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fpeech for himself. His effufions both in profe and poetry, during the most trying moments of his confinement, prove that he did not. The naked unadorned feelings of his own mind on that awful' occafion (which he could hardly convey to Dr. Johnfon) would have been the moft expreffive of his fincerity and felfhumiliation; and the most proper and effectual recommendation of his cafe to the commiferation of his audience, and the merciful interpofition of his judges.

An ambition to go out of the world with the applause of having made a florid fpeech, we cannot, with any degree of charity, impute to the unfortunate criminal. He muft, in that cafe, have

had

had vanity fufficient to prevent him from borrowing his materials from another.

But whatever inducement Dr. Dodd might have to folicit Dr. Johnson's aid on fuch an occafion, it is hardly poffible to divine what could be Dr. Johnson's motive for accepting the office. A man to exprefs the precife ftate of mind of another about to be deftined to an ignominious death for a capital crime, fhould, one would imagine, have fome consciousness, that he himself had incurred fome guilt of the fame kind; in which cafe his own apprehenfions would furnish him with topics of deprecation, fuited to the purpose of his obtaining mercy. But this, we truft, was not the

cafe.

Was

1

Was it then the vanity of fhewing how far he was fuperior in abilities to an eminent mafter in his own craft of artificial compofition, that prevailed with Dr. Johnson to lend his talent on fo critical an occafion? Such, one might fear, was the motive, from the early and general intelligence imparted to the public, by whom this admired piece of oratory was fabricated.

Was it, laftly, the prefumption that a fpeech compofed by Dr. Johnson, and delivered by Dr. Dodd, could not fail of interefting all the world in favour of the prifoner, and of procuring the most powerful interceffion for the unhappy criminal's life?

Authors

Authors in the pleafing contemplation of their own powers, and in the exertion of them upon paper, may imagine ftrange things in their clofets concerning their efficiency when they come abroad. But here, alas! all the propriety of diction, and the beauty of colouring, were abfolutely wafted upon the good fenfe and native integrity of the late worthy Recorder of London.. He faw through the artifice. He faw no circumftance from one end of the tranfaction to the other to make it probable that no fraud was intended, nor found any weight in the counterbalance propofed in the pompous ftrains of Dr. Samuel Johnson.

But

But there is no end of conjectures in a cafe where fome abfurdity or other arifes to difgrace every account that can be fuggefted of the origin of a manœuvre of which no precedent can be found, except among the works of the chaplain of Newgate.

We fhould indeed be inclined to call it a mere jeu d'efprit, in the nature of an effay of what could be faid in a fictitious cafe, were it not utterly incredible that any one with the cooleft feelings of humanity (of which we by no means fuppofe Dr. Johnson to be deftitute) could bring himself to sport with the calamity of the unhappy criminal, without hope or profpect, or intention of re

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