black wig on the top of his head, instead of a nightcap, and a poker in his hand, imagining, probably, that some ruffians were coming to attack him. When he discovered who they were, and was told their errand, he smiled, and with great good humour agreed to their proposal: "What, is it you, you dogs! I'll have a frisk with you P." He was soon dressed, and they sallied forth together into CoventGarden, where the green-grocers and fruiterers were beginning to arrange their hampers, just come in from the country. Johnson made some attempts to help them; but the honest gardeners stared so at his figure, and manner, and odd interference, that he soon saw his services were not relished. They then repaired to one of the neighbouring taverns, and made a bowl of that liquor called 'bishop,' which Johnson had always liked: while, in joyous contempt of sleep, from which he had been roused, he repeated the festive lines,

:

Short, O short then be thy reign,

And give us to the world again ¶ !

They did not stay long, but walked down to the Thames, took a boat, and rowed to Billingsgate. Beauclerk and Johnson were so well pleased with their amusement, that they resolved to persevere in dissipation for the rest of the day but Langton deserted them, being engaged to breakfast with some young ladies. Johnson scolded him for " leaving his social friends, to go and sit with a set of wretched un-idea'd girls." Garrick being told of this ramble, said to him smartly, "I heard of your frolick t'other night. You'll be in the Chronicle." Upon which Johnson afterwards observed, "He durst not do such a thing. His wife would not let him!"

P Johnson, as Mr. Kemble observed to me, might here have had in his thoughts the words of sir John Brute, (a character which doubtless he had seen represented by Garrick,) who uses nearly the same expression in the Provoked Wife," Act III. Sc. i.—MALONE.

4 Mr. Langton recollected, or Dr. Johnson repeated, the passage wrong. The lines are in lord Lansdowne's drinking song to Sleep, and run thus:

Short, very short, be then thy reign,

For I'm in haste to laugh and drink again.-Boswell.

He entered upon this year 1753 with his usual piety, as appears from the following prayer, which I transcribed from that part of his diary which he burnt a few days before his death:

“Jan. 1, 1753, N. S. which I shall use for the future. Almighty God, who hast continued my life to this day, grant that, by the assistance of thy Holy Spirit, I may improve the time which thou shalt grant me, to my eternal salvation. Make me to remember, to thy glory, thy judgements and thy mercies. Make me so to consider the loss of my wife, whom thou hast taken from me, that it may dispose me, by thy grace, to lead the residue of my life in thy fear. Grant this, O Lord, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen."

He now relieved the drudgery of his Dictionary, and the melancholy of his grief, by taking an active part in the composition of the Adventurer, in which the began to write, April 10, marking his essays with the signature T. by which most of his papers in that collection are distinguished: those, however, which have that signature, and also that of Mysargyrus, were not written by him, but, as I suppose, by Dr. Bathurst'. Indeed Johnson's energy of thought and richness of language, are still more decisive marks than any signature. As a proof of this, my readers, I imagine, will not doubt that No. 39, on Sleep, is his; for it not only has the general texture and colour of his style, but the authors with whom he was peculiarly conversant are readily introduced in it in cursory allusion. The translation of a passage in Statius quoted in that

S

r Besides these contradictory assertions, that Dr. Johnson did write with the signature T. and immediately after that he did not, there are these two mistakes in this account. Dr. Johnson began to write in the Adventurer, not on April 10, but March 3, and not only most, but all his papers are marked with the signature T, unless in very incorrect editions. On the blank leaf at the end of Dr. Warton's copy of the Adventurer is the following authority in his handwriting. "The papers marked T. were written by Mr. S. Johnson." The above corrections of Boswell, whose account of the Adventurer is very confused, were taken from Chalmers' Preface to the twenty-third vol. of his British Essayists.-Ed.

This is a slight inaccuracy. The Latin Sapphicks translated by C. B. in that paper were written by Cowley, and are in his fourth book on Plants.-MALONE.

paper, and marked C. B. has been erroneously ascribed to Dr. Bathurst, whose christian name was Richard. How much this amiable man actually contributed to the Adventurer, cannot be known. Let me add, that Hawkesworth's imitations of Johnson are sometimes so happy, that it is extremely difficult to distinguish them, with certainty, from the compositions of his great archetype. Hawkesworth was his closest imitator, a circumstance of which that writer would once have been proud to be told; though, when he had become elated by having risen into some degree of consequence, he, in a conversation with me, had the provoking effrontery to say he was not sensible of it.

Johnson was truly zealous for the success of the Adventurer; and very soon after his engaging in it, he wrote the following letter

TO THE REVEREND DR. JOSEPH WARTON.

"DEAR SIR,-I ought to have written to you before now, but I ought to do many things which I do not; nor can I, indeed, claim any merit from this letter; for being desired by the authors and proprietor of the Adventurer to look out for another hand, my thoughts necessarily fixed upon you, whose fund of literature will enable you to assist them, with very little interruption of your studies.

