262 The last Rambler. [A.D. 1750. Johnson thus described him to Mr. Malone: 'Sir, he lived in London, and hung loose upon society.' The concluding paper of his Rambler is at once dignified and pathetick. I cannot, however, but wish that he had not ended it with an unnecessary Greek verse, translated also into an English couplet'. It is too much like the conceit of those dramatick poets, who used to conclude each act with a rhyme; and the expression in the first line of his couplet, Celestial powers,' though proper in Pagan poetry, is ill suited to Christianity, with a conformity' to which he consoles himself. How much better would it have been, to have ended with the prose sentence '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'.' His friend, Dr. Birch, being now engaged in preparing an edition of Ralegh's smaller pieces, Dr. Johnson wrote the following letter to that gentleman: 'SIR, 'TO DR. BIRCH. 'Gough-square, May 12, 1750. 'Knowing that you are now preparing to favour the publick 'How sweet in sleep to pass the careless hours, Ib. No. 117. Αὐτῶν ἐκ μακάρων ἀντάξιος εἴη ἀμοιβή. 'Celestial powers! that piety regard, From you my labours wait their last reward.' A modification of the Greek line is engraved on the scroll in Johnson's monument in St. Paul's (post, Dec. 1784). * The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute my own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the precepts of Christianity. . . . I therefore look back on this part of my work with pleasure, which no blame or praise of man shall diminish or augment.' Rambler, No. 208. I have little doubt that this attack on the concluding verse is an indirect blow at Hawkins, who had quoted the whole passage, and had clearly thought it the more 'awful' on account of the couplet. See Hawkins's Johnson, p. 291. Aetat. 41.] Milton's grand-daughter. 263 with a new edition of Ralegh's' miscellaneous pieces, I have taken the liberty to send you a Manuscript, which fell by chance within my notice. I perceive no proofs of forgery in my examination of it; and the owner tells me, that he has heard, the handwriting is Sir Walter's. If you should find reason to conclude it genuine, it will be a kindness to the owner, a blind person', to recommend it to the booksellers. I am, Sir, 'Your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' His just abhorrence of Milton's political notions was ever strong. But this did not prevent his warm admiration of Milton's great poetical merit, to which he has done illustrious justice, beyond all who have written upon the subject. And this year he not only wrote a Prologue, which was spoken by Mr. Garrick before the acting of Comus at Drury-lane theatre, for the benefit of Milton's grand-daughter, but took a very zealous interest in the success of the charity'. On the day preceding the performance, he published the following letter in the General Advertiser, addressed to the printer of that paper: 'SIR, 'That a certain degree of reputation is acquired merely by approving the works of genius, and testifying a regard to the In the original Raleigh's. 'The italics are Boswell's. 'Mrs. Williams is probably the person meant. BOSWELL. • In 1750, April 5, Comus was played for her benefit. She had so little acquaintance with diversion or gaiety, that she did not know what was intended when a benefit was offered her. The profits of the night were only £130, though Dr. Newton brought a large contribution; and £20 were given by Tonson, a man who is to be praised as often as he is named. . . . This was the greatest benefaction that Paradise Lost ever procured the author's descendants; and to this he who has now attempted to relate his life had the honour of contributing a Prologue.' Johnson's Works, vii. 118. In the Gent. Mag. (xx. 152) we read that, as on April 4, the night first appointed, many inconvenient circumstances happened to disappoint the hopes of success, the managers generously quitted the profits of another night, in which the theatre was expected to be fuller. Mr. Samuel Johnson's prologue was afterwards printed for Mrs. Foster's benefit.' memory 264 Benefit of Mrs. Foster. [A.D. 1750. memory of authours, is a truth too evident to be denied; and therefore to ensure a participation of fame with a celebrated poet, many who would, perhaps, have contributed to starve him when alive, have heaped expensive pageants upon his grave'. 'It must, indeed, be confessed, that this method of becoming known to posterity with honour, is peculiar to the great, or at least to the wealthy; but an opportunity now offers for almost every individual to secure the praise of paying a just regard to the illustrious dead, united with the pleasure of doing good to the living. To assist industrious indigence, struggling with distress and debilitated by age, is a display of virtue, and an acquisition of happiness and honour. 'Whoever, then, would be thought capable of pleasure in reading the works of our incomparable Milton, and not so destitute of gratitude as to refuse to lay out a trifle in rational and elegant entertainment, for the benefit of his living remains, for the exercise of their own virtue, the increase of their reputation, and the pleasing consciousness of doing good, should appear at Drury-lane theatre to-morrow, April 5, when Comus will be performed for the benefit of Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, grand-daughter to the author, and the only surviving branch of his family. 