versal in Sky, except among the clergy, Sunday, 19th September.--It was rather worse weather than any that we had yet. At breakfast Dr. Johnson said, "Some cunning men choose fools for their wives, thinking to manage them, but they always fail. There is a spaniel fool and a mule fool. The spaniel fool may be made to do by beat-traordinary fact of Lady Grange's being ing. The mule fool will neither do by words nor blows; and the spaniel fool often turns mule at last and suppose a fool to be made to do pretty well, you must have the continual trouble of making her do. Depend upon it, no woman is the worse for sense and knowledge." Whether afterwards he meant merely to say a polite thing, or to give his opinion, I could not be sure; but he added, "Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves." In justice to the sex, think it but candid to acknowledge, that, in a subsequent conversation, he told me that he was serious in what he had said. : [By the very use of this word, Mr. Boswell in this century, is as frightfully romantic as if it 66 mons. I omitted to mention, in its place, that Dr. Johnson told Mr. M'Queen that he had found the belief of the second-sight uni As I have faithfully recorded so many minute particulars, I hope I shall be pardoned for inserting so flattering an encomium on what is now offered to the publick.-BOSWELL. is well known. I have seen her Journal. She had become privy to some of the jacobite intrigues, I Dr. Johnson said, if Macleod would let it be known that he had such a place for naughty ladies, he might make it a very profitable island. We had, in the course of our tour, heard of St. Kilda poetry. Dr. Johnson observed, "It must be very poor, because they have very few images." BosWELL. "There may be a poetical genius shown in combining these, and in making poetry of them." JOHNSON. "Sir, a man cannot make fire but in proportion as he has fuel. He cannot coin guineas but in proportion as he has gold." At tea he talked of his intending to go to Italy in 1775. Macleod said, he would like Paris better. JOHNSON. "No, sir; there are none of the French literati now alive, to visit whom I would cross a sea. I can find in Buffon's book all that he can say." After supper he said, "I am sorry that prize-fighting is gone out; every art should be preserved, and the art of defence is surely important. It is absurd that our soldiers should have swords, and not be taught the his men, were the direct agents in carrying her off (see ante, p. 72); and St. Kilda, belonging then to Macleod, was selected as the place of confinement. The name by which she was spoken or written of was Corpach, an ominous distinction, corresponding to what is called subject in the lecture-room of an anotamist, or shot in the slang of the Westport murderers.-WALTER SCOTT.] In "Carstares's State Papers," we find an authentick narrative of Connor, a catholick priest, who turned protestant, being seized by some of Lord Seaforth's people, and detained prisoner in the island of Harris several years: he was fed with bread and water, and lodged in a house where he was exposed to the rains and cold. Sir James Ogilvy writes, June 18, 1667," that the Lord Chancellor, the Lord Advocate, and himself, were to meet next day, to take effectual methods to have this redressed. Connor was then still detained."-P. 310. This shows what private oppression might in the last century be practised in the Hebrides. In the same collection, the Earl of Argyle gives a picturesque account of an embassy from the great M'Neil of Barra, as that insular chief used to be denominated. I received a letter yesterday from M'Neil of Barra, who lives very far off, sent by a gentleman in all formality, offering his service, which had made you laugh to see his entry. The style of his letter runs as if he were of another kingdom." —P. 643.—BoswELL. [It was said of M'Neil of Barra, that when he dined, his bagpipes blew a particular strain, intimating that all the world might go to dinner.