at this very time he had joined with some of his prejudiced countrymen in railing at Dr. Johnson, and had said, he wondered how any gentleman of Scotland could keep company with him, I thought he did not deserve the honour; yet, as it might be a convenience to Dr. Johnson, I contrived that he should accept the invitation, and engaged to conduct him. I resolved that, on our way to Sir John's, we should make a little circuit by Roslin Castle and Hawthornden, and wished to set out soon after breakfast; but young Mr. Tytler came to show Dr. Johnson some essays which he had written; and my great friend, who was exceedingly obliging when thus consulted, was detained so long, that it was, I believe, one o'clock before we got into our post-chaise. I found that we should be too late for dinner at Sir John Dalrymple's, to which we were engaged; but I would by no means lose the pleasure of seeing my friend at Hawthornden-of seeing Sam Johnson at the very spot where Ben Jonson visited the learned and poetical Drummond.

We surveyed Roslin Castle, the romantic scene around it, and the beautiful Gothic chapel, and dined and drank tea at the inn; after which we proceeded to Hawthornden, and viewed the caves; and I all the while had Rare Ben in my mind, and was pleased to think that this place was now visited by another celebrated wit of England.

By this time "the waning night was growing old," and we were yet several miles from Sir John Dalrymple's. Dr. Johnson did not seem much troubled at our having treated the baronet with so little attention to politeness; but when I talked of the grievous disappointment it must have been to him that we did not come to the feast that he had prepared for us (for he told us he had killed a seven-year-old sheep on purpose), my friend got into a merry mood, and jocularly said, "I dare say, Sir, he has been very sadly distressed; nay, we do not know but the consequence may have been fatal. Let me try to describe his situation in his own historical style. I have as good a right to make him think and talk, as he has to tell us how people thought and talked a hundred years ago, of which he has no evidence. All history, so far as it is not supported by contemporary evidence, is romance.-Stay now-let us consider!" He then (heartily laughing all the while) proceeded in his imitation, I

LT. 64.

CRANSTON-BLACKSHIELDS.

25

am sure to the following effect, though now, at the distance of almost twelve years, I cannot pretend to recollect all the precise words.

His

"Dinner being ready, he wondered that his guests were not yet come. wonder was soon succeeded by impatience. He walked about the room in anxious agitation; sometimes he looked at his watch, sometimes he looked out at the window with an eager gaze of expectation, and revolved in his mind the various accidents of human life. His family beheld him with mute con

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tern. Surely,' said he, with a sigh, they will not fail me.' The mind of man can bear a certain pressure; but there is a point when it can bear no more. A rope was in his view, and he died a Roman death."1

It was very late before we reached the seat of Sir John Dalrymple, who, certainly with some reason, was not in very good humour. Our conversation was not brilliant. We supped, and went to bed in ancient rooms, which would have better suited the climate of Italy in summer, than that of Scotland in the month of November.

I recollect no conversation of the next day worth preserving, except one saying of Dr. Johnson, which will be a valuable text for many decent old dowagers, and other good company, in various circles to descant upon. He said, "I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society." He certainly could not mean deep play.

My friend and I thought we should be more comfortable at the inn at Blackshields, two miles farther on. We therefore went thither in the evening, and he was very entertaining; but I have preserved nothing but the pleasing remembrance, and his verses on George the Second and Cibber, and his epitaph on Parnell, which he was then so good as to dictate to me. We breakfasted together next morning, and then the coach came, and took him up. He had, as one of his companions in it, as far as Newcastle, the worthy and ingenious Dr. Hope, botanical professor at Edinburgh. Both Dr. Johnson and he used to speak of their good fortune in thus accident

1 Essex was at that time confined to the same chamber of the Tower from which his father Lord Capel had been led to death, and in which his wife's grandfather had inflicted a voluntary death upon himself. When he saw his friend carried to what he reckoned certain fate, their common enemies enjoying the spectacle, and reflected that it was he who had forced Lord Howard upon the confidence of Russell, he retired, and by a Roman death, put an end his misery.”—Dalrymple's Memoirs, vol. i. p 86.

ally meeting; for they had much instructive conversation, which is always a most valuable enjoyment, and, when found where it is not expected, is peculiarly relished.

I have now completed my account of our Tour to the Hebrides. I have brought Dr. Johnson down to Scotland, and seen him into the coach which in a few hours carried him back into England. He said to me often, that the time he spent in this Tour was the pleasantest part of his life, and asked me if I would lose the recollection of it for five hundred pounds. I answered I would not; and he applauded my setting such a value on an accession of new images in my mind.

Had it not been for me, I am persuaded Dr. Johnson never would bave undertaken such a journey; and I must be allowed to assume some merit from having been the cause that our language has been enriched with such a book as that which he published on his return; a book which I never read but with the utmost admiration, as I had such opportunities of knowing from what very meagre materials it was composed.

But my praise may be supposed partial; and therefore I shall insert two testimonies, not liable to that objection, both written by gentlemen of Scotland, to whose opinions I am confident the highest respect will be paid, Lord Hailes and Mr. Dempster.

LETTER 166.

66

LORD HAILES TO MR. BOSWELL.

"Newhalles, Feb. 6, 1775.

