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imputations. through life.

Mr. Dyer, however, was admired and loved He was a man of literature'. Johnson loved to enter with him into a discussion of metaphysical, moral, and critical subjects; in those conflicts, exercising his talents, and, according to his custom, always contending for victory 2. Dr. Bathurst was the person on whom Johnson fixed his affection. He hardly ever spoke of him without tears in his eyes3. It was from him, who was a native of Jamaica, that

On a point of Latinity Johnson once said to him:-'Sir, I beg to have your judgement, for I know your nicety.' Life, iv. II. Burke described him as a man of profound and general erudition.' Ib. n. 1.

2

Ante, p. 376. 'He owned he sometimes talked for victory.' Life, v. 17. 'Care must be taken to distinguish between Johnson when he "talked for victory," and Johnson when he had no desire but to inform and illustrate.' Ib. iv. III.

Dyer was little likely to have entered into such a contest. According to Malone 'he was so modest and reserved, that he frequently sat silent in company for an hour, and seldom spoke unless appealed to.' Ib. iv. 11, n. I.

6

3 Ib. i. 190, 242, n. 1; Letters, i. 32; ante, p. 158. Bathurst thought of becoming an eminent London physician, and omitted no means to attain that character: he studied hard, dressed well, and associated with those who were likely to bring him forward, but he failed in his endeavours, and shortly before his leaving England [for the Havannah] confessed to Johnson that in the course of ten years' exercise of his faculty he had never opened his hand to more than one guinea.' Hawkins, P. 235.

Johnson, who 'had in general a peculiar pleasure in the company

of physicians' (Life, iv. 293), had three of them in his Club. Of these, 'M'Ghie, failing in his hope of getting forward in his profession, died of a broken heart, and was buried by a contribution of his friends' (Hawkins, p. 233); Barker 'died in obscurity' (Ib. p. 234), and Bathurst, 'missing of success,' went as 'physician to the army that was sent on the expedition against the Havannah,' where he died of fever (ib. p. 235). According to Hawkins, Bathurst's failure drew from Johnson the following reflection which many years later he inserted in his Life of Akenside: 'A physician in a great city seems to be the mere plaything of fortune; his degree of reputation is for the most part totally casual; they that employ him know not his excellence; they that reject him know not his deficience. By any acute observer, who had looked on the transactions of the medical world for half a century, a very curious book might be written on the Fortune of Physicians. Works, viii. 471.

'Hawkins, remarking on 'the very many ignorant men who have been known to succeed in the profession,' adds in a note, 'so ignorant as to request of the College [of Physicians] the indulgence of an examination in English.'

Johnson

Johnson received into his service Frank, the black servant, whom, on account of his master, he valued to the end of his life. At the time of instituting the club in Ivy-lane, Johnson had projected the Rambler. The title was most probably suggested by the Wanderer; a poem which he mentions, with the warmest praise, in the Life of Savage3. With the same spirit of independence with which he wished to live, it was now his pride to write. He communicated his plan to none of his friends: he desired no assistance, relying entirely on his own fund, and the protection of the Divine Being, which he implored in a solemn form of prayer, composed by himself for the occasion. Having formed a resolution to undertake a work that might be of use and honour to his country, he thought, with Milton, that this was not to be obtained 'but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that [who] can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and send [sends] out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases".

I

Life, i. 239; iv. 401; ante, p. 291. 'Soon after the decease of Mrs. Johnson the father of Dr. Bathurst arrived in England from Jamaica, and brought with him a negro-servant, a native of that island, whom he caused to be baptised and named Francis Barber, and sent for instruction to Barton upon Tees in Yorkshire; upon the decease of Captain Bathurst, for so he was called, Francis went to live with his son, who willingly parted with him to Johnson. The uses for which he was intended to serve this his last master were not very apparent, for Diogenes himself never wanted a servant less than he seemed to do... He placed him at a school at Bishop Stortford, and kept him there five years; and, as Mrs. Williams was used to say, who would frequently reproach him with his indiscretion in this instance, expended £300 in an endeavour to have him taught Latin and Greek.'

Hawkins, pp. 326-8. Francis entered Johnson's service a fortnight after Mrs. Johnson's death. Life, i. 239.

2

According to Nichols (Lit. Anec. ix. 501) the Club was known as the Ramblers' Club. If so the name must have been given some time after its foundation.

See Life, i. 202 for the origin of the name of The Rambler. In the list of Periodical Publications in Nichols's Lit. Anec.viii.495 is a paper under this name published in 1712.

3 From a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantage; nor can it without some degree of indignation and concern be told, that he sold the copy for ten guineas.' Works, viii. 131.

4

Hawkins, p. 265.

5 Ante, p. 9.

The Reason of Church Govern

Having invoked the special protection of Heaven, and by that act of piety fortified his mind, he began the great work of the Rambler. The first number was published on Tuesday, March the 20th, 1750; and from that time was continued regularly every Tuesday and Saturday for the space of two years, when it was finally closed on Saturday, March 14, 1752'. As it began with motives of piety, so it appears, that the same religious spirit glowed with unabating ardour to the last. His conclusion is: 'The Essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity, without any accommodation to the licentiousness and levity of the present age. I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no [blame or praise of] man shall diminish or augment. I shall never envy the honours which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be numbered among the writers who have given ardour to virtue, and confidence to truth.' The whole number of Essays amounted to two hundred and eight 2. Addison's, in the Spectator, are more in number, but not half in point of quantity 3. Addison was not bound to publish on stated days; he could watch the ebb and flow of his genius, and send his paper to the press when his own taste was satisfied. Johnson's case was very different. He wrote singly and alone. In the whole progress of the work he did not receive more than ten essays. This was a scanty contribution. For the rest, the author has described his situation: 'He that condemns himself to compose on a stated day, will often bring to his task an attention dissipated, a memory embarrassed, an imagination overwhelmed, a mind distracted with anxieties, a body languishing with disease: he will labour on a barren topic, till it is too late to change it; or, in the ardour of invention, diffuse his ment, &c., Book II. Introduction. Milton's Works, ed. 1806, i. 122. Quoted in Johnson's Life of Milton, Works, vii. 78.

