now Sir Robert) Our friend, Edmund Burke, who, by this time, had received some pretty severe strokes from Dr. Johnson, on account of the unhappy difference in their politicks, upon my repeating this passage to him, exclaimed, "Oil of vitriol !"— BOSWELL. 3 This, I find, is a Scotticism. I should have said, "It will not be long before we shall be at Marischal College."-BOSWELL. Chambers, who was about to sail for the East Indies, was going to take leave of his relations at Newcastle, and he conducted Dr. Johnson to that town [whence he wrote me the following]: "Newcastle, 11th August, 1775. "DEAR SIR,-I came hither last night, and hope, but do not absolutely promise, to be in Edinburgh on Saturday. Beattie will not come so soon. I am, sir, your most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON. "My compliments to your lady." Mr. Scott, of University College, Oxford, afterwards Sir William Scott [and Lord Stowell], accompanied him from thence to Edinburgh. With such propitious convoys did he proceed to my native city. But lest metaphor should make it be supposed he actually went by sea, I choose to mention that he travelled in post-chaises, of which the rapid motion was one of his most favourite amusements. Dr. Samuel Johnson's character, religious, moral, political, and literary; nay, his figure and manner are, I believe, more generally known than those of almost any man; yet it may not be superfluous here to attempt a sketch of him. Let my readers then remember that he was a sincere and zealous christian, of high church of England and monarchical principles, which he would not tamely suffer to be questioned; steady and inflexible in maintaining the obligations of piety and virtue, both from a regard to the order of society, and from a veneration for the Great Source of all order; correct, nay, stern in his taste; hard to please, and easily offended; impetuous and irritable in his temper, but of a most humane and benevolent heart; having a mind stored with a vast and various collection of learning and knowledge, which he communicated with peculiar perspicuity and force, in rich and choice expression. He united a most logical head with a most fertile imagination, which gave him an extraordinary advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he saw best for the moment. He could, when he chose it, be the greatest sophist that ever wielded a weapon in the schools of declamation, but he indulged this only in conversation; for he owned he sometimes talked for victory; he was too conscientious to make errour permament and pernicious, by deliberately writing it. He was conscious of his superiority. He loved praise when it was brought to him; but he was too proud to seek for it. He was somewhat susceptible of flattery. His mind was so full of imagery, that he might have been perpetually a poet. It has been often remarked, that in his poetical pieces, which it is to be regret ted are so few, because so excellent, his style is easier than in his prose. There is deception in this: it is not easier, but better suited to the dignity of verse; as one may dance with grace, whose motions, in ordinary walking, in the common step, are awkward. He had a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking: yet, though grave and awful in his deportment, when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himself in pleasantry and sportive sallies. He was prone to superstition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous and the mysterious, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy. He had a loud voice, and a slow, deliberate utterance, which no doubt gave some additional weight to the sterling metal of his conversation. Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, with a happy pleasantry, and some truth, that "Dr. Johnson's sayings would not appear so extraordinary, were it not for his bow-wow way." But I admit the truth of this only on some occasions. The Messiah played upon the Canterbury organ is more sublime than when played upon an inferior instrument; but very slight musick will seem grand, when conveyed to the ear through that majestick medium. While, therefore, Dr. Johnson's sayings are read, let his manner be taken along with them. Let it, however, be observed, that the sayings themselves are generally great; that, though he might be an ordinary composer at times, he was for the most part a Handel. His person was large, robust, I may say approaching to the gigantick, and grown un wieldy from corpulency. His countenance was naturally of the cast of an ancient statue, but somewhat disfigured by the scars of that evil, which, it was formerly imagined, the royal touch could cure. now in his sixty-fourth year, and was become a little dull of hearing. His sight had always been somewhat weak; yet, so much does mind govern, and even supply the deficiency of organs, that his perceptions were uncommonly quick and accurate. His