Books: The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

J >> James Boswell >> The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28

Talking of our friend Langton's house in Lincolnshire, he said, 'the
old house of the family was burnt. A temporary building was erected in
its room; and to this day they have been always adding as the family
increased. It is like a shirt made for a man when he was a child, and
enlarged always as he grows older.'

We talked to-night of Luther's allowing the Landgrave of Hesse two
wives, and that it was with the consent of the wife to whom he was
first married. JOHNSON. 'There was no harm in this, so far as she was
only concerned, because volenti non fit injuria. But it was an offence
against the general order of society, and against the law of the
Gospel, by which one man and one woman are to be united. No man can
have two wives, but by preventing somebody else from having one.'

Friday, 17th September

After dinner yesterday, we had a conversation upon cunning. M'Leod
said that he was not afraid of cunning people; but would let them play
their tricks about him like monkeys. 'But,' said I, 'they scratch';
and Mr M'Queen added, 'they'll invent new tricks, as soon as you find
out what they do.' JOHNSON. 'Cunning has effect from the credulity of
others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It
requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.' This led us to
consider whether it did not require great abilities to be very wicked.
JOHNSON. 'It requires great abilities to have the POWER of being very
wicked; but not to BE very wicked. A man who has the power, which
great abilities procure him, may use it well or ill; and it requires
more abilities to use it well, than to use it ill. Wickedness is
always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to every thing.
It is much easier to steal a hundred pounds, than to get it by labour,
or any other way. Consider only what act of wickedness requires great
abilities to commit it, when once the person who is to do it has the
power; for THERE is the distinction. It requires great abilities to
conquer an army, but none to massacre it after it is conquered.'

The weather this day was rather better than any that we had since we
came to Dunvegan. Mr M'Queen had often mentioned a curious piece of
antiquity near this which he called a temple of the goddess Anaitis.
Having often talked of going to see it, he and I set out after
breakfast, attended by his servant, a fellow quite like a savage. I
must observe here, that in Sky there seems to be much idleness; for
men and boys follow you, as colts follow passengers upon a road. The
usual figure of a Sky boy, is a lown with bare legs and feet, a dirty
kilt, ragged coat and waistcoat, a bare head, and a stick in his hand,
which, I suppose, is partly to help the lazy rogue to walk, partly to
serve as a kind of a defensive weapon. We walked what is called two
miles, but is probably four, from the castle, till we came to the
sacred place. The country around is a black dreary moor on all sides,
except to the sea-coast, towards which there is a view through a
valley, and the farm of Bay shews some good land. The place itself is
green ground, being well drained, by means of a deep glen on each
side, in both of which there runs a rivulet with a good quantity of
water, forming several cascades, which make a considerable appearance
and sound. The first thing we came to was an earthen mound, or dyke,
extending from the one precipice to the other. A little farther on,
was a strong stone-wall, not high, but very thick, extending in the
same manner. On the outside of it were the ruins of two houses, one on
each side of the entry or gate to it. The wall is built all along of
uncemented stones, but of so large a size as to make a very firm and
durable rampart. It has been built all about the consecrated ground,
except where the precipice is deep enough to form an enclosure of
itself. The sacred spot contains more than two acres. There are within
it the ruins of many houses, none of them large, a cairn, and many
graves marked by clusters of stones. Mr M'Queen insisted that the ruin
of a small building, standing east and west, was actually the temple
of the goddess Anaitis, where her statue was kept, and from whence
processions were made to wash it in one of the brooks. There is, it
must be owned, a hollow road visible for a good way from the entrance;
but Mr M'Queen, with the keen eye of an antiquary, traced it much
farther than I could perceive it. There is not above a foot and a half
in height of the walls now remaining; and the whole extent of the
building was never, I imagine, greater than an ordinary Highland
house. Mr M'Queen has collected a great deal of learning on the
subject of the temple of Anaitis; and I had endeavoured, in my
journal, to state such particulars as might give some idea of it, and
of the surrounding scenery; but from the great difficulty of
describing visible objects, I found my account so unsatisfactory, that
my readers would probably have exclaimed

And write about it, Goddess, and about it; and therefore I have
omitted it. When we got home, and were again at table with Dr Johnson,
we first talked of portraits. He agreed in thinking them valuable in
families. I wished to know which he preferred, fine portraits, or
those of which the merit was resemblance. JOHNSON. 'Sir, their chief
excellence is being like.' BOSWELL. 'Are you of that opinion as to the
portraits of ancestors, whom one has never seen?' JOHNSON. 'It then
becomes of more consequence that they should be like; and I would have
them in the dress of the times, which makes a piece of history. One
should like to see how Rorie More looked. Truth, sir, is of the
greatest value in these things.' Mr M'Queen observed, that if you
think it of no consequence whether portraits are like, if they are but
well painted, you may be indifferent whether a piece of history is
true or not, if well told.

