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��greatly increased by the Parliamentary debates J , which were continued by Johnson till the month of March, 1742-3. From that time the Magazine was conducted by Dr. Hawkesworth 2 .
In 1743-4, Osborne, the bookseller, who kept a shop in Gray's-Inn, purchased the Earl of Oxford's library, at the price of thirteen thousand pounds. He projected a catalogue in five octavo volumes, at five shillings each. Johnson was em ployed in that painful drudgery 3 . He was likewise to collect all such small tracts, as were in any degree worth preserving, in order to reprint and publish the whole in a collection, called 'The Harleian Miscellany 4 .' The catalogue was completed; and the Miscellany in 1749 was published in eight quarto volumes. In this business Johnson was a day-labourer for im mediate subsistence, not unlike Gustavus Vasa working in the mines of Dalecarlia. What Wilcox, a bookseller of eminence in the Strand, said to Johnson, on his first arrival in town, was now almost confirmed. He lent our author five guineas, and then asked him, ' How do you mean to earn your livelihood in this town?' ' By my literary labours,' was the answer. Wilcox, staring at him, shook his head : ' By your literary labours ! You had better buy a porter's knot.' Johnson used to tell this anecdote to Mr. Nichols ; but he said, 'Wilcox was one of my best friends, and he meant well V In fact, Johnson, while employed
��debates wherein all the wit, learning, and argument have been thrown into one side, and on the other nothing but what was low, mean, and ridiculous ... If any gentleman will take the trouble, which, I own, I very seldom do, to look into these magazines, he will find four pages wrote against the government for one that is in its favour.' Coxe's Walpole, i. 570-2.
1 The sale, according to Hawkins (p. 123), rose from ten to fifteen thousand copies a month.
The Private Journal of Dr. John copies were printed; and of the London Magazine, 7,000 copies. Gentleman's Magazine, 1857, i. 149.
��2 The Magazine was, I believe, still conducted by Cave. Hawkes worth wrote the Debates. Hawkins, p. 132. He probably in other ways supplied Johnson's place, who, after 1743, wrote very little in it.
3 Life,\. 153.
4 Ib. i. 175 ; Hawkins, pp. 132-150.
5 Life, i. 1 02, n. 2.
'Any porter has the liberty of bringing goods into London ; but may not carry any out of the city, or from one part of it to another, unless he be a freeman ; otherwise he is liable to be arrested.' Dodsley's London, 1761, v. 206. See also W. C. Hazlitt's Livery Companies, 1892, p. 154.
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