"France displayed all Mr. Baretti's useful powers--he bustled for us,
he catered for us, he took care of the child, he secured an apartment
for the maid, he provided for our safety, our amusement, our repose;
without him the pleasure of that journey would never have balanced
the pain. And great was his disgust, to be sure, when he caught us,
as he often did, ridiculing French manners, French sentiments, &c. I
think he half cryed to Mrs. Payne, the 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.
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