sameness, though her expression was undoubtedly very fine. Mrs. Clive was the best player I ever saw. Mrs. Pritchard was a very good one, but she had something affected in her manner: I imagine she had some player of the former age in her eye which occasioned it."* 1 Colonel Pennington said, Garrick sometimes failed in emphasis; as for instance, in Hamlet, instead of "I will speak daggers to her, but use none." "I will speak daggers to her, but use none.” We had a dinner of two complete courses, variety of wines, and the regimental band of music playing in the square before the windows after it. I enjoyed this day much. We were quite easy and cheerful. Dr. Johnson said, “I shall always remember this fort with gratitude." I could not help being struck with some admiration at finding upon this barren sandy point, such buildings, such a dinner, such company: it was like enchantment. Dr. Johnson, on the other hand, said to me more rationally, that it did not strike him as anything extraordinary, because he knew there was a large sum of money expended in building a fort; here was a regiment. If there had been less than what we found it would have surprised him. He looked coolly and deliberately through all the gradations: my warm imagination jumped from the barren sands to the splendid dinner and brilliant company; to borrow the expression of an absurd poet, . "Without ands or ifs I leapt from off the sands upon the cliffs." The whole scene gave me a strong impression of the power and excellence of human art. We left the fort between six and seven o'clock; Sir Eyre Coote, Colonel Pennington, and several more accompanied us down stairs and saw us into our chaise. There could not be greater attention paid to any visitors. Sir Eyre spoke of the hardships which Dr. Johnson had before him.-BOSWELL: "Considering what he has said of us, we must make him feel something rough in Scotland." Sir Eyre said to him, "You must change your name, sir."-BOSWELL: "Ay, to Dr. Macgregor."+ • Much agreeable gossip about all these theatrical personages-who enjoy a sort of classic renown in the annals of the English stage-will be found in Colley Cibber's "Apology" for his Life (1739), in Davies's "Life of Garrick" (1780), and in "Horace Walpole's Letters." Pope committed an egregious blunder in deposing Theobald to make the vivacious Colley Cibber hero of the "Dunciad."-ED. + The "wicked clan Gregor" was denounced and proscribed by statute; and the lieges were charged not to harbour any of the name, or assist them with meat, drink, or We got safely to Inverness, and put up at Mackenzie's inn. Mr. Keith, the collector of excise here, my old acquaintance at Ayr, who had seen us at the fort, visited us in the evening, and engaged us to dine with nim next day, promising to breakfast with us and take us to the English chapel; so that we were at once commodiously arranged. Not finding a letter here that I expected I felt a momentary impatience to be at home. Transient clouds darkened my imagination, and in those clouds I saw events from which I shrunk; but a sentence or two of the Rambler's conversation gave me firmness, and I considered that I was upon an expedition for which I had wished for years, and the recollection of which would be a treasure to me for life. clothing. The above familiar glimpse of Sir Eyre Coote, the gallant conqueror of Hyder Ali, and preserver of our Indian empire, has a pleasing effect. Sir Eyre was despatched a second time to India, as Commander-in-Chief, in 1778, and having retrieved the glory of the British arms, died at Madras in 1783. "Nor is he yet forgotten. Now and then a whiteheaded old Sepoy may still be found who loves to talk of Porto Novo and Pollilore. It is but a short time since one of those aged men came to present a memorial to an English officer who holds one of the highest employments in India. A print of Coote hung in the room. The veteran recognised at once that face and figure which he had not seen for more than half a century, and, forgetting his salam to the living, halted, drew himself up, and, with solemn reverence, paid his military obeisance to the dead."Macaulay's Essays," ed. 1850, p. 614.--ED. SUNDAY, AUGUST 29. Mr. Keith breakfasted with us. Dr. Johnson expatiated rather too strongly upon the benefits derived to Scotland from the Union, and the bad state of our people before it. I am entertained with his copious exaggeration upon that subject, but I am uneasy when people are by who do not know him as well as I do, and may be apt to think him narrow-minded ;* I therefore diverted the subject. The English chapel to which we went this morning was but mean.