Oct. 5.

A line in THE BEGGAR'S OPERA.

329

the ruins of a church or chapel'. We then proceeded to a place called Grissipol, or the rough Pool.

At Grissipol we found a good farm house, belonging to the Laird of Col, and possessed by Mr. M'Sweyn. On the beach here there is a singular variety of curious stones. I picked up one very like a small cucumber. By the by, Dr. Johnson told me, that Gay's line in The Beggar's Opera, 'As men should serve a cucumber',' &c., has no waggish meaning, with reference to men flinging away cucumbers as too cooling, which some have thought; for it has been a common saying of physicians in England, that a cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing. Mr. M'Sweyn's predecessors had been in Sky from a very remote period, upon the estate belonging to M'Leod; probably before M'Leod had it. The name is certainly Norwegian, from Sueno, King of Norway. The present Mr. M'Sweyn left Sky upon the late M'Leod's raising his rents. He then got this farm from Col.

He appeared to be near fourscore; but looked as fresh, and was as strong as a man of fifty. His son Hugh looked older; and, as Dr. Johnson observed, had more the manners

''Mr. Maclean has no publick edifice for the exercise of his ministry, and can officiate to no greater number than a room can contain; and the room of a hut is not very large . . . The want of churches is not the only impediment to piety; there is likewise a want of ministers. A parish often contains more islands than one . . . All the provision made by the present ecclesiastical constitution for the inhabitants of about a hundred square miles is a prayer and sermon in a little room once in three weeks.' Johnson's Works, ix. 118.

"Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds what we have taught her. I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter.

For she must have both hoods and gowns, and hoops to swell her pride,

With scarfs and stays, and gloves and lace; and she will have men beside;

And when she's drest with care and cost, all-tempting, fine

and gay,

As men should serve a cucumber, she flings herself away.'

Air vii.

of

330

Insular life.

[Oct. 5. of an old man than he. I had often heard of such instances, but never saw one before. Mrs. M'Sweyn was a decent old gentlewoman. She was dressed in tartan, and could speak nothing but Erse. She said, she taught Sir James M'Donald Erse, and would teach me soon. I could now sing a verse of the song Hatyin foam'eri', made in honour of Allan, the famous Captain of Clanranald, who fell at Sherrif-muir2; whose servant, who lay on the field watching his master's dead body, being asked next day who that was, answered, 'He was a man yesterday.'

We were entertained here with a primitive heartiness. Whiskey was served round in a shell, according to the ancient Highland custom. Dr. Johnson would not partake of it; but, being desirous to do honour to the modes of other times,' drank some water out of the shell.

In the forenoon Dr. Johnson said, 'it would require great resignation to live in one of these islands.' BOSWELL. 'I don't know, Sir; I have felt myself at times in a state of almost mere physical existence, satisfied to eat, drink, and sleep, and walk about, and enjoy my own thoughts; and I can figure a continuation of this.' JOHNSON. 'Ay, Sir; but if you were shut up here, your own thoughts would torment you. You would think of Edinburgh or London, and that you could not be there.'

We set out after dinner for Breacacha, the family seat of the Laird of Col, accompanied by the young laird, who had now got a horse, and by the younger Mr. M'Sweyn, whose wife had gone thither before us, to prepare every thing for our reception, the laird and his family being absent at Aberdeen. It is called Breacacha, or the Spotted Field, because in summer it is enamelled with clover and daisies, as young Col told me. We passed by a place where there is a very large stone, I may call it a rock;-' a vast weight for Ajax'.'

1 See ante, p. 185.

3

* In 1715.

'When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labours, and the words move slow.'

Pope, Essay on Criticism, 1. 370.

The

Oct. 5.]

A sandy desart.

331

The tradition is, that a giant threw such another stone at his mistress, up to the top of a hill, at a small distance; and that she in return, threw this mass down to him'. It was all in sport.

'Malo me petit lasciva puella".'

As we advanced, we came to a large extent of plain ground. I had not seen such a place for a long time. Col and I took a gallop upon it by way of race. It was very refreshing to me, after having been so long taking short steps in hilly countries. It was like stretching a man's legs after being cramped in a short bed. We also passed close by a large extent of sand-hills, near two miles square. Dr. Johnson said, 'he never had the image before. It was horrible, if barrenness and danger could be so.' I heard him, after we were in the house of Breacacha, repeating to himself, as he walked about the room,

'And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind, dies3.'

