Characteres Advocatorum. He allowed him power of mind, and that he understood very well what he tells; but said that there was too much declamation, and that the Latin was not correct. He found fault with appropinquabant in the character of Gilmour. I tried him with the opposition between gloria and palma, in the comparison between Gilmour and Nisbet, which Lord Hailes, in his catalogue of the Lords of Session, thinks difficult to be understood. The words are, "penes illum gloria, penes hunc palma." In a short account of the Kirk of Scotland, which I published some years ago, I applied these words to the two contending parties, and explained them thus: "The popular party has most eloquence; Dr. Robertson's party most influence." I was very desirous to hear Dr. Johnson's explication.JOHNSON. "I see no difficulty. Gilmour was admired for his parts; Nisbet carried his cause by his skill in law. Palma is victory."-I observed, that the character of Nicholson in this book resembled that of Burke; for it is said, in one place, " in omnes lusos et jocos se sæpe resolvebat ;" and, in another, "sed acceptris more è conspectu aliquando astantium sublimi se protrahens volatu, in prædam miro impetu descendebat."+-JOHNSON. "No, sir; I never heard Burke make a good joke in my life."-Boswell. "But, sir, you will allow he is a hawk."-Dr. Johnson, thinking that I meant this of his joking, said, "No, sir, he is not the hawk there. He is the beetle in the mire."—I still adhered to my metaphor: "But he soars as the hawk." -JOHNSON. "Yes, sir; but he catches nothing."-Macleod asked, what is the particular excellence of Burke's eloquence ?-JOHNSON. "Copiousness and fertility of allusion; a power of diversifying his matter, by placing it in various relations. Burke has great information, and great command of language; though, in my opinion, it has not in every respect the highest elegance."-BOSWELL. "Do you think, sir, that Burke has read Cicero much ?”-JOHNSON. "I don't believe it, sir. Burke has great knowledge, great fluency of words, and great promptness of ideas, so that he can speak with great illustration on any subject that comes before him. He is neither like Cicero, nor like Demosthenes, nor like any one else, but speaks as well as he can."

In the 65th page of the first volume of Sir George Mackenzie, Dr. Johnson pointed out a paragraph beginning with Aristotle, and told me there was an error in the text, which he bade me try to discover. I was lucky enough to hit it at once. As the passage is printed, it is said that the devil answers even in engines. I corrected it to-ever in

* He often indulged himself in every species of pleasantry and wit.-BOSWELL. + But, like the hawk, having soared with a lofty flight to a height which the eye could not reach, he was wont to swoop upon his quarry with wonderful rapidity.-IBID.

ænigmas. Sir," said he, "you are a good critic. This would have been a great thing to do in the text of an ancient author."

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 16.

Last night much care was taken of Dr. Johnson, who was still distressed by his cold. He had hitherto most strangely slept without a night-cap. Miss Macleod made him a large flannel one, and he was prevailed with to drink a little brandy when he was going to bed. He has great virtue in not drinking wine or any fermented liquor, because, as he acknowledged to us, he could not do it in moderation. -Lady Macleod would hardly believe him, and said, “I am sure, sir, you would not carry it too far."-JOHNSON. “ 'Nay, madam, it carried me. I took the opportunity of a long illness to leave it off. It was then prescribed to me not to drink wine; and having broken off the habit, I have never returned to it."

In the argument on Tuesday night about natural goodness, Dr. Johnson denied that any child was better than another, but by difference of instruction; though, in consequence of greater attention being paid to instruction by one child than another, and of a variety of imperceptible causes, such as instruction being counteracted by servants, a notion was conceived, that of two children, equally well educated, one was naturally much worse than another. He owned,

this morning, that one might have a greater aptitude to learn than another, and that we inherit dispositions from our parents. "I inherited," said he, "a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober." Lady Macleod wondered he should tell this. "Madam," said I, "he knows that with that madness he is superior to other men."

I have often been astonished with what exactness and perspicuity he will explain the process of any art. He this morning explained to us all the operation of coining, and at night all the operation of brewing, so very clearly, that Mr. Macqueen said, when he heard the first, he thought he had been bred in the mint; when he heard the second, that he had been bred a brewer.

I

I was elated by the thought of having been able to entice such a man to this remote part of the world. A ludicrous, yet just image presented itself to my mind, which I expressed to the company. compared myself to a dog who has got hold of a large piece of meat, and runs away with it to a corner, where he may devour it in peace, without any fear of others taking it from him. "In London, Reynolds, Beauclerk, and all of them, are contending who shall enjoy Dr. Johnson's conversation. We are feasting upon it undisturbed at Dunvegan."

It was still a storm of wind and rain. Dr. Johnson, however, walked out with Macleod, and saw Rorie More's cascade in full perfection. Colonel Macleod, instead of being all life and gaiety, as I have seen him, was at present grave, and somewhat depressed by his anxious concern about Macleod's affairs, and by finding some gentlemen of the clan by no means disposed to act a generous or affectionate part to their Chief in his distress, but bargaining with him as with a stranger. However, he was agreeable and polite, and Dr. Johnson said, he was a very pleasing man. My fellow-traveller and I talked of going to Sweden; and while we were settling our plan, I expressed a pleasure in the prospect of seeing the king.-JOHNSON. "I doubt, sir, if he would speak to us." Colonel Macleod said, “I am sure Mr. Boswell would speak to him;" but, seeing me a little disconcerted by his remark, he politely added, "and with great propriety.”—Here let me offer a short defence of that propensity in my disposition to which this gentleman alluded. It has procured me much happiness. I hope it does not deserve so hard a name as either forwardness or impudence. If I know myself, it is nothing more than an eagerness to share the society of men distinguished either by their rank or their talents, and a diligence to attain what I desire. If a man is praised for seeking knowledge, though mountains and seas are in his way, may he not be pardoned, whose ardour, in the pursuit of the same object, leads him to encounter difficulties as great, though of a different kind?

