he kindy and generously made use of it to bring out Johnson's tragedy, which had been long kept back for want of encouragement. But in this benevolent purpose he met with no small difficulty from the temper of Johnson, which could not brook that a drama which he had formed with much study, and had been obliged to keep more than the nine years of Horace, should be revised and altered at the pleasure of an actor. Yet Garrick knew well, that without some alterations it would not be fit for the stage. A violent dispute having ensued between them, Garrick applied to the Rev. Dr. Taylor to interpose. Johnson was at first very obstinate. 'Sir,' said he, 'the fellow wants me to make "Mahomet " run mad, that he may have an opportunity of tossing his hands and kicking his heels.' He was, however, at last with difficulty prevailed on to comply with Garrick's wishes, so as to allow of some changes; bu still there were not enough.

Dr. Adams was present the first night of the representation of Irene, and gave me the following account:-'Before the curtain drew up, there were catcalls whistling, which alarmed Johnson's friends. The Prologue, which was written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably, till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be

died in 1736, not long before Johnson settled in London. Some account of this lady was published under the title of The Secret History of Vanella, 8vo, 1732. See also Vanella in the Straw, 4to, 1732. In Mr. Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides (p. 37, 4th edition) we find some observations respecting the lines in question:

In Dr. Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes there is the following passage:

"The teeming mother, anxious for her race,

Begs for each birth the fortune of a face:
Yet Vane," etc.

'Lord Hailes told him [Johnson] he was mistaken in the instances he had given of unfortunate fair ones, for neither Vane nor Sedley had a title to that description.'-His lordship therefore thought that the lines should rather have run thus:

'Yet Shore could tell

And Valière curs'd

Our friend (he added in a subsequent note, addressed to Mr. Boswell on this subject) chose Vane, who was far from being well-look'd, and Sedley, who was so ugly that Charles H. said his brother had her by way of penance.'-MALONE.

'Mahomet' was in fact played by Mr. Barry, and 'Demetrius' by Mr. Garrick; but probably at this time the parts were not yet cast.-BOSWELL.

2 The expression used by Dr. Adams was 'soothed.' I should rather think the audience was awed by the extraordinary spirit and dignity of the following lines:

'Be this at least his praise, be this his pride,
To force applause on modern arts are tried :
Should partial catcalls all his hopes confound,
He bids no trumpet quell the fatal sound;
Should welcome sleep relieve the weary wit,
He rolls no thunders o'er the drowsy pit;

She

strangled upon the stage, and was to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck. The audience cried out "Murder! Murder!" several times attempted to speak; but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off the stage alive. This passage was afterwards struck out, and she was carried off to be put to death behind the scenes, as the play now has it. The Epilogue, as Johnson informed me, was written by Sir William Yonge. I know not how his play came to be thus graced by the pen of a person then so eminent in the political world.

Notwithstanding all the support of such performers as Garrick, Barry, Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Pritchard, and every advantage of dress and decoration, the tragedy of Irene did not please the public. Mr. Garrick's zeal carried it through for nine nights, so that the author had his three nights' profit; and from a receipt signed by him, now in the hands of Mr. James Dodsley, it appears that his friend Mr. Robert Dodsley gave him one hundred pounds for the copy, with his usual reservation of the right of one edition.

Irene, considered as a poem, is entitled to the praise of superior excellence. Analyzed into parts, it will furnish a rich store of noble senti. ments, fine imagery, and beautiful language; but it is deficient in pathos, in that delicate power of touching the human feelings which is

No snares to captivate the judgment spreads,
Nor bribes your eyes to prejudice your heads.
Unmov'd, though witlings sneer and rivals rail,
Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail,
He scorns the meek address, the suppliant strain,
With merit needless, and without it vain :
In Reason, Nature, Truth, he dares not trust;
Ye fops be silent, and ye wits be just!'

-BOSWELL.

1 This shows how ready modern audiences are to condemn in a new play what they have frequently endured very quietly in an old one. Rowe has made 'Moneses'in Tamerlane die by the bowstring, without offence.-MALONE.

2 I know not what Sir John Hawkins means by the cold reception of Irene. I was at the first representation, and most of the subsequent. It was much ap plauded the first night, particularly the speech on tomorrow. It ran nine nights at least. It did not indeed become a stock play, but there was not the least opposition during the representation, except the first night in the last act, where Irene' was to be strangled on the stage, which John could not bear, though a dramatic poet may stab or slay by hundreds. The bowstring was not a Christian nor an ancient Greek or Roman death. But this offence was removed after the first night, and Irene' went off the stage to be strangled. Many stories were circulated at the time, of the author's being observed at the representation to be dissatified with some of the speeches and conduct of the play himself; and, like La Fontaine, expressing his disapprobation aloud.BURNEY.

