January 1775
21 October 1773
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Text from the Weekly Magazine, Edinburgh. Published before the completion of Johnson’s Scottish tour, this poem was one of the earliest public reactions to the notorious English visitor. Fergusson’s reference to Wilkes and Churchill, together with his sustained parody of Johnson’s allegedly pedantic style in the manner of Campbell’s Lexiphanes (No. 62), associate him with three of Johnson’s leading antagonists of the 1760s. See Introduction, pp. 6–7, 29. |
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Let Wilkes and Churchill rage no more, Tho’ scarce provision, learning’s good: What can these hungry’s next implore? Even Samuel Johnson loves our food. RODONDO |
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GREAT PEDAGOGUE, whose literanian lore, With SYLLABLE and SYLLABLE conjoin’d, To transmutate and varyfy, has learn’d The whole revolving scientific names That in the alphabetic columns lie, Far from the knowledge of mortalic shapes, As we, who never can peroculate The miracles by thee miraculiz’d, The Muse silential long, with mouth apert Would give vibration to stagnatic tongue, And loud encomiate thy puissant name, Eulogiated from the green decline Of Thames’s banks to Scoticanian shores, Where Loch-lomondian liquids undulize. To meminate thy name in after times, The mighty Mayor in each regalian town Shall consignate thy work to parchment fair In roll burgharian, and their tables all Shall fumigate with fumigation strong: SCOTLAND, from perpendicularian hills, Shall emigrate her fair MUTTONIAN store, Which late had there in pedestration walk’d, And o’er her airy heights perambuliz’d. Oh, blackest execrations on thy head, EDINA shameless! tho’ he came within The bounds of your NOTATION; tho’ you knew His HONORIFIC name, you noted not, But basely suffer’d him to chariotize Far from your tow’rs, with smoke that nubilate, Nor drank one amicitial swelling cup To welcome him convivial. BAILIES all, With rage inflated, Catenations* tear, Nor ever after be you vinculiz’d, Since you that sociability denied To him whose potent Lexiphanian stile Words can PROLONGATE, and inswell his page With what in others to a line’s confin’d. Welcome, thou verbal potentate and prince! To hills and vallies, where emerging oats From earth assurge our pauperty to bay, And bless thy name, thy dictionarian skill, Which there definitive will still remain, And oft be speculiz’d by taper blue, While youth STUDENTIOUS turn thy folio page. Have you as yet, in per’patetic mood, |
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Regarded with the texture of the eye The CAVE CAVERNICK, where fraternal bard, CHURCHILL, depicted pauperated swains With thraldom and bleak want, reducted sore,1 Where Nature, coloriz’d, so coarsely fades, And puts her russet par’phenalia on? Have you as yet the way explorified, To let lignarian chalice, swell’d with oats, Thy orofice approach? Have you as yet, With skin fresh rubified by scarlet spheres, Applied BRIMSTONIC UNCTION to your hide, To terrify the SALAMANDRIAN fire That from involuntary digits asks The strong allaceration? —Or can you swill The USQUEBALIAN flames of whisky blue In fermentation strong? Have you apply’d The kelt aerian to your Anglian thighs, And with renunciation assigniz’d Your breeches in LONDONA to be worn? Can you, in frigor of Highlandian sky, On heathy summits take nocturnal rest? It cannot be—You may as well desire An alderman leave plumb-puddenian store, And scratch the tegument from pottage-dish, As bid thy countrymen, and thee conjoin’d, Forsake stomachic joys. Then hie you home, And be a malcontent, that naked hinds, On lentiles fed, can make your kingdom quake, And tremulate Old England libertiz’d. |
January–February 1775, lii, 57–65, 158–62
| Griffiths (1720–1803) was the founder of the Monthly Review in 1749. |
Scotland seems to be daily so much increasing in consideration with her sister-kingdom, that tours to the Highlands, and voyages to the isles, will possibly become the fashionable routes of our virtuosi, and those who travel for mere amusement. Mr. Pennant has led the way,1 Dr. Johnson has followed; and with such precursors, and the sanction of such examples, what man of spirit and curiosity will forbear to explore these remote parts of our island, with her territorial appendages, —of which, indeed, and of the public advantages which might be derived from them, we have hitherto been shamefully ignorant.
