Dr. Johnson affected to despise it, observing that, "it would make a good prison in England."

Lest it should be supposed that I have suppressed one of his sallies against my country, it may not be improper here to correct a mistaken account that has been circulated, as to his conversation this day. It has been said, that being desired to attend to the noble prospect from the Castle-hill, he replied, "Sir, the noblest prospect that a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to London."-This lively sarcasm was thrown out at a tavern in London, in my presence, many years before.

We had with us to-day at dinner, at my house, the Lady Dowager Colvill, and Lady Anne Erskine, sisters of the Earl of Kelly; the Honourable Archibald Erskine, who has now succeeded to that title; Lord Elibank; the Reverend Dr. Blair; Mr. Tytler, the acute vindicator of Mary Queen of Scots, and some other friends. *

Fingal being talked of, Dr. Johnson, who used to boast that he had, from the first, resisted both Ossian and the Giants of Patagonia, averred his positive disbelief of its authenticity. Lord Elibank said, "I am sure it is not Macpherson's. Mr. Johnson, I keep company a great deal with you; it is known I do. I may borrow from you better things than I can say myself, and give them as my own; but, if I should, every body will know whose they are." The Doctor was not softened by this compliment. He denied merit to Fingal, supposing it to be the production of a man who has had the advantages that the present age affords; and said, "nothing is more easy than to write enough in that style if once you begin." One gentleman in company expressing his opinion, "that Fingal was certainly genuine, for that he had heard a great part of it repeated in the original," Dr. Johnson indignantly asked him whether he understood the original; to which an answer being given in the negative, "Why then," said Dr. Johnson, we see to what this testimony comes thus it is."

66

I mention this as a remarkable proof how liable the mind of man is to credulity, when not guarded by such strict examination as that which Dr. Johnson habitually practised. The talents and integrity

* Mr. Tytler was an excellent Scottish antiquary, and did much to illustrate the history, poetry, and music of his native country. He died in 1792, aged eighty-five. His son inherited his taste and talents, and was a Scottish Judge under the title of Lord Woodhouselee. He died in 1813, aged sixty-six. Lord Woodhouselee had a son, whe augmented the literary honours of the family-the late Patrick Fraser Tytler, Esq. author of the "History of Scotland."-ED.

† I desire not to be understood as agreeing entirely with the opinions of Dr. Joba son, which I relate without any remark. The many imitations, however, of "Fing that have been published confirm this observation in a considerable degree.--BOSWELL

of the gentleman who made the remark are unquestionable; yet, had not Dr. Johnson made him advert to the consideration, that he who does not understand a language, cannot know that something which is recited to him is in that language, he might have believed, and reported to this hour, that he had "heard a great part of Fingal repeated in the original."

1

For the satisfaction of those on the north of the Tweed, who may think Dr. Johnson's account of Caledonian credulity and inaccuracy too strong, it is but fair to add, that he admitted the same kind of ready belief might be found in his own country." He would undertake," he said, "to write an epic poem on the story of Robin Hood, and half England, to whom the names and places he should mention in it are familiar, would believe and declare they had heard it from their earliest years."

One of his objections to the authenticity of "Fingal," during the conversation at Ulinish, is omitted in my Journal, but I perfectly recollect it."Why is not the original deposited in some public library, instead of exhibiting attestations of its existence? Suppose there were a question in a court of justice, whether a man be dead or alive: You aver he is alive, and you bring fifty witnesses to swear it: I answer, Why do you not produce the man ?"" This is an argument founded upon one of the first principles of the law of evidence, which Gilbert would have held to be irrefragable.

6

I do not think it incumbent on me to give any precise decided opinion upon this question, as to which I believe more than some and less than others. The subject appears now to have become very uninteresting to the public. That " Fingal" is not, from beginning to end, a translation from the Gaelic, but that some passages have been supplied by the editor to connect the whole, I have heard admitted by very warm advocates for its authenticity. If this be the case, why are not these distinctly ascertained? Antiquaries, and admirers of the work, may complain, that they are in a situation similar to that of the unhappy gentleman whose wife informed him, on her deathbed, that one of their reputed children was not his; and, when he eagerly begged her to declare which of them it was, she answered, "That you shall never know;" and expired, leaving him in irremediable doubt as to them all.

I beg leave now to say something upon second sight, of which I have related two instances, as they impressed my mind at the time." I own, I returned from the Hebrides with a considerable degree of faith in the many stories of that kind which I heard with a too easy acquiescence without any close examination of the evidence; but, since that time, my belief in those stories has been much weakened by

reflecting on the careless inaccuracy of narrative in common matters, from which we may certainly conclude that there may be the same in what is more extraordinary. It is but just, however, to add, that the belief in second sight is not peculiar to the Highlands and Isles.

Some years after our tour, a cause was tried in the Court of Session, where the principal fact to be ascertained was, whether a ship-master, who used to frequent the Western Highlands and Isles, was drowned in one particular year or in the year after. A great number of witnesses from those parts were examined on each side, and swore directly contrary to each other upon this simple question. One of them, a very respectable chieftain, who told me a story of second sight which I have not mentioned, but which I too implicitly believed, had in this case, previous to this public examination, not only said, but attested under his hand, that he had seen the shipmaster in the year subsequent to that in which the court was finally satisfied he was drowned. When interrogated with the strictness of judicial inquiry, and under the awe of an oath, he recollected himself better, and retracted what he had formerly asserted, apologising for his inaccuracy by telling the judges, “A man will say what he will not swear." By many he was much censured, and it was maintained that every gentleman would be as attentive to truth without the sanction of an oath as with it. Dr. Johnson, though he himself was distinguished at all times by a scrupulous adherence to truth, controverted this proposition; and as a proof that this was not, though it ought to be, the case, urged the very different decisions of elections under Mr. Grenville's Act from those formerly made. "Gentlemen will not pronounce upon oath what they would have said and voted in the house, without that sanction."

