in the purchase of literary property, that species of merchandise which more than any other depends for its success on the use of great shrewdness and
critical discernment. Strahan was eminently successful, and with the usual effect of good management, was enabled to be liberal to air.hors, while he enriched himself. With Dr Johnson he was for some time intimately connected,
and he took the charge of editing his prayers and meditations after the doctor's death. Johnson, howerer, has been accused of speaking of him in a
manner which the world seldom admires, when used towards a person to win in the speaker owes obligations, whatever may be the intellectual disparity. Boswell observes, "Dr Gerard told us, that an eminent printer was very intimate with Warburton. Johnson, 'Why, sir, he has printed some of his works, and perhaps, bought the property of some of them. The intimacy is such as one of the professors here might have with one of the carpenters, who is repairing the college.'" In a letter to Sir William Forbes, Dr Beattie has made
the following remark on this passage, "I cannot but take notice of a very illiberal saying of Johnson with respect to the late Mr Strahan, (Mr Boswell has politely concealed the name,) who was a man to whom Johnson had been much obliged, and whom, on account of his abilities and virtues, as well as rank in lifo, every one who knew him, and Johnson as well as others, acknowledged to be a most respectable character. I have seen the letter mentioned by Dr Gerard, and I have seen many other letters from bishop Warburton to Mr Strahan. They were very particularly acquainted: and Mr Strahan's merit entitled him to be on a footing of intimacy with any bishop, or any British subject. He was eminently skilled in composition and the English language, exrelied in the epistolary style, had corrected (as he told me himself) the
phraseology of both Mr Hume and Dr Robertson; he was a faithful friend, and his great knowledge of the world, and of business, made him a very useful one."[1] The expression was probably one of a splenetic moment, for Johnson was not on all occasions on good terms with Strahan. "In the course of this year," (1778,) says Boswell, "there was a difference between him (Johnson) and his friend Mr Strahan: the particulars of which it is unnecessary to relate." The doctor must have been signally in the wrong, for he deigned to offer terms of accommodation. "It would be very foolish for us," he says in a letter to Strahan, "to continue strangers any longer. You can never by persistency make wrong right. If I resented too acrimoniously, I resented only to yourself. Nobody ever saw or heard what I wrote. You saw that my anger was over, for in a day or two I crime to your house. I have given you longer time; and I hope 'you have made so good use of it as to be no longer on evil terms with, Sir, yours, &c., Sam. Johnson."[2] Strahan, when he became influential with the ministry, proposed Johnson as a person well fitted to hold a seat in parliament for their interest, but the recommendation was not adopted. So soon as he found himself in easy circumstances, Mr Strahan became an active politician, and corresponded with many eminent statesmen. In the year 1769, he wrote some Queries to Dr Franklin, respecting the discontents of the Americans, which were afterwards published in the London Chronicle of 28th July, 1778. In 1775, he was elected member for the borough of Malmsbury, in Wiltshire, with Fox as his colleague, and in the succeeding parliament he represented Wotton Basset in the same county. He is said to have been an active and useful legislator. On the resignation of his friends in 1784, he declined, partly from bad health, to stand again for a seat His health from
this period quickly declined, and he died on the 9th July, 1785, in the seven-
Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/194
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330
WILLIAM STRAHAN.
