[80] _Works_, p. 382. The evident meaning of the last sentence is that Lesley's ways were so dark that it was highly necessary for him often to ask, "See ye?" Yet one cannot help feeling that this relentless creditor may not have been solely animated by malignant hatred of his debtor. Even in the above speech there seem to be claims which cannot be lightly brushed aside. One is again reminded of Mr Micawber, and of the sudden and unexpected glimpse of a better nature in his most truculent creditor, which was vouchsafed him when he got his discharge in bankruptcy. "Even the revengeful bootmaker," we are told, "declared in open court that he bore him [Mr M.] no malice, but that when money was owing to him he liked to be paid. He said he thought it was human nature" (_David Copperfield_, chap. xii.). An eminent American philosopher has said that there is a great deal of human nature in man. There seems at any rate to have been a great deal in Mr Lesley of Findrassie.
[81] In one of his queer _Epigrams_, after comparing the insatiable demands of his creditors to those of the grave and of the sea, he closes with the following alliterative litany:
"Free me from Farcher, Fraser, Fendrasie."
[82] "His subjects and familiars surnamed him [Esormon] ουροχἀρτοϛ, that is [to] say, 'fortunate and well-beloved'" (_Works_, p. 156).
[84] _Acts of the Parliament of Scotland_, vol. vii. 479, _a_, _b_.
[85] The parish of Cromartie consists of the north-east portion of the peninsula called the Black Isle, terminating eastward in the precipice called the Southern Sutor, and stretches for about four miles along the shore of the Moray Firth on the east, and about six along that of the Firth of Cromartie on the north and west. To the west of the parish of Cromartie were situated the joint parishes of Kirkmichael and Cullicudden, on the southern shore of the Cromartie Firth. In Sir Thomas Urquhart's time these were separate parishes, but they were united in 1662, and a new church was built at Resolis, in Kirkmichael, near the border of Cullicudden. The newly constituted parish bore and still bears the name of Resolis.
[86] In his _Logopandecteision_ he speaks of the "stipauctionarie tide" which began to overflow the land. He thought "with sufficient bulwarks of good argument to have stayed the inundation thereof from two of his churches"; but, he says, "I was violently driven like a feather before a whirlewind, notwithstanding all my defences, to the sanctuary of an inforced patience" (_Works_, p. 352). He does not, however, appear to have stayed long in this sanctuary, or else the shelter it afforded was but imperfect. His "_stipauctionarie_" (_i.e._ stipend-increasing) reminds us of Mr Micawber's calling his salary his "_stipendiary emoluments_."