eet him by saying "We had wine
before the Union." But this only got him into worse trouble. "No,
sir, you had some weak stuff, the refuse of France, which would not
make you drunk." {150} _Boswell_. "I assure you, sir, there was a
great deal of drunkenness." _Johnson_. "No, sir; there were people
who died of dropsies which they contracted in trying to get drunk."
This was said as they sailed along the shores of Skye; and of course
the whole tour in Scotland afforded many opportunities for such jests.
There was the wall at Edinburgh which by tradition was to fall upon
some very learned man, but had been taken down some time before
Johnson's visit: "They have been afraid it never would fall," said he.
There was St. Giles's at Edinburgh, which provoked the chaffing aside
to Robertson, "Come, let me see what was once a church." There were
the beauties of Glasgow of which Adam Smith boasted, and provoked the
famous question "Pray, sir, have you ever seen Brentford?" There was
the supposed treelessness of Scotland, on which he dwells in the
_Journey_, and which once led him to question whether there was a tree
between Edinburgh and the English border older than himself; and to
reply to Boswell's suggestion that he ought to be whipped at every tree
over 100 years old in that space, "I believe I might submit to it for a
baubee!" It led also to the pleasantry in which he emphasized his
conviction that the oak stick he had brought from London was stolen and
not {151} merely lost when it disappeared in Mull; "Consider, sir, the
value of such a _piece of timber_ here."

To-day we think of Scotland as one of the most beautiful countries in
the world and go there in thousands for that reason. But that was not
why Johnson went. He had little pleasure in any landscape scenery, and
none in that of moors and mountains. Indeed nobody had in those days
except Gray. And Gray was the last man in whose company Johnson was
likely to be found differing from his contemporaries. So that though
he saw much of what is finest in the noble scenery of Scotland, it
hardly drew from him a single word of wonder or delight: and his only
remembered allusion to it is the well-known sally hurled ten years
earlier at the Scotsman in London who thought to get on safe ground for
the defence of his country by speaking of her "noble wild prospects,"
but only drew upon himself the answer, "I believe, sir, you have a
great many. Norway, too, has noble