Dr. Johnson in the Hebrides

Hardly the sporting type, nor Rousseau in the closet— though Johnson well knew how to look at nature— there he was, the Londoner, the learned philosopher, in the Highland wilderness, lordly in a vast brown overcoat with pockets, having met Boswell in Edinburgh, been displayed in the salons, and traveled by coach to Inverness, now setting out with him on horseback, foot, and finally by boat

for the Hebrides, with a manservant and local guides speaking Erse. An arduous unlikely venture for the stout and purblind scholar, who mocked Scotland publicly, yet yielded to his eager Scottish friend. Why travel? Worn by work, by words, yet he had not tired of London, Litchfield, Streatham, nor of life; instead he sought a time and place half-known, remote: wild prospects, feudal law,

savage battles in the glens, fierce independence, Stuart pride, and landscapes like no other, stony, harsh, and mountainous, with treeless wastes for miles, and then the sea. They ate coarse fare and slept on hay once; elsewhere, dreading vermin, in a dubious bed; or in stern castles of the local lairds —rough-hewn, but able to converse (even a book collector!). The travelers visited a hut, a Druid

circle, studied scenes and mores, wrote. One old crone, hearing them inquire where she slept, feared they had designs upon her. Leaving Skye, heading to Iona, they took passage, with their comrade Col MacLean, in a vessel bound for Mull, close to St. Columba's isle, but shortly met a storm that offered death in Davy Jones's locker. Seasick, Johnson stayed below, a dog curled in his back,

unmoved, trusting, no doubt, to Providence, or thinking of the Sea of Galilee; Boswell, anxious, paced on deck until Col bade him hold a useless rope and wait. Night fell; the tempest lashed the vessel as it tacked or lay broadside onto the sea, no headway possible. They chose to make for Col's own island, though its harbor had a treacherous rock, invisible. Col found the channel, steered the ship

through the "prodigious sea," and Johnson thereby visited Icolmkill. Then to Oban and Glasgow, leaving the prison of the isles, the water's hazards, turning home, his old man's thoughts like embers, ruddy in the sunset's radiance, brighter still in darkness—deepening, illuminating times that would not be again, an old and honest order lost, life mostly gone, but washed and fired by grace.