which had been lent him in the Temple that summer in which he first became acquainted with Johnson, for it, too, was a nest of lawyers. There were inhabiting it at this time thirteen advocates, among them Lord Elibank, seven Writers to the Signet and Clerks of Session, a Commissioner, and two first clerks of advocates. The other householders were only six in number: two physicians, one of whom was Sir John Pringle,[1] the President of the Royal Society of London, a teller in the Old Bank, a teacher of French, a dancing-mistress, and a gentlewoman. Pringle, who was Boswell's intimate friend, was one of "the three topics "which he begged Johnson to avoid at his father's house—Presbyterianism and Whiggism being the other two. If any one of these subjects were introduced an altercation was certain to follow, for all three were as dear to Lord Auchinleck as they were distasteful to Johnson. Here Hume had lived till very lately in a house "which was very cheerful and even elegant, but was too small," he complained, "to display his great talents for cookery." Nevertheless it had been the one spot to which, when abroad, his heart untravelled had fondly turned. Even in the palace at Fontainebleau, while fresh from the flattery of the three young princes who were in turn to be kings of France, in this high tide of his fortune it was for "his easy-chair and his retreat in James's Court that twice or thrice a day" he longed. Here he had welcomed Benjamin Franklin, here Adam Smith had been his frequent guest, and here he had offered a shelter to Rousseau. In his absence from Edinburgh Dr. Blair had been his tenant, and here, no doubt, had written some of those sermons and lectures which were to attain so wide a popularity, and then to sink into as deep a neglect. The time once was when Blair's shrine would have drawn a crowd of pilgrims.
Hume and Boswell had for a short time been very near neighbours, as it was in the same block of buildings[2] that they lived. If the elder man had entertained the American patriot, Franklin, the younger had entertained the Corsican patriot, Pascal Paoli. He could boast, moreover, of the distinguished guests who thronged his house during Johnson's two visits, both at his first coming and
- ↑ Pringle seems to have kept on a house in Edinburgh though he was for the most part living at this time in London. See Hume's Letters to Strahan, p. 117.
- ↑ The Scotch called each set of rooms on every floor a house, and each block a land. Thus Hume had once lived in Jack's Land, in the Canongate. A land of thirteen stories, such as was shown to Johnson at the foot of the Post-house Stairs would contain twenty-six houses—two on every floor.
