DOMINIE SAMPSON'S PRO-DI-GI-OUS. 37 



solitary and somewhat surly sort of business, whereas in the former 

 you have the chance of pleasant and agreeable companionship, 

 in addition to its other attractions. 



For one to make a discovery, and to think that oneself has made 

 a discovery, are two widely different things. We readily acknow- 

 ledge the distinction. That we have made a discovery we shall 

 not venture to affirm, but we think we have. Our discovery, if 

 discovery it be, is this, that Sir Walter Scott is indebted for 

 Dominie Sampson's " prodigious ! " to Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

 Who can think of the worthy, kind-hearted, most unsophisticated, 

 and withal most learned, albeit life-long kirkless parson, without 

 instantly recalling his favourite exclamation of " Pro-di-gi-ous ? " 

 We stumbled on our discovery in this wise : A few evenings ago 

 we -were reading the third volume of a very fine edition of Boswell's 

 " Johnson," kindly placed at our disposal by Lady Riddell of 

 Strontiau and a good edition of a good book is no small matter to 

 one so far removed from libraries as we are when we came to a 

 page that described Johnson's meeting with a gentleman who had 

 been his companion at Pembroke College, Oxford, some fifty years 

 previously. Mr. Edwards, for that was the gentleman's name, and 

 Boswell accompanied Johnson home, where, in course of con- 

 versation, Mr. Edwards said, addressing Johnson, " Sir, I remember 

 you would not let us say prodigious at college. For even then, sir 

 (turning to Boswell), he was delicate in language, and we all feared 

 him." Ifow, can any one doubt that it was having his attention 

 particularly called to the word in this passage that made Scott first 

 ponder the absurdity of using a word of such volume and import 

 on every trifling occasion, and caused him, possibly at a long sub- 

 sequent date (for Scott's memory, as we know, was prodigiously 

 Retentive there the word, you will observe, is pat and appropriate 

 enough prodigiously retentive, we say, of words, phrases, and odd 

 turns of expression) to put it so frequently as an exclamation of 



