to London to be knighted, I was not so undistinguished as to be
unknown to him by name, or to be thought unworthy of his acquaintance.
I was given to understand, from what his own Ailie Gourlay calls a
sure hand, that a call from me was expected, and that I would be well
received. I went to his lodgings, in Piccadilly, with much of the same
palpitation of heart which Boswell experienced when introduced to
Johnson. I was welcomed with both hands, and such kind, and
complimentary words, that confusion and fear alike forsook me. When I
saw him in Edinburgh, he was in the very pith and flush of life--even
in my opinion a thought more fat than bard beseems; when I looked on
him now, thirteen years had not passed over him and left no mark
behind: his hair was growing thin and grey; the stamp of years and
study was on his brow: he told me he had suffered much lately from
ill-health, and that he once doubted of recovery. His eldest son, a
tall, handsome youth--now a major in the army--was with him. From that
time, till he left London, I was frequently in his company. He spoke
of my pursuits and prospects in life with interest and with
feeling--of my little attempts in verse and prose with a knowledge
that he had read them carefully--offered to help me to such
information as I should require, and even mentioned a subject in which
he thought I could appear to advantage. "If you try your hand on a
story," he observed, "I would advise you to prepare a kind of
skeleton, and when you have pleased yourself with the line of
narrative, you may then leisurely clothe it with flesh and blood."
Some years afterwards, I reminded him of this advice. "Did you follow
it?" he inquired. "I tried," I said; "but I had not gone far on the
road till some confounded Will-o-wisp came in and dazzled my sight, so
that I deviated from the path, and never found it again."--"It is the
same way with myself," said he, smiling; "I form my plan, and then I
deviate."--"Ay, ay," I replied, "I understand--we both deviate--- but