[618] Johnson wrote of the ministers:—­’I saw not one in the islands whom I had reason to think either deficient in learning, or irregular in life; but found several with whom I could not converse without wishing, as my respect increased, that they had not been Presbyterians.’ Ib. p. 102.

[619] See ante, p. 142.

[620] See ante, ii. 28.

[621]

     ’So horses they affirm to be
      Mere engines made by geometry,
      And were invented first from engines,
      As Indian Britons were from penguins.’

Hudibras, part i. canto 2, line 57.  Z. Gray, in a note on these lines, quotes Selden’s note on Drayton’s Polyolbion:—­’About the year 1570, Madoc, brother to David Ap Owen, Prince of Wales, made a sea-voyage to Florida; and by probability those names of Capo de Breton in Norimberg, and Penguin in part of the Northern America, for a white rock and a white-headed bird, according to the British, were relicts of this discovery.’

[622] Published in Edinburgh in 1763.

[623] See ante, ii. 76.  ’Johnson used to say that in all family disputes the odds were in favour of the husband from his superior knowledge of life and manners.’  Johnson’s Works (1787), xi. 210.

[624] He wrote to Dr. Taylor:—­’ Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.’ Notes and Queries, 6th S. v. 342.

[625] As I have faithfully recorded so many minute particulars, I hope I shall be pardoned for inserting so flattering an encomium on what is now offered to the publick.  BOSWELL.

[626] See ante, iv. 109, note 1.

[627] ’The islanders of all degrees, whether of rank or understanding, universally admit it, except the ministers, who universally deny it, and are suspected to deny it in consequence of a system, against conviction.’  Johnson’s Works, ix. 106.

[628] The true story of this lady, which happened in this century, is as frightfully romantick as if it had been the fiction of a gloomy fancy.  She was the wife of one of the Lords of Session in Scotland, a man of the very first blood of his country.  For some mysterious reasons, which have never been discovered, she was seized and carried off in the dark, she knew not by whom, and by nightly journeys was conveyed to the Highland shores, from whence she was transported by sea to the remote rock of St. Kilda, where she remained, amongst its few wild inhabitants, a forlorn prisoner, but had a constant supply of provisions, and a woman to wait on her.  No inquiry was made after her, till she at last found means to convey a letter to a confidential friend, by the daughter of a Catechist, who concealed it in a clue of yarn.  Information being thus obtained at Edinburgh, a ship was sent to bring her off; but intelligence of this being received, she was conveyed to M’Leod’s island of Herries, where she died.