voyage. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, a man _does_ feel so, till he considers how
very little he can learn from such voyages.' BOSWELL. 'But one is
carried away with the general grand and indistinct notion of A VOYAGE
ROUND THE WORLD.' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, but a man is to guard himself
against taking a thing in general.' I said I was certain that a great
part of what we are told by the travellers to the South Sea must be
conjecture, because they had not enough of the language of those
countries to understand so much as they have related. Objects falling
under the observation of the senses might be clearly known; but every
thing intellectual, every thing abstract--politicks, morals, and
religion, must be darkly guessed. Dr. Johnson was of the same opinion.
He upon another occasion, when a friend mentioned to him several
extraordinary facts, as communicated to him by the circumnavigators,
slily observed, 'Sir, I never before knew how much I was respected by
these gentlemen; they told _me_ none of these things.'

He had been in company with Omai, a native of one of the South Sea
Islands, after he had been some time in this country. He was struck with
the elegance of his behaviour, and accounted for it thus: 'Sir, he had
passed his time, while in England, only in the best company; so that all
that he had acquired of our manners was genteel. As a proof of this,
Sir, Lord Mulgrave and he dined one day at Streatham; they sat with
their backs to the light fronting me, so that I could not see
distinctly; and there was so little of the savage in Omai, that I was
afraid to speak to either, lest I should mistake one for the other[27].'

We agreed to dine to-day at the Mitre-tavern, after the rising of the
House of Lords, where a branch of the litigation concerning the Douglas
Estate[28], in which I was one of the counsel, was to come on. I brought
with me Mr. Murray, Solicitor-General of Scotland, now one of the Judges