After the ladies were gone from table, we talked of the Highlanders not having sheets; and this led us to consider the advantage of wearing linen.-JOHNSON. "All animal substances are less cleanly than vegetable. Wool, of which flannel is made, is an animal substance; flannel therefore is not so cleanly as linen. I remember I used to think tar dirty; but when I knew it to be only a preparation of the juice of the pine, I thought so no longer. It is not disagreeable to have the gum that oozes from a plum-tree upon your fingers, because it is vegetable; but if you have any candle-grease, any tallow upon your fingers, you are uneasy till you rub it off. I have often thought, that if I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns, or cotton,-I mean stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silk; you cannot tell when it is clean; it will be very nasty before it is perceived to be so. Linen detects its own dirtiness."

To hear the grave Dr. Samuel Johnson, "that majestic teacher of moral and religious wisdom," while sitting solemn in an arm-chair in the Isle of Sky, talk, ex cathedra, of his keeping a seraglio, and acknowledge that the supposition had often been in his thoughts, struck me so forcibly with ludicrous contrast, that I could not but

laugh immoderately. He was too proud to submit, even for a moment, to be the object of ridicule, and instantly retaliated with such keen sarcastic wit, and such a variety of degrading images, of every one of which I was the object, that though I can bear such attacks as well as most men, I yet found myself so much the sport of all the company, that I would gladly expunge from my mind every trace of this severe retort.

Talking of our friend Langton's house in Lincolnshire, he said, "The old house of the family was burnt. A temporary building was erected in its room; and to this day they have been always adding as the family increased. It is like a shirt made for a man when he was a child, and enlarged always as he grows older."

We talked to-night of Luther's allowing the Landgrave of Hesse two wives, and that it was with the consent of the wife to whom he was first married.-JOHNSON. "There was no harm in this, so far as she was only concerned, because volenti non fit injuria. But it was an offence against the general order of society, and against the law of the Gospel, by which one man and one woman are to be united. No man can have two wives, but by preventing somebody else from having one."

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17.

66

After dinner yesterday, we had a conversation upon cunning, Macleod said that he was not afraid of cunning people; but would let them play their tricks about him like monkeys. But," said I, they'll scratch," and Mr. Macqeen added, "they'll invent new tricks as soon as you find out what they do."-JOHNSON. "Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lieand deceive.”—This led us to consider whether it did not require great abilities to be very wicked.-JOHNSON. "It requires great

abilities to have the power of being very wicked, but not to be very wicked.* A man who has the power, which great abilities procurehim, may use it well or ill; and it requires more abilities to use it well, than to use it ill. Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything. It is much easier to steal a hundred pounds, than to get it by labour, or any other way. Consider only what act of wickedness requires great abilities to commit it, when once the person who has to do it has the power; for there is

* In other words-Great talents are not essential to being very wicked, but great. talents are required to do much evil. Yet accidental circumstances (as birth and riches) may determine the position of the party, and the position may give the power to do great good or evil.-ED.

the distinction. It requires great abilities to conquer an army, but none to massacre it after it is conquered."

The weather this day was rather better than any that we had since we came to Dunvegan. Mr. Macqueen had often mentioned a curious piece of antiquity near this, which he called a temple of the goddess Anaitis. Having often talked of going to see it, he and I set out after breakfast, attended by his servant, a fellow quite like a savage. I must observe here, that in Sky there seems to be much idleness; for men and boys follow you, as colts follow passengers upon a road. The usual figure of a Sky-boy, is a lown* with bare legs and feet, a dirty kilt, ragged coat and waistcoat, a bare head, and a stick in his hand, which, I suppose, is partly to help the lazy rogue to walk, partly to serve as a kind of a defensive weapon. We walked what is called two miles, but is probably four, from the castle, till we came to the sacred place. The country around is a black, dreary moor on all sides, except to the sea-coast, towards which there is a view through a valley; and the farm of Bay shows some good land. The place itself is green ground, being well drained, by means of a deep glen on each side, in both of which there runs a rivulet with a good quantity of water, forming several cascades, which make a considerable appearance and sound. The first thing we came to was an earthen mound, or dyke, extending from the one precipice to the other. A little further on was a strong stone-wall, not high, but very thick, extending in the same manner. On the outside of it were the ruins of two houses, one on each side of the entry or gate to it. The wall is built all along of uncemented stones, but of so large a size as to make a very firm and durable rampart. It has been built all about the consecrated ground, except where the precipice is steep enough to form an inclosure of itself. The sacred spot contains more than two acres. There are within it the ruins of many houses, none of them large, a cairn, and many graves marked by clusters of stones. Mr. Macqueen insisted that the ruin of a small building, standing east and west, was actually the temple of the goddess Anaitis, where her statue was kept, and from whence processions were made to wash it in one of the brooks. There is, it must be owned, a hollow road, visible for a good way from the entrance; but Mr. Macqueen, with the keen eye of an antiquary, traced it much further than I could perceive it. There is not above a foot and a half in height of the walls now remaining, and the whole extent of the building was never, I imagine, greater than an ordinary Highland house. Mr. Macqueen has collected a great deal of learning on

* A Lowland Scottish phrase. Burns, in his Glossary, defines it," a fellow, a ragamuffin ;" but it also implies a careless, half-grown lad.-Ed.