the petty arts of fraud and imposition, against an injudicious biographer, who undertook to be his editor, and the protector of his memory. Another writer, Dr. Towers, in an Essay on the Life and Character of Dr. Johnson, seems to countenance this calumny. He says, It can hardly be doubted, but that Johnson s aversion to Milton's politics was the cause of that alacrity with which he joined with Lauder in his infamous attack on our great epic poet, and which induced him to assist in that transaction'. These words would seem to describe an accomplice, were they not immediately followed by an express declaration, that Johnson was unacquainted with the imposture. Dr. Towers adds, It seems to have been by way of making some compensation to the memory of Milton, for the share he had in the attack of Lauder, that Johnson wrote the prologue, spoken by Garrick, at Drury-lane Theatre, in 1750, on the performance of the Masque of Comus, for the benefit of Milton's grand-daughter. Dr. Towers is not free from prejudice; but, as Shakspeare has it, 'he begets a temperance, to give it smoothness 3. He is, therefore, entitled to a dispassionate answer. When Johnson wrote the prologue, it does [? not] appear that he was aware of the malignant artifices practised by Lauder. In the postscript to Johnson's preface, a subscription is proposed, for relieving the grand-daughter of the author of Paradise Lost *. Dr. Towers will agree that this shews Johnson's alacrity in doing good. That alacrity shewed

4 'It is yet in the power of a great people to reward the poet whose name they boast, and from their alliance to whose genius they claim some kind of superiority to every other nation of the earth; that poet, whose works may possibly be read when every other monument of British greatness shall be obliterated; to reward him, not with pictures or with medals, which, if he sees, he sees with contempt, but with tokens of gratitude, which he, perhaps, may even now consider as not unworthy the regard of an immortal spirit.' Life, i. 230.

itself again in the letter printed in the European Magazine, January, 1785, and there said to have appeared originally in the General Advertiser, 4th April, 1750, by which the publick were invited to embrace the opportunity of paying a just regard to the illustrious dead, united with the pleasure of doing good to the living'. The letter adds, 'To assist industrious indigence, struggling with distress, and debilitated by age, is a display of virtue, and an acquisition of happiness and honour. Whoever, therefore [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 a 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. Nota bene, there will be a new prologue on the occasion written by the author of Irene, and spoken by Mr. Garrick.' The man, who had thus exerted himself to serve the grand-daughter, cannot be supposed to have entertained personal malice to the grand-father. It is true, that the malevolence of Lauder, as well as the impostures of Archibald Bower, were fully detected by the labours, in the cause of truth, of the Rev. Dr. Douglas, now Lord Bishop of Salisbury2.

'Diram qui contudit Hydram,

Notaque fatali portenta labore subegit3.'

But the pamphlet, entituled, Milton vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Mr. Lauder, and Lauder himself convicted of several Forgeries and gross Impositions on the Publick. By John Douglas, M. A. Rector of Eaton Constantine, Salop, was not published till the year 1751. In that work, p. 77, Dr. Douglas says: 'It is to be hoped, nay, it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious

sentiments and inimitable style point out the author of Lauder's preface and postscript, will no longer allow A MAN [one] to plume himself with his feathers, who appears so little to have deserved 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.' We have here a contemporary testimony to the integrity of Dr. Johnson throughout the whole of that vile transaction'. What was the consequence of the requisition made by Dr. Douglas? Johnson, whose ruling passion may be said to be the love of truth, convinced Lauder, that it would be more for his interest to make a full confession of his guilt, than to stand forth the convicted champion of a lye; and for this purpose he drew up, in the strongest terms, a recantation in a Letter to the Rev. Mr. Douglas, which Lauder signed, and published in the year 1751 2. That piece will remain a lasting memorial of the abhorrence with which Johnson beheld a violation of truth. Mr. Nichols, whose attachment to his illustrious friend was unwearied, shewed him in 1780 a book, called Remarks on Johnson's Life of Milton, in which the affair of Lauder was renewed with virulence 3, and a poetical scale in the Literary Magazine 1758 (when Johnson had ceased to write in that collection) was urged as an additional proof of deliberate malice. He read the libellous passage with attention, and instantly wrote on the margin: ""In the business of Lauder I was deceived, partly by thinking the man too frantic to be fraudulent." Of the poetical scale quoted from the Magazine I am not the author. I fancy it was put in after I had quitted that work; for I not only did not write it, but I do not remember it. As a critic and a scholar, Johnson

was willing to receive what numbers at the time believed to be true information: when he found that the whole was a forgery, he renounced all connection with the author'.

