Is your concern; for, you know, he is a word, when better evidence, if he had it, Presbyterian."

here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable; and what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. You may print this if you will.

"SAM. JOHNSON."

Mr. Macpherson little knew the character of Dr. Johnson, if he supposed that he could be easily intimidated; for no man was ever more remarkable for personal courage. He had, indeed, an awful dread of death, or rather, "of something after death: " and what rational man, who seriously thinks of quitting all that he has ever known, and going into a new and unknown state of being, can be without that dread? But his fear was from reflection; his courage natural. His fear, in that one instance, was the result of philosophical and religious consideration. He feared death, but he feared nothing else, not even what might occasion death.

rectly swam into it. He told me himself that one night he was attacked in the street by four men, to whom he would not yield, but kept them all at bay, till the watch came up, and carried both him and them to the round-house. In the playhouse at Lichfield, as Mr. Garrick informed me, Johnson having for a moment quitted a chair which was placed for, him between the side-scenes, a gentleman took possession of it, and, when Johnson on his return civilly demanded his seat, rudely refused to give it up; upon which Johnson laid hold of it, and tossed him and the chair into the pit 2. Foote, who so successfully revived the old comedy, by exhibiting living characters, had resolved to imitate Johnson on the stage, expecting great profits from his ridicule of so celebrated a man. Johnson being informed of his intention, and being at dinner at Mr. Thomas Davies's, the bookseller, from whom I had the story, he asked Mr. Davies, "what was the common price of an oak stick?" and being answer[Fear was indeed a sensation to ed sixpence, "Why then, sir," said he, Piozzi, which Dr. Johnson was an utter "give me leave to send your servant to stranger, excepting when some sud- purchase me a shilling one. I have a den apprehensions seized him that he was double quantity; for I am told Foote means going to die; and even then, he kept all his to take me off, as he calls it, and I am dewits about him, to express the most hum-termined the fellow shall not do it with imble and pathetic petitions to the Almighty: and when the first paralytic stroke took his speech from him, he instantly set about composing a prayer in Latin, at once to deprecate God's mercy, to satisfy himself that his mental powers remained unimpaired, and to keep them in exercise, that they might not perish by permitted stagnation.

p. 214.

When one day he had at Streatham taken tincture of antimony instead of emetic wine, for a vomit, he was himself the person to direct what should be done for him, and managed with as much coolness and deliberation as if he had been prescribing for an indifferent person.]

punity." Davies took care to acquaint Foote of this, which effectually checked the wantonness of the mimick. Mr. Macpherson's menaces made Johnson provide himself with the same implement of defence; and had he been attacked, I have no doubt that, old as he was, he would have made his corporal prowess be felt as much as his intellectual.

His "Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland" is a most valuable performance. It abounds in extensive philosophical views of society, and in ingenious sentiment and lively description. A considerable part of it, indeed, consists of speculaMany instances of his resolution may be tions, which, many years before he saw mentioned. One day, at Mr. Beauclerk's the wild regions which we visited togethhouse in the country, when two large dogs er, probably had employed his attention, were fighting, he went up to them, and though the actual sight of those scenes unbeat them till they separated; and at anoth-doubtedly quickened and augmented them. er time, when told of the danger there was that a gun might burst if charged with many balls, he put in six or seven, and fired it off against a wall. Mr. Langton told me, that when they were swimming together, near Oxford, he cautioned Dr. Johnson against a pool, which was reckoned particularly dangerous; upon which Johnson di

1 ["When we inquired," says Mrs. Piozzi, into the truth of this story, he answered, the dogs have been somewhat magnified, I believe. They were, as I remember, two stout young pointers; but the story has gained but little." Piozzi, p. 88. This story was told ante, p. 438.-ED.]

Mr. Orme, the very able historian, agreed with me in this opinion, which he thus strongly expressed: "There are in that book thoughts, which, by long revolution in the great mind of Johnson, have been formed and polished like pebbles rolled in the ocean!"

That he was to some degree of excess tertained an undue prejudice against both a true born Englishman, so as to have enthe country and the people of Scotland, must be allowed. But it was a prejudice of the

2 [If Mrs. Piozzi had reported any statement so obviously exaggerated as this, Mr. Boswell would have been very indignant.-ED.].