Mr. Murphy, in his Life of Johnson, p. 53, says: The amount of the three benefit nights for the tragedy of Irene, it is to be feared, were not very

1

paper, I was at a loss how to name it. I sat down at night upon my bedside, and resolved that I would not go to sleep till I had fixed its title. The Rambler seemed the best that occurred, and I took it." With what devout and conscientious sentiments this paper was undertaken, is evidenced by the following prayer, which he composed and offered up on the occasion :

'Almighty God, the giver of all good things, without whose help all labour is ineffectual, and without whose grace all wisdom is folly; grant, I beseech Thee, that in this undertaking thy Holy Spirit may not be withheld from me, but that I may promote thy glory, and the salvation of myself and others: grant this, O Lord, for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen.' [Pr. and Med. p. 9.]

2

The first paper of the Rambler was published on Tuesday the 20th of March 1749-50; and its author was enabled to continue it, without interruption, every Tuesday and Saturday, till Saturday the 17th of March 1752, on which day it closed. This is a strong confirmation of the truth of a remark of his, which I have had occasion to quote elsewhere,3 that a man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it; for, notwithstanding his constitutional indolence, his depression of spirits, and his labour in carrying on his Dictionary, he answered the stated calls of the press twice a week from the stores of his mind, during all that time; having received no assistance, except four billets in No. 10, by Miss Mulso, now Mrs. Chapone; No. 30, by Mrs. Catherine Talbot; No. 97, by Mr. Samuel Richardson, whom he describes in an introductory note as 'an author who has enlarged the knowledge of human nature, and taught the passions to move at the command of virtue;' and Nos. 44 and 100, by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter.

Posterity will be astonished when they are

I have heard Dr. Warton mention that he was at Mr. Robert Dodsley's with the late Mr. Moore, and several of his friends, considering what should be the name of the periodical paper which Moore had undertaken. Garrick proposed the Salad, which by a curious coincidence was afterwards applied to himself by Goldsmith:

'Our Garrick's a salad, for in him we see
Oil, vinegar, sugar, and saltness agree!'

At last, the company having separated, without anything of which they approved having been offered, Dodsley himself thought of The World.-BOSWELL.

2 This is a mistake, into which the author was very pardonably led by the inaccuracy of the original folio edition of the Rambler, in which the concluding paper of that work is dated on 'Saturday, March 17.' But Saturday was in fact the fourteenth of March. This circumstance though it may at first appear of very little importance, is yet worth notice, for Mrs. Johnson died on the seventeenth of March.-MALONE.

Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, 3d edit. p. 23.BOSWELL.

told, upon the authority of Johnson himself, that many of these discourses, which we should suppose had been laboured with all the slow attention of literary leisure, were written in haste as the moment pressed, without even being read over by him before they were printed. It can be accounted for only in this way: that by reading and meditation, and a very close inspection of life, he had accumulated a great fund of miscellaneous knowledge, which, by a peculiar promptitude of mind, was ever ready at his call, and which he had constantly accustomed himself to clothe in the most apt and energetic expression. Sir Joshua Reynolds once asked him by what means he had attained his extraordinary accuracy and flow of language. He told him that he had early laid it down as a fixed rule to do his best on every occasion, and in every company, to impart whatever he knew in the most forcible language he could put it in; and that by constant practice, and never suffering any careless expressions to escape him, or attempting to deliver his thoughts without arranging them in the clearest manner, it became habitual to him.1

Yet he was not altogether unprepared as a periodical writer; for I have in my possession a small duodecimo volume in which he has written, in the form of Mr. Locke's CommonPlace Book, a variety of hints for essays on different subjects. He has marked upon the first blank leaf of it, 'To the 128th page, collections for the Rambler;' and in another place, 'In fifty-two there were seventeen provided; in 97, 21; in 190, 25.' At a subsequent period, probably after the work was finished, he added, 'In all, taken of provided materials, 30.'

Sir John Hawkins, who is unlucky upon all occasions, tells us that this method of accumulating intelligence had been practised by Mr. Addison, and is humorously described in one of the Spectators [No. 46], wherein he feigns to have dropped his paper of notanda, consisting of a diverting medley of broken sentences and loose hints, which he tells us he had collected and meant to make use of. Much of the same kind is Johnson's Adversaria.' But the truth is, that there is no resemblance at all between them. Addison's note was a fiction, in which unconnected fragments of his lucubrations were purposely jumbled together in as odd a manner as he could, in order to produce a laughable effect; whereas Johnson's abbreviations are all distinct, and applicable to each subject of which the head is mentioned.

The rule which Dr. Johnson observed is sanctioned by the authority of two great writers of antiquity: Ne id quidem tacendum est, quod eidem Ciceroni placet, nullum nostrum usquam negligentem esse sermonem : quicquid loquemur, ubicunque, sit pro sua scilicet portione perfectum.' Quinctil. x. 7.-MALONE.

