Mr. M'Queen said, "No, but my brother has it." JOHNSON. "Have you the "Idler?" M'QUEEN. "No, Sir." JOHNSON. "Then I will order one for you at Edinburgh, which you will keep in remembrance of me." Mr. M'Queen was much pleased with this. He expressed to me, in the strongest terms, his admiration of Dr. Johnson's wonderful knowledge, and every other quality for which he is distinguished. I asked Mr. M'Queen if he was satisfied with being a minister in Sky. He said he was; but he owned that his forefathers having been so long there, and his having been born there, made a chief ingredient in forming his contentment. I should have mentioned, that on our left hand, between Portree and Dr. Macleod's house, Mr. M'Queen told me there had been a college of the Knights Templars; that tradition said so; and that there was a ruin remaining of their church, which had been burnt: but I confess Dr. Johnson has weakened my belief in remote tradition. In the dispute about Anaitis, Mr. M'Queen said, Asia Minor was peopled by Scythians, and, as they were the ancestors of the Celts, the same religion might be in Asia Minor and Sky. JOHNSON. "Alas! Sir, what can a nation that has not letters tell of its original? I have always difficulty to be patient when I hear authors gravely quoted, as giving accounts of savage nations, which accounts they had from the savages themselves. What can the M'Craas tell about themselves a thousand years ago? There is no tracing the connection of ancient nations, but by language; and therefore I

1 "What can the M'Craas tell of themselves a thousand years ago?" More than the Doctor would suppose. I have a copy of their family history, written by Mr. John Mac Ra, minister of Dingwall, in Ross-shire, in 1702. In this history, they are averred to have come over with those Fitzgeralds now holding the name of M'Kenzie, at the period of the battle of Largs, in 1263. I was indulged with a copy of the pedigree, by the consent of the principal persons of the clan, in 1826, and had the original in my possession for some time. It is modestly drawn up, and apparently with all the accuracy which can be expected when tradition must be necessarily much relied upon. The name was in Irish, Mac Grath, softened in the Highlands into Mac Ra, Mac Corow, Mac Rae, &c. ; and in the Lowlands, where the patronymic was often dropped, by the names of Crow, Craw, &c.-Walter Scott.

am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigree of nations. If you find the same language in distant countries, you may be sure that the inhabitants of each have been the same people; that is to say, if you find the languages a good deal the same; for a word here and there being the same, will not do. Thus Butler, in his 'Hudibras,' remembering that penguin, in the Straits of Magellan, signifies a bird with a white head, and that the same word has, in Wales, the signification of a white-headed wench (pen head, and guin white), by way of ridicule, concludes that the people of those straits are Welsh."

1

A young gentleman of the name of M'Lean, nephew to the Laird of the Isle of Muck, came this morning; and just as we sat down to dinner came the Laird of the Isle of Muck himself, his lady, sister to Talisker, two other ladies, their relations, and a daughter of the late M'Leod of Hamer, who wrote a treatise on the second sight, under the designation of "Theophilus Insulanus." It was somewhat droll to hear this laird called by his title. Muck would have sounded ill; so he was called Isle of Muck, which went off with great readiness. The name, as now written, is unseemly, but is not so bad in the original Erse, which is Mouach, signifying the Sows' Island.2 Buchanan calls it Insula Porcorum. It is so called from its form. Some call it the Isle of Monk. The Laird insists that this is the proper name. It was formerly church-land belonging to Icolmkill, and a hermit lived in it. It is two miles long, and about three-quarters of a mile broad. The Laird said, he had seven score of souls upon it. Last year he had eighty persons inoculated, mostly children, but some of them eighteen years of age. He agreed with the surgeon to come and do it at half a crown a head. It is very fertile in corn, of which they export some; and its

1 The work of 66 Theophilus Insulanus" was written in as credulous a style as either Dr. Johnson or his biographer could have desired.— Walter Scott.

2

Properly, Mr. William Macpherson informed me,—of sea-swine or seals.-Croker.

coasts abound in fish. A tailor comes there six times in a year. They get a good blacksmith from the Isle of Egg.

