Life of Johnson Volume V Part 50

[493] Such spells are still believed in. A lady of property in Mull, a friend of mine, had a few years since much difficulty in rescuing from the superst.i.tious fury of the people, an old woman, who used a _charm_ to injure her neighbour's cattle. It is now in my possession, and consists of feathers, parings of nails, hair, and such like trash, wrapt in a lump of clay. WALTER SCOTT.

[494] Sir Walter Scott, writing in Skye in 1814, says:--'Macleod and Mr.

Suter have both heard a tacksman of Macleod's recite the celebrated Address to the Sun; and another person repeat the description of Cuchullin's car. But all agree as to the gross infidelity of Macpherson as a translator and editor.' Lockhart's _Scott_, iv. 308.

[495] See _post_, Nov. 10.

[496] 'The women reaped the corn, and the men bound up the sheaves. The strokes of the sickle were timed by the modulation of the harvest-song, in which all their voices were united.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 58.

[497] 'The money which he raises annually by rent from all his dominions, which contain at least 50,000 acres, is not believed to exceed 250; but as he keeps a large farm in his own hands, he sells every year great numbers of cattle ... The wine circulates vigorously, and the tea, chocolate, and coffee, however they are got, are always at hand.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 142. 'Of wine and punch they are very liberal, for they get them cheap; but as there is no custom-house on the island, they can hardly be considered as smugglers.' _Ib_. p. 160.

'Their trade is unconstrained; they pay no customs, for there is no officer to demand them; whatever, therefore, is made dear only by impost is obtained here at an easy rate.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 52.

[498] 'No man is so abstemious as to refuse the morning dram, which they call a _skalk_.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. p. 51.

[499] Alexander Macleod, of Muiravenside, advocate, became extremely obnoxious to government by his zealous personal efforts to engage his chief Macleod, and Macdonald of Sky, in the Chevalier's attempts of 1745. Had he succeeded, it would have added one third at least to the Jacobite army. Boswell has oddly described _M'Cruslick_, the being whose name was conferred upon this gentleman, as something between Proteus and Don Quixote. It is the name of a species of satyr, or _esprit follet_, a sort of mountain Puck or hobgoblin, seen among the wilds and mountains, as the old Highlanders believed, sometimes mirthful, sometimes mischievous. Alexander Macleod's precarious mode of life and variable spirits occasioned the _soubriquet_. WALTER SCOTT.

[500] Johnson also complained of the cheese. 'In the islands they do what I found it not very easy to endure. They pollute the tea-table by plates piled with large slices of Ches.h.i.+re cheese, which mingles its less grateful odours with the fragrance of the tea.' _Works_, ix. 52.

[501] 'The estate has not, during four hundred years, gained or lost a single acre.' _Ib_. p. 55.

[502] Lord Stowell told me, that on the road from Newcastle to Berwick, Dr. Johnson and he pa.s.sed a cottage, at the entrance of which were set up two of those great bones of the whale, which are not unfrequently seen in maritime districts. Johnson expressed great horror at the sight of these bones; and called the people, who could use such relics of mortality as an ornament, mere savages. CROKER.

[503] In like manner Boswell wrote:--'It is divinely cheering to me to think that there is a Cathedral so near Auchinleck [as Carlisle].'

_Ante_, iii. 416.

[504] 'It is not only in Rasay that the chapel is unroofed and useless; through the few islands which we visited we neither saw nor heard of any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins. The malignant influence of Calvinism has blasted ceremony and decency together... It has been for many years popular to talk of the lazy devotion of the Romish clergy; over the sleepy laziness of men that erected churches we may indulge our superiority with a new triumph, by comparing it with the fervid activity of those who suffer them to fall.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 61. He wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'By the active zeal of Protestant devotion almost all the chapels have sunk into ruin.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 152.

[505] 'Not many years ago,' writes Johnson, 'the late Laird led out one hundred men upon a military expedition.' _Works_, ix. 59. What the expedition was he is careful not to state.

