the throat, and
pointing with his stick to the open book, where two leaves are marked as
torn out. But Boswell, in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for March 1786,
asserts that no such applications or threats had been made. The results,
however, may have added to the writer's unpopularity, as Lord Houghton
suggests, at the Edinburgh bar, through the answers, replies, and other
rejoinders to the strictures of Johnson, for which Boswell, as the
pioneer and the introducer of the stranger, 'the chiel among them takin'
notes,' may in Edinburgh society have been held as mainly responsible.

To Johnson, the memories of the tour--the lone shieling and the misty
island--were a source of pleasing recollection. Taken earlier, it would
have removed many of his insular prejudices by wider survey and more
varied conversation. 'The expedition to the Hebrides,' he wrote to
Boswell some years after, 'was the most pleasant journey I ever made;'
and two years later, after restless and tedious nights, he is found
reverting to it and recalling the best night he had had these twenty
years back, at Fort Augustus. Yet all through September they had not
more than a day and a half of really good weather, and but the same
during October. Out of such slight materials and uncomfortable
surroundings has Boswell produced a masterpiece of descriptive writing.
The memory of Johnson has lingered where that of the Jacobite Pretender
has well-nigh completely passed away. Mr Gladstone, proposing a
Parliamentary vote of thanks to Lord Napier for 'having planted the
Standard of St George upon the mountains of Rasselas;' Sir Robert Peel,
quoting, in his address to Glasgow University as Lord Rector, Johnson's
description of Iona; Sir Walter Scott finding in Skye that he and his
friends had in their memories, as the one typical association of the
island, the ode to Mrs Thrale, all combine to shew the abiding interest
attaching to the Rambler even in Abyssinia and to his foot-steps in
Scotland.

CHAPTER VI

EDINBURGH LIFE--DEATH OF JOHNSON. 1773-1784

'My father used to protest I was born to be a strolling
pedlar.'--SIR WALTER SCOTT--_Autobiography._

'You have done Auchinleck much honour and have, I hope, overcome my
father who has never forgiven your warmth for monarchy and episcopacy. I
am anxious to see how your pages will operate on him.' Boswell had good
grounds for thus expressing himself to Johnson over the publication of
the latter's bo