Col also told us that the same person having come up with a serjeant and twenty men, working on the high road, he entered into discourse with the serjeant and then gave him sixpence for the men to drink. The serjeant asked, 'Who is this fellow?' Upon being informed, he said, 'If I had known who it was I should have thrown it in his face.' _Johnson_: '... he has not learnt to be a miser; I believe we must take him apprentice.' _Boswell_: 'He would grudge giving half a guinea to be taught.' _Johnson_: 'Nay, sir, you must teach him _gratis_.' If the 'Tour to the Hebrides' is uniquely indiscreet, it is only the more typical of Boswell. He loved to be in the public eye and he was now notorious beyond measure. The wags laughed, the injured Scotsmen were angry, and the more respectable parts of the community were profoundly shocked. A sheaf of cartoons did justice to the humour of the situation. Lord Macdonald was represented with uplifted stick, and the threatened author on his knees before him.[2] 'Johnson's Ghost' was depicted as appearing to the terror-stricken Boswell and mournfully reproaching him. In a series of twenty large caricatures the biographer was represented in twenty absurd situations, and each sketch had a quotation from his book. Boswell at all events was the first in the field of all who intended to write about Johnson, and no doubt he was glad that all the world was aware of the fact. But Boswell did not mean to be notorious in this fashion. He may have expected some ridicule, but not ill-feeling; he was too good-humoured himself. Possibly he satisfied his malice on more than one occasion; but as a rule he had no intention of giving pain. The admirable Dr. Beattie calls him 'a very good-natured man,' and says he was convinced that Bozzy meant no harm. Sir William Forbes said that he seemed sorry for 'some parts,' and Boswell published his own apology and defence in one of the notes of a later edition: Having found, on a revision of the first edition of this work, that, notwithstanding my best care, a few observations had escaped me, which arose from the instant impression, the publication of which might perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of strict decorum, I immediately ordered that they should be omitted in subsequent editions. I was pleased to find that they did not amount in the whole to a page. If any of the same kind are yet left, it is owing to inadvertence alone, no man being more unwilling to give pain to others than I am.