Probably he had been thinking of the whole of the simile in Cato, of which that is the concluding line; the sandy desart had struck him so strongly. The sand has of late been blown over a good deal of meadow, and the people of the island say, that their fathers remembered much of the space which is now covered with sand, to have been under tillage'.

' Johnson's remark on these stones is curious as shewing that he had not even a glimpse of the discoveries to be made by geology. After saying that 'no account can be given' of the position of one of the stones, he continues:-'There are so many important things of which human knowledge can give no account, that it may be forgiven us if we speculate no longer on two stones in Col.' Works, ix. 122. See ante, ii. 536, for his censure of Brydone's 'anti-mosaical remark.' 'Malo me Galatea petit, lasciva puella.' My Phillis me with pelted apples plies.'

2

DRYDEN. Virgil, Eclogues, iii. 64.

'The helpless traveller, with wild surprise,
Sees the dry desert all around him rise,
And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies.'

Cato, act ii. sc. 6.

Johnson seems unwilling to believe this. I am not of opinion

Col's

332

Johnson's powers of ridicule.

[Oct. 6.

Col's house is situated on a bay called Breacacha Bay. We found here a neat new-built gentleman's house, better than any we had been in since we were at Lord Errol's. Dr. Johnson relished it much at first, but soon remarked to me, that 'there was nothing becoming a Chief about it: it was a mere tradesman's box'.' He seemed quite at home, and no longer found any difficulty in using the Highland address; for as soon as we arrived, he said, with a spirited familiarity, 'Now, Col, if you could get us a dish of tea.' Dr. Johnson and I had each an excellent bed-chamber. er. We had a dispute which of us had the best curtains. His were rather the best, being of linen; but I insisted that ny bed khe,) had the best posts, which was undeniable. 'Well, (said if you have the best posts, we will have you tied to thei and whipped.' I mention this slight circumstance, only to shew how ready he is, even in mere trifles, to get the better of his antagonist, by placing him in a ludicrous view. have known him sometimes use the same art, when hard pressed in serious disputation. Goldsmith, I remember, to retaliate for many a severe defeat which he has suffered from him, applied to him a lively saying in one of Cibber's comedies, which puts this part of his character in a strong light. There is no arguing with Johnson; for, if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6.

After a sufficiency of sleep, we assembled at breakfast. We were just as if in barracks. Every body was master.

that by any surveys or land-marks its [the sand's] limits have been ever fixed, or its progression ascertained. If one man has confidence enough to say that it advances, nobody can bring any proof to support him in denying it.' Works, ix. 122. He had seen land in like manner laid waste north of Aberdeen; where the owner, when he was required to pay the usual tax, desired rather to resign the ground.. Ib. p. 15.

1 Box, in this sense, is not in Johnson's Dictionary. 2 See ante, ii. 115, and iv. 316.

ww

We

Oct. 6.]

Happiness in a cottage.

333

We went and viewed the old castle of Col, which is not far from the present house, near the shore, and founded on a rock. It has never been a large feudal residence, and has nothing about it that requires a particular description. Like other old inconvenient buildings of the same age, it exemplified Gray's picturesque lines,

'Huge' windows that exclude the light,

And passages that lead to nothing.'

It may however be worth mentioning, that on the second story we saw a vault, which was, and still is, the family prison. There was a woman put into it by the laird, for theft, within these ten years; and any offender would be confined there yet; for, from the necessity of the thing, as the island is remote from any power established by law, the laird must exercise his jurisdiction to a certain degree.

After seeing the It is called Teigh Col could not tell

We were shewn, in a corner of this vault, a hole, into which Col said greater criminals used to be put. It was now filled up with rubbish of different kinds. He said, it was of a great depth. 'Ay, (said Dr. Johnson, smiling,) all such places, that are filled up, were of a great depth.' He is very quick in shewing that he does not give credit to careless or exaggerated accounts of things. castle, we looked at a small hut near it. Franchich, i. e. the Frenchman's House. us the history of it. A poor man with a wife and children now lived in it. We went into it, and Dr. Johnson gave them some charity. There was but one bed for all the family, and the hut was very smoky. When he came out, he said to me, 'Et hoc secundum sententiam philosophorum est esse beatus.' BOSWELL. The philosophers, when they placed happiness in a cottage, supposed cleanliness and no smoke.' JOHNSON. Sir, they did not think about either.'

In the original, Rich windows. A Long Story, 1.7.

And this according to the philosophers is happiness.' Boswell says of Crabbe's poem The Village, that 'its sentiments as to the false notions of rustick happiness and rustick virtue were quite congenial with Johnson's own.' Ante, iv. 202.

We