Imitations of Horace, book II. epist. ii. [l. 23]. BOSWELL.
[670] Very likely Boswell himself. See post, July 17, 1779, where he put Johnson's friendship to the test by neglecting to write to him.
[671] No doubt Dr. Barnard, Dean of Derry, afterwards Bishop of Killaloe. See ante, p. 84.
[672] The reverse of the story of Combabus, on which Mr. David Hume told Lord Macartney, that a friend of his had written a tragedy. It is, however, possible that I may have been inaccurate in my perception of what Dr. Johnson related, and that he may have been talking of the same ludicrous tragical subject that Mr. Hume had mentioned. BOSWELL. The story of Combabus, which was originally told by Lucian, may be found in Bayle's Dictionary. MALONE.
[673] Horace Walpole, less than three months later, wrote (Letters, vii. 83):—'Poor Mrs. Clive has been robbed again in her own lane [in Twickenham] as she was last year. I don't make a visit without a blunderbuss; one might as well be invaded by the French.' Yet Wesley in the previous December, speaking of highwaymen, records (Journal, iv. 110):—'I have travelled all roads by day and by night for these forty years, and never was interrupted yet.' Baretti, who was a great traveller, says:—'For my part I never met with any robbers in my various rambles through several regions of Europe.' Baretti's Journey from London to Genoa, ii. 266.
[674] A year or two before Johnson became acquainted with the Thrales a man was hanged on Kennington Common for robbing Mr. Thrale. Gent. Mag. xxxiii. 411.
[675] The late Duke of Montrose was generally said to have been uneasy on that account; but I can contradict the report from his Grace's own authority. As he used to admit me to very easy conversation with him, I took the liberty to introduce the subject. His Grace told me, that when riding one night near London, he was attacked by two highwaymen on horseback, and that he instantly shot one of them, upon which the other galloped off; that his servant, who was very well mounted, proposed to pursue him and take him, but that his Grace said, 'No, we have had blood enough: I hope the man may live to repent.' His Grace, upon my presuming to put the question, assured me, that his mind was not at all clouded by what he had thus done in self-defence. BOSWELL.
[676] See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, for a discussion on signing death-warrants.
[677] 'Mr. Dunning the great lawyer,' Johnson called him, ante, p. 128. Lord Shelburne says:—'The fact is well known of the present Chief Justice of the Common Pleas (Lord Loughborough, formerly Mr. Wedderburne) beginning a law argument in the absence of Mr. Dunning, but upon hearing him hem in the course of it, his tone so visibly [sic] changed that there was not a doubt in any part of the House of the reason of it.' Fitzmaurice's Shelburne, iii. 454.
[678] 'The applause of a single human being,' he once said, 'is of great consequence.' Post, 1780, in Mr. Langton's Collection.