idge in 1812, and should surely have been
placed in some safe author's museum.

The most remarkable of Johnson's performances as a hack writer deserves
a brief notice. He was one of the first of reporters. Cave published
such reports of the debates in Parliament as were then allowed by the
jealousy of the Legislature, under the title of _The Senate of
Lilliput_. Johnson was the author of the debates from Nov. 1740 to
February 1742. Persons were employed to attend in the two Houses, who
brought home notes of the speeches, which were then put into shape by
Johnson. Long afterwards, at a dinner at Foote's, Francis (the father of
Junius) mentioned a speech of Pitt's as the best he had ever read, and
superior to anything in Demosthenes. Hereupon Johnson replied, "I wrote
that speech in a garret in Exeter Street." When the company applauded
not only his eloquence but his impartiality, Johnson replied, "That is
not quite true; I saved appearances tolerably well, but I took care that
the Whig dogs should not have the best of it." The speeches passed for a
time as accurate; though, in truth, it has been proved and it is easy to
observe, that they are, in fact, very vague reflections of the original.
The editors of Chesterfield's Works published two of the speeches, and,
to Johnson's considerable amusement, declared that one of them resembled
Demosthenes and the other Cicero. It is plain enough to the modern
reader that, if so, both of the ancient orators must have written true
Johnsonese; and, in fact, the style of the true author is often as
plainly marked in many of these compositions as in the _Rambler_ or
_Rasselas_. For this deception, such as it was, Johnson expressed
penitence at the end of his life, though he said that he had ceased to
write when he found that they were taken as genuine. He would not be
"accessory to the propagation of falsehood."

Another of Johnson's works which appeared in 1744 requires notice both
for its intrinsic merit, and its autobiographical interest. The most
remarkable of his Grub-Street companions was the Richard Savage already
mentioned. Johnson's life of him written soon after his death is one of
his most forcible performances, and the best extant illustration of the
life of the struggling authors of the time. Savage claimed to be the
illegitimate son of the Countess of Macclesfield, who was divorced from
her husband in the year of his birth on account of her connexion with
his supposed fa