Next day they got into a boat for Skye, reaching Armidale before one.
Here occurred one of the dramatic episodes of the book. Sir Alexander Macdonald, husband of Boswell's Yorkshire cousin Miss Bosville, and the host at the masquerade in February, was on his way to Edinburgh, and met them at the house of a tenant, 'as we believe,' wrote Johnson to Mrs Thrale, 'that he might with less reproach entertain us meanly. Boswell was very angry, and reproached him with his improper parsimony. Boswell has some thoughts of collecting the stories and making a novel of his life.' In the first edition of his book something strong had clearly been written, but it was wisely suppressed at the last moment when the book was bound, for the new pages are but clumsily pasted on the guard between leaves 166 and 169. The first edition had accordingly this account, which was even toned down in the next.
'Instead of finding the head of the Macdonalds surrounded with his clan, and a festive entertainment, we had a small company and cannot boast of our cheer. The particulars are minuted in my journal, but I shall not trouble the publick with them. I shall mention but one characteristick circumstance. My shrewd and hearty friend, Sir Thomas Blackett, Lady Macdonald's uncle, who had preceded us in a visit to this chief, upon being asked by him if the punchbowl then upon the table was not a very handsome one, replied, "Yes, if it were full." Sir Alexander, having been an Eton scholar, Dr Johnson had formed an opinion of him which was much diminished when he beheld him in the Isle of Sky, where we heard heavy complaints of rents racked, and the people driven to emigration.
Dr Johnson said, "it grieves me to see the chief of a great clan appear to such disadvantage. The gentleman has talents, nay, some learning; but he is totally unfit for his situation. Sir, the Highland chiefs should not be allowed to go further south than Aberdeen." I meditated an escape from this the very next day, but Dr Johnson resolved that we should weather it out till Monday.'
Next day being Sunday Bozzy's spirits were cheered by the climate and the weather, but 'had I not had Dr Johnson to contemplate, I should have been sunk into dejection, but his firmness supported me. I looked at him as a man whose head is turning giddy at sea looks at a rock.'
Everywhere they met signs of the parting of the ways in the Highlands.
The old days of feudal power were merging in the industrial, the chiefs were now landlords and exacting ones. Emigration was rife, and the pages of the _Scots Magazine_ of the time dwell much on this. A month before, four hundred men had left Strathglass and Glengarry; in June eight hundred had sailed from Stornoway; Lochaber sent four hundred, 'the finest set of fellows in the Highlands, carrying 6000 in ready cash with them. The extravagant rents exacted by the landlords is the sole cause given for this emigration which seems to be only in its infancy.'
The high price of provisions and the decrease of the linen trade in the north of Ireland sent eight hundred this year from Stromness, when we find the linen dealers thanking Boswell's old rival, as he supposed, with Miss Blair, Sir Alexander Gilmour, M.P. for Midlothian, for his efforts at providing better legislation.
Rasay is one of the happiest descriptions in the tour. 'This,' said Johnson, 'is truly the patriarchal life; this is what we came to find.'
They heard from home and had letters. At Kingsburgh they were welcomed by the lady of the house, 'the celebrated Miss Flora Macdonald, a little woman of genteel appearance; and uncommonly mild and well-bred.' 'I was in a cordial humour, and promoted a cheerful glass. Honest Mr M'Queen observed that I was in high glee, "my governor being gone to bed." ...
The room where we lay was a celebrated one. Dr Johnson's bed was the very bed in which the grandson of the unfortunate King James the Second lay, on one of the nights after the failure of his rash attempt in 1745-6. To see Dr Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the Isle of Sky, in the house of Miss Flora Macdonald, struck me with such a group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed through the mind. The room was decorated with a great variety of maps and prints. Among others, was Hogarth's print of Wilkes grinning, with a cap of liberty on a pole by him.' Certainly Bozzy had never thought of finding a remembrance of his 'classic friend' in such circumstances.