In March 1752, he felt a severe stroke of affliction in the death of his wife. The last number of the Rambler, as already mentioned, was on the 14th of that month. The loss of Mrs. Johnson was then approaching, and, probably, was the cause that put an end to those admirable periodical essays. It appears that she died on the 28th of March: in a memorandum, at the foot of the Prayers and Meditations, that is called her Dying Day 2. She was buried at Bromley, under the care of Dr. Hawkesworth 3. Johnson placed a Latin inscription on her tomb, in which he celebrated her beauty. With the singularity of his prayers for

poet; those of Milton of a little pedant.' Prior's Goldsmith, i. 233. The Literary Magazine for 1758 is not in the British Museum. Johnson did not write for it after 1757. Life, i. 307.

I Porson says that it was his 'opinion that the writer of the preface, postscript and letter of contrition for W. Lauder was neither willingly undeluded, nor forward in exposing the atrocity of those hideous interpolations by which it had been vainly contrived to obscure the splendor of Milton's PARADISE LOST.' Porson's Tracts, p. 379.

Mark Pattison went far beyond Porson. 'Dr. Johnson,' he writes, 'conspired with one William Lauder to stamp out Milton's credit by proving him to be a wholesale plagiarist.' He calls them 'this pair of literary bandits.' On the next page he writes: 'Johnson, who was not concerned in the cheat, and was only guilty of indolence and party spirit, saved himself by sacrificing his comrade. He afterwards took ample revenge for the mortification of this exposure, in his Lives of the Poets, in

which he employed all his vigorous powers and consummate skill to write down Milton.' Milton, by Mark Pattison, pp. 217-219. Both Porson and Pattison must have known that Johnson in the postscript to Lauder's pamphlet spoke of Milton as 'that poet whose works may possibly be read when every other monument of British greatness shall be obliterated,' and that he ends his Life of him by saying that 'his great works were performed under discountenance and in blindness: but difficulties vanished at his touch; he was born for whatever is arduous; and his work is not the greatest of heroick poems only because it is not the first.' Works, v. 271; vii. 142.

2 She died three days after the publication of the last Rambler, on March 17 O. S., 28 N. S. I do not know to what memorandum Murphy refers.

3 Hawkesworth lived at Bromley. Life, i. 241.

It was not till a few months before his death that he placed this inscription. Shall I ever be able

his deceased wife, from that time to the end of his days, the world is sufficiently acquainted. On Easter-day, 22d April, 1764, his memorandum says: Thought on Tetty, poor dear Tetty with my eyes full. Went to Church. After sermon I recommended Tetty in a prayer by herself; and my father, mother, brother, and Bathurst, in another. I did it only once, so far as it might be lawful for me.' In a prayer, January 23, 1759, the day on which his mother was buried, he commends, as far as may be lawful, her soul to God, imploring for her whatever is most beneficial to her in her present state2. In this habit he persevered to the end of his days. The Rev. Mr. Strahan, the editor of the Prayers and Meditations, observes, ‘That Johnson, on some occasions, prays that the Almighty may have had mercy on his wife and Mr. Thrale: evidently supposing their sentence to have been already passed in the Divine Mind; and, by consequence, proving, that he had no belief in a state of purgatory, and no reason for praying for the dead that could impeach the sincerity of his profession as a Protestant.' Mr. Strahan adds, 'That, in praying for the regretted tenants of the grave, Johnson conformed to a practice which has been retained by many learned members of the Established Church, though the Liturgy no longer admits it. If where the tree falleth, there it shall be3; if our state, at the close of life, is to be the measure of our final sentence, then prayers for the dead, being visibly fruitless, can be regarded only as the vain oblations of superstition. But of all superstitions this, perhaps, is one of the least unamiable, and most incident to a good mind. If our sensations of kindness be intense, those, whom we have revered and loved, death cannot wholly seclude from our concern. It is true, for the reason just mentioned, such evidences of our surviving affection may be thought ill-judged; but surely they are generous, and some natural tenderness is due even to a superstition, which thus

to bear the sight of this stone?' he wrote to his friend Ryland. 'In your company I hope I shall.' Letters, ii. 429. See also ib. ii. 411; Life, i. 241, n.; iv. 351, 394. He gave the wrong date of the year of

her death. Letters, ii. 429.

1 Ante, p. 11, N. I.

2 Ante, pp. 23, 29; Life, i. 240. 3 Ecclesiastes xi. 3; for Johnson's explanation of the text, see Life, iv. 225.

originates