Reg_. for the same year
(xix. 185) was published a translation the letter in which Voltaire had
attacked their authenticity. The passage that Johnson quotes is the
following:--'On est en droit de lui dire ce qu'on dit autrefois a l'abbe
Nodot: "Montrez-nous votre manuscript de Petrone, trouve a Belgrade, ou
consentez a n'etre cru of de personne."' Voltaire's _Works_, xliii.
544.
[837] Baretti (_Journey from London to Genoa_, i. 9) says that he
saw in 1760, near Honiton, at a small rivulet, 'an engine called a
ducking-stool; a kind of armed wooden chair, fixed on the extremity of a
pole about fifteen feet long. The pole is horizontally placed on a post
just by the water, and loosely pegged to that post; so that by raising
it at one end, you lower the stool down into the midst of the river.
That stool serves at present to duck scolds and termagants.'
[838] 'An two men ride of a horse, one must ride behind.' _Much Ado
about Nothing_, act iii. sc. 5.
[839] See _ante_, ii. 9.
[840] 'One star differeth from another star in glory.' I Cor. xv. 41.
[841] See _ante_, iii. 48, 280.
[842] 'The physicians in Hogarth's prints are not caricatures: the
full dress with a sword and _a great tye-wig_, and the hat under the
arm, and the doctors in consultation, each smelling to a gold-headed
cane shaped like a parish-beadle's staff, are pictures of real life in
his time, and myself have seen a young physician thus equipped walk the
streets of London without attracting the eyes of passengers.
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