University of Virginia Library

"New Essays by Dr. Johnson," RES, XVIII (1942), 197-207.

I have not found the notice anywhere else; see my preceding "John Newbery, Projector of the Universal Chronicle: A Study of the Advertisements," in this volume of SB, fn. 8.

The Bodleian Library, apparently, possesses the only complete file of the original numbers; the British Museum set, from which the following transcript was made, lacks No. 65; Yale University Library contains a set of the first thirty-nine, plus photostats of the remaining, numbers.

For a detailed discussion of Johnson's contributions to the World Displayed, see Allen T. Hazen's Samuel Johnson's Prefaces & Dedications (1937), pp. 216 ff. I must confess in passing that the concluding sentence of the notice for the World Displayed ("It is hoped that this Collection will be favourably received, as none has hitherto been offered so cheap or so commodious"), rejected by both Dr. L. F. Powell (Boswell's Life [1934-50], I, 546) and Professor Hazen (p. 217), seems to me to be written in characteristic Johnsonian style; I am particularly impressed by "has hitherto been," a phrase which Johnson used repeatedly in one form or another, and by the parallelism of "so cheap" and "so commodious," especially when separated by the "or." Cf., also, "than any Publication which has hitherto been offered" in the text of the notice reprinted above.

See my article cited in n. 2 above.

Hazen, pp. 205-209; Boylston Green, "Possible Additions to the Johnson Canon," Yale University Library Gazette, XVI (1942), 70-79. Both Professor Hazen's and Mr. Green's attributions are completely convincing to me.

All italics in the passages cited are mine. The quotation from the Proposals for the Publisher is taken from the facsimile reproduction (1930), with a prefatory note by R. W. Chapman; those from the Rambler are taken from the Oxford ed. (II, 3, 196) of Johnson's works; the remainder are drawn from Hazen, pp. 54, 204, 128-29.

My italics. The quotation is taken from McAdam, p. 206.

So far as I know, the "preliminary address" was not printed in any other paper; see my article cited in n. 2 above.