Books: The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

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Saturday, 21st August

Neither the Rev. Mr Nisbet, the established minister, nor the Rev. Mr
Spooner, the episcopal minister, were in town. Before breakfast, we
went and saw the town-hall, where is a good dancing-room, and other
rooms for tea-drinking. The appearance of the town from it is very
well; but many of the houses are built with their ends to the street,
which looks awkward. When we came down from it, I met Mr Gleg, a
merchant here. He went with us to see the English chapel. It is
situated on a pretty dry spot, and there is a fine walk to it. It is
really an elegant building, both within and without. The organ is
adorned with green and gold. Dr Johnson gave a shilling extraordinary
to the clerk, saying, 'He belongs to an honest church.' I put him in
mind, that episcopals were but DISSENTERS here; they were only
TOLERATED. 'Sir,' said he, 'we are here, as Christians in Turkey.' He
afterwards went into an apothecary's shop, and ordered some medicine
for himself, and wrote the prescription in technical characters. The
boy took him for a physician.

I doubted much which road to take, whether to go by the coast, or by
Lawrence Kirk and Monboddo. I knew Lord Monboddo and Dr Johnson did
not love each other: yet I was unwilling not to visit his lordship;
and was also curious to see them together. [Footnote: There were
several points of similarity between them: learning, clearness of
head, precision of speech, and a love of research on many subjects
which people in general do not investigate. Foote paid Lord Monboddo
the compliment of saying, that he was 'an Elzevir edition of Johnson'.

It has been shrewdly observed that Foote must have meant a diminutive,
or POCKET edition.] I mentioned my doubts to Dr Johnson, who said, he
would go two miles out of his way to see Lord Monboddo. I therefore
sent Joseph forward, with the following note.

Montrose, 21 August.
My dear Lord,

Thus far I am come with Mr Samuel Johnson. We must be at Aberdeen
to-night. I know you do not admire him so much as I do; but I cannot
be in this country without making you a bow at your old place, as I do
not know if I may again have an opportunity of seeing Monboddo.
Besides, Mr Johnson says, he would go two miles out of his way to see
Lord Monboddo. I have sent forward my servant, that we may know if
your lordship be at home. I am ever, my dear lord,

Most sincerely yours,
James Boswell.

As we travelled onwards from Montrose, we had the Grampion hills in
our view, and some good land around us, but void of trees and hedges.
Dr Johnson has said ludicrously, in his Journey, that the HEDGES were
of STONE; for, instead of the verdant THORN to refresh the eye, we
found the bare WALL or DIKE intersecting the prospect. He observed,
that it was wonderful to see a country so divested, so denuded of
trees.

We stopped at Lawrence Kirk, where our great grammarian, Ruddiman, was
once schoolmaster. We respectfully remembered that excellent man and
eminent scholar, by whose labours a knowledge of the Latin language
will be preserved in Scotland, if it shall be preserved at all. Lord
Gardenston, one of our judges, collected money to raise a monument to
him at this place, which I hope will be well executed. I know my
father gave five guineas towards it. Lord Gardenston is the proprietor
of Lawrence Kirk, and has encouraged the building of a manufacturing
village, of which he is exceedingly fond, and has written a pamphlet
upon it, as if he had founded Thebes, in which, however there are many
useful precepts strongly expressed. The village seemed to be
irregularly built, some of the houses being of clay, some of brick,
and some of brick and stone. Dr Johnson observed, they thatched well
here.

I was a little acquainted with Mr Forbes, the minister of the parish.
I sent to inform him that a gentleman desired to see him. He returned
for answer, 'that he would not come to a stranger'. I then gave my
name, and he came. I remonstrated to him for not coming to a stranger;
and, by presenting him to Dr Johnson, proved to him what a stranger
might sometimes be. His Bible inculcates 'be not forgetful to
entertain strangers', and mentions the same motive. He defended
himself by saying, he had once come to a stranger who sent for him;
and he found him 'a little worth person!'

