Grampian Club > Boswelliana

140 MEMOIR OF JAMES BOSWELL.
making public what had better have been concealed, and in
dragging into the controversy Sir Thomas Blacket, a near relative
of Sir Alexander's wife.* Both baronets made loud complaint,
and the chief of the Macdonalds spoke of vengeance by personal
chastisement. To this threat Peter Pindar thus pungently
alludes : —
t " Let Lord Macdonald threat thy breech to kick,
And o'er thy shrinking shoulders shake his stick ;
Treat with contempt the menace of this Lord,
'Tis Hist'ry's province, Bozzy, to record."
The displeasure which Boswell had excited was appeased by
a compromise. He agreed in his next edition to exclude Blacket's
anecdote, and to substitute allusion to IMacdonald's shabbiness
by quoting his Latin verses, welcoming the lexicographer to Sky.
In 1786 Boswell executed his Will, and it seems probable that
"the apprehension of danger to his life":!: to which in that
document he refers was due to the menace of the Highland
chief. If this conjecture is well founded, it is interesting to
her tea-table ; we picked up our sugar with our fingers. Boswell
was very angry, and reproached him with his improper parsimony.
. . . I have done thinking of Sir Alexander Macdonald, whom we
now call Sir Sawney; he has disgusted all mankind by injudicious
parsimony, and given occasion to so many stories, that Boswell has
some thoughts of collecting them, and making a novel of his life."
(Letters to Mrs. Thrale, vol. i., p. 137.)
* Lady Macdonald, nee Elizabeth Diana Bosville, was a member of
the eldest branch of the BosweU family, and was one of those gentle-
women to whom early in life Boswell thought of offering his hand (see
page 67). Daughter of Godfrey Bosville, Esq., of Gunthwaite,
Yorkshire, she married Sir Alexander Macdonald in 1768.
t Sir Alexander Macdonald, Bart., was raised to the peerage, as
Baron Macdonald of Slate, on the 17th July, 1776.
+ Seej'/Oo^fcrt.