ED.

mired. [We have seen his kind acknowledgment of Macleod's hospitality 3, and the loss of poor Col is recorded in his journal in affectionate and pathetic terms.] His candour and amiable disposition is conspicuous from his conduct, when informed by Mr. Macleod, of Rasay, that he had committed a mistake, which gave that gentleman some uneasiness. He wrote him [as we have seen] a courteous and kind letter, and inserted in the newspapers an advertisement, correcting the mistake 4.

The observations of my friend Mr. Dempster 5 in a letter written to me, soon after he had read Dr. Johnson's book, are so just and liberal, that they cannot be too often repeated.

head, and not of the heart. He had no ill-will to the Scotch; for, if he had been conscious of that, he never would have thrown himself into the bosom of their country; and trusted to the protection of its remote inhabitants with a fearless confidence. His remark upon the nakedness of the country, from its being denuded of trees, was made after having travelled two hundred miles along the eastern coast, where certainly trees are not to be found near the road; and he said it was "a map of the road" which he gave. His disbelief of the authenticity of the poems ascribed to Ossian, a Highland bard, was confirmed in the course of his journey, by a very strict examination of the evidence offered for it; and although their authenticity was made too much a national point by the Scotch, there were many respectable persons in that country, who did not concur in this: so that his judgment upon the question ought not to be decried, even by those who differ from him. As to myself, I can only say, upon a subject now become very uninteresting, that when the fragments of Highland poetry first came out, I was much pleased with their wild peculiarity, and was one of those who subscribed to enable their editor, Mr. Macpherson, then a young man, to make a search in the Highlands and Hebrides for a long poem in the Erse language, which was reported to be preserved somewhere in those regions. But when there came forth an Epick poem in six books, with all the common circumstances "Upon the whole, the book cannot disof former compositions of that nature; and please, for it has no pretensions. The auwhen, upon an attentive examination of it, thour neither says he is a geographer, nor there was found a perpetual recurrence of an antiquarian, nor very learned in the histhe same images which appear in the frag-tory of Scotland, nor a naturalist, nor a fosments; and when no ancient manuscript, to authenticate the work, was deposited in any publick library, though that was insisted on as a reasonable proof, who could forbear to doubt?

Johnson's grateful acknowledgments of kindness received in the course of this tour completely refute the brutal reflections which have been thrown out against him, as if he had made an ungrateful return; and his delicacy in sparing in his book those, who, we find, from his letters to Mrs. Thrale, were just objects of censure 2, is much to be ad

[This is a distinction which the Editor is not sure that he understands. Did Mr. Boswell think that he improved the case by representing Johnson's dislike of Scotland as the result not of feeling but of reason? In truth, in the printed Jour:nal of his Tour, there is nothing that a fair and liberal Scotchman can or does complain of; but his conversation is full of the harshest and often most unjust sarcasms against the Scotch, nationally and individually.-ED.]

[The only person censured in these letters is Sir A. Macdonald, to whom Boswell no doubt

"There is nothing in the book, from beginning to end, that a Scotchman need to take amiss. What he says of the country is true; and his observations on the people are what must naturally occur to a sensible, observing, and reflecting inhabitant of a convenient metropolis, where a man on thirty pounds a year may be better accommodated with all the little wants of life, than Col or Sir Allan.

"I am charmed with his researches concerning the Erse language, and the antiquity of their manuscripts. I am quite convinced; and I shall rank Ossian and his Fingals and Oscars amongst the nursery tales, not the true history of our country, in all time to come,

silist. The manners of the people, and the face of the country, are all he attempts to describe, or seems to have thought of. Much were it to be wished, that they who have travelled into more remote, and of course more curious regions, had all possessed his good sense. Of the state of learning, his observations on Glasgow university show he has formed a very sound judgment. He understands our climate too; and he has accurately observed the changes, however slow and imperceptible to us, which Scotland has undergone, in consequence of the blessings of liberty and internal peace."

Mr. Knox, another native of Scotland, alludes, but whom his delicacy did not spare. See ante, p. 372.—ED.]

3

[See ante, p. 415.—ED.]
4 See ante, p. 469.-BoswELL.