Dr Johnson insisted on stopping at the inn, as I told him that Lord
Gardenston had furnished it with a collection of books, that
travellers might have entertainment for the mind, as well as the body.
He praised the design, but wished there had been more books, and those
better chosen.

About a mile from Monboddo, where you turn off the road, Joseph was
waiting to tell us my lord expected us to dinner. We drove over a wild
moor. It rained, and the scene was somewhat dreary. Dr Johnson
repeated, with solemn emphasis, Macbeth's speech on meeting the
witches. As we travelled on, he told me, 'Sir, you got into our club
by doing what a man can do. [Footnote: This, I find, is considered as
obscure. I suppose Dr Johnson meant, that I assiduously and earnestly
recommended myself to some of the members, as in a canvass for an
election into Parliament.] Several of the members wished to keep you
out. Burke told me, he doubted if you were fit for it: but, now you
are in, none of them are sorry. Burke says, that you have so much good
humour naturally, it is scarce a virtue.' BOSWELL. 'They were afraid
of you, sir, as it was you who proposed me.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, they knew,
that if they refused you, they'd probably never have got in another.
I'd have kept them all out. Beauclerk was very earnest for you.'
BOSWELL. 'Beauclerk has a keenness of mind which is very uncommon.'
JOHNSON. 'Yes, sir; and every thing comes from him so easily. It
appears to me that I labour, when I say a good thing.' BOSWELL. 'You
are loud, sir; but it is not an effort of mind.'

Monboddo is a wretched place, wild and naked, with a poor old house;
though, if I recollect right, there are two turrets which mark an old
baron's residence. Lord Monboddo received us at his gate most
courteously; pointed to the Douglas arms upon his house, and told us
that his great-grandmother was of that family, 'In such houses,' said
he, 'our ancestors lived, who were better men than we.' 'No, no, my
lord,' said Dr Johnson. 'We are as strong as they, and a great deal
wiser.' This was an assault upon one of Lord Monboddo's capital
dogmas, and I was afraid there would have been a violent altercation
in the very close, before we got into the house. But his lordship is
distinguished not only for 'ancient metaphysicks', but for ancient
politesse, la vieille cour, and he made no reply.

His lordship was drest in a rustick suit, and wore a little round hat;
he told us, we now saw him as Farmer Burnett, and we should have his
family dinner, a farmer's dinner. He said, 'I should not have forgiven
Mr Boswell, had he not brought you here, Dr Johnson.' He produced a
very long stalk of corn, as a specimen of his crop, and said, 'You see
here the loetas segetes.' He added, that Virgil seemed to be as
enthusiastick a farmer as he, and was certainly a practical one.
JOHNSON. 'It does not always follow, my lord, that a man who has
written a good poem on an art, has practised it. Philip Miller told
me, that in Philips's "Cyder", a poem, all the precepts were just, and
indeed better than in books written for the purpose of instructing;
yet Philips had never made cyder.'

I started the subject of emigration. JOHNSON. 'To a man of mere animal
life, you can urge no argument against going to America, but that it
will be some time before he will get the earth to produce. But a man
of any intellectual enjoyment will not easily go and immerse himself
and his posterity for ages in barbarism.'

