nt to continue it. The whole
extent of his assistance to Cave is not known. The Lives of Paul Sarpi,
Boerhaave, Admirals Drake and Blake, Barretier, Burman, Sydenham, and
Roscommon, with the Essay on Epitaphs, and an Essay on the Account of
the Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough, were certainly contributed to
his Miscellany by Johnson. Two tracts, the one a Vindication of the
Licenser of the Stage from the Aspersions of Brooke, Author of Gustavus
Vasa; the other, Marmor Norfolciense, a pamphlet levelled against Sir
Robert Walpole and the Hanoverian succession, were published by him,
separately, in 1739.

For his version of Sarpi's History, he had received from Cave, before
the 21st of April in this year, fifty pounds, and some sheets of it had
been committed to the press, when, unfortunately, the design was
stopped, in consequence of proposals appearing for a translation of the
same book, by another person of the same name as our author, who was
curate of St. Martin's in the Fields, and patronized by Dr. Pearce, the
editor of Longinus. Warburton [3] afterwards expressed a wish that
Johnson would give the original on one side, and his translation on the
other. His next engagement was to draw up an account of the printed
books in the Earl of Oxford's library, for Osborne, the bookseller, who
had purchased them for thirteen thousand pounds. Such was the petulant
impatience of Osborne, during the progress of this irksome task, that
Johnson was once irritated so far as to beat him.

In May, 1738, appeared his "London," imitated from the Third Satire of
Juvenal, for which he got ten guineas from Dodsley. The excellence of
this poem was so immediately perceived, that it reached a second edition
in the course of a week. Pope having made some ineffectual inquiries
concerning the author, from Mr. Richardson, the son of the painter,
observed that he would soon be _deterre_. In the August of 1739, we find
him so far known to Pope, that at his intercession, Earl Gower applied
to a friend of Swift to assist in procuring from the University the
degree of Master of Arts, that he might be enabled to become a candidate
for the mastership of a school then vacant; the application was without
success.

His own wants, however pressing, did not hinder him from assisting his
mother, who had lost her other son. A letter to Mr. Levett, of
Lichfield, on the subject of a debt, for which he makes himself
responsible on her account, affords so