Monboddo is a wretched place, wild and naked, with a poor old house; though, if I recollect right, there are two turrets which mark an old baron’s residence.  Lord Monboddo received us at his gate most courteously; pointed to the Douglas arms upon his house, and told us that his great-grandmother was of that family.  ’In such houses (said he,) our ancestors lived, who were better men than we.’  ’No, no, my lord (said Dr. Johnson).  We are as strong as they, and a great deal wiser[238].’  This was an assault upon one of Lord Monboddo’s capital dogmas, and I was afraid there would have been a violent altercation in the very close, before we got into the house.  But his lordship is distinguished not only for ‘ancient metaphysicks,’ but for ancient politesse, ‘la vieille cour’ and he made no reply[239].

His lordship was dressed in a rustick suit, and wore a little round hat; he told us, we now saw him as Farmer Burnet[240], and we should have his family dinner, a farmer’s dinner.  He said, ’I should not have forgiven Mr. Boswell, had he not brought you here, Dr. Johnson.’  He produced a very long stalk of corn, as a specimen of his crop, and said, ‘You see here the loetas segetes[241];’ he added, that Virgil seemed to be as enthusiastick a farmer as he[242], and was certainly a practical one.  JOHNSON.  ’It does not always follow, my lord, that a man who has written a good poem on an art, has practised it.  Philip Miller told me, that in Philips’s Cyder, a poem, all the precepts were just, and indeed better than in books written for the purpose of instructing; yet Philips had never made cyder[243].’

I started the subject of emigration[244].  JOHNSON.  ’To a man of mere animal life, you can urge no argument against going to America, but that it will be some time before he will get the earth to produce.  But a man of any intellectual enjoyment will not easily go and immerse himself and his posterity for ages in barbarism.’

He and my lord spoke highly of Homer.  JOHNSON.  ’He had all the learning of his age.  The shield of Achilles shews a nation in war, a nation in peace; harvest sport, nay, stealing[245].’  MONBODDO.  ’Ay, and what we (looking to me) would call a parliament-house scene[246]; a cause pleaded.’  JOHNSON.  ’That is part of the life of a nation in peace.  And there are in Homer such characters of heroes, and combinations of qualities of heroes, that the united powers of mankind ever since have not produced any but what are to be found there.’  MONBODDO.  ’Yet no character is described.’  JOHNSON.  ’No; they all develope themselves.  Agamemnon is always a gentleman-like character; he has always [Greek:  Basilikon ti].  That the ancients held so, is plain from this; that Euripides, in his Hecuba, makes him the person to interpose[247].’  MONBODDO.  ’The history of manners is the most valuable.  I never set a high value on any other history.’  JOHNSON.  ’Nor