here is a
pleasure in the song which none but the songstress knows, and by telling
her we know it all ready we should make the poor devil unhappy.'
Lockharts _Scott_, ed. 1839, ii. 106.

[1115] _ O rare Ben Jonson_ is on Jonson's tomb in Westminster Abbey.

[1116] See _ante_, ii. 365.

[1117] 'Essex was at that time confined to the same chamber of the Tower
from which his father Lord Capel had been led to death, and in which his
wife's grandfather had inflicted a voluntary death upon himself. When he
saw his friend carried to what he reckoned certain fate, their common
enemies enjoying the spectacle, and reflected that it was he who had
forced Lord Howard upon the confidence of Russel, he retired, and, by a
_Roman death_, put an end to his misery.' Dalrymple's _Memoirs of Great
Britain and Ireland_, vol. i. p. 36. BOSWELL. In the original after 'his
wife's grandfather,' is added 'Lord Northumberland.' It was his wife's
great-grandfather, the eighth Earl of Northumberland. He killed himself
in 1585. Burke's _Peerage_.

[1118] Dr. A. Carlyle (_Auto_. p. 293) says of Robertson and
Blair:--'Having been bred at a time when the common people thought to
play with cards or dice was a sin, and everybody thought it an indecorum
in clergymen, they could neither of them play at golf or bowls, and far
less at cards or backgammon, and on that account were very unhappy when
from home in friends' houses in the country in rainy weather. As I had
set the first example of playing at cards at home with unlocked door
[Carlyle was a minister], and so relieved the clergy from ridicule on
that side, they both learned to play at whist after they were sixty.'
See _ante_, iii. 23.

[1119] See _ante_, i. 149, and v. 350.

[1120] See _ante_, iv. 54.

[1121] He wrote to Boswell on Nov. 16, 1776 (_ante_, iii. 93):--'The
expedition to the Hebrides was the most pleasant journey that I ever
made.' In his _Diary_ he recorded on Jan. 9, 1774:--'In the autumn I
took a journey to the Hebrides, but my mind was not free from
perturbation.' _Pr. and Med._ p. 136. The following letter to Dr. Taylor
I have copied from the original in the possession of my friend Mr. M. M.
Holloway:--

'DEAR SIR,

'When I was at Edinburgh I had a letter from you, telling me that in
answer to some enquiry you were informed that I was in the Sky. I was
then I suppose in the western islands of Scotland; I set out on the
northern expedition August 6, and came back to Fleet