He and my lord spoke highly of Homer. JOHNSON. 'He had all the
learning of his age. The shield of Achilles shews a nation in war, a
nation in peace; harvest sport, nay stealing.' [Footnote: My note of
this is much too short. Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio. Yet as I
have resolved that THE VERY Journal WHICH DR JOHNSON READ, shall be
presented to the publick, I will not expand the text in any
considerable degree, though I may occasionally supply a word to
complete the sense, as I fill up the blanks of abbreviation in the
writing; neither of which can be said to change the genuine Journal.
One of the best criticks of our age conjectures that the imperfect
passage above has probably been as follows: 'In his book we have an
accurate display of a nation in war, and a nation in peace; the
peasant is delineated as truly as the general; nay, even
harvest-sport, and the modes of ancient theft are described.']
MONBODDO. 'Ay, and what we' (looking to me)?'would call a
parliament-house scene; a cause pleaded.' JOHNSON. 'That is part of
the life of a nation in peace. And there are in Homer such characters
of heroes, and combinations of qualities of heroes, that the united
powers of mankind ever since have not produced any but what are to be
found there.' MONBODDO. 'Yet no character is described.' JOHNSON. 'No;
they all develope themselves. Agamemnon is always a gentleman-like
character; he has always . That the ancients held so, is plain
from this; that Euripides, in his Hecuba, makes him the person to
interpose.' [Footnote: Dr Johnson modestly said, he had not read Homer
so much as he wished he had done. But this conversation shews how well
he was acquainted with the Moeonian bard; and he has shewn it still
more in his criticism upon Pope's Homer, in his Life of that poet. My
excellent friend, Mr Langton, told me, he was once present at a
dispute between Dr Johnson and Mr Burke, on the comparative merits of
Homer and Virgil, which was carried on with extraordinary abilities on
both sides. Dr Johnson maintained the superiority of Homer.] MONBODDO.
'The history of manners is the most valuable. I never set a high value
on any other history.' JOHNSON. 'Nor I; and therefore I esteem
biography, as giving us what comes near to ourselves, what we can turn
to use.' BOSWELL. 'But in the course of general history, we find
manners. In wars, we see the dispositions of people, their degrees of
humanity, and other particulars.' JOHNSON. 'Yes; but then you must
take all the facts to get this; and it is but a little you get.'
MONBODDO. 'And it is that little which makes history valuable.' Bravo!
thought I; they agree like two brothers. MONBODDO. 'I am sorry, Dr
Johnson, you were not longer at Edinburgh, to receive the homage of
our men of learning.' JOHNSON. 'My lord, I received great respect and
great kindness.' BOSWELL. 'He goes back to Edinburgh after our tour.'
We talked of the decrease of learning in Scotland, and the Muses'
Welcome. JOHNSON. 'Learning is much decreased in England, in my
remembrance.' MONBODDO. 'You, sir, have lived to see its decrease in
England, I its extinction in Scotland.' However, I brought him to
confess that the High School of Edinburgh did well. JOHNSON. 'Learning
has decreased in England, because learning will not do so much for a
man as formerly. There are other ways of getting preferment. Few
bishops are now made for their learning. To be a bishop, a man must be
learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age; but always of
eminence. Warburton is an exception; though his learning alone did not
raise him. He was first an antagonist to Pope, and helped Theobald to
publish his Shakspeare; but, seeing Pope the rising man, when Crousaz
attacked his Essay on Man, for some faults which it has, and some
which it has not, Warburton defended it in the Review of that time.
This brought him acquainted with Pope, and he gained his friendship.
Pope introduced him to Allen, Allen married him to his niece: so, by
Allen's interest and his own, he was made a bishop. But then his
learning was the sine qua non: he knew how to make the most of it; but
I do not find by any dishonest means.' MONBODDO. 'He is a great man.'
JOHNSON. 'Yes; he has great knowledge, great power of mind. Hardly any
man brings greater variety of learning to bear upon his point.'
MONBODDO. 'He is one of the greatest lights of your church.' JOHNSON.
'Why, we are not so sure of his being very friendly to us. He blazes,
if you will, but that is not always the steadiest light. Lowth is
another bishop who has risen by his learning.'

Dr Johnson examined young Arthur, Lord Monboddo's son, in Latin. He
answered very well; upon which he said, with complacency, 'Get you
gone! When King James comes back, [Footnote: I find, some doubt has
been entertained concerning Dr Johnson's meaning here. It is to be
supposed that he meant, 'when a king shall again be entertained in
Scotland'.] you shall be in the "Muses' Welcome"!' My lord and Dr
Johnson disputed a little, whether the savage or the London shopkeeper
had the best existence; his lordship, as usual, preferring the savage.
My lord was extremely hospitable, and I saw both Dr Johnson and him
liking each other better every hour.

