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Johnson's prejudice against Scotland.

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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, it is but letting Hercules have his club; and, by-and-by, my readers will find this stick will bud, and produce a good joke2.

This imperfect sketch of the COMBINATION and the form 3'. 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, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land?
Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?
There none are swept by sudden fate away;
But all, whom hunger spares, with age decay.'

prejudice of the woollen manufac-
tures.' An Act was brought in to
prohibit the use of horse-hair, and
was only thrown out on the third
reading. Parl. Hist. x. 787.

'Boswell wrote to Erskine on Dec. 8, 1761: 'I, James Boswell Esq., who "am happily possessed of a facility of manners "-to use the very words of Mr. Professor [Adam] Smith, which upon honour were addressed to me.' Boswell and Erskine Corres. ed. 1879, p. 26.

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C 2

See ante, iv., March 21, 1783. Johnson is often reproached with his dislike of the Scotch, though much of it was assumed; but no one blames Hume's dislike of the English, though it was deep and real. On Feb. 21, 1770, he wrote:-'Our Government is too perfect in point of liberty for so rude a beast as an Englishman; who is a man, a bad animal too, corrupted by above a century of licentiousness.' J. H. Burton's Hume, ii. 434. Dr. Burton writes of the English as 'a people Hume so heartily disliked.' Ib. p. 433.

The

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Johnson a true born Englishman.'

The truth is, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, he allowed himself to look upon all nations but his own as barbarians': not only Hibernia, and Scotland, but Spain, Italy, and France, are attacked in the same poem. If he was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because they were more in his way; because he thought their success in England rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit; and because he could not but see in them that nationality which I believe no liberalminded Scotsman 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 Englishman3. 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.

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 English are better animals than the Scots; 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 many of my countrymen.

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To have the company of Chambers and Scott, he delayed describes Johnson. See ante, i. 129, note 3.

1 See ante, iv. 15.

The term John Bull came into the English language in 1712, when Dr. Arbuthnot wrote The History of John Bull.

3 Boswell in three other places so

See ante, i. 467.

All nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.' Rev. vii. 9. See ante, ii. 376

August 14.] Johnson arrives at Edinburgh.

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his journey so long, that the court of session, which rises on the eleventh of August, was broke up before he got to Edinburgh'.

On Saturday the fourteenth of August, 1773, late in the evening, I received a note from him, that he was arrived at Boyd's inn2, at the head of the Canongate. 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 cleanliness3. He

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' In Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, i. 157, there is a description of Edinburgh, towards the close of the century, the last purely Scotch age that Scotland was destined to see. Almost the whole official state, as settled at the Union, survived; and all graced the capital, unconscious of the economical scythe which has since mowed it down. All our nobility had not then fled. The lawyers, instead of disturbing good company by professional matter, were remarkably free of this vulgarity; and being trained to take difference of opinion easily, and to conduct discussions with forbearance, were, without undue obtrusion, the most cheerful people that were to be met with. Philosophy had become indigenous in the place, and all classes, even in their gayest hours, were proud of the presence of its cultivators. And all this was still a Scotch scene. The whole country had not begun to be absorbed in the ocean of London. According to the modern rate of travelling [written in 1852] the capitals of Scotland and of England were then about 2400 miles asunder. Edinburgh was still more distant in its style and habits. had then its own independent tastes, and ideas, and pursuits.' Scotland at this time was distinguished by the liberality of mind of its leading

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clergymen, which was due, according to Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 57), to the fact that the Professor of Theology under whom they had studied was 'dull and Dutch and prolix.' 'There was one advantage,' he says, 'attending the lectures of a dull professor-viz., that he could form no school, and the students were left entirely to themselves, and naturally formed opinions far more liberal than those they got from the Professor.'

2 Chambers (Traditions of Edinburgh, ed. 1825, ii. 297) says that 'the very spot which Johnson's armchair occupied is pointed out by the modern possessors.' The inn was called 'The White Horse.' 'It derives its name from having been the resort of the Hanoverian faction, the White Horse being the crest of Hanover.' Murray's Guide to Scotland, ed. 1867, p. 111.

3 Boswell writing of Scotland says: -'In the last age it was the common practice in the best families for all the company to eat milk, or pudding, or any other dish that is eat with a spoon, not by distributing the contents of the dish into small plates round the table, but by every person dipping his spoon into the large platter; and when the fashion of having a small plate for each guest was brought from the continent by a

then

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Boswell's house in James's court.

[August 14.

then drank no fermented liquor. He asked to have his lemonade made sweeter; upon which the waiter, with his greasy fingers, lifted a lump of sugar, and put it into it. The Doctor, in indignation, threw it out of the window. Scott said, he was afraid he would have knocked the waiter down. Mr. Johnson 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: 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 windows3; but from the structure of the houses in the old town, young gentleman returned from his travels, a good old inflexible neighbour in the country said, " he did not see anything he had learnt but to take his broth twice." Nay, in our own remembrance, the use of a carving knife was considered as a novelty; and a gentleman of ancient family and good literature used to rate his son, a friend of mine, for introducing such a foppish superfluity.'-London Mag. 1778, p. 199.

See ante, ii. 403. Johnson, in describing Sir A. Macdonald's house in Sky, said :-'The Lady had not the common decencies of her teatable; we picked up our sugar with our fingers.' Piozzi Letters, i. 138.

2 Chambers says that 'James's Court, till the building of the New Town, was inhabited by a select set of gentlemen. They kept a clerk to record their names and their proceedings, had a scavenger of their own, and had balls and assemblies among themselves.' Paoli was Boswell's guest there in 1771.

Traditions of Edinburgh, i. 219. It was burnt down in 1857. Murray's Guide to Scotland, ed. 1883, p. 49. Johnson wrote:-'Boswell has very handsome and spacious rooms, level with the ground on one side of the house, and on the other four stories high.' Piozzi Letters, i. 109. Dr. J. H. Burton says that Hume occupied them just before Boswell. He continues:'Of the first impression made on a stranger at that period when entering such a house, a vivid description is given by Sir Walter Scott in Guy Mannering; and in Counsellor Pleydell's library, with its collection of books, and the prospect from the window, we have probably an accurate picture of the room in which Hume spent his studious hours.' Life of Hume, ii. 137, 431. At Johnson's visit Hume was living in his new house in the street which was humorously named after him, St. David Street. Ib. p. 436.

3 The English servant-girl in Humphry Clinker (Letter of July 18),

August 14.] The streets of Edinburgh.

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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 appearance2.

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 Hanway3 should have obtained him a magnificent reward from the EastIndia Company. He shewed 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*.

I did not begin to keep a regular full journal till some days after we had set out from Edinburgh; but I have luckily

after describing how the filth is thus thrown out, says :-The maid calls gardy loo to the passengers, which signifies Lord have mercy upon you!'

• Wesley, when at Edinburgh in May, 1761, writes:- How can it be suffered that all manner of filth should still be thrown even into this street [High Street] continually? How long shall the capital city of Scotland, yea, and the chief street of it, stink worse than a common sewer?' Wesley's Journal, iii. 52. Baretti Journey from London to Genoa, ii. 255) says that this was the universal practice in Madrid in 1760. He was driven out of that town earlier than he had intended to leave it by the dreadful stench. A few years after his visit the King made a reform, so that it became one of the cleanest towns in Europe.' Ib. p. 258.

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