Thursday, 28th October

Mr Smollet pleased Dr Johnson, by producing a collection of news-papers in the time of the Usurpation, from which it appeared that all sorts of crimes were very frequent during that horrible anarchy. By the side of the high road to Glasgow, at some distance from his house, he had erected a pillar to the memory of his ingenious kinsman, Dr Smollet; and he consulted Dr Johnson as to an inscription for it. Lord Kames, who, though he had a great store of knowledge, with much ingenuity, and uncommon activity of mind, was no profound scholar, had it seems recommended an English inscription. Dr Johnson treated this with great contempt, saying ‘An English inscription would be a disgrace to Dr Smollet’; and, in answer to what Lord Kames had urged, as to the advantage of its being in English, because it would be generally understood, I observed, that all to whom Dr Smollet’s merit could be an object of respect and imitation, would understand it as well in Latin; and that surely it was not meant for the Highland drovers, or other such people, who pass and repass that way.

We were then shewn a Latin inscription, proposed for this monument. Dr Johnson sat down with an ardent and liberal earnestness to revise it, and greatly improved it by several additions and variations. I unfortunately did not take a copy of it, as it originally stood; but I have happily preserved every fragment of what Dr Johnson wrote:

Quisquis ades, viator,
Vel mente felix, vel studiis cultus,
Immorare paululum memoriae
TOBIAE SMOLLET M.D.
Viri iis virtutibus
Quas in homine et cive
Et laudes, et imiteris,
.....
Postquam mira...
Se.........
....
Tali tantoque viro, suo patrueli,
......
Hanc columnam,
Amoris eheul inane monumentum,
In ipsis Leviniae ripis,
Quas primis infans vagitibus personuit,
Versiculisque jam fere moriturus illustravit,
Ponendam curavit
.........†

We had this morning a singular proof of Dr Johnson’s quick and retentive memory. Hay’s translation of Martial was lying in a window. I said, I thought it was pretty well done, and shewed him a particular epigram, I think, of ten, but am certain of eight, lines. He read it, and tossed away the book, saying ‘No, it is NOT pretty well.’ As I persisted in my opinion, he said, ‘Why, sir, the original is thus’ (and he repeated it); ‘and this man’s translation is thus,’ and then he repeated that also, exactly, though he had never seen it before, and read it over only once, and that too, without any intention of getting it by heart.

Here a post-chaise, which I had ordered from Glasgow, came for us, and we drove on in high spirits. We stopped at Dunbarton, and though the approach to the castle there is very steep, Dr Johnson ascended it with alacrity, and surveyed all that was to be seen. During the whole of our tour he shewed uncommon spirit, could not bear to be treated like an old or infirm man, and was very unwilling to accept of any assistance, insomuch that, at our landing at Icolmkill, when Sir Allan McLean and I submitted to be carried on men’s shoulders from the boat to the shore, as it could not be brought quite close to land, he sprang into the sea, and waded vigorously out.

On our arrival at the Saracen’s Head Inn, at Glasgow, I was made happy by good accounts from home; and Dr Johnson, who had not received a single letter since we left Aberdeen, found here a great many, the perusal of which entertained him much. He enjoyed in imagination the comforts which we could now command, and seemed to be in high glee. I remember, he put a leg up on each side of the grate, and said, with a mock solemnity, by way of soliloquy, but loud enough for me to hear it, ‘Here am I, an ENGLISH man, sitting by a COAL fire.’