Complete Works of Samuel Johnson, page 841
We found the lady of the house a very polite and sensible woman, who had lived for some time in London, and had there been in Dr. Johnson’s company. After we had dined, we repaired to the drawing-room, where some of the young ladies of the family, with their mother, were at tea. This room had formerly been the bed-chamber of Sir Roderick Macleod, one of the old Lairds; and he chose it, because, behind it, there was a considerable cascade, the sound of which disposed him to sleep. Above his bed was this inscription: ‘Sir Rorie M’Leod of Dunvegan, Knight. GOD send good rest!’ Rorie is the contraction of Roderick. He was called Rorie More, that is, great Rorie, not from his size, but from his spirit. Our entertainment here was in so elegant a style, and reminded my fellow-traveller so much of England, that he became quite joyous. He laughed, and said, ‘Boswell, we came in at the wrong end of this island.’ ‘Sir, (said I,) it was best to keep this for the last.’ He answered, ‘I would have it both first and last.’
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14.
Dr. Johnson said in the morning, ‘Is not this a fine lady?’ There was not a word now of his ‘impatience to be in civilized life; — though indeed I should beg pardon, — he found it here. We had slept well, and lain long. After breakfast we surveyed the castle, and the garden. Mr. Bethune, the parish minister, — Magnus M’Leod, of Claggan, brother to Talisker, and M’Leod of Bay, two substantial gentlemen of the clan, dined with us. We had admirable venison, generous wine; in a word, all that a good table has. This was really the hall of a chief. Lady M’Leod had been much obliged to my father, who had settled by arbitration a variety of perplexed claims between her and her relation, the Laird of Brodie, which she now repaid by particular attention to me. M’Leod started the subject of making women do penance in the church for fornication. JOHNSON. ‘It is right, Sir. Infamy is attached to the crime, by universal opinion, as soon as it is known. I would not be the man who would discover it, if I alone knew it, for a woman may reform; nor would I commend a parson who divulges a woman’s first offence; but being once divulged, it ought to be infamous. Consider, of what importance to society the chastity of women is. Upon that all the property in the world depends. We hang a thief for stealing a sheep; but the unchastity of a woman transfers sheep, and farm and all, from the right owner. I have much more reverence for a common prostitute than for a woman who conceals her guilt. The prostitute is known. She cannot deceive: she cannot bring a strumpet into the arms of an honest man, without his knowledge. BOSWELL. ‘There is, however, a great difference between the licentiousness of a single woman, and that of a married woman.’ JOHNSON. ‘Yes, Sir; there is a great difference between stealing a shilling, and stealing a thousand pounds; between simply taking a man’s purse, and murdering him first, and then taking it. But when one begins to be vicious, it is easy to go on. Where single women are licentious, you rarely find faithful married women.’ BOSWELL. ‘And yet we are told that in some nations in India, the distinction is strictly observed.’ JOHNSON. ‘Nay, don’t give us India. That puts me in mind of Montesquieu, who is really a fellow of genius too in many respects; whenever he wants to support a strange opinion, he quotes you the practice of Japan or of some other distant country of which he knows nothing. To support polygamy, he tells you of the island of Formosa, where there are ten women born for one man. He had but to suppose another island, where there are ten men born for one woman, and so make a marriage between them.’ At supper, Lady Macleod mentioned Dr. Cadogan’s book on the gout. JOHNSON. ‘It is a good book in general, but a foolish one in particulars. It is good in general, as recommending temperance and exercise, and cheerfulness. In that respect it is only Dr. Cheyne’s book told in a new way; and there should come out such a book every thirty years, dressed in the mode of the times. It is foolish, in maintaining that the gout is not hereditary, and that one fit of it, when gone, is like a fever when gone.’ Lady Macleod objected that the author does not practise what he teaches. JOHNSON. ‘I cannot help that, madam. That does not make his book the worse. People are influenced more by what a man says, if his practice is suitable to it, — because they are blockheads. The more intellectual people are, the readier will they attend to what a man tells them. If it is just, they will follow it, be his practice what it will. No man practises so well as he writes. I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good. Only consider! You read a book; you are convinced by it; you do not know the authour. Suppose you afterwards know him, and find that he does not practise what he teaches; are you to give up your former conviction? At this rate you would be kept in a state of equilibrium, when reading every book, till you knew how the authour practised.’ ‘But,’ said Lady M’Leod, ‘you would think better of Dr. Cadogan, if he acted according to his principles.’ JOHNSON. ‘Why, Madam, to be sure, a man who acts in the face of light, is worse than a man who does not know so much; yet I think no man should be the worse thought of for publishing good principles. There is something noble in publishing truth, though it condemns one’s self.’ I expressed some surprize at Cadogan’s recommending good humour, as if it were quite in our own power to attain it. JOHNSON. ‘Why, Sir, a man grows better humoured as he grows older. He improves by experience. When young, he thinks himself of great consequence, and every thing of importance. As he advances in life, he learns to think himself of no consequence, and little things of little importance; and so he becomes more patient, and better pleased. All good-humour and complaisance are acquired. Naturally a child seizes directly what it sees, and thinks of pleasing itself only. By degrees, it is taught to please others, and to prefer others; and that this will ultimately produce the greatest happiness. If a man is not convinced of that, he never will practise it. Common language speaks the truth as to this: we say, a person is well bred. As it is said, that all material motion is primarily in a right line, and is never per circuitum, never in another form, unless by some particular cause; so it may be said intellectual motion is.’ Lady M’Leod asked, if no man was naturally good? JOHNSON. ‘No, Madam, no more than a wolf.’ BOSWELL. ‘Nor no woman, Sir?’ JOHNSON. ‘No, Sir.’ Lady M’Leod started at this, saying, in a low voice, ‘This is worse than Swift.’
M’Leod of Ulinish had come in the afternoon. We were a jovial company at supper. The Laird, surrounded by so many of his clan, was to me a pleasing sight. They listened with wonder and pleasure, while Dr. Johnson harangued. I am vexed that I cannot take down his full strain of eloquence.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15.
The gentlemen of the clan went away early in the morning to the harbour of Lochbradale, to take leave of some of their friends who were going to America. It was a very wet day. We looked at Rorie More’s horn, which is a large cow’s horn, with the mouth of it ornamented with silver curiously carved. It holds rather more than a bottle and a half. Every Laird of M’Leod, it is said, must, as a proof of his manhood, drink it off full of claret, without laying it down. From Rorie More many of the branches of the family are descended; in particular, the Talisker branch; so that his name is much talked of. We also saw his bow, which hardly any man now can bend, and his Glaymore>, which was wielded with both hands, and is of a prodigious size. We saw here some old pieces of iron armour, immensely heavy. The broadsword now used, though called the Glaymore, (i.e. the great sword) is much smaller than that used in Rorie More’s time. There is hardly a target now to be found in the Highlands. After the disarming act, they made them serve as covers to their butter-milk barrels; a kind of change, like beating spears into pruning-hooks.
Sir George Mackenzie’s Works (the folio edition) happened to lie in a window in the dining room. I asked Dr. Johnson to look at the 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 & jocos se saepe resolvebat;’ and, in another, ‘sed accipitris more e conspectu aliquando astantium sublimi se protrahens volatu, in praedam 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.’ M’Leod 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 oenigmas. ‘Sir, (said he,) you are a good critick. This would have been a great thing to do in the text of an ancient authour.’
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 M’Leod 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 M’Leod 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 M’Leod 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. M’Queen 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 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. I 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 M’Leod, and saw Rorie More’s cascade in full perfection. Colonel M’Leod, instead of being all life and gaiety, as I have seen him, was at present grave, and somewhat depressed by his anxious concern about M’Leod’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 M’Leod 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 majestick teacher of moral and religious wisdom,’ while sitting solemn in an armchair 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 sarcastick 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.’
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17.
After dinner yesterday, we had a conversation upon cunning. M’Leod 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. M’Queen 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 lie and 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 procure him, 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 every thing. 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 is to do it has the power; for there is the distinction. It requires great abilities to conquer an army, but none to massacre it after it is conquered.’