Dunvegan and the castle of the Macleods received them in hospitable style. 'Boswell,' said Johnson, in allusion to Sir Alexander's stinted ways, 'we came in at the wrong end of the island;' the memories of their visit had not been forgotten when Scott was there on his Lighthouse Tour in 1814. The Rambler 'had tasted lotus, and was in danger of forgetting he was ever to depart.'
Landing at Strolimus, they proceeded to Corrichatachin, 'with but a single star to light us on our way.' There took place the scene that, though familiar, must be given in the writer's own words. A man who, for artistic setting and colour, could write it deliberately down even to his own disadvantage, and who could appeal to serious critics and readers of discernment and taste against the objections which he saw himself would be raised from the misinterpretation of others, is a figure not to be met with every day in literature.
'Dr Johnson went to bed soon. When one bowl of punch was finished, I rose, and was near the door, on my way upstairs to bed; but Corrichatachin said, it was the first time Col had been in his house, and he should have his bowl; and would not I join in drinking it? The heartiness of my honest landlord, and the desire of doing social honour to our very obliging conductor, induced me to sit down again. Col's bowl was finished; and by that time we were well warmed. A third bowl was soon made, and that too was finished. We were cordial, and merry to a high degree; but of what passed I have no recollection, with any accuracy. I remember calling _Corrichatachin_ by the familiar appellation of _Corri_ which his friends do. A fourth bowl was made, by which time Col, and young M'Kinnon, Corrichatachin's son, slipped away to bed. I continued a little time with Corri and Knockow; but at last I left them. It was near five in the morning when I got to bed.
_Sunday, September 26._ I awaked at noon with a severe head-ach. I was much vexed that I should have been guilty of such a riot, and afraid of a reproof from Dr Johnson, I thought it very inconsistent with that conduct which I ought to maintain, while the companion of the Rambler. About one he came into my room, and accosted me, "What, drunk yet?" His tone of voice was not that of severe upbraiding; so I was relieved a little. "Sir," (said I), "they kept me up." He answered, "No, you kept them up, you drunken dog:"--this he said with good-humoured _English_ pleasantry. Soon afterwards, Corrichatachin, Col, and other friends assembled round my bed.
Corri had a brandy bottle and glass with him, and insisted I should take a dram. "Ay," said Dr Johnson, "fill him drunk again. Do it in the morning, that we may laugh at him all day.
It is a poor thing for a fellow to get drunk at night, and skulk to bed, and let his friends have no sport." Finding him thus jocular, I became quite easy; and when I offered to get up, he very good naturedly said, "You need be in no such hurry now." I took my host's advice, and drank some brandy, which I found an effectual cure for my head-ach. When I rose, I went into Dr Johnson's room, and taking up Mrs M'Kinnon's Prayer-Book, I opened it at the twentieth Sunday after Trinity, in the epistle for which I read, "And be not drunk with wine, wherein there is excess." Some would have taken this as a divine interposition.'
Such is the extraordinary confession. St Augustine, Rousseau, De Quincey, have not quite equalled this. He found it had been made the subject of serious criticism and ludicrous banter. But his one object, as he tells 'serious criticks,' has been to delineate Johnson's character, and for this purpose he appeals from Philip drunk to Philip sober, and to the approbation of the discerning reader. Later on, he has laid the flattering unction to his heart, and has extracted comfort from the soul of things evil. He felt comfortable, and 'I then thought that my last night's riot was no more than such a social excess as may happen without much moral blame; and recollected that some physicians maintained, that a fever produced by it was, upon the whole, good for health: so different are our reflections on the same subject, at different periods; and such the excuses with which we palliate what we know to be wrong.'
Leaving Skye, they ran before the wind to Col.
'It was very dark, and there was a heavy and incessant rain.
