_Samuel Johnson--Gilbert Wakefield._--Whoever has had much to do with the
press will sympathise with MR. CHARLES KNIGHT in all that he has stated
("NOTES AND QUERIES," Vol. iii., p. 62.) respecting the accidental--but not
at first discovered--substitution of _modern_ for _moderate_. If that word
_modern_ had not been detected till it was too late for an explanation on
authority, what strange conjectures would have been the consequence!
Happily, MR. KNIGHT was at hand to remove that stumbling-block.
I rather fancy that I can rescue Samuel Johnson from the fangs of Gilbert
Wakefield, by the supposition of an error of the press. In 1786, Wakefield
published an edition of Gray's _Poems_, with notes; and in the last note on
Gray's "Ode on the Death of a Cat," he thus animadverts on Dr. Johnson:--
Our critic exposes himself to reproof from the manner in which he has
conveyed his severe remark: _show a rhyme is sometimes made_. The
omission of the relative, a too common practice with our writers, is an
impropriety of the grossest kind: and which _neither gods or men_, as
one expresses himself, nor any language under heaven, can endure."