SUNDAY, AUGUST 29.

Mr. Keith breakfasted with us.  Dr. Johnson expatiated rather too strongly upon the benefits derived to Scotland from the Union[404], and the bad state of our people before it.  I am entertained with his copious exaggeration upon that subject; but I am uneasy when people are by, who do not know him as well as I do, and may be apt to think him narrow-minded[405].  I therefore diverted the subject.

The English chapel, to which we went this morning, was but mean.  The altar was a bare fir table, with a coarse stool for kneeling on, covered with a piece of thick sail-cloth doubled, by way of cushion.  The congregation was small.  Mr. Tait, the clergyman, read prayers very well, though with much of the Scotch accent.  He preached on ’Love your Enemies[406].’  It was remarkable that, when talking of the connections amongst men, he said, that some connected themselves with men of distinguished talents, and since they could not equal them, tried to deck themselves with their merit, by being their companions.  The sentence was to this purpose.  It had an odd coincidence with what might be said of my connecting myself with Dr. Johnson[407].

After church we walked down to the Quay.  We then went to Macbeth’s castle[408].  I had a romantick satisfaction in seeing Dr. Johnson actually in it.  It perfectly corresponds with Shakspear’s description, which Sir Joshua Reynolds has so happily illustrated, in one of his notes on our immortal poet[409]: 

’This castle hath a pleasant seat:  the air
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself
Unto our gentle sense,’ &c.[410]

Just as we came out of it, a raven perched on one of the chimney-tops, and croaked.  Then I repeated

’——­The raven himself is hoarse,
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements[411].’

We dined at Mr. Keith’s.  Mrs. Keith was rather too attentive to Dr. Johnson, asking him many questions about his drinking only water.  He repressed that observation, by saying to me, ’You may remember that Lady Errol took no notice of this.’

Dr. Johnson has the happy art (for which I have heard my father praise the old Earl of Aberdeen) of instructing himself, by making every man he meets tell him something of what he knows best.  He led Keith to talk to him of the Excise in Scotland, and, in the course of conversation, mentioned that his friend Mr. Thrale, the great brewer, paid twenty thousand pounds a year to the revenue; and that he had four casks, each of which holds sixteen hundred barrels,—­above a thousand hogsheads.