'N.B. There will be a new prologue on the occasion, written 'Johnson is thinking of Pope's lines 'But still the great have kindness in reserve, He helped to bury whom he helped to starve.' Prologue to the Satires, 1. 247. In the Life of Milton he writes:-'In our time a monument has been erected in Westminster Abbey To the author of Paradise Lost by Mr. Benson, who has in the inscription bestowed more words upon himself than upon Milton.' Johnson's Works, vii. 112. Pope has a hit at Benson in the Dunciad, iii. 325: 'On poets' tombs see Benson's titles writ!' Moore, describing Sheridan's funeral, says:- It was well remarked by a French Journal, in contrasting the penury of Sheridan's latter years with the splendour of his funeral, that “ France is the place for a man of letters to live in, and England the place for him to die in."' Moore himself wrote: 'How proud they can press to the funeral array Of him whom they shunned in his sickness and sorrow- Whose pall shall be held up by Nobles to-morrow.' Moore's Sheridan, ii. 460-2. by Aetat. 42.] Lauder's imposition. 265 by the author of Irene', and spoken by Mr. Garrick; and, by particular desire, there will be added to the Masque a dramatick satire, called Lethe, in which Mr. Garrick will perform.' 1751: ÆTAT. 42.]—IN 1751' we are to consider him as carrying on both his Dictionary and Rambler. But he also wrote The Life of Cheynel',* in the miscellany called The Student; and the Reverend Dr. Douglas having, with uncommon acuteness, clearly detected a gross forgery and imposition upon the publick by William Lauder, a Scotch schoolmaster, who had, with equal impudence and ingenuity, represented Milton as a plagiary from certain modern Latin poets, Johnson, who had been so far imposed upon as to furnish a Preface and Postscript to his work, now dictated a letter for Lauder, addressed to Dr. Douglas, acknowledging his fraud in terms of suitable contrition'. 2 Johnson's Works, i. 115. Among the advertisements in the Gent. Mag. for February of this year is the following:- An elegy wrote in a country churchyard, 6d.' • See Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 17, 1773. Lest there should be any person, at any future period, absurd enough to suspect that Johnson was a partaker in Lauder's fraud, or had any knowledge of it, when he assisted him with his masterly pen, it is proper here to quote the words of Dr. Douglas, now Bishop of Salisbury, at the time when he detected the imposition. 'It is to be hoped, nay it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments and inimitable style point out the authour of Lauder's Preface and Postscript, will no longer allow one to plume himself with his feathers, who appeareth so little to deserve [his] assistance: an assistance which I am persuaded would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets.' Milton no Plagiary, 2nd edit. p. 78. And his Lordship has been pleased now to authorise me to say, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who expressed the strongest indignation against Lauder. BOSWELL. To this letter Lauder had the impudence to add a shameless postscript and some 'testimonies' concerning himself. Though on the face of it it is evident that this postscript is not by Johnson, yet it is included in his works (v. 283). The letter was dated Dec. 20, 1750. In the Gent. Mag. for the next month (xxi. 47) there is 266 Johnson tricked by Lauder. [A.D. 1751. This extraordinary attempt of Lauder was no sudden effort. He had brooded over it for many years: and to this hour it is uncertain what his principal motive was, unless it were a vain notion of his superiority, in being able, by whatever means, to deceive mankind. To effect this, he produced certain passages from Grotius, Masenius, and others, which had a faint resemblance to some parts of the Paradise Lost. In these he interpolated some fragments of Hog's Latin translation of that poem, alledging that the mass thus fabricated was the archetype from which Milton copied. These fabrications he published from time to time in the Gentleman's Magazine; and, exulting in his fancied success, he in 1750 ventured to collect them into a pamphlet, entitled An Essay on Milton's Use and Imitation of the Moderns in his Paradise Lost. To this pamphlet Johnson wrote a Preface', in full persuasion of Lauder's honesty, and the following paragraph:-'Mr. Lauder confesses here and exhibits all his forgeries; for which he assigns one motive in the book, and after asking pardon assigns another in the postscript; he also takes an opportunity to publish several letters and testimonials to his former character.' Goldsmith in Retaliation has a hit at Lauder : Here Douglas retires from his toils to relax, The scourge of impostors, the terror of quacks. New Lauders and Bowers the Tweed shall cross over, No countryman living their tricks to discover.' Dr. Douglas was afterwards Bishop of Salisbury (ante, p. 147). See post, June 25, 1763, for the part he took in exposing the Cock Lane Ghost imposture. 'Scott writing to Southey in 1810 said:-'A witty rogue the other day, who sent me a letter signed Detector, proved me guilty of stealing a passage from one of Vida's Latin poems, which I had never seen or heard of. The passage alleged to be stolen ends with, 'When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!" which in Vida ad Eranen. El. ii. v. 21, ran, Cum dolor atque supercilio gravis imminet angor, 'It is almost needless to add,' says Mr. Lockhart, 'there are no such lines.' Life of Scott, iii. 294. The greater part of this Preface was given in the Gent. Mag. for August 1747 (xvii. 404). a Postscript |