Her grace made Dr. Johnson come and sit by her, and asked him why he made his journey so late in the year.  ’Why, madam, (said he,) you know Mr. Boswell must attend the Court of Session, and it does not rise till the twelfth of August.’  She said, with some sharpness, ’I know nothing of Mr. Boswell.’  Poor Lady Lucy Douglas[963], to whom I mentioned this, observed, ‘She knew too much of Mr. Boswell.’  I shall make no remark on her grace’s speech.  I indeed felt it as rather too severe; but when I recollected that my punishment was inflicted by so dignified a beauty, I had that kind of consolation which a man would feel who is strangled by a silken cord.  Dr. Johnson was all attention to her grace.  He used afterwards a droll expression, upon her enjoying the three titles of Hamilton, Brandon, and Argyle[964].  Borrowing an image from the Turkish empire, he called her a Duchess with three tails.

He was much pleased with our visit at the castle of Inverary.  The Duke of Argyle was exceedingly polite to him, and upon his complaining of the shelties which he had hitherto ridden being too small for him, his grace told him he should be provided with a good horse to carry him next day.

Mr. John M’Aulay passed the evening with us at our inn.  When Dr. Johnson spoke of people whose principles were good, but whose practice was faulty, Mr. M’Aulay said, he had no notion of people being in earnest in their good professions, whose practice was not suitable to them.  The Doctor grew warm, and said, ’Sir, you are so grossly ignorant of human nature, as not to know that a man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice[965]!’

Dr. Johnson was unquestionably in the right; and whoever examines himself candidly, will be satisfied of it, though the inconsistency between principles and practice is greater in some men than in others.

I recollect very little of this night’s conversation.  I am sorry that indolence came upon me towards the conclusion of our journey, so that I did not write down what passed with the same assiduity as during the greatest part of it.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26.

Mr. M’Aulay breakfasted with us, nothing hurt or dismayed by his last night’s correction.  Being a man of good sense, he had a just admiration of Dr. Johnson.

Either yesterday morning, or this, I communicated to Dr. Johnson, from Mr. M’Aulay’s information, the news that Dr. Beattie had got a pension of two hundred pounds a year[966].  He sat up in his bed, clapped his hands, and cried, ’O brave we[967]!’—­a peculiar exclamation of his when he rejoices[968].

As we sat over our tea, Mr. Home’s tragedy of Douglas was mentioned.  I put Dr. Johnson in mind, that once, in a coffee house at Oxford, he called to old Mr. Sheridan, ’How came you, Sir, to give Home a gold medal for writing that foolish play?’ and defied Mr. Sheridan to shew ten good lines in it.  He did not insist they should be together; but that there were not ten good lines in the whole play[969].  He now persisted in this.  I endeavoured to defend that pathetick and beautiful tragedy, and repeated the following passage:—­