[445] It is amusing to observe the different images which this being presented to Dr. Johnson and me.  The Doctor, in his Journey, compares him to a Cyclops.  BOSWELL.  ’Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge.’ Works, ix. 44.  Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—­’When we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed where one of us was to lie.  Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got’. Piozzi Letters, i, 136.  Macaulay (Essays, ed. 1843, i. 404) says:  ’It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote.  The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque.  When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese.  His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions.’  Macaulay thereupon quotes these two passages.  See ante, under Aug. 29, 1783.

[446] ’We had a lemon and a piece of bread, which supplied me with my supper.’Piozzi Letters, i, 136.  Goldsmith, who in his student days had been in Scotland, thus writes of a Scotch inn:—­’Vile entertainment is served up, complained of, and sent down; up comes worse, and that also is changed, and every change makes our wretched cheer more unsavoury.’ Present State of Polite Learning, ch. 12.

[447] General Wolfe, in his letter from Head-quarters on Sept. 2, 1759, eleven days before his death wrote:—­’In this situation there is such a choice of difficulties that I own myself at a loss how to determine.’ Ann.  Reg. 1759, p. 246.

[448] See ante, p. 89.

[449] See ante, ii. 169, note 2.

[450] Boswell, in a note that he added to the second edition (see post, end of the Journal), says that he has omitted ’a few observations the publication of which might perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of a strict decorum,’ In the first edition (p. 165) the next three paragraphs were as follows:—­’Instead of finding the head of the Macdonalds surrounded with his clan, and a festive entertainment, we had a small company, and cannot boast of our cheer.  The particulars are minuted in my Journal, but I shall not trouble the publick with them.  I shall mention but one characteristick circumstance.  My shrewd and hearty friend Sir Thomas (Wentworth) Blacket, Lady Macdonald’s uncle, who had preceded us in a visit to this chief, upon being asked by him if the punch-bowl then upon the table was not a very handsome one, replied, “Yes—­if it were full.”  ’Sir Alexander Macdonald having been an Eton scholar, Dr. Johnson had formed an opinion of him which was much diminished when he beheld him in the isle of Sky, where we heard heavy complaints of rents racked, and the people driven to