The sparks of the burning peat flew so much about, that I dreaded the vessel might take fire. Then as _Col_ was a sportsman, and had powder on board, I figured that we might be blown up. Our vessel often lay so much on one side, that I trembled lest she should be overset, and indeed they told me afterwards that they had run her sometimes to within an inch of the water, so anxious were they to make what haste they could before the night should be worse. I now saw what I never saw before, a prodigious sea, with immense billows coming upon a vessel, so that it seemed hardly possible to escape. I am glad I have seen it once. I endeavoured to compose my mind; when I thought of those who were dearest to me, and would suffer severely, should I be lost, I upbraided myself. Piety afforded me comfort; yet I was disturbed by the objections that have been made against a particular providence, and by the arguments of those who maintain that it is in vain to hope that the petitions of an individual, or even of congregations, can have any influence with the Deity. I asked _Col_ with much earnestness what I could do. He with a happy readiness put into my hand a rope, which was fixed to the top of one of the masts, and told me to hold it till he bade me pull. If I had considered the matter, I might have seen that this could not be of the slightest service; but his object was to keep me out of the way.... Thus did I stand firm to my post, while the wind and rain beat upon me, always expecting a call to pull my rope.... They spied the harbour of Lochiern, and _Col_ cried, "Thank God, we are safe!" Dr Johnson had all this time been quiet and unconcerned. He had lain down on one of the beds, and having got free from sickness, was satisfied. The truth is, he knew nothing of the danger we were in. Once he asked whither we were going; upon being told that it was not certain whether to Mull or Col, he cried, "Col for my money!" I now went down to visit him. He was lying in philosophick tranquillity, with a greyhound of _Col's_ at his back keeping him warm.'
Mull, Tobermory, Ulva's Isle, and Inch Kenneth followed. Then Iona,--'the sacred place which as long as I can remember, I had thought on with veneration.' The two friends, as they landed on the island, 'cordially embraced,' as they had done in the _White Horse_ at Edinburgh, and the mark of feeling is a note that we are yet with them in the eighteenth century. They lay in a barn with a portmanteau for a pillow, and 'when I awaked in the morning and looked round me, I could not help smiling at the idea of the chief of the Macleans, the great English moralist, and myself lying thus extended in such a situation.'
The old Boswell of the Roman Catholic days appears at this time.
'Boswell,' writes Johnson to Mrs Thrale, 'who is very pious went into the chapel at night to perform his devotions, but came back in haste for fear of spectres.' Second sight was often in their thoughts and conversation on their tour; at the club Colman had jocularly to bid Boswell 'cork it up' when he was too full of his belief on the point.
His fear of ghosts reminds one of Pepys in the year of the great plague, as he went through the graveyard of the church, with the bodies buried thick and high, 'frighted and much troubled.'
'I left him,' says Boswell himself, 'and Sir Allan at breakfast in our barn, and stole back again to the cathedral, to indulge in solitude and devout meditation. When contemplating the venerable ruins, _I reflected with much satisfaction_, that the solemn scenes of piety _never lose their sanctity and influence_, though the cares and follies of life may prevent us from visiting them.... I hoped that, ever after having been in this holy place, I should maintain an exemplary conduct. One has a strange propensity to fix upon some point of time from whence a better course of life may begin.' This is a revelation of the inner Boswell. On the eve of the appearance of the _Tour in Corsica_, he had written to Temple, about 'fixing some period for my perfection as far as possible.
Let it be when my account of Corsica is finished. I shall then have a character to support.' On landing at Rasay, he noticed the remains of a cross on the rock, 'which had to me a pleasing vestige of religion,' and he 'could not but value the family seat more for having even the ruins of a chapel close to it. There was something comforting in the thought of being so near a piece of consecrated ground.'
