Johnson Taylor entered at Christ Church: he matriculated there,1 February 24th, 1729: was made a prebendary of Westminster, became rector of Bosworth, and inherited a good estate at Ashbourne in Derbyshire, where, for at least a part of the year, he resided, living as a very prosperous gentleman; there he was frequently visited by Johnson, and on two occasions he entertained Johnson in company with Boswell. There were opportunities then and afterwards for the eager inquiries of Boswell.

But there was another source of information open to Boswell. "The history of my Oxford exploits," Mrs. Piozzi reports him to have said, "lies all between Taylor and Adams.”2

William Adams was born at Shrewsbury, 1707. M.A. and Junior Fellow of the College in 1727, Master of the College 1775. Adams was present in Jorden's rooms when Johnson, accompanied by his father, made his first appearance at Oxford, and he continued through life a true and affectionate friend of Johnson.

Johnson, accompanied by Boswell, visited Oxford March, 1776, and they together wait on Dr. Adams in the lodge of Pembroke. "Before his advancement to the headship of his College, I had intended to go and visit him at Shrewsbury, where he was rector of St. Chad's, in order to get from him what particulars he could recollect of Johnson's academical life. He now obligingly gave me part of that authentic information which, with what I afterwards owed to his kindness, will be found incorporated in its proper place in this work." (Vol. ii. p. 260.) So that the information, which we find in Boswell's Life, would seem to be imparted by Adams himself.

3

But not content with prosecuting his inquiries with the friends of Johnson, he carried them on with Johnson himself. Thus, after meeting him at dinner at General Paoli's, Tuesday, March 31st, 1772, Boswell goes on to tell us3 that, as they drank tea together in his lodgings in Conduit Street, previous to their going to the Pantheon, they talked among other things of Goldsmith's Life of Parnell, which Johnson said was poor, "not that it is poorly written, but that he had poor materials; for nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk with him." Whereupon Boswell, always on the watch to gather materials, said: "If it was not troublesome and presuming too much, I would request him to tell me all the little

1

See Birkbeck Hill's Johnson, his Friends and Critics, Appendix, P. 343.

2 Johnsoniana, p. 15.

3

Life, vol. ii. p. 20.

attended, when he came He did not disapprove

circumstances of his life; what schools he to Oxford, when he came to London, &c. &c. my curiosity as to these particulars, but said, 'They'll come out by degrees, as we talk together.'" (Vol. ii. p. 20-21.) And as they talked together on Easter Sunday, April 11th, 1773, when Boswell enjoyed the rare honour of dining with him in "the dusky recess of a court in Fleet Street," "I again solicited him to communicate to me the particulars of his early life." He said, "You shall have them all for two pence. . . . He mentioned to me this day many circumstances, which I wrote down when I went home and have interwoven in the former part of this narrative." Now, though Johnson might have resented too close a questioning on the subject of his academical life, for as he himself said, "it is particularly wrong to question a man concerning himself-there may be parts of his former life he may not wish to be made known to other persons, or even brought to his own recollection," " yet Boswell would encounter no reticence of this nature in Hector, or Taylor, or Adams. It is possible, indeed, that from his ignorance of English academical life, Boswell may have mistaken what they said; but his statement that Johnson left Pembroke in the Autumn of 1731, would seem built on information which almost amounts to positive evidence, and which remained unchallenged from the publication of the first edition in 1791 down to the time of Mr. Croker's editorship. In his first, and all subsequent editions, Mr. Croker, on the authority of the buttery books of the College, which had been carefully examined by Dr. Hall, the Master, questioned the rather more than three years' residence, and reduced it to fourteen months. It would be idle to dispute the authoritative character of these buttery books. By their evidence, and theirs alone, the College authorities, both then and now, would determine the question of residence, which is the necessary preliminary to proceeding to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Mr. Fitzgerald, though he carefully examined them, remained constant to Boswell's representation, not considering, as I think, the distinction between a name being borne on the books of the College, and battels being charged consecutively to that name, which alone would prove residence. He has shown that weekly battels were charged to Johnson with regularity from November 1st, 1728, to December 12th, 1729. His name, indeed, remains on the books, and sums of small amount are charged occasionally, at long intervals,

against him; probably College charges of some kind, but not battels. In October, 1731, the name finally disappears from the books. The Editor cordially sympathizes with Mr. Fitzgerald's loyal belief in the accuracy of Boswell. He has made an excellent fight for it, but those terrible buttery books present evidence which cannot be confuted, and which bears down all opposing statements. Like Mr. Fitzgerald, the Editor had the help of Professor Chandler and Mr. Mowat, the Bursar of the College, in examining their records. He owes much to the kindness of these gentlemen, who, all their courtesy notwithstanding, may well entertain a very pardonable dread of anxious and inquiring editors. Reluctantly, I am obliged to confess, that Boswell was mistaken and Mr. Croker right in his correction of the mistake. The whole question, not very important after all, has been well sifted and clearly stated by Dr. Birkbeck Hill in his excellent volume on "Dr. Johnson, his Friends and his Critics: " London, 1878.

JOHNSON'S PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES.

"HE this year and the two following (i.e., 1741-2-3) wrote the Parliamentary Debates. He told me himself, that he was the sole composer of them for those three years only. He was not, however, precisely exact in his statement, which he mentioned from hasty recollection; for it is sufficiently evident that his composition of them began Nov. 19, 1740, and ended Feb. 23, 1743.”

