hospitable, but not complaisant, to strangers. Insincerity and cruelty have no existence amongst them; but if they ought not to be hated they can never be much loved, for they are incapable of insinuation, and their ignorance of the world makes them unfit for entertaining sensible strangers. They are public-spirited, but torn to pieces by factions. A gloominess in religion renders one part of them very barbarous, and an enthusiasm in politics so transports the genteeler part, that they sacrifice to party almost every consideration of tenderness. Among such a people a man may long live, little known, and less instructed; for their reservedness renders them uncommunicative, and their excessive haughtiness prevents them from being solicitous of knowledge.
The Scots are far from being a dull nation; they are lovers of pomp and show, but then there is an eternal stiffness, a kind of affected dignity, which spoils their pleasures. Hence we have the less reason to wonder that Boyse lived obscurely at Edinburgh.about thirty years ago, and therefore you will not be obliged to notice it otherwise than in the course of enumeration. In the account of Hammond, my good friend Samuel has stumbled on a material circumstance in the publication of Cibber’s ‘Lives of the Poets.’ He intimates that Cibber never saw the work. This is a reflection on the bookseller, your humble servant. The bookseller has now in his possession Theophilus Cibber’s receipt for twenty guineas (Johnson says ten,) in consideration of which he engaged to revise, correct, and improve the work, and also to affix his name in the title-page. Mr. Cibber did accordingly very punctually revise every sheet; he made numerous corrections, and added many improvements—particularly in those lives which came down to his own times, and brought him within the circle of his own and his father’s literary acquaintance, especially in the dramatic line. To the best of my recollection, he gave some entire lives, besides inserting abundance of paragraphs, of notes, anecdotes, and remarks, in those which were compiled by Shiells and other writers. I say other, because many of the best pieces of biography in that collection were not written by Shiells, but by superior hands. In short, the engagement of Cibber, or some other Englishman, to superintend what Shiells in particular should offer, was a measure absolutely necessary, not only to guard against his Scotticisms and other defects of expression, but his virulent Jacobitism, which inclined him to abuse every Whig character that came in his way. This, indeed, he would have done, but Cibber (a staunch Williamite) opposed and prevented him, inso-
