Yale Digital Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson

Table of Contents

PROPOSALS For Printing every Fortnight, (Price Sixpence) THE PUBLISHER: CONTAINING MISCELLANIES In PROSE and VERSE. Collected by J. CROKATT, Bookseller.

- Export Citation
- Export Annotation

By Johnson, Samuel

Samuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand

Image view

Print
Save
Share
Cite

Translation

PROPOSALS FOR PRINTING THE PUBLISHER WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE DESIGN (1744)

[Editorial Introduction]

At a meeting of the Johnson Club in Gough Square on 13 December 1929, R. W. Chapman announced the discovery of a work which he attributed to Johnson—“An Account of the Design” in a folio set of proposals, dated 24 September 1744, for a new periodical to be entitled The Publisher: containing Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. Collected by J. Crokatt, Bookseller. No external evidence for the attribution has yet been discovered, but Johnson certainly knew Crokatt. James’s Medicinal Dictionary was printed by Thomas Osborne and James Crokatt, who together formed the Society of Booksellers for the Promotion of Learning. The publisher of the Publisher was Mary Cooper, who was the principal trade publisher (or distributor) for Robert Dodsley, whom Johnson called his “patron.” Johnson and Crokatt shared a mutual acquaintance with Thomas Birch. Crokatt himself seems to have sent a copy of the proposals to Birch on 7 November 1744.1 Later, 11 March 1748, Crokatt wrote to Birch from Ludgate debtors’ prison.2 In 1751 Johnson wrote to the Daily Advertiser seeking relief for Crokatt’s poverty (see below, p. 220).

Johnson’s connection to Crokatt provides some, admittedly weak, external evidence for the attribution of this work, but the internal evidence is stronger. R. W. Chapman made the case in the London Mercury (XXI [March 1930], 439–41), maintaining that the style is unmistakably Johnson’s, and the arguments for collecting and publishing “fugitive pieces” very similar to those in his proposals for the Harleian Miscellany (pp. 90–97 above). Chapman gave the text of “An Account” in the London Mercury article, and he printed a facsimile of the proposals (1930) from the unique copy now in the Rothschild Collection, Trinity College, Cambridge.

Hazen (pp. 193–95) discusses the work and provides a collation of the Publisher (in some copies of which “An Account” appears as a preface), though he does not reprint the text. Four numbers of the Publisher, each of forty-four octavo pages, were published between December 1744 and

Page 115

March 1745 (“Prospectuses,” p. 223). As Johnson promised, they contain great “variety,” ranging from an account of Anne Boleyn’s creation as Marchioness of Pembroke (printed from a manuscript in the Bodleian Library), to a long narrative of the “Revolution of the Empire of the Great Mogol,” to contemporary verse, such as a poem of consolation to Martha Blount on the death of Pope.3 We observe the original spacing and capitalization in our representation of the proposals proper.

PROPOSALS

For Printing every Fortnight, (Price Sixpence)

THE PUBLISHER:

CONTAINING MISCELLANIES

In PROSE and VERSE.

Collected by J. CROKATT, Bookseller.

An Account of the Design.

The learned Morhoff was particularly careful to treasure up in his literary collections small volumes and single tracts, because he considered them as more subject to accidents than bulky productions; and knew, that if he neglected the first opportunity of preserving them, they could never after be recovered.1

This care was undoubtedly reasonable, but the interest of

Page 116

learning demands that it should be farther extended, and that not only those pieces should be preserved that have been made public, but that some method should be found, of facilitating the publication of those which are hidden from the world—because they are too small to appear single; of cultivating those flowers of literature which, however beautiful and fragrant, are often trampled and destroyed without use and without pleasure, or choaked by brambles and by weeds of more exuberant growth, but of less value.

The necessity of gaining the attention of mankind by outward appearance, an advantage often preferred to intrinsic excellence, has doubtless obliged many to write much, who would have been more ambitious of the praise of writing well. They found it necessary to exchange solidity for extension, and thought it of more importance to fill the eye than the understanding.

To take away this unpleasing compulsion, and to invite those to communicate their discoveries, whose curiosity has engaged them in minute enquiries, whose vivacity hurries them from one subject to another, without allowing time for diffuse treatises, or whose severity of reason confines them within the narrow bounds of unembellished arguments, it is proposed to open a receptacle for minute performances, by publishing at stated periods a small pamphlet, consisting of miscellaneous pieces, to which all the learned and curious are invited to contribute, in which young and timorous writers may try their fortune with secrecy, and those whose character restrains them from an open persuit of lighter amusements, may indulge their inclinations without danger of reproach.

Some collections of the same kind have been formerly attempted, which seem to have miscarried, not because they were useless or disapproved, but because the compilers attempted to raise their fabric on too small a basis; because they regarded only those parts of learning in which themselves excelled, and refused admission to such correspondents as appeared to persue different studies. By rejecting therefore such materials as were offered, they were soon obliged to desist from their design.

Page 117

But as we have the advantage of their experience, we shall at least take care not to fail by the same error, and if our collections want variety, they will not want it by our fault; for we set no limits to our scheme, but those of decency and virtue.

