WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25.

We got up between seven and eight, and found Mr. Boyd in the dining-room, with tea and coffee before him, to give us breakfast.  We were in an admirable humour.  Lady Errol had given each of us a copy of an ode by Beattie, on the birth of her son, Lord Hay.  Mr. Boyd asked Dr. Johnson how he liked it.  Dr. Johnson, who did not admire it, got off very well, by taking it out, and reading the second and third stanzas of it with much melody.  This, without his saying a word, pleased Mr. Boyd.  He observed, however, to Dr. Johnson, that the expression as to the family of Errol,

     ‘A thousand years have seen it shine,’

compared with what went before, was an anticlimax, and that it would have been better

     ‘Ages have seen,’ &c.

Dr. Johnson said, ’So great a number as a thousand is better. Dolus latet in universalibus.  Ages might be only two ages.’  He talked of the advantage of keeping up the connections of relationship, which produce much kindness.  ’Every man (said he,) who comes into the world, has need of friends.  If he has to get them for himself, half his life is spent before his merit is known.  Relations are a man’s ready friends who support him.  When a man is in real distress, he flies into the arms of his relations.  An old lawyer, who had much experience in making wills, told me, that after people had deliberated long, and thought of many for their executors, they settled at last by fixing on their relations.  This shews the universality of the principle.’

I regretted the decay of respect for men of family, and that a Nabob now would carry an election from them.  JOHNSON.  ’Why, Sir, the Nabob will carry it by means of his wealth, in a country where money is highly valued, as it must be where nothing can be had without money; but, if it comes to personal preference, the man of family will always carry it[322].  There is generally a scoundrelism about a low man[323].’  Mr. Boyd said, that was a good ism.

I said, I believed mankind were happier in the ancient feudal state[324] of subordination, than they are in the modern state of independency.  JOHNSON.  ’To be sure, the Chief was:  but we must think of the number of individuals.  That they were less happy, seems plain; for that state from which all escape as soon as they can, and to which none return after they have left it, must be less happy; and this is the case with the state of dependance on a chief or great man.’