loss, keeping my great Master steadily in view.  Family histories, like the imagines majorum of the Ancients, excite to virtue; and I wish that they who really have blood, would be more careful to trace and ascertain its course.  Some have affected to laugh at the history of the house of Yvery[621]:  it would be well if many others would transmit their pedigrees to posterity, with the same accuracy and generous zeal with which the Noble Lord who compiled that work has honoured and perpetuated his ancestry.

On Thursday, April 10[622], I introduced to him, at his house in Bolt-court, the Honourable and Reverend William Stuart, son of the Earl of Bute; a gentleman truly worthy of being known to Johnson; being, with all the advantages of high birth, learning, travel, and elegant manners, an exemplary parish priest in every respect.

After some compliments on both sides, the tour which Johnson and I had made to the Hebrides was mentioned.  JOHNSON.  ’I got an acquisition of more ideas by it than by any thing that I remember.  I saw quite a different system of life[623].’  BOSWELL.  ’You would not like to make the same journey again?’ JOHNSON.  ’Why no, Sir; not the same:  it is a tale told.  Gravina, an Italian critick, observes, that every man desires to see that of which he has read; but no man desires to read an account of what he has seen:  so much does description fall short of reality.  Description only excites curiosity:  seeing satisfies it.  Other people may go and see the Hebrides.’  BOSWELL.  ’I should wish to go and see some country totally different from what I have been used to; such as Turkey, where religion and every thing else are different.’  JOHNSON.  ’Yes, Sir; there are two objects of curiosity,—­the Christian world, and the Mahometan world.  All the rest may be considered as barbarous.’  BOSWELL.  ‘Pray, Sir, is the Turkish Spy[624] a genuine book?’ JOHNSON.  ’No, Sir.  Mrs. Manley, in her Life, says that her father wrote the first two volumes[625]:  and in another book, Dunton’s Life and Errours, we find that the rest was written by one Sault, at two guineas a sheet, under the direction of Dr. Midgeley[626].

BOSWELL.  ’This has been a very factious reign, owing to the too great indulgence of Government.’  JOHNSON.  ’I think so, Sir.  What at first was lenity, grew timidity[627].  Yet this is reasoning a posteriori, and may not be just.  Supposing a few had at first been punished, I believe faction would have been crushed; but it might have been said, that it was a sanguinary reign.  A man cannot tell a priori what will be best for Government to do.  This reign has been very unfortunate.  We have had an unsuccessful war; but that does not prove that we have been ill governed.  One side or other must prevail in war, as one or other must win at play.  When we beat Louis we were not better governed; nor were the French better governed when Louis beat us.’