Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/448

 430 Essay on

��Essays x, were subjects of his constant praise. Mr. Boswell, Dr. Rose of Chiswick, Andrew Millar, Mr. Hamilton the printer, and the late Mr. Strahan, were among his most intimate friends 2. Many others might be added to the list. He scorned to enter Scotland as a spy 3 ; though Hawkins, his biographer, and the professing defender of his fame, allowed himself leave to repre sent him in that ignoble character. He went into Scotland to survey men and manners 4. Antiquities, fossils, and minerals, were not within his province. He did not visit that country to settle the station of Roman camps, or the spot where Galgacus fought the last battle for public liberty 5. The people, their customs, and the progress of literature, were his objects. The civilities which he received in the course of his tour have been repaid with grateful acknowledgement, and, generally, with great elegance of expression 6. His crime is, that he found the country bare of trees, and he has stated the fact. This, Mr. Boswell, in his Tour to the Hebrides, has told us, was resented by his countrymen with anger inflamed to rancour ; but he admits that there are few trees on the east side of Scotland 7. Mr. Pennant, in his Tour, says, that in some parts of the eastern side of the country, he saw several large plantations of pine planted by gentlemen near their seats ; and in this respect such a laudable spirit prevails, that, in another half century, it never shall be said, ' To spy the nakedness of the land are you come 8 .' Johnson

1 Of Beattie's Essay on Truth he rather as a spy than a traveller, and wrote: 'It is, I believe, every day might have said to him "To dis- more liked ; at least I like it more cover [see] the nakedness of the land as I look more upon it.' Life, ii. are ye [ye are] come. [Genesis, xlii. 202. 12]."'

2 Ib. ii. 121, 306. 4 Life, v. 112.

Percy said that 'Johnson's in- 5 Tacitus, Agricola, c. 29. It was

vectives against Scotland in common left for Jonathan Oldbuck to prove

conversation were more in pleasantry that it was on the Kaim of Kinprunes

and sport than real and malignant ; that this battle was fought. The

for no man was more visited by Antiquary, c. 4. natives of that country, nor were 6 Life, ii. 303. there any for whom he had a greater 7 Ib. ii. 301, 304, 311 ; v. 69, 75. esteem.' Anderson's Johnson, ed. 8 Sir A. Gordon, describing how

1815, p. 285. his father, the Earl of Aberdeen, on

3 The Scotch, Hawkins says (p. attaining his majority in 1805, went 486), * had reason to look on Johnson down to his ancestral home, says :

could

�� �