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great improvements; but whether those improvements are to be expected from this attempt, you * must judge from the fpecimen, which, if you approve the proposal, 1 fhall fubmit to your examina

⚫tion.

• Suppose the merit of the versions equal, we may < hope that the addition of the notes will turn the balance in our favour, confidering the reputation <of the Annotator.

• Be pleased to favour me with a speedy answer, if you are not willing to engage in this scheme; ⚫ and appoint me a day to wait on you, if you are. 'I am, Sir, your humble fervant, SAM. JOHNSON.'

Cave's acquiefcence, in the above propofal, drew Johnson into a clofe intimacy with him: he was much at St. John's Gate, and taught Garrick the way thither. Cave had no great relish for mirth, but he could bear it; and having been told by Johnfon, that his friend had talents for the theatre, and was come to London with a view to the profeflion of an actor, expreffed a wish to fee him in fome comic character: Garrick readily complied; and, as Cave himself told me, with a little preparation of the room over the great arch of St. John's Gate, and, with the affiftance of a few journeymen printers, who were called together for the purpose of reading the other parts, represented, with all the graces of comic humor, the principal character in Fielding's farce of the Mock-Doctor.

Cave's temper was phlegmatic: though he affumed, as the publisher of the Magazine, the name of Sylvanus Urban, he had few of thofe qualities

that

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that conftitute the character of urbanity. Judge of his want of them by this question, which he once put to an author: Mr., I hear you have just publifhed a pamphlet, and am told there is a very good paragraph in it, upon the fubject of mufic: • did you write that yourfelf?' His difcernment was alfo flow; and as he had already at his command fome writers of profe and verfe, who, in the language of bookfellers are called good hands, he was the backwarder in making advances, or courting an intimacy with Johnfon. Upon the first approach of a ftranger, his practice was to continue fitting, a pof

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• Mr. Mofes Browne, originally a pen-cutter, was, so far as concerned the poetical part of it, the chief fupport of the Magazine, which he fed with many a nourishing morfel. This perfon being a lover of angling, wrote pifcatory eclogues; and was a candidate for the fifty pound prize mentioned in Johnfon's first letter to Cave, and for other prizes which Cave engaged to pay him who fhould write the best poem on certain fubjects; in all or most of which competitions Mr. Browne had the good fortune to fucceed. He published thefe and other poems of his writing, in an octavo volume, Lond. 1739; and has therein given proofs of an exuberant fancy and a happy invention. Some years after he entered into holy orders. A farther account of him may be feen in the Biographia Dramatica, to a place in which work he feems to have acquired a title, by fome juvenile compofitions for the ftage. Being a perfon of a religious turn, he alfo published in verfe, a feries of devout contemplations, called Sunday Thoughts. Johnson, who often expreffed his dislike of religious poetry, and who, for the purpose of religious meditation, feemed to think one day as proper as another, read them with cold approbation, and said, he had a great mind to write and publish Monday Thoughts.

To the proofs above adduced of the coarfenefs of Cave's manners, let me add the following: he had undertaken, at his own rifque, to publish a tranflation of Du Halde's Hiftory of China, in

ture in which he was ever to be found, and, for a few minutes, to continue filent: if at any time he was inclined to begin the difcourfe, it was generally by putting a leaf of the Magazine, then in the

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which were contained fundry geographical and other plates. Each of these he infcribed to one or other of his friends; and, among the reft, one To Mofes Browne.' With this blunt and familiar défignation of his perfon, Mr. Browne was justly offended: to ap'pease him, Cave directed an engraver, to introduce with a caret under the line, Mr. and thought, that in fo doing, he had made ample amends to Mr. Browne for the indignity done him.

Mr. John Duick, also a pen-cutter, and a near neighbour of Cave, was a frequent contributor to the Magazine, of short -poems, written with spirit and ease. He was a kinfınan of 'Browne, and the author of a good copy of encomiaftic verses 'prefixed to the collection of Browne's poems above-mentioned.

Mr. Foffer Webb, a young man who had received his education in Mr. Watkins's academy in Spital-square, and afterwards became clerk to a merchant in the city, was, at first, a contributor to the Magazine, of enigmas, a fpecies of poetry in which he then delighted, but was diffuaded from it by the following lines, which appeared in the Magazine for October, 1740, after a few fuccefsful effays in that kind of writing:

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Too modest bard, with enigmatic veil

No longer let thy mufe her charms conceal;
Though oft the Sun in clouds his face difguise,
Still he looks nobler when he gilds the fkies.
Do thou, like him, avow thy native flame,

Burst thro' the gloom, and brighten into fame.'

