Fàilte!
Johnson and Boswell in Scotland
The Highlands and the Islands
The Counties
James Boswell
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Boswell, James - born October 29, 1740, Edinburgh,
Scotland
Died May 19, 1795, London, England
Friend and biographer of Samuel Johnson (Life of
Johnson, 2 vol., 1791). The 20th-century publication
of his journals proved him to be also one of the
world's greatest diarists.
Boswell's father, Alexander Boswell, advocate and
laird of Auchinleck in Ayrshire from 1749, was raised
to the bench with the judicial title of Lord Auchinleck
in 1754. The Boswells were anold and well-connected
family, and James was subjected to the strong pressure
of an ambitious family.
Samuel Johnson
• Dr Samuel Johnson
September 7 (18), 1709
December 13, 1784 , often
referred to simply as Dr
Johnson, was one of
England's greatest literary
figures: a critic, poet,
essayist, biographer and
lexicographer.
Where have they been?
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Inch Keith
St.Andrews
Aberbrothick
Montrose
Aberdeen
Slanes Castle, the
Buller of Buchan
• Banff
• Elgin
• Fores, Calder, Fort
George
• Inverness
• Loch Ness
• Fall of Fiers
• Fort Augustus
• Anoch
Slanes/Slains Castle
Buller of Buchan
Buller of Buchan
Where else did they go?
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Glensheals
The Highlands
Glenelg
Skye, Armadale
(Armidel)
• Coriatachan (Skye)
• Raasay
• Dunvegan
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Ullinish
Talisker
Ostig
Col
Grissippol
Castle of Col
Mull
Ulva
Elgin
• Boswell:
The bishop’s house, and those
of the other clergy, which are
still pretty entire, do not seem
to have been proportioned to
the magnificence of the
cathedral, which has been of
great extent, and had very fine
carved work. The ground within
the walls of the cathedral is
employed as a burying-place.
The family of Gordon have
their vault here; but it has
nothing grand.
• Johnson:
Let us not however make too much
haste to despise our neighbours. Our
own cathedrals are mouldering by
unregarded dilapidation. It seems to
be part of the despicable philosophy of
the time to despise monuments of
sacred magnificence, and we are in
danger of doing that deliberately,
which the Scots did not do but in the
unsettled state of an imperfect
constitution. Those who had once
uncovered the cathedrals never wished
to cover them again; and being thus
made useless, they were, first
neglected, and perhaps, as the stone
was wanted, afterwards demolished.
Elgin Cathedral
And where else?
• Inch Kenneth
• Icolmkill (Iona)
• Invarary, Loch
Lomond
• Glasgow
• Back to Edinburgh
About the Higlands
• Boswell:
After breakfast, he (Johnson)
said to me, ‘A Highland chief
should now endeavour to do
every thing to raise his rents, by
means of the industry of his
people. Formerly, it was right
for him to have his house full of
idle fellows; they were his
defenders, his servants, his
dependants, his friends. Now
they may be better employed.
• Johnson:
That the primitive manners are
continued where the primitive
language is spoken, no nation will
desire me to suppose, for the
manners of mountaineers are
commonly savage, but they are
rather produced by their
situation than derived from their
ancestors. ...
Mountaineers are thievish,
because they are poor, and
having neither manufactures nor
commerce, can grow richer only
by robbery.
More on the Highlands
• Boswell:
The system of things is now so
much altered, that the family
cannot have influence but by
riches, because it has no longer
the power of ancient feudal
times. An individual of a family
may have it; but it cannot now
belong to a family, unless you
could have a perpetuity of men
with the same views.
• Johnson:
They regularly plunder their
neighbours, for their neighbours
are commonly their enemies;
and having lost that reverence
for property, by which the order
of civil life is preserved, soon
consider all as enemies, whom
they do not reckon as friends,
and think themselves licensed
to invade whatever they are not
obliged to protect.
Highland
Loch Ness
• Johnson: Civility seems part of the national character of Highlanders. Every
chieftain is a monarch, and politeness, the natural product of royal government, is
diffused from the laird through the whole clan. But they are not commonly dexterous:
their narrowness of life confines them to a few operations, and they are accustomed to
endure little wants more than to remove them.
Lough Ness, though not twelve miles broad, is a
very remarkable diffusion of water without
islands. It fills a large hollow between two
ridges of high rocks, being supplied partly by
the torrents which fall into it on either side, and
partly, as is supposed, by springs at the bottom.
Its water is remarkably clear and pleasant, and is
imagined by the natives to be medicinal. We
were told, that it is in some places a hundred
and forty fathoms deep, a profundity scarcely
credible, and which probably those that relate it
have never sounded. Its fish are salmon, trout,
and pike.
Armadale / Armidel on Skye
• Johnson: We landed at Armidel, where we were met on the sands by Sir
Alexander Macdonald, who was at that time there with his lady, preparing to leave the
island and reside at Edinburgh.