Quicquid agunt homines—nostri est farrago Libelli.2

Every species of knowledge, upon which the human attention is employed, every subject that has at any time been thought worthy of discussion will be admitted by us; we shall neither deny a place to politics, nor criticism, nor philosophy, nor history; the antiquary may here treasure up his discoveries of forgotten customs, and the philologist his explanations of dark passages, and his etymologies of doubtful words; the chemist may reveal new analyses of minerals, and the astronomer mark out the courses of new discovered stars.

Nor shall an austere adherence to scientific learning fright the gay or the polite from the perusal of our pamphlet, in which wit and humour shall likewise find a place; nor shall we think ourselves less indebted to those writers who shall make us instrumental to the suppression of a modish vice, or reputable folly, than to those who shall communicate new laws of motion, or definitions of matter.

Such is the design which the publick is now solicited to favour, and which may be hop’d to obtain some regard, not only by its apparent usefulness, but also by the circumstances of him by whom it is undertaken; who having impaired his fortune in the promotion of literature, and found by experience that a great book is a great evil,3 is now endeavouring to retrieve, by a periodical pamphlet, those losses which he has suffered by expensive volumes.4

Page 118

Conditions.

I. That each pamphlet shall contain three sheets, printed elegantly in octavo, price sixpence, to be continued every fortnight. The first number to be published in November next.

II. The numbers, as published, shall be sent by the editor to gentlemen’s abode, that will please to leave their directions at the following coffee-houses, where books are kept for that purpose. Parcels and letters directed to him (post paid) will be received, and letters duly answered, viz. Batson’s, Grigsby’s, and Marine, near the Royal Exchange; Half-Moon in Cheapside; Nando’s and George’s near Temple-Bar; Exchequer, Westminster-Hall Gate; Will’s in Buckingham-Court near the Admiralty-Office;5 Cocoa-Tree, Pall-Mall; White’s, St. James’s Street; The Mount, in Grosvenor Street; Bedford Arms near the Theatre, Covent-Garden; St. Luke’s near the Church, Old-Street;6 Seagoe’s against Furnival’s Inn in Holbourn; Matthew’s and Shakeshaft’s Gill-Houses in Leaden-Hall Market.7

N.B. Booksellers in town or country, who are or may be possess’d of minute pieces, too small for a pamphlet, shall receive a reasonable consideration for them, according to their bulk.8

Page 119

Editorial Notes

1 British Library MS Add 4303, f. 199.

2 Ibid., 201.

3 A. D. Barker thinks SJ wrote the preface to the GM for 1744 in which there is a reference to the Publisher as “a new literary undertaking by several good hands, of which we shall not fail, from time to time, to give specimens in our Magazine” (p. 337).

1 Daniel Georg Morhof (1639–91), German scholar, author of Unterricht von der Teutschen Sprache und Poesie (1682) and the encyclopedic Polyhistor, sive de auctorum notitia et rerum commentarii (1688–1708), which is cited often in the Harleian Catalogue. He himself is said in the Catalogue, in Latin, to have been “expert in many languages and many arts and to have achieved a great name through his many writings in both verse and prose” (Vol. II: item no. 15733). We have not located the specific passage to which SJ refers, but in the Prolegomena of the Polyhistor of 1714 (p. 3), there is attention to work “fugitivo & desultorio,” just the kind of “fugitive” works that SJ means here and in the introduction to the Harleian Miscellany (p. 98 above).

2 Juvenal, Satires I.85–86: “Whatever men do . . . forms the hodge-podge of my book.” This was the epigraph for the first forty numbers of the Tatler.

3 [SJ’s note] Μέγα Βίβλιον μέγα κακόν. [Callimachus, Fragmenta incerta, no. 359; the quotation also appears in Idler 85 (Yale, II.266).]

4 In his appeal to Birch (see p. 116 above), Crokatt cited his involvement in “the Universal Hist. Genl. Dictionary [ed. Birch, 10 vols., 1734–41], Fleury’s Ecclesiastical Hist. [5 vols., 1727–32] and others.” For other titles, see below, p. 220, n. 3 and p. 221, n. 2.

5 This predates the first entry for this coffee house (no. 1546) in Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses (1963).

6 This coffee house is not in Bryant Lillywhite’s London Coffee Houses; St. Luke’s church is on Old Street in Clerkenwell.

7 Unlike the other locations, these are pubs or taverns.

8 When “An Account of the Design” was reprinted for the first number, the following note was substituted: “N.B. Gentlemen who will please to favour the editor with materials for this undertaking, shall receive any reasonable consideration for the same.” A few insignificant variants were introduced in the reprinting (see Hazen, p. 194, n. 4).

Transcription

Document Details

Document TitlePROPOSALS For Printing every Fortnight, (Price Sixpence) THE PUBLISHER: CONTAINING MISCELLANIES In PROSE and VERSE. Collected by J. CROKATT, Bookseller.

AuthorJohnson, Samuel

Creation Date1744

Publ. DateN/A

Alt. TitleN/A

Contrib. AuthorN/A

ClassificationSubject: Periodical; Subject: Pamphlet; Genre: Proposal; Genre: Preface

PrinterN/A

PublisherJames Crokatt

Publ. PlaceLondon

VolumeSamuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand

Login Required

Your subscription has expired.