"Yes, (said I,) if it is not a deluge." "At any rate," he replied. This shewed a kind of fretful impatience; nor was it to be wondered at, considering our disagreeable ride. I feared he would give up Mull and Icolmkill, for he said something of his apprehensions of being detained by bad weather in going to Mull and Iona. However I hoped well. We had a dish of tea at Dr. Macleod's, who had a pretty good house, where was his brother, a half-pay officer. His lady was a polite, agreeable woman. Dr. Johnson said, he was glad to see that he was so well married, for he had an esteem for physicians. The doctor accompanied us to Kingsburgh, which is called a mile farther; but the computation of Sky has no connection whatever with the real distance.

I was highly pleased to see Dr. Johnson safely arrived at Kingsburgh, and received by the hospitable Mr. Macdonald, who, with a most respectful attention, supported him into the house. Kingsburgh was compleatly the figure of a gallant Highlander,-exhibiting "the graceful mien, and manly looks," which our popular Scots song has justly attributed to that character. He had his Tartan plaid thrown about him, a large blue bonnet with a knot of black ribband like a cockade, a brown short coat of a kind of duffil, a Tartan waistcoat with gold buttons and gold button-holes, a bluish philibeg, and Tartan hose. He had jet black hair tied behind, and was a large stately man, with a steady sensible countenance.

There was a comfortable parlour with a good fire, and a dram went round. By and by supper was served, at which there appeared the lady of the house, the celebrated Miss Flora Macdonald. She is a little woman, of a genteel appearance, and uncommonly mild and well-bred. To see Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora Macdonald in the isle of Sky, was a striking sight; for though somewhat congenial in their notions, it was very improbable they should meet here.

Miss Flora Macdonald (for so I shall call her) told me, she heard upon the main land, as she was returning to Sky about a fortnight before, that Mr. Boswell was coming to Sky, and one Mr. Johnson, a young English buck, with him. He was highly entertained with this fancy. Giving an account of the afternoon which we past at Anock, he said, "I, being a buck, had miss in to make tea." He was rather quiescent to-night, and went early to bed. I was in a cordial humour, and promoted a cheerful glass. The punch was superexcellent. Honest Mr. M'Queen observed that I was in high glee, "my governour being gone to bed." Yet in reality my heart was

Second Edition.-Line 33: Read "as she was returning home about," &c.

VOL. III.

21

grieved, when I recollected that Kingsburgh was embarrassed in his affairs, and intended to go to America. However, nothing but what was good was present, and I pleased myself in thinking that so spirited a man would be well every where. I slept in the same room with Dr. Johnson. Each had a neat bed, with Tartan curtains, in an upper chamber.1

Monday, 13th September.

The room where we lay was a celebrated one. Dr. Johnson's bed was the very bed in which the grandson of the unfortunate King James the Second lay, on one of the nights after the failure of his rash attempt in 1745-6, while he was eluding the pursuit of the emissaries of government, which had offered thirty thousand pounds as a reward for apprehending him. To see Dr. Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the isle of Sky, in the House of Miss Flora Macdonald, struck me with such a groupe of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed through the mind. and said, "I have had no ambitious thoughts in it." was decorated with a great variety of maps and prints. others, was Hogarth's print of Wilkes grinning, with the cap of

He smiled,

The room

Among

• I do not call him the Prince of Wales, or the Prince, because I am quite satisfied that the right which the House of Stuart had to the throne is extinguished. I do not call him the Pretender, because it appears to me as an insult to one who is still alive, and, I suppose, thinks very differently. It may be a parliamentary expression; but it is not a gentlemanly expression. I know, and I exult in having it in my power to tell, that THE ONLY PERSON in the world who is entitled to be offended at this delicacy, "thinks and feels as I do ; " and has liberality of mind and generosity of sentiment enough, to approve of my tenderness for what even has been BloodRoyal. That he is a prince by courtesy, cannot be denied; because his mother was the daughter of Sobieski, king of Poland. I shall, therefore, on that account alone, distinguish him by the name of Prince Charles Edward.

b This, perhaps, was said in allusion to some lines ascribed to Pope, on his lying, at John Duke of Argyll's, at Adderbury, in the same bed in which Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, had slept :

"With no poetic ardour fir'd,

I press the bed where Wilmot lay;
That here he liv'd, or here expir'd,
Begets no numbers, grave or gay."

1 "The Kingsburgh family," says Mr. Carruthers," emigrated in the year after Johnson's visit. They returned to their old home. Flora, during the voyage, aided in repelling the attack of a privaeer by animating the men. In the fray she was thrown down, and had her arm broken. She died in 1790."

