[917] Begging pardon of the Doctor and his conductor, I have often seen and partaken of cold sheep’s head at as good breakfast-tables as ever they sat at.  This protest is something in the manner of the late Culrossie, who fought a duel for the honour of Aberdeen butter.  I have passed over all the Doctor’s other reproaches upon Scotland, but the sheep’s head I will defend totis viribus.  Dr. Johnson himself must have forgiven my zeal on this occasion; for if, as he says, dinner be the thing of which a man thinks oftenest during the day, breakfast must be that of which he thinks first in the morning.  WALTER SCOTT.  I do not know where Johnson says this.  Perhaps Scott was thinking of a passage in Mrs. Piozzi’s Anec. p. 149, where she writes that he said:  ’A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of any thing than he does of his dinner.’

[918] A horrible place it was.  Johnson describes it (Works, ix. 152) as ’a deep subterraneous cavity, walled on the sides, and arched on the top, into which the descent is through a narrow door, by a ladder or a rope.’

[919] See ante, p. 177.

[920] Sir Allan M’Lean, like many Highland chiefs, was embarrassed in his private affairs, and exposed to unpleasant solicitations from attorneys, called, in Scotland, writers (which indeed was the chief motive of his retiring to Inchkenneth).  Upon one occasion he made a visit to a friend, then residing at Carron lodge, on the banks of the Carron, where the banks of that river are studded with pretty villas:  Sir Allan, admiring the landscape, asked his friend, whom that handsome seat belonged to.  ‘M—–­, the writer to the signet,’ was the reply.  ‘Umph!’ said Sir Allan, but not with an accent of assent, ’I mean that other house.’  ’Oh ! that belongs to a very honest fellow Jamie—–­, also a writer to the signet.’  ‘Umph!’ said the Highland chief of M’Lean with more emphasis than before, ‘And yon smaller house?’ ’That belongs to a Stirling man; I forget his name, but I am sure he is a writer too; for—–.’  Sir Allan who had recoiled a quarter of a circle backward at every response, now wheeled the circle entire and turned his back on the landscape, saying, ’My good friend, I must own you have a pretty situation here; but d—­n your neighbourhood.’  WALTER SCOTT.

[921] Loch Awe.

[922] ’Pope’s talent lay remarkably in what one may naturally enough term the condensation of thoughts.  I think no other English poet ever brought so much sense into the same number of lines with equal smoothness, ease, and poetical beauty.  Let him who doubts of this peruse his Essay on Man with attention.’  Shenstone’s Essays on Men and Manners. [Works, 4th edit. ii. 159.] ’He [Gray] approved an observation of Shenstone, that “Pope had the art of condensing a thought."’ Nicholls’ Reminiscences of Gray, p. 37.  And Swift [in his Lines on the death of Dr. Swift], himself a great condenser, says—­