Oban received them with a tolerable inn. They were again on the mainland, and found papers with conjectures as to their motions in the islands. Next day they spent at Inverary. The castle of the Duke of Argyll was near, and now, for the first time on the tour, the indefatigable agent in advance was completely nonplussed. The spectre of the great Douglas Trial loomed large in the eyes of the pamphleteer and the hero of the riot. He had reason, he says, to fear hostile reprisals on the part of the Duchess, who had been Duchess of Hamilton and mother of the rival claimant, before she had become the wife of John, fifth Duke of Argyll. It is from this scene and from the Stratford Jubilee fiasco that the general reader draws his picture of poor Bozzy, and the belief remains that James Boswell was a pushing and forward interloper, half mountebank and half showman. Read in the original, as a revelation of the writer's character, the very reverse is the impression; he is there presented not in any ludicrous light but rather in a good-humoured and fussy way. He met his friend the Rev. John Macaulay, one of the ministers of Inverary, who accompanied them to the castle, where Boswell presented the doctor to the Duke. 'I shall never forget,' quaintly adds the chronicler, 'the impression made upon my fancy by some of the ladies' maids tripping about in neat morning dresses. After seeing for a long time little but rusticity, their lively manner, and gay inviting appearance, pleased me so much, that I thought, for a moment, I could have been a knight-errant for them.' This grandfather of the historian and essayist, the man who has dealt the heaviest blow to the reputation of poor Bozzy, was to encounter some warm retorts from the Rambler like his brother, Macaulay's grand-uncle, the minister at Calder. Mr Trevelyan is eager for the good name of his family, and finds it impossible to suppress a wish that the great talker had been there to avenge them. It may not be quite impossible that, mingling with the brilliant essayist's ill-will to the politics of the travellers, there was an unconscious strain of resentment at the contemptuous way in which his relations had been tossed by the doctor, and that Bozzy's own subsequent denunciations of the abolitionists and the slave trade had edged the memories in the mind of the son of Zachary Macaulay. Be this as it may, for this scene Macaulay has a keen eye, and as much of his colour is derived from it, it is but right that in some abridged form the incident be set down here in Boswell's own words--
'I went to the castle just about the time when I supposed the ladies would be retired from dinner. I sent in my name; and, being shewn in, found the amiable Duke sitting at the head of his table with several gentlemen. I was most politely received, and gave his grace some particulars of the curious journey which I had been making with Dr Johnson.... As I was going away, the Duke said, "Mr Boswell, won't you have some tea?" I thought it best to get over the meeting with the Duchess this night; so respectfully agreed. I was conducted to the drawing-room by the Duke, who announced my name; but the duchess, who was sitting with her daughter, Lady Betty Hamilton, and some other ladies, took not the least notice of me. I should have been mortified at being thus coldly received, had I not been consoled by the obliging attention of the Duke.
'_Monday, October 25._ I presented Dr Johnson to the Duke of Argyll ... the duke placed Dr Johnson next himself at table. I was in fine spirits; and though sensible of not being in favour with the duchess, I was not in the least disconcerted, and offered her grace some of the dish that was before me. It must be owned that I was in the right to be quite unconcerned, if I could. I was the Duke of Argyll's guest; and I had no reason to suppose that he adopted the prejudices and resentments of the Duchess of Hamilton.
'I knew it was the rule of modern high life not to drink to anybody; but, that I might have the satisfaction for once to look the duchess in the face, with a glass in my hand, I with a respectful air addressed her,--"My Lady Duchess, I have the honour to drink your grace's good health." I repeated the words audibly, and with a steady countenance. This was, perhaps, rather too much; but some allowance must be made for human feelings. I made some remark that seemed to imply a belief in _second sight_. The duchess said, "I fancy you will be _a methodist_." This was the only sentence her grace deigned to utter to me; and I take it for granted, she thought it a good hit on _my credulity_ in the Douglas Cause.