"SIR,-I have received much pleasure and much instruction from perusing the ‘Journey to the Hebrides.' I admire the elegance and variety of description, and the lively picture of men and manners. I always approve of the moral, often of the political reflections. I I love the benevolence of the author. They who search for faults may possibly find them in this, as well as in every other work of literature. For example, the friends of the old family say that the era of planting is placed too late, at the union of the two kingdoms. I am known to be no friend of the old family; yet I would place the era of planting at the restoration; after the murder of Charles I. had been expiated in the anarchy which succeeded it.

"Before the restoration, few trees were planted, unless by the monastic drones: their successors (and worthy patriots they were), the barons, first cut down the trees, and then sold the estates. The gentleman at St. Andrews, who said that there were but two trees in Fife, ought to have added, that the

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JOURNEY TO THE HEBRIDES.

27

elms of Balmerino were sold within these twenty years, to make pumps for the fire-engines.

"In J. Major de Gestis Scotorum, l. i. c. 2, last edition, there is a singular passage:

"Davidi Cranstoneo conteraneo, dum de prima theologiæ licentia foret, duo ei consocii et familiares, et mei cum eo in artibus auditores, scilicet Jacobus Almain Senonensis, et Petrus Bruxcellensis, Prædicatoris ordinis, in Sorbonæ curia die Sorbonico commilitonibus suis publice objecerunt, quod pane avenaceo plebeii Scoți, sicut a quodam religioso intellexerant, vescebantur, ut virum, quem cholericum noverant, honestis salibus tentarent, qui hoc inficiari tanquam patriæ dedecus nisus est.'

"Pray introduce our countryman, Mr. Licentiate David Cranston, to the acquaintance of Mr. Johnson.

"The syllogism seems to have been this:—

"MY DEAR BOSWELL, I cannot omit a moment to return you my best thanks for the entertainment you have furnished me, my family, and guests, by the perusal of Dr. Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands;' and now for my sentiments of it. I was well entertained. His descriptions are accurate and vivid. He carried me on the tour along with him. I am pleased with the justice he has done to your humour and vivacity. The noise of the wind being all its own,' is a bon-mot, that it would have been a pity to have omitted, and a robbery not to have ascribed to its author.'

"There is nothing in the book, from beginning to end, that a Scotchman need to take amiss. What he says of the country is true, and his observations on the people are what must naturally occur to a sensible, observing, and reflecting inhabitant of a convenient metropolis, where a man on thirty pounds a year may be better accommodated with all the little wants of life than Col or Sir Allan. He reasons candidly about the second-sight; but I wish he had inquired more, before he ventured to say he even doubted of the possibility of such an unusual and useless deviation from all the known laws of nature. The notion of the second-sight I consider as a remnant of superstitious ignorance and credulity, which a philosopher will set down as such, till the contrary is

1 "I know not that I ever heard the wind so loud in any other place (as in Col]; and Mr. Boswell observed, that its noise was all its own, for there were no trees to increase it." Johnson's Journey.-C.

clearly proved, and then it will be classed among the other certain, though unaccountable parts of our nature, like dreams, and—I do not know what.

In regard to the language, it has the merit of being all his own. Many words of foreign extraction are used, where I believe, common ones would do as well, especially on familiar occasions. Yet I believe he could not express himself so forcibly in any other style. I am charmed with his researches concerning the Erse language, and the antiquity of their manuscripts. I am quite convinced; and I shall rank Ossian, and his Fingals and Oscars, amongst the nursery tales, not the true history of our country, in all time to come.

"Upon the whole the book cannot displease, for it has no pretensions. The author neither says he is a geographer, nor an antiquarian, nor very learned in the History of Scotland, nor a naturalist, nor a fossilist. The manners of the people, and the face of the country, are all he attempts to describe, or seems to have thought of. Much were it to be wished that they who have travelled into more remote, and of course more curious, regions, had all possessed his good sense. Of the state of learning his observations on Glasgow university show he has formed a very sound judgment. He understands our climate too, and he has accurately observed the changes, however slow and imperceptible to us, which Scotland has undergone, in consequence of the blessings of liberty and internal peace. I could have drawn my pen through the story of the old woman at St. Andrews's, being the only silly thing in the book. He has taken the opportunity of ingrafting into the work several good observations, which I dare say he had made upon men and things before he set foot on Scotch ground, by which it is considerably enriched.' A long journey, like a tall may-pole, though not very beautiful itself, yet is pretty enough when ornamented with flowers and garlands; it furnishes a sort of cloak-pins for hanging the furniture of your mind upon; and whoever sets out upon a journey, without furnishing his mind previously with much study and useful knowledge, erects a may-pole in December, and puts up very useless cloak-pins.

"I hope the book will induce many of his countrymen to make the same jaunt, and help to intermix the more liberal part of them still more with us, and perhaps abate somewhat of that virulent antipathy which many of them entertain against the Scotch; who certainly would never have formed those combinations which he takes notice of, more than their ancestors, had they not been necessary for their mutual safety, at least for their success, in a country where they are treated as foreigners. They would find us not deficient, at least in a point of hospitality, and they would be ashamed ever after to abuse us in the mass.

"So much for the Tour. I have now, for the first time in my life, passed a winter in the country; and never did three months roll on with more swift

1 Mr. Orme, one of the ablest historians of this age, is of the same opinion. He said to me, "There are in that book thoughts which, by long revolution in the great mind of Jehnson, have been formed and polished-like pebbles rolled in the ocean."