Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/27

INTRODUCTION.

TRAVELLER who passed through the Hebrides in the year 1786 recorded that in many houses he was given the room to sleep in which had been occupied by Dr. Johnson.^[1]
DR. JOHNSON'S BEDROOM, DUNVEGAN.Twenty-eight years later, when Sir Walter Scott with some of his friends landed in Skye, it was found on inquiry that the first thought which had come into each man's mind was of Johnson's Latin Ode to Mrs. Thrale.^[2] The Highlanders at Dunvegan, Scott goes on to say, saw that about Johnson there was something worthy of respect, "they could not tell what, and long spoke of him as the Sassenach mohr, or big Englishman."^[3] He still lives among them, mainly, no doubt, by his own and Boswell's books, but partly also by tradition. Very few of the houses remain where he visited. Nevertheless, in two of these in the Hebrides, and in one in the Lowlands, I was shown his bedroom. Proud, indeed, would the old man have been

1. John Knox's Tour through the Highlands, pp. 77, 132.
2. Croker's Boswell, p. 314.
3. Croker's Correspondence, ii. 33; Croker's Boswell, p. 409.