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  • Audiet Pugnas vitio Parentum / Rara Juventus. Hor: Young men—the few who are left after the crimes of their fathers—will hear of battles. [School and College Latin Exercises]
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© 2023
Postscript to Lauder’s Essay on Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns
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By Johnson, Samuel

Samuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand

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Postscript to Lauder’s Essay on Milton’s Use and
Imitation of the Moderns (1750)
[Editorial Introduction]
The proposed edition of Adamus Exul never appeared, although the Gentleman’s Magazine had printed the Latin text of the beginning of the second act in July and August 1747 (XVII.313–14, 365–66) and an English text of Act I in February 1749 (XIX.67–69).1 Presumably, there were not enough subscribers to support publication,2 and Lauder focused his attention on An Essay on Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns in His Paradise Lost. The work was published on 14 December 1749.3 To this pamphlet of 192 pages, Johnson contributed the postscript, as well as most of the preface, which Lauder derived from the revised proposals (presented above). Johnson did not read the Essay before writing the preface, for obvious reasons, nor before writing the postscript.4 The preface and the postscript may have come into being to fill two leaves each, to facilitate printing. Both were last-minute additions.5 The postscript alludes to the second edition of Dr. Newton’s Paradise Lost, which had just come out on 30 November. Lauder had solicited Newton’s support, and both of Newton’s editions incorporated some of Lauder’s “findings.” Although Johnson says he has not had time to read the work, he commends it for its sympathy for the only living child of the poet. On the recto of the last leaf of the postscript is an advertisement:
Subscriptions,
For the relief of
Mrs. Elizabeth Foster,
Grand-Daughter to John Milton,
Are taken in by


Page 147

Mr. Dodsley in Pall-mall
Mess. Cox and Collings, under the Royal Exchange
Mr. Cave, at St. John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, and
Mess. Payne and Bouquet, in Pater-noster-row.
Johnson continued his appeal for support of Milton’s granddaughter in a letter to the General Advertiser for 4 April 1750 (see p. 198 below) and by writing a prologue for Garrick’s benefit performance of Comus on the next day (Yale, VI.239).
Not long after Lauder’s Essay was printed, John Douglas, drawing on the earlier discoveries by John Bowle and others, exposed Lauder as a forger and a liar in Milton Vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Mr. Lauder, and Lauder himself convicted of several Forgeries, and gross Impositions on the Public (1751).6 In his contributions to the Gentleman’s Magazine, reprinted and expanded in his Essay, Lauder had, among other dishonest acts of scholarship, interpolated lines in the putative sources of the poem, taken from his fellow Scot William Hogg’s Latin translation of Paradise Lost. The evidence was immediately accepted as conclusive. Newton added a postscript to his edition, vindicating himself and condemning Lauder. Lauder’s publishers similarly hastened to distance themselves from him. In a stroke of hypocrisy worthy of Madison Avenue, however, they attempted to cut their losses with a backhanded promotion: “We therefore disclaim all Connexion with him, and shall for the future sell his Book ONLY as a Master-piece of Fraud, which the Public may be supplied with at 1 s. 6 d. stitched.”7
A new preface, with apologies and disclaimers, dated 1 December, signed by the booksellers John Payne and Joseph Bouquet, was inserted in unsold copies and distributed to previous purchasers, along with a new postscript with further admissions and a strong disclaimer issued on behalf of one of Lauder’s supporters, the Rector of St. Michael’s, Bassishaw. The new postscript is dated 2 January 1750 (1751 New Style) and inserted in the front matter (pp. v–viii). Neither the new preface nor the new postscript appears to have been touched by Johnson.8 The postscript was reprinted in the Gentleman’s Magazine for December 1749 (XIX.563) with some differences from the original, which we note.


Page 148

The Postscript1
When this essay was almost finished, the splendid edition of Paradise Lost, so long promised by the reverenda Dr. Newton, fell into my hands; of which I had, however, so little use, thatb as it would be injustice to censure, it would be flattery to commend it: and I should have totally forborn the mention of a bookc that I have not read, had not one passage, at the conclusion of the life of Milton, excited in me too much pity and indignation to be suppressed in silence.
“Deborah, Milton’s youngest daughter,” says the editor, “was married to Mr. Abraham Clarke, a weaverd in Spittle-fields, and died in August 1727, in the 76th year of her age. She had ten children. Elizabeth, the youngest, was married to Mr. Thomas Foster, a weaver in Spittle-fields, and had seven children, who are all dead; and she herself is aged about sixty, and weak and infirm. She seemeth to be a good plain sensible woman, and has confirmed several particulars related above, and informed me of some others, which she had often heard from her mother.” These the doctor enumerates, and then adds; “in all probabilitye Milton’s whole family will be extinct with her, and he can live only in his writings. And such is the caprice of fortune, this grand-daughter of a man, who will be an everlasting glory to the nation, has now for some years, with her


