Note 445 — WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1.
Reading edition
It is amusing to observe the different images which this being presented to Dr. Johnson and me. The Doctor, in his Journey, compares him to a Cyclops. BOSWELL. 'Out of one of the beds on which we were to repose, started up at our entrance, a man black as a Cyclops from the forge.' Works, ix. 44. Johnson wrote to Mrs. Thrale:—'When we were taken up stairs, a dirty fellow bounced out of the bed where one of us was to lie. Boswell blustered, but nothing could be got'. Piozzi Letters, i, 136. Macaulay (Essays, ed. 1843, i. 404) says: 'It is clear that Johnson himself did not think in the dialect in which he wrote. The expressions which came first to his tongue were simple, energetic, and picturesque. When he wrote for publication, he did his sentences out of English into Johnsonese. His letters from the Hebrides to Mrs. Thrale are the original of that work of which the Journey to the Hebrides is the translation; and it is amusing to compare the two versions.' Macaulay thereupon quotes these two passages. See ante, under Aug. 29, 1783.