Middlesex election and to justify
the attempt to reduce our fellow-subjects in America to unconditional
submission, it contained an admirable display of the properties of a
real patriot, in the original and genuine sense.

_IX.--Johnson's Physical Courage and Fear of Death_

The "Rambler's" own account of our tour in the Hebrides was published in
1775 under the title of "A journey to the Western Islands of Scotland,"
and soon involved its author, who had expressed his disbelief in the
authenticity of Ossian's poems, in a controversy with Mr. Macpherson.
Johnson called for the production of the old manuscripts from which Mr.
Macpherson said that he had copied the poems. He wrote to me: "I am
surprised that, knowing as you do the disposition of your countrymen to
tell lies in favour of each other, you can be at all affected by any
reports that circulate among them." And when Mr. Macpherson, exasperated
by this scepticism, replied in words that are generally said to have
been of a nature very different from the language of literary contest,
Johnson answered him in a letter that opened: "I 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."

Mr. Macpherson knew little the character of Dr. Johnson if he supposed
that he could be easily intimidated, for no man was ever more remarkable
for personal courage. He had, indeed, an awful dread of death, or,
rather, "of something after death"; and he once said to me, "The fear of
death is so much natural to man that the whole of life is but keeping
away the thoughts of it," and confessed that "he had never had a moment
in which death was not terrible to him." But his fear was from
reflection, his courage natural. Many instances of his resolution may be
mentioned. One day, at Mr. Beauclerk's house in the country, when two
large dogs were fighting, he went up to them and beat them till they
separated.

At another time, when Foote threatened to _take him off_ on the stage,
he sent out for an extra large oak stick; and this mere threat, repeated
by Davies to Foote, effectually checked the wantonness of the mimic. On
yet another occasion, in the playhouse at Lichfield, as Mr. Garrick
informed me, Johnson having for a moment quitted a chair which was
placed for him between the side sce