Dr Johnson said at breakfast to day, 'that it was but of late that
historians bestowed pains and attention in consulting records, to
attain to accuracy. Bacon, in writing his History of Henry VII, does
not seem to have consulted any, but to have just taken what he found
in other histories, and blended it with what he learnt by tradition.'
He agreed with me that there should be a chronicle kept in every
considerable family, to preserve the characters and transactions of
successive generations.

After dinner I started the subject of the temple of Anaitis. Mr
M'Queen had laid stress on the name given to the place by the country
people, Ainnit; and added, 'I knew not what to make of this piece of
antiquity, till I met with the Anaitidis delubrum in Lydia, mentioned
by Pausanias and the elder Pliny.' Dr Johnson, with his usual
acuteness, examined Mr M'Queen as to the meaning of the word Ainnit,
in Erse; and it proved to be a WATER-PLACE, or a place near water,
'which,' said Mr M'Queen, 'agrees with all the descriptions of the
temples of that goddess, which were situated near rivers, that there
might be water to wash the statue'. JOHNSON. 'Nay, sir, the argument
from the name is gone. The name is exhausted by what we see. We have
no occasion to go to a distance for what we can pick up under our
feet. Had it been an accidental name, the similarity between it and
Anaitis might have had something in it; but it turns out to be a mere
physiological name.' Macleod said, Mr M'Queen's knowledge of etymology
had destroyed his conjecture. JOHNSON. 'You have one possibility for
you, and all possibilities against you. It is possible it may be the
temple of Anaitis. But it is also possible that it may be a
fortification; or it may be a place of Christian worship, as the first
Christians often chose remote and wild places, to make an impression
on the mind; or, if it was a heathen temple, it may have been built
near a river, for the purpose of lustration; and there is such a
multitude of divinities, to whom it may have been dedicated, that the
chance of its being a temple of Anaitis is hardly any thing. It is
like throwing a grain of sand upon the sea-shore today, and thinking
you may find it tomorrow. No, sir, this temple, like many an ill-built
edifice, tumbles down before it is roofed in.' In his triumph over the
reverend antiquarian, he indulged himself in a conceit; for, some
vestige of the ALTAR of the goddess being much insisted on in support
of the hypothesis, he said, 'Mr M'Queen is fighting pro aris et
focis.'

It was wonderful how well time passed in a remote castle, and in
dreary weather. After supper, we talked of Pennant. It was objected
that he was superficial. Dr Johnson defended him warmly. He said,
'Pennant has greater variety of inquiry than almost any man, and has
told us more than perhaps one in ten thousand could have done, in the
time that he took. He has not said what he was to tell; so you cannot
find fault with him, for what he has not told. If a man comes to look
for fishes, you cannot blame him if he does not attend to fowls.'
'But,' said Colonel M'Leod, 'he mentions the unreasonable rise of
rents in the Highlands, and says, "the gentlemen are for emptying the
bag, without filling it"; for that is the phrase he uses. Why does he
not tell how to fill it?' JOHNSON. 'Sir, there is no end of negative
criticism. He tells what he observes, and as much as he chooses. If he
tells what is not true, you may find fault with him; but, though he
tells that the land is not well cultivated, he is not obliged to tell
how it may be well cultivated. If I tell that many of the highlanders
go bare-footed, I am not obliged to tell how they may get shoes.
Pennant tells a fact. He need go no farther, except he pleases. He
exhausts nothing; and no subject whatever has yet been exhausted. But
Pennant has surely told a great deal. Here is a man six feet high, and
you are angry because he is not seven.' Notwithstanding this eloquent
Oratio pro Pennantio, which they who have read this gentleman's TOURS,
and recollect the Savage and the Shopkeeper at Monboddo will probably
impute to the spirit of contradiction. I still think that he had
better have given more attention to fewer things, than have thrown
together such a number of imperfect accounts.

