absence in the previous year by staying at home. Johnson managed to
complete his account of the _Scotch Tour_, which was published at the
end of the year. Among other consequences was a violent controversy with
the lovers of _Ossian_. Johnson was a thorough sceptic as to the
authenticity of the book. His scepticism did not repose upon the
philological or antiquarian reasonings, which would be applicable in the
controversy from internal evidence. It was to some extent the expression
of a general incredulity which astonished his friends, especially when
contrasted 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