'We went to tea. The duke and I walked up and down the drawing-room, conversing. The duchess still continued to shew the same marked coldness for me; for which, though I suffered from it, I made every allowance, considering the very warm part that I had taken for Douglas, in the cause in which she thought her son deeply interested. Had not her grace discovered some displeasure towards me, I should have suspected her of insensibility or dissimulation. Her grace made Dr Johnson come and sit by her, and asked him why he made his journey so late in the year. "Why, madam (said he), you know Mr Boswell must attend the Court of Session, and it does not rise till the 12th of August." She said, with some sharpness, "I _know nothing_ of Mr Boswell." Poor Lady Lucy Douglas, to whom I mentioned this, observed, "She knew _too much_ of Mr Boswell."
I shall make no remark on her grace's speech, etc., etc.'
In all this scene it will be confessed there is nothing but rudeness on the part of the duchess, one of the beautiful Gunnings, intentional or otherwise, while the kindly touches on Boswell's part, his allowance for her supposed feelings over the trial, and his determination, for once, to look a duchess in the face, are admirable. Bozzy was by birth a gentleman, and there is not the slightest indication here of any want of breeding or taste on his side.
At Dumbarton, steep as is the incline, Johnson ascended it. The _Saracen's Head_, which had welcomed Paoli before now, received the travellers. There was now no more sullen fuel or peat. 'Here am I,'
soliloquized the Rambler, with a leg upon each side of the grate, 'an _Englishman_, sitting by a coal fire.'
'Jamie's aff the hooks noo;' said the old laird, as they drew near Auchinleck, 'he's bringing doon an auld dominie.' Boswell begged of his companion to avoid three topics of discourse on which he knew his father had fixed opinions--Whiggism, Presbyterianism, and Sir John Pringle. For a time all went well. They walked about 'the romantick groves of my ancestors,' and Bozzy discoursed on the antiquity and honourable alliances of the family, and on the merits of its founder, Thomas, who fell with King James at Flodden. But the storm broke, over the judge's collection of medals, where that of Oliver Cromwell brought up Charles the First and Episcopacy. All must regret that the writer's filial feelings withheld the 'interesting scene in this dramatick sketch.' It is the one _lacuna_ in the book. Sir John Pringle, as the middle term in the debate, came off without a bruise, but the honours lay with Lord Auchinleck. The man whose 'Scots strength of sarcasm' could retort on Johnson, that Cromwell was a man that let kings know they 'had a _lith_ in their neck,' was likely to open new ideas to the doctor, whose political opinions could not rank higher than prejudices. 'Thus they parted,' says the son, after his father had, with his dignified courtesy, seen Johnson into the postchaise; 'they are now in a happier state of existence, in a place where there is no room for _Whiggism_.'
'I have always said,' the doctor maintained, 'the first Whig was the Devil!'
Edinburgh was reached on November 9th. Eighty-three days had passed since they left it, and for five weeks no news of them had been heard.
Writing from London, on his arrival, Johnson said, 'I came home last night, without any incommodity, danger, or weariness, and am ready to begin a new journey. I know Mrs Boswell wished me well to go.' The irregular hours of her guest, and his habit of turning the candles downward when they did not burn brightly, letting the wax run upon the carpet, had not been quite to the taste of the hostess, who resented, 'what was very natural to a female mind,' the influence he possessed over the actions of her husband.
We may well call this tour a spirited one, as Boswell had styled his own Corsican expedition. No better book of travels in Scotland has ever been written than Boswell's _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_. The accuracy of his description, his eye for scenes and dramatic effects, have all been fully borne witness to by those who have followed in their track, and the fact of the book being day by day read by Johnson, during its preparation, gives it an additional value from the perfect veracity of its contents--'as I have resolved that the very journal which Dr Johnson read shall be presented to the publick, I will not expand the text in any considerable degree.' If the way in which the Rambler roughed it, 'laughing to think of myself roving among the Hebrides at sixty, and wondering where I shall rove at four score,' is admirable, none the less so is Bozzy's imperturbable good humour. 'It is very convenient to travel with him,' writes his companion from Auchinleck to Mrs Thrale, 'for there is no house where he is not received with kindness and respect. He has better faculties than I had imagined; more justness of discernment and more fecundity of images.' They had hoped to go sailing from island to island, and had not reckoned with what Scott, who wonders they were not drowned, calls the proverbial carelessness of Hebridean boatmen. They really had come two months too late. But Boswell's attention to the old man smoothed all difficulties,--'looking on the tour as a co-partnership between Dr Johnson and myself,' he did his part faithfully, dancing reels, singing songs, and airing the scraps of Gaelic he picked up, thinking all this better than 'to play the abstract scholar.'
