I observe you sometimes write Erse and sometimes Earse; one or other only must be right.

P. 286, 1. 8, for Brecacig - Breacachach.

P. 296 (erroneously printed 226). This page I believe will make me yet go to the popish islands. But I must have instructions from you in writing.

Of the reception of this document by the Sage we have no account, but it may safely be left to the reader's imagination. Boswell ultimately went so far as to propose to publish a sort of supplement to the "Journey"; but, after his trip to London in the spring of 1775, this amazing plan was, happily, dropped. In May he wrote to Temple:

I have not written out another line of my "Remarks on the Hebrides." I found it impossible to do it in London. Besides, Dr. Johnson does not seem very desirous that I should publish any supplement. Between ourselves, he is not apt to encourage one to share reputation with himself. But don't you think I may write out my remarks in Scotland, and send them to be revised by you, and then they may be published freely?

Such was the origin of the "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.," perhaps the sprightliest book of travels in the language. A decade was to elapse, and Johnson to pass away, ere the publication of the book; but Boswell had his reward for fulfilling the Horatian

principle of delay. The lapse of time enabled him to publish, not a supplement to Johnson's book, but an independent volume, in which he was not to "share" Johnson's fame as a writer of travels, but totally to eclipse it. Moreover, the death of his eminent companion enabled him to cast all

restraint aside and to print, as literally as he chose to do, the diary which he had kept during the tour. Of this diary and of the "Tour to the Hebrides" he speaks in identical terms. Once only (under date of September 4) does he speak of suppressing material in the diary.

This diary had, as it were, the approval — though by no means the imprimatur- of Samuel

Johnson. He was well acquainted with Boswell's journal-keeping habits, and had often seen him at work upon it. After reading it, he made the remark that it was a very exact picture of a portion of his life. We have Boswell's word for it that Johnson was also aware of his intention to produce a biography of him. And yet to assert all this is not to say that Johnson ever conceived of the possibility of Boswell's printing the journal as it stood. Print the journal! He would as soon have permitted Reynolds to paint him in a state of nature.

When, in 1785, the "Tour" appeared, Johnson had been in his grave nearly a twelvemonth; but though he was not alive, to protest in person, his friends protested for him. Nothing like it had ever been read. It became at once a standard of indiscretion. To compare it with the autobiographical revelations made, in our own day, by the wife of a former Prime Minister of Great Britain would be to adduce but a feeble parallel. Boswell calmly recorded Johnson's casual remarks about everybody he had met. Lord Errol, for example, was told that the pillows on his bed had a disagreeable smell. Lord Monboddo was still alive, to read Johnson's contemptuous opinion of his theory of man's descent from monkeys, and was told that he was "as jealous of his tail as a

squirrel." He might also read that Johnson disapproved of his round hat, and considered him a fool for calling himself "Farmer Burnet." The Macaulay family were informed that Johnson said he did not believe that the Reverend Kenneth Macaulay (or M'Auley) of Calder was capable of writing the "History of St. Kilda's" which had appeared under his name - a slight which Trevelyan, writing nearly a century later, still found it impossible to pardon. The insult to Sir Alexander McDonald ("I meditated an escape from this house the very next day; but Dr. Johnson resolved that we should weather it out till Monday") and that to the famous Duchess of Hamilton are too well known to need repetition. When Rowlandson and Collings published their popular series of caricatures of the "Tour," one plate represented Boswell as "revising for a second edition," while Sir Alexander, brandishing a stick, stands over him as he tears out certain pages of the book. In the second edition Boswell did, indeed, make certain alterations in the interests of discretion, and spoke of a "few observations" which "might be considered as passing the bounds of a strict decorum"; but enough remained to require the revision of every principle of decorum of which the eighteenth century had ever conceived.

In October, a friend of Bishop Percy's wrote to

him about the book, remarking, "I have been amused at it, but should be very sorry either to have been the author or the hero of it." A pamphlet in the form of a letter to Boswell was written by a penny-a-liner calling himself "Verax," in which he said: "You have forced upon the Public a six-shilling book replete with small talk and illnatured remarks." This wretched hack professed to fear that the public would soon "have volume upon volume of coffee-house chit-chat or amorous tête-à-têtes." A satire, entitled "A Poetical Epistle from the Ghost of Dr. Johnson to his Friends,' contains the following lines:

O ne'er shall I our curious jaunt forget;
When, hungry, cold, sleepy, fatigu’d and wet,
On musty hay we vainly sought repose. . . .
How oft I mark'd thee, like a watchful cat,
List'ning to catch up all my silly chat;
How oft that chat I still more silly made,
To see it in thy common-place conveyed!

So much for the attack of Boswell's enemies. But his friends were scarcely less of a burden to him. He was deluged with a Niagara of advice, urging him to be more cautious. One page, in particular, roused the dismay of everyone who had known Johnson. This was the sheet of advertisement at the end, in which Boswell announced to the public that he was at work upon a biography of Johnson, that he had been collecting