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 show 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. We talked of one of our friends taking ill, for a length of time, a hasty expression of Dr. Johnson's to him, on his attempting to prosecute a subject that had a reference to religion beyond the bounds within which the Doctor thought such topics should be confined in a mixed company.-JOHNSON: "What is to become of society, if a friendship of twenty years is to be broken off for such a cause?" As Bacon says, "Who, then, to frail mortality shall trust, But limns the water, or but writes in dust." I said he should write expressly in support of Christianity; for that, although a reverence for it shines through his works in several places, that is not enough. "You know," said I, "what Grotius has done, and what Addison has done. You should do also." He replied, "I hope I shall." MONDAY, AUGUST 23. Principal Campbell,† Sir Alexander Gordon, Professor Gordon, and Professor Ross visited us in the morning, as did Dr. Gerard, who had come six miles from the country on purpose. We went and The Rev. Dr. Phannel Bacon, a now neglected poet, author of "The Artificial Kite," 1719, a series of dramatic pieces, collected and published in 1757 under the title of "Humorous Ethics," and various other productions. He was rector of Balden, in Oxfordshire, and vicar of Bramber, in Sussex. He died January 10, 1783, aged eightythree.-ED. †The Rev. Dr. George Campbell, author of "A Dissertation on Miracles," "The Philosophy of Rhetoric," and other works. He died April 6th, 1796. Campbell was the Paley of Scotland; a man of great and various talents, who did eminent service to the cause of Christian truth.-ED. This gentleman died in 1777. His death was occasioned by swallowing a spider in a glass of wine!-"Scots' Magazine."-ED. saw the Marischal College,* and at one o'clock we waited on the magistrates in the town hall, as they had invited us in order to present Dr. Johnson with the freedom of the town, which Provost Jopp did with a very good grace. Dr. Johnson was much pleased with this mark of attention, and received it very politely. There was a pretty numerous company assembled. It was striking to hear all of them drinking "Dr. Johnson! Dr. Johnson!" in the town-hall of Aberdeen, and then to see him with his burgess-ticket, or diploma, in his hat, which he wore as he walked along the street, according to the usual custom. It gave me great satisfaction to observe the regard, and indeed fondness too, which everybody here had for my father. While Sir Alexander Gordon conducted Dr. Johnson to old Aberdeen, Professor Gordon and I called on Mr. Riddoch, whom I found to be a grave, worthy clergyman. He observed that, whatever might be said of Dr. Johnson while he was alive, he would, after he was dead, be looked upon by the world with regard and astonishment on account of his Dictionary. Professor Gordon and I walked over to the Old College, which Dr. Johnson had seen by this time I stepped into the chapel, and looked at the tomb of the founder, Archbishop [Bishop] Elphinston, of whom I shall have occasion to write in my History of James IV. of Scotland, the patron of my family.§ * Dr. Beattie was so kindly entertained in England, that he had not yet returned home.-BoSWELL. † He does not appear to have made a speech on the occasion, as is customary in acknowledgment of such honours. The omission is worthy of notice in reference to the question as to Johnson's oratorical powers. See Boswell's "Life," 1771. Johnson confessed to Lord Stowell that he had several times tried to speak in the Society of Arts and Sciences, but "had found he could not get on."-ED. Dr. Johnson's burgess-ticket was in these words: "Aberdoniæ, vigesimo tertio die mensis Augusti, anno Domini millesimo septingentesimo septuagesimo tertio, in presentia honorabilium virorum, Jacobi Jopp, armigeri, præpositi, Adami Duff, Gulielmi Young, Georgii Marr, et Gulielmi Forbes, Balivorum, Gulielmi Rainie Decani guildæ, et Joannis Nicoll Thesaurarii dicti burgi. Quo die vir generosus et doctrina clarus, Samuel Johnson, LL.D., receptus et admissus fuit in municipes et fratres guildæ præfati burgi de Aberdeen. In deditissimi amoris et affectus ac eximiæ observantiæ tesseram, quibus dicti Magistratus eum amplectuntur. Extractum per me, BOSWELL.] "ALEX. CARNEGIE." This was one of Boswell's many broken resolutions and ineffectual wishes; he never wrote a history of James IV. On examination, he was probably not proud of the sort of patronage bestowed on the founder of his family. From the treasurer's books in the reign of James IV. it appears that Thomas Boswell was connected with the train of that sovereign; Mr Pitcairn conjectures as a minstrel. In one entry he is found employed in paying "the wife of the king's inns," and "the boy that ran the king's horse," 18s. Another entry shows that 56s. were paid by the Court for "twa hidis to be jakkis to Thomas Boswell and Walter Trumbull" against the raid of Eskadale. A sum of 28s. was also paid for "dancing-gear" to Thomas Boswell and Pate Sinclair; and on the 31st We dined at Sir Alexander Gordon's. The Provost, Professor Ross, Professor Dunbar, Professor Thomas Gordon, were there. After dinner came in Dr. Gerard, Professor Leslie, Professor Macleod We had little or no conversation in the morning; now we were but barren. The professors seemed afraid to speak. 66 Dr. Gerard told us that an eminent printer was very intimate with Warburton.