-WALTER SCOTT.] use of them. Prize-fighting o made people accustomed not to be alarmed at seenig their own blood, or feeling a little pain from a wound. I think the heavy glaymore was an ill-contrived weapon. A man could only strike once with it. It employed both his hands, and he must of course be soon fatigued with wielding it; so that if his antagonist could only keep playing awhile, he was sure of him. I would fight with a dirk against Rorie More's sword. I could ward off a blow with a dirk, and then run in upon my enemy. When within that heavy sword, I have him; he is quite helpless, and I could stab him at my leisure, like a calf. It is thought by sensible military men, that the English do not enough avail themselves of their superior strength of body against the French; for that must always have a great advantage in pushing with bayonets. I have heard an officer say, that if women could be made to stand, they would do as well as men in a mere interchange of bullets from a distance; but, if a body of men should come close up to them, then to be sure they must be overcome; now," said he, " in the same manner the weaker-bodied French must be overcome by our strong soldiers." The subject of duelling was introduced. JOHNSON. "There is no case in England where one or other of the combatants must die if you have overcome your adversary by disarming him, that is sufficient, though you should not kill him; your honour, or the honour of your family, is restored, as much as it can be by a duel. It is cowardly to force your antagonist to renew the combat, when you know that you have the advantage of him by superior skill. You might just as well go and cut his throat while he is asleep in his bed. When a duel begins, it is supposed there may be an equality; because it is not always skill that prevails. It depends much on presence of mind; nay, on accidents. The wind may be in a man's face. He may fall 3. Many such things may decide the superiority. man is sufficiently punished by being called A 2 [Mrs. Piozzi says, "Mr. Johnson was very conversant in the art of attack and defence by boxing, which science he had learned from his uncle Andrew, I believe; and I have heard him descant upon the age when people were received, and when rejected, in the schools once held for that brutal amusement, much to the admiration of those who had no expectation of his skill in such matters, from the sight of a figure which precluded all possibility of personal prowess."-Anecdotes. p. 4.-ED.] I doubt the justice of my fellow-traveller's remark concerning the French literati, many of whom, I am told, have considerable merit in con- 3 [Johnson considers duels as only fought with versation, as well as in their writings. That of swords, a practice now wholly superseded by the Monsieur de Buffon, in particular, I am well as- use of pistols, a weapon which, generally speaksured is highly instructive and entertaining.-Bos-ing, is more equal than the sword could be. WELL. ED.] out, and subjected to the risk that is in a du- | the peaceable and the quarrelsome. When el." But on my suggesting that the injured person is equally subjected to risk, he fairly owned he could not explain the rationality of duelling. I returned to Lichfield, after having been in London, my mother asked me, whether I was one of those who gave the wall, or those who took it. Now, it is fixed Monday, 20th September. When I awak- that every man keeps to the right; or, if ed, the storm was higher still. It abated one is taking the wall, another yields it, and about nine, and the sun shone; but it rain- it is never a dispute." He was very seed again very soon, and it was not a day vere on a lady, whose name was mentioned. for travelling. At breakfast, Dr. Johnson He said, he would have sent her to St. Kiltold us, "There was once a pretty good da. That she was as bad as negative badtavern in Catharine-street in the Strand, ness could be, and stood in the way of what where very good company met in an eve- was good that insipid beauty would not ning, and each man called for his own half-go a great way; and that such a woman pint of wine, or gill, if he pleased; they were frugal men, and nobody paid but for what he himself drank. The house fur nished no supper; but a woman attended with mutton-pies, which any body might purchase. I was introduced to this company by Cumming the Quaker 1, and used to go there sometimes when I drank wine. In the last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it; [Thomas Cumming was a bold and busy man, who mistook his vocation when he turned quaker (for he was not born in that sect). He planned and almost commanded a military expedition to the coast of Africa, in 1758, which ended in the capture of Senegal. It and its authour make a considerable figure in Smollett's History of England, vol. ii. p. 278, where the anomaly of a quaker's heading an army is attempted to be excused by the event of the enemy's having surrendered without fighting; and a protest that Cumming would not have engaged in it had he not been assured, that against an overpowering force the enemy could not have resisted. This reminds us of another story of Cumming. During the rebellion of 1745, he was asked, whether the time was not come when even he, as a quaker, ought to take arms for the civil and religious liberties of his country? No," said Cumming, "but I will drive an ammunition waggon." Yet this bustling man was, it seems, morbidly sensitive. Mrs. Piozzi says he died heart-broken by a libel in a periodical paper. "Dr. Johnson once told me that Cummings, the famous quaker, whose friendship he valued very highly, fell a sacrifice to the insults of the newspapers, having declared on his death-bed to Dr. Johnson, that the pain of an anonymous letter, written in some of the common prints of the day, fastened on his heart, and threw him into the slow fever of which he died."-Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 143. Chalmers is in possession of one of those libels, found, as he believes, in the Town and Country Magazine, in which, by a wooden cut, and under the name of Tomecomingo, the political quaker, his person and principles are certainly severely handled, but nothing to die of. The date, however, of this paper, which Mr. Chalmers believes to have been published in 1774, the year in which Cumming died, gives some countenance to Johnson's anecdote.-ED.] Mr. might be cut out of a cabbage, if there was a skilful artificer. Macleod was too late in coming to breakfast. Dr. Johnson said, laziness was worse than the toothache. BOSWELL. "I cannot agree with you, sir; a basin of cold water, or a horsewhip, will cure laziness." JOHNson. “No, sir; it will only put off the fit ; it will not cure the disease. I have been trying to cure my laziness all my life, and could not do it." BOSWELL. "But if a man does in a shorter time what might be the labour of a life, there is nothing to be said against him." JOHNSON (perceiving at once that I alluded to him and his Dictionary). "Suppose that flattery to be true, the consequence would be, that the world would have no right to censure a man; but that will not justify him to himself." After breakfast he said to me, "A Highland chief should now endeavour to do every thing to raise his rents, by means of the industry of his people. Formerly, it was right for him to have his house full of idle fellows; they were his defenders, his servants, his dependants, his friends. Now they may be better employed. The system of things is now so much altered, that the family cannot have influence but by riches, because it has no longer the power of ancient feudal times. An individual of a family may have it; but it cannot now belong to a family, unless you could have a perpetuity of men with the same views. Macleod has four times the land that the Duke of Bedford has. I think, with his spirit, he may in time make himself the greatest man in the king's dominions for land may always be improved to a certain degree. I would never have any man sell land, to throw money into the funds, as is often done, or to try any other species of trade. Depend upon it, this rage of trade will destroy itself. You and I shall not see it; but the time will come when there will be an end of it. Trade is like gaming. If a whole company are gamesters, play must cease; for there is nothing to be won. When all nations are traders, there is nothing to be gained by trade, and it will stop HEBRIDES. first where it is brought to the greatest perfection. Then the proprietors of land only will be the great men." I observed, it was hard that Macleod should find ingratitude in so many of his people. JOHNSON. "Sir, gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people." I doubt of this. Nature seems to have implanted gratitude in all living creatures. The lion, mentioned by Aulus Gellius, had it. It appears to me that culture, which brings luxury and selfishness with it, has a tendency rather to weaken than promote this affection. Dr. Johnson said this morning, when talking of our setting out, that he was in the state in which Lord Bacon represents kings. He desired the end, but did not like He wished much to get home, "You but was unwilling to travel in Sky. are like kings too in this, sir," said I, "that you must act under the direction of others." the means. Tuesday, 21st September.