Iona

During the fall of 1773, James Boswell and Samuel Johnson were enjoying their tour of the Scottish Western Isles, having reached Iona.

'Wednesday, 20th October

Early in the morning we surveyed the remains of antiquity at this

place, accompanied by an illiterate fellow, as cicerone, who called

himself a descendant of a cousin of Saint Columba, the founder of the

religious establishment here. As I knew that many persons had already

examined them, and as I saw Dr Johnson inspecting and measuring

several of the ruins of which he has since given so full an account,

my mind was quiescent; and I resolved; to stroll among them at my

ease, to take no trouble to investigate minutely, and only receive the

general impression of solemn antiquity, and the particular ideas of

such objects as should of themselves strike my attention.

We walked from the monastery of nuns to the great church or cathedral,

as they call it, along an old broken causeway. They told us, that this

had been a street; and that there were good houses built on each side.

Dr Johnson doubted if it was any thing more than a paved road for the

nuns. The convent of monks, the great church, Oran's chapel, and four

other chapels, are still to be discerned. But I must own that

Icolmkill did not answer my expectations; for they were high, from

what I had read of it, and still more from what I had heard and

thought of it, from my earliest years. Dr Johnson said, it came up to

his expectations, because he had taken his impression from an account

of it subjoined to Sacheverel's History of the Isle of Man, where it

is said, there is not much to be seen here. We were both disappointed,

when we were shewn what are called the monuments of the kings of

Scotland, Ireland, and Denmark, and of a king of France. There are

only some grave-stones flat on the earth, and we could see no

inscriptions. How far short was this of marble monuments, like those

in Westminster Abbey, which I had imagined here! The grave-stones of

Sir Allan M'Lean's family, and of that of M'Quarrie, had as good an

appearance as the royal grave-stones; if they were royal, we doubted...'

Boswell and Johnson express mixed impressions about the isle, being somewhat disappointed overall. 

The entry above comes from Boswell’s “The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D”.

Sir Walter Scott also had mixed feelings about Iona, though for a different reason.  In “Northern Lights

or a Voyage in the Lighthouse Yacht to Nova Zembla and the Lord where in the summer of 1814”,

 Scott comments that “my eyes, familiarised with the wretchedness of Zetland (Shetland) and the

 Harris, are less shocked with that of Iona.”.  Scott was referring to how poor the inhabitants were, 

which was painful to witness.