The third case of killing by misadventure was that of Joseph Baretti, the author of the well-known Italian and English dictionary. Baretti had resided in England for some years, engaged upon this work; he was a middle-aged, respectable man, of studious habits, the friend and associate of the most noted literary men and artists of the day. He was a member of the club of the Royal Academicians at that time (1769), lodged in Soho, and went there one afternoon after a long morning's work over his proofs. Finding no one at the club, he went on to the Orange coffee-house, and returning by the Haymarket to the club, was madly assaulted by a woman at the corner of Panton Street. Very unwisely he resented her attack by giving her a blow with his hand, when the woman, finding by his accent he was a foreigner, cried for help against the cursed Frenchman, when there was at once a gathering of bullies, who jostled and beat Baretti, making him "apprehensive that he must expect no favour nor protection, but all outrage and blows." There was, generally, a great puddle at the corner of Panton Street, even when the weather was fine, and on this particular day it had rained incessantly, and the pavement was very slippery. Baretti's assailants tried hard to push him into the puddle, and at last in self-defence he drew his pocket-knife, a knife he kept, as he afterwards declared, to carve fruit and sweetmeats, and not to kill his fellow creatures with. Being hard pushed, "in great horror, having such bad eyes," lest he should run against some, and his pursuers constantly at him, jostling and beating him, Baretti "made a quick blow" at one who had knocked off his hat with his fist; the mob cried, "Murder, he has a knife out," and gave way. Baretti ran up Oxenden Street, then faced about and ran into a shop for protection, being quite spent with fatigue. Three men followed him; one was a constable, who had called upon Baretti to surrender. Morgan, the man whom he had stabbed, three times, as it appeared, "the third wound having hurt him more than the two former," was fast bleeding to death. Baretti was carried before Sir John Fielding; his friends came from the club and testified to his character, among others Sir Joshua Reynolds himself, but he was committed to prison. It was urged in Baretti's defence that he had been very severely handled; he had a swollen cheek, and was covered with bruises. Independent witnesses came forward, and swore that they had been subjected to personal outrage in the neighbourhood of the Haymarket. A number of personal friends, including Sir Joshua Reynolds, Doctor Johnson, Mr. Fitz-Herbert, and Mr. Edmund Burke, spoke in the highest terms of Mr. Baretti as a "man of benevolence, sobriety, modesty, and learning." In the end he was acquitted of murder or manslaughter, and the jury gave a verdict of self-defence. FOOTNOTES: