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Identifying Johnson's contribution to the translations and publications of Crousaz's two attacks on Pope's Essay on Man has been difficult. James Boswell reports in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786) that on 19 August 1773 when visiting St. Andrews, Johnson, in speaking of how quickly he could compose, mentioned that he had "written six sheets in a day of translation from the French."[6] Later, on 3 June 1781, Boswell records in his

journal that Johnson "Told us at night he had once written six sheets in one day: forty-eight quarto pages of translation of Crousaz on Pope, published by itself in 1740 or 1741."[7] If this is exactly what Johnson said, the confusion about the role Johnson may have had in a translation of Crousaz was introduced for Boswell by his source. One problem is the publication date for the translation: all copies of the Commentary are dated either 1739 or 1742, although the latter was issued in late 1741. A second problem is the format: the Commentary is not a quarto but a duodecimo. A third problem, although less obvious, is the amount of translation Johnson performed in one day. The text of the volume fills fourteen and a half sheets. Translating six sheets, 144 duodecimo pages of prose and verse, or about forty-two percent of the total work, would seem to be beyond the reach of even Johnson. Perhaps two sheets or forty-eight duodecimo pages is closer to the truth.[8]

By the time Boswell came to write the Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791) he was convinced that the Examination had been translated by Elizabeth Carter but apparently was unaware of the Commentary. In spite of the confused account Boswell received from Johnson, he gathers three pieces of evidence in the Life to prove that Johnson did not translate Crousaz and leaves the impression that the issue has been settled. After reprinting Johnson's letter to Cave of 21 or 22 November 1738 suggesting that "the Examen

should be pushed forward with the utmost expedition," Boswell comments, "But although he corresponded with Mr. Cave concerning a translation of Crousaz's Examen of Pope's Essay on Man, and gave advice for its success, I was long ago convinced by a perusal of the Preface, that this translation was erroneously ascribed to him."[9] As early as 12 March 1786 Boswell had written to Edmond Malone that Dr. Richard Palmer "shewed me the translation of Crousaz which has been ascribed to Dr. Johnson; But which is certainly not his. I agree with you that the translation itself is not a test. But the Preface is."[10] Boswell's statement in the Life, it should be noted, is a hit at Sir John Hawkins who, in his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787), attributes the Examination to Johnson, citing the letter of 21 or 22 November as evidence (Hawkins, Life, 66-67). As will be seen below, Boswell's attempt to keep as much distance as possible between his biography and that of Hawkins prevented him from using valuable information that Hawkins offered. In any case, Boswell's first piece of evidence, based on a recognition of Johnson's style, is also faulty, for the Preface is only a translation from Crousaz; Johnson's translation of the Commentaire would undoubtedly be rejected on the same stylistic grounds.

With his second and third pieces of evidence, Boswell is on safe ground. He first cites a manuscript in the British Museum: "Elisæ Carteræ. S.P.D. Thomas Birch. Versionem tuam Examinis Crousaziani jam perlegi. Summam styli et elegantian, et in re difficillimâ proprietatem, admiratus, Dabam Novemb. 27° 1738."[11] Then he says, "Indeed Mrs. Carter has lately acknowledged to Mr. Seward, that she was the translator of the 'Examen.'"[12] Boswell, apparently unaware of the Commentary, but aware that the Examination had been translated by Elizabeth Carter, was at a stand. When he arrived at 3 June 1781 in the Life he revised his journal account to read: "He told us, that he had in one day written six sheets of a translation from the French," bringing it into accord with his earlier published account in the Tour, in which he also omits any reference to Crousaz (Life, 4:127).

Boswell, Hawkins, and other early biographers had received no help from Johnson on his role as translator of Crousaz. In the Life of Pope there is no indication that Johnson has any connection with a work by Crousaz: "It was

first turned into French prose, and afterwards by Resnel into verse. Both translations fell into the hands of Crousaz, who first, when he had the version in prose, wrote a general censure, and afterwards reprinted Resnel's version with particular remarks upon every paragraph."[13] Nevertheless the Commentary was attributed to Johnson shortly after his death, in plenty of time to allow Hawkins and Boswell to avoid omitting the attribution.[14]

