“Johnson.—–­I should do what I could to bail him; but if he were once fairly hanged, I should not suffer.

“Boswell.—­Would you eat your dinner that day, Sir?

“Johnson.—­Yes, Sir, and eat it as if he were eating it with me.  Why, there’s Baretti, who is to be tried for his life to-morrow.  Friends have risen up for him on every side, yet if he should be hanged, none of them will eat a slice of plum-pudding the less.  Sir, that sympathetic feeling goes a very little way in depressing the mind.”

Steevens relates that one evening previous to the trial a consultation of Baretti’s friends was held at the house of Mr. Cox, the solicitor.  Johnson and Burke were present, and differed as to some point of the defence.  On Steevens observing to Johnson that the question had been agitated with rather too much warmth, “It may be so,” replied the sage, “for Burke and I should have been of one opinion if we had had no audience.”  This is coming very near to—­

  “Would rather that the man should die
  Than his prediction prove a lie.”

Two anecdotes of Baretti during his imprisonment are preserved in “Thraliana”: 

“When Johnson and Burke went to see Baretti in Newgate, they had small comfort to give him, and bid him not hope too strongly.  ’Why what can he fear,’ says Baretti, placing himself between ’em, ’that holds two such hands as I do?’

“An Italian came one day to Baretti, when he was in Newgate for murder, to desire a letter of recommendation for the teaching of his scholars, when he (Baretti) should be hanged.  ‘You rascal,’ replies Baretti, in a rage, ’if I were not in my own apartment, I would kick you down stairs directly,’”

The year after his acquittal Baretti published “Travels through Spain, Portugal, and France;” thus mentioned by Johnson in a Letter to Mrs, Thrale, dated Lichfield, July 20, 1770: 

“That Baretti’s book would please you all, I made no doubt.  I know not whether the world has ever seen such travels before.  Those whose lot it is to ramble can seldom write, and those who know how to write can seldom ramble.”  The rate of pay showed that the world was aware of the value of the acquisition.  He gained 500l. by this book.  His “Frusta Letteraria,” published some time before in Italy, had also attracted much attention, and, according to Johnson, he was the first who ever received money for copyright in Italy,

In a biographical notice of Baretti which appeared in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for May, 1789, written by Dr. Vincent, Dean of Westminster, it is stated that it was not distress which compelled him to accept Mr. Thrale’s hospitality, but that he was overpersuaded by Johnson, contrary to his own inclination, to undertake the instruction of the Misses Thrale in Italian.  “He was either nine or eleven years almost entirely in that family,” says the Dean, “though he still rented a lodging