Dr. Johnson’s book may be regarded as a valuable supplement to Mr. Pennant’s two accounts of his northern expeditions, —the more properly supplemental, as it is a very different performance, on the same subject; both Writers concurring in the general representation, where the track in which they proceed, and the subjects they view, happen to be the same (which is not very frequently the case) and disagreeing in no circumstance of importance.
Mr. Pennant travels, chiefly, in the character of the naturalist and antiquary; Dr. Johnson in that of the moralist and observer of men and manners. The former describes whatever is remarkable in the face of the country—the extraordinary productions of Nature—the ruins, the relics, and the monuments of past times; the latter gives us his observations on the common appearances and productions of the soil and climate, with the customs and characteristics of the inhabitants, just as particulars and circumstances chanced to present themselves to his notice. The ingenious Cambrian delights in painting sublime scenes, and
pleasing pictures; while the learned English Rambler seems rather to confine his views to the naked truth, —to moralize on the occurrences of his journey, and to illustrate the characters and situation of the people whom he visited, by the sagacity of remark, and the profundity of reflection.
None of those who have the pleasure of a personal acquaintance with Dr. Johnson, will suppose that he set out with many prejudices in favour of that country. With what opinion of it he returned, will be seen from the extracts we shall give from his observations.
[by summary and quotation traces the route of Johnson’s journey.]
‘ALL travel,’ says our reflecting and philosophizing Rambler, ‘has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own, and if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.’ One of these advantages may, indeed, be most comfortably drawn from this survey of a cluster of islands, of which it is confessed, ‘that they have not many allurements, but to the mere lover of naked nature.’ For, ‘the inhabitants are thin, provisions are scarce, and desolation and penury give little pleasure.’
As the enjoyment of this satisfaction may, however, (to the national English Reader) be mingled with some degree of malignant exultation, we do not, at present, feel so much desire to gratify him, as to pass on, directly, to matters of higher curiosity. —Besides, with regard to those circumstances of description, which chiefly serve but to mark the natural disparity between the southern and northern parts of our island, enough of them are to be found in the former part of this article.
The public attention hath been much excited by the altercations to which this work hath given birth, concerning the Earse language, and our Author’s opinion as to the originality and authenticity of Ossian’s Poems, as published by the ingenious Mr. Macpherson. We shall therefore preextract what the learned traveller has inserted, on that subject, in the work before us.
[quotes fourteen paragraphs of Johnson’s views on Erse and Ossian.]
Such is the opinion, and such are the reasonings of our learned Author, in relation to the northern Homer and his supposed writings. To these arguments, nothing hath been opposed, by the champions for Ossian, but railing and ridicule, in the newspapers; together with an Advertisement from Mr. Becket, the Bookseller, declaring that the original was publickly exposed, during several months, at his shop, for the examination of the curious. But still it does not appear in what language that same original was written; and our honest publisher hath, since, modestly declined his part in the controversy: it is even said that, in private, among his friends, he makes no scruple of acknowledging that he is no better acquainted with the Earse, than Dr. Johnson himself.
The appearance of an inclination in our Author to believe in the second sight, (the notion of which hath so long, and so seriously obtained in the Highlands and the Isles) hath given rise to some pleasantry at the Doctor’s expence. He does not, however, profess his entire faith in this species of prophecy. He declares that, on a strict inquiry into the subject, he never could ‘advance his curiosity to conviction.’ But he acknowledges that he ‘came away at last, only willing to believe.’ —This will, no doubt, extort a smile even from the gravest of our Readers; but all who have perused the Doctor’s book must allow that he seems to have made the most, and the best, that could be made, of so very singular an investigation: and that he hath thrown out some observations on the subject, which only a man of genius could have offered. And the most infidel reader must subscribe to the justice of the Doctor’s remark, that he, and his companion, would have had but ‘little claim to the praise of curiosity if they had not endeavoured, with particular attention, to examine the question of the second sight.’ He adds, ‘Of an opinion received for centuries by a whole nation, and supposed to be confirmed through its whole descent, by a series of successive facts, it is desirable that the truth should be established, or the fallacy detected.’
The Doctor’s remark, and intention, are equally entitled to our approbation; but the misfortune is, that, still, with regard to this question, there is no truth established, nor fallacy detected.
We must now, for the present, take leave of this very able and entertaining writer; but not without expressing our thanks for the pleasure we have received in the perusal of his animated and instructive narration.
