When he denounced Macpherson for his Ossian frauds, and the irate Celt said something about personal chastisement, Johnson told him, in writing, that he was not to be deterred from detecting a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian, and by way of a temporary provision for his self-defence selected a most grievous cudgel, six feet in height, and terminating in a head (once the root) of the size of a large orange.  The possession of great physical strength is no mean assistance to a straightforward life.  The late Professor Fawcett, who, though blind, delighted, arm-in-arm with a friend, to skate furiously on the fens,

never could be brought to share the fears entertained on his behalf by some of the less stalwart of his acquaintances.  ‘Why,’ he used to exclaim apologetically, ‘even if I do run up against anybody, it is always the other fellow who gets the worst of it.’  But poor Pope, whom a child could hustle, had no such resources.  We should always remember this; it is brutal to forget it.