† The altar was a bare fir table, with a coarse stool for kneeling on, covered with a piece of thick sail-cloth doubled, by way of cushion. The congregation was small. Mr. Tait, the clergyman, read prayers very well, though with much of the Scotch accent. He preached on "Love your enemies." It was remarkable that, when talking of the connexions amongst men, he said, that some connected themselves with men of distinguished talents, and, since they could not equal them, tried to deck themselves with their merit by being their companions. The sentence was to this purpose. It had an odd coincidence with what might be said of my connecting myself with Dr. Johnson. After church we walked down to the quay. We then went to Macbeth's castle. I had a romantic satisfaction in seeing Dr. John It is remarkable that Dr. Johnson read this gentle remonstrance, and took no notice of it to me.-BOSWELL. [If ruffled for a moment by the "gentle remonstrance," Johnson must have been soothed to complacency by the next passage in the Journal.— ED.] + A better church was afterwards erected, which in its turn gave way to the present edifice, a very handsome and commodious structure. Inverness, when Johnson saw it, was a little old-fashioned Highland town-a northern emporium or capital for all the country north of the Spey, though not above half its present size, and with a population of only five or six thousand. There was some shipping at the harbour, and a few merchants exported malt, salt-fish, skins, &c., to Holland and the Thames, receiving cloths, wines, and other commodities in exchange. There was no banking establishment nearer than Aberdeen. Shortly after the Union a weekly post was established by foot-runners through the central Highlands; but in 1755 this was supplanted by a post thrice a week by way of Aberdeen. The first post-chaise was brought to the town in 1760, and was for some time the only four-wheeled carriage in the district. In 1770 the first cargo of coals was commissioned, the common fuel then and long afterwards being peats or turf. The houses were mostly thatched, and had winding stairs in front. Tea had crept slowly into use before 1773, but ale was the common beverage of the people; and there was seldom any want of smuggled brandy, or of good claret, which could be had at from eighteen-pence to two shillings a bottle. Fish and game were abundant. All classes-merchants, lawyers and tradesmen-took the world easy in those uncompeting days. The Christmas festivities were usually kept up for two or three weeks-the gentlemen playing at bowls during the day, and the ladies amusing themselves at the card-tables. One of the duties of lawyers' clerkssmart young Highlanders in kilts-was to find out their masters at night, wherever they might happen to be, and to see them safe home! In the earlier times, however, the quiet citizens had been sorely beset by tyrannical chiefs and lawless clans, and suffered severely in the wars of Montrose and the rebellions of 1715 and 1745.-ED. son actually in it. It perfectly corresponds with Shakspeare's description, which Sir Joshua Reynolds has so happily illustrated, in one of his notes on our immortal poet: "This castle hath a pleasant seat: the air Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself Just as we came out of it a raven perched on one of the chimneytops and croaked Then I repeated, We dined at Mr. Keith's. Mrs. Keith was rather too attentive to Dr. Johnson, asking him many questions about his drinking only water. He repressed that observation by saying to me, "You may remember that Lady Errol took no notice of this." * The ruined fortress commonly called "Macbeth's Castle," which was blown up in 1746, was erected subsequent to the period of the great usurper. The ancient castle stood at a short distance from this spot, on an eminence still called "The Crown." The original fortress was early in ruins. There is in existence an old deed, dated at Inverness in 1362, by which Robert de Chisholm grants to the altars of the Holy Cross six acres of land within the lands of the "old castle of Inverness." Malcolm Canmore is said to have destroyed the castle on account of his father, King Duncan, having been murdered there, or because it was Macbeth's castle; and he erected a new fortress to the westward of the former, on a commanding situation overlooking the town and river. Either of the sites would answer Shakspeare's description, which no doubt was purely fanciful, introduced, as Sir Joshua Reynolds remarks, to give repose to the mind of the reader or the spectator after the tumultuous bustle of the preceding scenes in the drama, and as a contrast to the scene of horror that immediately succeeds. There is a strong probability that Macbeth had a castle at Inverness. The Pictish sovereign, Brudei, had a residence at the mouth of the Ness about the year 565, as we learn from Adomnan's "Life of Columba." Macbeth was Maormor or governor of Rossshire, and by his marriage he became also governor of the province of Moray; so that the whole region from the Spey to the confines of Sutherland, and extending westwards to Argyle, was under his