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Notes
"An Account of the Life of the late Mr Edward Cave," Gentleman's Magazine, 24 (February 1754), 57.
The first volume was announced in the Daily Advertiser on 25 April 1738; it also appeared as the first item in the Gentleman's Magazine register of books for April 1738 (8: 224). The second volume was listed in the November 1741 Gentleman's Magazine (11:614). John Wilford was one of the founders of the Gentleman's Magazine's chief rival, the London Magazine, and until his bankruptcy in 1735, he owned a one-fifth share and managed another one-fifth share for the magazine's printer, Charles Ackers. See D. F. McKenzie and J. C. Ross, eds., A Ledger of Charles Ackers Printer of the London Magazine, Oxford Bibliographical Society Publications, n.s. 15 (Oxford, 1968), 5-9. Cave used Wilford as a trade publisher from September 1737 until 1741. For Cave's relationship with John Wilford, see A. D. Barker, "Edward Cave, Samuel Johnson, and the Gentleman's Magazine" (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1981), 68-71. The evidence of the type ornaments indicates that the volumes were printed by Cave, or perhaps by Thomas Gardner to whom Cave gave some of his extra printing (Barker, 68 and Appendix K).
Kaminski, 198, and Fleeman's forthcoming bibliography of the writings of Samuel Johnson. There has been a continuous tradition of attributions of works to Johnson on the basis of style since his own lifetime. When James Boswell came to compile his list of attributions for his Life of Samuel Johnson which, rightly or wrongly, has served as the basic guide to Johnson's canon, his work was greatly assisted by previously published accounts. See The Early Biographies of Samuel Johnson, ed. O M Brack, Jr. and Robert E. Kelley (1974), passim. For an overview of attributions of works to Johnson from the beginnings until 1962, see Donald J. Greene, "The Development of the Johnsonian Canon," in Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature: Essays in Honor of Alan Dugald McKillop, ed. Carroll Camden (1963), 407-427.
The text is taken from the first edition and sight collated with the second edition; both copies are in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Copies of the first edition in the British Library and the Huntington Library and copies of the second edition in the British Library, Beinecke Library, Yale University, and the Loren and Frances Rothschild Collection, Los Angeles, have also been bibliographically examined and the prefaces sight collated. No variation was discovered within copies of each edition of the preface.
The letter, which fills a column and a half, has as a running head: "Character of the Memoirs of a Man of Quality." The announcement in the General Evening Post (31 May-3 June) that the May 1740 issue of the Gentleman's Magazine had been published 2 June lists the table of contents, which includes "Character of the Memoirs of a Man of Quality." I have been unable to locate a copy of the proposals, and a search of the April and May 1740 issues of the following newspapers has failed to turn up an advertisement for them: Daily Gazetteer, Daily Post, General Evening Post, London Daily Post and General Advertiser, London Evening Post, and London Gazette. Also, no mention of a new translation is made in the London Magazine, the Gentleman's Magazine's chief rival.
A full list of variants appears at the end of the letter, published as "Character of the Memoirs of a Man of Quality. 1740" in The Shorter Prose Writings of Samuel Johnson, ed. O M Brack, Jr. (New York: AMS Press, 1994).
In fact, both volumes are duodecimos in half sheets. A full description is forthcoming in J. D. Fleeman's bibliography of the writings of Samuel Johnson.
Johnson's editorial contributions to the Gentleman's Magazine are canvassed by Kaminski and many of the items will appear in The Shorter Prose Writings of Samuel Johnson.
Kaminski, 61-82; Hawkins, Life, 22. Johnson's translation of Crousaz's Commentary would probably have gone unrecognized had he not added footnotes. Any attempt to identify a work as Johnson's on the basis of translation technique is fraught with difficulties. Most of his techniques are those used by other professional writers, such as Tobias Smollett. For a discussion of some of the problems in identifying Johnson as a translator, see O M Brack, Jr., and Thomas Kaminski, "Johnson, James, and the Medicinal Dictionary," Modern Philology 81 (1984), 378-400.
