I read just now some of Drummond's _Travels_[866], before I
perceived what books were here. I then took up Derham's
_Physico-Theology_[867].'
Every particular concerning this island having been so well described by
Dr. Johnson, it would be superfluous in me to present the publick with
the observations that I made upon it, in my _Journal_.
I was quite easy with Sir Allan almost instantaneously. He knew the
great intimacy that had been between my father and his predecessor, Sir
Hector, and was himself of a very frank disposition. After dinner, Sir
Allan said he had got Dr. Campbell about an hundred subscribers to his
_Britannia Elucidata_, (a work since published under the title of _A
Political Survey of Great Britain_[868],) of whom he believed twenty
were dead, the publication having been so long delayed. JOHNSON. 'Sir, I
imagine the delay of publication is owing to this;--that, after
publication, there will be no more subscribers, and few will send the
additional guinea to get their books: in which they will be wrong; for
there will be a great deal of instruction in the work. I think highly of
Campbell[869]. In the first place, he has very good parts. In the second
place, he has very extensive reading; not, perhaps, what is properly
called learning, but history, politicks, and, in short, that popular
knowledge which makes a man very useful.
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