ness and satisfaction. I used not only to wonder at, but pity, those whose lot condemned them to winter anywhere but in either of the capitals. But every place has its charms to a cheerful mind. I am busy planting and taking measures for opening the summer campaign in farming; and I find I have an excellent resource, when revolutions in politics perhaps, and revolutions of the sun for certain, will make it decent for me to retreat behind the ranks of the more forward in life. "I am glad to hear the last was a very busy week with you. I see you as counsel in some causes which must have opened a charming field for your humourous vein. As it is more uncommon, so I verily believe it is more useful than the more serious exercises of reason; and, to a man who is to appear in public, more eclat is to be gained, sometimes more money too, by a bon-mot, than a learned speech. It is the fund of natural humour which Lord North possesses, that makes him so much the favourite of the house, and so able, because so amiable, a leader of a party. "I have now finished my Tour of Seven Pages. In what remains, I beg leave to offer my compliments, and those of ma très chère femme, to you and Mrs. Boswell. Pray unbend the busy brow, and frolic a little in a letter to, my dear Boswell, your affectionate friend, "GEORGE DEMPSTER." 1 I shall also present the public with a correspondence with the laird of Rasay, concerning a passage in the "Journey to the Western Islands," which shows Dr. Johnson in a very amiable light. LETTER 168. THE LAIRD OF RASAY TO MR. BOSWELL. "Rasay, April 10, 1775. "DEAR SIR,-I take this occasion of returning you my most hearty thanks for the civilities shown to my daughter by you and Mrs. Boswell. Yet, though she has informed me that I am under this obligation, I should very probably have deferred troubling you with making my acknowledgments at present, if I had not seen Dr. Johnson's Journey to the Western Isles,' in which he has been pleased to make a very friendly mention of my family, for which I am surely obliged to him, as being more than an equivalent for the reception you and he met with. Yet there is one paragraph I should have been glad he had omitted, which I am sure was owing to misinformation; that is, that I had acknowledged Macleod to be my chief, though my ancestors disputed the preeminence for a long tract of time. 1 Every reader will, I am sure, join with me in warm admiration of the truly patriotic writer of this letter. I knew not which most to applaud,-that good sense and liberality of mind which could see and admit the defects of his native country, to which no man is a more zealous friend; or that candour which induced him to give just praise to the minister whom he honestly and strenuously opposed. "I never had occasion to enter seriously on this argument with the present laird, or his grandfather, nor could I have any temptation to such a renunciation from either of them. I acknowledge the benefit of being chief of a clan is in our days of very little significancy, and to trace out the progress of this honour to the founder of a family, of any standing, would perhaps be a matter of some difficulty. "The true state of the present case is this: -the M'Leod family consists of two different branches; the M'Leods of Lewis, of which I am descended, and the M'Leods of Harris. And though the former have lost a very extensive estate by forfeiture in King James the Sixth's time, there are still several respectable families of it existing, who would justly blame me for such an unmeaning cession, when they all acknowledge me head of that family; which, though in fact it be but an ideal point of honour, is not hitherto so far disregarded in our country, but it would determine some of my friends to look on me as a much smaller man than either they or myself judge me at present to be. I will, therefore, ask it as a favour of you to acquaint the Doctor with the difficulty he has brought me to. In travelling among rival clans, such a silly tale as this might easily be whispered into the ear of a passing stranger; but as it has no foundation in fact, I hope the Doctor will be so good as to take his own way in undeceiving the public-I principally mean my friends and connexions, who will be first angry at me, and next sorry to find such an instance of my littleness recorded in a book which has a very fair chance of being much read. I expect you will let me know what he will write you in return, and we here beg to make offer to you and Mrs. Boswell of our most respectful compliments.—I am, dear Sir, your most obedient humble servant, "JOHN M'LEOD." LETTER 169. MR. BOSWELL TO THE LAIRD OF RASAY. "London, May 8, 1775. "DEAR SIR,-The day before yesterday I had the honour to receive your letter, and I immediately communicated it to Dr. Johnson. He said he loved your spirit, and was exceedingly sorry that he had been the cause of the smallest uneasiness to you. There is not a more candid man in the world than he is, when properly addressed, as you will see from his letter to you, which I now inclose. He has allowed me to take a copy of it, and he says you may read it to your clan, or publish it, if you please. Be assured, Sir, that I shall take care of what he has intrusted to me, which is to have an acknowledgment of his error inserted in the Edinburgh newspapers. You will, I dare say, be fully satisfied with Dr Johnson's behaviour. He is desirous to know that you are; and therefore when you have read his acknowledgment in the papers, I beg you may write to me; and if you choose it, I am persuaded a letter from you to the Doctor also will be taken kind. I shall be at Edinburgh the week after next. Any civilities which my wife and I had in our power to show to your daughter, Miss M'Leod, were due to her own merit, and were well repaid by her agreeable company. But I am sure I should be a very unworthy man if I did not wish to show a grateful sense of the hospitable and genteel manner in which you were pleased to treat me. Be assured, my dear Sir, that I shall never forget your goodness, and the happy hours which I spent in Rasay. "You and Dr. M'Leod were both so obliging as to promise me an account in writing, of all the particulars which each of you remember, concerning the transactions of 1745-6. Pray do not forget this, and be as minute and full as you can; put down everything; I have a great curiosity to know as much as I can, authentically. "I beg that you may present my best respects to Lady Rasay, my compliments to your young family, and to Dr. M'Leod; and my hearty good wishes to Malcolm, with whom I hope again to shake hands cordially.