HIS PREMEDITATED WRITINGS. MANY, NO DOUBT, HAD READ AS MUCH,
AND PERHAPS MORE THAN HE; BUT SCARCE EVER ANY CONCOCTED
HIS READING INTO JUDGEMENT AS HE DID[8].

_Baker's Chronicle_ [ed. 1665, p. 449].




THE

JOURNAL

OF A

TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES

WITH

SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.


Dr. Johnson had for many years given me hopes that we should go
together, and visit the Hebrides[9]. 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_[10] 'that he scarcely remembered how the wish to visit the