The man who wrote this noble passage had not surely that insensibility to nature which is so often laid to his charge. He was sixty-four years old; mounted on a pony scarcely strong enough to bear his weight, he had had a long and hard day’s ride through wind and rain; he had dined in his wet clothes in a hut warmed by a smoky turf fire, and yet at the end of the day he could say with the enthusiasm of a young poet that neither darkness nor storm would he willingly have had lessened. He was supported, no doubt, in his recollections by the comforts of the inn at Inverary which was, he said, “not only commodious, but magnificent.” Perhaps he was inspired also by the gill of whisky which he called for—“the first fermented liquor,” says Boswell, “that he tasted during his travels.” He forgets, however, the brandy which he was prevailed on to drink at Dunvegan when he was suffering from cold. “Come, (said Johnson) let me know what it is that makes a Scotchman happy.” He thought it preferable to any English malt brandy. “What was the process,” he writes, “I had no opportunity of enquiring, nor do I wish to improve the art of making poison pleasant.” To the excellence of the inn at Inverary, Pennant also bears testimony. Far otherwise does Burns speak of it, in his indignation at the incivility of the landlord, whose whole attention was occupied by the visitors of the Duke of Argyle.
“Whoe’er he be that sojourns here,
I pity much his case,
Unless he comes to wait upon
The Lord their God his Grace.
“There’s naething here but Highland pride,
And Highland scab and hunger;
If Providence has sent me here,
’Twas surely in an anger.”
