no NETHER LOCHABER. 



And you remember Macbeth, and cannot fail to catch the 

 allusion 



" The raven himself is hoarse, 



That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 



Under my battlements." 



During his tour in the Highlands with Dr. Johnson, Boswell writes 

 a highly characterestic letter to David Garrick, and, describing 

 their visit to Macbeth 's Castle, says " The situation of the old 

 castle corresponds exactly to Shakspeare's description. While we 

 were there to-day, it happened oddly that a raven perched upon 

 one of the chimney tops and croaked. Then I, in my turn, repeated 

 ' The raven himself,' &c." Now, if a raven in truth did so perch, 

 all we can say is that it was a very curious place for a raven to be, 

 or ravens, within a hundred years, must have very much changed 

 their habits and nature. The explanation probably is that it was 

 a tame raven, or a rook perhaps, or, likeliest of all, that it was a 

 common jackdaw (Corviis monedula), a pert, impudent, and 

 garrulous little gentleman in black no bigger than a dovecot 

 pigeon that Mr. Boswell mistook (proh pudor /) for the grave, 

 stately, and sagacious raven, who is as much bigger, and weightier, 

 and wiser than his loquacious cousin the daw, as Samuel Johnson 

 was bigger, and weightier, and wiser than his travelling companion, 

 James Boswell. It is curious to meet with the following on the 

 authority of no less renowned a personage than the valorous and 

 puissant knight Don Quixote de la Mancha, the flower of chivalry. 

 " Have you not read, sir," proceeds the knight, " the annals and 

 histories of England, wherein are recorded the famous exploits 

 of King Arthur, whom in our Castilian tongue we perpetually 

 called King Artus, of whom there exists an ancient tradition, 

 universally received over the whole kingdom of Great Britain, that 

 he did not die, but that by magic art Tie was transformed into a 

 raven, for which reason it cannot be proved that from that time to 

 this any Englishman hath killed a raven." 