Dr Johnson having retired for a short time, his lordship spoke of his
conversation as I could have wished. Dr Johnson had said, 'I have done
greater feats with my knife than this;' though he had eaten a very
hearty dinner. My lord, who affects or believes he follows an
abstemious system, seemed struck with Dr Johnson's manner of living. I
had a particular satisfaction in being under the roof of Monboddo, my
lord being my father's old friend, and having been always very good to
me. We were cordial together. He asked Dr Johnson and me to stay all
night. When I said we must be at Aberdeen, he replied, 'Well, I am
like the Romans: I shall say to you, "Happy to come--happy to
depart!"' He thanked Dr Johnson for his visit. JOHNSON. 'I little
thought, when I had the honour to meet your lordship in London, that I
should see you at Monboddo.' After dinner, as the ladies were going
away, Dr Johnson would stand up. He insisted that politeness was of
great consequence in society. 'It is,' said he, 'fictitious
benevolence. It supplies the place of it amongst those who see each
other only in publick, or but little. Depend upon it, the want of it
never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other. I have
always applied to good breeding, what Addison in his Cato says of
honour:

Honour's a sacred tie; the law of Kings;
The noble mind's distinguishing perfection,
That aids and strengthens Virtue where it meets her.
And imitates her actions where she is not.

When he took up his large oak stick, he said, 'My lord, that's
Homerick;' thus pleasantly alluding to his lordship's favourite
writer.

Gory, my lord's black servant, was sent as our guide, to conduct us to
the high road. The circumstance of each of them having a black servant
was another point of similarity between Johnson and Monboddo. I
observed how curious it was to see an African in the north of
Scotland, with little or no difference of manners from those of the
natives. Dr Johnson laughed to see Gory and Joseph riding together
most cordially. 'Those two fellows,' said he, 'one from Africa, the
other from Bohemia, seem quite at home.' He was much pleased with Lord
Monboddo to-day. He said, he would have pardoned him for a few
paradoxes, when he found he had so much that was good: but that, from
his appearance in London, he thought him all paradox; which would not
do. He observed, that his lordship had talked no paradoxes to-day.
'And as to the savage and the London shopkeeper," said he, 'I don't
know but I might have taken the side of the savage equally, had any
body else taken the side of the shopkeeper.' He had said to my lord,
in opposition to the value of the savage's courage, that it was owing
to his limited power of thinking, and repeated Pope's verses, in which
'Macedonia's madman' is introduced, and the conclusion is,

Yet ne'er looks forward farther than his nose.

I objected to the last phrase, as being low. JOHNSON. 'Sir, it is
intended to be low: it is satire. The expression is debased, to debase
the character.'

When Gory was about to part from us, Dr Johnson called to him, 'Mr
Gory, give me leave to ask you a question! Are you baptized?' Gory
told him he was, and confirmed by the Bishop of Durham. He then gave
him a shilling.

We had tedious driving this afternoon, and were somewhat drowsy. Last
night I was afraid Dr Johnson was beginning to faint in his
resolution; for he said, 'If we must ride much, we shall not go; and
there's an end on't.' To-day, when he talked of Sky with spirit, I
said, 'Why, sir, you seemed to me to despond yesterday. You are a
delicate Londoner; you are a maccaroni; you can't ride.' JOHNSON.
'Sir, I shall ride better than you. I was only afraid I should not
find a horse able to carry me.' I hoped then there would be no fear of
getting through our wild tour.

We came to Aberdeen at half an hour past eleven. The New Inn, we were
told, was full. This was comfortless. The waiter, however, asked if
one of our names was Boswell, and brought me a letter left at the inn:
it was from Mr Thrale, enclosing one to Dr Johnson. Finding who I was,
we were told they would contrive to lodge us by putting us for a night
into a room with two beds. The waiter said to me in the broad strong
Aberdeenshire dialect, 'I thought I knew you, by your likeness to your
father.' My father puts up at the New Inn, when on his circuit. Little
was said to-night. I was to sleep in a little press-bed in Dr
Johnson's room. I had it wheeled out into the dining-room, and there
I lay very well.

Sunday, 22d August

I sent a message to Professor Thomas Gordon, who came and breakfasted
with us. He had secured seats for us at the English chapel. We found a
respectable congregation, and an admirable organ, well played by Mr
Tait.

