In the eve

We performed,

and merry in his room this forenoon. ning the company danced as usual. with much activity, a dance which, I suppose, the emigration from Sky has occasioned. They call it America. Each of the couples, after the common involutions and evolutions, successively whirls round in a circle, till all are in motion; and the dance seems intended to show how emigration catches, till a whole neighbourhood is set afloat. Mrs. M'Kinnon told me, that last year, when a ship sailed from Portree for America, the people on shore were almost distracted when they saw their relations go off; they lay down on the ground, tumbled, and tore the grass with their teeth. This year there was not a tear shed. The people on the shore seemed to think that they would soon follow. This indifference is a mortal sign for the country.

We danced to-night to the music of the bagpipe, which made us beat the ground with prodigious force. I thought it better to endeavour to conciliate the kindness of the people of Sky, by joining heartily in their amusements, than to play the abstract scholar. I looked on this tour to the Hebrides as a copartnership between Dr. Johnson and me. Each was to do all he could to promote its success; and I have some reason to flatter myself, that my gayer exertions were of service to us. Johnson's immense fund of knowledge and wit was a wonderful source of admiration and delight to them; but they had it only at times; and they required to have the intervals agreeably filled up, and even little elucidations of his learned text. I

Dr.

was also fortunate enough frequently to draw him forth to talk, when he would otherwise have been silent. The fountain was at times locked up, till I opened the spring. It was curious to hear the Hebridians, when any dispute happened while he was out of the room, saying, Stay till Dr. Johnson

comes; say that to him!”

66

Yesterday, Dr. Johnson said, "I cannot but laugh, to think of myself roving among the Hebrides at sixty. I wonder where I shall rove at fourscore!" This evening he disputed the truth of what is said as to the people of St. Kilda catching cold whenever strangers come. "How can there," said he, "be a physical effect without a physical cause?" He added, laughing, "the arrival of a ship full of strangers would kill them; for, if one stranger gives them one cold, two strangers must give them two colds; and so in proportion." I wondered to hear him ridicule this, as he had praised M'Aulay for putting it in his book; saying, that it was manly in him to tell a fact, however strange, if he himself believed it. He said, the evidence was not adequate to the improbability of the thing; that if a physician, rather disposed to be incredulous, should go to St. Kilda, and report the fact, then he would begin to look about him. They said, it was annually proved by Macleod's steward, on whose arrival all the inhabitants caught cold. He jocularly remarked, "The steward always comes to demand something from them; and so they fall a coughing. (1) I sup

(1) See antè, Vol. III. p. 42., an, at least, ingenious solution of this enigma.-C.

pose the people in Sky all take a cold when (naming a certain person) comes." They said, he came only in summer. JOHNSON. "That is out of tenderness to you. Bad weather and he, at the same time, would be too much."

APPENDIX.

No. I.

IN justice to the ingenious Dr. Blacklock, I publish the following Letter from him, relative to a passage in p. 41.

"TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

66

Edinburgh, Nov. 12, 1785. "DEAR SIR, Having lately had the pleasure of reading your account of the journey which you took with Dr. Samuel Johnson to the Western Isles, I take the liberty of transmitting my ideas of the conversation which happened between the Doctor and myself concerning lexicography and poetry, which, as it is a little different from the delineation exhibited in the former edition of your Journal, cannot, I hope, be unacceptable; particularly since I have been informed that a second edition of that work is now in contemplation, if not in execution: and I am still more strongly tempted to encourage that hope, from considering that, if every one concerned in the conversations related were to send you what they can recollect of these colloquial entertainments, many curious and interesting particulars might be recovered, which the most assiduous attention could not observe, nor the most tenacious memory retain. A little reflection, Sir, will convince you, that there is not an axiom in Euclid more intuitive nor more evident than the Doctor's assertion that poetry was of much easier execution than lexicography. Any mind, therefore, endowed with common sense, must have been extremely absent from itself, if it discovered the least astonishment from hearing that a poem might be

written with much more facility than the same quantity of a dictionary.

"The real cause of my surprise was what appeared to me much more paradoxical, that he could write a sheet of dictionary with as much pleasure as a sheet of poetry. He acknowledged, indeed, that the latter was much easier than the former. For in the one case, books and a desk were requisite ; in the other, you might compose when lying in bed, or walking in the fields, &c. He did not, however, descend to explain, nor to this moment can I comprehend, how the labours of a mere philologist, in the most refined sense of that term, could give equal pleasure with the exercise of a mind replete with elevated conceptions and pathetic ideas, while taste, fancy, and intellect were deeply enamoured of nature, and in full exertion. You may likewise, perhaps, remember, that when I complained of the ground which scepticism in religion and morals was continually gaining, it did not appear to be on my own account, as my private opinions upon these important subjects had long been inflexibly determined. What I then deplored, and still deplore, was the unhappy influence which that gloomy hesitation had, not only upon particular characters, but even upon life in general; as being equally the bane of action in our present state, and of such consolations as we might derive from the hopes of a future.

"I have the pleasure of remaining, with sincere esteem and respect, dear Sir, your most obedient humble servant,

"THOMAS BLACKLOCK.

I am very happy to find that Dr. Blacklock's apparent uneasiness on the subject of scepticism was not on his own account (as I supposed), but from a benevolent concern for the happiness of mankind. With respect, however, to the question concerning poetry, and composing a dictionary, I am confident that my state of Dr. Johnson's position is accurate. One may misconceive the motive by which a person is induced to discuss a particular topic (as in the case of Dr. Blacklock's speaking of scepticism); but an assertion, like that made by Dr. John