Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/423

 In the course of the winter preceding this grand publication, the late Earl of Chesterfield gave two essays in the periodical Paper, called THE WORLD, dated November 28, and December 5, 1754, to prepare the publick for so important a work. The original plan, addressed to his Lordship in the year 1747, is there mentioned in terms of the highest praise x ; and this was understood, at the time, to be a courtly way of soliciting a dedi cation of the Dictionary to himself. Johnson treated this civility with disdain. He said to Garrick and others, ' I have sailed a long and painful voyage round the world of the English language ; and does he now send out two cock-boats to tow me into harbour 2 ? ' He had said, in the last number of the Rambler, ' that, having laboured to maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now degrade it by the meanness of dedication 3 .' Such a man, when he had finished his ' Dictionary, not/ as he says him self, * in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow, and without the patronage of the great Y was not likely to be caught by the lure thrown out by Lord Chesterfield. He had in vain sought the patronage of that

1 ' Perfection is not to be expected prevented him from ever dedicating from man ; but if we are to judge in his own person.' Ib. ii. I.

by the various works of Mr. John- Dr. Franklin wrote in June,

son already published, we have good 1782 : ' I never made a dedication

reason to believe that he will bring and I never desired that one should

this as near to perfection as any man be made to me.' Franklin's Works,

could do.' Life, i. 258. ed. 1888, vii. 475. Gibbon, in the

2 Murphy perhaps gets this story Preface to vol. vii. of the Decline from the Memoirs of the Life and and Fall, artfully dedicates without Writings of Dr. Johnson, ed. 1785, a dedication. Were I ambitious of p. 120, where it is also stated that to any other Patron than the Public, Edward Moore, the editor of The I would inscribe this work to a World, and the creature of Lord Statesman,' &c.

Chesterfield,' who had come from his 4 * The English Dictionary was

Lordship, Johnson replied: 'I am written with little assistance of the

under obligations to no great man, learned, and without any patronage

and of all others Chesterfield ought of the great ; not in the soft ob-

to know me better than to think me scurities,' &c. Works,v. 51. Murphy

capable of contracting myself into mars that passage which Home

a dwarf that he may be thought a Tooke said he could never read

giant.' See also Life, i. 259. without shedding a tear.' Life, i.

3 ' The loftiness of Johnson's mind 297, n. 2.

nobleman ;

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