All the miserable cavillings against his Journey, in newspapers, magazines, and other fugitive publications, I can speak from certain knowledge, only furnished him with sport.  At last there came out a scurrilous volume, larger than Johnson’s own, filled with malignant abuse, under a name, real or fictitious, of some low man in an obscure corner of Scotland, though supposed to be the work of another Scotchman, who has found means to make himself well known both in Scotland and England.  The effect which it had upon Johnson was, to produce this pleasant observation to Mr. Seward, to whom he lent the book:  ’This fellow must be a blockhead.  They don’t know how to go about their abuse.  Who will read a five-shilling book against me?  No, Sir, if they had wit, they should have kept pelting me with pamphlets.’

On Tuesday, March 21, I arrived in London; and on repairing to Dr. Johnson’s before dinner, found him in his study, sitting with Mr. Peter Garrick, the elder brother of David, strongly resembling him in countenance and voice, but of more sedate and placid manners.  Johnson informed me, that ’though Mr. Beauclerk was in great pain, it was hoped he was not in danger, and that he now wished to consult Dr. Heberden to try the effect of a new understanding.’  Both at this interview, and in the evening at Mr. Thrale’s where he and Mr. Peter Garrick and I met again, he was vehement on the subject of the Ossian controversy; observing, ’We do not know that there are any ancient Erse manuscripts; and we have no other reason to disbelieve that there are men with three heads, but that we do not know that there are any such men.’  He also was outrageous upon his supposition that my countrymen ’loved Scotland better than truth,’ saying, ’All of them,—­nay not all,—­but droves of them, would come up, and attest any thing for the honour of Scotland.’  He also persevered in his wild allegation, that he questioned if there was a tree between Edinburgh and the English border older than himself.  I assured him he was mistaken, and suggested that the proper punishment would be that he should receive a stripe at every tree above a hundred years old, that was found within that space.  He laughed, and said, ’I believe I might submit to it for a baubee!’

The doubts which, in my correspondence with him, I had ventured to state as to the justice and wisdom of the conduct of Great-Britain towards the American colonies, while I at the same time requested that he would enable me to inform myself upon that momentous subject, he had altogether disregarded; and had recently published a pamphlet, entitled, Taxation no Tyranny; an answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress.

He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America.  For, as early as 1769, I was told by Dr. John Campbell, that he had said of them, ’Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.’