jects of publick notice; nor were they quieted till authentick assurance was given them, that the RAMBLER was written by a person who had never heard of any one of them*.

The RAMBLER was re-printed in London in six volumes 12mo. for Payne and Bouquet, 1752; and about the same time an edition was published in Scotland, of which Mr. BoswELL gives the following account.

"Mr. JAMES ELPHINSTONE, who has since published various works, and who was ever esteemed by JOHNSON as a worthy man, happened to be in Scotland when 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. It was executed in the printing-office of Sands, Murray,and Cochran, with uncommon elegance, upon writing-paper, of a duodecimo size, and with the greatest correctness; and Mr. ELPHINSTONE enriched it with translations of the mottos. 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."

* Polyphilus in No. 19 is said to have been drawn from the various studies of FLOYER SYDENHAM, but no produce of his studies is known except his translations.

This account is not given with Mr. BosWELL'S usual precision in matters of fact. Either he never saw this Edinburgh edition, or he never took the trouble to compare a single page of it with any London edition, in order to ascertain the great accuracy which he extols. That it is a publication distinguished for typographical beauty, is undeniable, but it is a literal copy of the folio RAMBLER, without one of the many thousand alterations which Dr. JOHNSON made in the London second and third editions. These alterations, indeed, form a part of the history of this work, with which Mr. BOSWELL appears to have been totally unacquainted; nor have I found any of the few surviving friends of the author aware of it. The circumstance, however, is of such importance as to require some detail. It is something to have gleaned a new fact after so careful an inquirer as Mr. BosWELL.

The general opinion entertained by Dr. JOHNSON's friends was, that he wrote as correctly and elegantly in haste, and under various obstructions of person and situation, as other men can, who have health, and ease, and leisure for the lime labor.

Mr. BOSWELL says, with great truth, that "Posterity will be astonished when they are 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 print

ed. 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 energetick 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*." Mr. BoswELL afterwards remarks that those Essays for which the author had made no preparation (in his Adversaria, or Commonplace-book)," are as rich and as highly finished as those for which hints were lying by himt."

Sir JOHN HAWKINS informs us, that these Essays hardly ever underwent a revision before they were sent to the 66 and adds, press, The original manuscripts of the RAMBLER have passed through my hands, and by the perusal of them I am warranted to say, as was said of SHAKSPEARE by the players of his time, that he

* Life of JOHNSON, vol. 1 p. 178-9, 2d edit. +Ibid.

never blotted out a line, and I believe without the risk of that retort which BEN JONSON made to them, Would he had blotted out a thousand*.''

"

Mr. MURPHY, a more agrecable authority on a question of taste and composition, classes Dr. JOHNSON among those writers who (using his own words in his life of Pope) " employ at once memory and invention, and with little intermediate use of the pen, form and polish large masses by continued meditation, and write their productions only when, in their opinion, they have completed them. This last," Mr. MURPHY adds, 66 was JOHNSON's method. He never took his pen in hand till he had well weighed his subject, and grasped in his mind the sentiments, the train of argument, and the arrangement of the whole. As he often thought aloud, he had, perhaps, talked it over to himself. This may account for that rapidity with which, in general, he dispatched his sheets to the press, without being at the trouble of a fair copyt.

Such are the opinions of those friends of Dr. JOHNSON who had long lived in his society, had studied his writings, and were eager to give to

'Hawkins, p. 381. which is confirmed by the following passage in Boswell's Life, vol. 2. p. 405. Johnson" told us, almost all his Ramblers were written just as they were wanted for the press; that he sent a certain portion of the copy of an essay, and wrote the remainder, while the former part of it was printing. When it was wanted, and he had fairly sat down to it, he was sure it would be done."

+MURPHY'S Essay on the Life and Genius of Dr. JOHNSON. p. 103. edit. 1793.

the publick every information by which its curiosity to know the history of so eminent a character might be gratified. But by what fatality it has happened that they were ignorant of the vast labour Dr. JOHNSON employed in correcting this work after it came from the first press, it is not easy to determine. This circumstance indeed might not fall within the scope of Mr. MURPHY's elegant Essay, but had it been known to Sir JOHN HAWKINS, or to Mr. BOSWELL, they would undoubtedly have been eager to bring it forward as an important event in Dr. JOHNSON's literary history. Mr. BosWELL has given us some various readings of the "Lives of the Poets," and the reader will probably agree with him, that although the author's "amendments in that work are for the better, there is nothing of the pannus afflatus: the texture is uniform, and indeed what had been there at first is very seldom unfit to have remained. At the conclusion of these various readings, he offers an apology, of which I may be permitted to avail myself." Should it be objected, that many of my various readings are inconsiderable, those who make the objec

*These were the alterations made by the Author in the manuscript, or in the proof before pubiication for the second edition. Mr. BOSWELL does not seem to have known that Dr. JOHNSON made so many alterations for the third Edition as to induce Mr. NICHOLS to collect them in an octavo pamphlet of three sheets closely printed, which was given to the purchasers of the second Octavo edition. Since Mr. NICHOLS obligingly furnished me with the history of this pamphlet, I have been the less surprised at Mr. BOSWELL'S not suspecting the alterations in the RAMBLER.