We walked down to the shore. Dr Johnson laughed to hear that
Cromwell's soldiers taught the Aberdeen people to make shoes and
stockings, and to plant cabbages. He asked, if weaving the plaids was
ever a domestick art in the Highlands, like spinning or knitting. They
could not inform him here. But he conjectured probably, that where
people lived so remote from each other, it was likely to be a
domestick art; as we see it was among the ancients, from Penelope. I
was sensible to-day, to an extraordinary degree, of Dr Johnson's
excellent English pronunciation. I cannot account for its striking me
more now than any other day: but it was as if new to me; and I
listened to every sentence which he spoke, as to a musical
composition. Professor Gordon gave him an account of the plan of
education in his college. Dr Johnson said, it was similar to that at
Oxford. Waller the poet's great grandson was studying here. Dr Johnson
wondered that a man should send his son so far off, when there were so
many good schools in England. He said, 'At a great school there is all
the splendour and illumination of many minds; the radiance of all is
concentrated in each, or at least reflected upon each. But we must own
that neither a dull boy, nor an idle boy, will do so well at a great
school as at a private one. For at a great school there are always
boys enough to do well easily, who are sufficient to keep up the
credit of the school; and after whipping being tried to no purpose,
the dull or idle boys are left at the end of a class, having the
appearance of going through the course, but learning nothing at all.
Such boys may do good at a private school, where constant attention is
paid to them, and they are watched. So that the question of publick or
private education is not properly a general one; but whether one or
the other is best for MY SON.'

We were told the present Mr Waller was a plain country gentleman; and
his son would be such another. I observed, a family could not expect a
poet but in a hundred generations. 'Nay,' said Dr Johnson, 'not one
family in a hundred can expect a poet in a hundred generations.' He
then repeated Dryden's celebrated lines,

Three poets in three distant ages born, &c.

and a part of a Latin translation of it done at Oxford: he did not
then say by whom.[Footnote: London, 2d May, 1778. Dr Johnson
acknowledged that he was himself the authour of the translation above
alluded to, and dictated it to me as follows:

Quos laudet vales Graius Romanus et Anglus
Tres tria temporibus secla dedere suis.
Sublime ingenium Graius; Romanus habebat
Carmen grande sonans; Anglus utrumque tulit.
Nil majus Natura capit: clarare priores
Quae potuere duos tertius unus habet.]

He received a card, from Sir Alexander Gordon, who had been his
acquaintance twenty years ago in London, and who, 'if forgiven for not
answering a line from him', would come in the afternoon. Dr Johnson
rejoiced to hear of him, and begged he would come and dine with us. I
was much pleased to see the kindness with which Dr Johnson received
his old friend Sir Alexander; a gentleman of good family, Lismore, but
who had not the estate. The King's College here made him Professor of
Medicine, which affords him a decent subsistence. He told us that the
value of the stockings exported from Aberdeen was, in peace, a hundred
thousand pounds; and amounted, in time of war, to one hundred and
seventy thousand pounds. Dr Johnson asked, what made the difference?
Here we had a proof of the comparative sagacity of the two professors.
Sir Alexander answered, 'Because there is more occasion for them in
war.' Professor Thomas Gordon answered, 'Because the Germans, who are
our great rivals in the manufacture of stockings, are otherwise
employed in time of war.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, you have given a very good
solution.'

At dinner, Dr Johnson ate several plate-fulls of Scotch broth, with
barley and peas in it, and seemed very fond of the dish. I said, 'You
never ate it before.' JOHNSON. 'No, sir; but I don't care how soon I
eat it again.' My cousin, Miss Dallas, formerly of Inverness, was
married to Mr Riddoch, one of the ministers of the English chapel
here. He was ill, and confined to his room; but she sent us a kind
invitation to tea, which we all accepted. She was the same lively,
sensible, cheerful woman, as ever. Dr Johnson here threw out some
jokes against Scotland. He said, 'You go first to Aberdeen; then to
Enbru (the Scottish pronunciation of Edinburgh); then to Newcastle, to
be polished by the colliers; then to York; then to London.' And he
laid hold of a little girl, Stuart Dallas, niece to Mrs Riddoch, and,
representing himself as a giant, said, he would take her with him!
telling her, in a hollow voice, that he lived in a cave, and had a bed
in the rock, and she should have a bed cut opposite to it!

