It grew dusky; and we had a very tedious ride for what was called five miles; but I am sure would measure ten.  We had no conversation.  I was riding forward to the inn at Glenelg, on the shore opposite to Sky, that I might take proper measures, before Dr. Johnson, who was now advancing in dreary silence, Hay leading his horse, should arrive.  Vass also walked by the side of his horse, and Joseph followed behind:  as therefore he was thus attended, and seemed to be in deep meditation, I thought there could be no harm in leaving him for a little while.  He called me back with a tremendous shout, and was really in a passion with me for leaving him.  I told him my intentions, but he was not satisfied, and said, ’Do you know, I should as soon have thought of picking a pocket, as doing so?’ BOSWELL.  ‘I am diverted with you, Sir.’  JOHNSON.  ’Sir, I could never be diverted with incivility.  Doing such a thing, makes one lose confidence in him who has done it, as one cannot tell what he may do next.’  His extraordinary warmth confounded me so much, that I justified myself but lamely to him; yet my intentions were not improper.  I wished to get on, to see how we were to be lodged, and how we were to get a boat; all which I thought I could best settle myself, without his having any trouble.  To apply his great mind to minute particulars, is wrong:  it is like taking an immense balance, such as is kept on quays for weighing cargoes of ships,—­to weigh a guinea.  I knew I had neat little scales, which would do better; and that his attention to every thing which falls in his way, and his uncommon desire to be always in the right, would make him weigh, if he knew of the particulars:  it was right therefore for me to weigh them, and let him have them only in effect.  I however continued to ride by him, finding he wished I should do so.

As we passed the barracks at Bernera, I looked at them wishfully, as soldiers have always every thing in the best order:  but there was only a serjeant and a few men there.  We came on to the inn at Glenelg.  There was no provender for our horses; so they were sent to grass, with a man to watch them.  A maid shewed us up stairs into a room damp and dirty, with bare walls, a variety of bad smells, a coarse black greasy fir table, and forms of the same kind; and out of a wretched bed started a fellow from his sleep, like Edgar in King Lear[444], ’Poor Tom’s a cold[445].’  This inn was furnished with not a single article that we could either eat or drink[446]; but Mr. Murchison, factor to the Laird of Macleod in Glenelg, sent us a bottle of rum and some sugar, with a polite message, to acquaint us, that he was very sorry that he did not hear of us till we had passed his house, otherwise he should have insisted on our sleeping there that night; and that, if he were not obliged to set out for Inverness early next morning, he would have waited upon us.  Such extraordinary attention from this gentleman, to entire strangers, deserves the most honourable commemoration.