FOOTNOTES:

‘Here falling houses thunder on your head, And here a female Atheist talks you dead.’”

“This country has arrived at the true pitch of comfort and happiness. The people are full of information, are natural, unassuming, and social, but with a great mixture of occupation. People meet together to be pleased, cheerful, and easy; even the Scotch pride has its uses by putting the poor often on an equal footing with the rich. A Douglas or a Scott would consider himself on a par with persons of the highest title and rank; their education is equally good, their society the same, their spirit and love of their country possibly much greater. Almost every family can boast of heroes in some generation, which excites emulation; and nothing is so uncommon as to see idle men and listless manners. All is energy, and every one has some object in view to exercise his faculties and talents. I must say, at the present time I think the race very superior to the English, who are too far gone in luxury and dissipation to be agreeable or happy. Morals here are certainly very good, and yet the manners are much more free, and one scarcely ever meets with affectation and airs. People meet like friends, and not with a cold bow and a distant curtsey.”

“Comes jucundus in via pro vehiculo est. “To John Wilkes, Esq., as pleasant a companion as ever lived.

From the Author.

“...Will my Wilkes retreat, And see, once seen before, that ancient seat,” &c.

“There the bright flame was shot through Marchmont’s soul.”

Dr. Johnson entertained a prejudice against him, but was induced by Boswell to wait on him for his recollections of Pope. Johnson was received by the earl with much cordiality, and at the close of a long interview he remarked to Boswell that he “would rather have given twenty pounds than not have come.” Lord Marchmont died on the 10th January, 1794, aged eighty-six.

“O Henderson! the man—the brother! And art thou gone, and gone for ever? And hast thou crossed that unknown river,

Life’s dreary bound?

Like thee where shall I find another

The world around?

“Go to your sculptured tombs, ye great, In a’ the tinsel trash o’ state! But by thy honest turf I’ll wait,

Thou man o’ worth!

And weep the ae best fellow’s fate

E’er lay in earth.”

In transmitting the poem to Mr. McMurdo, Burns writes from Ellisland, 2nd August, 1790, “You knew Henderson? I have not flattered his memory.” In a tract by the Lord Chief Commissioner Adam, entitled “Two Short Essays on the Study of History—the gift of a grandfather,” and printed at the Blair-Adam press in 1836, the author concludes a list of eminent Scotsmen, his contemporaries, with the following note:—“Besides these here enumerated, there were many others who made a respectable figure in the society of Edinburgh during the period here referred to (between 1750 and 1766), and there were some who stand more prominently forward, whose rank, whose wit, and whose taste and talent for conversation adorned the society when they joined it, such as Thomas, Earl of Kelly; Thomas, Earl of Haddington; Nisbet, of Dirleton; Matthew Henderson, at a future period distinguished by Burns; Sir Robert Murray, of Hillhead; George Brown, of Elliestoun, and others.”

“Numerisque fertur

Lege solutis.”

“Argyll, the state’s whole thunder born to wield, And shake alike the senate and the field.”

The Duke was born in 1678, and died in 1743.

“How blithe, ilk morn, was I to see

My swain come o’er the hill!

He skipt the burn and flew to me;

I met him with good-will.

Oh the brume, the bonnie, bonnie brume!

The brume o’ the Cowdenknowes!

I wish I were with my dear swain,

With his pipe and my yowes.”

“Views enamoured in her beauteous race

All Leveson’s sweetness and all Beaufort’s grace.”

In the “Life of Johnson,” Boswell, in allusion to having met the Hon. Mrs. Boscawen at dinner at Allan Ramsay’s (29th April, 1778), writes: “Of whom, if it be not presumptuous in me to praise her, I would say that her manners are the most agreeable, and her conversation the best, of any lady with whom I ever had the happiness to be acquainted.”

“Mrs. Webster begs Mrs. Boswell would set about the collection for poor Mr. Colville, who is truly starving and has not a house to cover his head. Mr. Ely Campbell has too much humanity not to give something handsome.”