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 "phrase from the preface, in which the Jockey Club at Newmarket is mentioned, I am charitable enough to believe that he had really seen the book, and that 'Club' in the text is probably a correction introduced by the excessive zeal of a reader misled by the reference to the Club. At page 11, Mr. Fitzgerald comments upon a note in which Dr. Birkbeck Hill explains a passage in Johnson's letter on receiving the M.A. degree at Oxford by referring to a seditious placard published during the period of excitement over the famous Oxfordshire election of 1754. The letter, says Mr. Fitzgerald, was written in February 175 5, and the placard appeared in 'July, five or six months later. So the whole speculation topples over!' It would, were it not that the placard appeared in July 1754 (not 1755), as is indeed obvious from Dr. Birkbeck Hill's reference to the Gentleman's Magazine of that year (vol. i. 282). At p. 16, Mr. Fitzgerald attacks Dr. Birkbeck Hill's dates. Dr. Birkbeck Hill (vol. i. 146) says that Johnson had his first interview with Hogarth 'sixteen years' after coming to London. 'This cannot be accurate,' says Mr. Fitzgerald. Why? The date of the interview is fixed by its happening soon after the execution of Dr. Cameron for his share in the '45. Therefore, Mr. Fitzgerald assumes, it took place in 1745-6. If he had not been aware of Cameron's well-known story, he might have found it in the note before his eyes, where the date of the execution is stated, namely, 7th June 1753. As Johnson came to London in 1737, Dr. Birkbeck Hill is again quite right. I will give one other strange proof of Mr. Fitzgerald's carelessness. In the collection of Johnson's letters, Dr. Birkbeck Hill speaks of Reynolds's prosperity in 1758. He gives, says Mr. Fitzgerald, an 'odd proof' of it, namely, that in 1758 Reynolds had '150 letters': certainly this would be an odd proof of prosperity; but in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's notes (vol. i. 76 n.) the words are '150 sitters'—a fact which most portrait-painters would regard as a pretty good proof of prosperity."

"I do not say that all Mr. Fitzgerald's criticisms are of this"