ted with his tenderness for many puerile superstitions. He could
scarcely be induced to admit the truth of any narrative which struck
him as odd, and it was long, for example, before he would believe even
in the Lisbon earthquake. Yet he seriously discussed the truth of
second-sight; he carefully investigated the Cock-lane ghost--a goblin
who anticipated some of the modern phenomena of so-called
"spiritualism," and with almost equal absurdity; he told stories to
Boswell about a "shadowy being" which had once been seen by Cave, and
declared that he had once heard his mother call "Sam" when he was at
Oxford and she at Lichfield. The apparent inconsistency 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 d