was in truth natural enough.  Any man who clings with unreasonable pertinacity to the prejudices of his childhood, must be alternately credulous and sceptical in excess.  In both cases, he judges by his fancies in defiance of evidence; and accepts and rejects according to his likes and dislikes, instead of his estimates of logical proof. Ossian would be naturally offensive to Johnson, as one of the earliest and most remarkable manifestations of that growing taste for what was called “Nature,” as opposed to civilization, of which Rousseau was the great mouthpiece.  Nobody more heartily despised this form of “cant” than Johnson.  A man who utterly despised the scenery of the Hebrides as compared with Greenwich Park or Charing Cross, would hardly take kindly to the Ossianesque version of the mountain passion.  The book struck him as sheer rubbish.  I have already quoted the retort about “many men, many women, and many children.”  “A man,” he said, on another occasion, “might write such stuff for ever, if he would abandon his mind to it.”

The precise point, however, upon which he rested his case, was the tangible one of the inability of Macpherson to produce the manuscripts of which he had affirmed the existence.  MacPherson wrote a furious letter to Johnson, of which the purport can only be inferred from Johnson’s smashing retort,—­

“Mr. James MacPherson, I have received your foolish and impudent letter.  Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me.  I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.

“What would you have me retract?  I thought your book an imposture:  I think it an imposture still.  For this opinion I have given my reasons to the public, which I here dare you to refute.  Your rage I defy.  Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable; and what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove.  You may print this if you will.

“SAM.  JOHNSON.”

And so laying in a tremendous cudgel, the old gentleman (he was now sixty-six) awaited the assault, which, however, was not delivered.

In 1775 Boswell again came to London, and renewed some of the Scotch discussions.  He attended a meeting of the Literary Club, and found the members disposed to laugh at Johnson’s tenderness to the stories about second-sight.  Boswell heroically avowed his own belief.  “The evidence,” he said, “is enough for me, though not for his great mind.  What will not fill a quart bottle, will fill a pint bottle.  I am filled with belief.”  “Are you?” said Colman; “then cork it up.”