This seemed to Boswell rather as acting from the motive of private vengeance than of public advantage; but Johnson maintained that in acting thus he would be satisfying both. He added, however, that it was a difficult point: “one does not know what to say: one may hang one’s self a year afterwards from uneasiness for having shot a highwayman. Few minds are to be trusted with so great a thing.” And we may add, seeing how many highwaymen were shot at, and how few hit, few hands either.
Half a mile beyond Turpin’s Oak is North Finchley, a recent suburb of smart shops, risen on the site of those gibbets mentioned by Pennant. Those who affect to be more genteel and individualistic, name it Torrington Park, and thus hope to be exquisitely distinguished from the ruck of Finchleys that take their names from the four points of the compass. The Park Road Hotel, rising at the angle where the road from Child’s Hill joins the highway we are travelling, actually stands on the site of a gibbet. As “Tally-ho Corner,” this is a spot familiarly known to cyclists. Maps, however, know it as “Tallow Corner.”
Whetstone succeeds to North Finchley. It once groaned under the oppression of a toll-gate—a gate that spanned the road by the “Griffin” inn, where the old “whetstone” still remains. This gate, abolished November 1st, 1863, was associated with a story of George Morland, the artist, who, having received an invitation to Barnet, was journeying to that town in company with two friends, when he was stopped here by a cart containing two men, who were disputing with the toll-keeper. One was a chimney-sweep, and the other one Hooper, a tinsmith and prize-fighter, scarcely higher in the social scale; but they knew Morland, who had often caroused with them at the low wayside taverns he affected. Now, however, he was not in a mood for his old companions; recent success had turned him respectable for a time. Accordingly, he endeavoured to pass, when the tinsmith called out, “What, Mr. Morland, won’t you speak to a body?”
It was of no use trying to escape, for the man began to roar out after him, so that he was obliged to turn back and shake hands with his old crony; whereupon Hooper turned to the chimney-sweep and said, “Why, Dick, don’t you know this here gentleman? ’Tis my friend, Mr. Morland.” The man of soot, smiling a recognition, forced his unwelcome black hand upon his brother of the brush; then they whipped the horse up and went off, much to Morland’s relief. He used afterwards to declare that the sweep was a stranger to him; but the dissolute artist’s habits made the story generally believed, and “Sweeps, your honour,” was a joke that followed him all his days.