C Sunday, 22d Auguft. I fent a meffage to Profeffor Thomas Gordon, who came and breakfafted with us. He had fecured feats 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 fhore: Dr. Johnson laughed to hear that Cromwell's foldiers 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 fo remote from each other, it was likely to be a domeftick art; as we fee it was among the anci ents, from Penelope.-I was fenfible to-day, to an extraordinary degree, of Dr. Johnson's excellent English pronunciation. I cannot account for its ftriking me more now than any other day but it was as if new to me; and I liftened to every fentence which he spoke, as to a mufical compofition. Profeffor Gordon gave him an account of the plan of education in his college. Dr. Johnson said, it was fimilar to that at Oxford.-Waller the poet's great grandson was ftudying here. Dr. Johnfon wondered that a man should fend his fon fo far off, when there were fo many good fchools in England. He faid, "At a great fchool there is all the splendour and illumination of many minds; the radiance of all is concentrated in each, or at leaft reflected upon each. But we must own that neither a dull boy, nor an idle boy, will do fo well at a great school as at a private one. For at a great school there are always boys enough to do well eafily, who are fufficient fufficient 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 courfe, 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 ageneral one; but whether one or the other is beft for my fon." We were told the prefent Mr. Waller was a plain country gentleman; and his fon would be fuch another. I obferved, a family could not expect a poet but in a hundred generations." Nay, (faid 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 tranflation of it done at Oxford*: he did not then say by whom. 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 pleafed to fee the kindness with which Dr. Johnfon London, ad May, 1778. Dr. Johnfon acknowledged that he was himself the authour of the translation above alluded to, and dictated it to me as follows: Quos laudet vates Graius Romanus et Anglus Tres tria temporibus fecla dedere fuis. Carmen grande fonans; Anglus utrumque tulit, Nil majus Natura capit: clarare priores Que potuere duos tertius unus habet, Johnson received his old friend Sir Alexander; a gentleman of good family, Lifmore, but who had not the estate. The King's College here made him Profeffor of Medicine, which affords him a decent fubfiftence. 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. Johnfon afked, What made the difference? Here we had a proof of the comparative fagacity of the two profeffors. Sir Alexander answered, “Because there is more occafion for them in war." Profeffor Thomas Gordon answered, "Because the ¡Germans, who are our great rivals in the manufac-ture of stockings, are otherwife employed in time of war."-Johnson. "Sir, you have given a very good folution." At dinner, Dr. Johnson ate feveral plate-fulls of Scotch broth, with barley and peas in it, and seemed very fond of the difh. I faid, "You never ate it before."―Johnfon. No, fir; but I don't care how foon I eat it again."-My coufin, Mifs Dallas, formerly of Invernefs, was married to Mr. Riddoch, one of the minifters of the English chapel here. He was ill, and confined to his room; but fhe fent us a kind invitation to tea, which we all accepted. She was the fame lively, fenfible, cheerful woman, as ever. Dr. Johnson here threw out fome jokes against Scotland. He faid, "You gq first to Aberdeen; then to Enbrų (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, reprefenting himfelt 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 the fhould have a little bed cut oppofite 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 lapfe of time: but a general rule that a crime fhould 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 profecution from malice. How unlikely is it the King's advocate fhould have malice against persons who commit murder, or fhould even know them at all. If the fon of the murdered man fhould 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 fuch an act. On the contrary, I would bid him fubmit to the determination of fociety, because a man is bound to fubmit 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 fay, "Here I am amongst barbarians, who not only refufe to do juftiçe, but encourage the greatest of all crimes. I am therefore in a state of nature: for, fo far as there is no law, it is a ftate of nature: and confequently, upon the eternal and immutable law of juftice, which requires that he who sheds man's blood fhould have his blood shed, I will ftab the murderer of my father." We went to our inn, and fat quietly. Dr. Johnfon borrowed, at Mr. Riddoch's, a volume of Mafillon's Maffillon's Difcourfes on the Pfalms: but I found he read little in it. Ogden too he fometimes took up, and glanced at; but threw it down again. I then entered upon religious converfation. Never did I fee him in a better frame: calm, gentle, wife, holy. I faid, "Would not the fame objection hold against the Trinity as against Tranfubftantiation ?"-" Yes, (faid he,) if you take three and one in the fame fenfe. If you do fo, to be fure you cannot believe it: but the three perfons in the Godhead are Three in one fenfe, and One in another. We cannot tell how; and that is the mystery !" I spoke of the fatisfaction of Chrift. He faid his notion was, that it did not. atone for the fins of the world; but, by fatisfying divine juftice, by fhewing that no less than the Son of God fuffered for fin, it fhewed to men and innumerable created beings, the heinoufness of it, and therefore rendered it unneceffary for divine vengeance to be exercifed against finners, as it otherwife muft have been; that in this way it might operate even in favour of thofe who had never heard of it: as to those who did hear of it, the effect it fhould produce would be repentance and piety, by impreffing upon the mind a juft notion of fin that original fin was the propensity to evil, which no doubt was occafioned by the fall. He prefented this folemn fubject in a new light to me*, 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 My worthy, intelligent, and candid friend, Dr. Kippis, informs, me, that feveral divines have thus explained the mediation of our Saviour. What Dr. Johnfon now delivered, was but a temporary opinion; for he afterwards was fully convinced of the propitiatory facrifice, as I fhall fhew at large in my future work, THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, L. L. D. |