[889] In a Debate on the Copyright Bill on May 16, 1774, Governor Johnstone said:—'It had been urged that Dr. Johnson had received an after gratification from the booksellers who employed him to compile his Dictionary. He had in his hand a letter from Dr. Johnson, which he read, in which the doctor denied the assertion, but declared that his employers fulfilled their bargain with him, and that he was satisfied.' Parl. Hist. xvii. 1105.
[890] He more than once attacked them. Thus in An Appeal to the Public, which he wrote for the Gent. Mag. in 1739 (Works, v. 348), he said:—'Nothing is more criminal in the opinion of many of them, than for an author to enjoy more advantage from his own works than they are disposed to allow him. This is a principle so well established among them, that we can produce some who threatened printers with their highest displeasure, for having dared to print books for those that wrote them.' In the Life of Savage (ib. viii. 132), written in 1744, he writes of the 'avarice, by which the booksellers are frequently incited to oppress that genius by which they are supported.' In the Life of Dryden (ib. vii. 299), written in 1779, he speaks of an improvement. 'The general conduct of traders was much less liberal in those times than in our own; their views were narrower, and their manners grosser. To the mercantile ruggedness of that race the delicacy of the poet was sometimes exposed.'
[891] Prayers and Meditations, p. 40 [25]. BOSWELL. Johnson wrote to Miss Boothby on Dec. 30, 1755:—'If I turn my thoughts upon myself, what do I perceive but a poor helpless being, reduced by a blast of wind to weakness and misery?… Mr. Fitzherbert sent to-day to offer me some wine; the people about me say I ought to accept it. I shall therefore be obliged to him if he will send me a bottle.' Pioszi Letters, ii. 393.
[892] Prayers and Meditations, p. 27. BOSWELL
[893] See post, April 6, 1775. Kit Smart, once a Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, ended his life in the King's Bench Prison; 'where he had owed to a small subscription, of which Dr. Burney was at the head, a miserable pittance beyond the prison allowance. In his latest letter to Dr. Burney, he passionately pleaded for a fellow-sufferer, "whom I myself," he impressively adds, "have already assisted according to my willing poverty." In another letter to the same friend he said:—"I bless God for your good nature, which please to take for a receipt."' Memoirs of Dr. Burney, i. 205, 280.
[894] In this Essay Johnson writes (Works, v. 315):—'I think there is room to question whether a great part of mankind has yet been informed that life is sustained by the fruits of the earth. I was once, indeed, provoked to ask a lady of great eminence for genius, "Whether she knew of what bread is made."'
[895] In The Universal Visiter this Essay is entitled, 'Reflections on the Present State of Literature;' and in Johnson's Works, v. 355, 'A Project for the Employment of Authors.' The whole world, he says, is turning author. Their number is so large that employment must be found for them. 'There are some reasons for which they may seem particularly qualified for a military life. They are used to suffer want of every kind; they are accustomed to obey the word of command from their patrons and their booksellers; they have always passed a life of hazard and adventure, uncertain what may be their state on the next day…. There are some whom long depression under supercilious patrons has so humbled and crushed, that they will never have steadiness to keep their ranks. But for these men there may be found fifes and drums, and they will be well enough pleased to inflame others to battle, if they are not obliged to fight themselves.'
[896] He added it also to his Life of Pope.
[897] 'This employment,' wrote Murphy (Life, p. 88), 'engrossed but little of Johnson's time. He resigned himself to indolence, took no exercise, rose about two, and then received the visits of his friends. Authors long since forgotten waited on him as their oracle, and he gave responses in the chair of criticism. He listened to the complaints, the schemes, and the hopes and fears of a crowd of inferior writers, "who," he said, in the words of Roger Ascham, "lived, men knew not how, and died obscure, men marked not when." He believed, that he could give a better history of Grub Street than any man living. His house was filled with a succession of visitors till four or five in the evening. During the whole time he presided at his tea-table.' In The Rambler, No. 145, Johnson takes the part of these inferior writers:—'a race of beings equally obscure and equally indigent, who, because their usefulness is less obvious to vulgar apprehensions, live unrewarded and die unpitied, and who have been long exposed to insult without a defender, and to censure without an apologist.'
[898] In this essay (Works, vi. 129) Johnson describes Canada as a 'region of desolate sterility,' 'a cold, uncomfortable, uninviting region, from which nothing but furs and fish were to be had.'