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Notes
Each number of the Gentleman's Magazine was normally issued in seven half sheets, or 56 pages. Some rough arithmetic suggests that there might be as many as 382,000 gatherings (175 x 312 x 7).
Todd has reported his methods for distinguishing printings of periodicals in several essays. See "The Printing of Eighteenth-Century Periodicals: With notes on The Examiner and The World," Library, 5th ser., 10 (1955), 49-54 and "Early Editions of The Tatler," Studies in Bibliography, 15 (1962), 121-133.
The World Encompassed was first published in 1628, but Johnson used an edition reprinted, with three other early accounts of Drake's voyages, for Nicholas Bourne in 1652-1653. For a detailed discussion of Johnson's use of these sources, see O M Brack, Jr., "The Making of the Life of Drake" (forthcoming).
See, for example, Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, 2nd ed. (1598-1600), 3: 735 and Camden's Annals (1635), p. 222.
The 1767 volume was reissued by F. Newbery with a cancel-title in 1769 and 1775, and then reprinted in 1777. Given the St. John's Gate address, one would like to think that the substantive changes in the 1767 edition were made by Johnson, or with his authority. But Clarence Tracy's comments on the editorial work in the 1767 Life of Savage apply here: "Many of the changes . . . like the removal of a hypergrammatical 'If' . . . might have been made by any competent compositor, others are 'improvements' that Johnson probably would not have relished, and a few downright blunders." See his edition of the Life of Savage (1971), p. xxxi.
For purposes of comparison I have also examined carefully the following copies: AzTeS, CLSU, CtY (Beinecke, Sterling copy 2), TxHR, British Library (North Library), Bodleian (A7.5010), Herman W. Liebert. I have searched numerous copies for another example of the second printing of the Life of Blake and would welcome reports.
Mechanic Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing, ed. Herbert Davis and Harry Carter (1962), pp. 332-333.
Todd fails to note these abbreviations which provide a small clue to later printings. At best they indicate that an early number with no abbreviations probably was not printed before mid-1741 but it cannot be dated exactly without the additional evidence provided by Todd. It is worth noting that the two abbreviations in the January 1741 installment of the Life of Drake are expanded in the second printing.
In a copy of the pamphlet now in the Glasgow University Library the word "whole" is inserted in Johnson's handwriting in the clause "he spent whole days among his books" (p. 26, 1. 2). See J. D. Fleeman, A Preliminary Handlist of Copies of Books Associated with Dr. Samuel Johnson (1984), no. 102. See also nos. 121 and 140.
Although the Life of Drake is based primarily on the four pamphlets printed for Nicholas Bourne, Johnson examines other sources for Drake's early life and corroborates information when he is suspicious of his principal source. In the Life of Blake, as in the lives of Paul Sarpi, Herman Boerhaave, Peter Burman, and Thomas Sydenham, he was content to draw upon one source, filling it out with his own commentary.
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