choly, the clouds of which darkened the brightnefs of his fancy, and gave a gloomy caft to his whole course of thinking: yet, though grave and awful in his deportment, when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himfelf in pleafantry and sportive fallies. He was prone to fuperftition, but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous, and the myfterious, his vigorous reafon. examined the evidence with jealousy. He had a loud voice, and a flow deliberate utterance, which no doubt gave fome additional weight to the fterling metal of his converfation. Lord Pembroke said once to me at Wilton, with a happy pleasantry, and fome truth, that "Dr. Johnfon's fayings would not appear fo extraordinary, were it not for his bow-wow way:" but I admit the truth of this only on fome occafions. The Meffiah, played upon the Canterbury organ, is more fublime than when played upon an inferior inftrument: but very flight mufick will feem grand, when conveyed to the ear through that majeftick medium. While therefore Doctor Johnson's sayings are read, let his manner be taken along with them. Let it however be observed, that the fayings themselves are generally great; that, though he might be an ordinary composer at times, he was for the most part a Handel. His perfon was large, robuft, I may fay approaching to the gigantick, and grown unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was naturally of the cast of an ancient ftatue, but fomewhat disfigured by the scars of that evil, which, it was formerly imagined, the royal touch could cure. He was now in his fixty-fourth year, and was be

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come a little dull of hearing. His fight had always been fomewhat weak; yet, fo much does mind govern, and even fupply the deficiency of organs, that his perceptions were uncommonly quick and accurate. His head, and fometimes alfo his body, fhook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palfy he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulfive contractions*, of the nature of that diftemper called St. Vitus's dance. He wore a full fuit of plain brown clothes, with twisted-hair-buttons of the fame colour, a large bufhy greyish wig, a plain fhirt, black worfted stockings, and filver buckles. Upon this tour, when journeying, he wore boots, and a very wide brown cloth great coat, with pockets which might have almost held the two volumes of his folio dictionary; and he carried in his hand a large English oak stick. Let me not be cenfured for mentioning fuch minute particulars. Every thing relative to fo great a man is worth obferving. I remember Dr. Adam Smith, in his rhetorical lectures at Glafgow, told us he was glad to know that Milton wore latchets in his fhoes, instead of buckles. When I mention thé oak ftick, it is but letting Hercules have his club; and, by-and-by, my readers will find this ftick will bud, and produce a good joke.

This

* Such they appeared to me; but fince the first edition, Sir Joshua Reynolds has obferved to me," that Dr. Johnson's extraordinary geftures were only habits, in which he indulged himself at certain times. When in company, where he was not free, or when engaged earnestly in converfation, he never gave way to fuch habits, which proves that they were not involuntary." I ftill however think, that these gestures were involuntary; for surely had not that been the case, he would have reftrained them in the publick streets.

This imperfect sketch of "the COMBINATION and the form" of that Wonderful Man, whom I venerated and loved while in this world, and after whom I gaze with humble hope, now that it has pleased ALMIGHTY GOD to call him to a better world, will ferve to introduce to the fancy of my readers the capital object of the following journal, in the course of which I trust they will attain to a confiderable degree of acquaintance with him.

His prejudice against Scotland was announced almost as soon as he began to appear in the world of letters. In his London, a poem, are the following nervous lines:

For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's land? "Or change the rocks of Scotland for the Strand?' "There none are swept by fudden fate away;

But all, whom hunger fpares, with age decay."

The truth is, like the ancient Greeks and Romans, he allowed himself to look upon all nations but his own as barbarians: not only Hibernia, and Scotland, but Spain, Italy, and France, are attacked in the fame poem. If he was particularly prejudiced against the Scots, it was because they were more in his way; because he thought their fuccefs in England rather exceeded the due proportion of their real merit; and because he could not but see in them that nationality which I believe no liberal-minded Scotfman will deny. He was indeed, if I may be allowed the phrase, at bottom much of a John Bull; much of a blunt true born Englishman. There was a ftratum of common clay under the rock of marble. He was voraciously fond of good eating, and he had a great deal of that quality

called

called humour, which gives an oiliness and a glofs to every other quality.

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I am, I flatter myself, completely a citizen of the world. In my travels through Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corfica, France, I never felt myself from home; and I fincerely love "every kindred and tongue and people and nation." subscribe to what my late truly learned and philofophical friend Mr. Crosbie said, that the English are better animals than the Scots; they are nearer the fun; their blood is richer, and more mellow: but when I humour any of them in an outrageous contempt of Scotland, I fairly own I treat them as children. And thus I have, at fome moments, found myself obliged to treat even Dr. Johnson.

To Scotland however he ventured; and he returned from it in great good humour, with his prejudices much leffened, and with very grateful feelings of the hofpitality with which he was treated; as is evident from that admirable work, his " Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland," which, to my utter astonishment, has been misapprehended, even to rancour, by many of my countrymen.

To have the company of Chambers and Scott, he delayed his journey fo long, that the court of felfion, which rifes on the eleventh of Auguft, was broke up before he got to Edinburgh.

On Saturday the fourteenth of Auguft, 1773, late in the evening, I received a note from him, that he was arrived at Boyd's inn, at the head of the Canongate. I went to him directly. He embraced me cordially; and I exulted in the thought, that I now had him actually in Caledonia. Mr. Scott's amiable nannirs, and attachment to our Socrates, at once

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united me to him. He told me that, before I came in, the Doctor had unluckily had a bad specimen of Scottish cleanliness. He then drank no fermented liquor. He afked to have his lemonade made sweeter; upon which the waiter, with his greafy fingers, lifted a lump of fugar, and put it into it. Doctor, in indignation, threw it out of the window. Scott faid, he was afraid he would have knocked the waiter down. Mr. Johnson told me, that fuch another trick was played him at the house of a lady in Paris. He was to do me the honour to lodge under my roof. I regretted fincerely that I had not alfo a room for Mr. Scott. Mr. Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High-street, to my house in James's court: it was a dufky night; I could not prevent his being affailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. I heard a late baronet, of fome diftinction in the political world in the beginning of the prefent reign, obferve, that "walking the ftreets of Edinburgh at night was pretty perilous, and a good deal odoriferous." The peril is much abated, by the care which the magistrates have taken to enforce the city laws against throwing foul water from the windows; but, from the structure of the houses in the old town, which consist of many stories, in each of which a different family lives, and there being no covered fewers, the odour still continues. A zealous Scotfman would have wifhed Mr. Johnson to be without one of his five fenfes upon this occafion. As we marched flowly along, he grumbled in my ear, "I fmell you in the dark !" in the dark!" But he acknowledged that the breadth of the street, and the loftiness of the buildings on each side, made a noble appearance.

My