As to any little defects that may possibly be espied in this work, by the minute critic, we have not, at this time, either leisure or inclination to engage in the search of them. —Indeed, the modesty, and dignity of simplicity, with which this philosophic traveller concludes his volume, are sufficient to turn the edge of all true and liberal criticism.
[quotes the final paragraph of the Journey.]
1775
| Extracts from pp. 1–6, 34–6. See Introduction, p. 29. |
SIR,
It cannot be denied, that he who publishes his speculations to the world, submits them to the animadversion of every reader; the following observations therefore on your Tour to the Hebrides, need little apology; that work containing remarks sufficient to move passions less irritable than those which commonly warm a Scotchman’s breast; and the world will not be surprized to find, that he who is said to ‘prefer his country to truth.’1 should prefer it also to prejudice, and to you.
I shall not endeavour to reduce to method what I have to say upon this occasion, but my remarks shall follow each other as nearly as possible, in the order of those observations which occasion them; and if, in imitation of so great a model, I should now and then quit the common path, ‘to view a solitary shrub, or a barren rock/I hope for excuse.
A man is not likely to be a very unprejudiced traveller through a country which he has held for forty years in contempt: ocular demonstration may convince him that his opinions were erroneous, but no demonstration will oblige him to retract: he whose errors have acquired a kind of classic authority, will not easily confess one of so long a standing, though founded on misapprehension or mistake; and much less will he be inclined to retract an error which arose from the malice of his heart.
The contemptible ideas you have long entertained of Scotland and its inhabitants, have been too carefully propagated, not to be universally known; and those who read your Journey, if they cannot applaud your candour, must at least praise your consistency, for you have been very careful not to contradict yourself. Your prejudice, like a plant, has gathered strength with age—the shrub which you nursed so many years in the hothouse of confidential conversation, is now become a full-grown tree, and planted in the open air.
I, Sir, who am almost as superstitious as yourself, could not help regarding your description of Inch Keith, the first object of your attention, as ominous of what was to follow. ‘Inch Keith is nothing more than a rock, covered with a thin layer of earth, not wholly bare of grass, and very fertile of thistles.’2 It immediately struck me, that your book would be something like this rock, ‘a barren work, covered with a thin layer of merit; not only void of truth, but very fertile of prejudice:’ —how far it may agree with this description, those only who have seen what you have seen, can judge.
Immortal Buchanan!3 If yet thy sacred spirit has any influence on the scenes of thy earthly existence, let a blasting fog consume the present productions of that holy place, where thou wert wont to exalt thy Creator! And yet this, so much complained of, vegetable congregation, may as much display the glory of God, and be as acceptable in His sight, as those who, though endowed with reason, ‘draw near him only with their lips, whilst their hearts are far from Him.’4 Let not him complain that an episcopalian chapel is turned into a green-house, who would not hesitate to convert a presbyterian kirk into a privy.
What can be said for the alienated college? do you think there are not professors sufficient for the students? if there be, surely they will not be less assiduous because they are better paid; the Scotch clergy do not become negligent of their duty in proportion as their income is augmented.
He who is determined to say whatever he can in prejudice of an object, will not only be apt to say untruths, but even improbabilities. When you said that ‘a tree might be a show in Scotland,’5 you certainly overshot your mark; such an assertion will never be believed, no, not though Dr. Johnson had sworn it. I will not say it is improbable you saw no trees, for much of the eastern coast of England, as well as of Scotland, is more naked of wood than the inland country; and the greater part of the road between Edinburgh and Inverness (at least the road which you travelled) is often upon the sands, and always near the sea. And yet I think you must have passed the Bridge of Don with your eyes shut. Middleton of Seaton took, perhaps, no notice of you; and you in return, disdained to take notice of his beautiful seat, whose surrounding woods adjoin to that bridge.
You saw few trees in that part of Scotland through which you passed,
and you modestly insinuate, there are none in Scotland; a Scotchman who had traversed the north-west side of London, might affirm by the same rule, that there is not a corn field in England. Scotland, however, has its extensive and well-grown woods, as well as England; and you might have reclined, in every county, under the oak or the pine of an hundred years old.
