his own character. He was, he flattered himself, a citizen of the world; one who in his travels never felt himself from home. In that impudent Correspondence which he and his friend Andrew Erskine published when they were still almost lads, he thus describes himself:
"The author of the Ode to Tragedy is a most excellent man; he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright; and his education has been good. He has travelled in post-chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple-pie. He drinks old hock. He has a very fine temper. He is somewhat of an humorist, and a little tinctured with pride. He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles."[1]
We have a later description of him again by his own hand, as he was at the time of his tour with Johnson.
"Think, then (he says), of a gentleman of ancient blood, the pride of which was his predominant passion. He was then in his thirty-third year, and had been about four years happily married. His inclination was to be a soldier; but his father, a respectable judge, had pressed him into the profession of the law. He had travelled a good deal, and seen many varieties of human life. He had thought more than anybody supposed, and had a pretty good stock of general learning and knowledge. He had all Dr. Johnson's principles, with some degree of relaxation. He had rather too little, than too much prudence; and, his imagination being lively, he often said things of which the effect was very different from the intention. He resembled sometimes
The best good man, with the worst natur'd muse.'"
Johnson celebrated his good humour and perpetual cheerfulness, his acuteness, his gaiety of conversation, and civility of manners. "He was," he said, "the best travelling companion in the world." According to Burke, "his good nature was so natural to him that he had no merit in possessing it. A man might as well assume to himself merit in possessing an excellent constitution." Reynolds loved him so well that "he left him £200 in his will, to be expended, if he thought proper, in the purchase of a picture at the sale of his paintings, to be kept for his sake."[2] In a memoir of him in the Scots Magazine he is described as "a most pleasant companion, affectionate and friendly; but, particularly in his latter days, he betrayed a vanity which seemed to predominate."[3] Tytler