They desire you to engage to furnish one paper a month, at two guineas a paper, which you may very readily perform. We have considered that a paper should consist of pieces of imagination, pictures of life, and disquisitions of literature. The part which depends on the imagination is very well supplied, as you will find when you read the paper; for descriptions of life, there is now a treaty

t We have, however, the express authority of sir John Hawkins, that Dr. Bathurst wrote the papers signed A ; and without depending implicitly upon this authority, we may safely assert, that if Dr. Bathurst did not write these papers, he did not write any part of the work; for all the other papers are appropriated upon undoubted authority to Drs. Hawkesworth, Johnson, and Warton, with the exception of two or three, the authors of which were unknown to the editor, or are pointed out in Chalmers' edition, from whose preface, as above, this extract is made.-ED.

almost made with an author and authoress "; and the province of criticism and literature they are very desirous to assign to the commentator on Virgil.

"I hope this proposal will not be rejected, and that the next post will bring us your compliance. I speak as one of the fraternity, though I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto; but two of the writers are my particular friends, and I hope the pleasure of seeing a third united to them will not be denied to, dear sir, Your most obedient,

66

"March 8, 1753.

66

and most humble servant,
"SAM. JOHNSON."

The consequence of this letter was Dr. Warton's enriching the collection with several admirable essays.

Johnson's saying, "I have no part in the paper, beyond now and then a motto," may seem inconsistent with his being the author of the papers marked T. but he had, at this time, written only one number*; and besides, even at

u It is not improbable that the author and authoress, with whom a treaty was almost made,—for descriptions of life, and who are mentioned in a manner that seems to indicate some connection between them, were Henry, and his sister Sally, Fielding, as she was then popularly called. Fielding had previously been a periodical essayist, and certainly was well acquainted with life in all its varieties, more especially within the precincts of London; and his sister was a lively and ingenious writer. To this notion perhaps it may be objected, that no papers in the Adventurer are known to be their productions. But it should be remembered, that of several of the essays in that work the authors are unknown; and some of these may have been written by the persons here supposed to be alluded to. Nor would the objection be decisive, even if it were ascertained that neither of them contributed any thing to the Adventurer; for the treaty above mentioned might afterwards have been broken off. The negotiator, doubtless, was Hawkesworth, and not Johnson. Fielding was at this time in the highest reputation; having, in 1751, produced his Amelia, of which the whole impression was sold off on the day of its publication.— MALONE.

* The author, I conceive, is here in an errour. He had before stated, that Johnson began to write in the Adventurer on April 10th, (when No. 45 was published,) above a month after the date of his letter to Dr. Warton. The two papers published previously with the signature T. and subscribed Mysargyrus, (No. 34 and 41,) were written, I believe, by Bonnel Thornton, who contributed also the papers signed A. This information I received several

any after period, he might have used the same expression, considering it as a point of honour not to own them; for Mrs. Williams told me that, " as he had given those essays to Dr. Bathurst, who sold them at two guineas each, he never would own them; nay, he used to say, he did not write them but the fact was that he dictated them, while Bathurst wrote." I read to him Mrs. Williams's account; he smiled, and said nothing".

years ago; but do not precisely remember from whom I derived it. I believe, however, my informer was Dr. Warton*.

With respect to No. 39, on Sleep, which our author has ascribed to Johnson, (see p. 188,) even if it were written by him, it would not be inconsistent with his statement to Dr. Warton; for it appeared on March 20th, near a fortnight after the date of Johnson's letter to that gentleman. But on considering it attentively, though the style bears a strong resemblance to that of Johnson, I believe it was written by his friend, Dr. Bathurst, and perhaps touched in a few places by Johnson. Mr. Boswell has observed, that “this paper not only has the general texture and colour of his style, but the authors with whom he was peculiarly conversant are readily introduced in it, in cursory allusion.” Now the authors mentioned in that paper are, Fontenelle, Milton, Ramazzini, Madle. Scuderi, Swift, Homer, Barretier, Statius, Cowley, and sir Thomas Browne. With many of these, doubtless, Johnson was particularly conversant; but I doubt whether he would have characterised the expression quoted from Swift as elegant;' and with the works of Ramazzini it is very improbable that he should have been acquainted. Ramazzini was a celebrated physician, who died at Padua in 1714, at the age of 81; with whose writings Dr. Bathurst may be supposed to have been conversant. So also with respect to Cowley : Johnson, without doubt, had read his Latin poem on plants; but Bathurst's profession probably led him to read it with more attention than his friend had given to it; and Cowley's eulogy on the Poppy would more readily occur to the naturalist and the physician, than to a more general reader. I believe, however, that the last paragraph of the paper on Sleep, in which sir Thomas Browne is quoted, to show the propriety of prayer before we lie down to rest, was added by Johnson.-MALONE.

Thus far Mr. Malone; but see Preface to Adventurer, and notes on the papers above alluded to in vol. iv. Johnson's works, Oxford edition.-ED.

y "Dr. Johnson, it is not improbable," observes Chalmers, with critical sagacity, "smiled to see his friend puzzling himself with a difficulty which a plain question could in a moment have removed. But admitting the literal truth of Mrs. Williams's narrative, what does it amount to but this, that Dr. Johnson was the author of the papers signed T. and by employing Dr. Bathurst as an amanuensis, gave him the profits? Dr. Bathurst could have no more merit in these papers than the servant who carried them to the printing-of*The writer of Bonnel Thornton's life in the Biog. Dic. has assigned these papers to him, but does not give any authority for his assignment.-ED.