• Boswell: We reached the shore of Armidale before one o’clock. Sir Alexander
M’Donald came down to receive us. He and his lady (formerly Miss Bosville of
Yorkshire) were then in a house built by a tenant at this place, which is in the district of
Slate, the family mansion here having been burned in Sir Donald Macdonald’s time.
Talisker on Skye
• Johnson: Talisker is the place beyond all that I have seen, from which the gay
and the jovial seem utterly excluded; and where the hermit might expect to grow old in
meditation, without possibility of disturbance or interruption. It is situated very near the
sea, but upon a coast where no vessel lands but when it is driven by a tempest on the
rocks. Towards the land are lofty hills streaming with water-falls. The garden is
sheltered by firs or pines, which grow there so prosperously, that some, which the
present inhabitant planted, are very high and thick.
Isles of Mull and Iona
• Boswell:
• Johnson:
Mr. Boswell's curiosity strongly impelled him
to survey Iona, or Icolmkil, which was to the
early ages the great school of Theology, and
is supposed to have been the place of
sepulture for the ancient kings. I, though less
eager, did not oppose him....
We sent to hire horses to carry us across the
island of Mull to the shore opposite to
Inchkenneth, the residence of Sir Allan
M’Lean, uncle to young Col, and chief of the
M’Leans, to whose house we intended to go
the next day. Our friend Col went to visit his
aunt, the wife of Dr Alexander M’Lean, a
physician, who lives about a mile from
Tobermorie.
The Isle of Mull is perhaps in extent the third
of the Hebrides. It is not broken by waters,
nor shot into promontories, but is a solid and
compact mass, of breadth nearly equal to its
length. Of the dimensions of the larger
Islands, there is no knowledge approaching to
exactness. I am willing to estimate it as
containing about three hundred square miles.
Auchinleck
• Boswell:
My father was not quite a year and a half older than
Dr Johnson [...]; and as he had not much leisure to be
informed of Dr Johnson’s great merits by reading his
works, he had a partial and unfavourable notion of
him, founded on his supposed political tenets; which
were so discordant to his own, that, instead of
speaking of him with respect to which he was
entitled, he used to call him ‘a JACOBITE
FELLOW’. Knowing all this, I should not have
ventured to bring them together, had not my father,
out of kindness to me, desired me to invite Dr
Johnson his house.
I was very anxious that all should be well; and
begged of my friend to avoid three topicks, as to
which they differed very widely; Whiggism,
Presbyterianism, and—Sir John Pringle. He said
courteously, ‘I shall certainly not talk on subjects
which I am told are disagreeable to a gentleman
under whose roof I am; especially, I shall not do so to
YOUR FATHER.’
• Johnson:
From Glasgow we directed our course to Auchinleck,
an estate devolved, through a long series of
ancestors, to Mr. Boswell's father, the present
possessor. In our way we found several places
remarkable enough in themselves, but already
described by those who viewed them at more leisure,
or with much more skill; and stopped two days at Mr.
Campbell's, a gentleman married to Mr. Boswell's
sister.
...
Lord Auchinleck, who is one of the Judges of
Scotland, and therefore not wholly at leisure for
domestick business or pleasure, has yet found time to
make improvements in his patrimony. He has built a
house of hewn stone, very stately, and durable, and
has advanced the value of his lands with great
tenderness to his tenants.
...
Auchinleck, which signifies a stony field, seems not
now to have any particular claim to its denomination.
It is a district generally level, and sufficiently fertile,
but like all the Western side of Scotland,
incommoded by very frequent rain. It was, with the
rest of the country, generally naked, till the present
possessor finding, by the growth of some stately trees
near his old castle, that the ground was favourable
enough to timber, adorned it very diligently with
annual plantations.
Auchinleck House (built 1762)
Return to Edinburgh
• Boswell:
I wished to have shewn Dr Johnson the Duke
of Hamilton’s house, commonly called the
Palace of Hamilton, which is close by the
town. It is an object which, having been
pointed out to me as a splendid edifice, from
my earliest years, in travelling between
Auchinleck and Edinburgh, has still great
grandeur in my imagination. My friend
consented to stop, and view the outside of it,
but could not be persuaded to go into it.
We arrived this night at Edinburgh, after an
absence of eighty-three days. For five weeks
together, of the tempestuous season, there had
been no account received of us. I cannot
express how happy I was on finding myself
again at home.
• Johnson:
We now returned to Edinburgh, where I
passed some days with men of learning,
whose names want no advancement from my
commemoration, or with women of elegance,
which perhaps disclaims a pedant's praise.
The conversation of the Scots grows every
day less unpleasing to the English; their
peculiarities wear fast away; their dialect is
likely to become in half a century provincial
and rustick, even to themselves. The great,
the learned, the ambitious, and the vain, all
cultivate the English phrase, and the English
pronunciation, and in splendid companies
Scotch is not much heard, except now and
then from an old Lady.
Edinburgh views
Dun Eideann