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This favourable prefumption was illfounded and premature. It appeared afterwards, by the confeffion of Lauder himfelf, that "in Johnfon's friendship " he placed the most implicit and unlimited confidence *.*

Dr. Johnfon had faid for his friend, at the end of the Essay, that "Lauder's mo

tives were, a ftrict regard to truth "alone, &c. and none of them taken "from any difference of country, or of έσ fentiments in political or religious "matters +." This Lauder, in his pamphlet of 1754, exprefsly contradicted, and avowed motives of party and premeditated deception t. Here the cat leaped

King Charles I. vindicated, p. 3, 4.

+ Effay, p. 163.

King Charles I. vindicated from the charge of Plagiarifm, brought against him by Milton, Printed for Owen, 1754, P. 11.

out

out of the bag. It was now notorious that the fable had been inverted.

The

Lion roared in the Afs's Skin; and if the Lion had not the whole afinine plan communicated to him à priori, Lauder's confidence in his friend Johnson was neither implicit nor unlimited.

Dr. Johnson, indeed, it is to be fufpected, took upon him the patronage of Lauder's project from the beginning; and bore

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his part in the controverfy retailed in the Gentleman's Magazine for the year 1747. There is at least a HIGH DEGREE OF PREPOLLENT PROBABILITY, that the Letter in that Magazine for the month of Auguft, page 363, 364, figned wILLIAM LAUDER, came from the amicable hand of Mr. Samuel Johnson.

In

In the year 1751 was published Lau

der's penitential letter to Dr. Douglas,. containing a full and free confeffion of his roguery: the merit of which was tofally overthrown by a contradictory poftfcript; which is thus accounted for by Lauder himself, after informing his readers, that his confidential friend advised an unreferved difclofure of his impof

ture.

"With this expedient," fays Lauder, I then chearfully complied, when that “gentleman wrote for me that letter that

was published in my name to Mr..Douglas, in which he committed one error that proved fatal to me, and at the "fame time injurious to the public. For

* Quarto, printed for Owen, 1751.

"in the place of acknowledging that "fuch particular paffages only were in"terpolated, he gave up the whole effay "against Milton as delufion and mifre"presentation, and therefore impofed ❝ more grievously on the public than I "had done; and that too in terms much 66 more fubmiffive and abject than the "nature of the offence required *."

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The amanuenfis here gained two con-fiderable points. 1. It was at his op tion to mention or not the affiftance that Lauder had in compofing his effay; and confequently to conceal in what degree the fraud was communicated to him: from the beginning. 2. He effectually anfwered Mr.Douglas's expectation, who *Vindication of King Charles I. p. 4.

would

would naturally conclude that Lauder had no accomplices in his villany, except the jefuits.

But they who read Lauder's complaints` of this confidential friend in the pamphlet juft quoted, muft fuperabound both in faith and charity, if they can believe that the compofer of the letter to Mr. Douglas was unconfcious of Lauder's forgery, previoufly to Dr. Douglas's detection of it.

A poftfcript to a fecond edition of Dr. Douglas's Vindication, dated May 17, 1756, finished the controverfy. Lauder was difgraced with the public, and difcarded by his amanuenfis, who turned a deaf ear to all his reproaches, and abandoned him to his fate, with a cool philofophical

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