limitations have their consequences for the subject-matter of the
chapters which follow. There is nothing about the controversial
issue of a Scottish militia, which exercised many minds during the
third quarter of the eighteenth century (see LSJ ii. 431), and
nothing about the science and medicine for which Edinburgh was
famous. The concerns of Johnson and Boswell, as they moved from
the capital around the perimeter of the nation, lay rather with the
science of man, as pioneered by figures like Hume, Kames,
Ferguson, Reid, Smith, Monboddo, Hailes, and their contem-
poraries--and even some of these were largely outside Johnson's
ken. What I seek to show is that the central themes uncovered by
the Journey and the Tour were matters widely debated at the time,
and not that the two authors were responding to precise contribu-
tions to this debate--although in the Conclusion it is argued that
Johnson seems to draw on some of the ideas found in Ferguson
Essay on Civil Society, and even to foreshadow certain themes of
Smith Wealth of Nations.

It scarcely needs to be said that Johnson travelled to Scotland
with a full sense of the renown which the Edinburgh school of
thinkers and social critics had acquired. He could not have been
unaware of the work of David Hume, not just his widely read
History of Great Britain but also his essays, which frequently
address concerns close to Johnson's own. Whatever his dislike for
Hume, he was regularly forced to confront the man and his works
by Boswell's incessant prompting. There is an instance as adjacent
to the Hebridean tour as this exchange reported in The Life of
Samuel Johnson under the date 30 April 1773: the subject was
Goldsmith.

BOSWELL. 'An historian! My dear Sir, you surely will not rank his
compilation of the Roman History with the works of other historians of
this age?' JOHNSON. 'Why, who are before him?' BOSWELL. ' Hume,--
Robertson,--Lord Lyttelton.' JOHNSON. (His antipathy to the Scotch
beginning to rise) 'I have not read Hume; but, doubtless, Goldsmith's
History is better than the verbiage of Robertson, or the foppery of
Dalrymple.' ( LSJ ii. 236-7)

The exchange continues a little longer. The alleged anti-Scottish
bias of Johnson will be considered in Chapter 8; we may note here
that he is claiming not to have read Hume History specifically,
and that his other target was Sir John Dalrymple Memoirs ofGreat Britain

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