Sunday, Sept. 19.-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 beating. 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 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 over-match 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, I think it but candid to acknowledge, that in a subsequent conversation he told me that he was serious in what he had said.

breakfast, to read
He often before
To-day he said,
I observed, there

He came to my room this morning before my Journal, which he has done all along. said, "I take great delight in reading it." "You improve it grows better and better." was a danger of my getting a habit of writing in a slovenly manner. "Sir," said he, "it is not written in a slovenly manner. It might be printed, were the subject fit for printing." "While Mr. Bethune preached to us in the dining-room, Dr. Johnson sat in his own room, where I saw lying before him a volume of Lord Bacon's works, "The Decay of Christian Piety," Monboddo's "Origin of Language," and Sterne's Sermons. He asked me to-day, how it happened that we were so little together; I told him my Journal took up much time. Yet, on reflection, it appeared strange to me, that although I

1 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 public.

will run from one end of London to another, to pass an hour with him, I should omit to seize any spare time to be in his company, when I am settled in the same house with him. But my Journal is really a task of much time and labour, and he forbids me to contract it.

I omitted to mention, in its place, that Dr. Johnson told Mr. M'Queen that he had found the belief of the second sight universal in Sky, except among the clergy, who seemed determined against it. I took the liberty to observe to Mr. M'Queen, that the clergy were actuated by a kind of vanity. "The world," say they, "takes us to be credulous men in a remote corner. We'll show them that we are more enlightened than they think." The worthy man said, that his disbelief of it was from his not finding sufficient evidence; but I could perceive that he was prejudiced' against it.

After dinner to-day, we talked of the extraordinary fact of Lady Grange's' being sent to St. Kilda, and confined there

By the very use of this word, Mr. Boswell shows, that he himself was prejudiced in favour of the second sight, either because it suited the credulous temper of his own mind, or because it looked like a national honour. The clergy were probably not prejudiced against it, otherwise than as, being the best educated and most intelligent persons in those regions, they saw the absurdity of the fables on which the superstition was supported. General Macleod found Johnson more willing to believe in the second sight than in Ossian. And Boswell boasts of being an absolute believer. -Croker.

2 The true story of this lady, which happened in this century, is as frightfully romantic as if it had been the fiction of a gloomy fancy. She was the wife of one of the Lords of Session in Scotland, a man of the very first blood of his country. For some mysterious reasons, which have never been discovered, she was seized and carried off in the dark, she knew not by whom, and by nightly journeys was conveyed to the Highland shores, from whence she was transported by sea to the remote rock of St. Kilda, where she remained, amongst its few wild inhabitants, a forlorn prisoner, but had a constant supply of provisions, and a woman to wait on her. No inquiry was made after her, till she at last found means to convey a letter to a confidential friend, by the daughter of a Catechist, who concealed it in a clue of yarn. Information being thus obtained at Edinburgh, a ship was sent to bring her off; but intelligence of this being received, she was conveyed to Macleod's island of Herries, where she died. In Carstare's State Papers, we find an authentic narrative of Connor,

for several years, without any means of relief. 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 a catholic 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.

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.--W'alter Scott.

The story of Lady Grange is well known. I have seen her Journal. She had become privy to some of the Jacobite intrigues, in which her husband, Lord Grange (an Erskine brother of the Earl of Mar, and a Lord of Session), and his family were engaged. Being on indifferent terms with her husband, she is said to have thrown out hints that she knew as much as would cost him his life. The judge probably thought with Mrs. Peachum, that it is rather an awkward state of domestic affairs, when the wife has it in her power to hang the husband. Lady Grange was the more to be dreaded, as she came of a vindictive race, being the grandchild of that Chiesley of Dalry, who assassinated Sir George Lockhart, the Lord President. Many persons of importance in the Highlands were concerned in removing her testimony. The notorious Lovat, with a party of his men, were the direct agents in carrying her off; 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 anatomist, or shot in the slang of the Westport murderers.-Walter Scott.

Rachel Chiesley was, as Mr. Chambers informs me, the daughter, not the grand-daughter, of the murderer. The Earl of Mar, restored in 1824, was her grandson. She was buried, as Macleod informs me, at Dunvegan. -Croker.