The Lawnmarket] DR. JOHNSON. 95
years, his house was rented by Dr. Blair ; but amid
the gaieties of Pans his mind would seem to have
reverted to his Scottish home. ?I am sensible
that I am misplaced, and I wish twice or thrice
aday for my easychair, and my retreat in James?s
Court:? he wrote to his friend Dr. Ferguson;
then he added, as Burton tells us, Never think,
dear Ferguson, that as long as you are master of
your own fireside and your own time, you can be
unhappy, or that any other circumstance can add
to your enjoyment.? ?Never put a fire in the
south room with the red paper,? he wrote to Dr.
Blair ; ? it is so warm of itself, that all last winter,
which was a very severe one, I lay with a single
blanket, and frequently, upon coming in at midnight
starving with cold, I have sat down and read for
an hour as if I had a stove in the room.? One
of his most intimate friends and correspondents
while in France was Mrs. Cockburn of Ormiston,
authoress of one of the beautiful songs called U The
Flowers of the Forest,? who died at Edinburgh,
1794. Some of her letters to Hume are dated in
1764, from Baud?s Close, on .the Castle Hill.
About the year 1766, when still in Paris, he began
to think of settling there, and gave orders to sell
his house in James?s Court, and he was only prevented
from doing so by a mere chance. Leaving
the letter of instruction to be posted by his Parisian
landlord, he set out to pass his Christmas with
the Countess de Boufflers ai L?Isle Adam ; but a
snow storm had blocked up the roads. He returned
to Paris, and finding that his letter had not
yet been posted, he changed his mind, and
thought that he had better retain his flat in James?s
Court, to which he returned in 1766. He soon
after left it as Under-Secretary of State to General
Conway, but in 1769, on the resignation of that
Minister, he returned again to James?s Court, with
what was then deemed opulence-AI,ooo per annuni-
and became the head of that brilliant circle
of literary men who then adorned Edinburgh. ?I
am glad to come within sight of you: he wrote to
Adam Smith, then busy with ?The Wealth of
Nations? in the quietude of his mother?s house,
$? and to have a view of Kirkcaldy from mywindows ;
but I wish also to be on speaking terms with you.?
In another letter he speaks of ??my old house in
James?s Court, which is very cheerful and very
elegant, but too small to display my great talent
for cookery, the science to which I intend to addict
the remaining years of my life.?
Elsewhere we shall find David Hunie in a more
fashionable abode in the new town of Edinburgh,
and on his finally quitting James?s Court, his house
there was leased by Tames Boswell, whose character
is thus summed up by Lord Macaulay :-? Servile
and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and
a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering
about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet
stooping to be a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a
common butt in the taverns of London ; so curious
to know everybody who was talked about that,
Tory and High Churchman though he was, he
rnanceuvred for an introduction to Tom Paine ; so
vain of the most childish distinctions, that when he
had been to Court he drove to the office where
his book was printing, without changing his clothes,
and summoned all the printer?s devils to admire
his new rufRes and sword. Such was this man,
and such he was content to be.?
He was the eldest son of Alexander Boswell, one
of the Judges of the Court of Session, a sound
scholar, a respectable and useful country gentleman,
an able and upright judge, who, on his
elevation to the Bench, in compliance with the
Scottish custom, assumed the distinctive title of
Lord Auchinleck, from his estate in Ayrshire.
His mother, Eupham Erskine, a descendant of the
line of Alloa, from the House of Mar, was a woman
of exemplary piety. To James?s Court, Boswell,
in -4ugust, 1773, cohducted Dr. Johnson, from the
White Horse Hostel, in ,St. Mary?s Wynd, then
one of the principal inns of Edinburgh, where he
found him storming at the waiter for having sweetened
his lemonade without using the sugar-tongs, ,
~Johnson and I,? says Boswell, walked arm-inarm
up the High Street to my house in James?s
Court, and as we went, he acknowledged that the
breadth of the street and the loftiness of the buildings
on each side made a noble appearance.? ?My
wife had tea ready for him,? he adds, ?? ail we sat
chatting till nearly two in the morning.? It would
appear that before the time of the visit-which
lasted over several days-Boswell had removed
into a better and larger mansion, immediately
below and on the level of the court, a somewhat
extraordinary house in its time, as it consisted of
two floors with an internal stair. Mrs. Boswell,
who was Margaret Montgomery, a relation of the
Earl of Eglmton, a gentlewoman of good breeding
and brilliant understanding, was disgusted with the
bearing and manners of Johnson, and expressed
her opinion of him that he was ?a great brute !?
And well might she think so, if Macaulay?s description
of him be correct. ?He could fast,
but when he did not fast he tore his dinner like
a famished wolf, With the veins swelling in his
forehead, and the perspiration running down his
cheeks; he scarcely ever took wine; but when
he drank it, he drank it greedily and in large
.
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