n that city, yet his person
was obscure; for as he was altogether unsocial in his temper, he had but
few acquaintances, and those of a cast much inferior to himself, and
with whom he ought to have been ashamed to associate. It was some time
before he could be found out; and lord Stormont's kind intentions had
been defeated, if an advertisement had not been published in one of
their weekly papers, desiring the author of the Tears of the Muses to
call at the house of the attorney[1].

The personal obscurity of Mr. Boyse might perhaps not be altogether
owing to his habits of gloominess and retirement. Nothing is more
difficult in that city, than to make acquaintances; There are no places
where people meet and converse promiscuously: There is a reservedness
and gravity in the manner of the inhabitants, which makes a stranger
averse to approach them. They naturally love solitude; and are very slow
in contracting friendships. They are generous; but it is with a bad
grace. They are strangers to affability, and they maintain a haughtiness
and an apparent indifference, which deters a man from courting them.
They may be said to be hospitable, but not complaisant to strangers:
Insincerity and cruelty have no existence amongst them; but if they
ought not to be hated, they can never be much loved, for they are
incapable of insinuation, and their ignorance of the world makes them
unfit for entertaining sensible strangers. They are public-spirited, but
torn to pieces by factions. A gloominess in religion renders one part of
them very barbarous, and an enthusiasm in politics so transports the
genteeler part, that they sacrifice to party almost every consideration
of tenderness. Among such a people, a man may long live, little known,
and less instructed; for their reservedness renders them
uncommunicative, and their excessive haughtiness prevents them from
being solicitous of knowledge.

The Scots are far from being a dull nation; they are lovers of pomp and
shew; but then there is an eternal stiffness, a kind of affected
dignity, which spoils their pleasures. Hence we have the less reason to
wonder that Boyse lived obscurely at Edinburgh. His extreme carelesness
about his dress was a circumstance very inauspicious to a man who lives
in that city. They are such lovers of this kind of decorum, that they
will admit of no infringement upon it; and were a man with more wit than
Pope, and more philosophy than Newton, to appear at their mark