It must not be denied, that the north of Scotland is universally destitute of hedges; for which I can recollect only one good reason. Hedges and trees are in general a mark of distinction peculiar to Gentlemen’s seats: a farmer no sooner attempts to inclose his fields with a hedge, or ornament them with a row of trees, than he becomes the object of the Laird’s jealousy or avarice; —he is supposed to be rich, his rent is raised, and he is compelled to the alternative of starving on his farm, or quitting it. To this may be added, that a farmer in Scotland is not allowed to lop even the wood which he has planted: the loppings, without which no farmer’s houses are built, must be purchased of the Laird at his own price.
[there follow nearly thirty pages of censorious comment on a wide variety of Johnson’s remarks. Concludes:]
I conclude with a parody on your own words, —‘To propagate error, by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the world was not till now acquainted; but stubborn audacity, is the last refuge of detection.’6
These are far from being all the observations which a more attentive perusal of your book might have given birth to; but these will perhaps be sufficient to convince the unprejudiced, that veracity and candour are not always to be expected from grey hairs. Should they prompt some abler pen to vindicate a country and a people, which you have taken so much pains to asperse, they will not have been written in vain.
Of all the various readers into whose hands your book may fall, it is almost impossible to say to whom it can prove useful, unless it be to him who would perfect himself in the illiberal art of insinuation, or to him who loves to accumulate subjects for national abuse. To the former it will be a complete manual; and there is hardly a misfortune, a folly, or a vice, that it will not enable the latter to ascribe to poor Scotland, on the indubitable authority of Dr. Johnson. Let him, then, who may in future have occasion to prove that a Scotchman is poor, dirty, lazy, foolish, ignorant, proud, an eater of kail, a liar, a brogue-maker, or a thief; and that Scot-
land is a barren wilderness; let him apply to your book, for there he will find ample authority.
‘You had long desired,’ you say, ‘to visit Scotland;’7 the desire was invidious, for it was to discover the nakedness of a sister. The flame of national rancour and reproach has been for several years but too well fed—you too have added your faggot, and well deserved the thanks of your friends; but whether you have merited those of the Scotchman who procured you the means of subsistence,8 or of the Monarch by whose bounty you are fed, is a question which your own conscience must determine.
1775
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Translated from the text of the MacLagan Manuscript printed in the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, xxii (1898), 177–8. Four Gaelic songs are extant which vigorously trounce ‘the London savant’ for the ‘insult, contempt and defamation’ which he allegedly lavished on his Scottish hosts. Three appeared in Gillie’s Collection of Ancient and Modern Gaelic Poems and Songs, Perth, 1786; the fourth is given below. |
Indeed I do not believe that the monster’s ancestral root Is of the Clan MacIan [Johnson]: Rather he was begotten to his mother By a stranger with the nature of Venus.
A boor without manners full of spite; a slave who is disrespectful to himself. The best meat when it spoils Will double its smell of corruption.
You are a slimy, yellow-bellied frog, You are a toad crawling along
the ditches, You are a lizard of the waste, Crawling and creeping like a reptile.
You are a filthy caterpillar of the fields; You are an ugly, soft, sluggish snail; You are a tick [such as] it is not easy to draw from What you grip in your claws.
You are the weedings of the garden, You are the straw and the chaff of the winnowing, When productive seed is sown; You are a duncoloured heap of tobacco.
You are the malingerer from battle, You are the kite of the birds. You are now the secret jest of the bards. Among fish you are the cub of the dogfish.
Or that sullen beast the devil fish; You are the brat in the midst of filth, The badger with its nose in his buttocks three quarters of a year, A sheep-tick that is called the leech.
Foul is the wealth that you share, And if it were not that I do not like the name of satirist, I myself would earnestly desire to abuse you.
1779
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Extracts from pp. 1–15, 242–3, 364–71. Boswell refers to this work as ‘a scurrilous volume, larger than Johnson’s own, filled with malignant abuse, under a name, real or fictitious, of some low man in an obscure corner of Scotland’ (Life, ii. 308). The Remarks is certainly malevolent; it is lengthy (371 pages); but the author could not be dismissed as ‘some low man’. McNicol (1736–1802) was a learned minister (of Lismore in Argyll), an antiquary, and a Celtic poet in his own right. His book was republished together with Johnson’s Journey in one volume, at Glasgow, 1817. (James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson may have collaborated with McNicol on the original publication.) See Introduction, pp. 7, 29. |
Travelling through the different kingdoms of Europe has greatly prevailed, of late years, among men of curiosity and taste. Some are led abroad by the mere love of novelty; others have a more solid purpose in view, a desire of acquiring an extensive knowledge of mankind. As the observations of the former are generally of a cursory nature, and seldom extend beyond the circle of their private acquaintance, it is from the latter only that we can expect a more public and particular information relative to foreign parts. Some ingenious and valuable productions of this kind have lately made their appearance; and when a man communicates, with candour and fidelity, what he has seen in other countries, he cannot render a more agreeable or useful service to his own.
