HE WAS OF AN ADMIRABLE PREGNANCY OF WIT, AND THAT PREGNANCY
     MUCH IMPROVED BY CONTINUAL STUDY FROM HIS CHILDHOOD: 
     BY WHICH HE HAD GOTTEN SUCH A PROMPTNESS IN EXPRESSING HIS
     MIND, THAT HIS EXTEMPORAL SPEECHES WERE LITTLE INFERIOR TO
     HIS PREMEDITATED WRITINGS.  MANY, NO DOUBT, HAD READ AS MUCH,
     AND PERHAPS MORE THAN HE; BUT SCARCE EVER ANY CONCOCTED
     HIS READING INTO JUDGEMENT AS HE DID[8].

     Baker’s Chronicle [ed. 1665, p. 449].

THE

JOURNAL

OF A

TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES

WITH

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

Dr. Johnson had for many years given me hopes that we should go together, and visit the Hebrides[9].  Martin’s Account of those islands had impressed us with a notion that we might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to see; and, to find simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of remote time or place, so near to our native great island, was an object within the reach of reasonable curiosity.  Dr. Johnson has said in his Journey[10] ’that he scarcely remembered how the wish to visit the Hebrides was excited;’ but he told me, in summer, 1763[11], that his father put Martin’s Account into his hands when he was very young, and that he was much pleased with it.  We reckoned there would be some inconveniencies and hardships, and perhaps a little danger; but these we were persuaded were magnified in the imagination of every body.  When I was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned our design to Voltaire.  He looked at me, as if I had talked of going to the North Pole, and said, ’You do not insist on my accompanying you?’—­’No, Sir,’—­’Then I am very willing you should go.’  I was not afraid that our curious expedition would be prevented by such apprehensions; but I doubted that it would not be possible to prevail on Dr. Johnson to relinquish, for some time, the felicity of a London life, which, to a man who can enjoy it with full intellectual relish, is apt to make existence in any narrower sphere seem insipid or irksome.  I doubted that he would not be willing to come down from his elevated state of philosophical dignity; from a superiority of wisdom among the wise, and of learning among the learned; and from flashing his wit upon minds bright enough to reflect it.

He had disappointed my expectations so long, that I began to despair; but in spring, 1773, he talked of coming to Scotland that year with so much firmness, that I hoped he was at last in earnest.  I knew that, if he were once launched from the metropolis he would go forward very well; and I got our common friends there to assist in setting him afloat.  To Mrs. Thrale in particular, whose enchantment over him seldom failed, I was much obliged.  It was, ‘I’ll give thee a wind.’-’ Thou art kind.[12]’—­To attract him, we had invitations from the chiefs Macdonald and Macleod; and, for additional aid, I wrote to Lord Elibank[13], Dr. William Robertson, and Dr. Beattie.