-The uncertainty of our present situation having prevented me from receiving any letters from home for some time, I could not help being uneasy. Dr. Johnson had an advantage over me in this respect, he having no wife or child to occasion anxious apprehensions in his mind. It was a good morning; so we resolved to set out. But, before quitting this castle, where we have been so well entertained, let me give a short description of it. father of the late laird, began to repair the castle, or rather to complete it; but he did not live to finish his undertaking. Not doubting, however, that he should do it, he, like those who have had their epitaphs written before they died, ordered the following inscription, composed by the minister of the parish, to be cut upon a broad stone above one of the lower windows, where it still remains to celebrate what was not done, and to serve as a memento of the uncertainty of life, and the presumption of man 5: "Joannes Macleod Beganoduni Dominus gentis suæ Philarchus 6, Durinesiæ Haraiæ Vaternesiæ, &c. Baro D. Floræ Macdonald matrimoniali vinculo conjugatus turrem hanc Beganodunensem proavorum habitaculum longe vetustissimum diu penitus labefectatam Anno æræ vulgaris MDCLXXXVI instauravit. "Quem stabilire juvat proavorum tecta vetusta, Omne scelus fugiat, justitiamque colat. Vertit in aerias turres magalia virtus, Inque casas humiles tecta superba nefas." Macleod and Talisker accompanied us. We passed by the parish church of Durinish. The churchyard is not enclosed, but a pretty murmuring brook runs along one side of it. In it is a pyramid erected to the memory of Thomas Lord Lovat, by his son Lord Simon, who suffered on Tower-hill. It is of free-stone, and, I suppose, about thirty feet high. There is an inscription on a piece of white marble inserted in it, which I suspect to have been the composition of Lord Lovat himself, being much in his pompous style. I have preserved this inscription 7, though 5 [It is now finished, though not on so lofty a scale as was originally designed.-ED.] Along the edge of the rock, there are the remains of a wall, which is now covered with ivy. A square court is formed by buildings of different ages, particularly some towers, said to be of great antiquity; and at one place there is a row of false cannon2 of stone. There is a very large unfinished 6 [The minister seems to have been no conIs not Philarchus a very pile, four stories high, which we were told temptible Latinist. was here when Leod, the first of this fam- happy term to express the paternal and kindly ily, came from the Isle of Man, married the authority of the head of a clan? heiress of the M'Crails, the ancient posses-run in English, sors of Dunvegan, and afterwards acquired by conquest as much land as he had got by marriage. He surpassed the house of Austria; for he was felix both bella gerere et nubere 3. John Breck 4 Macleod, the grand 1 Aul. Gellius, lib. v. c. xiv.-BOSWELL. 2 [Dunvegan Castle is mounted with real cannon; not unnecessarily, for its situation might expose it in war time to be plundered by privateers. -WALTER SCOTT.] 3 [This is an allusion to a celebrated epigram, quoted with so much effect by the late Mr. Whitbread, in a speech in the house of commons (9th March, 1810), in allusion to the marriage of the Archduchess Maria Louisa with Buonaparte. "Bella gerant alii; tu, felix Austria, nube; Quæ dat Mars aliis, dat tibi regna Venus."-ED.] [Breck means marked with the small-pox.ED.] VOL. I. 51 Macleod's titles "Lord of Dunvegan, Chief of his Clan, Baron of Durinish, Harris, Waterness," &c.-ED.] See Appendix. 7 "This pyramid was erected by Simon Lord Fraser, of Lovat, in honour of Lord Thomas his father, a peer of Scotland, and chief of the great and ancient clan of the Frasers. Being attacked for his birthright by the family of Atholl, then in power and favour with King William, yet, by the valour and fidelity of his clan, and the assistance of the Campbells, the old friends and allies of his family, he defended his birthright with such greatness and fermety of soul, and such valour and activity, that he was an honour to his name, and a good pattern to all brave chiefs of clans. He died in the month of May, 1699, in the sixtythird year of his age, in Dunvegan, the house of the Laird of Macleod, whose sister he had married: by whom he had the above Simon Lord Fraser, and several other children. And, for the great love he bore to the family of Macleod, he TOUR TO THE of no great value, thinking it characteristi- | him, they dug into it. It was very narcal of a man who has made some noise in row and low, and seemed about forty feet in the world. Dr. Johnson said, it was poor length. Near it, we found the foundations stuff, such as Lord Lovat's butler might of several small huts, built of stone. Mr. have written. M'Queen, who is always for making every thing as ancient as possible, boasted that it was the dwelling of some of the first inhabitants of the island, and observed, what a curiosity it was to find here a specimen of the houses of the aborigines, which he believed could be found nowhere else; and it was plain that they lived without fire. Dr. Johnson remarked, that