[506] 'I considered this rugged ascent as the consequence of a form of life inured to hards.h.i.+ps, and therefore not studious of nice accommodations. But I know not whether for many ages it was not considered as a part of military policy to keep the country not easily accessible. The rocks are natural fortifications.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. p. 54.

[507] See _post_ Sept. 17.

[508] In Sky a price was set 'upon the heads of foxes, which, as the number was diminished, has been gradually raised from three s.h.i.+llings and sixpence to a guinea, a sum so great in this part of the world, that, in a short time, Sky may be as free from foxes as England from wolves. The fund for these rewards is a tax of sixpence in the pound, imposed by the farmers on themselves, and said to be paid with great willingness.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 57.

[509] Boswell means that the eastern coast of Sky is westward of Rasay.

CROKER.

[510] 'The Prince was hidden in his distress two nights in Rasay, and the King's troops burnt the whole country, and killed some of the cattle. You may guess at the opinions that prevail in this country; they are, however, content with fighting for their King; they do not drink for him. We had no foolish healths', _Piozzi Letters_, i. 145.

[511] See _ante_, iv. 217, where he said:--'You have, perhaps, no man who knows as much Greek and Latin as Bentley.'

[512] See _ante_, ii. 61, and _post_, Oct. 1.

[513] See _ante_, i. 268, note 1.

[514] Steele had had the Duke of Marlborough's papers, and 'in some of his exigencies put them in p.a.w.n. They then remained with the old d.u.c.h.ess, who, in her will, a.s.signed the task to Glover [the author of _Leonidas_] and Mallet, with a reward of a thousand pounds, and a prohibition to insert any verses. Glover rejected, I suppose with disdain, the legacy, and devolved the whole work upon Mallet; who had from the late Duke of Marlborough a pension to promote his industry, and who talked of the discoveries which he had made; but left not, when he died, any historical labours behind him.' Johnson's _Works_, viii. 466.

The d.u.c.h.ess died in 1744 and Mallet in 1765. For more than twenty years he thus imposed more or less successfully on the world. About the year 1751 he played on Garrick's vanity. 'Mallet, in a familiar conversation with Garrick, discoursing of the diligence which he was then exerting upon the _Life of Marlborough_, let him know, that in the series of great men quickly to be exhibited, he should _find a niche_ for the hero of the theatre. Garrick professed to wonder by what artifice he could be introduced; but Mallet let him know, that by a dexterous antic.i.p.ation he should fix him in a conspicuous place. "Mr. Mallet," says Garrick in his grat.i.tude of exultation, "have you left off to write for the stage?"

Mallet then confessed that he had a drama in his hands. Garrick promised to act it; and _Alfred_ was produced.' _Ib_. p. 465. See _ante_, iii. 386.

[515] According to Dr. Warton (_Essay on Pope_, ii. 140) he received 5000. 'Old Marlborough,' wrote Horace Walpole in March, 1742 (Letters, i. 139), 'has at last published her _Memoirs_; they are digested by one Hooke, who wrote a Roman history; but from her materials, which are so womanish that I am sure the man might sooner have made a gown and petticoat with them.'

[516] See _ante_, i. 153

[517] 'Hooke,' says Dr. Warton (_Essay on Pope_, ii. 141), 'was a Mystic and a Quietist, and a warm disciple of Fenelon. It was he who brought a Catholic priest to take Pope's confession on his death-bed.'

[518] See c.u.mberland's _Memoirs_, i. 344.

[519] Mr. Croker says that 'though he sold a great tract of land in Harris, he left at his death in 1801 the original debt of 50,000 [Boswell says 40,000] increased to 70,000.' When Johnson visited Macleod at Dunvegan, he wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'Here, though poor Macleod had been left by his grandfather overwhelmed with debts, we had another exhibition of feudal hospitality. There were two stags in the house, and venison came to the table every day in its various forms.