Saturday, 18th September

Before breakfast, Dr Johnson came up to my room, to forbid me to
mention that this was his birthday; but I told him I had done it
already; at which he was displeased; I suppose from wishing to have
nothing particular done on his account. Lady M'Leod and I got into a
warm dispute. She wanted to build a house upon a farm which she has
taken, about five miles from the castle, and to make gardens and other
ornaments there; all of which I approved of; but insisted that the
seat of the family should always be upon the rock of Dunvegan.
JOHNSON. 'Ay, in time we'll build all round this rock. You may make a
very good house at the farm; but it must not be such as to tempt the
Laird of M'Leod to go thither to reside. Most of the great families of
England have a secondary residence, which is called a jointure-house:
let the new house be of that kind.' The lady insisted that the rock
was very inconvenient; that there was no place near it where a good
garden could be made; that it must always be the rude place; that it
was a Herculean labour to make a dinner here. I was vexed to find the
alloy of modern refinement in a lady who had so much old family
spirit. 'Madam,' said I, 'if once you quit this rock, there is no
knowing where you may settle. You move five miles first, then to St
Andrews, as the late laird did; then to Edinburgh; and so on till you
end at Hampstead, or in France. No, no; keep to the rock: it is the
very jewel of the estate. It looks as if it had been let down from
heaven by the four corners, to be the residence of a chief. Have all
the comforts and conveniencies of life upon it, but never leave Rorie
More's cascade.' 'But,' said she, 'is it not enough if we keep it?
Must we never have more convenience than Rorie More had? He had his
beef brought to dinner in one basket, and his bread in another. Why
not as well be Rorie More all over, as live upon his rock? And should
not we tire, in looking perpetually on this rock? It is very well for
you, who have a fine place, and every thing easy, to talk thus, and
think of chaining honest folks to a rock. You would not live upon it
yourself.' 'Yes, madam,' said I, 'I would live upon it, were I Laird
of M'Leod, and should be unhappy if I were not upon it.' JOHNSON (with
a strong voice, and most determined manner). 'Madam, rather than quit
the old rock, Boswell would live in the pit; he would make his bed in
the dungeon.' I felt a degree of elation, at finding my resolute
feudal enthusiasm thus confirmed by such a sanction. The lady was
puzzled a little. She still returned to her pretty farm--rich ground,
fine garden. 'Madam,' said Dr Johnson, 'were they in Asia, I would not
leave the rock.' My opinion on this subject is still the same. An
ancient family residence ought to be a primary object; and though the
situation of Dunvegan be such that little can be done here in
gardening, or pleasure-ground, yet, in addition to the veneration
acquired by the lapse of time, it has many circumstances of natural
grandeur, suited to the seat of a Highland chief: it has the sea,
islands, rocks, hills, a noble cascade; and when the family is again
in opulence, something may be done by art.

Mr Donald M'Queen went away today, in order to preach at Bracadale
next day. We were so comfortably situated at Dunvegan, that Dr Johnson
could hardly be moved from it. I proposed to him that we should leave
it on Monday. 'No, sir,' said he, 'I will not go before Wednesday. I
will have some more of this good.' However, as the weather was at this
season so bad, and so very uncertain, and we had a great deal to do
yet, Mr M'Queen and I prevailed with him to agree to set out on
Monday, if the day should be good. Mr M'Queen though it was
inconvenient for him to be absent from his harvest, engaged to wait on
Monday at Ulinish for us. When he was going away, Dr Johnson said, 'I
shall ever retain a great regard for you'; then asked him if he had
the Rambler. 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 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 Welch.'

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 founded 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. Buchanan calls it Insula
Porcorum. It is so called from its form. Some call it 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
coasts abound in fish. A taylor comes there six times in a year. They
get a good blacksmith from the Isle of Egg.

Sunday, 19th September

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 or 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.

He came to my room this morning before breakfast, to read my Journal,
which he has done all along. He often before said, 'I take great
delight in reading it.' Today he said, 'You improve: it grows better
and better.' I observed, there 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.' [Footnote: 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 publick.] While Mr Beaton
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 today, 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 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 shew 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 for several years,
without any means of relief. [Footnote: The true story of this lady,
which happened In this century, is as frightfully romantick 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 journies 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 M'Leod's
island of Herries, where she died.

In Carstares's State Papers, we find an authentick narrative of
Connor, a Catholick priest, who turned Protestant, being seized by
some of Lord Seaforth's people, and detained prisoner in the island of
Herries 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 shews
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. His
style of his letter runs as if he were of another kingdom' (p. 643).]
Dr Johnson said, if M'Leod 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 poetical genius shewn in combining
these, and in making poetry of them.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, a man cannot make
fire but in proportion as he has fuel. He cannot coin guineas but in
proportion as he has gold.' At tea he talked of his intending to go to
Italy in 1775. M'Leod said, he would like Paris better. JOHNSON. 'No,
sir; there are none of the French literati now alive, to visit whom I
would cross a sea. I can find in Buffon's book all that he can
say.'[Footnote: I doubt the justice of my fellow-traveller's remark
concerning the French literati, many of whom, I am told, have
considerable merit in conversation, as well as in their writings. That
of Monsieur de Buffon, in particular, I am well assured is highly
instructive and entertaining.]

After supper he said, 'I am sorry that prize-fighting is gone out;
every art should be preserved, and the art of defence is surely
important. It is absurd that our soldiers should have swords, and not
be taught the use of them. Prize-fighting made people accustomed not
to be alarmed at seeing their own blood, or feeling a little pain from
a wound. I think the heavy glaymore was an ill-contrived weapon. A man
could only strike once with it. It employed both his hands, and he
must of course be soon fatigued with wielding it; so that if his
antagonist could only keep playing a while, he was sure of him. I
would fight with a dirk against Rorie More's sword. I could ward off a
blow with a dirk, and then run in upon my enemy. When within that
heavy sword, I have him; he is quite helpless, and I could stab him at
my leisure, like a calf. It is thought by sensible military men, that
the English do not enough avail themselves of their superior strength
of body against the French; for that must always have a great
advantage in pushing with bayonets. I have heard an officer say, that
if women could be made to stand, they would do as well as men in a
mere interchange of bullets from a distance: but, if a body of men
should come close up to them, then to be sure they must be overcome;
now (said he), in the same manner the weaker-bodied French must be
overcome by our strong soldiers.'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28