Life of Johnson: Germs, happiness, the Scots

Still in a dull-ish part, but here are some quotations I would like to remember.

Kenneth Macaulay (great-uncle of Thomas Macaulay, the Whig historian who so savaged Croker) wrote a history of St. Kilda, a very isolated island, in which he included a "wonderful story that upon the approach of a stranger all the inhabitants catch cold." Someone told him to leave it out; Johnson praised him for leaving it in: "To leave things out of a book, merely because people tell you they will not be believed, is meanness. Macaulay acted with more magnanimity." It has been a given for centuries that a man should tell the truth even when he will be attacked for it, which helps encourage honest men to do just that, but I at least had never thought how especially hard it can be to tell the truth when the reaction will simply be disbelief. I like the contrast of meanness and magnanimity, which says that a great-souled man knows the world to be so large that its oddities will exceed his own knowledge and that it is timidity to conceal them. The story was also likely true; it is explained elsewhere that the islanders rarely had ships visit, so for someone who knows about germ theory, it is easy to believe that each visit was a new exposure to diseases from the mainland.

Johnson, who persevered through life-long depression, said this about climate, which seemed directed towards me and my complaints about Seattle's gloom: "What is climate to happiness? Place me in the heart of Asia, should I not be exiled? What proportion does climate bear to the complex system of human life? You may advise me to go to live at Bologna to eat sausages. The sausages there are the best in the world; they lose much by being carried." Still, there is no denying that one of Seattle's rare sunny days lifts my spirits.

Johnson did not think much of the Scots, or at least he had some prejudice that he enjoyed using to tease Boswell. Johnson's critical acumen led him to reject the supposedly ancient Scottish poem Fingal, which had in fact been largely forged. In a letter to Boswell, speaking of the discoverer/forger's claim to have manuscripts (which he never produced), Johnson said, "If old manuscripts should now be mentioned, I should, unless there were more evidence than can be easily had, supposed them another proof of Scotch conspiracy in national falsehood. Do not censure the expression; you know it to be true." I happened to see a book (The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History) on the same topic, in the Telegraph I think, just last week; I would like to read it. Anyway, it is not a peculiar vice of the Scots, but a common disease of weak and resentful nations. Germany, Russia, Japan, Ireland, and most recently Mexico have all succumbed to it. I suppose multiculturalism prohibits the observation that men often lie to further a common delusion and that few delusions are as gripping as mystical nationalism.