August 16.]

Witchcraft.

45

and so far as wisdom and wit can be aided by administering agreeable sensations to the palate, my wife took care that our great guest should not be deficient.

Sir Adolphus Oughton, then our Deputy Commander in Chief, who was not only an excellent officer, but one of the most universal scholars I ever knew, had learned the Erse language, and expressed his belief in the authenticity of Ossian's Poetry'. Dr. Johnson took the opposite side of that perplexed question; and I was afraid the dispute would have run high between them. But Sir Adolphus, who had a very sweet temper, changed the discourse, grew playful, laughed at Lord Monboddo's notion of men having tails, and called him a Judge, à posteriori, which amused Dr. Johnson; and thus hostilities were prevented.

At supper3 we had Dr. Cullen, his son the advocate, Dr. Adam Fergusson, and Mr. Crosbie, advocate. Witchcraft was introduced. Mr. Crosbie said, he thought it the greatest blasphemy to suppose evil spirits counteracting the Deity, and raising storms, for instance, to destroy his creatures. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, if moral evil be consistent with the government of the Deity, why may not physical evil be also consistent with it? It is not more strange that there should be evil spirits, than evil men: evil unembodied spirits, than evil embodied spirits. And as to storms, we know there are such things; and it is no worse that evil spirits raise them, than that they rise.' CROSBIE. 'But it is not credible, that witches should have effected what they are said in stories to have done.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I am not defending their credibility. I am only saying, that your arguments are not good, and 'will not overturn the belief of witchcraft.— (Dr. Fergusson said to me, aside, ‘He is right.')—And then, Sir, you have all mankind, rude and civilized, agreeing in the belief of the agency of preternatural powers. You must take evidence: you must consider, that wise and great men have condemned witches to die". CROSBIE. 'But an act of parliament put an

46

Lord Monboddo and the Ouran-Outang. (August 17.

end to witchcraft'.' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; witchcraft had ceased; and therefore an act of parliament was passed to prevent persecution for what was not witchcraft. Why it ceased, we cannot tell, as we cannot tell the reason of many other things.'— Dr. Cullen, to keep up the gratification of mysterious disquisition, with the grave address for which he is remarkable in his companionable as in his professional hours, talked, in a very entertaining manner, of people walking and conversing in their sleep. I am very sorry I have no note of this. We talked of the Ouran-Outang, and of Lord Monboddo's thinking that he might be taught to speak. Dr. Johnson treated this with ridicule. Mr. Crosbie said, that Lord Monboddo believed the existence of every thing possible; in short, that all which is in posse might be found in esse. JOHNSON. 'But, Sir, it is as possible that the Ouran-Outang does not speak, as that he speaks. However, I shall not contest the point. I should have thought it not possible to find a Monboddo; yet he exists.' I again mentioned the stage. JOHNSON. 'The appearance of a player, with whom I have drunk tea, counteracts the imagination that he is the character he represents. Nay, you know, nobody imagines that he is the character he represents. They say, "See Garrick! how he looks to night! See how he'll clutch the dagger!" That is the buz of the theatre'.'

I

TUESDAY, AUGUST 17.

Sir William Forbes came to

'It is supposed that there were no executions for witchcraft in England subsequently to the year 1682; but the Statute of 1 James I, c. 12, so minute in its enactments against witches, was not repealed till the 9 Geo. II, c. 5. In Scotland, so late as the year 1722, when the local jurisdictions were still hereditary [see post, Sept. 11], the sheriff of Sutherlandshire condemned a witch to death.' Penny Cyclo. xxvii. 490. In the Bishopric of Wurtzburg, so late as 1750, a nun was burnt for witchcraft: 'Cette malheureuse fille soutint opiniâtrément qu'elle était

breakfast, and brought with him

sorcière. . . . Elle était folle, ses juges furent imbécilles et barbares.' Voltaire's Works, ed. 1819, xxvi. 285.

2 A Dane wrote to Garrick from Copenhagen on Dec. 23, 1769 :— 'There is some of our retinue who, not understanding a word of your language, mimic your gesture and your action so great an impression did it make upon their minds, the scene of daggers has been repeated in dumb show a hundred times, and those most ignorant of the English idiom can cry out with rapture, “A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a Dr. Blacklock,

August 17.]

Eternal necessity refuted.

47

Dr. Blacklock, whom he introduced to Dr. Johnson, who received him with a most humane complacency; 'Dear Dr. Blacklock, I am glad to see you!' Blacklock seemed to be much surprized, when Dr. Johnson said, 'it was easier to him to write poetry than to compose his Dictionary. His mind was less on the stretch in doing the one than the other. Besides; composing a Dictionary requires books and a desk: you can make a poem walking in the fields, or lying in bed. Dr. Blacklock spoke of scepticism in morals and religion, with apparent uneasiness, as if he wished for more certainty3. Dr. Johnson, who had thought it all over, and whose vigorous understanding was fortified by much experience, thus encouraged the blind Bard to apply to higher speculations what we all willingly submit to in common life: in short, he gave him more familiarly the able and fair reasoning of Butler's Analogy: 'Why, Sir, the greatest concern we have in this world, the choice of our profession, must be determined without demonstrative reasoning. Human life is not yet so well known, as that we can have it. And take the case of a man who is ill. I call two physicians : they differ in opinion. I am not to lie down, and die between them: I must do something.' The conversation then turned on Atheism; on that horrible book, Système de la Nature*; and on the supposition of an eternal necessity, without design, without a governing mind. JOHNSON. 'If it were so, why has it ceased? Why don't we see men thus produced around us now? Why, at least, does it not keep pace, in some measure, with the progress of time? If it stops because there is now no

Burton's Hume, ii. 399.

