Page:Footsteps of Dr. Johnson.djvu/274

214 strange contrast to the wildness of the scenery and the roughness of the weather was their talk one day about Shenstone and his Love Pastorals. It was surely not among the stormy Hebrides that the poet of the Leasowes, whose "ambition was rural elegance," would have expected to be quoted. Yet here it was, in the midst of beating winds and dashing showers, with the storm-tossed sea in view of the windows, that Boswell repeated the pretty stanza:

On Friday, October 1, they took advantage of a break in the weather to move on to Armidale, about a mile from the Sound of Slate, where they waited for a favourable wind to carry them to Iona. It came, or rather seemed to come, on the following Sunday.

For some hours they sailed along with a favourable breeze, catching sight of the Isle of Rum as they rounded the point; but when they had got in full view of Ardnamurchan, the wind changed. They tried tacking, but a storm broke upon them, night came on, and they were forced to run through the darkness for Col. Boswell's account of this dangerous voyage is too long to quote, and too good