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This favourable presumption was illfounded and premature. It appeared afterwards, by the confeffion of Lauder himself, that "in Johnson's friendship " he placed the most implicit and unli"mited confidence *."

Dr. Johnson had faid for his friend, at the end of the Effsay, that "Lauder's mo"tives were, a strict regard to truth " alone, &c. and none of them taken " from any difference of country, or of "sentiments in political or religious " matters t." This Lauder, in his pamphlet of 1754, expressly contradicted, and avowed motives of party and premeditated deception 1. Here the cat leaped

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

+ Effay, p. 163.

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

out

1

out of the bag. It was now notorious that the fable had been inverted. The Lion roared in the Ass's Skin; and if the Lion had not the whole asinine 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 suspected, took upon him the patronage of Lauder's project from the beginning; and bore his part in the controversy 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 August, page 363, 364, figned WILLIAM LAUDER, came from the amicable hand of Mr. Samuel Johnfon.

In

In the year 1751 was published Lauder's penitential letter * to Dr. Douglas, containing a full and free confeffion of his roguery: the merit of which was totally overthrown by a contradictory poftfcript; which is thus accounted for by Lauder himself, after informing his readers, that his confidential friend advised an unreferved disclofure of his impof

ture.

"With this expedient,” says 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 " such particular passages only were in"terpolated, he gave up the whole essay "against Milton as delusion and misre" presentation, and therefore imposed " more grievously on the public than I " had done; and that too in terms much " more fubmifssive and abject than the "nature of the offence required *." The amanuenfis here gained two con-fiderable points. 1. It was at his op tion to mention or not the assistance that Lauder had in composing his effsay; and consequently 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 just quoted, must superabound both in faith and charity, if they can believe that the composer of the letter to Mr. Douglas was unconscious of Lauder's forgery, previously to Dr. Douglas's detection of it.

A postscript to a fecond edition of Dr. Douglas's Vindication, dated May 17, 1756, finished the controversy. Lauder was disgraced 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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