[Boswell was so vehemently attacked by his countrymen, as if he were particeps criminis with Dr. Johnson, that he thought it expedient to produce these testimonia Scotorum in his own defence.-ED.]

who has since made the same tour, and pub-| most capital article, the character of the inlished an account of it, is equally liberal. habitants."

His private letters to Mrs. Thrale, written during the course of his journey, which therefore may be supposed to convey his genuine feelings at the time, abound in such benignant sentiment towards the people who showed him civilities, that no man whose temper is not very harsh and sour can retain a doubt of the goodness of his

"I have read," says he, "his book again and again, travelled with him from Berwick to Glenelg, through countries with which I am well acquainted; sailed with him from Glenelg to Rasay, Sky, Rum, Col, Mull, and Icolmkill, but have not been able to correct him in any matter of consequence. I have often admired the accuracy, the precision, and the justness of what he advances, re-heart. specting both the country and the people.

The Doctor has every where delivered his sentiments with freedom, and in many instances with a seeming regard for the benefit of the inhabitants, and the ornament of the country. His remarks on the want of trees and hedges for shade, as well as for shelter to the cattle, are well founded, and merit the thanks, not the illiberal censure of the natives. He also felt for the distresses of the Highlanders, and explodes with great propriety the bad management of the grounds, and the neglect of timber in the Hebrides.".

Having quoted Johnson's just compliments on the Rasay family, he says,

"On the other hand, I found this family equally lavish in their encomiums upon the Doctor's conversation, and his subsequent civilities to a young gentleman of that country, who, upon waiting upon him at London, was well received, and experienced all the attention and regard that a warm friend could bestow. Mr. Macleod having also been in London, waited upon the Doctor, who provided a magnificent and expensive entertainment in honour of his old Hebridean acquaintance."

And, talking of the military road by Fort Augustus, he says,

"By this road, though one of the most rugged in Great Britain, the celebrated Dr. Johnson passed from Inverness to the Hebride Isles. His observations on the country and people are extremely correct, judicious,

and instructive 1."

Mr. Tytler, the acute and able vindicator of Mary, Queen of Scots, in one of his letters to Mr. James Elphinstone, published in that gentleman's "Forty Years'. Correspondence," says,

"I read Dr. Johnson's Tour" with very great pleasure. Some few errors he has fallen into, but of no great importance, and those are lost in the numberless beauties of his work.

If I had leisure, I could perhaps point out the most exceptionable places; but at present I am in the country, and have not his book at hand. It is plain he meant to speak well of Scotland; and he has in my apprehension done us great honour in the

1 Page 103.-BOSWELL.

It is painful to recollect with what rancour he was assailed by numbers of shallow irritable North Britons, on account of his supposed injurious treatment of their country and countrymen, in his "Journey.” Had there been any just ground for such a charge, would the virtuous and candid Dempster have given his opinion of the book, in the terms in which I have quoted? Would the patriotic Knox 2 have spoken of it as he has done? Would Mr. Tytler, surely

a Scot, if ever Scot there were,"

have expressed himself thus? And let me add, that, citizen of the world as I hold myself to be, I have that degree of predilection for my natale so'um, nay, I have that just sense of the merit of an ancient nation, which has been ever renowned for its valour, which in former times maintained its independence against a powerful neighbour, and in modern times has been equally distinguished for its ingenuity and industry in civilized life, that I should have felt a generous indignation at any injustice done to it. Johnson treated Scotland no worse than he did even his best friends, whose characters he used to give as they appeared to him, both in light and shade. Some people, who had not exercised their minds sufficiently, condemned him for censuring his friends. But sir Joshua Reynolds, whose philosophical penetration and justness of thinking were not less known to those who lived with him, than his genius in his art admired by the world, explained his conduct thus:

"He was fond of discrimination, which he could not show without pointing out the bad as well as the good in every character; and as his friends were those whose characters he knew best, they afforded him the best opportunity for showing the acuteness of his judgment."

He expressed to his friend, Mr. Windham of Norfolk 3, his wonder at the extreme

2 I observed with much regret, while the first edition was passing through the press (August, 1790), that this ingenious gentleman is dead.— BOSWELL.

3 [The Right Honourable William Windham of Felbrigg, born 1750, died 1810. He cultivated Johnson's acquaintance for the last few years of