with fome of the members of both, arifing from an employment he held in the poft-office, that of inspector of the franks, which not only gave him the privilege of fending his letters free of postage, but an acquaintance with, and occafions of access to many of them.

Of this advantage he was too good a judge of his own intereft not to avail himself. He therefore determined to gratify his readers with as much of this kind of intelligence as he could procure and it was fafe to communicate: his refolution was to frequent the two houses whenever an important debate was likely to come on, and from such expreffions and particulars in the course thereof as could be collected and retained in memory, to give the arguments on either fide. This refolution he put into practice in July 1736. His method of proceeding is variously reported; but I have been informed by fome who were much about him, that taking with him a friend or two, he found means to procure for them and humfelf admiffion into the gallery of the house of commons, or to fome concealed ftation in the other, and that then they privately took down notes of the feveral speeches, and the general tendency and fubstance of the arguments. Thus furnished, Cave and his affociates would adjourn to a neighbouring tavern, and compare and adjust their notes, by means whereof and the help of their memories, they became enabled to fix at least the fubftance of what they had fo lately heard and remarked.

The reducing this crude matter into form, was the work of a future day, and of an abler hand, viz. Guthrie, the hiftorian, a writer for the bookfellers, whom Cave retained for the purpose: the fpeeches thus compofed were given monthly to the public,

and perused and read with great eagerness; those who contemplated them thought they difcovered in them not merely the political principles, but the ftile and manner of the speaker; the fact is, that there was little difcriminaton of the latter between the speeches of the best and the worft orators in either affembly, and in most instances the perfons to whom they were afcribed were here made to speak with more eloquence and even propriety of diction, than, in the place of debate they were able to do: Sir John Barnard, for inftance, a man of no learning or reading, and who by the way had been bred a quaker, had a ftile little better than an ordinary mechanic, and which abounded with fuch phrases as, if so be-fet cafe-and-nobody more fo-and other fuch vulgarifms, yet was he made in the Magazine to debate in language as correct and polished as that of Sir William Wyndham or Mr. Pulteney; though it must be confeffed that fo weighty was his matter on fubjects of commerce, that Sir Robert Walpole, as I have been credibly informed, was used to say, that when he had answered Sir John Barnard, he looked upon that day's business in the house of commons to be as good as over.

The vigorous oppofition to the minifter, and the motion in both houfes of the thirteenth of February, 1740-1, to remove him, were a new era in politics; and, as the debates on that occafion were warmer than had ever then been known, the drawing them up required, in Cave's opinion, the pen of a more nervous writer than he who had hitherto conducted them. Johnson, who, in his former publications in profe, had given no very favourable specimens of ftile, had by this time, by the study of the beft of our old English

English writers, fuch as Sir Thomas More, Afcham, Hooker, Spenfer, archbishop Sandys, Jewel, Chillingworth, Hales of Eton, and others, formed a new one, confifting in original phrafes and new combinations of the integral parts of sentences, which, with the infufion of words derived from the Latin and accommodated to our idiom, were fuch an improvement of the language as greatly tended to enrich it: Cave therefore thought him a fit perfon to conduct this part of his monthly publication, and, dismissing Guthrie, committed the care of it to Johnson.

Before this change of hands, Cave had been checked by fome intimations from the clerks of the house of commons, that his printing the debates had given offence to the speaker, and might subject him to cenfure; this he, for fome time, regarded but little, relying poffibly upon the indulgence that had been fhewn as well to the publishers of the Political State of Great Britain, who were the first that ventured on this practice, as to himself; but a refolution of the house at length gave him to underftand, that it would be prudence in him to defift from it. The thought of putting his readers on fhort allowance was very unpleafing to him, and this, with the apprehenfion that the fale of his Magazine might be affected by the omiffion of a kind of intelligence which they had been accustomed to, drove him to many contrivances to evade the prohibition, out of which he chose one that fcarce any man but himself would have thought of: it was the giving to the public the debates in the British fenate under a fictitious defignation. Every one, he knew, was acquainted with Gulliver's Travels; he therefore, in his Magazine

for June 1738, begins the month by feigning, that the debates in the fenate of Magna Lilliputia were then extant; and referring to the refolution of the house of commons, above-mentioned, whereby he was forbidden to infert any account of the proceedings of the British parliament, he pretends to doubt not but his readers will be pleafed with the infertion of what he calls the appendix to captain Gulliver's account of Lilliput, in their room. A change of fictitious for real names of perfons, countries, and provinces, was abfolutely neceffary for the carrying on this defign, and accordingly, by tranfpofing the letters, and otherwife anagrammatizing proper names, he has, through the medium of nonfenfe, given light to that which he would be thought to conceal.

Farther to aid his reader as to the names of countries, &c. he published, at the end of his Magazine for 1738, a fictitious propofal for printing, by fubfcription, a work, intitled, Anagrammata Rediviva, or the art of compofing and refolving anagrams, with a reference to the bookfellers, agents, and masters of fhips, in the cities, countries, and provinces therein described by barbarous names opposed to those which they are meant to fignify: he also, at the end of the Magazines for 1739, 1740, 1741, 1742, and 1743, gave a lift of chriftian and furnames pretendedly fynonimous, forming thereby a key to that otherwife unintelligible jargon which Cave, by this fubterfuge, had introduced into the debates.

The proprietors of the London Magazine, who alfo gave the debates, but from documents lefs authentic than thofe of Cave, compelled by the fame neceflity

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that

that forced him to this artifice, took another course : they feigned to give the debates in the Roman fenate, and by adapting Roman names to the feveral fpeeches, rendered them more plaufible than they appear under Cave's management.

The artifice however fucceeded in both inftances: the refolution of the commons was never enforced, and the debates were publifhed with impunity. I will not difgrace my page by the infertion of any of those barbarous appellations which Cave had invented, and which, I dare fay, were mufic to his ear; but content myfelf with faying, that Guthrie acquiefced in Cave's fiction and the nonfenfe which it involved, and as it was found to answer its end, Johnson fcrupled not to adopt it.

The debates penned by Johnson were not only more methodical and better connected than thofe of Guthrie, but in all the ornaments of ftile fuperior: they were written at thofe feafons when he was able to raise his imagination to fuch a pitch of fervour as bordered upon enthusiasm, which, that he might the better do, his practice was to fhut himself up in a room affigned him at St. John's gate, to which he would not fuffer any one to approach, except the compofitor or Cave's boy for matter, which, as fast as he composed it, he tumbled out at the door.

Never were the force of reafoning or the powers of popular eloquence more evidently difplayed, or the arts of fophiftry more clearly detected than in these animated compofitions. Nor are they more worthy of admiration for these their excellencies than for that peculiarity of language which difcriminates