As we walked up from the shore, Dr. Johnson’s heart was cheered by the sight of a road marked with cart-wheels, as on the main land; a thing which we had not seen for a long time.  It gave us a pleasure similar to that which a traveller feels, when, whilst wandering on what he fears is a desert island, he perceives the print of human feet.  Military men acquire excellent habits of having all conveniences about them.  Sir Allan M’Lean, who had been long in the army, and had now a lease of the island, had formed a commodious habitation, though it consisted but of a few small buildings, only one story high[864].  He had, in his little apartments, more things than I could enumerate in a page or two.

Among other agreeable circumstances, it was not the least, to find here a parcel of the Caledonian Mercury, published since we left Edinburgh; which I read with that pleasure which every man feels who has been for some time secluded from the animated scenes of the busy world.

Dr. Johnson found books here.  He bade me buy Bishop Gastrell’s Christian Institutes[865], which was lying in the room.  He said, ’I do not like to read any thing on a Sunday, but what is theological; not that I would scrupulously refuse to look at any thing which a friend should shew me in a newspaper; but in general, I would read only what is theological.  I read just now some of Drummond’s Travels[866], before I perceived what books were here.  I then took up Derham’s Physico-Theology[867].’

Every particular concerning this island having been so well described by Dr. Johnson, it would be superfluous in me to present the publick with the observations that I made upon it, in my Journal.

I was quite easy with Sir Allan almost instantaneously.  He knew the great intimacy that had been between my father and his predecessor, Sir Hector, and was himself of a very frank disposition.  After dinner, Sir Allan said he had got Dr. Campbell about an hundred subscribers to his Britannia Elucidata, (a work since published under the title of A Political Survey of Great Britain[868],) of whom he believed twenty were dead, the publication having been so long delayed.  JOHNSON.  ’Sir, I imagine the delay of publication is owing to this;—­that, after publication, there will be no more subscribers, and few will send the additional guinea to get their books:  in which they will be wrong; for there will be a great deal of instruction in the work.  I think highly of Campbell[869].  In the first place, he has very good parts.  In the second place, he has very extensive reading; not, perhaps, what is properly called learning, but history, politicks, and, in short, that popular knowledge which makes a man very useful.  In the third place, he has learned much by what is called the vox viva.  He talks with a great many people.’