To have the company of
Chambers and Scott, he delayed his journey so long, that the court of
session, which rises on the eleventh of August, was broke up before he
got to Edinburgh[41].
On Saturday the fourteenth of August, 1773, late in the evening, I
received a note from him, that he was arrived at Boyd's inn[42], at the
head of the Canongate. I went to him directly. He embraced me cordially;
and I exulted in the thought, that I now had him actually in Caledonia.
Mr. Scott's amiable manners, and attachment to our _Socrates_, at once
united me to him. He told me that, before I came in, the Doctor had
unluckily had a bad specimen of Scottish cleanliness[43]. He then drank
no fermented liquor. He asked to have his lemonade made sweeter; upon
which the waiter, with his greasy fingers, lifted a lump of sugar, and
put it into it. The Doctor, in indignation, threw it out of the window.
Scott said, he was afraid he would have knocked the waiter down. Mr.
Johnson told me, that such another trick was played him at the house of
a lady in Paris[44]. He was to do me the honour to lodge under my roof.
I regretted sincerely that I had not also a room for Mr. Scott. Mr.
Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High=street, to my house in
James's court[45]: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being
assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh.
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