This was my father's book. Inside, in pencil, he wrote: R.D.G. Coale 11/9/36. He had turned 19 in August of that year. I don't know if he ever read the book and I can't ask him. He died 33 years ago. I just got around to reading it. I don't know of many 19 year olds that would have a book like this.

Boswell, Samuel Johnson's biographer, and Samuel Johnson did a tour of Scotland in 1773. This book is about the travels of two of the greatest minds of the time. The book is available online but it isn't this book. The original book that Boswell published, the one online, had been heavily edited. This book is based on Boswell's original notes which had been recently discovered after it had been thought they had been lost. Unfortunately, even the current published versions seem to be the original edited version. The internet comes to the rescue. Alibris lists several versions of my edition starting at $3.95. To make sure you get the right one. The full title is: Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides With Samuel Johnson: Now First Published from the Original Manuscript. It was published by The Literary Guild in 1936.

Johnson and Boswell.

But, if Boswell without Johnson would have been forgotten, it was his own talent that gave the Life its surpassing excellence. Whenever he writes of Johnson, he succeeds in giving the impression that he saw things as they were, and not through the spectacles of his own personality. He never tried to conceal the part that he played; and yet, despite his vanities, and they were many, he knew how to make his readers think that they are looking at the facts for themselves. The very freedom from self-consciousness which was no help to his career was a great part of the secret of his skill in description. It also provided him with material denied to less sympathetic natures. “No man,” he said, “has been more successful in making acquaintance easily than I have been. I even bring people quickly on to a degree of cordiality.” Johnson, too, tells us that “Mr. Boswell’s frankness and gaiety made every body communicative.” He never tired of arranging new situations, in order to see what they would bring forth; and his interpretations of what he found are strong testimony to his insight into character and to his judgment. Minute as his observations are, he never offers a meaningless detail. It is easy to understand why Johnson made him postpone the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, which was intended as a supplement to his own Journey. He had given “notions rather than facts”; but Boswell had contrived to make the facts give Johnson.

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James Boswell (1740-1795)

Here are two online versions:

Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.

The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. by Boswell