After dinner, various topicks were discussed; but I recollect only one particular. Dr Johnson compared the different talents of Garrick and Foote, as companions, and gave Garrick greatly the preference for elegance, though he allowed Foote extraordinary powers of entertainment. He said, 'Garrick is restrained by some principle; but Foote has the advantage of an unlimited range. Garrick has some delicacy of feeling; it is possible to put him out; you may get the better of him; but Foote is the most incompressible fellow that I ever knew: when you have driven him into a corner, and think you are sure of him, he runs through between your legs, or jumps over your head, and makes his escape.'
Dr Erskine and Mr Robert Walker, two very respectable ministers of Edinburgh, supped with us, as did the Reverend Dr Webster. The conversation turned on the Moravian missions, and on the Methodists. Dr Johnson observed in general, that missionaries were too sanguine in their accounts of their success among savages, and that much of what they tell is not to be believed. He owned that the Methodists had done good; had spread religious impressions among the vulgar part of mankind: but, he said, they had great bitterness against other Christians, and that he never could get a Methodist to explain in what he excelled others; that it always ended in the indispensible necessity of hearing one of their preachers.
Thursday, 11th November
Principal Robertson came to us as we sat at breakfast; he advanced to Dr Johnson, repeating a line of Virgil, which I forget. I suppose, either
Post varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum, [Footnote: Through various hazards and events we move.]
or
... multum ille et terris jactatus, et alto. [Footnote: Long labours both by sea and land he bore. DRYDEN.]
Every body had accosted us with some studied compliment on our return. Dr Johnson said, 'I am really ashamed of the congratulations which we receive. We are addressed as if we had made a voyage to Nova Zembla, and suffered five persecutions in Japan.' And he afterwards remarked, that, 'to see a man come up with a formal air, and a Latin line, when we had no fatigue and no danger, was provoking.' I told him, he was not sensible of the danger, having lain under cover in the boat during the storm: he was like the chicken, that hides its head under its wing, and then thinks itself safe.
Lord Elibank came to us, as did Sir William Forbes. The rash attempt in 1745 being mentioned, I observed, that it would make a fine piece of history. Dr Johnson said it would. Lord Elibank doubted whether any man of this age could give it impartially. JOHNSON. 'A man, by talking with those of different sides, who were actors in it, and putting down all that he hears, may in time collect the materials of a good narrative. You are to consider, all history was at first oral. I suppose Voltaire was fifty years in collecting his Louis XIV which he did in the way that I am proposing.' ROBERTSON. 'He did so. He lived much with all the great people who were concerned in that reign, and heard them talk of every thing: and then either took Mr Boswell's way, of writing down what he heard, or, which is as good, preserved it in his memory; for he has a wonderful memory.' With the leave, however, of this elegant historian, no man's memory can preserve facts or sayings with such fidelity as may be done by writing them down when they are recent. Dr Robertson said, 'it was now full time to make such a collection as Dr Johnson suggested; for many of the people who were then in arms, were dropping off; and both Whigs and Jacobites were now come to talk with moderation.' Lord Elibank said to him, 'Mr Robertson, the first thing that gave me a high opinion of you, was your saying in the Select Society, [Footnote: A society for debate in Edinburgh, consisting of the most eminent men.] while parties ran high, soon after the year 1745, that you did not think worse of a man's moral character for his having been in rebellion. This was venturing to utter a liberal sentiment, while both sides had a detestation of each other.'
Dr Johnson observed, that being in rebellion from a notion of another's right, was not connected with depravity; and that we had this proof of it, that all mankind applauded the pardoning of rebels; which they would not do in the case of robbers and murderers. He said, with a smile, that 'he wondered that the phrase of UNNATURAL rebellion should be so much used, for that all rebellion was natural to man'.
As I kept no journal of any thing that passed after this morning, I shall, from memory, group together this and the other days, till that on which Dr Johnson departed for London. They were in all nine days; on which he dined at Lady Colvill's, Lord Hailes's, Sir Adolphus Oughton's, Sir Alexander Dick's, Principal Robertson's, Mr McLaurin's, and thrice at Lord Elibank's seat in the country, where we also passed two nights. He supped at the Honourable Alexander Gordon's, now one of our judges, by the title of Lord Rockville; at Mr Nairne's, now also one of our judges, by the title of Lord Dunsinan; at Dr Blair's, and Mr Tytler's; and at my house thrice, one evening with a numerous company, chiefly gentlemen of the law; another with Mr Menzies of Culdares, and Lord Monboddo, who disengaged himself on purpose to meet him; and the evening on which we returned from Lord Elibank's, he supped with my wife and me by ourselves.