half-witted person," my informant added, in a serious voice, "had warned one of the party not to go; but his warning was not heeded, and the man lost his life."
At Lochbuie two traditions, I found, had been preserved in the family of the laird, the great-grandson of that Maclean of Lochbuie whom Boswell had heard described as "a great roaring braggadocio," but found only "a bluff, comely, noisy old gentleman. He bawled out to Johnson (as Boswell tells us), ' Are you of the Johnstons
SOUND OF ULVA.
of Glencroe or of Ardnamurchan?' Dr. Johnson gave him a significant look, but made no answer."[1] The report has come down in the family that Johnson replied that he was neither one nor the other. Whereupon Lochbuie cried out, "Damn it, Sir, then you must be a bastard." There can, I fear, be no doubt that this rejoinder belongs to those excelleus impromptus à loisir in which Rousseau excelled[2]—that esprit de l'escalier, as the French describe it. If the laird, like Addison, could draw for a thousand pounds, he had, I suspect, but nine pence in ready money.[3] For had this repartee been made at the time, and not been merely an after-invention, Boswell most certainly would not have let it pass unre-
