praises "his sprightly fancy and whimsical eccentricity," which "agreeably tempered the graver conversation" of Adam Smith or Hugh Blair at the small and select parties given by Lord Kames.[1]
He was welcome everywhere but at his own father's house. Neither was he the better thought of by the old man on account of the great Englishman whom he brought with him. Everything however went off smoothly for a day or two, but the host and his guest at length came in collision over Lord Auchinleck's collection of medals. The scene is thus described by Boswell, who witnessed it:
"Oliver Cromwell's coin unfortunately introduced Charles the First and Toryism. They became exceedingly warm and violent, and I was very much distressed by being present at such an altercation between two men, both of whom I reverenced; yet I durst not interfere. It would certainly be very unbecoming in me to exhibit my honoured father and my respected friend, as intellectual gladiators, for the entertainment of the public; and, therefore, I suppress what would, I dare say, make an interesting scene in this dramatic sketch—this account of the transit of Johnson over the Caledonian Hemisphere."
Ramsay of Ochtertyre says, that the year after this famous altercation, Lord Auchinleck "told him with warmth that the great Dr. Johnson, of whom he had heard wonders, was just a dominie, and the worst-bred dominie he had ever seen."[2] The account which Sir Walter Scott gives is very dramatic, though no doubt somewhat embellished.
"Old Lord Auchinleck (he writes) was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient family; and, moreover, he was a strict Presbyterian and Whig of the old Scottish cast. This did not prevent his being a terribly proud aristocrat; and great was the contempt he entertained and expressed for his son James, for the nature of his friendships and the character of the personages of whom he was engoné one after another. 'There's nae hope for Jamie, mon,' he said to a friend. 'Jamie is gaen clean gyte.[3] What do you think, mon? He's done wi' Paoli—he's off wi' the land-louping[4] scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon?' Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. 'A dominie, mon—an auld dominie: he keeped a schǔle, and cau'd it an acaadamy."
The full force of Lord Auchinleck's contempt is only seen when we understand the position of a dominie. The character of a schoolmaster, generally, according to Johnson, was less honour-
