After dinner I started the subject of the temple of ANAITIS.  Mr. M’Queen had laid stress on the name given to the place by the country people,—­Ainnit; and added, ’I knew not what to make of this piece of antiquity, till I met with the Anaitidis delubrum in Lydia, mentioned by Pausanias and the elder Pliny.’  Dr. Johnson, with his usual acuteness, examined Mr. M’Queen as to the meaning of the word Ainnit, in Erse; and it proved to be a water-place, or a place near water, ‘which,’ said Mr. M’Queen, ’agrees with all the descriptions of the temples of that goddess, which were situated near rivers, that there might be water to wash the statue.’  JOHNSON.  ’Nay, Sir, the argument from the name is gone.  The name is exhausted by what we see.  We have no occasion to go to a distance for what we can pick up under our feet.  Had it been an accidental name, the similarity between it and Anaitis might have had something in it; but it turns out to be a mere physiological name.’  Macleod said, Mr. M’Queen’s knowledge of etymology had destroyed his conjecture.  JOHNSON.  ’Yes, Sir; Mr. M’Queen is like the eagle mentioned by Waller, who was shot with an arrow feather’d from his own wing[612].’  Mr. M’Queen would not, however, give up his conjecture.  JOHNSON.  ’You have one possibility for you, and all possibilities against you.  It is possible it may be the temple of Anaitis.  But it is also possible that it may be a fortification; or it may be a place of Christian worship, as the first Christians often chose remote and wild places, to make an impression on the mind; or, if it was a heathen temple, it may have been built near a river, for the purpose of lustration; and there is such a multitude of divinities, to whom it may have been dedicated, that the chance of its being a temple of Anaitis is hardly any thing.  It is like throwing a grain of sand upon the sea-shore to-day, and thinking you may find it to-morrow.  No, Sir, this temple, like many an ill-built edifice, tumbles down before it is roofed in.’  In his triumph over the reverend antiquarian, he indulged himself in a conceit; for, some vestige of the altar of the goddess being much insisted on in support of the hypothesis, he said, ’Mr. M’Queen is fighting pro aris et focis’.

It was wonderful how well time passed in a remote castle, and in dreary weather.  After supper, we talked of Pennant.  It was objected that he was superficial.  Dr. Johnson defended him warmly[613].  He said, ’Pennant has greater variety of enquiry than almost any man, and has told us more than perhaps one in ten thousand could have done, in the time that he took.  He has not said what he was to tell; so you cannot find fault with him, for what he has not told.  If a man comes to look for fishes, you cannot blame him if he does not attend to fowls.’  ‘But,’ said Colonel M’Leod, ’he mentions the unreasonable rise of rents in the Highlands, and says, “the gentlemen are for emptying the