Life, i. 203, n. I.

2 Of these, four whole numbers and part of a fifth were by other hands. Ib. i. 203.

3 Addison wrote about 240 Spectators, of about 112 lines to a number. In ninety-two weeks he wrote, roughly speaking, 26,680 lines, or 292 lines a week. Johnson wrote 203 Ramblers in 103 weeks, which, at 167 lines to a number, give 33,901 lines, or 329 a week.

thoughts

thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgement to examine or reduce 1.' Of this excellent production the number sold on each day did not amount to five hundred: of course the bookseller, who paid the author four guineas a week, did not carry on a successful trade. His generosity and perseverance deserve to be commended; and happily, when the collection appeared in volumes, were amply rewarded. Johnson lived to see his labours flourish in a tenth edition. His posterity, as an ingenious French writer has said on a similar occasion, began in his lifetime.

In the beginning of 1750, soon after the Rambler was set on foot, Johnson was induced by the arts of a vile impostor to lend his assistance, during a temporary delusion, to a fraud not to be paralleled in the annals of literature. One LAUDER, a native of Scotland, who had been a teacher in the University of EDINBURGH, had conceived a mortal antipathy to the name and character of Milton 3. His reason was, because the prayer of

'Rambler, No. 208. In this number he says:-'I have never complied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled my readers to discuss the topick of the day.' There is a curious instance of this in his passing over in silence the great earthquake scare of April 8, 1750, when 'the open fields that skirt the metropolis were filled with an incredible number of people assembled in chairs, in chaises and coaches, as well as on foot, who waited in the most fearful suspense until morning.' Smollett's History of England, iii. 293. See also Walpole's Letters, ii. 201. Johnson's next number was on 'Retirement natural to a great mind.'

2 In the closing number Johnson says have never been much a favourite with the public.' The bookseller was Cave. Life, i. 203, n. 6. It is stated in Chalmers's British Essayists, vol. xvi. Preface, p. 14, that the only number which had

a prosperous sale' was 97-contributed by Richardson. A second impression however was required of the first numbers, as I have shown in the Introduction to Select Essays of Johnson (Dent & Co., 1889), p.

21.

Each edition, according to Hawkins (p. 269), consisted of 1,250 copies. Johnson soon parted with the copyright. Letters, i. 29, n. I.

3 Lauder had scarcely left college when he was struck on the knee by a golf-ball on Bruntsfield Links; through neglect of the wound he had to have the leg amputated. In spite of considerable merit he failed to get one or two appointments which he sought. This soured his temper, and 'at length drove him in an unlucky hour from Edinburgh to London. Here his folly working on his necessities induced him to detract from the fame of Milton by publishing forgeries. The public indignation Pamela,

Pamela, in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, was, as he supposed, maliciously inserted by the great poet in an edition of the Eikon Basilike, in order to fix an imputation of impiety on the memory of the murdered king'. Fired with resentment, and willing to reap the profits of a gross imposition, this man collected from several Latin poets, such as Masenius the Jesuit, Staphorstius a Dutch divine, Beza, and others, all such passages as bore any kind of resemblance to different places in the Paradise Lost; and these he published, from time to time, in the Gentleman's Magazine, with occasional interpolations of lines, which he himself translated from Milton. The public credulity swallowed all with eagerness; and Milton was supposed to be guilty of plagiarism from inferior modern writers. The fraud succeeded so well, that Lauder collected the whole into a volume, and advertised it under the title of 'An Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns, in his Paradise Lost; dedicated to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge.' While the book was in the press, the proof-sheets were shewn to Johnson at the Ivy-lane Club, by Payne, the bookseller, who was one of the members. No man in that society was in possession of the authors from whom Lauder professed to make his extracts. The

at length forced him to look for refuge and subsistence in Barbadoes, where he died in poverty and neglect about 1771. He had a sallow complexion, large rolling fiery eyes, a stentorian voice and a sanguine temper.' Ruddiman, who had given him some help in his Poetarum Scotorum Musae Sacrae, says in a manuscript note, 'I was so sensible of the weakness and folly of that man that I shunned his company as far as I decently could.' Life of Ruddiman, by G. Chalmers, 1794, p. 146.

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about the Eikon Basilike, under the title of The General Impostor detected, or Milton convicted of forgery against King Charles I. Gent. Mag. 1754, p. 97. There is no reason to believe that, as Murphy says, 'he supposed' that Milton was guilty.

Johnson repeated the charge in his Life of Milton. Works, vii. 84. ‘A century after Milton's death it was safe for the most popular writer of the day to say that the prayer from the Arcadia had been interpolated in the Eikon by Milton himself, and then by him charged upon the King as a plagiarism.' Pattison's Milton, p. 103.

For Pamela's prayer see Milton's Works, ed. 1806, ii. 408.

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