��Extracts from
��At the mention of this circumstance Johnson paused ; but re covering himself, said, ' You should not have laid hands on the book ; for had I missed it, and not known you had it, I should have roared for my book, as Othello did for his handkerchief 1 , and probably have run mad.'
I gave him time, till the next day, to compose himself, and then wrote him a letter, apologizing, and assigning at large the reasons for my conduct ; and received a verbal answer by Mr. Langton, which, were I to repeat it, would render me suspected of inexcusable vanity ; it concluded with these words,
- If I was not satisfied with this, I must be a savage 2 .'
��1 Johnson refers to the speech where Emilia says to Othello :
' Nay, lay thee down and roar.'
(Act v. Sc. 2.)
But it was not for his handkerchief that he roared, for he did not as yet know the trick that had been played on him.
~ 2 * One of these volumes,' writes Boswell, ' Sir John Hawkins informs us, he put into his pocket; for which the excuse he states is, that he meant to preserve it from falling into the hands of a person whom he describes so as to make it sufficiently clear who is meant ; " having strong reasons (said he,) to suspect that this man might find and make an ill use of the book." Why Sir John should suppose that the gentleman alluded to would act in this manner, he has not thought fit to explain. But what he did was not approved of by John son ; who, upon being acquainted of it without delay by a friend, ex pressed great indignation, and warmly insisted on the book being delivered up ; and, afterwards, in the supposition of his missing it, without knowing by whom it had been taken, he said, " Sir, I should have gone out of the world distrust ing half mankind." Sir John next day wrote a letter to Johnson, as
��signing reasons for his conduct ; upon which Johnson observed to Mr. Langton, " Bishop Sanderson could not have dictated a better letter. I could almost say, Melius est sic penituisse quam non errdsse" The agitation into which Johnson was thrown by this incident, prob ably made him hastily burn those precious records which must ever be regretted.' Life, iv. 406, n. I. Bishop Sanderson, I suppose, was selected on account of ' his casuistical learn ing ' and of 'the very many cases that were resolved by letters,' when he was consulted by people of ' rest less and wounded consciences.' Walton's Lives, ed. 1838, p. 378.
According to Miss Hawkins the ' person ' was George Steevens, who had a share in the St. James's Chronicle. She says that he stole from her father's library the copy of an Address to the Throne from the Magistrates of Middlesex during the American war, and published it in his newspaper. Memoirs of L. M. Hawkins, i. 265. This certainly was ' a paper of a public nature,' but not ' of great importance ' unless in the eyes of a Middlesex Magistrate.
Of this incident there is no men tion in the first edition. ' It is not so much to our purpose to enquire,
7 th.
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