Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/64

60 manners, though at times it was not perfectly embodied in act.

The tradition of Johnson’s fixed antipathy to the Scottish people owes a great part of its strength and persistence to Boswell, who not only recorded Johnson’s railing speeches against the Scotch, but provoked the larger number of them. His apologetic speech in Davies’s shop, on his first introduction, put him at Johnson’s mercy for the rest of his life. ‘Mr. Johnson (said I), I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.’ From that time forward, Johnson delighted to indulge his humour, playful rather than hostile, on the sensitive nationality of his friend. The best of his sallies are written in the Life; but some, which Boswell omitted or forgot, are recorded by other writers. The Rev. Dr. Thomas Campbell notes in his Diary how Johnson ‘seems fond of Boswell, and yet he is always abusing the Scots before him, by way of joke… Boswell lamented there was no good map of Scotland. “There never can be a good map of Scotland,” says the Doctor sententiously. This excited Boswell to ask wherefore. “Why, Sir, to measure land, a man must go over it; but who could think of going over Scotland?”’

The truth of this matter is better explained by other less agitated historians than by Boswell himself. ‘Johnson’s invectives against Scotland,’ says Bishop Percy, ‘were more in pleasantry and sport than real or malignant; for no man was more visited by natives of that country, nor were there any for whom he had a greater esteem.’ The ground of the antipathy is explained by Reynolds: ‘Against the Irish he entertained no prejudice, he thought they united themselves very well with us; but the Scotch, when in England, united and made