greatly increased by the Parliamentary debates', which were continued by Johnson till the month of March, 1742-3. From that time the Magazine was conducted by Dr. Hawkesworth 2.

In 1743-4, Osborne, the bookseller, who kept a shop in Gray's-Inn, purchased the Earl of Oxford's library, at the price of thirteen thousand pounds. He projected a catalogue in five octavo volumes, at five shillings each. Johnson was employed in that painful drudgery 3. He was likewise to collect all such small tracts, as were in any degree worth preserving, in order to reprint and publish the whole in a collection, called The Harleian Miscellany. The catalogue was completed; and the Miscellany in 1749 was published in eight quarto volumes. In this business Johnson was a day-labourer for immediate subsistence, not unlike Gustavus Vasa working in the mines of Dalecarlia. What Wilcox, a bookseller of eminence in the Strand, said to Johnson, on his first arrival in town, was now almost confirmed. He lent our author five guineas, and then asked him, 'How do you mean to earn your livelihood in this town?' 'By my literary labours,' was the answer. Wilcox, staring at him, shook his head: 'By your literary labours!—You had better buy a porter's knot.' Johnson used to tell this anecdote to Mr. Nichols ; but he said, 'Wilcox was one of my best friends, and he meant well 5. In fact, Johnson, while employed

debates wherein all the wit, learning, and argument have been thrown into one side, and on the other nothing but what was low, mean, and ridiculous ... If any gentleman will take the trouble, which, I own, I very seldom do, to look into these magazines, he will find four pages wrote against the government for one that is in its favour.' Coxe's Walpole, i. 570-2.

The sale, according to Hawkins (p. 123), rose from ten to fifteen thousand copies a month.

The Private Journal of Dr. John Byrom mentions that, in 1739, 10,000 copies were printed; and of the London Magazine, 7,000 copies. Gentleman's Magazine, 1857, i. 149.

in Gray's-Inn, may be said to have carried a porter's knot. He paused occasionally, to peruse the book that came to his hand. Osborne thought that such curiosity tended to nothing but delay, and objected to it with all the pride and insolence of a man, who knew that he paid daily wages. In the dispute that of course ensued, Osborne, with that roughness which was natural to him, enforced his argument by giving the lie. Johnson seized a folio, and knocked the bookseller down'. This story has been related as an instance of Johnson's ferocity; but merit cannot always take the spurns of the unworthy with a patient spirit.

That the history of an author must be found in his works is, in general, a true observation; and was never more apparent than in the present narrative. Every æra of Johnson's life is fixed by his writings. In 1744, he published the Life of Savage; and then projected a new edition of Shakspeare. As a prelude to this design, he published, in 1745, Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth, with Remarks on Sir Thomas Hanmer's Edition; to which were prefixed, Proposals for a new Edition of Shakspeare, with a Specimen. Of this pamphlet Warburton, in the Preface to Shakspeare, has given his opinion: As to all those things, which have been published under the title of Essays, Remarks, Observations, &c. on Shakspeare, if you except some critical notes on Macbeth, given as a specimen of a projected edition, and written, as appears, by a man of parts and genius, the rest are absolutely below a serious notice 3.' But the attention of

the publick was not excited; there was no friend to promote a subscription; and the project died, to revive at a future day'. A new undertaking, however, was soon after proposed; namely, an English Dictionary, upon an enlarged plan. Several of the most opulent booksellers had meditated a work of this kind; and the agreement was soon adjusted between the parties 2. Emboldened by this connection, Johnson thought of a better habitation than he had hitherto known. He had lodged with his wife in courts and alleys about the Strand3; but now, for the purpose of carrying on his arduous

Oct. 31, 1765, not two, but twenty years after this 'praise.' It was provoked by the severe criticisms of his Shakespeare by Johnson in the edition which he had just published. Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate, 1st ed., p. 272.

1 Dr. Anderson, in his Life of Johnson, 1815, p. 106, gives a letter dated April 11, 1745, in which Tonson threatens Cave with a Chancery suit if he prints Shakespeare. That, he says, 'will be the method we shall take with any one who shall attack our property in this or any other copy that we have fairly bought and paid for.' The University of Oxford, it was true, had lately published Hanmer's edition; but, if you call on me,' Tonson continues, 'I will give my reasons why we rather chuse to proceed with the University by way of reprisal for their scandalous invasion of our rights than by law.'

Lord Camden, in the judgment which he gave in the House of Lords on Feb. 22, 1774, on the great copyright case says: Shakespeare's works, which he left carelessly behind him in town when he retired from it, were surely given to the public if ever author's were; but two prompters, or players behind the scenes, laid hold of them, and the

present proprietors pretend to derive that copy from them, for which the author himself never received a farthing.' Parl. Hist., xvii. 1000.

For the booksellers' claim of copyright see Life, i. 437, and Letters of Hume to Strahan, p. 275, where I have examined it at some length.

They had undertaken to publish Warburton's Shakespeare which appeared in 1747, and so would not in 1745 suffer a rival edition. In 1756 they themselves engaged Johnson as editor. Life, i. 175, 318; Hawkins, p. 361.

'Warburton (said Quin the player) ought to have stuck to his own Bible, and not to have meddled with ours.' Nichols, Lit. Hist., ii. 840.

