IN WEEKLY VOLUMES, price 3d.; or in Cloth, 6d. A SELECTION OF THE MOST POPULAR VOLUMES IN CASSELL'S NATIONAL LIBRARY. The following are amongst those already published, and a full list will be sent by the Publishers post free on application. Table Talk DICKENS. ISAAC WALTON. SIR A. HELPS. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. COVENTRY PATMORE PHILIP SIDNEY. BYRON. EDGEWORTH. SILVIO PELLICO. GOLDSMITH. BOCCACCIO. PALGRAVE. LA MOTTE FOUQUE. SPENSER. LA MOTTE FOUQUE. PLUTARCH. MARTIN LUTHER. The L fe and Adventures of Baron Trenck (Vols. I. & II.). The Natural History of Selborne (Vols. I. & II.) Lives of Pericles, Fabius Maximus, &c. Victories of Love Sorrows of Werter .. Lives of Butler, Denham, Dryden, &c. The North-West Passage Lives of Addison, Savage, and Swift Lives of Timoleon, Paulus Emilius, &c. Wisdom of the Ancients Earlier Poems.. Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit Francis Bacon Lives of Prior, Congreve, &c. Voyagers' Tales The Christian Year Earl of Chatham GILBERT WHITE. COVENTRY PATMORE SAMUEL JOHNSON. COLERIDGE. MACAULAY. SAMUEL JOHNSON. JOHN KEBle. MACAULAY. PLUTARCH. SAMUEL JOHNSON, Lives of Solon, Publicola, &c. The next Volume will be The Comedy of Errors. By WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. INTRODUCTION. IN 1763, when Johnson was fifty-four years old, talk one day with young Boswell, whose age then was twenty-three, about a young man who was a good scholar and a Highland chief, caused Johnson to express a wish to visit the Western Highlands of Scotland. To Boswell this seemed a very romantic fancy, which he little thought would be afterwards realised. But Johnson, he said, "told me that his father had put Martin's account of those islands into his hands when he was very young, and that he was highly pleased with it; that he was particularly struck with the St. Kilda man's notion that the high church of Glasgow had been hollowed out of a rock; a circumstance to which old Mr. Johnson directed his attention. He said he would go to the Hebrides with me when I returned from my travels, unless some very good companion should offer when I was absent, which he did not think probable; adding, "There are few people whom I take so much to as you." Certainly there was no London friend, of those days, whom even Johnson could have tempted to take holiday in the Hebrides. To Boswell they were not so far afield. In 1763 2730 |