Johnson's Life and Genius.
��thoughts into wild exuberance, which the pressing hour of publication cannot suffer judgement to examine or reduce V Of this excellent production the number sold on each day did not amount to five hundred : of course the bookseller, who paid the author four guineas a week, did not carry on a successful trade. His generosity and perseverance deserve to be com mended ; and happily, when the collection appeared in volumes, were amply rewarded. Johnson lived to see his labours flourish in a tenth edition 2 . His posterity, as an ingenious French writer has said on a similar occasion, began in his lifetime.
In the beginning of 1750, soon after the Rambler was set on foot, Johnson was induced by the arts of a vile impostor to lend his assistance, during a temporary delusion, to a fraud not to be paralleled in the annals of literature. One LADDER, a native of Scotland, who had been a teacher in the University of EDIN BURGH, had conceived a mortal antipathy to the name and character of Milton 3 . His reason was, because the prayer of
��1 Rambler, No. 208. In this num ber he says : ' I have never com plied with temporary curiosity, nor enabled my readers to discuss the topick of the day.' There is a curious instance of this in his passing over in silence the great earthquake scare of April 8, 1750, when 'the open fields that skirt the metropolis were filled with an incredible number of people assembled in chairs, in chaises and coaches, as well as on foot, who waited in the most fearful suspense until morning.' Smollett's History of England ', iii. 293. See also Wai- pole's Letters, ii. 201. Johnson's next number was on ' Retirement natural to a great mind.'
2 In the closing number Johnson says : ' 1 have never been much a favourite with the public.' The book seller was Cave. Life, i. 203, n. 6. It is stated in Chalmers's British Essayists, vol. xvi. Preface, p. 14, that 'the only number which had
��a prosperous sale' was 97 con tributed by Richardson. A second impression however was required of the first numbers, as I have shown in the Introduction to Select Essays of Johnson (Dent Co., 1889), p. 21.
Each edition, according to Haw copies. Johnson soon parted with the copyright. Letters, i. 29, n. i.
3 Lauder had scarcely left college when he was struck on the knee by a golf-ball on Bruntsfield Links; through neglect of the wound he had to have the leg amputated. In spite of considerable merit he failed to get one or two appointments which he sought. This soured his temper, and ' at length drove him in an unlucky hour from Edinburgh to London. Here his folly working on his ne cessities induced him to detract from the fame of Milton by publishing forgeries. The public indignation Pamela,
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