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Thus he who approved the burning American houses has had fire brought home to him. Baretti in a marginal note on mass-house, says, 'So illiberal was Johnson made by religion that he calls here the chapel a mass-house.... Yet he hated the Presbyterians. That was a nasty blot in his character.
Baretti told Malone that, having proposed to teach Johnson Italian, they went over a few stanzas of Ariosto, and Johnson then grew weary. 'Some years afterwards Baretti said he would give him another lesson, but added, "I suppose you have forgotten what we read before."
It is wonderful what a number and variety of writers, some of them even unknown to him, prevailed on his good-nature to look over their works, and suggest corrections and improvements . My arrival interrupted for a little while the important business of this true representative of Bayes ; upon its being resumed, I found that the subject under immediate consideration was a translation, yet in manuscript, of the Carmen Seculare of Horace, which had this year been set to musick, and performed as a publick entertainment in London, for the joint benefit of Monsieur Philidor and Signer Baretti . When Johnson had done reading, the authour asked him bluntly, 'If upon the whole it was a good translation? Johnson, whose regard for truth was uncommonly strict, seemed to be puzzled for a moment, what answer to make; as he certainly could not honestly commend the performance: with exquisite address he evaded the question thus, 'Sir, I do not say that it may not be made a very good translation . Here nothing whatever in favour of the performance was affirmed, and yet the writer was not shocked.
Garoffi was thoroughly terrified to-day, in the expectation of a severe punishment from the teacher; but the master did not make his appearance; and as the assistant was also missing, Signora Cromi, the oldest of the schoolmistresses, came to teach the school; she has two grown-up children, and she has taught several women to read and write, who now come to accompany their sons to the Baretti schoolhouse.
There is a change of modes in the whole department of life. Next day, October 20, he appeared, for the only time I suppose in his life, as a witness in a Court of Justice, being called to give evidence to the character of Mr. Baretti, who having stabbed a man in the street, was arraigned at the Old Bailey for murder.
I had looked very little into it since I wrote it, and, I think, I found it full as often better, as worse, than I expected. 'Baretti and Davies have had a furious quarrel; a quarrel, I think, irreconcileable. Dr. Goldsmith has a new comedy, which is expected in the spring. No name is yet given it.
Cholmondeley, the sayer of odd things, and Seward, much given to yawning, and Baretti, who slew the man in the Haymarket, and Paoli, talking broken English, and Langton, taller by the head than any other member of the club, and Lady Millar, who kept a vase wherein fools were wont to put bad verses, and Jerningham, who wrote verses fit to be put into the vase of Lady Millar, and Dr.
Thrale gives a long but scarcely credible account of her quarrel with Baretti. It is very unlikely that he used to say to her eldest daughter 'that, if her mother died in a lying-in which happened while he lived here, he hoped Mr. Thrale would marry Miss Whitbred, who would be a pretty companion for her, and not tyrannical and overbearing like me. Hayward's Piozzi, ii. 336.
Let me pay Scotland one just praise; there was no officer gaping for a fee; this could have been said of no city on the English side of the Tweed. Piozzi Letters, i. 117. Baretti, in a MS. note on this passage, says: 'Throughout England nothing is done for nothing.
Upon a settlement of our account of expences on a Tour to the Hebrides, there was a balance due to me, which Dr. Johnson chose to discharge by sending books. See post, under Nov. 29, 1777. Baretti told me that Johnson complained of my writing very long letters to him when I was upon the continent; which was most certainly true; but it seems my friend did not remember it. See ante, iii. 27.
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