-JOHNSON: "Why, sir, he has printed some of his works, and perhaps bought the property of some of them. The inti macy is such as one of the professors here may have with one of the carpenters who is repairing the college."* "But," said Gerard, "1 saw a letter from him to this printer, in which he says that the onehalf of the clergy of the Church of Scotland are fanatics, and the other half infidels."-JOHNSON: "Warburton has accustomed himself to write letters just as he speaks, without thinking any more of what he throws out. When I read Warburton first, and observed his force and his contempt of mankind, I thought he had driven the world before him; but I soon found that was not the case; for Warburton, by extending his abuse, rendered it ineffectual." He told me, when we were by ourselves, that he thought it very wrong in the printer to show Warburton's letter, as it was raising a body of enemies against him. He thought it foolish in Warburton to write so to the printer; and added, “Sir, the worst way of being intimate is by scribbling." He called Warburton's "Doctrine of Grace" a poor performance, and so he said was Wesley's Answer. Warburton, he observed, had laid himself very open. In particular, he was weak enough to say, that, in some disorders of the imagination, people had spoken with tongues, had spoken languages which they never knew before; a thing as absurd as to say that in some disorders of the imagination people had been known to fly. I talked of the difference of genius, to try if I could engage Gerard in a disquisition with Dr. Johnson; but I did not succeed. I men of December, 1505, the treasurer charges "to thirty dozen of bells for dancers, delivered to Thomas Boswell, £4 10s." About this time, however, the Court favourite received a grant of the lands of Auchinleck, and other possessions in Ayrshire. He accompanied his royal master in his invasion of England, in 1513, and, as his descendant was proud to state, fell with him at Flodden.-ED. * Mr. Strahan, the king's printer, was the party alluded to, and this reference to him, though the name was concealed, gave great offence to his friends. Mr. Strahan was then a Member of Parliament, "and his merit," says Dr. Beattie, "entitled him to be on a footing of intimacy with any bishop or any British subject." He had conferred substantial favours on Johnson himself, who really esteemed and respected him, notwithstanding the above splenetic remark.-See Boswell's "Life of Johnson," under date 1771. -ED. + Dr. Gerard wrote an "Essay on Genius," and other metaphysical and philosophical treatises. He died February 22nd, 1795.-ED. tioned as a curious fact, that Locke had written verses.-JOHNSON “I know of none, sir, but a kind of exercise prefixed to Dr. Sydenham's Works, in which he has some conceits about the dropsy, in which water and burning are united, and how Dr. Sydenham removed fire by drawing off water, contrary to the usual practice, which is to extinguish fire by bringing water upon it. I am not sure that there is a word of all this; but it is such kind of talk."* * All this, as Dr. Johnson suspected at the time, was the immediate invention of his own lively imagination; for there is not one word of it in Mr. Locke's complimentary performance. My readers will, I have no doubt, like to be satisfied by comparing them, and at any rate it may entertain them to read verses composed by our great metaphysician, when a Bachelor in Physic. AUCTORI, IN TRACTATUM EJUS DE FEBRIBUS. Febriles æstus victumque ardoribus orbem Nam post mille artes, medicæ tentamina curæ, Præda sumus flammis; solum hoc speramus ab igne, Dum quærit medicus febris causamque modumque, Quas tractat patitur flammas, et febre calescens, Qui tardos potuit morbos artusque trementes Sic faber exesos fulsit tubicine muros, Dum trahit antiquas lenta ruina domos. Non temere incusat tectæ putedinis ignes; Non bilem ille movet, nulla hic pituita; salutis Innocuas placide corpus jubet urere flammas; Et justo rapidos temperat igne focos. Quid febrim exstinguat, varius quid postulat usus, Hactenus ipsa suum timuit Natura calorem, Dum reparat tacitos male provida sanguinis ignes, Jam secura suas foveant præcordia flammas, We spoke of Fingal. Dr. Johnson said calmly, "If the poems were really translated, they were certainly first written down. Let Mr. Macpherson deposit the manuscript in one of the colleges at Aberdeen, where there are people who can judge; and, if the professors certify the authenticity, then there will be an end of the controversy If he does not take this obvious and easy method, he gives the best reason to doubt; considering too, how much is against it à priori "* Extorsit Lachesi cultros, Pestique venenum Quis tandem arte novâ domitam mitescere Pestem Etheriæ quanquam spargunt contagia flammæ, Has gelidâ exstingui non nisi morte putas? Te simul et mundum qui manet, ignis erit. J. LOCKE, A.M., Ex Ede Christi, Oxon A large portion of the poems was confessedly written down from oral recitation, and a manuscript in the handwriting of Mr. Macpherson or any of his coadjutors would have been no evidence. It appears, Lowever, that Macpherson did make an attempt to give satisfaction to the public. He left for some months all the originals of his translation open to inspection and examination in Becket the bookseller's shop, and intimated by advertisement in the newspapers that he had done so. No person called to look at them, and his disdain of public censure became still stronger. See letter from Dr. Blair to Henry Mackenzie in Highland Society's Report. ---ED. F |