By such faithful portraits of men and manners, we are presented with a view of the world around us, as it really is. Our Author, like a trusty guide, conducts us through the scenes he describes, and makes us acquainted with the inhabitants; and thus we reap all the pleasures and advantages of travel, without the inconveniencies attending it. There is no country so contemptible as not to furnish some things that may please, nor is any arrived to that degree of perfection as to afford no matter of dislike. When, therefore, no false colouring is used, to diminish what is commendable, or magnify defects, we often find reason to give up much of our supposed superiority over other nations. Hence our candour increases with our knowledge of mankind, and we get rid of the folly of prejudice and self-conceit; which is equally ridiculous in a people as individuals, and equally an obstacle to improvement.
It were to be wished that the Treatise, which is the subject of the following sheets, had been formed on such a plan as has been now mentioned, as it would be a much more agreeable task to commend than censure it. But it will appear, from the sequel, how far its author has acquitted himself with that candour which could inform the curious, or undeceive the prejudiced.
When it was known, about two years ago, that Dr. Samuel Johnson, a man of some reputation for letters, had undertaken a tour through Scotland, it was naturally enough expected, that one of his contemplative turn would, some time or other, give a public account of his journey. His early prejudices against the country were sufficiently known; but every one expected a fair, if not a flattering, representation, from the narrative of grey hairs. But there was another circumstance which promised a collateral security for the Doctor’s fair dealing. Mr. Pennant,1 and other gentlemen of abilities and integrity, had made the same tour before him, and, like men of liberal sentiments, spoke respectfully of the Scotch nation. It was thought, therefore, that this, if nothing else, would prove a check on his prepossessions, and make him extremely cautious, were it only for his own sake, how he contradicted such respectable authorities.
Neither of these considerations, however, had any weight. The Doctor hated Scotland; that was the master-passion, and it scorned all restraints. He seems to have set out with a design to give a distorted representation of every thing he saw on the north side of the Tweed; and it is but doing him justice to acknowledge, that he has not failed in the execution.
But consistency has not always been attended to in the course of his narration. He differs no more from other travellers, than he often does from himself, denying at one time what he has asserted at another, as prejudice, or a more generous passion, happened, by turns, to prevail;
which, to say no worse, is but an aukward situation for a man who makes any pretensions to be believed.
At the same time I am not so partial to my country, as to say that Dr. Johnson is always in the wrong when he finds fault. On the contrary, I am ready to allow him, as, I believe, will every Scotchman, that the road through the mountains, from Fort Augustus to Glenelg, is not quite so smooth as that between London and Bath; and that he could not find, in the huts or cottages at Anoch and Glensheals, the same luxuries and accommodations as in the inns on an English post-road. In these, and such like remarks, the Doctor’s veracity must certainly remain unimpeached. But the bare merit of telling truth will not always atone for a want of candour in the intention. In the more remote and unfrequented parts of a country, little refinement is to be expected; it is, therefore, no less frivolous to examine them with too critical an eye, than disingenuous to exhibit them as specimens of the rest. This, however, has been too much the practice with Dr. Johnson, in his account of Scotland; every trifling defect is eagerly brought forward, while the more perfect parts of the piece are as carefully kept out of view. If other travellers were to proceed on the same plan, what nation in Europe but might be made to appear ridiculous?
The objects of any moment, which have been chiefly distinguished by that odium which Dr. Johnson bears to every thing that is Scotch, seem to be—the Poems of Ossian, —the whole Gallic language, —our seminaries of learning, —the Reformation, —and the veracity of all Scotch, and particularly Highland narration. The utter extinction of the two former seems to have been the principal motive of his journey to the North. To pave the way for this favourite purpose, and being aware that the influence of tradition, to which all ages and nations have ever paid some regard in matters of remote antiquity, must be removed, he resolves point blank to deny the validity of all Scotch, and particularly Highland narration….