The sufficient evidence on which Boswell founds his very definite statement was, it may be presumed, the same as that which enabled the editor and publisher of the Debates to specify the first as occurring on the 19th Nov., 1740, and the last on the 23rd Feb., 1743. These are the limits assigned in the first edition, published under the editorship of George Chalmers in the year 1787: a period of two years and three months; and these have been accepted by the different editors of Boswell's "Life," and were first questioned by Mr. Croker. It will be respectful to reproduce here the note which he appended in all his editions to the above statement of Boswell :-" Boswell must mean that the sole and exclusive composition by Johnson

began at this date, because we have seen that he had been employed on these Debates as early as 1738. I, however, see abundant reason to believe that he wrote them from the time that they assumed the Lilliputian title; and even the introduction to this new form is evidently his. And when Mr. Boswell limits Johnson's share to the 23rd of Feb., 1743, he refers to the date of the debate itself, and not to that of the report, for the debates on the Gin Act (certainly reported by Johnson), which took place in Feb., 1743, were not concluded in the Magazine till Feb., 1744 ; so that, instead of two years and nine months, according to Mr. Boswell's reckoning, we have, I think, Johnson's own evidence that he was employed in this way for near six years-from 1738 to 1744." Two years and nine months is not Mr. Boswell's reckoning, but Mr. Croker's blunder: from Nov. 19, 1740, to Feb. 23, 1743-the dates assigned by the editor of the first edition of the Debates, and followed by Boswell-do not constitute two years and nine months, but two years and three months. Nor can it be shown from Johnson's own evidence, or from the evidence of anyone else, that he was employed on the Debates for a period of six years. Admitting that from the first to the last of his connection with the Magazine he was the sole editor and reporter of them-which is not the fact that connection did not extend over six, but was limited to five, years. Though indeed the last of his debates appeared in the number of "Gentleman's Magazine" for Feb., 1744, that only proves the publication, not the composition, of the debate. The examination of these debates as they appear, both in the "Gentleman's Magazine" and in the "London," shows, that the reports were published sometimes a year-sometimes even more-after they were written. In flat contradiction to Boswell's distinct testimony, that Johnson informed him that he was the sole composer of them for those three years only, i.e., 1741-42-43, Mr. Croker "sees abundant reason " to believe that Johnson wrote them from June, 1838, when they assumed the title of the Debates in the Senate of Lilliput, and wrote even the introduction to this new form. All this must be grounded, of course, on internal evidence (the most fallacious and dangerous of all tests of authenticity); for until Mr. Croker's day, no one that we are aware of ever questioned, that in 1738, and the subsequent years, the debates in Parliament, brought home and digested by Guthrie, were sent by Cave to Johnson for his revision. The passage in Johnson's letter to Cave, see ante, p. 100: "If I made fewer alterations than usual in the Debates, it was only because there appeared, and

still appears to be, less need of alteration," confirms this view. After some time, however, it was resolved that he should do the whole himself. There were, then, two periods in Johnson's connection with the Magazine in relation to the Debates-the first, when, as we see from his letter to Cave, he was, so to speak, the reviser of Guthrie's reports; the second, when, according to Johnson's own testimony, he was the sole composer of them. This is Boswell's representation, which has not been invalidated by any of Mr. Croker's busy, but blundering, annotations.

Many years after his connection with the Magazine in this capacity, we find, in Boswell, another and very curious mention of Johnson as a composer of speeches. On the 13th May, 1779, Boswell tells us that he spent all the day with him at Streatham, when he talked a great deal, and was in very good humour. "Looking at Messrs. Dilly's splendid edition of Lord Chesterfield's Miscellaneous Works," which had been published in two quartos, 1777, he laughed, and said, "Here, now, are two speeches ascribed to him, both of which were written by me; and the best of it is, they have found out that one is like Demosthenes, and the other like Cicero." This, in substance, was the remark of Dr. Maty, who, to his fulsome "Life of Chesterfield," subjoined remarks on the various miscellanies of the collection. Johnson, as we see, claimed only two out of the three speeches which Maty selects as specimens of Chesterfield's eloquence -the first "in the strong nervous style of Demosthenes, the two latter in the witty, ironical manner of Tully." But Mr. Croker, wiser than Johnson, asserts that all three speeches were certainly Johnson's composition. But the first of the three-Speech on the Licensing Bill, or, as it is called in the Parliamentary debates, the Playhouse Billis not Johnson's, but Chesterfield's. It is, we suppose, that which Dr. Maty considered as written "in the strong nervous style of Demosthenes." An incorrect and defective abstract of this speech appeared in "Fog's Journal," No. 5, in the month of August, 1737. A fuller report, evidently drawn up by Chesterfield himself, was sent to the two magazines, and appeared in the "Gentleman's Magazine," 1737, p. 409, and foll., and in the "London Magazine," 1737, p. 401, and foll. These two reports are verbatim et literatim the same; and the speech thus reported was transferred by Maty, without any alteration, to his edition of the "Miscellaneous Works," vol. i., p. 229, and foll. Johnson had no hand in this admirable speech. It is remarkable, however, that shortly after Chesterfield delivered it in the House of Lords, June, 1737, Johnson