’We are well assured that Dr. Johnson is confined by tempestuous weather to the isle of Sky; it being unsafe to venture, in a small boat, upon such a stormy surge as is very common there at this time of the year.  Such a philosopher, detained on an almost barren island, resembles a whale left upon the strand.  The latter will be welcome to every body, on account of his oil, his bone, &c., and the other will charm his companions, and the rude inhabitants, with his superior knowledge and wisdom, calm resignation, and unbounded benevolence.’

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23.

After a good night’s rest, we breakfasted at our leisure.  We talked of Goldsmith’s Traveller, of which Dr. Johnson spoke highly; and, while I was helping him on with his great coat, he repeated from it the character of the British nation, which he did with such energy, that the tear started into his eye:—­

     ’Stern o’er each bosom reason holds her state,
      With daring aims irregularly great,
      Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
      I see the lords of human kind pass by,
      Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
      By forms unfashion’d, fresh from nature’s hand;
      Fierce in their native hardiness of soul,
      True to imagin’d right, above control,
      While ev’n the peasant boasts these rights to scan,
      And learns to venerate himself as man.’

We could get but one bridle here, which, according to the maxim detur digniori, was appropriated to Dr. Johnson’s sheltie.  I and Joseph rode with halters.  We crossed in a ferry-boat a pretty wide lake[921], and on the farther side of it, close by the shore, found a hut for our inn.  We were much wet.  I changed my clothes in part, and was at pains to get myself well dried.  Dr. Johnson resolutely kept on all his clothes, wet as they were, letting them steam before the smoky turf fire.  I thought him in the wrong; but his firmness was, perhaps, a species of heroism.

I remember but little of our conversation.  I mentioned Shenstone’s saying of Pope, that he had the art of condensing sense more than any body[922].  Dr. Johnson said, ’It is not true, Sir.  There is more sense in a line of Cowley than in a page (or a sentence, or ten lines,—­I am not quite certain of the very phrase) of Pope.’  He maintained that Archibald, Duke of Argyle[923], was a narrow man.  I wondered at this; and observed, that his building so great a house at Inverary was not like a narrow man.  ’Sir, (said he,) when a narrow man has resolved to build a house, he builds it like another man.  But Archibald, Duke of Argyle, was narrow in his ordinary expences, in his quotidian expences.’

The distinction is very just.  It is in the ordinary expences of life that a man’s liberality or narrowness is to be discovered.  I never heard the word quotidian in this sense, and I imagined it to be a word of Dr. Johnson’s own fabrication; but I have since found it in Young’s Night Thoughts, (Night fifth,)