Johnson's account of the journey is an able performance, and is written with a lighter touch and grace than is to be found in his early works.
One passage from it has become famous,--his description of Iona. 'The man whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona,' rivals Macaulay's New Zealander as a stock quotation, and the whole book is not without incisive touches. But it is completely eclipsed by the _Journal_ of Boswell. From start to finish there is not a dull page, and the literary polish is, we venture to think, of a higher kind than is seen in the _Life_. The artistic opening, and the grouping of the characters, together with the wealth of archaeological and historical information, the tripping style and sustained interest, all render this book of Boswell's a masterpiece. Johnson's account, published in 1775, took ten years to reach a second edition. Boswell's appeared in September, 1785; and by December 20 the issue was exhausted, a third followed on August 15, 1786, and the next year saw a German translation issued at Lubeck.
There had been grave indiscretions, lack of reticence, and other faults in the book. Caricatures were rife. _Revising for the Second Edition_ shewed Sir Alexander Macdonald seizing the author by the throat, and pointing with his stick to the open book, where two leaves are marked as torn out. But Boswell, in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for March 1786, asserts that no such applications or threats had been made. The results, however, may have added to the writer's unpopularity, as Lord Houghton suggests, at the Edinburgh bar, through the answers, replies, and other rejoinders to the strictures of Johnson, for which Boswell, as the pioneer and the introducer of the stranger, 'the chiel among them takin'
notes,' may in Edinburgh society have been held as mainly responsible.
To Johnson, the memories of the tour--the lone shieling and the misty island--were a source of pleasing recollection. Taken earlier, it would have removed many of his insular prejudices by wider survey and more varied conversation. 'The expedition to the Hebrides,' he wrote to Boswell some years after, 'was the most pleasant journey I ever made;'
and two years later, after restless and tedious nights, he is found reverting to it and recalling the best night he had had these twenty years back, at Fort Augustus. Yet all through September they had not more than a day and a half of really good weather, and but the same during October. Out of such slight materials and uncomfortable surroundings has Boswell produced a masterpiece of descriptive writing.
The memory of Johnson has lingered where that of the Jacobite Pretender has well-nigh completely passed away. Mr Gladstone, proposing a Parliamentary vote of thanks to Lord Napier for 'having planted the Standard of St George upon the mountains of Rasselas;' Sir Robert Peel, quoting, in his address to Glasgow University as Lord Rector, Johnson's description of Iona; Sir Walter Scott finding in Skye that he and his friends had in their memories, as the one typical association of the island, the ode to Mrs Thrale, all combine to shew the abiding interest attaching to the Rambler even in Abyssinia and to his foot-steps in Scotland.
CHAPTER VI
EDINBURGH LIFE--DEATH OF JOHNSON. 1773-1784
'My father used to protest I was born to be a strolling pedlar.'--SIR WALTER SCOTT--_Autobiography._
'You have done Auchinleck much honour and have, I hope, overcome my father who has never forgiven your warmth for monarchy and episcopacy. I am anxious to see how your pages will operate on him.' Boswell had good grounds for thus expressing himself to Johnson over the publication of the latter's book. He had not long, it would seem, to wait for the breaking of the storm, as we find him writing to Temple in ominous language. 'My father,' he says, 'is most unhappily dissatisfied with me.
He harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think how shockingly erroneous!) and wandering, or some such phrase, to London. I always dread his making some bad settlement.' Then the old judge would grimly relate how Lord Crichton, son of the Earl of Dumfries, would go to Edinburgh, and how, when he was carried back to the family vault, the Earl, as he saw the hearse from the window, had said, 'Ay, ay, Charles, thou went without an errand: I think thou hast got one to bring thee back again.'
But had the son chosen to be quite candid here, we should see how just a cause the father had for his displeasure. In the spring of 1774, he had written to Johnson suggesting a run up to London, expressing the peculiar satisfaction which he felt in celebrating Easter at St Paul's, which to his fancy was like going up to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. The doctor was wisely deaf to this subtle appeal. 'Edinburgh,'
said he, 'is not yet exhausted,' and reminded him that his wife, having permitted him last year to ramble, had now a claim upon him at home, while to come to Iona or to Jerusalem could not be necessary, though useful. Next year, however, Boswell was in London, 'quite in my old humour,' as he tells Temple, arguing with him for concubinage and the plurality of the patriarchs, from all which we may see that the plea urged to Johnson for the visit was to be taken in a lax sense by Boswell, who made his chief excuse out of some business at the bar of the House over an election petition in Clackmannan. He waited on Temple in Devon and shocked his host by his inebriety, but 'under a solemn yew tree' he had vowed reformation. But his return to town, if it 'exalted him in piety' at St Paul's, seems to have led but to fresh dissipation.
He hints at 'Asiatic multiplicity,' but this is only when he has taken too much claret. The good resolutions at Iona and the influence of the ruins had passed away, the trip is extended to two months, and he frets irritably over his old friend Henry Dundas's election as King's Advocate,--'to be sure he has strong parts, but he is a coarse unlettered dog.' Harry Dundas at least was never found philandering as we find Bozzy on this occasion, where the mixture of religion and flirtation is so confusing. 'After breakfasting with Paoli,' he writes before leaving for the north, 'and worshipping at St Paul's, I dined _tete-a-tete_ with my charming Mrs Stuart, of whom you have read in my Journal. We dined in all the elegance of two courses and a dessert, with dumb waiters, except when the second course and the dessert were served. We talked with unreserved freedom, as we had nothing to fear. We were _philosophical_, upon honour--not deep, but feeling, we were pious; we drank tea and bid each other adieu as finely as romance paints. She is my wife's dearest friend, so you see how beautiful our intimacy is.'
But from Johnson's letter to Mrs Thrale we see looming ahead a crisis.
'He got two and forty guineas in fees while he was here. He has by _his wife's persuasion and mine_ taken down a present for his mother-in-law,'--an error, doubtless, for 'stepmother.' He had entered himself this time at the Temple, and Johnson was his bond. He left to be in time for practice before the General Assembly, finding 'something low and coarse in such employment, but guineas must be had'--a feeling quite different from that of Lord Cockburn who thought the aisle of St Giles had seen the best work of the best men in the kingdom since 1640.
Perhaps his feelings on this point were soothed by the traveller in the coach, a Miss Silverton, an 'amiable creature who has been in France. I can unite little fondnesses with perfect conjugal love.' Alas for poor Peggie Montgomerie, 'of the ancient house of Eglintoun,' blamed by his father for not bridling the follies of his son, waiting, doubtless, anxiously for the present to the second wife of his father as a means of peace-offering!
Then the secret leaks out that the father had refused Boswell's plan of being allowed 400 a year and the trial of fortune at the London bar.
