In a letter that has been dated 17 December 1777, Reynolds wrote to Johnson about the manuscript of Seven Discourses, revised versions of the presidential addresses he had given annually at the Royal Academy. Reynolds asked Johnson to read the whole manuscript, adding, “I have not courage enough to appear in public without your imprimatur.”1 There is a manuscript of Reynolds’s eleventh Discourse (1782) that proves Johnson’s involvement in that publication, and he may have touched up some of Reynolds’s other Discourses.2 In any case, Johnson certainly wrote the dedication on 19 April 1778, just in advance of the May publication of Seven Discourses. Boswell reported his knowledge of this in his Life, but Reynolds did not want Boswell to advertise the fact of Johnson’s assistance; he therefore obliged him to cancel the offending passage before publication. The truth came out, however, through the work of an indexer using an uncanceled copy (see p. 502 above).