d afraid to speak[287].

Dr. Gerard told us that an eminent printer[288] was very intimate with
Warburton. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, he has printed some of his works, and
perhaps bought the property of some of them. The intimacy is such as one
of the professors here may have with one of the carpenters who is
repairing the college.' 'But, (said Gerard,) I saw a letter from him to
this printer, in which he says, that the one half of the clergy of the
church of Scotland are fanaticks, and the other half infidels.' JOHNSON.
'Warburton has accustomed himself to write letters just as he speaks,
without thinking any more of what he throws out[289]. When I read
Warburton first, and observed his force, and his contempt of mankind, I
thought he had driven the world before him; but I soon found that was
not the case; for Warburton, by extending his abuse, rendered it
ineffectual[290].'

He told me, when we were by ourselves, that he thought it very wrong in
the printer to shew Warburton's letter, as it was raising a body of
enemies against him. He thought it foolish in Warburton to write so to
the printer; and added, 'Sir, the worst way of being intimate, is by
scribbling.' He called Warburton's _Doctrine of Grace_[291] a poor
performance, and so he said was Wesley's Answer[292]. 'Warburton, he
observed, had laid himself very open. In particular, he was weak enough
to say, that, in some disorders of the imagination, people had spoken
with tongues, had spoken languages which they never knew before; a thing
as absurd as to say, that, in some disorders of the imagination, people
had been known to fly.'

I talked of the difference of genius, to try if I could engage Gerard in
a disquisition with Dr. Johnson; but I did not succeed. I mentioned, as
a curious fact, that Locke had written verses. JOHNSON. 'I know of none,
Sir, but a kind of exercise prefixed to Dr. Sydenham's Works[293], in
which he has some conceits about the dropsy, in which water and burning
are united; and how Dr. Sydenham removed fire by drawing off water,
contrary to the usual practice, which is to extinguish fire by bringing
water upon it. I am not sure that there is a word of all this; but it is
such kind of talk[294].' We spoke of _Fingal_[295]. Dr. Johnson said
calmly, 'If the poems were really translated, they were certainly first
written down. Let Mr. Macpherson deposite the manuscript in one of the
colleges at Aberdeen, where there are people who can judge; and,