“Instead of finding the head of the Macdonalds surrounded with his clan, and a festive entertainment, we had a small company, and cannot boast of our cheer. The particulars are minuted in my Journal, but I shall not trouble the publick with them. I shall mention but one characteristick circumstance. My shrewd and hearty friend Sir Thomas (Wentworth) Blacket, Lady Macdonald’s uncle, who had preceded us on a visit to this chief, upon being asked by him if the punch-bowl then upon the table was not a very handsome one, replied, ‘Yes,—if it were full.’ Sir Alexander Macdonald having been an Eton scholar, Dr. Johnson had formed an opinion of him which was much diminished when he beheld him in the Isle of Skye, where we heard heavy complaints of rents racked, and the people driven to emigration. Dr. Johnson said, ‘It grieves me to see the chief of a great clan appear to such disadvantage. This gentleman has talents, nay, some learning; but he is totally unfit for this situation. Sir, the Highland chiefs should not be allowed to go farther south than Aberdeen. A strong-minded man, like his brother Sir James, may be improved by an English education, but in general they will be turned into insignificance.’ I meditated an escape from this house the very next day; but Dr. Johnson resolved that we should weather it out till Monday.” In charging the chief of the Macdonalds with an unwarrantable parsimony, Boswell is justified in a letter written by Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale.[78] But he evinced his wonted imprudence in making public what had better have been concealed, and in dragging into the controversy Sir Thomas Blacket, a near relative of Sir Alexander’s wife.[79] Both baronets made loud complaint, and the chief of the Macdonalds spoke of vengeance by personal chastisement. To this threat Peter Pindar thus pungently alludes:— “Let Lord Macdonald[80] threat thy breech to kick, And o’er thy shrinking shoulders shake his stick Treat with contempt the menace of this Lord, ’Tis Hist’ry’s province, Bozzy, to record.” The displeasure which Boswell had excited was appeased by a compromise. He agreed in his next edition to exclude Blacket’s anecdote, and to substitute allusion to Macdonald’s shabbiness by quoting his Latin verses, welcoming the lexicographer to Skye. In 1786 Boswell executed his Will, and it seems probable that “the apprehension of danger to his life”[81] to which in that document he refers was due to the menace of the Highland chief. If this conjecture is well founded, it is interesting to remark that Boswell especially provides that his own tenantry should in the matter of rent be treated with leniency.