r and the philosopher, and availing himself of the judge's sense of hospitality, which was punctilious, reduced the debate to more order. WALTER SCOTT. Paoli had visited Auchinleck. Boswell wrote to Garrick on Sept. 18, 1771:--'I have just been enjoying the very great happiness of a visit from my illustrious friend, Pascal Paoli. He was two nights at Auchinleck, and you may figure the joy of my worthy father and me at seeing the Corsican hero in our romantic groves.' Garrick Corres. i. 436. Johnson was not blind to Cromwell's greatness, for he says (Works, vii. 197), that 'he wanted nothing to raise him to heroick excellence but virtue.' Lord Auchinleck's famous saying had been anticipated by Quin, who, according to Davies (Life of Garrick, ii. 115), had said that 'on a thirtieth of January every king in Europe would rise with a crick in his neck.'
[1040] See ante, p. 252.
[1041] James Durham, born 1622, died 1658, wrote many theological works. Chalmers's Biog. Dict. In the Brit. Mus. Cata. I can find no work by him on the Galatians; Lord Auchinleck's triumph therefore was, it seems, more artful than honest.
[1042] Gray, it should seem, had given the name earlier. His friend Bonstetten says that about the year 1769 he was walking with him, when Gray 'exclaimed with some bitterness, "Look, look, Bonstetten! the great bear! There goes Ursa Major!" This was Johnson. Gray could not abide him.' Sir Egerton Brydges, quoted in Gosse's Gray, iii. 371. For the epithet bear applied to Johnson see ante, ii. 66, 269, note i, and iv. 113, note 2. Boswell wrote on June 19, 1775:--'My father harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think, how shockingly erroneous!), and wandering (or some such phrase) to London.' Letters of Boswell, p. 207.
[1043] It is remarkable that Johnson in his Life of Blackmore [Works, viii. 42] calls the imaginary Mr. Johnson of the Lay Monastery 'a constellation of excellence.' CROKER.
[1044] Page 121. BOSWELL. See also ante, iii. 336.
[1045] 'The late Sir Alexander Boswell,' wrote Sir Walter Scott, 'was a proud man, and, like his grandfather, thought that his father lowered himself by his deferential suit and service to Johnson. I have observed he disliked any allusion to the book or to Johnson himself, and I have heard that Johnson's fine picture by Sir Joshua was sent upstairs out of the sitting apartments at Auchinleck.' Croker Corres. ii. 32. This portrait, which was given by Sir Joshua to Boswell (Taylor's Reynolds, i. 147), is now in the possession of Mr. Charles Morrison.
[1046] 'I have always said that first Whig was the devil.' Ante, iii. 326
[1047] See ante, ii. 26.
[1048] Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 266) has paid this tribute. 'Lord Elibank,' he writes, 'had a mind that embraced the greatest variety of topics, and produced the most original remarks. ... He had been a lieutenant-colonel in the army and was at the siege of Carthagena, of which he left an elegant account (which I'm afraid is lost). He was a Jacobite, and a member of the famous Cocoa-tree Club, and resigned his commission on some disgust.' Dr. Robertson and John Home were his neighbours in the country, 'who made him change or soften down many of his original opinions, and prepared him for becoming a most agreeable member of the Literary Society of Edinburgh.' Smollett in Humphry Clinker (Letter of July 18), describes him as 'a nobleman whom I have long revered for his humanity and universal intelligence, over and above the entertainment arising from the originality of his character.' Boswell, in the London Mag. 1779, p. 179, thus mentions the Cocoa-tree Club:--'But even at Court, though I see much external obeisance, I do not find congenial sentiments to warm my heart; and except when I have the conversation of a very few select friends, I am never so well as when I sit down to a dish of coffee in the Cocoa Tree, sacred of old to loyalty, look round me to men of ancient families, and please myself with the consolatory thought that there is perhaps more good in the nation than I know.'
[1049] Johnson's Works, vii. 380. See ante, i. 81.
[1050] See ante, p. 53.
[1051] The Mitre tavern. Ante, i. 425.
[1052] Of this Earl of Kelly Boswell records the following pun:--'At a dinner at Mr. Crosbie's, when the company were very merry, the Rev. Dr. Webster told them he was sorry to go away so early, but was obliged to catch the tide, to cross the Firth of Forth. "Better stay a little," said Thomas Earl of Kelly, "till you be half-seas over."' Rogers's Boswelliana, p. 325.
[1053] See ante, i. 354.
[1054] In the first edition, and his son the advocate. Under this son, A. F. Tytler, afterwards a Lord of Session by the title of Lord Woodhouselee, Scott studied history at Edinburgh College. Lockhart's Scott, ed. 1839, i. 59, 278.
[1055] See ante, i. 396, and ii. 296.
[1056] 'If we know little of the ancient Highlanders, let us not fill the vacuity with Ossian. If we have not searched the Magellanick regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons.' Johnson's Works, ix.