journey Johnson wrote:--'We had very little
entertainment as we travelled either for the eye or ear. There are, I
fancy, no singing birds in the Highlands.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 135. It
is odd that he should have looked for singing birds on the first of
September.

[444] Act iii. sc. 4.

[445] It is amusing to observe the different images which this being
presented to Dr. Johnson and me. The Doctor, in his _Journey_, compares
him to a Cyclops. BOSWELL. 'Out of one of the beds on which we were to
repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the
forge.' _Works_, ix. 44. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:--'When we were
taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed where one of us
was to lie. Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got'. _Piozzi
Letters_, i, 136. Macaulay (_Essays_, ed. 1843, i. 404) says: 'It is
clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he
wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple,
energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his
sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides
to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the _Journey to
the Hebrides_ is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two
versions.' Macaulay thereupon quotes these two passages. See _ante_,
under Aug. 29, 1783.

[446] 'We had a lemon and a piece of bread, which supplied me with my
supper.'_Piozzi Letters_, i, 136. Goldsmith, who in his student days had
been in Scotland, thus writes of a Scotch inn:--'Vile entertainment is
served up, complained of, and sent down; up comes worse, and that also
is changed, and every change makes our wretched cheer more unsavoury.'
_Present State of Polite Learning_, ch. 12.

[447] General Wolfe, in his letter from Head-quarters on Sept. 2, 1759,
eleven days before his death wrote:--'In this situation there is such a
choice of difficulties that I own myself at a loss how to determine.'
_Ann. Reg._ 1759, p. 246.

[448] See _ante_, p. 89.

[449] See _ante_, ii. 169, note 2.

[450] Boswell, in a note that he added to the second edition (see
_post_, end of the _Journal_), says that he has omitted 'a few
observations the publication of which might perhaps be considered as
passing the bounds of a strict decorum,' In the first edition (p. 165)
the next three paragraphs were as follows:--'Instead of finding the head
of the Macdonalds surrounded with his clan, and a f