From the first appearance of Ossian’s Poems in public,2 we may date the origin of Dr. Johnson’s intended tour to Scotland; whatever he may pretend to tell us, in the beginning of his narration. There are many circumstances to justify this opinion; among which a material one is, that a gentleman of undoubted honour and veracity, who happened to be at London soon after that period, informed me upon his return to the country, that Caledonia might, some day, look for an unfriendly visit
from the Doctor. So little able was he, it seems, to conceal his ill-humour on that occasion, that it became the subject of common discourse; and the event has fully verified what was predicted as the consequence.
In the year 1773 he accomplished his purpose; and sometime in the year following he published an account of his journey, which plainly shews the spirit with which it was undertaken. All men have their prejudices more or less, nor are the best always without them; but so sturdy an instance as this is hardly to be met with. It is without example, in any attempt of the like kind that has gone before it; and it is to be hoped, for the sake of truth and the credit of human nature, it will furnish none to such as may come after.
[McNicol claims that he is ‘perfectly free from narrowness of national prejudice’.]
My first intention was to write what I had to say on this subject in the form of an Essay. Upon farther consideration, however, the method I have now adopted appeared the most eligible; as, by citing the Doctor’s own words, the Public will be the better enabled to judge what justice is done to his meaning. This plan, on account of the frequent interruptions, may not, perhaps, render the performance so entertaining to some readers; but it gives an opportunity for a more close investigation, and to such as are not possessed of the Doctor’s book, it will, in a great measure, supply its place.
That the reader may not be disappointed, I must tell him before-hand, that he is not to expect, in the following sheets, what Dr. Johnson calls ‘ornamental splendors.’ Impartiality of observation shall be more attended to than elegance of diction; and if I appear sometimes severe, the Doctor shall have no reason to say I am unjust. He is to be tried all along by his own evidence; and, therefore, he cannot complain, if, ‘out of his own mouth, he is condemned.’
Dr. Johnson informs us, that he set out from Edinburgh, upon his intended peregrination, the 18th of August 1773. This must undoubtedly appear an uncommon season of the year for an old frail inhabitant of London to undertake a journey to the Hebrides, if he proposed the tour should prove agreeable to himself, or amusing to the Public. Most other travellers make choice of the summer months, when the countries through which they pass are seen to most advantage; and as the Doctor acknowledges he had been hitherto but little out of the metropolis, one should think he would have wished to have made the most of his journey. But it was not beauties the Doctor went to find out in Scotland, but defects; and for the northern situation of the Hebrides, the advanced time of the year suited his purpose best.
He passes over the city of Edinburgh almost without notice; though surely its magnificent castle, its palace, and many stately buildings, both public and private, were not unworthy of a slight touch, at least, from the Doctor’s pencil. Little, therefore, is to be expected from a man who would turn his back on the capital with a supercilious silence. But, indeed, he is commonly very sparing of his remarks where there is any thing that merits attention; though we find he has always enough to say where none but himself could find matter of observation.
[follows Johnson’s account step by step. Only the remarks on his attitude to Gaelic and Ossian are given.]
There has been occasion to observe, oftener than once, that it was the great object of the Doctor’s Journey, to find out some pretence or other for denying the authenticity of the ancient compositions in the Gaelic language; and now that design begins to unfold itself beyond a possibility of doubt. To effect his purpose, he takes a short but very ingenious method. He finds it only necessary to say, that no Bards have existed for some centuries; that, as nothing was then written in the Gaelic language, their works must have perished with themselves; and consequently, that every thing now attributed to them, by their modern countrymen, must be false and spurious.3
As the Doctor gives no authority for the facts, from which he draws this inference, he might as well have remained at home, as he says upon another occasion, and have fancied to himself all that he pretends to have heard on this subject. His bare word, without leaving Fleet-street, would have been just as good as his bare word after returning from the Hebrides. A Journey, however, was undertaken; though there is every reason to believe, that it was not so much with a view to obtain information, as to give a degree of sanction to what he had before resolved to assert….
The Doctor concludes his observations on the Poems of Ossian, by passing two very severe reflections; the one of a personal, the other of a national kind. As what he says is pretty remarkable, I shall give it in his own words.