After this friendly exhortation, Mr. Webb, in thöfe hours of leifure which bufinefs afforded, amufed him felf with tranflating from the Latin claffics, particularly Ovid and Horace: from the latter of thefe he rendered into English verfe, with better fuccefs than any that had before attempted it, the odes Quis múlta gracilis te puer in rofa; Solvitur acris hyems grata vice veris, ' & Favoni,'' Parcus Deorum cultor & infrequens ;' and 'Diffugêre nives, redeunt jam gramina campis ;' all which are in

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the prefs, into the hand of his vifitor, and afking his opinion of it. I remember that, calling in on him once, he gave me to read the beautiful poem of Collins, written for Shakespeare's Cymbeline, To fair

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ferted in Cave's Magazine. His fignature was fometimes Telarius, at others Vedaftus. He was a modeft, ingenious, and fober young man; but a confumption defeated the hopes of his friends, and took him off in the twenty-second year of his age.

Mr. John Smith, another of Mr. Watkins's pupils, was a writer in the Magazine, of profe effays, chiefly on religious and moral fubjects, and died of a decline about the fame time.

Mr. John Canton, apprentice to the above-named Mr. Watkins, and also his fucceffor in his academy, was a contributor to the Magazine, of verses, and afterwards, of papers on philofophical and mathematical fubjects. The difcoveries he made in electricity and magnetifm are well known, and are recorded in the tranfactions of the Royal Society, of which he afterwards became a member.

Mr. William Rider, bred in the fame prolific feminary, was a writer in the Magazine, of verses figned Philargyrus. He went from school to Jefus college, Oxford, and, fome years after his leaving the fame, entered into holy orders, and became fur-mafter of St. Paul's fchool, in which office he continued many years, but at length was obliged to quit that employment by reafon of his deafness.

Mr. Adam Calamy, a fon of Dr. Edmund Calamy, an eminent non-conformist divine, and author of the Abridgment of Mr. Baxter's Hiftory of his Life and Times, was another of Mr. Watkins's pupils, that wrote in the Magazine; the subjects on which he chiefly exercised his pen were essays in polemical theology and republican politics; and he diftinguished them by the assumed fignature of A confiftent proteftant.' He was bred to the profeffion of an attorney, and was brother to Mr. Edmund Calamy, a diffenting teacher, of eminence for his worth and learning.

A feminary, of a higher order than that above-mentioned, viz. the academy of Mr. John Eames in Moorfields, furnished the Magazine with a number of other correfpondents in mathematics and other branches of science and polite literature. This was an

inftitution

fair Fidele's graffy tomb,' which, though adapted to a particular circumftance in the play, Cave was for inferting in his Magazine, without any reference to the fubject: I told him it would lofe of its beauty if it were so published: this he could not fee; nor could he be convinced of the propriety of the name Fidele: he thought Paftora a better, and fo printed it.

He was fo incompetent a judge of Johnson's abilities, that, meaning at one time to dazzle him with the fplendor of fome of thofe luminaries in literature who favoured him with their correfpondence, he told him that, if he would, in the evening, be at a certain alehouse in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell, he might have a chance of feeing Mr. Browne and another or two of the perfons mentioned in the preceding note: Johnfon accepted the invitation; and being introduced by Cave, dreffed in a loose horseman's coat,

inftitution fupported by the Diffenters, the defign whereof was to qualify young men for their ministry. Mr. Eames was formerly the continuator of the abridgement of the Philofophical Tranfactions begun by Jones and Lowthorp, and was a man of great knowledge, and a very able tutor. Under him were bred many young men who afterwards became eminently diftinguished for learning and abilities; among them were the late Mr. Parry, of Cirencester, the late Dr. Furneaux, and Dr. Gibbons; and, if I mistake not, the present Dr. Price. The pupils of this academy had heads that teemed with knowledge, which, as fast as they acquired it, they were prompted by a juvenile and laudable ambition to communicate in letters to Mr. Urban.

To this account of Cave's correfpondents might be added the celebrated names of Dr. Birch, who will be spoken of hereafter, Mrs. Carter, Dr. Akenfide, the Rev. Mr. Samuel Pegge, who, by an ingenious tranfpofition of the letters of his name, formed the plaufible fignature of Paul Gemfege; Mr. Luck, of Barnftaple in Devonshire; Mr. Henry Price, of Pool, in Dorfetshire ; Mr. Richard Yate, of Chively, in Shropshire; Mr. John Bancks; and that induftrious and prolific genius, Mr. John Lock man.

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