Page 149

husband, kept a little chandler’s orfgrocer’s shop,gfor their subsistence, lately at the lower Holloway, in the road between High-gate and London, and at present in Cock Lane, not far from Shoreditch Church.”
That this relation is true, cannot be questioned:—but, surely, the honour of letters, the dignity of sacred poetry, the spirit of the English nation, and the glory of human nature, require—that it should be true no longer. In an age, in which statues are erected to the honour of this great writer,2 in which his effigy has been diffused on medals, and his work propagated by translations, and illustrated by commentaries; in an age, which, amidst all its vices, and all its follies, has not become infamous for want of charity: it may be, surely, allowed to hope, that the living remains of Milton will be no longer suffered to languish in distress. It is yet in the power of a great people, to reward the poeth whose name they boast, and from their alliance to whose genius,i they claim some kind of superiority to every other nation of the earth; that poet, whose works may possibly be readj when every other monument of British greatness shall be obliterated; to reward him—not with pictures, or with medals, which, if he sees, he sees with contempt, but—with tokens of gratitude, which he, perhaps, may even now consider as not unworthy the regard of an immortal spirit. And, surely, to those, who refuse their names to no other scheme of expence, it will not be unwelcome, that a subscription is proposed, for relieving, in the languor of age, the pains of disease, and the contempt of poverty, the grand-daughter of the author of Paradise Lost. Nor can it be questioned, that, if I, who have been marked


Page 150

out as the Zoilus of Milton,3 think this regard due to his posterity, the design will be warmly seconded by those, whose lives have been employed, in discovering his excellencies, and extending his reputation.
Editorial Notes
1 However, Lauder edited Adamus Exul, without the promised translation or references to Paradise Lost, and published it in the first volume of his more ambitious Delectus Auctorum Sacrorum Miltono Facem Praelucentium (1752), with a separate title page and pagination, so it also appears as an independent pamphlet. Delectus Auctorum was to be a four-volume work, as Lauder’s proposals (1750) indicate, but only the first two volumes (1752–53), containing six of the promised twenty-six works, were published.
2 This is Marcuse’s suggestion in “The Pre-Publication History of William Lauder’s Essay on Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns in His Paradise Lost,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, LXXII (1978), 37–57: 41 and n. 25.
3 See the General Advertiser for that day.
4 Marcuse speculates that SJ heard the Essay read in proof at the Ivy Lane Club on 5 December (“Pre-Publication History,” p. 56).
5 Marcuse, “Pre-Publication History,” p. 49.
6 The exposé had, in fact, begun earlier, most notably in Richard Richardson’s Zoilomastix (1747); see Marcuse, “The Gentleman’s Magazine and the Lauder/Milton Controversy.”
7 This advertisement appeared in the Literary Magazine for December 1750 (99) with the dateline, “White-Hart in Pater-noster-row, London, Nov. 28, 1750.” It was reported in the December issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine (XX.535).
8 Fleeman treats these revisions, whether one or both are included, as parts of a second issue of Lauder’s book. He describes the new preface as done at SJ’s “instigation,” and the new postscript as “prepared” by him (Bibliography, I.185–86), but the writing does not seem to us SJ’s.
1 When the postscript was reprinted in the GM, it included the following introductory note:
Mr W. L.’s Essay on Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns, of which some account has already been given in several magazines for 1747, (see index to that volume, also the defence of Milton, vol. xviii. p. 67, 114.) is at length published in one volume, 8vo. To this work is added a postscript, which, as it contains some circumstances relating to Milton’s family, that are known but to few, and some remarks upon them, which deserve the attention of all, we are impatient to communicate to our readers, as follows, with this single remark, that if he has any way lessened or affected Milton’s character, by his critical remarks, he has made a compensation for it, in his tender regard for the only representative of his family.
a Rev. GM
b that, GM
c book, GM
d weaver, GM
e probability, GM
f or GM
g shop GM
2 A monument for Milton, including a bust by John M. Rysbrack, had been erected in Westminster Abbey in 1737 by William Benson. SJ refers to it in The Vanity of Human Wishes as the “tardy bust” (l. 162). A medal of the bust by John Sigismund Tanner was struck in the same year that it was raised.
h poet, GM
i genius GM
j read, GM
3 Richard Richardson, in Zoilomastix or a Vindication of Milton from All the Invidious Charges of Mr. William Lauder (1747), had so branded Lauder. Zoilus was a fourth-century BCE critic of Homer who took the name Homeromastix, whipper of Homer.
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Document Details
Document TitlePostscript to Lauder’s Essay on Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns
AuthorJohnson, Samuel
Creation Date1750
Publ. DateN/A
Alt. TitleN/A
Contrib. AuthorN/A
ClassificationSubject: Milton; Subject: Elizabeth Foster; Subject: Charity; Genre: Postscript
PrinterN/A
PublisherJ. Payne and J. Bouquet
Publ. PlaceLondon
VolumeSamuel Johnson: Johnson on Demand
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