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Bengal. He and I shall come down together as far as Newcastle, and thence I shall easily get to Edinburgh. Let me know the exact time when your courts intermit I must conform a little to Chambers's occasions, and he must conform a little to mine. The time which you shall fix must be the common point to which we will come as near as we can. Except this eye, I am very well.

"Beattie is so caressed, and invited, and treated, and liked, and flattered by the great, that I can see nothing of him. I am in great hope that he will be well provided for, and then we will live upon him at the Marischal College, without pity or modesty.

1 left the town without taking leave of me, and 1 Is not this very childish?

is gone in deep dudgeon to Where is now my legacy?

"I hope your dear lady and her dear baby are both well. I shall see them too when I come; and I have that opinion of your choice, as to suspect that when I have seen Mrs. Boswell, I shall be less willing to go away. I am, dear sir, your af fectionate humble servant,

"Write to me as soon as you can. Oxford."

"SAM. JOHNSON. Chambers is now at

I again wrote to him, informing him that the court of session rose on the twelfth of August, hoping to see him before that time, and expressing, perhaps in too extravagant terms, my admiration of him, and my expectation of pleasure from our intended

tour.

"TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

"3d August, 1773.

“DEAR SIR,—I shall set out from London on Friday the sixth of this month, and purpose not to loiter much by the way. Which day I shall be at Edinburgh, I cannot exactly tell. I suppose I must drive to an inn, and send a porter to find you. "I am afraid Beattie will not be at his college soon enough for us, and I shall be sorry to miss him; but there is no staying for the concurrence of all conveniences. We will do as well as we can. I am, sir, your most humble servant,

1

"SAM. JOHNSON."

[Both these blanks must be filed with Langton. See ante, p. 245.-ED.]

Tour to
Hebrid.

"3d August, 1773.

"DEAR SIR,-Not being at Mr. Thrale's when your letter came, I had written the inclosed paper and sealed it; bringing it hither for a frank, I found yours. If any thing could repress my ardour, it would be such a letter as yours. To disappoint a friend is unpleasing; and he that forms expectations like yours, must be disappointed. Think only when you see me, that you see a man who loves you, and is proud and glad that you love him. I am, sir, your most affectionate,

"SAM. JOHNSON."

1

1 Dr. Johnson had, for many years, given me hopes that we should go together, and visit the Hebrides. Martin's account of those islands had impressed us with a notion, that we might there contemplate a system of life almost totally different from what we had been accustomed to see; and to find simplicity and wildness, and all the circumstances of remote time or place, so near to our native great island, was an object within the reach of reasonable curiosity. Dr. Johnson has said in his "Journey," "that he scarcely remembered how the wish to visit the Hebrides was excited;" but he told me, in summer, 1763, that his father put Martin's account into his

[Here begins the Journal of the Tour to the Hebrides, to which Mr. Boswell had prefixed two mottos, the first in the title-page, from Pope:

"O! while along the stream of time thy name
Expanded flies, and gathers all its fame,
Say, shall my little bark attendant sail,

Pursue the triumph and partake the gale ?"

The other on a fly-leaf, from Baker's Chronicle:

"He was of an admirable pregnancy of wit, and that pregnancy much improved by continual study from his childhood; by which he had gotten such a promptness in expressing his mind, that his extemporal speeches were little inferior to his premeditated writings. Many, no doubt, had read as much, and perhaps more than he; but scarce ever any concocted his reading into judgment as he did." Mr. Boswell tells us that Johnson read this journal as it proceeded, which, strange as the reader will think it, when he comes to read some passages of it, Johnson himself confirms; for he says to Mrs. Thrale, "You never told me, and I omitted to inquire, how you were entertained by Boswell's Journal. One would think the man had been hired to be a spy upon me. He was very diligent, and caught opportunities of writing from time to time. You may now conceive yourself tolerably well acquainted with the expedition."-Letters, v. 1, p. 233.-ED.]

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