-I have the honour to be, dear Sir, your obliged and faithful humble servant, "JAMES BOSWELL." ADVERTISEMENT WRITTEN BY DR. JOHNSON, And inserted by his desire in the Edinburgh newspapers, referred to in the foregoing letter.1 "The author of the Journey to the Western Islands,' having related that the M'Leods of Rasay acknowledge the chieftainship or superiority of the M'Leods of Sky, finds that he has been misinformed or mistaken. He means in a future edition to correct his error, and wishes to be told of more, if more have been discovered." LETTER 170.. DR. JOHNSON TO THE LAIRD OF RASAY. London, May 6, 1775. "DEAR SIR,-Mr. Boswell has this day shown me a letter in which you complain of a passage in the 'Journey to the Hebrides.' My meaning is mistaken. I did not intend to say that you had personally made any cession of the rights of your house, or any acknowledgment of the superiority of M'Leod of Dunvegan. I only designed to express what I thought generally admitted-that the house of Rasay allowed the superiority of the house of Dunvegan. Even this I now find to be erroneous, and will therefore omit or retract it in the next edition. 66 Though what I had said had been true, if it had been disagreeable to you, I should have wished it unsaid; for it is not my business to adjust precedence. As it is mistaken, I find myself disposed to correct, both by my respect for you, and my reverence for truth. 1 The original MS. is now in my possession. "As I know not when the book will be reprinted, I have desired Mr. Boswell to anticipate the correction in the Edinburgh papers. This is all that can be done. "I hope I may now venture to desire that my compliments may be made, and my gratitude expressed, to Lady Rasay, Mr. Malcolm Macleod, Mr. Donald M'Queen, and all the gentlemen and all the ladies whom I saw in the island of Rasay; a place which I remember with too much pleasure and too much kindness, not to be sorry that my ignorance, or hasty persuasion, should, for a single moment, have violated its tranquillity. "I beg you all to forgive an undesigned and involuntary injury, and to consider me as, Sir, your most obliged and most humble servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." 1 It would be improper for me to boast of my own labours; but I cannot refrain from publishing such praise as I received from such a man as Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, after the perusal of the original manuscript of my Journal. LETTER 171. SIR W. FORBES TO MR. BOSWELL. "Edinburgh, March 7, 1777. "MY DEAR SIR,-I ought to have thanked you sooner for your very obliging letter, and for the singular confidence you are pleased to place in me, when you trust me with such a curious and valuable deposit as the papers you have sent me.2 Be assured I have a due sense of this favour, and shall faithfully and carefully return them to you. You may rely that I shall neither copy any part, nor permit the papers to be seen. 'They contain a curious picture of society, and form a journal on the most instructive plan that can possibly be thought of; for I am not sure that an ordinary observer would become so well acquainted either with Dr. Johnson, or with the manners of the Hebrides, by a personal intercourse, as by a perusal of your Journal. I am very truly, dear Sir, &c. "WILLIAM FORBES." When I consider how many of the persons mentioned in this Tour are now gone to "that undiscovered country, from whose bourne 1 Rasay was highly gratified, and afterwards visited and dined with Dr. Johnson, at his house in London. 2 In justice both to Sir William Forbes and myself, it is proper to mention, that the papers which were submitted to his perusal contained only an account of our Tour from the time that Dr. Johnson and I set out from Edinburgh, and consequently did not contain the eulogium on Sir William Forbes (page 179), which he never saw till this book appeared in print; nor did he even know, when he wrote the above letter, that this Journal was to be published. no traveller returns," I feel an impression at once awful and tender -Requiescant in pace! It may be objected by some persons, as it has been by one of my friends, that he who has the power of thus exhibiting an exact transcript of conversations is not a desirable member of society. I repeat the answer which I made to that friend : Few, very few, need be afraid that their sayings will be recorded. Can it be imagined that I would take the trouble to gather what grows on every hedge, because I have collected such fruits as the Nonpareil and the BoN CHRETIEN?" On the other hand, how useful is such a faculty, if well exercised. To it we owe all those interesting apophthegms and memorabilia of the ancients, which Plutarch, Xenophon, and Valerius Maximus, have transmitted to us. To it we owe all those instructive and entertaining collections which the French have made under the title of "Ana," affixed to some celebrated name. To it we owe the “Table Talk" of Selden, the "Conversation" between Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden, Spence's "Anecdotes of Pope," and other valuable remains in our own language. How delighted should we have been, if thus introduced into the company of Shakspeare and of Dryden, of whom we know scarcely any thing but their admirable writings! What pleasure would it have given us, to have known their petty habits, their characteristic manners, their modes of composition, and their genuine opinion of preceding writers and of their contemporaries? All these are now irrecoverably lost. Considering how many of the strongest and most brilliant effusions of exalted intellect must have perished, how much is it to be regretted that all men of distinguished wisdom and wit have not been attended by friends, of taste enough to relish, and abilities enough to register their conversation : "Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Nocte, carent quia vate sacro." They whose inferior exertions are recorded, as serving to explain or illustrate the sayings of such men, may be proud of being thus |