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 hands when he was
very young, and that he was much pleased with it. We reckoned there
would be some inconveniencies and hardships, and perhaps a little
danger; but these we were persuaded were magnified in the imagination
of every body. When I was at Ferney, in 1764, I mentioned our design
to Voltaire. He looked at me, as if I had talked of going to the North
Pole, and said, 'You do not insist on my accompanying you?' 'No, sir.'
'Then I am very willing you should go.' I was not afraid that our
curious expedition would be prevented by such apprehensions; but I
doubted that it would not be possible to prevail on Dr Johnson to
relinquish, for some time, the felicity of a London life, which, to a
man who can enjoy it with full intellectual relish, is apt to make
existence in any narrower sphere seem insipid or irksome. I doubted
that he would not be willing to come down from his elevated state of
philosophical dignity; from a superiority of wisdom among the wise,
and of learning among the learned; and from flashing his wit upon
minds bright enough to reflect it.

He had disappointed my expectations so long, that I began to despair;
but in spring, 1773, he talked of coming to Scotland that year with so