‘I have yet,’ says he, ‘supposed no imposture but in the publisher;’ and, a little after, he adds, ‘The Scots have something to plead for their easy reception of an improbable fiction: they are seduced by their
fondness for their supposed ancestors. A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist, who does not love Scotland better than truth; he will always love it better than inquiry; and, if falsehood flatters his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it.’4
As an imposture is the last thing of which a gentleman can be supposed guilty, it is the last thing with which he ought to be charged. To bring forward such an accusation, therefore, without proof to establish it, is a ruffian mode of impeachment, which seems to have been reserved for Dr. Johnson, There is nothing in his Journey to the Hebrides to support so gross a calumny, unless we admit his own bare assertions for arguments; and the publisher, if by the publisher he means Mr. Macpherson,5 is certainly as incapable of an imposture, as the Doctor is of candour or good manners.
The indelicacy of such language is obvious. A gentleman would not have expressed himself in that manner, for his own sake; a man of prudence would not have done it, for fear of giving just offence to Mr. Macpherson. But the Doctor seems to have been careless about the reputation of the first of those characters; and the malignity of his disposition seems to have made him overlook the foresight generally annexed to the second. Though he was bold in his assertions, however, I do not find he has been equally courageous in their defence. His mere allegation on a subject which he could not possibly understand, was unworthy of the notice of the gentleman accused; but the language, in which he expressed his doubts, deserved chastisement. To prevent this, he had age and infirmities to plead; but not content with that security, which, I dare venture to say, was sufficient, he declared, when questioned, that he would call the laws of his country to his aid. Men, who make a breach upon the laws of good manners, have but a scurvy claim to the protection of any other laws.
Nor will our traveller come better off with the public, in his more general assault. No man, whose opinion is worth the regarding, will give credit to so indiscriminate a calumny: the Doctor, therefore, has exhibited this specimen of his rancour to no other purpose, than either to gratify the prejudiced, or to impose upon the weak and credulous. If any thing can be inferred from what he says, it is only this, that he himself is not so ‘very sturdy a moralist’ as to love truth so much as he hates Scotland.
Soon after this, he tells us, that he left Sky to visit some other islands.
But as his observations, through that part of his Journey, present nothing new, I shall not follow him in his progress; and the reader, I believe, as well as myself, will have no objection to be relieved, from his long attendance on so uncouth a companion. We shall leave him, therefore, to rail, in the old way, at the poverty, ignorance, and barbarity of the inhabitants; while, with a peculiar consistency, he acknowledges plenty, intelligence, and politeness, every where. Neither shall we disturb his meditations among the ruins of Iona; but permit him to tread that once hallowed spot with reverential awe, and demonstrate the true spirit of his faith, by mourning over the ‘dilapidated monuments of ancient sanctity.’6
When he tells us, page 376 [146], that men bred in the universities of Scotland obtain only a mediocrity of knowledge between learning and ignorance, he contradicts his own attestations to the contrary in a thousand different places. I formerly compared this passage with his elogiums on the Highland clergy; I must now contrast it with what he mentions in two or three pages after. ‘We now,’ says he, ‘returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of learning, whose names want no advancement from my commemoration.’7 It was somewhat careless in the Doctor, to say no worse, to hold so very different a language in page 379, while the censure passed on our universities, but so little before, must be recent in the reader’s memory. But a regard to the trifling forms of consistency seems never to have been an object of his attention.
It happens luckily, however, that the reputation of the Scots for learning rests upon a better foundation than the opinion of Dr. Johnson. The testimony of the world is in their favour; and, against that, his praise or censure can have but little weight. The three learned professions bear witness to their knowledge and talents. In physic they stand unrivalled; and in the pulpit and at the bar they have no superiors.
But, besides professional merit, the Scots have long occupied every other department of literature; and they have distinguished themselves in each. The province of history is, in a manner, yielded up to them; they have added largely to the various stores of philosophy and the mathematics; and, in criticism and the belles lettres, they have discovered abilities, and acquired applause. Though they seldom descend to the ludicrous, yet they have not wanted writers, who have made some figure in that walk. If the Doctor doubts the fact, I shall refer him, for information, to the author of Lexiphanes.8
I shall now take a final leave of Dr. Johnson. That he set out with an intention to traduce the Scots nation, is evident; and the account he gives of his Journey shews, with what a stubborn malignity he persevered in that purpose. Every line is marked with prejudice; and every sentence teems with the most illiberal invectives. If he has met with some correction, in the course of this examination, it is no more than he ought to have expected; unless he feels in his own mind, what his pride perhaps will not allow him to acknowledge, that misrepresentation and abuse merit no passion superior to contempt.