[107] ’Hume recommended Fergusson’s friends to prevail on him to suppress the work as likely to be injurious to his reputation.’  When it had great success he said that his opinion remained the same.  He had heard Helvetius and Saurin say that they had told Montesquieu that he ought to suppress his Esprit des Lois.  They were still convinced that their advice was right.  J. H. Burton’s Hume, ii. 385-7.  It was at Fergusson’s house thirteen years later that Walter Scott, a lad of fifteen, saw Burns shed tears over a print by Bunbury of a soldier lying dead on the snow.  Lockhart’s Scott, i. 185.  See ib. vii. 61, for an anecdote of Fergusson.

[108] They were pulled down in 1789.  Murray’s Handbook for Scotland, ed. 1883, p. 60.

[109] See ante, ii. 128.

[110] See ante, iii. 357, and post, Johnson’s Tour into Wales, Aug. 1, 1774.

[111]

     ’There where no statesman buys,
        no bishop sells;
      A virtuous palace where no
        monarch dwells.’

An Epitaph.  Hamilton’s Poems, ed. 1760, p. 260.  See ante, iii. 150.

[112] The stanza from which he took this line is,

     ’But then rose up all Edinburgh,
       They rose up by thousands three;
     A cowardly Scot came John behind,
     And ran him through the fair body!’

[113] Johnson described her as ’an old lady, who talks broad Scotch with a paralytick voice, and is scarce understood by her own countrymen.’ Piozzi Letters, i.109.  Lord Shelburne says that ’her husband, the last Duke, could neither read nor write without great difficulty.’  Fitzmaurice’s Shelburne, i. 11.  Dr. A. Carlyle (Auto. p. 107) says that in 1745 he heard her say:—­’I have sworn to be Duchess of Douglas or never to mount a marriage bed.’  She married the Duke in 1758.  R. Chambers wrote in 1825:—­’It is a curious fact that sixty years ago there was scarcely a close in the High Street but what had as many noble inhabitants as are at this day to be found in the whole town.’ Traditions of Edinburgh, ed. 1825, i. 72.

[114] See ante, ii. 154, note 1.

[115] Lord Chesterfield wrote from London on Dec. 16, 1760 (Misc.  Works, iv. 291):—­’I question whether you will ever see my friend George Faulkner in Ireland again, he is become so great and considerable a man here in the republic of letters; he has a constant table open to all men of wit and learning, and to those sometimes who have neither.  I have been able to get him to dine with me but twice.’

[116] Dr. Johnson one evening roundly asserted in his rough way that “Swift was a shallow fellow; a very shallow fellow.”  Mr. Sheridan replied warmly but modestly, “Pardon me, Sir, for differing from you, but I always thought the Dean a very clear writer.”  Johnson vociferated “All shallows are clear."’ Town and Country Mag.  Sept. 1769. Notes and Queries, Jan. 1855, p. 62.  See ante, iv. 61.