Among the farthest Hebrides.'--WORDSWORTH.

When Boswell was leaving London in May he called, for the last time,
upon Goldsmith, round whom the clouds of misfortune were fast settling,
and who was planning a _Dictionary of Arts and Sciences_ as a means of
extrication from his embarrassments. In such circumstances, it was not
unnatural for Goldsmith to revert to his own past travels, and to the
reflection that he was unlikely again to set out upon them, unless
sheltered like Johnson behind a pension. He assured Boswell that he
would never be able to lug the dead weight of the Rambler through the
Highlands. The enthusiastic pioneer, however, was loud in the praises of
his companion; Goldsmith thought him not equal to Burke, 'who winds into
a subject like a serpent.' The other, with more than wonted irrelevance,
maintained that Johnson was 'the Hercules who strangled serpents in his
cradle;' and with these characteristic utterances they parted, never
again to meet. Throughout his great work, Boswell shews ever a curious
depreciation of Goldsmith. Rivalry for the good graces of their common
friend Johnson, as Scott thought, and the fear of his older acquaintance
as the possible biographer made him suspicious of the merits of the
poet, who figures in the pages of Boswell as a foil for his gently
patronizing tone,--'honest Goldsmith.'

The tour to the Hebrides had been a project which had occurred to them
in the first days of their friendship. The _Description of the Western
Isles of Scotland_ (1703) by Martin, had been put into Johnson's hands
at a very early age by his father; and, though for long he had
disappointed the expectations of his friend, he had talked of it in the
spring of this year in such a way as to lead Boswell to write to
Beattie, Robertson, Lord Elibank, and the chiefs of the Macdonalds and
the Macleods, for invitations such as he could shew the doctor. Mrs
Thrale also and others were induced to forward the scheme, and at last
the Rambler set out on the 6th day of August. He was nine days upon the
road, including two at Newcastle, where he picked up his friend Scott
(Lord Stowell), and after passing Berwick, Dunbar and Prestonpans, the
coach late in the evening deposited Johnson at Boyd's inn, _The White
Horse_, in the Canongate,--the rendezvous of the old Hanoverian
faction,--which occupied the site of the present building from which
this volume, one hundred and twenty-three years later, is published