He now removed to London with Mrs. Johnson; but her daughter, who had lived with them at Edial, was left with her relations in the country. His lodgings were for some time in Woodstock Street, near Hanover Square, and afterwards in Castle Street, near Cavendish Square. As there is something pleasingly interesting, to many, in tracing so great a man through all his different habitations, I shall, before this work is concluded, present my readers with an exact list of his lodgings and houses, in order of time, which, in placid condescension to my respectful curiosity, he one evening [Oct. 10. 1779,] dictated to me, but without specifying how long he lived at each. In the progress of his life I shall have occasion to mention some of them as connected with particular incidents, or with the writing of particular parts of his works. To some, this minute attention may appear trifling; but when we consider the punctilious exactness with which the different houses in which Milton resided have been traced by the writers of his life, a similar enthusiasm may be pardoned in the biographer of Johnson.

His tragedy being by this time, as he thought, completely finished and fit for the stage, he was very desirous that it should be brought forward. Mr. Peter Garrick told me, that Johnson and he went together to the Fountain tavern, and read it over, and that he afterwards solicited Mr. Fleetwood, the patentee of Drury Lane theatre, to have it acted at his house; but Mr. Fleetwood would not accept it, probably because it was not patronised by some man of high rank; and it was not acted till 1749, when

his friend David Garrick was manager of that theatre.

The Gentleman's Magazine, begun and carried on by Mr. Edward Cave, under the name of Sylvanus Urban, had attracted the notice and esteem of Johnson, in an eminent degree, before he came to London as an adventurer in literature. He told me, that when he first saw St. John's Gate, the place where that deservedly popular miscellany was originally printed, he "beheld it with reverence." (1) I suppose, indeed, that every young author has had the same kind of feeling for the magazine or periodical publication which has first entertained him, and in which he has first had an opportunity to see himself in print, without the risk of exposing his name. I myself recollect such impressions from the Scots Magazine, which was begun at Edinburgh in the year 1739, and has been ever conducted with judgment, accuracy, and propriety. (2) I yet cannot help thinking of it with

(1) If, as Mr. Boswell supposes, Johnson looked at St. John's Gate as the printing-office of Cave, surely a less emphatical term than reverence would have been more just. The Gentleman's Magazine had been, at this time, but six years before the public, and its contents were, until Johnson himself contributed to improve it, entitled to any thing rather than reverence; but it is much more probable that Johnson's reverence was excited by the recollections connected with the ancient gate itself, the last relic of the once extensive and magnificent priory of the heroic knights of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, suppressed at the dissolution, and destroyed by successive dilapidations. Its last prior, Sir William Weston, though compensated with the annual pension (enormous in those days) of 1000l., died of a broken heart, on Ascension-day, 1540, the very day the house was suppressed. - CROker.

(2) [The Scots Magazine, particularly valuable under the years 1745-6, &c. for its details of the expedition of Prince

an affectionate regard. Johnson has dignified the Gentleman's Magazine by the importance with which he invests the life of Cave; but he has given it still greater lustre by the various admirable essays which he wrote for it.

Though Johnson was often solicited by his friends to make a complete list of his writings, and talked of doing it, I believe with a serious intention that they should all be collected on his own account, he put it off from year to year, and at last died without having done it perfectly. I have one in his own handwriting, which contains a certain number; I indeed doubt if he could have remembered every one of them, as they were so numerous, so various, and scattered in such a multiplicity of unconnected publications; nay, several of them published under the names of other persons, to whom he liberally contributed from the abundance of his mind. We must, therefore, be content to discover them, partly from occasional information given by him to his friends, and partly from internal evidence. (1)

His first performance in the Gentleman's Magazine, which for many years was his principal source

Charles Edward Steuart, and in subsequent times enlivened with the original essays of many eminent persons, has been for some years past discontinued. 1835.]

(1) While, in the course of my narrative, I enumerate his writings, I shall take care that my readers shall not be left to waver in doubt, between certainty and conjecture, with regard to their authenticity; and, for that purpose, shall mark with an asterisk (*) those which he acknowledged to his friends, and with a dagger (†) those which are ascertained to be his by internal evidence. When any other pieces are ascribed to him, I shall give my reasons,