Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

FLANNAN ISLANDS. 201
Sound of Harris, and I could not persuade him to come
within ten miles of the land ; as, at St. Kilda, he had
hove to twenty miles off, vowing^ that he was within a
mile of the shore. He seemed to think that his vessel
drew fifty fathoms. This was not the other captain, I beg
to remark ; who was as bold as a lion. Fat is a fearful sub-
stance; tallow is timid. Ask old Jack if this be not so.
The Spartans knew it well, and fed their soldiers accord-
ingly. So did the philosopher who wrote the apologue
of the two dogs. Fear is the result of good eating, the
fear of death is the produce of venison and turtle. " Ter-
rible is the thought of death to him that is full of meat."
It is the gourmand who wishes to live his dinners over
again. "Ah, Davy, Davy, these are the things which
make a man afraid to die." If dinner is the most import-
ant business of a man's life, as Dr. Johnson says, it is that
also which is always new, and of which he never tires.
He becomes wearied of all else, in time. Every thing
palls, all proves vanity; except dinner. He therefore
who dines best, he who is " full of meat," as " the
Preacher" says, and who longs to be as full to-morrow as
he was to-day, he is the man to whom the foe and the fever
are as the undertaker and the hour glass, to whom every
rock is Scylla and every eddy Charybdis. Never, my
dear Scott, when you become first Lord of the Admiralty,
give a fat captain the command of a ship in the Western
Islands.
It is said that there are seven of the Flannan islands.
That is very possible, probably it is very true ; but I could
only count six. Certainly there ought to be seven, because
the Laird of Lochow had seven castles, and so had the King
of Bohemia and King Fergus the first : to say nothing of
the seven wise men of Gotham. If Sterne had looked into
Peter Bongus, instead of stealing in the second-hand