Macleod, besides his estate in Sky, larger I suppose than some English counties, is proprietor of nine inhabited isles; and of his isles uninhabited I doubt if he very exactly knows the number, I told him that he was a mighty monarch. Such dominions fill an Englishman with envious wonder; but when he surveys the naked mountain, and treads the quaking moor; and wanders over the wild regions of gloomy barrenness, his wonder may continue, but his envy ceases. The unprofitableness of these vast domains can be conceived only by the means of positive instances. The heir of Col, an island not far distant, has lately told me how wealthy he should be if he could let Rum, another of his islands, for twopence halfpenny an acre; and Macleod has an estate which the surveyor reports to contain 80,000 acres, rented at 600 a year.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 154.

[520] They were abolished by an act pa.s.sed in 1747, being 'reckoned among the princ.i.p.al sources of the rebellions. They certainly kept the common people in subjection to their chiefs. By this act they were legally emanc.i.p.ated from slavery; but as the tenants enjoyed no leases, and were at all times liable to be ejected from their farms, they still depended on the pleasure of their lords, notwithstanding this interposition of the legislature, which granted a valuable consideration in money to every n.o.bleman and petty baron, who was thus deprived of one part of his inheritance.' Smollett's _England_, iii. 206. See _ante_, p.

46, note 1, and _post_, Oct. 22.

[521] 'I doubt not but that since the regular judges have made their circuits through the whole country, right has been everywhere more wisely and more equally distributed; the complaint is, that litigation is grown troublesome, and that the magistrates are too few and therefore often too remote for general convenience... In all greater questions there is now happily an end to all fear or hope from malice or from favour. The roads are secure in those places through which forty years ago no traveller could pa.s.s without a convoy...No scheme of policy has in any country yet brought the rich and poor on equal terms to courts of judicature. Perhaps experience improving on experience may in time effect it.' Johnson's _Works_, ix. 90.

[522] He described Rasay as 'the seat of plenty, civility, and cheerfulness.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 152.

[523] 'We heard the women singing as they _waulked_ the cloth, by rubbing it with their hands and feet, and screaming all the while in a sort of chorus. At a distance the sound was wild and sweet enough, but rather discordant when you approached too near the performers.'

Lockhart's _Scott_, iv. 307.

[524] She had been some time at Edinburgh, to which she again went, and was married to my worthy neighbour, Colonel Mure Campbell, now Earl of Loudoun, but she died soon afterwards, leaving one daughter. BOSWELL.

'She is a celebrated beauty; has been admired at Edinburgh; dresses her head very high; and has manners so lady-like that I wish her head-dress was lower.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 144. See _ante_, iii. 118.

[525]

'Yet hope not life from _grief_ or danger free, _Nor_ think the doom of man reversed for thee.'

_The Vanity of Human Wishes_.

[526] 'Rasay accompanied us in his six-oared boat, which he said was his coach and six. It is indeed the vehicle in which the ladies take the air and pay their visits, but they have taken very little care for accommodations. There is no way in or out of the boat for a woman but by being carried; and in the boat thus dignified with a pompous name there is no seat but an occasional bundle of straw.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 152.

In describing the distance of one family from another, Johnson writes:--'Visits last several days, and are commonly paid by water; yet I never saw a boat furnished with benches.' _Works_, ix. 100.

[527] See _ante_, ii. 106, and iii. 154.

[528] 'They which forewent us did leave a Roome for us, and should wee grieve to doe the same to these which should come after us? Who beeing admitted to see the exquisite rarities of some antiquaries cabinet is grieved, all viewed, to have the courtaine drawen, and give place to new pilgrimes?' _A Cypresse Grove_, by William Drummond of Hawthorne-denne, ed. 1630, p. 68.

[529] See _ante_, iii. 153, 295.

[530]

'While h.o.a.ry Nestor, by experience wise, To reconcile the angry monarch tries.'

FRANCIS. Horace, i _Epis_. ii. II.

[531] _See ante_, p. 16.

[532] Lord Elibank died Aug. 3, 1778, aged 75. _Gent. Mag._ 1778, p.

391.