The Lawnmarket.] JAMES BOSWELL. I01
duchess. A daughter of Douglas of Mains, she was
the widow of Archibald Duke of Douglas, who died
in 1761.
While on this visit, Patrick Lord Elibank, a
learned and accomplished noble, addressed a letter
to him, and they afterwards had various conversatkns
on literary subjects, all of which are duly
On one occasion he was in a large party, of
which David Hume was one. A mutual friend
proposed to introduce him to the historian, ?? No,
sir ! ? bellowed the intolerant moralist, and turned
away. Among Boswell?s friends and visitors at
James?s Court were Lords Kames and Hailes, the
annalist of Scotland; Drs. Robertson, Slab, and
recorded in the pages of the sycophantic Boswell.
Johnson was well and hospitably received by all
classes in Edinburgh, where his roughness of
manner and bearing were long proverbiaL ?? From
all I can learn,? says Captain Topham, who visited
the city in the following year, ?he repaid all their
attention to him with ill-breeding; and when in
the company of the ablest men in this country
his whole design was to show them how little he
thought of them.?
Beattie, and others, the most eminent of his
countrymen; but his strong predilection for
London induced him to move there with his
family, and in the winter of 1786 he was called to
the English bar. His old house was not immediately
abandoned to the plebeian population, as
his successor in it was Lady Wallace, dowager of
Sir Thomas Wallace of Craigie, and mother of the
unfortunate Captain William Wallace of the 15th
Hussars, whose involvement in the affairs of the
