were greatly amused with the spiteful
sullies of their visitor. Harry Erskine, after
being presented by Boswell to the doctor
in the Parliament House, slyly slipped a
shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering,
"It's for a sight of your bear !"

Johnson maintained that Buchanan,
tutor of James the Sixth, was the only
man of genius that Scotland ever
produced. Of course, he could not foresee
the approaching advent of Robert Burns,
and Sir Walter Scott; but if he had not
been very ignorant, he might have remembered
the old poets, Barbour and Gawain
Douglas, and that other poet, Drummond
of Hawthornden, whom another Jonson,
greater than himself, "rare old Ben,"
thought so highly of, that he made a
pilgrimage from London to Edinburgh on
foot, on purpose to shake hands with him.
He might also have included in the
category of Scottish men of genius, the royal
author of the King's Quair, a poem than
which there is nothing finer in Chaucer,
and even those lesser lights, Captain
James Montgomery, the author of the
Cherry and the Sloe; and Allan Ramsay,
the writer of the noble poem the Vision,
and of the Gentle Shepherd, a far better
pastoral poem than England ever
produced. Johnson would not allow Scotland
any credit for Lord Mansfield, inasmuch
as he was educated in England. "Much,"
he graciously added, "might be made
of a Scotchman if he were caught young."
But in our later day, if England is to be
credited with Lord Mansfield—Scotland
for the same reason should be credited
with Lord Brougham, and even with the
Reverend Sidney Smith, who denied Scotsmen
the possession of wit—though he
allowed them something which he called
"wut," and who acquired all the taste for
wit, or wut that was in him in Edinburgh,
where he resided in his youthful days,
cultivating literature as he himself phrased it
"upon a little oatmeal."

Johnson does not appear to have had
the slightest appreciation for the beauties
of natural scenery. Fleet- street was to
him the very heart of the universe, and its
dull brick houses finer than any lakes or
mountains in the world. "Sir," he said
to Boswell, "Scotland consists of two
things, stone and water. There is, indeed,
a little earth above the stone in some
places, but a very little, and the stone is
always appearing. It is like a man in
rags. The naked skin is still peeping
out." "He persevered in his wild allegation,"
says Boswell, in another place,
"that there was not a tree between
Edinburgh and the English border that was
older than himself." Boswell—though
how he could have presumed to make
such a jest in the awful presence of the
great object of his worship—suggested
that he should be led round the country
which he specified, and receive a flogging
at the foot of every tree he came to which
was more than a hundred years old! As
for the scenery of Scotland, Johnson
declared "that the noblest prospect a
Scotchman ever saw was the high road that led
him to London."This little witticism
may be pardoned for the truth that underlies
it, for to a poor man of talent starving
in a village it is a good road that leads
him to a metropolis, whether it be Scottish
or English.

Scotland, from the long and intimate
social, political, and commercial relations
that subsisted between its people and
government and those of France, while
Scotland was yet a separate kingdom, was
always famous for the excellent claret
imported by its wine-merchants, as it is
to this day. Johnson, however, insisted
that it was the union with England which
brought good claret into the country. "We
had wine before the union," said Boswell,
timidly. "No, sir," retorted Johnson,
"you had weak, poor stuff, the refuse of
France, which could not make you drunk."
"I assure you," replied Bozzy, making as
good a fight as he could for the honour of
his country thus rashly impugned, "there
was a great deal of drunkenness!" "No,
sir," shouted Samuel; "there were people
who died of dropsy, which they contracted
in trying to get drunk."

Johnson, who was one of the most voracious
of eaters, as all readers of Mrs. Piozzi's
Memoirs will remember, did not approve
of Scottish cookery. He particularly
objected to Finnon, or Findon haddocks, and
at Cullen, where he stopped to breakfast,
the sight of them so disgusted him, that
the excellent fish had to be taken out of
the room. This was not because they were
unsavoury;—what English traveller of our
day does not consider a properly cured
Finnon haddie worth travelling to Scotland
for?—but simply because it was his humour
to be anti-Scottish. He also objected
theoretically to haggis, though he ate a good
plateful of it. "What do ye think o' the
haggis?" asked the hospitable old lady, at
whose table he was dining, seeing that he
partook so plentifully of it. "Humph!"