The three variants are given in the notes to the preface. Although the stylistic revisions cannot be attributed to Johnson with certainty, this is the kind of editorial tinkering he was doing on the lives of Blake and Drake about this time. See O M Brack, Jr., "The Gentleman's Magazine, Concealed Printing, and the Text of Samuel Johnson's Lives of Admiral Robert Blake and Sir Francis Drake," Studies in Bibliography, 40 (1987), 140-146.
The Dublin News-Letter of 27 February—2 March 1741/42 advertised as "Just Published. The Translation of the First French Volume of the Memoirs and Adventures of the Marquis de Bretagne and Duke d'Harcourt." A new "French Volume" was advertised at regular intervals and then the Dublin News-Letter for 13-17 July 1742 announced the publication of "three volumes, Price 9s." I am grateful to Laurence and Jonathan Avery for bibliographically examining the 1741 Dublin edition in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library and supplying me with photocopies of relevant pages.
In one instance, the change of "observe" to "perceive," Erskine restores a reading found in the preface but not in the letter. This is probably a coincidence since all other readings which appear only in the letter are followed. The variant readings between the preface and the letter are included in the Shorter Prose Writings of Samuel Johnson. Although beyond the scope of this study, it would be interesting to know if Erskine used Cave's edition to assist him in making his translation.
Tobias Smollett includes the accounts written for the proposals for his Complete History of England, Continuation of the Complete History of England, and the Present State of All Nations as introductions to these works. See O M Brack, Jr., "Tobias Smollett Puffs his Histories," in Writers, Books, and Trade, ed. O M Brack, Jr. (New York: AMS Press, 1993), 267-288.
London Evening Post, 11-13 November 1742, "Beautifully printed in three pocket volumes, 12mo." It was also listed in the catalogue of new books in the London Magazine for November 1742 (11:572). It was advertised in the London Evening Post for 3-5 March 1743 as "Beautifully printed in Three Volumes Twelves . . . Printed for M. Cooper." Thomas Cooper died 9 February 1743 and his widow, Mary, had taken over the business. See Michael Treadwell, "London Trade Publishers 1675-1750," Library, 6th ser., 4 (1982), 111. What seems to be the same edition is listed as the first item under the heading "Lately Publish'd, Printed for C. Hitch, at the Red-Lion in Pater-noster-Row" in the General Advertiser for 22, 23, 24 April 1747. For purposes of collating the texts, I have used the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. I have also bibliographically examined the copies in the British Library and the Huntington Library.
This is the only edition sold in numbers listed by R. M. Wiles in Serial Publication in England Before 1750 (1957), 342. Wiles identifies the Collyer edition as identical to Cave's.
The work appears as item 23 in an undated advertisement, "Books Printed for E. Cave at St. John's Gate," bound at the end of A General Index to the First Twenty Volumes of the Gentleman's Magazine (London, 1753) in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Although the advertisement is a separately printed gathering, it could not have been printed earlier than 1753, as it advertises the third edition of The Entire Works of Dr. Thomas Sydenham, to which Johnson's life was prefixed, published that year.
It was also the seventh item in the register of books in the May 1747 issue of the Gentleman's Magazine (17:252). I have examined the copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles. A facsimile of the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, appears in "The Flowering of the Novel Series" of Garland Publishing (1975).
Although this was the "second" edition published in Dublin, it was the "third" edition of the Erskine translation, as one had been published in London. I have examined the British Library copy, available in the ESTC microfilm series.
S. Roscoe, John Newbery and His Successors, 1740-1814. A Bibliography (Wormley, Herts.: Five Owls Press, 1973), A426. I have examined the British Library copy, available in the ESTC microfilm series. The query on Oliver Goldsmith as translator in this copy should be ignored. Goldsmith was born 10 November 1728 and would have been age nine when the first volume appeared and thirteen when the second appeared.
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