University of Virginia Library

Edward Cave, the founder in 1731 of the Gentleman's Magazine, would have had a larger fortune, Samuel Johnson observed, "had he not rashly and wantonly impaired it by innumerable projects, of which I know not that ever one succeeded."[1] Johnson's extensive involvement in two of Cave's unsuccessful projects, the translation from the French of Pierre François Le Courayer's edition of Father Paul Sarpi's History of the Council of Trent and Jean Pierre de Crousaz's A Commentary on Mr. Pope's Principles of Morality or Essay on Man, is well known. Unknown, however, until discovered by Thomas Kaminski, is that Johnson was involved in another of Cave's publication failures, a translation from the French of Abbé Antoine François Prévost D'Exiles's novel, Memoirs et aventures d'un homme de qualité (1728-31).[2] Entitled Memoirs of a Man of Quality, the first volume of the anonymous translation was published 25 April 1738, "Printed and sold by J. Wilford," and the second volume, "Printed for E. Cave," in November 1741, but dated "1742" on the title page.[3] This essay is an examination of the extent of Johnson's contribution to the Memoirs and its textual history.

What is the extent of Johnson's involvement in Cave's Memoirs of a Man of Quality? He was not responsible for the translation of the first volume of the novel since its printing must have been virtually complete by the time Johnson began visiting St. John's Gate, Cave's office and the home of the Gentleman's Magazine. "Ad Urbanum," Johnson's first contribution to

Cave's popular magazine, had appeared in March 1738. The favorable reception this poem received opened the way for Johnson to approach Cave about the publication of London, his imitation of Juvenal's third satire, and during April and early May he visited Cave to complete negotiations. Cave was taciturn, but "if at any time he was inclined to begin the discourse," Sir John Hawkins observes, "it was generally by putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the press, into the hand of his visitor, and asking his opinion of it."[4] When Johnson visited St. John's Gate it appears not to have been a leaf of the magazine Cave thrust into his hand, however, but part of the first volume of his forthcoming Memoirs of a Man of Quality. Either on his own initiative or at the request of Cave, Johnson added to a preface apparently written by the anonymous translator the eight sentences enclosed in brackets below and, perhaps, touched up the rest. If the passages in brackets are removed, the remainder makes a complete preface in a style lacking overall Johnson's characteristic force and balance. It is on the basis of style that the passage in the preface must be attributed to Johnson—Kaminski calls the style "strikingly Johnsonian" and J. D. Fleeman "certainly persuasively SJ's"—as no external evidence appears to have survived.[5]

The first draft of the preface must have been written by the translator. He begins the English translation of the Memoirs proper with the second paragraph of the French, omitting the first paragraph, except for the quotation from Ovid, which he retains for his preface. The preface, it should be noted, does not have a direct counterpart in the French edition, which has instead an "Avis de l'Editeur," written by Prévost to maintain the fiction that "Cet Ouvrage me tomba, l'automne passé, entre les mains, dans un voiage que je fis à l' Abbaye de . . . où l'Auteur s'est retire."[6] Prévost's "Avis" was omitted in Cave's edition, undoubtedly because the first draft of the preface incorporates many of its ideas on fate, courage, and virtue. Johnson, in a less specific way, also takes some cues for his remarks from Prévost.[7] The preface is here printed from the first edition of volume one (1738), with three emendations from the second edition (1742).[8]