2 Mr. Boswell, no doubt, laid this question before the king, when he waited on him to ask permission to publish the report of the conversation between Johnson and his Majesty. His behaviour on this occasion is amusingly described by Madame d'Arblay.-See Memoir of Dr. Burney, vol. iii. p. 114.

liberty on a pole by him. That too was a curious circumstance in the scene this morning; such a contrast was Wilkes to the above groupe. It reminded me of Sir William Chambers's "Account of Oriental Gardening," in which we are told all odd, strange, ugly, and even terrible objects, are introduced, for the sake of variety: a wild extravagance of taste which is so well ridiculed in the celebrated

Epistle to him. The following lines of that poem immediately

occurred to me:

"Here, too, O king of vengeance ! in thy fane,

Tremendous Wilkes shall rattle his gold chain."

Upon the table in our room I found in the morning a slip of paper, on which Dr. Johnson had written with his pencil these words:

What he meant by writing them I could not tell. He had catched cold a day or two ago, and the rain yesterday having made it worse, he was become very deaf. At breakfast he said, he would have given a good deal, rather than not have lain in that bed. I owned he was the lucky man; and observed, that without doubt it had been contrived between Mrs. Macdonald and him. She seemed to acquiesce; adding, "You know young bucks are always favourites of the ladies." He spoke of Prince Charles being here, and asked Mrs. Macdonald "Who was with him? We were told, madam, in England, there was one Miss Flora Macdonald with him." She said, "they were very right;" and perceiving Dr. Johnson's curiosity, though he had delicacy enough not to question her, very obligingly entertained him with a recital of the particulars which she herself knew of that escape, which does so much honour to the humanity, fidelity, and generosity, of the Highlanders. Dr. Johnson listened to her with placid attention, and said, "All this should be written down."

From what she told us, and from what I was told by others personally concerned, and from a paper of information which Rasay was so good as to send me, at my desire, I have compiled the fol

Second Edition.-On line 14 a note: "With virtue weigh'd, what worthless trash is gold !"

Ibid.-On line 15 a note: "Since the first edition of this book, an ingenious friend has observed to me, that Dr. Johnson had probably been thinking on the reward which was offered by government for the apprehension of the grandson of King James II. and that he meant by these words to express his admiration of the Highlanders, whose fidelity and attachment had resisted the golden temptation that had been held out to them."

forgetting his assumed sex, that his clothes might not be wet, hem up a great deal too high. Kingsburgh mentioned this to observing, it might make a discovery. He said, he would be careful for the future. He was as good as his word; for the rook they crossed, he did not hold up his clothes at all, but let float upon the water. He was very aukward in his female His size was so large, and his strides so great, that some en whom they met reported that they had seen a very big an, who looked like a man in women's clothes, and that perit was (as they expressed themselves) the Prince, after whom auch search was making.

t Kingsburgh he met with a most cordial reception; seemed at supper, and after it indulged himself in a cheerful glass with worthy host. As he had not had his clothes off for a long time, > comfort of a good bed was highly relished by him, and he slept undly till next day at one o'clock.

The mistress of Corrichatachin told me that in the forenoon she ent into her father's room, who was also in bed, and suggested to im her apprehensions that a party of the military might come up, nd that his guest and he had better not remain here too long. Her father said, "Let the poor man repose himself after his fatigues; and as for me, I care not, though they take off this old grey head ten or eleven years sooner than I should die in the course of nature." He then wrapped himself in the bed-clothes, and again fell fast asleep.

On the afternoon of that day, the Wanderer, still in the same dress, set out for Portree, with Flora Macdonald and a man servant. His shoes being very bad, Kingsburgh provided him with a new pair, and taking up the old ones, said, "I will faithfully keep them till you are safely settled at St. James's. I will then introduce myself, by shaking them at you, to put you in mind of your night's entertainment and protection under my roof." He smiled, and said, "Be as good as your word!" Kingsburgh kept the shoes as long as he lived. After his death, a zealous Jacobite gentleman gave twenty guineas for them.

Old Mrs. Macdonald, after her guest had left the house, took the sheets in which he had lain, folded them carefully, and charged her daughter that they should be kept unwashed, and that, when she died, her body should be wrapped in them as a winding sheet. Her will was religiously observed.

Upon the road to Portree, Prince Charles changed his dress, and put on man's clothes again; a tartan short coat and waistcoat, with philibeg and short hose, a plaid, and a wig and bonnet.