Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 41.djvu/9

Nichols field, ‘I hope we shall be much together;’ but in December Nichols was at Johnson's funeral (correspondence presented by Nichols to the British Museum, Addit. MS. 5159; Lit. Anecd. ii. 553–5). Murphy says that Nichols's attachment to Johnson was unwearied. They frequently met at the Essex Head Club (ib. vi. 434;, Johnson, ed. Croker, 1853, pp. 666–7, 674, 711, 789, 794).

In 1781 Nichols published his ‘Biographical Anecdotes of Mr. Hogarth, and a Catalogue of his Works, with occasional Remarks,’ in which he was much assisted by Steevens and Reed. Half a dozen copies of a portion of this book had been struck off in 1780, one of which is in the British Museum, and subsequent editions, considerably enlarged, appeared in 1782 and 1785. Walpole, who was a friend of Nichols (Lit. Anecd. i. 696), said that this account of Hogarth was more accurate and more satisfactory than that given in his ‘Anecdotes of Painting.’ A large quantity, but by no means all, of the original material is utilised in ‘Anecdotes of William Hogarth,’ issued by John Bowyer Nichols in 1833 (see notice by William Bates in Notes and Queries, 4th ser. i. 97). Afterwards Nichols and Steevens published ‘The Genuine Works of William Hogarth,’ in three volumes, 1808–17. A few copies of a slight ‘Life’ of Bowyer had been printed in 1778 for the use of friends; in 1782 appeared a large quarto volume, ‘Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, Printer, F.S.A., and of many of his learned friends. By John Nichols, his apprentice, partner, and successor.’ Of this work, which was in its turn to be the nucleus of a much larger undertaking, Walpole wrote shrewdly: ‘I scarce ever saw a book so correct as Mr. Nichols's “Life of Mr. Bowyer.” I wish it deserved the pains he has bestowed on it every way, and that he would not dub so many men great. I have known several of his heroes, who were very little men’ (Letters, viii. 259). In the same year Nichols edited the third edition of Bowyer's ‘Critical Conjectures and Observations on the New Testament,’ with the assistance of Dr. Henry Owen and Jeremiah Markland (Lit. Anecd. iv. 299); and in 1783 he brought out, with a dedication to Owen, a second edition of Bowyer's ‘Novum Testamentum Græcum.’ In that year, too, Domesday Book was published on a plan projected by Nichols.

Nichols's edition of the ‘Epistolary Correspondence of the Right Rev. Francis Atterbury, D.D., with Historical Notes,’ was begun in 1783 and completed in 1787. An enlarged edition appeared in 1799, with an additional fifth volume, which contained a memoir of the bishop. In conjunction with the Rev. Ralph Heathcote, Nichols revised the second edition of the ‘Biographical Dictionary,’ 1784, adding some hundreds of new lives; and he afterwards greatly assisted Chalmers in the enlarged edition of 1812–17. In 1785 appeared ‘Miscellaneous Tracts by the late William Bowyer and several of his Learned Friends. Collected and illustrated, with Occasional Notes, by John Nichols.’ Bishop Percy was in correspondence with Nichols in 1782–3 respecting an annotated edition of the ‘British Essayists’ (Lit. Illustr. vi. 570–6), and the valuable six-volume edition of the ‘Tatler’ appeared in 1786, the principal merit of the work being due to Dr. John Calder, who had at his disposal the notes collected by Dr. Percy. The ‘Spectator’ and ‘Guardian,’ less fully annotated, in which Nichols had little share, followed in 1789, and between 1788 and 1791 Nichols published Steele's ‘Correspondence,’ and a number of his less-known periodicals and pamphlets, which will be more fully described below. In 1787 he edited the ‘Works, in Verse and Prose, of Leonard Welsted, esq., now first collected, with Notes and Memoirs of the Author.’

Nichols was elected, in December 1784, a common councillor for the ward of Farringdon Without, but he lost the seat in 1786 after a violent party collision. Next year, however, he was unanimously re-elected, and was appointed a deputy of the ward by John Wilkes, who was its alderman. When Wilkes died in 1797, Nichols withdrew from the common council, but in the following year he was induced again to accept a seat, which he retained until 1811. He was hardly suited for political life, as he detested party warfare. In 1786 he had joined Dr. John Warner and Dr. Lettsom in a scheme for the erection of a statue to John Howard in St. Paul's Cathedral (ib. iv. 673, 682), and in 1793 land for a sea-bathing infirmary at Margate was bought in the names of Nichols, Dr. Lettsom, and the Rev. John Pridden (Lit. Anecd. ix. 220). Nichols was much distressed in 1788 by the death (29 Feb.) of his second wife, in her thirty-third year, a few weeks after the birth of a daughter (Gent. Mag. 1788, i. 177, 274).

The ‘Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, illustrated with Historical Notes by John Nichols,’ was published, with Gough's assistance, in 1788. A third volume was added in 1805, and part i. of a fourth volume in 1821. A new edition of the whole work appeared in 1823, in three volumes. In 1790 Nichols published ‘The Plays of William Shakspeare, accurately printed from