There is no crime so severely punished by the world as injustice, which is always repaid by a repetition of itself: hence the learned world which applauded the courage and ingenuity of Lauder, on the appearance of a full and explicit
detection of his crimes, by his countryman Dr Douglas,[1] were seized with confirmed hatred against the person who had duped them, and would not admit to his degraded name, the talents and information he undoubtedly possessed and displayed. Lauder subscribed a confession, addressed to Dr Douglas, explaining his whole conduct to have been caused by the neglect with which the world had looked on his previous labours. This confession is said to have been dictated by Dr Johnson, who was one of those on whom Lauder had imposed, or rather of those who chose to submit to be imposed on, which we may safely trace, in his case, to the grudge he never ceased to bear towards the republican poet. The connexion of Johnson with Lauder's work is, indeed, somewhat mysterious. In a manuscript note on the margin of archdeacon Blackburne's remarks on the life of Milton, Johnson has said, "In the business of Lauder I was deceived, partly by thinking the man too frantic to be
fraudulent."[2] But others have alleged, that he did more than believe the statements of Lauder, and even gave assistance to the work. Dr Lort had a volume of tracts on the controversy, in which he wrote, "Dr Samuel Johnson has been heard to confess, that he encouraged Lauder to this attack upon Milton, and revised his pamphlet, to which he wrote a preface and postscript." On the same subject Dr Douglas remarks, "It is to be hoped, nay, it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments, and inimitable style, point out the author of Lauder's preface and postscript, will no longer allow one to plume himself with his feathers, who appeareth so little to deserve assistance: an assistance which, I am persuaded, would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world in these sheets."[3] Boswell repels the insinuation that Johnson assisted in the preparation of the body of the work, assuring us that Douglas did not wish to create such a suspicion ; while he acknowledges the preface and postscript to have been the work of his hands.[4] On a first perusal of the book, we were indeed struck with the sonorous eloquence and majesty of the commencement and termination, when compared to the bareness of the other portions of the work, and a slight hint is quite sufficient to convince us of the authorship. The postscript contains matter much at variance with the other contents of the book, and had it been the work of Lauder, it might have gone far to redeem, at least the soundness of his hearty from the opprobrium which has been heaped upon him. It called for the admirers of Milton's works, to join in a subscription to the grand-daughter of Milton, who then lived in an obscure corner of London, in age, indigence, and sickness.
Notwithstanding his penitence, a desire to traduce the fame of Milton seems to have haunted this unhappy man like an evil spirit In 1754, he published "The grand Impostor detected, or Milton detected of Forgery against king Charles the First," An answer to this pamphlet appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1754, supposed to be from the hand of Johnson. After this period, Lauder quitted England, and for some time taught a school in Barbadoes. " His behaviour there," says Nichols, "was mean and despicable; and
- ↑ Milton vindicated from the charge of plagiarism brought against him by Lauder; and Lauder himself convicted of several forgeries and gross impositions on the public, in a letter addressed to the right hon. the earl of Bath, 1751, (by Dr Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury.)
- ↑ Nichol's Anecdotes, II. 551.
- ↑ Second edition, 78.
- ↑ Boswell's Johnson, (Croker's ed.) I. 191.
