into the pit.  Foote, who so successfully revived the old comedy, by exhibiting living characters, had resolved to imitate Johnson on the stage, expecting great profits from his ridicule of so celebrated a man.  Johnson being informed of his intention, and being at dinner at Mr. Thomas Davies’s the bookseller, from whom I had the story, he asked Mr. Davies ’what was the common price of an oak stick;’ and being answered six-pence, ’Why then, Sir, (said he,) give me leave to send your servant to purchase me a shilling one.  I’ll have a double quantity; for I am told Foote means to take me off, as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow shall not do it with impunity.  Davies took care to acquaint Foote of this, which effectually checked the wantonness of the mimick.  Mr. Macpherson’s menaces made Johnson provide himself with the same implement of defence; and had he been attacked, I have no doubt that, old as he was, he would have made his corporal prowess be felt as much as his intellectual.

His Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland is a most valuable performance.  Johnson’s grateful acknowledgements of kindnesses received in the course of this tour, completely refute the brutal reflections which have been thrown out against him, as if he had made an ungrateful return; and his delicacy in sparing in his book those who we find from his letters to Mrs. Thrale were just objects of censure, is much to be admired.  His candour and amiable disposition is conspicuous from his conduct, when informed by Mr. Macleod, of Rasay, that he had committed a mistake, which gave that gentleman some uneasiness.  He wrote him a courteous and kind letter, and inserted in the news-papers an advertisement, correcting the mistake.

As to his prejudice against the Scotch, which I always ascribed to that nationality which he observed in them, he said to the same gentleman, ’When I find a Scotchman, to whom an Englishman is as a Scotchman, that Scotchman shall be as an Englishman to me.’  His intimacy with many gentlemen of Scotland, and his employing so many natives of that country as his amanuenses, prove that his prejudice was not virulent; and I have deposited in the British Museum, amongst other pieces of his writing, the following note in answer to one from me, asking if he would meet me at dinner at the Mitre, though a friend of mine, a Scotchman, was to be there:—­

’Mr. Johnson does not see why Mr. Boswell should suppose a Scotchman less acceptable than any other man.  He will be at the Mitre.’

My much-valued friend Dr. Barnard, now Bishop of Killaloc, having once expressed to him an apprehension, that if he should visit Ireland he might treat the people of that country more unfavourably than he had done the Scotch, he answered, with strong pointed double-edged wit, ’Sir, you have no reason to be afraid of me.  The Irish are not in a conspiracy to cheat the world by false representations of the merits of their countrymen.  No, Sir; the Irish are a fair people;—­they never speak well of one another.’