to Edmond Malone.
��is dead, and he may have relations who may take it up as an offence, perhaps a libel 1 . Courtenay suggests, that you may perhaps get intelligence whether it was true. The Bishop of Dromore 2 can probably tell, as he knows a great deal about Rolt. In case of doubt, should I not cancel the leaf, and either omit the curious anecdote or give it as a story which Johnson laughingly told as having circulated ?
��March 8. I have before me your volunteer letter of February , and one of 5th current, which, if you have dated it right, has come with wonderful expedition. You may be perfectly sure that I have not the smallest fault to find with your dis inclination to come again under any pecuniary engagements for others, after having suffered so much. Dilly proposes that he and Baldwin 3 should each advance 2oo/. on the credit of my book ; and if they do so, I shall manage well enough, for I now find I can have 6oo/. in Scotland on the credit of my rents ; and thus I shall get the iooo/. paid in May.
��1 See Life, iii. 15 for the agitation of ' the question, whether legal re- dress could be obtained, even when a man's deceased relation was calum- niated in a publication.' Johnson said, 'the law does not regard that uneasiness which a man feels on having his ancestor calumniated.'
Boswell, in a note on this, says :
- It is held in the books, that an
attack on the reputation even of a dead man may be punished as a libel, because tending to a breach of the peace. There is, however, I believe, no modern decided case to that effect.'
' Chief Justice Mansfield laid down for law that satires even on dead kings were punishable.' Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George 77, iii. 153. See also his Letters, viii. 533. Blackstone makes no mention of libels on the dead.
Antony a Wood was expelled from
��the University of Oxford, and fined ^34, for libelling the memory of the first Earl of Clarendon. With this fine the statues at the entrance of the Physic Garden were set up. Bliss's Antony a Wood, pp. 381-2.
A friend of mine travelling lately in the East of Europe, found that a number of a Vienna newspaper was confiscated, as it contained an attack on Maria Theresa, who, like Socrates, 'has been dead a hundred years ago.'
2 Dr. Percy.
3 Boswell, in the ' Advertisement to the Second Edition,' says : ' May I be permitted to say that the typo- graphy of both editions does honour to the press of Mr. Henry Baldwin, now Master of the Worshipful Com- pany of Stationers, whom I have long known as a worthy man and an obliging friend.' Life, \. 10.
2 You
�� �
