agreeable
manner is one of the great arts of living. Were we so framed that it
were possible by perpetual supplies of wine to keep ourselves for ever
gay and happy, there could be no doubt that drinking would be the
_summum bonum_, the chief good, to find out which philosophers have been
so variously busied. But we know from humiliating experience that men
cannot be kept long in a state of elevated drunkenness.'

[468] That my readers may have my narrative in the style of the country
through which I am travelling, it is proper to inform them, that the
chief of a clan is denominated by his _surname_ alone, as M'Leod,
M'Kinnon, M'lntosh. To prefix _Mr._ to it would be a degradation from
_the_ M'Leod, &c. My old friend, the Laird of M'Farlane, the great
antiquary, took it highly amiss, when General Wade called him Mr.
M'Farlane. Dr. Johnson said, he could not bring himself to use this mode
of address; it seemed to him to be too familiar, as it is the way in
which, in all other places, intimates or inferiors are addressed. When
the chiefs have _titles_ they are denominated by them, as _Sir James
Grant_, _Sir Allan M'Lean_. The other Highland gentlemen, of landed
property, are denominated by their _estates_, as _Rasay_, _Boisdale_;
and the wives of all of them have the title of _ladies_. The _tacksmen_,
or principal tenants, are named by their farms, as _Kingsburgh_,
_Corrichatachin_; and their wives are called the _mistress_ of
Kingsburgh, the _mistress_ of Corrichatachin.--Having given this
explanation, I am at liberty to use that mode of speech which generally
prevails in the Highlands and the Hebrides. BOSWELL.

[469] See _ante_, iii. 275.

[470] Boswell implies that Sir A. Macdonald's table had not been
furnished plentifully. Johnson wrote:--'At night we came to a tenant's
house of the first rank of tenants, where we were entertained better
than at the landlord's.' _Piozzi Letters_, i. 141.

[471] 'Little did I once think,' he wrote to her the same day, 'of
seeing this region of obscurity, and little did you once expect a
salutation from this verge of European life. I have now the pleasure of
going where nobody goes, and seeing what nobody sees.' _Piozzi Letters_,
i. 120. About fourteen years since, I landed in Sky, with a party of
friends, and had the curiosity to ask what was the first idea on every
one's mind at landing. All answered separately that it was this Ode.
WALTER SCOTT.

[472] See Appendix B.

[473