And I beg I may not be charged with excessive arrogance when I venture to say that they contain a considerable portion of original thinking.'London Mag. 1783, p. 124.
[152] Burns, in The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer, says:--
'But could I like Montgomeries fight, Or gab like Boswell.'
Boswell and Burns were born within a few miles of each other, Boswell being the elder by eighteen years.
[153] 'For pointed satire I would Buckhurst choose, The best good man, with the worst-natured muse.'
Rochester's Imitations of Horace, Sat. i. 10.
[154] Johnson's Works, ix. i. See ante, ii. 278, where he wrote to Boswell:--'I have endeavoured to do you some justice in the first paragraph [of the Journey].' The day before he started for Scotland he wrote to Dr. Taylor:--'Mr. Boswell, an active lively fellow, is to conduct me round the country.' Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 422. 'His inquisitiveness,' he said, 'is seconded by great activity.' Works, ix. 8. On Oct. 7 he wrote from Skye:--'Boswell will praise my resolution and perseverance; and I shall in return celebrate his good humour and perpetual cheerfulness.... It is very convenient to travel with him, for there is no house where he is not received with kindness and respect.' Piozzi Letters, i. 198. He told Mrs. Knowles that 'Boswell was the best travelling companion in the world.' Ante, iii. 294. Mr. Croker says (Croker's Boswell, p. 280):--'I asked Lord Stowell in what estimation he found Boswell amongst his countrymen. "Generally liked as a good-natured jolly fellow," replied his lordship. "But was he respected?" "Well, I think he had about the proportion of respect that you might guess would be shown to a jolly fellow." His lordship thought there was more regard than respect.' Hebrides, p. 40.
[155] See ante, ii. 103, 411.
[156] There were two quarto volumes of this Diary; perhaps one of them Johnson took with him. Boswell had 'accidently seen them and had read a great deal in them,' as he owned to Johnson (ante, under Dec. 9, 1784), and moreover had, it should seem, copied from them (ante, i. 251). The 'few fragments' he had received from Francis Barber (ante, i. 27).
[157] In the original 'how much we lost at separation' Johnson's Works, ix. I. Mr. William Nairne was afterwards a Judge of the Court of Sessions by the title of Lord Dunsinnan. Sir Walter Scott wrote of him:--'He was a man of scrupulous integrity. When sheriff depute of Perthshire, he found upon reflection, that he had decided a poor man's case erroneously; and as the only remedy, supplied the litigant privately with money to carry the suit to the supreme court, where his judgment was reversed.' Croker's Boswell, p. 280.
[158]
'Non illic urbes, non tu mirabere silvas: Una est injusti caerula forma maris.
Ovid. Amor. L. II. El. xi.
Nor groves nor towns the ruthless ocean shows; Unvaried still its azure surface flows.
BOSWELL.
[159] See ante. ii. 229.
[160] My friend, General Campbell, Governour of Madras, tells me, that they made speldings in the East-Indies, particularly at Bombay, where they call them Bambaloes. BOSWELL. Johnson had told Boswell that he was 'the most unscottified of his countrymen.'Ante, ii. 242.
[161] 'A small island, which neither of my companions had ever visited, though, lying within their view, it had all their lives solicited their notice.' Johnson's Works, ix. 1.
[162] 'The remains of the fort have been removed to assist in constructing a very useful lighthouse upon the island. WALTER SCOTT.
[163]
'Unhappy queen! Unwilling I forsook your friendly state.'
Dryden. [Aeneid, vi. 460.] BOSWELL.
[164] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 331) says of his journey to London in 1758:--'It is to be noted that we could get no four-wheeled chaise till we came to Durham, those conveyances being then only in their infancy. Turnpike roads were only in their commencement in the north.' 'It affords a southern stranger,' wrote Johnson (Works ix. 2), 'a new kind of pleasure to travel so commodiously without the interruption of toll-gates.'
[165] See ante, iii. 265, for Lord Shelburne's statement on this subject.
[166] See ante, ii. 339, and iii. 205, note 4.
[167] See ante, iii. 46.
[168] The passage quoted by Dr. Johnson is in the Character of the Assembly-man; Butler's Remains, p. 232, edit. 1754:--'He preaches, indeed, both in season and out of season; for he rails at Popery, when the land is almost lost in Presbytery; and would cry Fire! Fire! in Noah's flood.'
There is reason to believe that this piece was not written by Butler, but by Sir John Birkenhead; for Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses, vol. ii. p. 640, enumerates it among that gentleman's works, and gives the following account of it:
'The Assembly-man (or the character of an assembly-man) written 1647, Lond. 1662-3, in three sheets in qu. The copy of it was taken from the author by those who said they could not rob, because all was theirs; so excised what they liked not; and so mangled and reformed it, that it was no character of an Assembly, but of themselves.