head, and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy: he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions, of the nature of that distemper He was 1 Such they appeared to me; but since the first edition, Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, "that Dr. Johnson's extraordinary gestures were only habits, in which he indulged himself at certain times. When in company, where he was not free, or when engaged earnestly in conversation, he never gave way to such habits, which man will deny. He was indeed, if I may be allowed the phrase, at bottom much of a John Bull; much of a blunt true-born Englishman. There was a stratum of common clay under the rock of marble. He was voraciously fond of good eating; and he had a great deal of that quality called humour, which gives an oiliness and a gloss to every other quality. called St. Vitus's dance. He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted hair-buttons of the same colour, a large bushy grayish wig, a plain shirt, black worsted stockings, and silver buckles. Upon this tour, when journeying, he wore boots, and a very wide brown cloth great coat, with pockets which might have almost held the two volumes of his folio dictionary, and he carried in his hand a large English oak stick. Let me not be censured for mentioning such minute particulars: every thing relative to so great a man is worth observing. I remember Dr. Adam Smith, in his rhetorical lectures at Glasgow, told us he was glad to know that Milton wore latchets in his shoes instead of buckles. When I mention the oak stick,glish are better animals than the Scots; it is but letting Hercules have his club; and, by and by, my readers will find this stick will bud, and produce a good joke. This imperfect sketch of "the combination and the form " of that wonderful man, whom I venerated and loved while in this world, and after whom I gaze with humble hope, now that it has pleased Almighty God to call him to a better world, will serve to introduce to the fancy of my readers the capital object of the following journal, in the course of which I trust they will attain to a considerable degree of acquaintance with him. His prejudice against Scotland was announced almost as soon as he began to appear in the world of letters. In his "London," a poem, are the following nervous lines: "For who would leave, unbribed, Hibernia's land? nations but his own as barbarians: not on- proves that they were not involuntary." I still, however, think, that these gestures were involuntary; for surely had not that been the case, he would have restrained them in the public streets. -BOSWELL. [See ante, p. 56, Sir Joshua's reasoning at large; notwithstanding which, it seems the better opinion that these gestures were the consequence of nervous affections, and not of trick or habit.-ED.] [This was no great discovery; the fashion of shoe-buckles was long posterior to Milton's day. -ED.] I am, I flatter myself, completely a citizen of the world. In my travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica, France, I never felt myself from home; and I sincerely love "every kindred and tongue and people and nation." I subscribe to what my late truly learned and philosophical friend Mr. Crosbie said, that the En they are nearer the sun; their blood is richer, and more mellow: but when I humour any of them in an outrageous contempt of Scotland, I fairly own I treat them as children. And thus I have, at some moments, found myself obliged to treat even Dr. Johnson. To Scotland, however, he ventured ; and he returned from it in great good humour, with his prejudices much lessened, and with very grateful feelings of the hospitality with which he was treated; as is evident from that admirable work, his " Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland," which, to my utter astonishment, has been misapprehended, even to rancour, by my own countrymen. To have the company of Chambers and Scott, he delayed his journey so long, that the court of session, which rises on the 11th of August, was broke up before he got to Edinburgh. On Saturday, the 14th of August, 1773, late in the evening, I received a note from him, that he was arrived a Boyd's inn 2, at the head of the Canon-gate. "Saturday night. "Mr. Johnson sends his compliments to Mr. Boswell, being just arrived at Boyd's." I went to him directly. He embraced me cordially; and I exulted in the thought that I now had him actually in Caledonia. Mr. Scott's amiable manners, and attachment to our Socrates, at once united me to him. He told me that before I came in, the Doctor had unluckily had a bad specimen of Scottish cleanliness. He then drank no fer [The sign of the White Horse. It continued a place from which coaches used to start till the end of the eighteenth century; some twelve or fifteen years ago it was a carrier's inn, and has since been held unworthy even of that occupation, and the sign is taken down. It was a base hovel. -WALTER SCOTT.] I did not begin to keep a regular full mented liquor. He asked to have his lemonade made sweeter; upon which the wait-journal till some days after we had set out er, with his greasy fingers, lifted a lump of from Edinburgh; but I have luckily presugar, and put into it. The Doctor, in in- served a good many fragments of his dignation, threw it out of the window, Memorabilia from his very first evening in Scott said he was afraid he would have Scotland. knocked the waiter down1. Mr. Johnson [has since] told me that such another trick was played him at the house of a lady in Paris. He was to do me the honour to lodge under my roof. I regretted sincerely that I had not also a room for Mr. Scott. Mr. Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High-street, to my house in James's-court 2: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. I heard a late baronet, of some distinction in the political world in the beginning of the present reign, observe, that "walking the streets of Edinburgh at night was pretty perilous, and a good deal odoriferous." The peril is much abated by the care which the magistrates have taken to enforce the city laws against throwing foul water from the windows; but, from the structure of the houses in the old town, which consist of many stories, in each of which a different family lives, and there being no covered sewers, the odour still continues. A zealous Scotsman would have wished Mr. Johnson to be without one of his five senses upon this occasion. As we marched slowly along, he grumbled in my ear," I smell you in the dark!" But he acknowledged that the breadth of the street, and the loftiness of the buildings on each side, made a noble appearance. My wife had tea ready for him, which it is well known he delighted to drink at all hours, particularly when sitting up late, and of which his able defence against Mr. Jonas Hanway should have obtained him a magnificent reward from the East India company. He showed much complacency upon finding that the mistress of the house was so attentive to his singular habit; and as no man could be more polite when he chose to be so, his address to her was most courteous and engaging; and his conversation soon charmed her into a forgetfulness of his external appearance. 1["The house," says Lord Stowell, "was kept by a woman, and she was called Luckie, which it seems is synonymous to Goody, in England. I, at first, thought the appellation very inappropriate, and that Unlucky would have been better, for Doctor Johnson had a mind to have thrown the waiter, as well as the lemonade, out of the window.". ."-ED.] 2 [See post, Nov. 1775.-ED.] 3 ["Boswell," Dr. Johnson writes, "has very handsome and spacious rooms, level with the ground at one side of the house, and on the other four stories high.”—Lett. i. 109.—Ed.] We had a little before this had a trial for murder, in which the judges had allowed the lapse of twenty years since its commission as a plea in bar, in conformity with the doctrine of prescription in the civil law, which Scotland and several other countries in Europe have adopted 4. He at first disapproved of this; but then he thought there was something in it, if there had been for twenty years a neglect to prosecute a crime which was known. He would not allow that a murder, by not being discovered for twenty years, should escape punishment. We talked of the ancient trial by duel. He did not think it so absurd as is generally supposed; "For," said he, " it was only allowed when the question was in equilibrio, as when one affirmed and another denied; and they had a notion that Providence would interfere in favour of him who was in the right. But as it was found that in a duel, he who was in the right had not a better chance than he who was in the wrong, therefore society instituted the present mode of trial, and gave the advantage to him who is in the right." We sat till near two in the morning, having chatted a good while after my wife left us. She had insisted that to show all respect to the sage she would give up her own bedchamber to him, and take a worse. This I cannot but gratefully mention as one of a thousand obligations which I owe her, since the great obligation of her being pleased to accept of me as her husband. Sunday, 15th August.-Mr. Scott came to breakfast, at which I introduced to Dr. Johnson, and him, my friend Sir William Forbes, now of Pitsligo 5, a man of whom too much good cannot be said, who, with distinguished abilities and application in his profession of a banker, is at once a good companion and a good christian, which I think is saying enough. Yet it is but justice to record, that once, when he was in a dangerous illness, he was watched with the anxious apprehension of a general calamity; day and night his house was beset with affectionate inquiries, and, upon his recovery, Te Deum was the universal chorus from the hearts of his countrymen. Mr. Johnson was pleased with my daughter Veronica 6, then a child of about four |