His debts of 1000 had been paid, and his allowance of 300 threatened with the reduction of a third. The promise under the old yew had not been kept; the one bottle of hock as a statutory limit had been exceeded, he had been 'not drunk, but was intoxicated,'--a subtle point for bacchanalian casuists, and very ill next day. He lays it on the drunken habits of the country which, he says, are very bad, and with the recollection of Burns' temptations in Dumfries we may admit that they were. His father, too, was now about to entail his estate, and Bozzy's predilection for feudal principles and heirs male brought things to a deadlock. He appealed to Lord Hailes, who admitted conscience and self formed a strong plea when found on different sides. Finally, after the judge had inserted in the deed his precautions against 'a weak, foolish and extravagant person,' the estate was entailed on Boswell. 'My father,' he tells Temple, 'is so different from me. We _divaricate_ so much, as Dr Johnson said. He has a method of treating me which makes me feel like a timid boy, which to _Boswell_ (comprehending all that my character does in my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) is intolerable. It requires the utmost exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet; but it has cost me drinking a considerable quantity of strong beer to dull my faculties.' The picture of the son drinking himself down to the level of the father is truly inimitable!
He feared the final settlement. He might be disgraced by his father, and not a shilling secured to his wife and children. Then he is comforted by the thought that his father is visibly failing, and he consults his brother David with a view to a settlement, should the succession pass to him. The birth of a son, who was diplomatically called Alexander, was taken by the old man as a compliment, and we find Boswell visiting at Auchinleck, 'not long at one time, but frequent renewals of attention are agreeable,' he finds, to his father. He proposed to Johnson a tour round the English cathedrals, but a brief trip with him to Derbyshire was all that resulted. We now find for the first time in the _Life_ indications of what would ensue when the strong hand of Johnson was removed from the guidance of his weaker companion. 'As we drove back to Ashbourne,' he writes with curious frankness, 'Dr Johnson recommended to me, _as he had often done_, to drink water only,' and we meet with as curious a defence of drinking--the great difficulty of resisting it when a good man asks you to drink the wine he has had twenty years in his cellar! Benevolence calls for compliance, for, 'curst be the _spring_,'
he adds with a change of Pope's verse, 'how well soe'er it flow, that tends to make one worthy man my foe!' 'I do,' he wrote in the _London Magazine_ for March 1780, 'fairly acknowledge that I love drinking; that I have a constitutional inclination to indulge in fermented liquors, and that if it were not for the restraints of reason and religion, I am afraid that I should be as constant a votary of Bacchus as any man.
Drinking is in reality an occupation which employs a considerable portion of the time of many people; and to conduct it in the most rational and agreeable manner is one of the great arts of living. Were we so framed that it were possible by perpetual supplies of wine to keep ourselves for ever gay and happy, there could be no doubt that drinking would be the _summum bonum_, the chief good to find out which philosophers have been so variously busied.' It looks as if poor Bozzy, when he wrote this, had heard of the Brunonian system of medicine, and of the unfortunate exemplication of it in practice and in precept by its founder in Edinburgh. No wonder such excesses produced violent reaction to low spirits and the 'black dog' of hypochondria. He finds it, after going to prayers in Carlisle Cathedral, 'divinely cheering to have a cathedral so near Auchinleck,' one hundred and fifty miles off, as Johnson sarcastically replied. Bozzy had been writing a series of articles, 'The Hypochondriack,' in the _London Magazine_, for about two years, but he was advised not to mention his own mental diseases, or to expect for them either the praise for which there was no room, or the pity which would do him no good. The active old man was now in better health than he had been upon the Hebridean tour, and was in hopes of yet shewing himself with Boswell in some part of Europe, Asia, or Africa.
'What have you to do with liberty and necessity?' cries the doctor to his friend, who had been worrying himself and his correspondent with philosophical questions, on which some six years before he had got some light from the _Lettres Persanes_ of Montesquieu. 'Come to me, my dear Bozzy, and let us be as happy as we can. We will go again to the Mitre, and talk old times over.' Thrice during the 1781 visit to London do we see his unfortunate habits breaking out; and, when we find him saying he has unfortunately preserved none of the conversations, Miss Hannah More, who met him that day at the Bishop of St Asaph's, explains it--'I was heartily disgusted with Mr Boswell, who came upstairs after dinner much disordered with wine.'