EBRIDES

WITH

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

Dr. Johnson had for many years given me hopes that we should go
together, and visit the Hebrides[9]. Martin's Account of those islands
had impressed us with a notion that we might there contemplate a system
of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to
see; and, to find simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of
remote time or place, so near to our native great island, was an object
within the reach of reasonable curiosity. Dr. Johnson has said in his
_Journey_[10] 'that he scarcely remembered how the wish to visit the
Hebrides was excited;' but he told me, in summer, 1763[11], that his
father put Martin's Account into his hands when he was very young, and
that he was much pleased with it. We reckoned there would be some
inconveniencies and hardships, and perhaps a little danger; but these we
were persuaded were magnified in the imagination of every body. When I
was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned our design to Voltaire. He looked at
me, as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and said, 'You do not
insist on my accompanying you?'--'No, Sir,'--'Then I am very willing
you should go.' I was not afraid that our curious expedition would be
prevented by such apprehensions; but I doubted that it would not be
possible to prevail on Dr. Johnson to relinquish, for some time, the
felicity of a London life, which, to a man who can enjoy it with full
intellectual relish, is apt to make existence in any narrower sphere
seem insipid or irksome. I doubted that he would not be willing to come
down from his elevated state of philosophical dignity; from a
superiority of wisdom among the wise, and of learning among the learned;
and from flashing his wit upon minds bright enough to reflect it.

He had disappointed my expectations so long, that I began to despair;
but in spring, 1773, he talked of coming to Scotland that year with so
much firmness, that I hoped he was at last in earnest. I knew that, if
he were once launched from the metropolis he would go forward very well;
and I got our common friends there to assist in setting him afloat. To
Mrs. Thrale in particular, whose enchantment over him seldom failed, I
was much obliged. It was, '_I'll give thee a wind._'-' _Thou art
kind._[12]'--To _attract_ him, we had invitations from the chiefs
Macdonald and Macleod; and, for additional aid, I wrote to Lord
Elibank[13], Dr. William Robertson, and Dr. Beattie.