408 Essay on
��related by Mrs. Piozzi nearly in the following manner 1 . ' Mr. Murphy being engaged in a periodical paper, the Gray'sr Inn Journal, was at a friend's house in the country, and, not being disposed to lose pleasure for business, wished to content his bookseller by some unstudied essay. He therefore took up a French Journal Litiraire, and translating something he liked, sent it away to town. Time, however, discovered that he translated from the French a Rambler, which had been taken from the English without acknowledgement. Upon this discovery Mr. Murphy thought it right to make his excuses to Dr. Johnson. He went next day, and found him covered with soot, like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room, as if he had been acting Lungs in the Alchymist, making czther. This being told by Mr. Murphy in company, "Come, come," [dear Mur.] said Dr. Johnson, <: the story is black enough ; but it was a happy day that brought you first to my house." ' After this first visit, the author of this narrative by degrees grew intimate with Dr. Johnson. The first striking sentence, that he heard from him, was in a few days after the publication of Lord Bolingbroke's posthumous works. Mr. Garrick asked him, ' If he had seen them ? ' * Yes, I have seen them.' ' What do you think of them ?' 'Think of them!' He made a long pause, and then replied: ' Think of them ! A scoundrel and a coward ! A scoundrel, who spent his life in charging a gun against Christianity ; and a coward, who was afraid of hearing the report of his own gun ; but left half a crown to a hungry Scotchman to draw the trigger after his death 2 / His mind, at this time strained and over laboured by constant exertion, called for an interval of repose
1 Ante> p. 306. pectations that he rejected the offer
2 The 'hungry' or 'beggarly of ^3,000 which Millar offered him Scotchman ' as he is in the Life, i. for the copyright, although he was 268, was David Mallet. Bolingbroke at this time so distressed for money left him the copyright of all his pub- that he was forced to borrow some lished works, ' and all the books of Millar to pay the stationer and which, at the time of my decease, printer. He had reason to repent shall be in the room called my his refusal as the edition was not library.' Bolingbroke's Works, ed. sold off in twenty years.' Chalmers's 1809, i. Introduction, p. 219. Biog. Diet., xxi. 196.
' So sanguine was Mallet in his ex-
and
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