4

By the Baron d'Holbach. Voltaire (Works, xii. 212) describes this book as Une Philippique contre Dieu.' He wrote to M. Saurin :-'Ce maudit livre du Système de la Nature est un péché contre nature. Je vous sais bien bon gré de réprouver l'athéisme et d'aimer ce vers: "Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer." Je suis rarement content de mes vers, mais j'avoue que j'ai une tendresse de père pour celui-là.' Ib. lv. 418.

need

48

One of Johnson's best days.

[August 17.

need of it, then it is plain there is, and ever has been, an all powerful intelligence. But stay! (said he, with one of his satyrick laughs'.) Ha ha ha! I shall suppose Scotchmen

made necessarily, and Englishmen by choice.'

At dinner this day, we had Sir Alexander Dick, whose amiable character, and ingenious and cultivated mind, are so generally known; (he was then on the verge of seventy, and is now (1785) eighty-one, with his faculties entire, his heart warm, and his temper gay;) Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes; Mr. Maclaurin, advocate; Dr. Gregory, who now worthily fills his father's medical chair3; and my uncle, Dr. Boswell. This was one of Dr. Johnson's best days. He was quite in his element. All was literature and taste, without any interruption. Lord Hailes, who is one of the best philologists in Great Britain, who has written papers in The World, and a variety of other works in prose and in verse, both Latin and English, pleased him highly. He told him, he had discovered the life of Cheynel, in The Students, to be his. JOHNSON. 'No one else knows it.' Dr. Johnson had, before this, dictated to me a law-paper, upon a question purely in the law of Scotland, concerning vicious intromission, that is to say, intermeddling with the effects of a deceased person, without a regular title; which formerly was understood to subject the intermeddler to payment of all the defunct's debts. The principle has of late been relaxed. Dr. Johnson's argument was, for a renewal of its strictness. The paper was printed, with additions by me, and given into the Court of Session. Lord Hailes knew Dr. Johnson's part not to be mine, and pointed out exactly where it began, and where it ended. Dr. Johnson said, 'It is much, now, that his lordship can distinguish so.'

One of Garrick's correspondents speaks of 'the sneer of one of Johnson's ghastly smiles.' Garrick Corres. i. 334. 'Ghastly smile' is borrowed from Paradise Lost, ii. 846.

2 See ante, iii. 212. In Chambers's Traditions of Edinburgh, ii. 158, is given a comic poem entitled The Court of Session Garland, written by Boswell, with the help, it was said, of Maclaurin.

3 Dr. John Gregory, Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh, died on Feb. 10 of this year. It was his eldest son James who met Johnson. 'This learned family has given sixteen professors to British Universities.' Chalmers's Biog. Dict. xvi. 289.

* See ante, i. 257, note 3.
5 See ante, i. 228.

See ante, ii. 196.

August 17.] A criticism by Lord Hailes.

49

In Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes, there is the following passage:

The teeming mother, anxious for her race,

Begs, for each birth, the fortune of a face :
Yet Vane could tell, what ills from beauty spring,

And Sedley curs'd the charms which pleas'd a king'.'

Lord Hailes told him, he was mistaken in the instances he had given of unfortunate fair ones; for neither Vane nor Sedley had a title to that description. His Lordship has since been so obliging as to send me a note of this, for the communication of which I am sure my readers will thank me.

'The lines in the tenth Satire of Juvenal, according to my alteration, should have run thus:

'Yet Shore' could tell- ;

And Valiere3 curs'd--.'

'The first was a penitent by compulsion, the second by sentiment ; though the truth is, Mademoiselle de la Valiere threw herself (but still from sentiment) in the King's way.

'Our friend chose Vane, who was far from being well-looked; and Sedley, who was so ugly, that Charles II. said, his brother had her by way of penance 5.

Mr. Maclaurin's learning and talents enabled him to do his part very well in Dr. Johnson's company. He produced two epitaphs upon his father, the celebrated mathematician. One

In the original, cursed the form that, &c. Johnson's Works, i. 21. 2 Mistress of Edward IV. BosWELL.

3 Mistress of Louis XIV. Bos WELL. Voltaire, speaking of the King and Mlle. de La Vallière (not Valiere, as Lord Hailes wrote her name), says :—'Il goûta avec elle le bonheur rare d'être aimé uniquement pour lui-même.' Siècle de Louis XIV, ch. 25. He describes her penitence in a fine passage. Ib. ch. 26.

⚫ Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 114) tells how in 1745 he found Professor Maclaurin busy on the walls on the south side of Edinburgh, endeavouring to make them more defensible [against the Pretender]. He had even erected some small cannon.' See ante, iii. 15, for a ridiculous story told of him by Goldsmith.

was