many parts of this country: he will meet with many persons here who
respect him, and some whom I am persuaded he will think not unworthy
of his esteem. I wish he would make the experiment. He sometimes
cracks his jokes upon us; but he will find that we can distinguish
between the stabs of malevolence, and 'the rebukes of the righteous,
which are like excellent oil [footnote: Our friend Edmund Burke, who
by this time had received some pretty severe strokes from Dr Johnson,
on account of the unhappy difference in their politicks, upon my
repeating this passage to him, exclaimed, 'Oil of vitriol!'], and
break not the head'. Offer my best compliments to him, and assure him
that I shall be happy to have the satisfaction of seeing him under my
roof.

To Dr Beattie I wrote,

The chief intention of this letter is to inform you, that I now
seriously believe Mr Samuel Johnson will visit Scotland this year: but
I wish that every power of attraction may be employed to secure our
having so valuable an acquisition, and therefore I hope you will
without delay write to me what I know you think, that I may read it to
the mighty sage, with proper emphasis, before I leave London, which I
must soon. He talks of you with the same warmth that he did last year.
We are to see as much of Scotland as we can, in the months of August
and September. We shall not be long of being at Marischal College
[footnote: This, I find, is a Scotticism. I should have said, 'It will
not be long before we shall be at Marischal College.']. He is
particularly desirous of seeing some of the Western Islands.

Dr Beattie did better: ipse venit. He was, however, so polite as to
wave his privilege of nil mihi rescribus, and wrote from Edinburgh, as