to Edmond Malone.
��and many insertions, were there room, as also seven-and-thirty letters, exclusive of twenty to Dr. Brocklesby, most of which will furnish only extracts. I am advised to extract several of those to others, and leave out some ; for my first volume makes only 516 pages, and to have 600 in the second will seem awkward, besides increasing the expense considerably z . The coun sellor, indeed, has devised an ingenious way to thicken the first volume, by prefixing the index. I have now desired to have but one compositor. Indeed, I go sluggishly and comfortlessly about my work. As I pass your door I cast many a longing look.
I am to cancel a leaf of the first volume, having found that though Sir Joshua certainly assured me he had no objection to my mentioning that Johnson wrote a dedication for him, he now thinks otherwise. In that leaf occurs the mention of Johnson having written to Dr. Leland, thanking the University of Dublin for their diploma 2 . What shall I say as to it?
shall see afterwards accepted of the same kind of assistance, well observed to me, " Writing a dedication is a knack. It is like writing an advertise ment."
'In this art no man excelled Dr. Johnson. Though the loftiness of his mind prevented him from ever dedicating in his own person, he wrote a great number of Dedications for others. After all the diligence I have bestowed, some of them have escaped my inquiries. He told me he believed he had dedicated to all the Royal Family round.'
Advertisement in the above passage is not used in its modern sense. What we should call the Prefaces to the first and second edition of the Life, Boswell calls the Advertisements. For the Advertisements which John son had intended for the English Poets, see Life, iv. 35 n.
Percy, in later editions of the Reliques, suppressed the Dedication. He wrote to Dr. Anderson : * Though not wholly written by Dr. Johnson, it owed its finest strokes to his pen, and
I have
��1 It contained 588 pages. of the first edition. In the second edition a change was made in the order of the paragraphs, by which Dr. Leland and the Dedications were separated by ten pages. In my edition Dr. Leland is found on vol. i. p. 489, and the Dedications on vol. ii. p. I. By the kindness of my friend, Mr. R. B. Adam, of Buffalo, who has in his collection the proof-sheets of the Life, with Boswell's autograph corrections, I am able to give the passage as it first stood. It ran as follows: 'He furnished his friend, Dr. Percy, now Bishop of Dromore, with a Dedication to the Countess of Northumberland, which was prefixed to his collection of " Reliques of ancient English Poetry," in which he pays compliments to that most illustrious family in the most courtly style. It should not be wondered at, that one who can himself write so well as Dr. Percy should accept of a Dedication from Johnson's pen ; for as Sir Joshua Reynolds, who we
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