The earliest attribution in print of a translation of Crousaz to Johnson seems to be that in "An Account of the Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Including Some Incidents of His Life" in the European Magazine for January 1785: "In November [1738], he is believed to have published a translation of An Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man, by M. Crousaz, Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at Lausanne, 12mo. whose Commentary on Pope's Principles of Morality, or Essay on Man, we can ascribe to him with confidence" (Early Biographies, 46). For some reason Boswell appears not to have consulted this work, or at least not this portion of it, even though it may have been written by Isaac Reed or George Steevens, or both.[15] In his haste to condemn Hawkins for attributing the Examination to Johnson, Boswell fails to note that Hawkins follows Johnson's account by mentioning a second work by Crousaz:

Further clues in Johnson's own writings suggested the existence of not one but two attacks by Crousaz on Pope's Essay on Man. The most important

hint is Johnson's letter of 21 or 22 November to Cave. The letter begins: "I am pretty much of your Opinion, that the Commentary cannot be prosecuted with any appearance of success," and after suggesting to Cave an advertisement for the Examen to forestall a rival, Johnson adds: "It will above all be necessary to take notice that it is a thing distinct from the Commentary." Hawkins, even though he misses the full significance of the sentence, recognizes that there are two works, whereas Boswell apparently does not. Had Boswell, for example, looked carefully at the Examination when he read the Preface, he would have noticed on the verso of the last leaf a full-page advertisement for the forthcoming Commentary. Had he actually read carefully the two-part essay in the 1743 Gentleman's Magazine that he attributed to Johnson on the basis of internal evidence, "'Considerations on the Dispute between Crousaz and Warburton, on Pope's Essay on Man,' in which, while he defends Crousaz, he shews an admirable metaphysical acuteness and temperance in controversy," Boswell would have discovered that the English translation of the Commentaire is mentioned explicitly and nearly half of the essay consists of quotations from it. In fact, the second installment has as its title: "Specimens of M. Crousaz's Sentiments from the English Translation of his Commentary on Mr Pope's Essay on Man, continued from p. 152." The running head reads "Sentiments from M. Crousaz's Commentary, &c."[16] Hawkins, who first attributed the essay to Johnson, had he been taken more seriously by Boswell, would have alerted Boswell to the real nature of the essay, although not to Johnson's role in the Commentary. Johnson, Hawkins suggests, decided to become a moderator between Crousaz's attacks on the Essay on Man in his Examination and Commentary on one side and William Warburton's defence in his Vindication, as it has come to be known,[17] on the other, "but proceeded no farther than to state the sentiments of Mr. Crousaz respecting the poem, from a seeming conviction that he was discussing an uninteresting question."[18] Another clue, admittedly difficult to locate, is a quotation from Johnson's Commentary in his Dictionary under "Consoler."

John Wilson Croker and other editors of Boswell's Life made ingenious attempts to explain the 21 or 22 November 1738 letter, but it was not until L. F. Powell undertook his massive revision of G. B. Hill's edition of the Life that the attribution to Johnson of the Commentary was finally resolved. True, Whitwell Elwin in his 1871 introduction to the Essay on Man in The Works of Alexander Pope quoted a sentence from Johnson's long footnote on the ruling passion: "'Every Observer,' says Johnson, 'has remarked, that in many men the love of pleasure is the ruling passion of their youth, and the love of money that of their advanced years.'" Elwin's footnote reads: "Crousaz's Commentary on Pope's Essay, translated by Johnson, p. 109."[19] But this reference, and an earlier footnote identifying Johnson as the translator, were overlooked by Johnsonians. Also ignored was a reference in William John Courthope's 1889 The Life of Alexander Pope, included as part of the same edition of The Works of Alexander Pope, that "Johnson was himself engaged with Crousaz' Commentary on the Abbé du Resnel's translation of the 'Essay on Man,' but he temporarily abandoned it in deference to the opinion of his publisher, Cave."[20] Powell, then, unaware of the earlier attributions of the Commentary to Johnson by Pope scholars, made an independent attribution in 1934.[21] Powell had seen only the 1742 issue of the Commentary and gave a quasi-facsimile description of the title page. Allen T. Hazen, while preparing an exhibition of Johnson books and manuscripts, which opened at Yale University on 8 November 1935, identified what to date is the unique copy of the 1739 issue. The discovery was reported initially by Hazen in the Times Literary Supplement for 2 November 1935 with a fuller account and a reproduction of the title page the following January in an essay co-authored with E. L. McAdam, Jr., in the Yale University Library Gazette.[22]