wondered how any gentleman of Scotland could keep company with him, I thought he did not deserve the honour; yet, as it might be a convenience to Dr. Johnson, I contrived that he should accept the invitation, and engaged to conduct him." The convenience consisted in the fact that, as his house was on the London road, Johnson would not have to rise so early by two hours to catch the coach. Dalrymple had lately made a good deal of stir both in the world of literature and politics by the publication of his Memoirs. From these it had been learnt for the first time that Algernon Sidney had been a pensioner of the King of France. Horace Walpole had been roused to anger by the exposure of a man whose memory he revered. "Need I tell you," he wrote to Mason, "that Sir John Dalrymple, the accuser of bribery, was turned out of his place of Solicitor of the Customs for taking bribes from brewers?"[1] Hume was astonished at "the rage against him, on account of the most commendable action in his life," but he despised "his ranting, bouncing style."[2] Johnson had an equal contempt for it, calling it "his foppery." Boswell records in the spring of the year:
"I mentioned Sir John Dalrymplu's Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, and his discoveries to the prejudice of Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney. Johnson. 'Why, Sir, every body who had just notions of government thought them rascals before. It is well that all mankind now see them to be rascals. … This Dalrymple seems to be an honest fellow; for he tells equally what makes against both sides. But nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing, it is the mere bouncing of a schoolboy: Great He! but greater She! and such stuff.'"
In describing the last scene between Lord and Lady Russell he had said, "they parted for ever—he great in this last act of his life, but she greater."[3]
His portrait, which I saw in the Loan Exhibition of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, shows a cold conceited face. Dr. Carlyle gives an unpleasing account of him. After recounting how at a dinner he had once had "to divide a haunch of venison among fifteen without getting any portion of fat for himself," he continues, "But what signifies that, when you have an opportunity of obliging your friends? as Sir J. Dalrymple said to me one day when we had a haunch at the Poker, flattering me for a good piece, for he was a gourmand."[4] How must the indignation of this flattering
