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cated it to Dr. Johnson. He said he loved your spirit, and was exceedingly sorry that he had been the cause of the smallest uneasiness to you. There is not a more candid man in the world than he is, when properly addressed, as you will see from his letter to you, which I now enclose. He has allowed me to take a copy of it, and he says you may read it to your clan, or publish it if you please. Be assured, sir, that I shall take care of what he has entrusted to me, which is to have an acknowledgement of his errour inserted in the Edinburgh newspapers. You will, I dare say, be fully satisfied with Dr. Johnson's beha viour. He is desirous to know that you are; and therefore when you have read his acknowledgement in the papers, I beg you may write to me; and if you choose it, I am persuaded a letter from the Doctor also will be taken kind. I shall be at Edinburgh the week after next.

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you to

Any civilities which my wife and I had in our power to shew to your daughter, Miss M'Leod, were due to her own merit, and were well repaid by her agreeable company. But I am sure I should be a very unworthy man if I did not wish to shew a grateful sense of the hospitable and genteel manner in which you were pleased to treat me. Be assured, my dear sir, that I shall never forget your goodness, and the happy hours which I spent in Rasay.

"You and Dr. M'Leod were both so obliging as to promise me an account in writing, of all the particulars which each of you remember, concerning the transactions of 1745-6. Pray do not forget this, and be as minute and full as you can; put down every thing; I have a great curiosity to know as much as I can, authentically.

"I beg that you may present my best respects to Lady Rasay, my compliments to your young family, and to Dr. M'Leod; and my hearty good wishes to Malcolm, with whom I hope again to shake hands cordially. I have the honour to be, Dear sir,

"Your obliged and faithful humble servant,
"JAMES BOSWell.”

Advertisement, written by Dr. Johnson, and inserted by his desire in the Edinburgh newspapers: -Referred to in the foregoing letter*.

"THE authour of the Journey to the Western "Islands, having related that the McLeods of Rasay " acknowledge the chieftainship or superiority of the "M'Leods of Sky, finds that he has been misinformed "or mistaken. He means in a future edition to cor"rect his erroùr, and wishes to be told of more, if more have been discovered."

Dr. Johnson's letter was as follows:

DEAR SIR,

TO THE LAIRD OF RASAY.

"MR. Boswell has this day shewn me a letter, in which you complain of a passage in "the Journey to the Hebrides." My meaning is mistaken. I did not intend to say that you had personally made any cession of the rights of your house, or any acknowledgement of the superiority of M'Leod of Dunvegan. I only designed to express what I thought generally admitted,-that the house of Rasay allowed the superiority of the house of Dunvegan.

Even this I now find to be erroneous, and

The original MS. is now in my possession.

will therefore omit or retract it in the next edition.

"Though what I had said had been true, if it had been disagreeable to you, I should have wished it unsaid; for it is not my business to adjust precedence. As it is mistaken, I find myself disposed to correct, both by my respect for you, and my reverence for truth.

"As I know not when the book will be reprinted, I have desired Mr. Boswell to anticipate the correction in the Edinburgh papers. This is all that can be done.

"I hope I may now venture to desire that my compliments may be made, and my gratitude expressed, to Lady Rasay, Mr. Malcolm M'Leod, Mr. Donald M'Queen, and all the gentlemen and all the ladies whom I saw in, the island of Rasay; a place which I remember with too much pleasure and too much kindness, not to be sorry that my ignorance, or hasty persuasion, should, for a single moment, have violated its tranquillity.

"I beg you all to forgive an undesigned and involuntary injury, and to consider me as,

London, May 6, 1775.

"Sir, your most obliged,
" and most humble servant,
"SAM. JOHNSON*."

It would be improper for me to boast of my own labours; but I cannot refrain from publishing such praise as I received from such a man as Sir William Forbes, of Pitsligo, after the perusal of the original manuscript of my Journal.

* Rasay was highly gratified, and afterwards visited and dined with Dr. Johnson, at his house in London.

TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR;

Edinburgh, March 7, 1777.

"I ought to have thanked you sooner, for your very obliging letter, and for the singular confidence you are pleased to place in me, when you trust me with such a curious and valuable deposit as the papers you have sent me *. have sent me *. Be assured I have a due sense of this favour, and shall faithfully and carefully return them to you. You may rely that I shall neither copy any part, nor permit the papers to be seen.

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They contain a curious picture of society, and form a journal on the most instructive plan that can possibly be thought of; for I am not sure that an ordinary observer would become so well acquainted either with Dr. Johnson, or with the manners of the Hebrides, by a personal intercourse, as by a perusal of your Journal.

"I am very truly,

"Dear Sir,

"Your most obedient,

"And affectionate humble servant,

"WILLIAM FORBES."

When I consider how many of the persons mentioned in this Tour are now gone to "that undisco

* In justice both to Sir William Forbes, and myself, it is proper to mention, that the papers which were submitted to his perusal contained only an account of our Tour from the time that Dr. Johnson and I set out from Edinburgh (p. 46), and consequently did not contain the elogium on Sir William Forbes, (p. 16), which he never saw till this book appeared in print; nor did he even know, when he wrote the above letter, that this Journal was to be published.

FF

vered country, from whose bourne no traveller returns," I feel an impression at once awful and tender.-Requiescant in pace!

It may be objected by some persons, as it has been by one of my friends, that he who has the power of thus exhibiting an exact transcript of conversations is not a desirable member of society. I repeat the answer which I made to that friend :"Few, very few, need be afraid that their sayings will be recorded. Can it be imagined that I would take the trouble to gather what grows on every hedge, because I have collected such fruits as the Nonpareil and the BON CHRETIEN?"

On the other hand, how useful is such a faculty, if well exercised! To it we owe all those interesting apophthegms and memorabilia of the ancients, which Plutarch, Xenophon, and Valerius Maximus, have transmitted to us. To it we owe all those instructive and entertaining collections which the French have made under the title of Ana, affixed to some celebrated name. To it we owe the TableTalk of Selden, the Conversation between Ben Johnson and Drummond of Hawthornden, Spence's Anecdotes of Pope, and other valuable remains in our own language. How delighted should we have been, if thus introduced into the company of Shakspeare and of Dryden, of whom we know scarcely any thing but their admirable writings! What pleasure would it have given us, to have known their petty habits, their characteristick manners, their modes of composition, and their genuine opinion of preceding writers and of their contemporaries! All these are now irrecoverably lost.-Considering how many of the strongest and most brilliant effusions

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