He thus treated the point, as to prescription of murder in Scotland.
'A jury in England would make allowance for deficiencies of evidence,
on account of lapse of time: but a general rule that a crime should
not be punished, or tried for the purpose of punishment, after twenty
years, is bad. It is cant to talk of the King's advocate delaying a
prosecution from malice. How unlikely is it the King's advocate should
have malice against persons who commit murder, or should even know
them at all. If the son of the murdered man should kill the murderer
who got off merely by prescription, I would help him to make his
escape; though, were I upon his jury, I would not acquit him. I would
not advise him to commit such an act. On the contrary, I would bid him
submit to the determination of society, because a man is bound to
submit to the inconveniences of it, as he enjoys the good: but the
young man, though politically wrong, would not be morally wrong. He
would have to say, "Here I am amongst barbarians, who not only refuse
to do justice, but encourage the greatest of all crimes. I am
therefore in a state of nature: for, so far as there is now law, it is
a state of nature: and consequently, upon the eternal and immutable
law of justice, which requires that he who sheds man's blood should
have his blood shed, I will stab the murderer of my father."' We went
to our inn, and sat quietly. Dr Johnson borrowed, at Mr Riddoch's, a
volume of Massilon's Discourses on the Psalms: but I found he read
little in it. Ogden too he sometimes took up, and glanced at; but
threw it down again. I then entered upon religious conversation. Never
did I see him in a better frame: calm, gentle, wise, holy. I said,
'Would not the same objection hold against the Trinity as against
transubstantiation?' 'Yes,' said he, 'if you take three and one in the
same sense. If you do, to be sure you cannot believe it: but the three
persons in the Godhead are Three in one sense, and One in another. We
cannot tell how; and that is the mystery!'

I spoke of the satisfaction of Christ. He said his notion was, that it
did not atone for the sins of the world; but, by satisfying divine
justice, by shewing that no less than the Son of God suffered for sin,
it shewed to men and innumerable created beings, the heinousness of
it, and therefore rendered it unnecessary for divine vengeance to be
exercised against sinners, as it otherwise must have been; that in
this way it might operate even in favour of those who had never heard
of it: as to those who did hear of it, the effect it should produce
would be repentance and piety, by impressing upon the mind a just
notion of sin: that original sin was the propensity to evil, which no
doubt was occasioned by the fall. He presented this solemn subject in
a new light to me, [Footnote: My worthy, intelligent, and candid
friend, Dr Kippis, informs me, that several divines have thus
explained the mediation of our Saviour. What Dr Johnson now delivered,
was but a temporary opinion; for he afterwards was fully convinced of
the propitiatory sacrifice, as I shall shew at large in my future
work, The life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.] and rendered much more
rational and clear the doctrine of what our Saviour has done for us,
as it removed the notion of imputed righteousness in co-operating;
whereas by this view, Christ has done all already that he had to do,
or is ever to do, for mankind, by making his great satisfaction; the
consequences of which will affect each individual according to the
particular conduct of each. I would illustrate this by saying, that
Christ's satisfaction resembles a sun placed to shew light to men, so
that it depends upon themselves whether they will walk the right way
or not, which they could not have done without that sun, 'the sun of
righteousness'. There is, however, more in it than merely giving
light--'a light to lighten the Gentiles': for we are told, there is
'healing under his wings'. Dr Johnson said to me, 'Richard Baxter
commends a treatise by Grotius, De Satisfactione Christi. I have never
read it: but I intend to read it; and you may read it.' I remarked,
upon the principle now laid down, we might explain the difficult and
seemingly hard text, 'They that believe shall be saved; and they that
believe not shall be damned.' They that believe shall have such an
impression made upon their minds, as will make them act so that they
may be accepted by God.

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