However difficult it may be for men who believe in preternatural communications, in modern times, to satisfy those who are of a different opinion, they may easily refute the doctrine of their opponents, who impute a belief in second sight to superstition. To entertain a visionary notion that one sees a distant or future event may be called superstition, but the correspondence of the fact or event with such an impression on the fancy, though certainly very wonderful, if proved, has no more connection with superstition than magnetism or electricity.

After dinner, various topics were discussed; but I recollect only one particular. Dr. Johnson compared the different talents of Garrick and Foote as companions, and gave Garrick greatly the preference for elegance, though he allowed Foote extraordinary powers of entertainment. He said, "Garrick is restrained by some principle, but Foote has the advantage of an unlimited range. Garrick has some delicacy of feeling; it is possible to put him out; you may get the better of

him; but Foote is the most incompressible fellow that I ever knew: when you have driven him into a corner, and think you are sure of him, he runs through between your legs, or jumps over your head, and makes his escape."

Dr. Erskine and Mr. Robert Walker, two very respectable ministers of Edinburgh, supped with us, as did the Reverend Dr. Webster.* The conversation turned on the Moravian missions, and on the Methodists. Dr. Johnson observed in general, that missionaries were too sanguine in their accounts of their success among savages, and that much of what they tell is not to be believed. He owned that the Methodists had done good had spread religious impressions among the vulgar part of mankind; but, he said, they had great bitterness against other Christians, and that he never could get a Methodist to explain in what he excelled others; that it always ended in the indispensable necessity of hearing one of their preachers.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER. 11..

Principal Robertson came to us as we sat at breakfast. He advanced to Dr. Johnson, repeating a line of Virgil, which I forget. I suppose, either

or,

"Post varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum,"†

"multum ille et terris jactatus, et alto."+

Every body had accosted us with some studied compliment on our return. Dr. Johnson said, "I am really ashamed of the congratulations which we receive. We are addressed as if we had made a voyage to Nova Zembla, and suffered five persecutions in Japan." And he afterwards remarked, that, "to see a man come up with a formal air and a Latin line, when we had no fatigue and no danger, was provoking." I told him he was not sensible of the danger, having lain under cover in the boat during the storm; he was like the chicken, that hides its head under its wing and then thinks itself safe.

*The two most eminent literary divines in Edinburgh, Robertson and Blair, held collegiate charges, and had for colleagues men directly opposed to them in views of Church polity and strict Calvinistic doctrine. Dr. John Erskine (born 1721, died 1803) was the colleague of Dr. Robertson in the Old Greyfriars. Dr. Robert Walker (born 1716, died 1783) was the colleague of Dr. Blair in the High Church. Both were able excellent men, and more popular as preachers with the ordinary class of church goers than their illustrious associates. It was remarked, however, that though the two evangelical divines excelled in what Micah, Balwhidder, in Galt's novel, called "kirkfilling eloquence," their literary colleagues, from their hearers being chiefly of the higher classes, were more successful in drawing money to the collections made at the ehurch doors. In" Guy Mannering" will be found sketches of Erskine and Walker.-ED. "Through various hazards and events we move."

"Long labours both by sea, and, land he bore."—DRYDEN.

reflecting on the careless inaccuracy of narrative in common matters, from which we may certainly conclude that there may be the same in what is more extraordinary. It is but just, however, to add, that the belief in second sight is not peculiar to the Highlands and Isles.

Some years after our tour, a cause was tried in the Court of Session, where the principal fact to be ascertained was, whether a ship-master, who used to frequent the Western Highlands and Isles, was drowned in one particular year or in the year after. A great number of witnesses from those parts were examined on each side, and swore directly contrary to each other upon this simple question. One of them, a very respectable chieftain, who told me a story of second sight which I have not mentioned, but which I too implicitly believed, had in this case, previous to this public examination, not only said, but attested under his hand, that he had seen the shipmaster in the year subsequent to that in which the court was finally satisfied he was drowned. When interrogated with the strictness of judicial inquiry, and under the awe of an oath, he recollected himself better, and retracted what he had formerly asserted, apologising for his inaccuracy by telling the judges, “A man will say what he will not swear." By many he was much censured, and it was maintained that every gentleman would be as attentive to truth without the sanction of an oath as with it. Dr. Johnson, though he himself was distinguished at all times by a scrupulous adherence to truth, controverted this proposition; and as a proof that this was not, though it ought to be, the case, urged the very different decisions of elections under Mr. Grenville's Act from those formerly made. "Gentlemen will not pronounce upon oath what they would have said and voted in the house, without that sanction."

However difficult it may be for men who believe in preternatural communications, in modern times, to satisfy those who are of a different opinion, they may easily refute the doctrine of their opponents, who impute a belief in second sight to superstition. To entertain a visionary notion that one sees a distant or future event may be called superstition, but the correspondence of the fact or event with such an impression on the fancy, though certainly very wonderful, if proved, has no more connection with superstition than magnetism or electricity.

After dinner, various topics were discussed; but I recollect only one particular. Dr. Johnson compared the different talents of Garrick and Foote as companions, and gave Garrick greatly the preference for elegance, though he allowed Foote extraordinary powers of entertainment. He said, "Garrick is restrained by some principle, but Foote has the advantage of an unlimited range. Garrick has some delicacy of feeling; it is possible to put him out; you may get the better of