and all of very coarse cloth."[1] How much more surprised would he have been at the far shorter gowns now worn by the commoners in his own university, showing, as they do, a raggedness which is not the effect of age and wear, but of intentional mutilation! There is an affectation of antiquity quite as much in a freshman's gown, as in the pedigree of some upstart who boasts that he is sprung from the Plantagenets. The college numbered at this time about four hundred students, most of whom lived in lodgings, but some boarded with the professors."[2]
The principal was Dr. Leechman, whose sermon on prayer had once raised a storm "among the high-flying clergy."[3]
"In his house Dr. Johnson had the satisfaction of being told that his name had been gratefully celebrated in one of the parochial congregations in the Highlands, as the person to whose influence it was chiefly owing that the New Testament was allowed to be translated into the Erse language. It seems some political members of the Society in Scotland for propagating Christian Knowledge had opposed this pious undertaking, as tending to preserve the distinction between the Highlanders and Lowlanders."
Johnson, in a letter full of generous indignation, had maintained that "he that voluntarily continues ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces," and had compared these political Christians to the planters of America, "a race of mortals whom, I suppose, no other man wishes to resemble."[4] Though he was no doubt struck by Leechman's appearance, "which was that of an ascetic, reduced by fasting and prayer," yet in his talk he could have had no pleasure. "He was not able to carry on common conversation, and when he spoke at all, it was a short lecture." The young students who were invited to his house, longed to be summoned from the library to tea in the drawing-room, where his wife "maintained a continued conversation on plays, novels, poetry, and the fashions."[5]
Dundonald Castle, Auchans (October 30—November 2).
On Saturday, October 30, our travellers set out on their way to Boswell's home at Auchinleck, in Ayrshire. Part of the way must
