landlady at Dover, on our return, because we laughed at French cookery, and French accommodations.  Oh, how he would court the maids at the inns abroad, abuse the men perhaps! and that with a facility not to be exceeded, as they all confessed, by any of the natives.  But so he could in Spain, I find, and so ’tis plain he could here.  I will give one instance of his skill in our low street language.  Walking in a field near Chelsea, he met a fellow, who, suspecting him from dress and manner to be a foreigner, said sneeringly, ’Come, Sir, will you show me the way to France?’ ‘No, Sir,’ says Baretti, instantly, ’but I will show you the way to Tyburn.’  Such, however, was his ignorance in a certain line, that he once asked Johnson for information who it was composed the Pater Noster, and I heard him tell Evans[1] the story of Dives and Lazarus as the subject of a poem he once had composed in the Milanese dialect, expecting great credit for his powers of invention.  Evans owned to me that he thought the man drunk, whereas poor Baretti was, both in eating and drinking, a model of temperance.  Had he guessed Evans’s thoughts, the parson’s gown would scarcely have saved him a knouting from the ferocious Italian.”

[Footnote 1:  Evans was a clergyman and rector of Southwark.]

On Oct. 20, 1769, Baretti was tried at the Old Bailey on a charge of murder, for killing with a pocket knife one of three men who, with a woman of the town, hustled him in the Haymarket.[1] He was acquitted, and the event is principally memorable for the appearance of Johnson, Burke, Grarrick, and Beauclerc as witnesses to character.  The substance of Johnson’s evidence is thus given in the “Gentleman’s Magazine”: 

[Footnote 1:  In his defence, he said:—­“I hope it will be seen that my knife was neither a weapon of offence or defence.  I wear it to carve fruit and sweetmeats, and not to kill my fellow creatures.  It is a general custom in France not to put knives on the table, so that even ladies wear them in their pockets for general use.”]

“Dr. J.—­I believe I began to be acquainted with Mr. Baretti about the year 1753 or 1754.  I have been intimate with him.  He is a man of literature, a very studious man, a man of great diligence.  He gets his living by study.  I have no reason to think he was ever disordered with liquor in his life.  A man that I never knew to be otherwise than peaceable, and a man that I take to be rather timorous.—­Q.  Was he addicted to pick up women in the streets?—­Dr. J. I never knew that he was.—­Q.  How is he as to eyesight?—­Dr. J. He does not see me now, nor do I see him.  I do not believe he could be capable of assaulting any body in the street, without great provocation.”

It would seem that Johnson’s sensibility, such as it was, was not very severely taxed.

“Boswell.—­But suppose now, Sir, that one of your intimate friends were apprehended for an offence for which he might be hanged?