The new Parliament had met on Nov. 29, the day before the date of
Johnson's letter (_Parl. Hist_, xviii. 23).
The leaf that Johnson cancelled contained pages 47, 48 in the first
edition of his _Journey to the Western Islands_. It corresponds with
pages 19-30 in vol. ix. of Johnson's _Works_ (ed. 1825), beginning
with the words 'could not enter,' and ending 'imperfect constitution.'
The excision is marked by a ridge of paper, which was left that the
revised leaf might be attached to it. Johnson describes how the lead
which covered the Cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen had been stripped
off by the order of the Scottish Council, and shipped to be sold in
Holland. He continues:--'Let us not however make too much haste to
despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded
dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the
time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger
of doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the
unsettled state of an imperfect constitution.'
In the copy of the first edition in the Bodleian Library, which had
belonged to Gough the antiquary, there is written in his hand, as a
foot-note to 'neighbours': 'There is now, as I have heard, a body
of men not less decent or virtuous than the Scottish Council, longing
to melt the lead of an English Cathedral. What they shall melt, it
were just that they should swallow.
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