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Dr. Johnson and the Public Ledger: A Small Addition
to the Canon
by
Gwin J. Kolb
In an article published a number of years ago,[1] Professor E. L. McAdam, Jr. demonstrated Dr. Johnson's authorship of the three "Weekly Correspondent" essays in the Public Ledger for December 2, 9, and 16, 1760, and suggested at the same time that Johnson "corrected and revised, if he did not write, the preliminary address to the public" (p. 204) which was printed in the first number (January 12, 1760) of the paper. Although to my knowledge no one has previously noted the fact, a much shorter notice regarding the Ledger appeared in the Universal Chronicle, and Westminster Journal [2] for January 5-12, 1760 (No. 93); and I believe, largely but not solely on the basis of similarities in thought and style, that Johnson was also the author of this piece. Since files of the Universal Chronicle are very rare,[3] and since knowledge of the context is necessary to a full understanding of the part I attribute to Johnson, I include herewith the complete text of the advertisement in which the three, one-sentence paragraphs appear.
And delivered Gratis,
Number I, of a New Paper, entitled,
The PUBLIC LEDGER,
or
Daily Register of Commerce and Intelligence;
Containing a judicious and accurate Arrangement of the most Early and Authentic News, besides many other Articles that are very essential, and even of great Importance to all those who are engaged in Trade and Commerce, or otherwise interested in Public Affairs, either Political or Literary.
Printed for W. Bristow, Publisher, next the great Toy-Shop, in St. Paul's Church Yard, London.
To the PUBLIC.
Though what is already said may be sufficient to explain so much of our Scheme as is at present necessary to be known, yet Custom has
This perhaps may be suspected of the Paper here proposed; for the Public has a Right to suspect, and to be satisfied; but the Projectors have also a Right to propose, and to be heard: Where the Benefit is reciprocal, and a Man serves others with an equal Advantage to himself, the Obligation is equal; but if he conveys more Benefit than he receives, he has Merit to plead in his Favour, and is not only entitled to Attention, but to Encouragement.
This Attention the Proprietors of the above Paper claim, and some Encouragement they hope for; as their Scheme, they apprehend, is not only new, but of a Nature more generally useful to Mankind than any Publication which has hitherto been offered: For a particular Explanation of it, however, they refer the Reader to the first Paper, which will be delivered Gratis at the Place above-mentioned.
External evidence supporting the attribution consists, briefly, of (1) the fact that a short time before January, 1760 Johnson had written a similar, one-paragraph notice "To the Public" in the advertisement (October 3, 1759) for John Newbery's World Displayed as well as the introduction (December 1, 1759) to that work;[4] and (2) the assumption that, as most writers have declared and as an examination of the advertisements suggests,[5] Newbery, the publisher of the Public Ledger, was also one of the proprietors of the Universal Chronicle, in which both the Idler and other pieces by Johnson were printed.[6] No. 92 of the Idler, for instance, appeared in the same number of the Chronicle as that in which the notice I attribute to Johnson was published.
Turning to the notice itself, I believe I detect in each of the sentences
Moreover, the striking resemblances between parts of the notice (especially the first half of the first sentence) and passages in several other pieces by Johnson, both earlier and later than 1760, afford fairly solid evidence, I think, for giving the notice a small place in the Johnsonian canon. For example, in the Introduction to the Harleian Miscellany (1744), Johnson began, "Though the Scheme . . . is so obvious, that the Title alone is sufficient to explain it . . . ." In the Proposals for the Publisher (1744), he wrote, "Such is the Design which the Publick is now solicited to favour." In the Rambler, No. 1 (1750), he remarked, "If a man could glide imperceptibly into the favour of the public and only proclaim his pretensions . . . when he is sure of not being rejected"; and in the Rambler, No. 40 (1750) he used the phrase "skill and assiduity." In the Preface to the Catalogue of the Society of Artists (1762), he declared, "The public may justly require to be inform'd of the nature and extent of every design, for which the favour of the public is openly solicited." And in the address "To the Public" concerning the Literary Magazine (1756), he wrote, in the closest parallel I have found, "There are some Practices which custom and prejudice have so unhappily influenced, that to observe or neglect them is equally censurable. The promises made by the Undertakers of any new Design, every Man thinks himself at liberty to deride, and yet every Man expects, and expects with reason, that he who solicits the Public Attention should give some account of his pretensions."[7]
Finally, in spite of the caveat about deducing the authorship of a given piece from another work whose attribution is itself uncertain, it can still be pointed out that (1) the explicit reference at the end of the notice to the "particular Explanation" which Mr. McAdam attributes (rightly, I think), in whole or part, to Johnson, provides at least slight evidence for Johnson's authorship of the notice; that (2) the concluding words of the "preliminary address"—"a clear Title to the Favour and Esteem of the Public, which is what we are most sollicitous to deserve"[8]—are somewhat similar to the opening of the first sentence in the notice; and that (3) the text of the
Notes
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.
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.
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