of the English Tories, salute Miss
Flora Macdonald in the isle of Sky, was a striking sight; for though
somewhat congenial in their notions, it was very improbable they should
meet here.

Miss Flora Macdonald (for so I shall call her) told me, she heard upon
the main land, as she was returning home about a fortnight before, that
Mr. Boswell was coming to Sky, and one Mr. Johnson, a young English
buck[539], with him. He was highly entertained with this fancy. Giving
an account of the afternoon which we passed, at _Anock_, he said, 'I,
being a _buck_, had miss[540] in to make tea.' He was rather quiescent
to-night, and went early to bed. I was in a cordial humour, and promoted
a cheerful glass. The punch was excellent. Honest Mr. M'Queen observed
that I was in high glee, 'my _governour_[541] being gone to bed.' Yet in
reality my heart was grieved, when I recollected that Kingsburgh was
embarrassed in his affairs, and intended to go to America[542]. However,
nothing but what was good was present, and I pleased myself in thinking
that so spirited a man would be well every where. I slept in the same
room with Dr. Johnson. Each had a neat bed, with Tartan curtains, in an
upper chamber.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13.

The room where we lay was a celebrated one. Dr. Johnson's bed was the
very bed in which the grandson of the unfortunate King James the
Second[543] lay, on one of the nights after the failure of his rash
attempt in 1745-6, while he was eluding the pursuit of the emissaries of
government, which had offered thirty thousand pounds as a reward for
apprehending him. To see Dr. Samuel Johnson lying in that bed, in the
isle of Sky, in the house of Miss Flora Macdonald, struck me with such a
group of ideas as it is not easy for words to describe, as they passed
through the mind. He smiled, and said, 'I have had no ambitious thoughts
in it[544].' The room was decorated with a great variety of maps and
prints. Among others, was Hogarth's print of Wilkes grinning, with a cap
of liberty on a pole by him. That too was a curious circumstance in the
scene this morning; such a contrast was Wilkes to the above groupe. It
reminded me of Sir William Chambers's _Account of Oriental
Gardening_[545], in which we are told all odd, strange, ugly, and even
terrible objects, are introduced for the sake of variety; a wild
extravagance of taste which is so well ridiculed in the celebrated
Epistle to him[546]. The following lines of that po