_Porson's Imposition_ (Vol. i., p. 71.) is indeed, I believe, an
_imposition_. The last line quoted (and I suppose all the rest) can
hardly be Porson's, for Mr. Langton amused Johnson, Boswell, and a
dinner party at General Oglethorpe's, on the 14th of April, 1778, with
some macaronic Greek "by _Joshua Barnes_, in which are to be found such
comical Anglo-hellenisms as [Greek: klubboisin ebagchthae] they were
banged with clubs." Boswell's _Johnson_, last ed. p. 591.

C.


_The Three Dukes_ (Vol. ii., pp. 9, 46, 91.).--Andrew Marvel thus makes
mention of the outrage on the beadle in his letter to the Mayor of Hull,
Feb. 28, 1671 (_Works_, i. 195.):--

"On Saturday night last, or rather Sunday morning, at two
o'clock, some persons reported to be of great quality, together
with other gentlemen, set upon the watch and killed a poor
beadle, praying for his life upon his knees, with many wounds;
warrants are out for apprehending some of them, but they are
fled."

I am not aware of any contemporary authority for the names of the three
dukes; and a difficulty in the way of assigning them by conjecture is,
that in the poem they are called "three bastard dukes." Your
correspondent C. has rightly said (p. 46.) that none of Charles II.'s
bastard sons besides Monmouth would have been old enough in 1671 to be
actors in such a fray. Sir Walter Scott, in his notes on _Absalom and
Achitophel_, referring to the poem, gives the assault to Monmouth and