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260 Boswell was not so careful in recording Johnson's talk on the Lake as I was with our boatman's. "I recollect," he writes, "none of his conversation, except that, when talking of dress, he said, 'Sir, were I to have any thing fine, it should be very fine. Were I to wear a ring, it should not be a bauble, but a stone of great value. Were I to wear a laced or embroidered waistcoat, it should be very rich. I had once a very rich laced waistcoat, which I wore the first night of my tragedy.'" Johnson, nearly five and twenty years before, sat in one of the side-boxes of Drury Lane Theatre, in a scarlet waistcoat, with rich gold lace, and a gold-



laced hat, listening to the catcalls whistling before the curtain rose; how little could he have thought that one day he would boast of his costume as he was roving in a boat upon Loch Lomond!

In the evening they drove to Cameron, the seat of Commissary Smollett. It was the first drive which they had taken since at Inverness they began their equitation full two months earlier. "Our satisfaction," says Boswell, "of [sic] finding ourselves again in a comfortable carriage was very great. We had a pleasing conviction of the commodiousness of civilisation, and heartily laughed at the ravings of those absurd visionaries who have attempted to persuade us of the superior advantages of a state of nature." With these visionaries Boswell himself sometimes sided. The people of