of his fame, allowed himself leave to represent him
in that ignoble character. He went into Scotland to survey men and
manners. Antiquities, fossils, and minerals, were not within his
province. He did not visit that country to settle the station of Roman
camps, or the spot, where Galgacus fought the last battle for public
liberty. The people, their customs, and the progress of literature, were
his objects. The civilities which he received in the course of his tour,
have been repaid with grateful acknowledgment, and, generally, with
great elegance of expression. His crime is, that he found the country
bare of trees, and he has stated the fact. This, Mr. Boswell, in his
tour to the Hebrides, has told us, was resented, by his countrymen, with
anger inflamed to rancour; but he admits that there are few trees on the
east side of Scotland. Mr. Pennant, in his tour, says, that, in some
parts of the eastern side of the country, he saw several large
plantations of pine, planted by gentlemen near their seats; and, in this
respect, such a laudable spirit prevails, that, in another half-century,
it never shall be said, "To spy the nakedness of the land are you come."
Johnson could not wait for that half-century, and, therefore, mentioned
things as he found them. If, in any thing, he has been mistaken, he has
made a fair apology, in the last paragraph of his book, avowing with
candour: "That he may have been surprised by modes of life, and
appearances of nature, that are familiar to men of wider survey, and
more varied conversation. Novelty and ignorance must always be
reciprocal: and he is conscious that his thoughts on national manners,
are the thoughts of one who has seen but little."

The poems of Ossian made a part of Johnson's inquiry, during his
residence in Scotland and the Hebrides. On his return to England,
November, 1773, a storm seemed to be gathering over his head; but the
cloud never burst, and the thunder never fell.--Ossian, it is well
known, was presented to the public, as a translation from the Erse; but
that this was a fraud, Johnson declared, without hesitation. "The Erse,"
he says, "was always oral only, and never a written language. The Welsh
and the Irish were more cultivated. In Erse, there was not in the world
a single manuscript a hundred years old. Martin, who, in the last
century, published an account of the Western Islands, mentions Irish,
but never Erse manuscripts, to be found in the islands in his tim