’I was upwards of twelve years acquainted with him, was frequently in his company, always talked with ease to him, and can truly say, that I never received from him one rough word.’

In this letter he relates his having, while engaged in translating the Lusiad, had a dispute of considerable length with Johnson, who, as usual, declaimed upon the misery and corruption of a sea life, and used this expression:—­’It had been happy for the world, Sir, if your hero Gama, Prince Henry of Portugal, and Columbus, had never been born, or that their schemes had never gone farther than their own imaginations.’

’This sentiment, (says Mr. Mickle,) which is to be found in his Introduction to the World displayed[782], I, in my Dissertation prefixed to the Lusiad, have controverted; and though authours are said to be bad judges of their own works[783], I am not ashamed to own to a friend, that that dissertation is my favourite above all that I ever attempted in prose.  Next year, when the Lusiad was published, I waited on Dr. Johnson, who addressed me with one of his good-humoured smiles:—­“Well, you have remembered our dispute about Prince Henry, and have cited me too.  You have done your part very well indeed:  you have made the best of your argument; but I am not convinced yet.”

’Before publishing the Lusiad, I sent Mr. Hoole a proof of that part of the introduction, in which I make mention of Dr. Johnson, yourself, and other well-wishers to the work, begging it might be shewn to Dr. Johnson.  This was accordingly done; and in place of the simple mention of him which I had made, he dictated to Mr. Hoole the sentence as it now stands[784].

’Dr. Johnson told me in 1772, that, about twenty years before that time, he himself had a design to translate the Lusiad, of the merit of which he spoke highly, but had been prevented by a number of other engagements.’

Mr. Mickle reminds me in this letter of a conversation, at dinner one day at Mr. Hoole’s with Dr. Johnson, when Mr. Nicol the King’s bookseller and I attempted to controvert the maxim, ’better that ten guilty should escape, than one innocent person suffer;’ and were answered by Dr. Johnson with great power of reasoning and eloquence.  I am very sorry that I have no record of that day[785]:  but I well recollect my illustrious friend’s having ably shewn, that unless civil institutions insure protection to the innocent, all the confidence which mankind should have in them would be lost.

I shall here mention what, in strict chronological arrangement, should have appeared in my account of last year; but may more properly be introduced here, the controversy having not been closed till this.  The Reverend Mr. Shaw[786], a native of one of the Hebrides, having entertained doubts of the authenticity of the poems ascribed to Ossian, divested himself of national bigotry; and having travelled in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and also in Ireland, in order