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detract from Buchanan's poetical merit, in compliance with Lauder's furious zeal in favour of Johnfton's Latin translation: of David's Pfalms, to which Lauder gave the preference.

In his alliance with Dr. Johnfon, cemented by their mutual antipathy to Milton's principles of civil and religious government, he found a paternal indulgence of his fplenetic animofity.

Milton was a Whig, and therefore must be a Plagiary; accordingly when the time came that Lauder's ftrictures in the Gentleman's Magazine had fwelled into the fize of a pamphlet of 160 pages, it was ushered into public by a preface, and finished by a poftfcript, from the illuftrious hand of Dr. Samuel Johnfon.

On

On occafion of these head and tailpieces the ingenious Dr. Douglas, the detector of Lauder's forgeries, writes thus:

"Tis to be hoped, nay, 'tis expected, "that the elegant and nervous writer, whofe judicious fentiments and iniinitable ftile point out the author of Lau der's Preface and Poftfcript, will no "longer allow one to plume himself with * his feathers, who appears fo little to have deferved his affiftance; an affif

tance which, I am perfuaded, would "never have been communicated, had "there been the leaft fufpicion of those facts which I have been the inftrument

"of conveying to the world *."

* Milton vindicated from the charge of Plagiarifin, &c. by John Douglas, M. A. for Millar, 1751, P. 77....

B 4

This

This favourable prefumption was illfounded and premature. It appeared afterwards, by the confeffion of Lauder himself, that "in Johnfon's friendship "he placed the most implicit and unli "mited confidence *.".

Dr. Johnson had faid for his friend, at the end of the Essay, that " Lauder's mo

tives were, a ftrict regard to truth

"alone, &c. and none of them taken "from any difference of country, or of «fentiments in political or religious "matters t." This Lauder, in his pam phlet of 1754, exprefsly contradicted, and avowed motives of party and premeditated deception. Here the cat leaped *King Charles I. vindicated, p. 3, 4.

+ Eflay, p. 163.

King Charles I. vindicated from the charge

of Plagiarism, brought against him by Milton. Printed for Owen, 1754, P. 15%.

out

out of the bag. It was now notorious that the fable had been inverted.

The

Lion roared in the Afs's Skin; and if the Lion had not the whole afinine plan com municated to him à priori, Lauder's con fidence in his friend Johnson was neither implicit nor unlimited.

Dr.Johnson, indeed, it is to be fufpected, took upon him the patronage of Lauder's project from the beginning; and bore his part in the controverfy retailed in the Gentleman's Magazine for the year 1747. There is at least a HIGH DEGREE OF PREPOLLENT PROBABILITY, that the Letter in that Magazine for the month of Auguft, page 363, 364, figned WIL LIAM LAUDER, came from the amicable hand of Mr. Samuel Johnson.

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In the year 1751 was published Lau der's penitential letter to Dr. Douglas, containing a full and free confeffion of his roguery: the merit of which was to tally overthrown by a contradictory poft feript; which is thus accounted for by Lauder himself, after informing his rea ders, that his confidential friend advifed an unreferved difelofure of his impof

ture.

"With this expedient," fays Lauder, "I then chearfully complied, when that "gentleman wrote for me that letter that "was published in my name to Mr. Doug"las, in which he committed one error that proved fatal to me, and at the fame time injurious to the public. For *Quarto, printed for Owen, 1751.

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