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 394 Essay on

��Pamela, in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, was, as he supposed, maliciously inserted by the great poet in an edition of the Eikon Basilike, in order to fix an imputation of impiety on the memory of the murdered king r. Fired with resentment, and willing to reap the profits of a gross imposition, this man collected from several Latin poets, such as Masenius the Jesuit, Staphorstius a Dutch divine, Beza, and others, all such passages as bore any kind of resemblance to different places in the Paradise Lost ; and these he published, from time to time, in the Gentleman's Magazine, with occasional interpolations of lines, which he him self translated from Milton. The public credulity swallowed all with eagerness ; and Milton was supposed to be guilty of plagiarism from inferior modern writers. The fraud succeeded so well, that Lauder collected the whole into a volume, and advertised it under the title of 'An Essay on Milton s Use and Imitation of the Moderns, in his Paradise Lost ; dedicated to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge' While the book was in the press, the proof-sheets were shewn to Johnson at the Ivy-lane Club, by Payne, the bookseller, who was one of the members. No man in that society was in possession of the authors from whom Lauder professed to make his extracts. The

at length forced him to look for refuge about the Eikon Basilike, under the

and subsistence in Barbadoes, where title of The General Impostor de-

he died in poverty and neglect about tected, or Milton convicted of forgery

1771. He had a sallow complexion, against King Charles I. Gent. Mag.

large rolling fiery eyes, a stentorian 1754, p. 97. There is no reason to

voice and a sanguine temper.' Rud- believe that, as Murphy says, ' he

diman, who had given him some supposed' that Milton was guilty,

help in his Poetarum Scotorum Johnson repeated the charge in his

Musae Sacrae, says in a manuscript Life of Milton. Works, vii. 84. 'A

note, ' I was so sensible of the weak- century after Milton's death it was

ness and folly of that man that I safe for the most popular writer of

shunned his company as far as the day to say that the prayer from

I decently could.' Life of Ruddiman, the Arcadia had been interpolated

by G. Chalmers, 1794, p. 146. in the Eikon by Milton himself, and

1 It was in 1747 that Lauder then by him charged upon the King

began his forgeries ; in 1750 he col- as a plagiarism.' Pattison's Milton,

lected them into a pamphlet. Life, p. 103.

i. 230. It was not till 1754, three For Pamela's prayer see Milton's

years after his detection and retrac- Works, ed. 1806, ii. 408. tation,that he published his pamphlet

charge

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