West of Scotland_

During the day we spent in Glasgow, we were received in the college by a
number of the professors, who showed all due respect to Dr. Johnson; and
Dr. Leechman, Principal of the University, had the satisfaction of
telling Dr. Johnson that his name had been gratefully celebrated 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. On
Saturday we set out towards Ayrshire, and on November 2 reached my
father's residence, Auchinleck.

My father was not quite a year and a half older than Dr. Johnson. His
age, office, and character had long given him an acknowledged claim to
great attention in whatever company he was, and he could ill brook any
diminution of it. He was as sanguine a Whig and Presbyterian as Dr.
Johnson was a Tory and Church of England man; and as he had not much
leisure to be informed of Dr. Johnson's great merits by reading his
works, he had a partial and unfavourable notion of him, founded on his
supposed political tenets, which were so discordant to his own that,
instead of speaking of him with that respect to which he was entitled,
he used to call him "a Jacobite fellow."

Knowing all this, I should not have ventured to bring them together had
not my father, out of kindness to me, desired me to invite Dr. Johnson
to his house. All went very smoothly till one day they came into
collision. If I recollect right, the contest began while my father was
showing him his collection of medals; and Oliver Cromwell's coin
unfortunately introduced Charles the First and Toryism. They became
exceedingly warm and violent; and in the course of their altercation
Whiggism and Presbyterism, Toryism and Episcopacy were terribly
buffeted. My father's opinion of Dr. Johnson may be conjectured by the
name he afterwards gave him, which was "Ursa Major." However, on leaving
Auchinleck, November 8, for Edinburgh, my father, who had the dignified
courtsy of an old baron, was very civil to Dr. Johnson, and politely
attended him to the post-chaise. We arrived in Edinburgh on Tuesday
night, November 9, after an absence of eighty-three days.

My illustrious friend, being now desirous to be again in the great
theatre of life and animated exertion, took a place in the coach, which
was to set out for London, on Monday, November 22; but I resolved that
we should make a little circuit, as I would by no means lose the
pleasure