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��the publick was not excited ; there was no friend to promote a subscription; and the project died, to revive at a future day 1 . A new undertaking, however, was soon after pro posed; namely, an English Dictionary, upon an enlarged plan. Several of the most opulent booksellers had meditated a work of this kind ; and the agreement was soon adjusted between the parties 2 . Emboldened by this connection, Johnson thought of a better habitation than he had hitherto known. He had lodged with his wife in courts and alleys about the Strand 3 ; but now, for the purpose of carrying on his arduous
��Oct. 31, 1765, not two, but twenty years after this 'praise.' It was pro voked by the severe criticisms of his Shakespeare by Johnson in the edition which he had just published. Letters from a Late Eminent Pre late, ist ed., p. 272.
1 Dr. Anderson, in his Life of Johnson, 1815, p. 106, gives a letter dated April u, 1745, in which Ton- son threatens Cave with a Chancery suit if he prints Shakespeare. That, he says, 'will be the method we shall take with any one who shall attack our property in this or any other copy that we have fairly bought and paid for.' The University of Oxford, it was true, had lately pub lished Hanmer's edition ; but, ' if you call on me,' Tonson continues, ' I will give my reasons why we rather chuse to proceed with the University by way of reprisal for their scandalous invasion of our rights than by law.'
Lord Camden, in the judgment which he gave in the House of Lords on Feb. 22, 1774, on the great copy right case says : ' Shakespeare's works, which he left carelessly be hind him in town when he retired from it, were surely given to the public if ever author's were ; but two prompters, or players behind the scenes, laid hold of them, and the
��present proprietors pretend to derive that copy from them, for which the author himself never received a far thing.' Par/. Hist., xvii. 1000.
For the booksellers' claim of copy right see Life, i. 437, and Letters of Hume to Strahan, p. 275, where I have examined it at some length.
They had undertaken to publish Warburton's Shakespeare which ap peared in 1747, and so would not in 1745 suffer a rival edition. In 1756 they themselves engaged John son as editor. Life, i. 175, 318; Hawkins, p. 361.
'Warburton (said Quin the player) ought to have stuck to his own Bible, and not to have meddled with ours.' Nichols, Lit. Hist., ii. 840.
2 Life, i. 182. Hawkins, who had seen the original contract, says that it was dated June 18, 1746. Hawkins, p. 345. I had not noticed this fact when I wrote my note 2 on vol. i. p. 176 of the Life, where 1774 is a misprint for 1747. It adds to the absurdity of Croker's suspicion that Johnson was at this time absent or concealed on account of some dif ficulties which had arisen through the rebellion of 1745.
3 For a list of his lodgings, which had not all been about the Strand, see Life, iii. 405, n. 6.
undertaking,
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