follows:

Your very kind and agreeable favour of the 20th of April overtook me
here yesterday, after having gone to Aberdeen, which place I left
about a week ago. I am to set out this day for London, and hope to
have the honour of paying my respects to Mr Johnson and you, about a
week or ten days hence. I shall then do what I can, to enforce the
topick you mentioned; but at present I cannot enter upon it, as I am
in a very great hurry; for I intend to begin my journey within an hour
or two.

He was as good as his word, and threw some pleasing motives into the
northern scale. But, indeed, Mr Johnson loved all that he heard from
one whom he tells us, in his Lives of the Poets, Gray found 'a poet, a
philosopher, and a good man'.

My Lord Elibank did not answer my letter to his lordship for some
time. The reason will appear, when we come to the Isle of Sky. I shall
then insert my letter, with letters from his lordship, both to myself
and Mr Johnson. I beg it may be understood, that I insert my own
letters, as I relate my own sayings, rather as keys to what is
valuable belonging to others, than for their own sake.

Luckily Mr Justice (now Sir Robert) Chambers, who was about to sail
for the East Indies, was going to take leave of his relations at
Newcastle, and he conducted Dr Johnson to that town. Mr Scott, of
University College, Oxford, (now Dr Scott, of the Commons) accompanied
him from thence to Edinburgh. With such propitious convoys did he
proceed to my native city. But, lest metaphor should make it be
supposed he actually went by sea, I choose to mention that he