[Sidenote: THE “LITH” IN THE NECKS OF KINGS.]
“The controversy between Tory and Covenanter raged with great fury, and ended in Johnson’s pressing upon the old judge the question, what good Cromwell, of whom he had said something derogatory, had ever done to his country; when, after being much tortured, Lord Auchinleck at last spoke out, ‘God, Doctor! he gart kings ken that they had a _lith_ in their neck’—he taught kings they had a _joint_ in their necks.”
This story did not, I believe, appear in print till the year 1831, when it was given as a note by Scott in Mr. Croker’s edition of _Boswell_. Fifty years earlier it had been told in somewhat different words of Quin the player, who had said that “on a thirtieth of January every king in Europe would rise with a crick in his neck.” Davies, who records the anecdote, says that it had been attributed to Voltaire, but unjustly.[798] It is possible, and even not unlikely, that we have but a Scotch version of an English saying. Cromwell himself, in his letter to the governor of Edinburgh Castle, had shown that he too saw this consequence of his great deed. “The civil authority,” he writes, “turned out a Tyrant in a way which the Christians in aftertimes will mention with honour, and all Tyrants in the world look at with fear.”[799]
In one happy though impudent retort, Lord Auchinleck was very successful.
“Dr. Johnson challenged him (writes Boswell) to point out any theological works of merit written by Presbyterian ministers in Scotland. My father, whose studies did not lie much in that way, owned to me afterwards, that he was somewhat at a loss how to answer, but that luckily he recollected having read in catalogues the title of _Durham on the Galatians_; upon which he boldly said, ‘Pray, Sir, have your read Mr. Durham’s excellent commentary on the Galatians?’ ‘No, Sir,’ said Dr. Johnson. By this lucky thought my father kept him at bay, and for some time enjoyed his triumph; but his antagonist soon made a retort, which I forbear to mention.”
In the long list of Durham’s theological works in the British Museum catalogue I find no mention of this book on the Galatians. The old judge, it is clear, had not forgotten in the years which he had sat on the bench the arts of the advocate. In Rowlandson’s Caricatures there is a humorous picture of _The Contest at Auchinleck_. Johnson is drawn felling his opponent with a huge liturgy, having made him drop two books equally big, entitled _Calvin_ and _Whiggism_. On the floor are lying the medals over which the dispute had begun, while Boswell is at the door in an attitude of despair, with his _Journal_ falling from his hands.