The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [209]
Johnson proceeded: ‘Even Sir Francis Wronghead248 is a character of manners, though drawn with great humour.’ He then repeated, very happily, all Sir Francis’s credulous account to Manly of his being with ‘the great man,’ and securing a place. I asked him, if The Suspicious Husband249 did not furnish a well-drawn character, that of Ranger. Johnson. ‘No, Sir; Ranger is just a rake, a mere rake, and a lively young fellow, but no character.’
The great Douglas Cause250 was at this time a very general subject of discussion. I found he had not studied it with much attention, but had only heard parts of it occasionally. He, however, talked of it, and said, I am of opinion that positive proof of fraud should not be required of the plaintiff, but that the Judges should decide according as probability shall appear to preponderate, granting to the defendant the presumption of filiation to be strong in his favour. And I think too, that a good deal of weight should be allowed to the dying declarations, because they were spontaneous. There is a great difference between what is said without our being urged to it, and what is said from a kind of compulsion. If I praise a man’s book without being asked my opinion of it, that is honest praise, to which one may trust. But if an authour asks me if I like his book, and I give him something like praise, it must not be taken as my real opinion.’
I have not been troubled for a long time with authours desiring my opinion of their works. I used once to be sadly plagued with a man who wrote verses, but who literally had no other notion of a verse, but that it consisted of ten syllables. Lay your knife and your fork, across your plate, was to him a verse:
Lay your knife and your fork, across your plate.
As he wrote a great number of verses, he sometimes by chance made good ones, though he did not know it.’
He renewed his promise of coming to Scotland, and going with me to the Hebrides, but said he would now content himself with seeing one or two of the most curious of them. He said, ‘Macaulay, who writes the account of St. Kilda, set out with a prejudice against prejudices, and wanted to be a smart modern thinker; and yet he affirms for a truth, that when a ship arrives there, all the inhabitants are seized with a cold.’
Dr. John Campbell, the celebrated writer, took a great deal of pains to ascertain this fact, and attempted to account for it on physical principles, from the effect of effluvia from human bodies. Johnson, at another time, praised Macaulay for his ‘‘magnanimity,’ in asserting this wonderful story, because it was well attested. A Lady of Norfolk, by a letter to my friend Dr. Burney, has favoured me with the following solution: ‘Now for the explication of this seeming mystery, which is so very obvious as, for that reason, to have escaped the penetration of Dr. Johnson and his friend, as well as that of the authour. Reading the book with my ingenious friend, the late Reverend Mr. Christian, of Docking – after ruminating a little, “The cause, (says he,) is a natural one. The situation of St. Kilda renders a North-East Wind indispensably necessary before a stranger can land. The wind, not the stranger, causes an epidemic cold.” If I am not mistaken, Mr. Macaulay is dead; if living, this solution might please him, as