SON. : I objected to the last phrase, as being low. JOHN"Sir, it is intended to be low it is satire The expression is debased, to debase the character." When Gory was about to part from us, Dr. Johnson called to him, "Mr. Gory, give me leave to ask you a question! are you baptised?" Gory told him he was and confirmed by the Bishop of Durham. He then gave him a shilling. We had a tedious driving this afternoon, and were somewhat drowsy. Last night I was afraid Dr. Johnson was beginning to faint in his resolution; for he said, "If we must ride much, we shall not go; and there's an end on't." To-day, when he talked of Sky with spirit, I said, "Why, Sir, you seemed to me to despond yesterday. You are a delicate Londoner; you are a maccaroni ; you can't ride." JOHNSON. "Sir, I shall ride better than you. I was only afraid I should not find a horse able to carry me." I hoped then there would be no fear of getting through our wild Tour. We came to Aberdeen at half an hour past eleven. The New Inn, we were told, was full. This was comfortless. The waiter, however, asked if one of our names was Boswell, and brought me a letter left at the inn: it was from Mr. Thrale, enclosing one to Dr. Johnson. Finding who I was, we were told they would contrive to lodge us by putting us for a night into a room with two beds. The waiter said to me in the broad strong Aberdeenshire dialect, “I The whole strange purpose of their lives to find Not one looks backward, onward still he goes, thought I knew you, by your likeness to your father." My father puts up at the New Inn, when on his circuit. Little was said to-night. I was to sleep in a little press-bed in Dr. Johnson's room. I had it wheeled out into the dining-room, and there I lay very well. Sunday, Aug. 22. - I sent a message to Professor Thomas Gordon, who came and breakfasted with us. He had secured seats for us at the English hapel. () We found a respectable congregation, and an admirable organ, well played by Mr. Tait. We walked down to the shore. Dr. Johnson laughed to hear that Cromwell's soldiers taught the Aberdeen people to make shoes and stockings, and to plant cabbages. He asked, if weaving the plaids was ever a domestic art in the Highlands, like spinning or knitting. They could not inform him here. But he conjectured probably, that where people lived so remote from each other, it was likely to be a domestic art; as we see it was among the ancients, from Penelope. I was sensible to-day, to an extraordinary degree, of Dr. Johnson's excellent English pronunciation. I cannot account for its striking me more now than any other day; but it was as if new to me, and I listened to every sentence which he spoke, as to a musical composition. Professor Gordon gave him an account of the plan of education in his college. Dr. Johnson said, it was similar to that at (1)"When I was at the English church in Aberdeen, I happened to be espied by Lady Di. Middleton, whom I had sometime seen in London: she told what she had seen to Mr. Boyd, Lord Errol's brother, who wrote us an invitation to Slains Castle." -Johnson's Letters, vol. i. p. 118.-Lady Diana was the daughter of Harry Grey, third Earl of Stamford, and wife of George Middleton, of Lenton, Esq. She died in 1780.-C. ÆTAT. 64. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE EDUCATION. 85 Oxford. Waller, the poet's great-grandson, was studying here. Dr. Johnson wondered that a man should send his son so far off, when there were so many good schools in England. He said, "At a great school there is all the splendour and illumination of many minds; the radiance of all is concentrated in each, or at least reflected upon each. But we must own that neither a dull boy, nor an idle boy, will do so well at a great school as at a private one. For at a great school there are always boys enough to do well easily, who are sufficient 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 course, 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 public or private education is not properly a general one; but whether one or the other is best for my son." We were told the present Mr. Waller was a plain country gentleman; and his son would be such another. I observed, a family could not expect a poet but in a hundred generations. Nay," said 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. (1) (1) ["Three poets in three distant ages born, and a part of a Latin translation of it done at Oxford (1): 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 pleased to see the kindness with which Dr. Johnson received his old friend Sir Alexander; a gentleman of good family (Lismore), but who had not the estate. The King's College here made him Professor of Medicine, which affords him a decent subsistence. 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. Johnson asked what made the difference? Here we had a proof of the comparative sagacity of the two professors. Sir Alexander answered, "Because there is more occasion for them in war." Professor Thomas Gordon answered, "Because the Germans, who are our great rivals in the manufacture of stockings, are otherwise employed in time of war." JOHNSON. Sir, you have given a very good solution." At dinner, Dr. Johnson ate several platefulls of Scotch broth, with barley and peas in it, and seemed 66 (1) London, 2d of May, 1778. Dr. Johnson acknowledged that he was himself the author of the translation above alluded to, and dictated it to me as follows: "Quos laudet vates Graius Romanus et Anglus Tres tria temporibus secla dedere suis. Sublime ingenium Graius; Romanus habebat Carmen grande sonans; Anglus utrumque tulit, Nil majus Natura capit: clarare priores Quæ potuere duos tertius unus habet." very fond of the dish. I said, "You never ate it before." JOHNSON. "No, Sir; but I don't care how soon I eat it again." My cousin, Miss Dallas, formerly of Inverness, was married to Mr. Riddoch, one of the ministers of the English chapel here. He was ill, and confined to his room; but she sent us a kind invitation to tea, which we all accepted. She was the same lively, sensible, cheerful woman, as ever. Dr. Johnson here threw out some jokes against Scotland. He said, "You go first to Aberdeen; then to Enbru (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, répresenting 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 she should have a little bed cut opposite 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 lapse of time: but a general rule that a crime should 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 prosecution from malice. How unlikely is it the king's advocate should have malice against persons who commit murder, or should even know them at all. If the son of the murdered man should kill the murderer who got off merely by prescription, I (1) See antè, p. 14.—C. |