world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen.  No, sir, the Irish are a fair people; they never speak well of one another.”  There was another difference.  He always expressed a generous resentment against the tyranny exercised by English rulers over the Irish people.  To some one who defended the restriction of Irish trade for the good of English merchants, he said, “Sir, you talk the language of a savage.  What! sir, would you prevent any people from feeding themselves, if by any honest means they can do it?” It was “better to hang or drown people at once,” than weaken them by unrelenting persecution.  He felt some tenderness for Catholics, especially when oppressed, and a hearty antipathy towards prosperous Presbyterians.  The Lowland Scotch were typified by John Knox, in regard to whom he expressed a hope, after viewing the ruins of St. Andrew’s, that he was buried “in the highway.”

This sturdy British and High Church prejudice did not prevent the worthy doctor from having many warm friendships with Scotchmen, and helping many distressed Scotchmen in London.  Most of the amanuenses employed for his Dictionary were Scotch.  But he nourished the prejudice the more as giving an excellent pretext for many keen gibes.  “Scotch learning,” he said, for example, “is like bread in a besieged town.  Every man gets a mouthful, but no man a bellyful.”  Once Strahan said in answer to some abusive remarks, “Well, sir, God made Scotland.”  “Certainly,” replied Johnson, “but we must always remember that He made it for Scotchmen; and comparisons are odious, Mr. Strahan, but God made hell.”

Boswell, therefore, had reason to feel both triumph and alarm when he induced the great man to accompany him in a Scotch tour.  Boswell’s journal of the tour appeared soon after Johnson’s death.  Johnson himself wrote an account of it, which is not without interest, though it is in his dignified style, which does not condescend to Boswellian touches of character.  In 1773 the Scotch Highlands were still a little known region, justifying a book descriptive of manners and customs, and touching upon antiquities now the commonplaces of innumerable guide books.  Scott was still an infant, and the day of enthusiasm, real or affected, for mountain scenery had not yet dawned.  Neither of the travellers, as Boswell remarks, cared much for “rural beauties.”  Johnson says quaintly on the shores of Loch Ness, “It will very readily occur that this uniformity of barrenness can afford very little amusement to the traveller; that it is easy to sit at home and conceive rocks and heath and waterfalls; and that these journeys are useless labours, which neither impregnate the imagination nor enlarge the understanding.”  And though he shortly afterwards sits down on a bank “such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign,” and there conceived the thought of his book, he does not seem to have felt much enthusiasm.  He checked Boswell for describing a hill as “immense,” and told him that it was only a “considerable protuberance.”  Indeed it is not surprising if he sometimes grew weary in long rides upon Highland ponies, or if, when weatherbound in a remote village in Skye, he declared that this was a “waste of life.”