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BOSWELLIANA. 207
Tower for high treason. Harry Erskine said, ' The next thing we
shall have will be an account of Lord George Gordon without
his head.' " I was present.
" When Boswell was introduced to Mr. Samuel Johnson, who
had a very great antipathy at the Scotch, ' Mr. Johnson,' said he,
' I come from Scotland, but I can't help it.' ' Sir,' said Johnson,
' that I find is what a very great many of your countrymen
cannot help.' " *
" Lord Eglintoune f said that the hear^ of the ladies were
like a looking-glass, which will reflect an image of the object
that is present, but retains no trace of what is absent,"
I was present.
" Doctor Blair J asked Macpherson§ why he lived in England,
where he died on the 1st November, 1793. Lord George Gordon
evidently laboured under mental aberration, and ought to have been
placed in a lunatic asylum.
* This anecdote is included by Boswell in his " Life of Johnson."
f Alexander, tenth Earl of Eglinton, was a friend of the Auch-
inleck family, and one of Boswell's early patrons. Born in 1726, he
succeeded his father in his third year. A zealous promoter of agri-
culture, he was much beloved by his tenantry and neighbours. He
was mortally wounded by a poacher, whom he sought forcibly to
deprive of his firelock : he died on the 2,5th October, 1769.
I Dr. Hugh Blair, the celebrated preacher and rhetorician, was a
central figure in the literary society of Edinbiugh. He was collegiate
minister of the High Church, and professor of rhetoric in the
University. The first volume of his " Sermons " was published by
Strahan, on the recommendation of Dr. Johnson. Dr. Blair was an
early patron of Burns, and to his encouragement and active assistance
Macpherson was much indebted in producing his first specimens of
Ossianic poetry. Dr. Blair died at Edinburgh on the 27th December,
1800, aged eighty-two.
§ James Macpherson, the editor of Ossian, established his residence
in London in 1766, in his twenty-eighth year. Li 1780 he was elected
M.P. for Camelford. He died at Belleville, Inverness-shire, on the 17th
February, 1796, aged fifty-eight. Boswell's allusion to John Bull is