Lane club, by Payne, the bookseller, who was one of the members. No man in that society was in possession of the authors from whom Lauder professed to make his extracts. The charge was believed, and the contriver of it found his way to Johnson, who is represented by Sir John Hawkins, not indeed as an accomplice in the fraud, but through motives of malignity to Milton, delighting in the detection, and exulting that the poet's reputation would suffer by the discovery. More malice to a deceased friend cannot well be imagined. Hawkins adds, "that he wished well to the argument must be inferred from the preface, which indubitably was written by him." The preface, it is well known, was written by Johnson, and for that reason is inserted in this edition. But if Johnson approved of the argument, it was no longer than while he believed it founded in truth. Let us advert to his own words in that very preface. Among the inquiries to which the ardour of criticism has naturally given occasion, none is more obscure in itself, or more worthy of rational curiosity, than a retrospection of the progress of this mighty genius in the construction of his work; a view of the fabric gradually rising, perhaps from small beginnings, till its foundation rests in the centre, and its turrets sparkle in the skies; to trace back the structure, through all its varieties, to the simplicity of the first plan; to find what was projected, whence the scheme was taken, how it was improved, by what assistance it was executed, and from what stores the materials were collected; whether its founder dug them from the quarries of nature, or demolished other buildings to embellish his own." These were the motives

that induced Johnson to assist Lauder with a preface ; and are not these the motives of a critic and a scholar? What reader of taste, what man of real knowledge, would not think his time well employed in an inquiry so curious, so interesting, and instructive? If Lauder's facts were really true, who would not be glad, without the smallest tincture of malevolence, to receive real information? It is painful to be thus obliged to vindicate a man who, in his heart, towered above 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, 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." 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 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 public 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, 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 consciousness of doing good, should appear at Drury Lane theatre, tomorrow, April 5, when CoмUS 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 Salisbury.

"Diram qui contudit Hydram,

Notaque fatali portenta labore subegit."

But the pamphlet, entitled, Milton vindicated from the charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Mr. Lauder, and Lauder himself convicted of several Forgeries and gross Impositions upon the Public, 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 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 to his interest to make a full confession of his guilt, than to stand forth the convicted champion of a lie ; 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. 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, 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. She was buried at Bromley, under the care of Dr. Hawkesworth. Johnson placed a Latin inscription ou her tomb, in which he celebrated her beauty. With the singularity of his prayers for his deceased wife, from that time to the end of his days, the world is sufficiently