Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 11.djvu/275

 io s. xi. MAR. -20, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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only suffered to survive their miseries, as men hung in Chaines, and forced with their relations either to begge, steal, or starve."

Let us leave aside the passage from Weever. Is it credible that serious writers like Harri- son and Chettle, writing about events of their own day, writing for a public acquainted with the facts is it credible that they should

of the times a thing which did not occur ? Bishop Gauden does not expressly state that men were hanged alive in chains when he wrote, but he uses a simile meaningless to his readers if the memory, at least, of the punishment was not fresh in men's minds. ALFRED MARKS. 155, Adelaide Road, N.W.

DR.

(To be continued.)

JOHNSON'S ANCESTORS CONNEXIONS.

AND

(See 10 S. viii. 281, 382, 462 ; ix. 43, 144, 302, 423 ; x. 44, 203, 343, 465 ; xi. 103.)

Rev. George Plaxton and Michael Johnson. No contemporary evidence in favour of Michael Johnson having been a man of exceptional attainments can be adduced except the extract from a letter written by the Rev. George Plaxton from Trentham on St. Peter's Day, 1716 :

" Johnson, the Litchfield Librarian, is now here ; he propagates learning all over this diocese, and advanceth knowledge to its just height ; all the Clergy here are his Pupils, and suck all they have from him ; Allen cannot make a warrant without his precedent, nor our quondam John Evans draw a recognizance sine directione Michaelis."

This extract was first made public by a correspondent of The Gentleman's Magazine in October, 1791, and was incorporated by Boswell in his great work, in the form of a foot-note, " to show the high estimation in which the Father of our great Moralist was held " (Boswell's ' Johnson,' ed. Birk- beck Hill, vol. i. p. 36). The letter, strangely enough, was one of a series addressed prin- cipally to the Rev. Francis Skrymsher, Rector of Forton, Salop (see my book, p. 258), a kinsman of the Dr. Gerard Skrymsher with whom Michael Johnson was closely connected. Plaxton, at the time, is saic to have been acting as chaplain to John, second Lord Gower (1694-1754), createc first Earl Gower in 1746 ; the same who on 1 Aug., 1739, wrote a letter to a friend o: Swift's, asking that the L T niversity of Dublin should confer a degree on Samuel Johnson.

A great deal has been made of Plaxton' 8 letter, and on the strength of its terms

Michael Johnson has been credited with a degree of educated intelligence which I hesitate to allow him. Macaulay, whose- constant desire to draw his pictures in bold relief left him with little inclination for that sober investigation which would rob his- fascinating pictures of much of their light and shade, found Plaxton' s letter excellent material for his brush, and splashed it boldly on to his canvas :

" Michael's abilities and attainments seem to lave been considerable. He was so well acquainted with the contents of the volumes which he exposed sale, that the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcestershire thought him an oracle on points of earning." Macaulay's ' Biographies,' 1860, p. 77.

Passing lightly over the clear internal evidence of Macaulay's belief that the Trentham district of Staffordshire was con- tiguous to Worcestershire, or that the two ounties were contained in the same diocese- a small blunder for which he would have gibbeted another author we may pronounce this passage to be founded upon a much too literal interpretation of Plaxton' s letter. In my book (p. 214), in an account of Michael Johnson, on the strength of a document in his own handwriting and composition, I threw considerable doubt upon his claim to possess more culture than we should expect in any intelligent provincial bookseller. I now wish to lay stress xipon the fact that Plaxton was an inveterate humorist, and that familiarity with his satirical method of expression will do much to destroy such an impression as his sentences seem to have

produced on Macaulay.

Having failed to discover any note on Plaxton in any edition of Boswell, or in any other Johnsonian work, I recently con- tributed to ' N. & Q.' (10 S. x. 301, 422, 503) a moderately full account of his life and character. The record of his clerical prefer- ments will be found in the first of the three papers.

Plaxton was a conscientious and devoted minister of the Gospel, who laboured zeal- ously for the welfare of his flock, and even interested himself in social reforms ; but it is as an antiquary, and a friend of Thoresby, that he is best known to us. The diary of the Yorkshire antiquary con- tains numerous references to him, indicative of considerable personal regard. Plaxton was also known to Thomas Hearne, who described him soon after his death as "a very ingenious man and a good scholar," who " loved antiquities." He subscribed to various antiquarian works ; but hie own labours did not produce much fruit.