pamphlet, entitled "The Patriot," addressed to the electors of Great
Britain. It was written with energetic vivacity; and except those
passages in which it endeavours to vindicate the glaring outrage of the
House of Commons in the case of the 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