210 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



Boswell makes these following remarks on the voyages : — 



" I gave him [Dr. Johnson] an account of a conversation 

 which had passed between me and Captain Cook the day 

 before at Sir John Pringle's, and he was much pleased with 

 the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated circumnavigator, 

 who set me right as to many of the exaggerated accounts 

 given by Dr. Hawkesworth of his voyages. I told him that 

 while I was with the captain I catch'd the enthusiasm of 

 curiosity and adventure, and felt a strong inclination to go 

 with him on his next voyage. 



" Johnson : ' Why, sir, a man does feel so till he considers 

 how very little he can learn from such voyages.' 



"Boswell: 'But one is carried away with the general 

 grand and indistinct notion of a voyage round the world.' 



"Johnson: 'Yes, sir; but a man is to guard himself 

 against taking a thing in general.' 



' ' I said I was certain that a great part of what we are 

 told by the travellers to the South Sea might be conjecture, 

 because they had not enough of the language of those 

 countries to understand so much as they have related. Ob- 

 jects falling under the observation of the senses must be 

 clearly known, but everything intellectual, everything ab- 

 stract — politics, morals, and religion — must be darkly guessed. 

 Dr. Johnson was of the same opinion. He upon another 

 occasion, when a friend mentioned to him several extraordi- 

 nary facts as communicated to him by the circumnavigators, 

 shly observed, ' Sir, I never before knew how much I was 

 respected by these gentlemen ; they told me none of these 

 things.' He had been in company with Omai, a native of 

 one of the South Sea Islands, after he had been some time 

 in this country. He was struck with the elegance of his 

 behaviour, and accounted for it thus : ' Sir, he had passed his 

 time while in England only in the best company, so that all 

 that he had acquired of our manners was genteel. As a 

 proof of this, sir, Lord Mulgrave and he dined one day at 

 Streatham. They sat with their backs to the light, fronting 

 me, so that I could not see distinctly, and there was so little 

 of the savage in Omai that I w 7 as afraid to speak to either 

 lest I should mistake one for the other.' " 



On this head we must remember that Dr. Johnson had 

 defective eyesight, which would accentuate this difficulty ; but 

 there is no doubt but that many of the Polynesian peoples are 

 well capable of acquiring the habits of civilisation. In fact, 

 we are able to notice this at the present time by comparing 

 the Maori of to-day with his ancestor of sixty years ago. 



Note. — The place mentioned as where the goat died was 

 either Camdentown or Camberwell, so far as my memory 

 serves. It is unfortunate that I did not make a note of this 

 at the time of reading the paragraph. 



