Taylor, I rode
out with our host, surveyed his farm, and was shown one cow which he had
sold for a hundred and twenty guineas, and another for which he had been
offered a hundred and thirty[421]. Taylor thus described to me his old
schoolfellow and friend, Johnson: 'He is a man of a very clear head,
great power of words, and a very gay imagination; but there is no
disputing with him. He will not hear you, and having a louder voice than
you, must roar you down.'
In the afternoon I tried to get Dr. Johnson to like the Poems of Mr.
Hamilton of Bangour[422], which I had brought with me: I had been much
pleased with them at a very early age; the impression still remained on
my mind; it was confirmed by the opinion of my friend the Honourable
Andrew Erskine, himself both a good poet[423] and a good critick, who
thought Hamilton as true a poet as ever wrote, and that his not having
fame was unaccountable. Johnson, upon repeated occasions, while I was at
Ashbourne, talked slightingly of Hamilton. He said there was no power of
thinking in his verses, nothing that strikes one, nothing better than
what you generally find in magazines; and that the highest praise they
deserved was, that they were very well for a gentleman to hand about
among his friends.
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