The following “letter to the editor,” the opening item in the Gentleman’s Magazine for January 1739 (IX.3–4), was first attributed to Johnson by G. B. Hill in 1887 (Life, I.139n.). Although the tone is sometimes ironic, the letter represents the first of Johnson’s serious pronouncements on matters of journalistic policy. He could still enter with gusto into a battle with journalistic rivals, as the previous item and some later ones indicate, and he was certainly far from withdrawing personally from political controversy, for his two most violent pamphlet attacks on the administration, Marmor Norfolciense and A Compleat Vindication of the Licensers of the Stage, were to appear in May of the same year (Yale, X.19–73). But here we see Johnson establishing a view of the Gentleman’s Magazine as the literate, intellectual vehicle for the cultural enlightenment of the educated middle class that it was to become, a forerunner of great nineteenth-century British and American magazines. He began speaking this way about the Gentleman’s Magazine as far back as the brash letter he sent to its proprietor from Lichfield in 1734 (Letters, I.5–7). In the present letter, he congratulates Cave for reducing the space he gives to reprinting political articles from such weeklies as the Craftsman and Common Sense, thus providing more room for original contributions, as he had advised Cave to do five years earlier. He then expresses ideals of political journalism. He condemns the hack who prostitutes his pen indifferently on either side of a question for gain while praising the serious political commentator who fearlessly defends governors against slander or (more importantly) warns the governed against encroachments on their liberties by the government. He does not hide his political bias, or his sharpness, but he argues for the intellectual high ground.

His moderate counsels of impartiality and civic responsibility are not easily reconciled with Johnson’s forthcoming publication of two fiery anti-Walpolian pamphlets. Johnson, however, always aware of genre and occasion in writing, undoubtedly saw an important distinction between the long-term educational role of “the first magazine” and that of “fugitive” political pamphlets.