��Essay on
��by no means probable T . When the appendages to a Dramatic Performance are not assigned to a friend, or an unknown hand, or a person of fashion, they are always supposed to be written by the author of the Play. It is to be wished, however, that the Epilogue in question could be transferred to any other writer. It is the worst Jeu d' Esprit that ever fell from Johnson's pen 2 .
An account of the various pieces contained in this edition, such as miscellaneous tracts, and philological dissertations, would lead beyond the intended limits of this essay. It will suffice to say, that they are the productions of a man who never wanted decorations of language, and always taught his reader to think. The life of the late king of Prussia, as far as it extends 3 , is a model of the biographical style. The Review of THE ORIGIN OF EVIL was, perhaps, written with asperity ; but the angry epitaph, which it provoked from SOAME JENYNS, was an ill- timed resentment, unworthy of the genius of that amiable author 4 .
��1 Boswell in the first edition of the Life says : ' The Epilogue was written by Sir William Yonge.' To the second edition he added, no doubt in answer to Murphy, ' as Johnson informed me.' Ib. i. 197, n. 4.
2 The wonder is that Johnson ac cepted this Epilogue, which is a little coarse and a little profane. Chester field writes of Yonge as a man 'with a most sullied, not to say blasted character.' Letters, iv. 53.
3 It ends with the year 1745. It was published in 1756 in The Lite rary Magazine. Life, i. 308 ; Works, vi. 435. Carlyle, in his Frederick the Great (ed. 1862, iii. 276), has the following about the English Lives of that king: 'One Dilworth, an in nocent English soul, writing on the spot some years after Voltaire, has this useful passage : '* It is the great failing of a strong imagination to catch greedily at wonders. Vol
��taire was misinformed, and would perhaps learn by a second inquiry a truth less amusing and splendid. A Contribution was by News- writers, upon their own authority, fruitlessly proposed. It ended in nothing : the Parliament voted a supply." . . . " Fruitlessly by News-writers on their own authority," that is the sad fact.' In a footnote Carlyle adds: 'A poor little Book, one of many coming out on that subject just then, which contains, if available now, the above sentence and no more. Indeed its brethren, one of them by Samuel Johnson (impransus, the imprisoned giant) do not even contain that, and have gone wholly to zero.'
It is strange Carlyle did not see Johnson's hand in the one sentence. Dilworth stole it from him, and slightly spoilt it in the stealing. See Works, vi. 455 ; Life, i. 498, n. 4.
4 Life, i. 316 ; Gentleman's Maga zine, 1786, pp. 428, 696.
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