they who made this were not in the rudest state; for that it was. more difficult to make it than to build a house; therefore certainly those who made it were in possession of houses, and had this only as a hiding-place. It appeared to me, that the vestiges of houses just by it confirmed Dr. Johnson's opinion. I observed, in this churchyard, a parcel of people assembled at a funeral, before the grave was dug. The coffin, with the corpse in it, was placed on the ground, while the people alternately assisted in making a grave. One man, at a little distance, was busy cutting a long turf for it, with the crooked spade which is used in Sky; a very awkward instrument. The iron part of it is like a plough-coulter. It has a rude tree for a handle, in which a wooden pin is placed for the foot to press upon. A traveller might, without further inquiry, have set this down as the mode of burying in Sky. I was told, however, that the usual way is to have a grave previously dug. I observed to-day, that the common way of carrying home their grain here is in loads on horseback. They have also a few sleds, or cars, as we call them in Ayrshire, clumsily made, and rarely used. From an old tower, near this place, is an extensive view of Loch-Braccadale, and, at a distance, of the isles of Barra and South Uist; and, on the landside, the Cuillin 2, a prodigious range of mountains, capped with We got to Ulinish about six o'clock, and They resemble the mountains near Corte, rocky pinnacles in a strange variety of shapes. found a very good farm-house, of two stories. in Corsica, of which there is a very good Mr. Macleod of Ulinish, the sheriff-substi- print. They make part of a great range for tute of the island, was a plain honest gentle-deer, which, though entirely devoid of trees, man, a good deal like an English justice of peace; not much given to talk, but sufficiently sagacious, and somewhat droll. His daughter, though she was never out of Sky, was a very well-bred woman. Our reverend friend, Mr. Donald M'Queen, kept his appointment, and met us here. Talking of Phipps's voyage to the North Pole, Dr. Johnson observed, that it "was conjectured that our former navigators have kept too near land, and so have found the sea frozen far north, because the land hinders the free motion of the tide; but, in the wide ocean, where the waves tumble at their full convenience, it is imagined that the frost does not take effect." Wednesday, 22d September. In the morning I walked out, and saw a ship, the Margaret of Clyde, pass by with a number of emigrants on board. It was a melancholy sight. After breakfast, we went to see what was called a subterraneous house, about a mile off. It was upon the side of a rising ground. It was discovered by a fox's having taken up his abode in it, and in chasing desired to be buried near his wife's relations, in the place where two of her uncles lay. And his son Lord Simon, to show to posterity his great affection for his mother's kindred, the brave Macleods, chooses rather to leave his father's bones with them, than carry them to his own burial-place, near Lovat." [An instrument somewhat like this (if not the same) is still in general use in Ireland.— ED.] is in these countries called a forest. his boat to an island possessed by him, In the afternoon, Ulinish carried us in where we saw an immense cave, much more deserving the title of antrum immane than that of the Sibyl described by Virgil, which I likewise have visited. It is one hundred and eighty feet long, about thirty feet broad, and at least thirty feet high. This cave, we were told, had a remarkable echo, but we found none. They said it was owing to the great rains having made it damp. Such are the excuses by which the exaggeration of Highland narratives is palliated There is a plentiful garden at Ulinish (a near the house is a hill, which has an Erse great rarity in Sky), and several trees; and name, signifying" the hill of strife," where, Mr. M'Queen informed us, justice was of old administered. It is like the mons placiti of Scone, or those hills which are called laws, such as Kelly law, North-Berwick law, and several others. It is singular that this spot should happen now to be the sheriff's residence. We had a very cheerful evening, and Dr their name from the ancient hero, Cuchullin [These picturesque mountains of Sky take The name is pronounced Quillen. I wonder that Boswell nowhere mentions Macleod's Maidens two or three immense stacks of rock, like the Needles at the Isle of Wight; and Macleod's Dining-Tables-hills which derive their name from their elevated, steep sides, and flat tops.WALTER SCOTT.] |