_Two undated letters about printing the Dictionary_.[In the possession
of Mr. John Waller, 2, Artesian Road, Westbourne Grove.]
'DEAR SIR,
'I must desire you to add to your other civilities this one, to go to
Mr. Millar and represent to him the manner of going on, and inform him
that I know not how to manage. I pay three and twenty shillings a week
to my assistants, in each instance having much assistance from them,
but they tell me they shall be able to pull better in method, as indeed
I intend they shall. The Point is to get two Guineas.
'Sir, Your humble Servant,
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
(Address on back.) 'To Mr. Strahan.'
'SIR,
'I have often suspected that it is as you say, and have told Mr. Dodsley
of it. It proceeds from the haste of the amanuensis to get to the end
of his day's work. I have desired the passages to be clipped close, and
then perhaps for two or three leaves it is done. But since poor Stuart's
time I could never get that part of the work into regularity, and
perhaps never shall. I will try to take some more care but can promise
nothing; when I am told there is a sheet or two I order it away. You
will find it sometimes close; when I make up any myself, which never
happens but when I have nobody with me, I generally clip it close, but
one cannot always be on the watch.
'I am Sir, Your most, &c.
'SAM. JOHNSON.'
These letters refer to the printing of the _Dictionary_, of which
Dodsley and Millar were two among the proprietors, and Strahan the
printer. Francis Stuart or Stewart was one of Johnson's amanuenses
(_ante_, i. 187). In 1779 Johnson paid his sister a guinea for an old
pocket-book of her brother's (_ante_, iii. 418), and wrote on April
8,1780 (_ante_, iii. 421):--'The memory of her brother is yet fresh
in my mind; he was an ingenious and worthy man.' In February 1784 he
gave her another guinea for a letter relating to himself that he had
found in the pocket-book (_ante_, iv. 262). A writer in the _Gent. Mag._
for 1799, p. 1171, who had been employed in Strahan's printing-works,
says that 'Stewart was useful to Johnson in the explanation of low cant
phrases; all words relating to gambling and card-playing, such as
_All-Fours_, _Catch-honours_ [not in Johnson's Dictionary], _Cribbage_
[merely defined as _A game at cards_], were said to be Stewart's
corrected by the Doctor.' He adds that after the printing had gone
on some time 'the proprietors of the _Dictionary_ paid Johnson through
Mr. Strahan at the rate of a guinea for every sheet of MS. copy delivered.
The copy was written upon quarto post, and in two columns each page.
Johnson wrote in his own hand the words and their explanation, and
generally two or three words in each column, leaving a space between
each for the authorities, which were pasted on as they were collected
by the different amanuenses employed: and in this mode the MS. was so
regular that the sheets of MS. which made a sheet of print could be
very exactly ascertained.' The same writer states that Stewart in a
night ramble in Edinburgh with some of his drinking companions 'met with
the mob conducting Captain Porteous to be hanged; they were next day
examined about it before the Town Council, when, as Stewart used to say,
"we were found to be too drunk to have any hand in the business." He
gave an accurate account of it in the Edinburgh Magazine of that time.'