Lett. v. i. p. 250. ously so; the time glided away in deliberation of what was to be done; and we resolved, at last, to run to the house of a gentleman in the Temple, of whom we knew nothing but that he was D'Avenant's friend, and look at the race from his windows, then drive away for Ranelagh, in time to see the barges drawn up, and the company disembark. Of the race, however, scarce any thing could be seen for clouds of dust that intercepted one's sight; and we have no balconies to see shows from, as are provided in countries where processions make much of the means of entertainment; so we discomposed our head-dresses against each other, by struggling for places in an open window, and then begged pardons with courtesies, which exposed our trains to be trod on, and made us still more out of humour. It was however a real pleasure to look at the crowd of spectators. Every shop was shut; every street deserted; and the tops of all such houses as had any catch of the river swarmed with people, like bees settling on a branch. Here is no exaggeration, upon my honour; even the lamp-irons on Westminster-bridge were converted into seats, while every lighter lying in the Thames bore men up to the topmast-head. This was the true wonder of the day. Baretti says he will show us finer sights when we go to Italy. I believe him; but shall we ever see so populous a city as London? so rich a city? so happy a city? I fancy not. 'Let bear or elephant be e'er so white, The people sure, the people, are the sight.' They could not indeed be very attentive to the games, like those Horace talks of, for here was neither panther nor camel; no pretence to draw us together, as I could find ;—yet they sat so thick upon the slating of Whitehall, that nobody could persuade me for a long while out of the notion that it was covered with black, till through a telescope we espied the animals in motion, like magnified mites in a bit of old cheese. Well! from this house in the Temple we hasted away to Ranelagh, happy in having at least convinced a hundred folks we never saw before, and perhaps never shall see again, that we had tickets for the regatta, and fine clothes to spoil with the rain, and that we were not come thither like the vulgar-in good time!-only to see the boat-race. And now, without one image of Cleopatra's galley or Virgil's games, or one pretext to say how it put us in mind of either, we drove to Ranelagh, and told each other all the way how pretty it would be to look at the : 251. ladies disembarking to musick, and walking in procession up Lett. to the rotunda. But the night came on; the wind roared; the v. i. p. rain fell; and the barges missing their way, many came up to the wrong stairs. The managers endeavoured to rectify the mistake, and drive them back, that some order might be kept, and some appearance of regularity might be made; but the women were weary and wet, and in no disposition to try for further felicity out of the old common road; so the procession was spoiled and as to musick, we heard none but screams of the frighted company, as they were tossed about at the moment of getting to shore. Once more, then, all were turned loose to look for pleasure where it could be found. The rotunda was not to be opened till twelve o'clock, when the bell was to call us to sup there; the temporary building was not finished, and the rain would not permit walking in the garden. Calamity, however, vanishes often upon a near approach--does not it?—as well as happiness. We all crowded into the new building, from whence we drove the carpenters, and called for cards, without the help of which, by some fatality, no day dedicated to amusement is ever able to end. 66 Queeney said there was no loss of the ornaments intended to decorate Neptune's hall; for she saw no attempt at embellishment, except a few fluttering rags, like those which dangle from a dyer's pole into the street; and in that room we sat telling opinions, adventures, &c. till supper was served, which the men said was an execrable one, and I thought should have been finer. 'Was nothing good then?' you begin to exclaim; 'here is desire of saying something where little is to be said, and lamentations are the readiest nonsense my mistress can find to fill her letter with.' No, no; I would commend the concert, the catch singers, for an hour, if you would hear me ; the musick was well selected, and admirably executed; nor did the company look much amiss when all the dismal was over, and we walked round Ranelagh a little in the old way;-every body being dressed in white was no advantage indeed to the general appearance. * "We returned safe home about five or six o'clock: a new scene to Hester, who behaved sweetly, and had no fears in the crowd, but prodigious surprise in finding it broad day when we came out. I might have wondered too, for few people have frequented publick places less than myself; and for the first six years after my marriage, as you know, I never set my foot in any theatre or place of entertainment at all. What most Lett. v. i. p. 253. ED. Letters, v. i. p. 278. ED. p. 290. amazed me about this regatta, however, was the mixture of company, when tickets were so difficult to obtain. Somebody talked at Ranelagh of two ladies that were drowned; but I have no doubt that was a dream."] [In the last days of June, he removed to Ashbourne; and his letters thence contain the usual routine of his country observations, with one or two more characteristic circumstances. He was very anxious that an old horse of Mrs. Thrale's should not be sold to hard work, or, as he called it, degraded, for five pounds, and was willing to have borne the expense of maintaining the poor animal. For