charge. Inverness would therefore be a central point in his government. King Duncan, at the time of his death, was on a progress to Caithness, to chastise Torfin, the Jarl or Earl of Caithness, who had refused to render tribute to the Crown. He was thus obliged to traverse the territories of Macbeth, and the opportunity may have suggested the murder, especially as both Macbeth and his wife Gruodh had private wrongs to revenge. Fordun and the "Chronicon Elegiacum" concur in stating that Macbeth slew Duncan, and that Duncan died at Elgin. He was slain, according to Fordun, at Bothgofuane or Bothgowan-in Gaelic, "the blacksmith's house." Boethius, who published his history in 1526, was the first to state that Macbeth was instigated by his wife to murder Duncan at Inverness. We do not look in Shakspeare for historical facts; but the chequered character of Macbeth, his warlike energy and ambition, his remorse for his great crime, as evinced by his penitential gifts to the Church and his largesses to the poor, and his commanding talents, which extorted obedience and admiration to the last, are faithfully depicted by the poet. Even his superstitious fears and beliefs are natural not only to the age and country, but to his character as a great military leader. "There is so much of chance in warfare," as Coleridge has remarked, " and such vast events are connected with the acts of a single individual, that the proper temperament for generating or receiving superstitious impressions is naturally proed." All history, from Brutus down to Napoleon, attests this fact.-ED. Dr. Johnson has the happy art (for which I have heard my father praise the old Earl of Aberdeen) of instructing himself, by making every man he meets tell him something of what he knows best. He led Keith to talk to him of the excise in Scotland; and in the course of conversation mentioned that his friend Mr. Thrale, the great brewer, paid twenty thousand pounds a-year to the revenue, and that he had four casks, each of which holds sixteen hundred barrels above a thousand hogsheads.* After this there was little conversation that deserves to be remembered; I shall, therefore, here again glean what I have omitted on former days. Dr. Gerard, at Aberdeen, told us that when he was in Wales he was shown a valley inhabited by Danes, who still retain their own language and are quite a distinct people. Dr. Johnson thought it could not be true, or all the kingdom must have heard of it. He said to me, as we travelled, "These people, sir, that Gerard talks of may have somewhat of a peregrinity in their dialect, which relation has augmented to a different language." I asked him if peregrinity was an English word; he laughed, and said "No." I told him this was the second time that I had heard him coin a word. When Foote broke his leg, I observed that it would make him fitter for taking off George Faulkner as Peter Paragraph, poor George having a wooden leg. Dr. Johnson at that time said, "George will rejoice at the depeditation of Foote ;" and when I challenged that word, laughed, and owned he had made it, and added that he had not made above three or four in his dictionary.t Having conducted Dr. Johnson to our inn, I begged permission to leave him for a little, that I might run about and pay some short * Barclay and Perkins's brewhouse, Park-street, Southwark, was founded by Henry Thrale, the friend of Dr. Johnson, and sold by Johnson and his brother executor, in behalf of Mrs. Thrale, for 135,000. Barclay was a descendant of the famous Barclay, who wrote the "Apology for the Quakers," and Perkins was the chief clerk in Thrale's establishment. The establishment in Park-street is now the largest of its kind in the world. The buildings extend over ten acres, and the machinery includes two steamengines. The store-cellars contain 126 vats, varying in their contents from 4000 barrels down to 500. About 160 horses are employed in conveying beer to different parts of London. The quantity brewed in 1826 was 380,180 barrels, upon which a duty of 108. the barrel, 180,0907., was paid to the revenue; and in 1835 the malt consumed exceeded 100,000 quarters.-(Cunningham's "Hand-book for London.") It is stated in Mr. Charles Knight's "London," that the number of barrels of beer brewed by the twelve principal brewers in London was 284,145, in 1782; 1,097,231, in 1808; and 2,119,447, in 1836.-ED. ↑ When upon the subject of this peregrinity, he told me some particulars concerning the compilation of his Dictionary, and concerning his throwing off Lord Chesterfield's patronage, of which very erroneous accounts have been circulated. These particulars, with others which he afterwards gave me, as also his celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield, which he dictated to me, I reserve for his “Life.”-BOSWELL. [They will be found in Boswell's "Life of Johnson," under the date of 1754.-ED.] |