To this list should be added an account of a Tour to the Isle of Man (ante, iii. 80).
A cancel in the first edition of Boswell's 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides.'
(Vol. v, p. 151.)
In my note on the suppression of offensive passages in the second edition of Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (ante, v. 148), I mention that Rowlandson in one of his Caricatures paints Boswell begging Sir Alexander Macdonald for mercy, while on the ground lie pages 165, 167, torn out. I have discovered, though too late to mention in the proper place, that in the first edition the leaf containing pages 167, 168, was really cancelled. In my own copy I noticed between pages 168 and 169 a narrow projecting slip of paper. I found the same in the copy in the British Museum. Mr. Horace Hart, the printer to the University, who has kindly examined my copy, informs me that the leaf was cancelled after the sheets had been stitched together. It was cut out, but an edge was left to which the new one was attached by paste. The leaf thus treated begins with the words 'talked with very high respect' (ante, v. 149) and ends 'This day was little better than a blank' (ante, v. 151). This conclusion was perhaps meant to be significant to the observant reader.
Boswell's conversation with the King about the title proper to be given to the Young Pretender.
(Vol. v, p. 185, n. 4.)
Dr. Lort wrote to Bishop Percy on Aug. 15, 1785:—
'Boswell's book [The Tour to the Hebrides], I suppose, will be out in the winter. The King at his levée talked to him, as was natural, on this subject. Boswell told his majesty that he had another work on the anvil—a History of the Rebellion in 1745 (ante, iii. 162); but that he was at a loss how to style the principal person who figured in it. "How would you style him, Mr. Boswell?" "I was thinking, Sire, of calling him the grandson of the unfortunate James the Second." "That I have no objection to; my title to the Crown stands on firmer ground —on an Act of Parliament." This is said to be the substance of a conversation which passed at the levée. I wish I was certain of the exact words.' —Nichols's Literary History, vii. 472.
Shakespeare's popularity.
(Vol. v, p. 244, n. 2.)