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and afterwards sent by Mr Cave to Johnson for his revision. Parliament then kept the press in a mysterious awe, which made it necessary to have recourse to the artifice of giving the speeches under a fictitious designation. The Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia appeared in the Magazine for June 1788, sometimes with feigned names of the several speakers, sometimes with denominations formed of the letters of their real names *.

When Guthrie had attained to a greater variety of employment, and the speeches were more and more enriched by the accession of

highly esteemed, as they procured him a pension from Government, which he enjoyed till his death, in 1769. His writings on criticism have considerable merit; but he is chiefly remembered by his "History of Scotland," and " Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar."

* The proprietors of the "London Magazine," who also gave the debates, compelled by the same necessity that forced Cave to this subterfuge, resorted to another artifice. They feigned to give the debates in the Roman Senate; and, by adopting Roman names to the several speakers, rendered them more plausible than they appear under Cave's management. The artifice succeeded in both instances, and the debates were published with impunity.

Johnson's genius, it was resolved that he should do the whole himself, from notes furnished by persons employed to attend in both houses of Parliament. His sole composition of them began November 19, 1740, and ended February 23, 1742-3; a period distinguished by the struggle that preceded, and the public disappointment that followed, the downfal of Walpole*. From that time they were written by Hawkesworth to the year 1760; within which period the plan of the Magazine was enlarged by a Review of New Publications, conducted about two years by Ruffhead, and afterwards by Hawkesworth, till the year 1772. Johnson

* Pulteney was at the head of the opposition; yet no sooner was Walpole driven off, than Pulteney and Carteret entered into private negociations with the Newcastle party, who were men of Walpole's measures, and, compromising matters, Pulteney became Earl of Bath, and Carteret Earl Granville; "We have seen," says Lord Chesterfield, one of their party, who was not taken into the new-formed ministry, "the noble fruits of a twenty years opposition blasted by the connivance and treachery of a few, who, by all the ties of gratitude and honour, ought to have cherished and preserved them to the people." "Old England, or the Constitutional Journal," No. 1, Feb. 5, 1743.

acknowledged the debates to be spurious, long after the world had considered them as genuine. He cautioned Smollett, in bringing down his" History of England" to the last reign, not to rely on the debates as given in the Magazine, for they were not authentic; but, excepting their general import, the work of his own imagination... Some days previous to his death, he declared, that of all his writings they gave him the most uneasiness. The deceit, 'however, could not be very pernicious, in the effects of which so many persons were involved. Neither are they so completely his own composition as is generally supposed. That notes of the speeches were taken in the Houses of Parliament, and given to him, is evident from his own declaration; and it does not appear probable, that Mr Cave, who was ever attentive to the improvement of his Magazine, should be more negligent in procuring notes as accurate as he could, during the time when Johnson executed this department, than when it was in the hands of Guthrie. It seems at least most likely, therefore, that the language and

illustrations are Johnson's own, but that the arguments and general arrangements were taken from the several speeches spoken in either House.

The trade of writing, notwithstanding the diligence of labour, and the diversification of employment, was so little profitable, and his literary prospects, notwithstanding the success of his London, so unpromising, that he wished to accept an offer made to him, of becoming master of the free-school at Appleby* in Leicestershire,

At this, and many other places, writers have fixed the free-school of which Johnson solicited to be master; but a gentleman, well acquainted with the neighbourhood of Stourbridge, believes it was at Treasle, a village lying between that town and Wolverhampton, where a grammar-school had been endowed, and is believed to have been then vacant. As this village, although within the borders of Staffordshire, is on the very verge of Shropshire, its situation might naturally be mistaken for the latter by Lord Gower or Mr Pope.

BISHOP PERCY.

Such was probable conjecture; but in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for May 1793, there is a letter from Mr Horn, one of the masters of the school of Appleby, in Leicestershire, which banishes every shadow of doubt; the salary, the degree requisite, the time of election, all agreeing with the statutes of Appleby; and the Minutebook of the school, declaring the head-mastership to be at that time vacant.

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the salary of which was sixty pounds a-year. But the statutes of the school required that he should be a Master of Arts; and it was then thought too great a favour to be asked of the University of Oxford. Pope, without any knowledge of him but from his London, recommended him to Lord Gower, as appears from the following note, sent to Mr Richardson the painter, with the imitation of Juvenal, copied with minute exactness by Mr Boswell from the original in the possession of Bishop Percy:

"This is imitated by one Johnson, who put in for a public school in Shropshire, but was disappointed. He has an infirmity of the convulsive kind that attacks him sometimes, so as to make him a sad spectacle. Mr P. from the merit of this work, which was all the knowledge he had of him, endeavoured

to serve him without his own application, and wrote to my Lord Gower, but he did not succeed. Mr Johnson published afterwards another poem in Latin, with notes, the whole very humorous, called the Norfolk Prophecy."

Lord Gower endeavoured to procure him a degree from Trinity College, Dublin, by the

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