his friend Baretti, of some point of whose conduct Mrs. Thrale had complained, he intercedes with that lady in a tone of modest propriety : "DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE. Ashbourne, 15th July, 1775. "Poor Baretti! do not quarrel with him; to neglect him a little will be sufficient. He means only to be frank, and manly, and independent, and perhaps, as you say, a little wise. To be frank, he thinks, is to be cynical, and to be independent to be rude. Forgive him, dearest lady, the rather because of his misbehaviour; I am afraid he has learned part of me. I hope to set him hereafter a better example." This coolness soon ended, as the next letter informs us: "DR. JOHNSON TO MRS. THRALE. "Ashbourne, 21st July, 1775. "You and [Baretti] are friends again. My dear mistress has the quality of being easily reconciled, and not easily offended. Kindness is a good thing in itself; and there are few things that are worthy of anger, and still fewer that can justify malignity. "I am glad you read Boswell's Journal. You are now sufficiently informed of the whole transaction, and need not regret that you did not make the tour of the Hebrides." 290. "I have passed one day at Birmingham with my old friend v. i. p. Hector—there's a name! and his sister, an old love. My mistress is grown much older than my friend. "O quid habes illius, illius Quæ spirabat amores Quæ me surpuerat mihi.'" He returned to town about the end of August.] After my return to Scotland, I wrote three letters to him, from which I extract the following passages: "I have seen Lord Hailes since I came down. He thinks it wonderful that you are pleased to take so much pains in revising his Annals.' I told him that you said you were well rewarded by the entertainment which you had in reading them.” 1 "There has been a numerous flight of Hebrideans in Edinburgh this summer, whom I have been happy to entertain at my house. Mr. Donald Macqueen 1 and Lord Monboddo supped with me one evening. They joined in controverting your proposition, that the Gaelick of the Highlands and Isles of Scotland was not written till of late." 66 My mind has been somewhat dark this summer. I have need of your warming and vivifying rays; and I hope I shall have them frequently. I am going to pass some time with my father at Auchinleck.” "TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. "London, Aug. 27, 1775. "DEAR SIR,-I am returned from the annual ramble into the middle counties. Having seen nothing I had not seen before, I have nothing to relate. Time has left that part of the island few antiquities; and commerce has left the people no singularities. I was glad to go abroad, and, perhaps, glad to come home; which is in other words, I was, I am afraid, weary of being at home, and weary of being abroad. Is not this the state of life? But, if we confess this weariness, let us not lament it; for all the wise and all the good say, that we may cure it. "For the black fumes which rise in your mind, I can prescribe nothing but that you disperse them by honest business or innocent pleasure, and by reading, sometimes easy and some The very learned minister in the Isle of Sky, whom both Dr. Johnson and I have mentioned with regard.-BoSWELL. [See ante, v. ii. p. 392.—ED.] Hor. Od. 13. 1. 4. ED. times serious. Change of place is useful; and I hope that your residence at Auchinleck will have many good effects. "That I should have given pain to Rasay, I am sincerely sorry; and am therefore very much pleased that he is no longer uneasy. He still thinks that I have represented him as personally giving up the chieftainship. I meant only that it was no longer contested between the two houses, and supposed it settled, perhaps, by the cession of some remote generation, in the house of Dunvegan. I am sorry the advertisement was not continued for three or four times in the paper. "That Lord Monboddo and Mr. Macqueen should controvert a position contrary to the imaginary interest of literary or national prejudice, might be easily imagined; but of a standing fact there ought to be no controversy; if there are men with tails, catch a homo caudatus; if there was writing of old in the Highlands or Hebrides, in the Erse language, produce the manuscripts. Where men write they will write to one another, and some of their letters, in families studious of their ancestry, will be kept. In Wales there are many manuscripts. “I have now three parcels of Lord Hailes's history, which I purpose to return all the next week: that his respect for my little observations should keep his work in suspense, makes one of the evils of my journey. It is in our language, I think, a new mode of history which tells all that is wanted, and, I pose, all that is known, without laboured splendour of language, or affected subtilty of conjecture. The exactness of his dates raises my wonder. He seems to have the closeness of Henault without his constraint. sup "Mrs. Thrale was so entertained with your 'Journal ',' that she almost read herself blind. She has a great regard for you. "Of Mrs. Boswell, though she knows in her heart that she does not love me, I am always glad to hear any good, and hope that she and the little dear ladies will have neither sickness nor any other affliction. But she knows that she does not care what becomes of me, and for that she may be sure that I think her very much to blame. "Never, my dear sir, do you take it into your head to think that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and esteem: I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a 1 My "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," which that lady read in the original manuscript.-BOSWELL. |