2 Hawkins's Life of Johnson, p. 263.-BosWELL.

As the Rambler was entirely the work of one man, there was, of course, such a uniformity in its texture as very much to exclude the charm of variety; and the grave and often solemn cast of thinking, which distinguished it from other periodical papers, made it for some time not generally liked. So slowly did this excellent work, of which twelve editions have | now issued from the press, gain upon the world at large, that even in the closing number the author says, 'I have never been much a favourite of the public.'

two of the papers of the Rambler.' But he has not

Yet, very soon after its commencement, there were who felt and acknowledged its uncommon excellence. Verses in its praise appeared in the newspapers; and the editor of the Gentleman's Magazine mentions, in October, his having received several letters to the same purpose from the learned. The Student of Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany, in which Mr. Bonnel Thornton and Mr. Colman were the principal writers, describes it as a work that exceeds anything of the kind ever published in this kingdom, some of the Spectators excepted-if, indeed, they may be excepted.' And afterwards: 'May the public favours crown his merits, and may not the

writes, p. 266, Sailor's fate any mansion:' whereas the original is, Sailor's life my aversion. He has also transcribed the unappropriated hints on Writers for bread, in which he deciphers these notable passages, one in Latin, fatui non famæ, instead of fami non fame; Johnson having in his mind what Thuanus says of the learned German antiquary and linguist Xylander, who, he tells us, lived in such poverty, that he was supposed fami non famæ scribere; and another in French, Degenté de fate et affamé d'argent, instead of Dégouté de fame (an old word for renommé) et affamé d'argent. The manuscript being written in an exceedingly small hand, is indeed very hard to read; but it would have been

better to have left blanks than to write nonsense.BOSWELL.

1 The Ramblers certainly were little noticed at first. Smart, the poet, first mentioned them to me as excellent papers, before I had heard any one else speak of them. When I went into Norfolk, in the autumn of 1751, I found but one person (the Rev. Mr. Squires, a man of learning, and a general purchaser of new books) who knew anything of them. But he had been misinformed concerning the true author, for he had been told they were written by a Mr. Johnson of Canter

bury, the son of a clergyman who had had a controversy with Bentley, and who had changed the readings of the old ballad entitled Norton Falgate, in Bentley's bold style (meo periculo), till not a single word of the original song was left. Before I left Norfolk, in the year 1760, the Ramblers were in high favour among persons of learning and good taste. Others there were, devoid of both, who said that the hard words in the Rambler were used by the author to render his Dictionary indispensably necessary.-BURNEY.

It may not be improper to correct a slight error in the preceding note, though it does not at all affect the principal object of Dr. Burney's remark. The clergyman above alluded to was Mr. Richard Johnson, schoolmaster at Nottingham, who in 1717 published an octavo volume in Latin, against Bentley's edition of Horace, entitled Aristarchus Anti-Bentleianus. In the middle of this Latin work (as Mr. Bindley observes to me) he has introduced four pages of English critieism, in which he ludicrously corrects, in Bentley's manner, one stanza, not of the ballad the hero of which lived in Norton Falgate, but of a ballad celebrating the achievements of Tom Bostock, who in a sea-fight performed prodigies of valour. The stanza on which this ingenious writer has exercised his wit is as follows:

Then old Tom Bostock he fell to the work,

He pray'd like a Christian, but fought like a Turk. And cut 'em all off in a jerk,

Which nobody can deny,' etc.-MALONE.

the Second, neglect a man who, had he lived in the first century, would have been one of the greatest favourites of Augustus.' This flattery of the monarch had no effect. It is too well known that the second George never was an Augustus to learning or genius.

Johnson told me, with an amiable fondness, a little pleasing circumstance relative to this work. Mrs. Johnson, in whose judgment and taste he had great confidence, said to him, after a few numbers of the Rambler had come out, "I thought very well of you before; but I did not imagine you could have written anything equal to this.' Distant praise, from whatever quarter, is not so delightful as that of a wife whom a man loves and esteems. Her approbation may be said to 'come home to his bosom ;' and being so near, its effect is most sensible and per

manent.

Mr. James Elphinston, who has since published various works, and who was ever esteemed by Johnson as a worthy man, happened to be in Scotland while the Rambler was coming out in single papers at London. With a laudable zeal at once for the improvement of his countrymen and the reputation of his friend, he suggested and took the charge of an edition of those essays at Edinburgh, which followed progressively the London publication.'

The following letter written at this time, though not dated, will show how much pleased Johnson was with this publication, and what kindness and regard he had for Mr. Elphinston:

1 It was executed in the printing-offiee of Sands, Murray, & Cochran, with uncommon elegance, upon writing-paper, of a duodecimo size, and with the greatest correctness; and Mr. Elphinston enriched it with translations of the mottoes. When completed, it made eight handsome volumes. It is, unquestionably, the most accurate and beautiful edition of this work; and there being but a small impression, it is now become scarce, and sells at a very high price.-BOSWELL.

With respect to the correctness of this edition, the author probably derived his information from some other person, and appears to have been misinformed; for it was not accurately printed, as we learn from Mr. A. Chalmers.-J. BOSWELL.