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The rapidity with which he composed is a wonderful circumstance. He has been heard to say, "I wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of the Life of Savage at a sitting; but then I sat up all night.”

In a letter to the Rev. T. Warton, he mentions his design of writing a Review. Dr. Adams told Boswell, that this scheme of a Bibliothèque was a serious one: for, upon his visiting him one day, he found his parlour floor covered with parcels of foreign and English literary journals, and he told Dr. Adams he meant to undertake a Review. ÁDAMS. "How, sir, can you think of doing it alone? All branches of knowledge must be considered in it. Do you know mathematics? Do you know natural history?" JOHNSON. "Why, sir, I must do as well as I can. My chief purpose is to give my countrymen a view of what is doing in literature upon the continent; and I shall have, in a good measure, the choice of my subject; for I shall select such books as I best understand." ADAMS. "As Dr. Maty has just finished his Bibliothèque Britannique, which is a well executed work, giving foreigners an account of British publications, you might, with great advantage, assume him as an assistant." JOHNSON. "He, the little black dog! I'd throw him into the Thames." The scheme, however, was dropped.

In one of his little memorandum-books were the following hints for his intended Review, or Literary Journal; "The Annals of Literature, foreign as well as domestic. Imitate Le Clerc-Bayle-Barbeyrac; Infelicity of Journals in England; works of the learned: we cannot take in all. Sometimes copy from foreign journalists—always tell.”

Having written a preface to Rolt's Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, in which he displays such a clear and comprehensive knowledge of the subject, as might lead the reader to think that its author had devoted all his life to it-Boswell asked him whether he knew much of Rolt, and of his work. "Sir," said he, "I never saw the man, and never read the book. The booksellers wanted a preface to a Dictionary of Trade and Commerce; I knew very well what such a dictionary should be, and I wrote a preface accordingly."

A pension of two hundred pounds a year having been given to Sheridan, Johnson, who thought slightingly of Sheridau's art, upon hearing it, exclaimed, "What! have they given him a pension? Then it is time for me to give up mine." Whether this proceeded from a momentary indignation, as if it were an affront to his exalted merit that a player should be rewarded in the same manner with him, or was the sudden effect of a fit of peevishness, it was unluckily said, and indeed cannot be justified. Mr. Sheridan's pension was granted to him, not as a player, but as a sufferer in the cause of government, when he was manager of the Theatre Royal in Ire-. land, when parties ran high in 1753: and it must also be allowed that he was a man of literature, and had considerably improved the arts of reading and speaking with distinctness and propriety.

Johnson afterwards complained, that a man who disliked him, repeated his sarcasm to Mr. Sheridan, without telling him what followed, which was, that after a pause, he added, " However, I am glad that he has a peusion, for he is a very good man."

Mrs. Sheridan's novel, entitled, Memoirs of Miss

Sydney Biddulph, contains an excellent moral, while it inculcates a future state of retribution; and what it teaches is impressed upon the mind by a series of as deep distress as can affect humanity, in the amiable and pious heroine, who goes to her grave unrelieved, but resigned, and full of hope of "Heaven's mercy." Johnson paid her this high compliment upon it: "I know not, madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much."

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"People," he remarked, once, who imagine that an private life than other men. quire uncommon opportunities for their exertion." Afterwards: " Sir, this book (The Elements of Criticism, which he had taken up), is a pretty essay, and deserves to be held in some estimation, though much of it is chimerical."

At this time the controversy concerning the pieces published by Mr. James Macpherson, as translations of Ossian, was at its height. Johnson had all along denied their authenticity; and what was still more provoking to their admirers, maintained that they had no merit. The subject having been introduced by Dr. Fordyce-Dr. Blair, relying on the internal evidence of their antiquity, asked Dr. Johnson whether he thought any man of a modern age could have written such poems ? Johnson replied, "Yes, sir, many men, many women, and many children." Johnson, at this time, did not know that Dr. Blair had just published a dissertation, not only defending their authenticity, but seriously ranking them with the poems of Homer and Virgil; and when he was

afterwards informed of this circumstance, he expressed some displeasure at Dr. Fordyce's having suggested the topic, and said, "I am not sorry that they got thus much for their pains."

"The poem of Fingal," he said, " is a mere unconnected rhapsody, a tiresome repetition of the same images. In vain shall we look for the lucidus ordo, where there is neither end or object, design or moral, nec certa recurrit imago."

He was vehement on the subject of the Ossian controversy, observing, "We do not know that there are any ancient Erse manuscripts, and we have no other reason to disbelieve that there are men with three heads, but that we do not know that there are any such men," He also was outrageous upon this supposition, that M'Pherson's countrymen "loved Scotland better than truth," saying, "all of them,-nay not all, but droves of them, would come up, and attest auy thing for the honour of Scotland."

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Another time, Ossian being mentioned-JOHNSON. Supposing the Irish and Erse languages to be the same, which I do not believe-yet, as there is no reason to suppose that the inhabitants of the Highlands and Hebrides ever wrote their native language, it is not to be credited that a long poem was preserved among them. If we had no evidence of the art of writing being practised in one of the counties of England, we should not believe that a long poem was preserved there, though in the neighbouring counties, where the same language was spoken, the inhabitants could write.". BEAUCLERK. "The ballad of Lilliburlero was once in the mouths of all the people of this country, and is said to have had a

great effect in bringing about the Revolution; yet, I question whether any body can repeat it now; which shows how improbable it is that much poetry should be preserved by tradition."

One of the company suggested an internal objection to the antiquity of the poetry said to be Ossian's, that we do not find the wolf in it, which must have been the case had it been of that age.

Johnson informed Boswell that he made the bargain for Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, and the price was sixty pounds. "And sir," said he, "a sufficient price too, when it was sold; for then the fame of Goldsmith had not been elevated, as it afterwards was, by his Traveller; and the bookseller had such faint hopes of profit by his bargain, that he kept the manuscript by him a long time, and did not publish it till after The Traveller had appeared. Then, to be sure, it was accidentally worth more money."

Boswell mentioned the periodical paper called The Connoisseur: Johnson said it wanted matter. "No doubt," adds the former, "it has not the deep thinking of Johnson's writings; but, surely, it has just views of the surface of life, and a very sprightly manner. His opinion of The World was not much higher than of the Counoisseur."

Mr. Alexander Donaldson, bookseller of Edinburgh, had for some time opened a shop in London, and sold his cheap editions of the most popular English books, in defiance of the supposed commonlaw right of literary property. Johnson, though he concurred in the opinion, which was afterwards sanctioned by a judgment of the house of lords, that there was no such right-waş at this time very an

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