United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All hail Dalblair! hail to thee, Laird of Auchinleck! We got to Fores at night, and found an admirable inn, in which Dr Johnson was pleased to meet with a landlord who styled himself 'Wine-Cooper, from London'. Friday, 27th August It was dark when we came to Fores last night; so we did not see what is called King Duncan's monument. I shall now mark some gleanings of Dr Johnson's conversation.
As I wandered with my reverend friend in the groves of Auchinleck, I told him, that, if I survived him, it was my intention to erect a monument to him here, among scenes which, in my mind, were all classical; for in my youth I had appropriated to them many of the descriptions of the Roman poets.
There is another rock near it, to which the drawbridge, when it was let down, is said to have reached. Here, in the ages of tumult and rapine, the Laird was surprised and killed by the neighbouring Chief, who perhaps might have extinguished the family, had he not in a few days been seized and hanged, together with his sons, by Douglas, who came with his forces to the relief of Auchinleck.
To add to the confusion of Lord Auchinleck his son had flung himself with all his enthusiasm into the famous Douglas Trial, the cause that figures so much to the confusion, it is to be feared, of the general reader.
The exasperation of the King, the dead-lock of all authority, the absolutely impracticable point at which the two almost equal powers had arrived, account for, though they do not excuse, such a breach of faith. The "Schort Memorial of the Scottis Cronikles," called the Auchinleck Chronicle, gives a brief but striking account of the proceedings that followed.
But he did not come alone; he was accompanied by Lord Auchinleck, the son of one of the betrayed barons who had fallen in the palace of Ayr.
'The difference with Lord Auchinleck is now over; and since young Alexander has appeared, I hope no more difficulties will arise among you; for I sincerely wish you all happy. Do not teach the young ones to dislike me, as you dislike me yourself; but let me at least have Veronica's kindness, because she is my acquaintance. 'You will now have Mr.
'Is that a'your objection, mon? said the judge; 'come your ways in here, and we'll baith of us tak the solemn league and covenant together. The oath was accordingly agreed and sworn to by both, and I dare say it was the last time it ever received such homage. It may be surmised how far Lord Auchinleck, such as he is here described, was likely to suit a high Tory and episcopalian like Johnson.
He saw Auchinleck in somewhat altered circumstances from those in which, four years before, he had left his father's house, riding through Glasgow 'in a cocked hat, a brown wig, brown coat made in the court fashion, red vest, corduroy small clothes, and long military-looking boots, with his servant riding a most aristocratic distance behind. He had left it likely to vex the soul of his father, the laureate of doggerel, threatening to be the disgrace of the family; he returned as the acquaintance, in varying degrees of intimacy, of Johnson, Wilkes, Churchill, Goldsmith, the Earl Marischal, Voltaire, Rousseau, Paoli, Chatham, and plenipotentiaries of all kinds.
The son had on his northern tour the pleasure to note, both at Aberdeen and at Inverness, the high regard in which the old judge was held, and to find his name and connection a very serviceable means of introduction to the travellers in their 'transit over the Caledonian hemisphere. Like the father of Scott, who kept the whole bead-roll of cousins and relations and loved a funeral, Lord Auchinleck bequeathed to his eldest son at least one characteristic, the attention to relatives in the remotest degree of kin.
Word Of The Day