2

Life, i. 182. Hawkins, who had seen the original contract, says that it was dated June 18, 1746. Hawkins, p. 345. I had not noticed this fact when I wrote my note 2 on vol. i. p. 176 of the Life, where 1774 is a misprint for 1747. It adds to the absurdity of Croker's suspicion that Johnson was at this time absent or concealed on account of some difficulties which had arisen through the rebellion of 1745.

3 For a list of his lodgings, which had not all been about the Strand, see Life, iii. 405, n. 6.

undertaking,

undertaking, and to be near his printer and friend Mr. Strahan, he ventured to take a house in Gough-square, Fleet-street'. He was told that the Earl of Chesterfield was a friend to his undertaking; and, in consequence of that intelligence, he published, in 1747, The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language, addressed to the Right Honourable Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield, one of his Majesty's principal Secretaries of State. Mr. Whitehead, afterwards Poet Laureat, undertook to convey the manuscript to his Lordship: the consequence was an invitation from Lord Chesterfield to the author3. A stronger contrast of characters could not be brought together; the Nobleman, celebrated for his wit, and all the graces of polite behaviour; the Author, conscious of his own merit, towering in idea above all competition, versed in scholastic logic, but a stranger to the arts of polite conversation, uncouth, vehement, and vociferous. The coalition was too unnatural. Johnson expected a Mæcenas, and was disappointed. No patronage, no assistance followed. Visits were repeated; but the reception. was not cordial. Johnson one day was left a full hour, waiting in an anti-chamber, till a gentleman should retire, and leave his Lordship at leisure. This was the famous Colley Cibber. Johnson saw him go, and, fired with indignation, rushed out of the house. What Lord Chesterfield thought of his visitor

1

Life, i. 188. Strahan lived at No. 10, Little New Street, Shoe Lane. Napier's Boswell, iii. 560.

2 For the 'casual excuse for laziness' which led Johnson to address his Plan to the Earl of Chesterfield, see Life, i. 183.

3 Dr. Taylor told me, that Johnson sent his Plan to him in manuscript, for his perusal; and that when it was lying upon his table, Mr. William Whitehead happened to pay him a visit, and being shewn it, was highly pleased with such parts of it as he had time to read, and begged to take it home with him, which he was allowed to do; that from him it got into the hands of a noble Lord,

who carried it to Lord Chesterfield.' Ib. i. 184.

4 'In a short time the moral, pious Johnson and the gay, dissipated Beauclerk were companions. "What a coalition!" said Garrick when he heard of this.' Ib. i. 249.

5 Of Andrew Millar, the printer, Johnson said he is the Mæcenas of the age.' Ib. i. 287, n. 3.

Hawkins (p. 189) tells the same story, which had long been current. 'But,' writes Boswell, ‘Johnson himself assured me, that there was not the least foundation for it. He told me, that there never was any particular incident which produced a quarrel between Lord Chesterfield

may

may be seen in a passage in one of that Nobleman's letters to his son (Letter CCXII). There is a man, whose moral character, deep learning, and superior parts, I acknowledge, admire, and respect; but whom it is so impossible for me to love, that I am almost in a fever whenever I am in his company. His figure (without being deformed) seems made to disgrace or ridicule the common structure of the human body. His legs and arms are never in the position which, according to the situation of his body, they ought to be in, but constantly employed in committing acts of hostility upon the Graces. He throws any where, but down his throat, whatever he means to drink; and only mangles what he means to carve. Inattentive to all the regards of social life, he mistimes or misplaces every thing. He disputes with heat and indiscriminately, mindless of the rank, character, and situation of those with whom he disputes; absolutely ignorant of the several gradations of familiarity and respect, he is exactly the same to his superiors, his equals, and his inferiors; and therefore, by a necessary consequence, absurd to two of the three. Is it possible to love such a man? No. The utmost I can do for him is, to consider him a respectable Hottentot '.' Such was the idea entertained

and him; but that his Lordship's continued neglect was the reason why he resolved to have no connection with him.' Life, i. 257.

I I have shewn that it was not of Johnson but of George Lyttelton that Chesterfield was writing. Life, i. 267; Dr. Johnson, His Friends and his Critics, p. 214.

'Johnson said to me many years before he published his Preface [to Lyttelton's Poems], "Lord Lyttelton was a worthy good man, but so ungracious that he did not know how to be a Gentleman." MS. note by Mr. Hussey, in Mr. H. Symonds's copy of the Life.

I do not know when Hottentot first came into common use. Addison, in the Freeholder for Jan. 6, 1716, describes how a Hottentot, who had

been brought to England, and 'in a great measure polished out of his natural barbarity, upon being carried back to the Cape of Good Hope, mixed in a kind of transport with his countrymen, brutalized with them in their habits and manners, and would never again return to his foreign acquaintance.'

Dr. Watts, in the first page of his Logick, published in 1724, says that 'the improvement of reason hath raised the learned and the prudent in the European world almost as much above the Hottentots, and other savages of Africa, as those savages are by nature superior to the birds, the beasts, and the fishes.

Fielding, in Tom Jones (Bk. xvi. ch. 8), describes Lady Bellaston as being 'much better pleased with the

by