House of Stuart was Scotch; and the
Stuarts had proved a bad bargain to the
English people? Was it because of the
rebellions of 1715 and 1745, fomented by
Scotsmen? Was it because the Scotch
when they crossed the Border, and came
to London, the centre of business, of
legislation and of fashion, prospered by dint of
"grip" and tenacity of purpose to a far
greater degree than the easy-going and
less "canny" southerns whom they
displaced or distanced in the great
competition  of life? Much might be said in
answer to these queries if time and space
permitted. At present I confine myself to
a smaller inquiry, and fresh from the
perusal of Boswell's inimitable biography,
ask how it was that a man of such sturdy
common sense as Dr. Samuel Johnson, the
most eminent literary man of his time,
should not only have made himself the
mouthpiece of the stupidest jealousy against
Scotland, but should have gone far beyond
all his contemporaries in holding Scotsmen
up to the ridicule and aversion of the
English public?

Johnson's dislike to Scotland, however
wayward, querulous, or savage in its
expression, was never malignant. It often
took the most comic and ludicrous shapes,
and must quite as frequently have amused
as offended the people who were its objects.
Highlanders and Lowlanders, the country
and its scenery, all that related to
Scotland, were equally the themes of his
disparagement; and enabled him to display a
good deal of humour, a small amount of
wit, and a very large stock of ignorance.
As a lexicographer and a linguist, he ought
to have been well informed if upon
anything whatever on the elements of the
English language, whether they were
Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin, Greek, or
Celtic. As regards the latter, he said the
Gaelic "was the rude gibberish of a
barbarous people, who as they conceived
grossly were content to be grossly
understood." It so happens, as all philologists
know in our day, that the Gaelic or
Celtic language of the Highlands of
Scotland, so far from meriting the contemptuous
epithet of "gibberish," is as ancient a
language as the Hebrew or the Chaldaic,
with both of which it has a common
origin, and has a grammar of which the
rules are simple as well as beautiful.
It is, moreover, exceedingly musical and
sonorous. Dr. Johnson did not know that
the Celtic has contributed to the English
many hundreds of colloquial words, which
everybody uses to this day, and which
Johnson, compelled to admit them into his
Dictionary, though densely ignorant of
the Celtic as well as Gothic roots from
which they sprang, could find no better
means of accounting for than by describing
them as "low." If Johnson could have
traced the origin of such words as "cuddle,"
"fun," "dull," "dark," "bright," "tall,"
"yew," " fern," and hundreds of others, or
of the names of nearly all the rivers in
England, he would have found it in the venerable
tongue which he ignorantly presumes to
call "gibberish." His Dictionary, besides
being faulty in its derivation, as well as
incomplete in its collection of words, was
in some respects a literary outrage,
inasmuch as it introduced the prejudices of the
compiler into a work that above all others,
to which a man could give his time and
talents, ought to be unimpassioned and
scientific. He described a pension as
"pay given to a state hireling for treason
to his country." Whether he changed
his opinion I do not know, but I do know
that he afterwards accepted a pension for
himself, and was glad to get it. "Oats "
he defined as "a grain which in
England is generally given to horses, but
which in Scotland supports the people."
On reading this Lord Elibank coolly
remarked, "Very true—and where will you
find such horses and such men?" Sir
Walter Scott very probably had this little
bit of Johnson's impertinent eccentricity
in his mind, when, in his immortal novel
of Old Mortality, he made Niel Blane, the
innkeeper, console himself with the reflection
that although he had sent away all
his good oatmeal to supply the wants of
the little garrison in the beleaguered
Castle of Tillietudlem, he had still some
wheaten flour left for the wants of his
family. "It's no that ill food," said Mel,
"though far from being so hearty and kindly
to a Scotchman's stamach, as the curney
aitmeal is. The Englishers live amaist
upon it; but to be sure the pock puddings
ken nae better!"

When at Edinburgh with Boswell, it
was thought that if Johnson found nothing
else to admire in the city, he would at all
events admire the beautiful situation of the
castle. Johnson had nothing to say about
the noble and picturesque rock; but turning
to Lord Elibank, he admitted that the
castle would make a good prison in
England! In vain poor Boswell endeavoured
to impress his friend with better notions,
unconscious of the fact that the Scotch