This letter is of unusual interest, as it proves beyond all doubt that Rasselas was written some weeks before Candide was published (see ante, i. 342, n. a).  Baretti, as I have shewn (i. 341, n. 3), says that ’any other person with the degree of reputation Johnson then possessed would have got L400 for the work, but he never understood the art of making the most of his productions.’  We see, however, by this letter that Johnson did ask for a larger sum than the booksellers allowed him.  He received but one hundred pounds for the first edition, but he had made a bargain for one hundred and fifty pounds or guineas.  Johnson, the bookseller, seems to have been but in a small way of business as a publisher.  I do not find in the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1758 any advertisement of books published by him, and only one in 1759 (P. 339).  Cowper’s publisher in 1778 was Joseph Johnson of St. Paul’s Churchyard. (Cowper’s Works by Southey, i. 285; see also Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes, iii. 461-464.)

By ‘little Pompadour’ Johnson, no doubt, means the second and cheaper edition of The History of the Marchioness de Pompadour.  The first edition was published by Hooper in one volume, price five shillings (Gent.  Mag. for October 1758, p. 493). and the second in two volumes for three shillings and sixpence (Gent.  Mag. for November, 1758, p. 543).

Johnson did not generally ‘print his name.’  He published anonymously his translation of Lobos Voyage to Abyssinia; London; The Life of Savage; The Rambler, and The Idler, both in separate numbers and when collected in volumes; Rasselas; The False Alarm; Falkland’s Islands; The Patriot;, and Taxation no Tyranny; (when these four pamphlets were collected in a volume he published them with the title of Political Tracts, by the Authour of the Rambler).  He gave his name in The Vanity of Human Wishes, Irene, the Dictionary, his edition of Shakespeare, the Journey to the Western Islands, and the Lives of the Poets.

VII.

A letter about George Strahan’s election to a scholarship at University College, Oxford, and about William Strahan’s ‘affair with the University’; dated October 24, 1764.[In the possession of Mr. Frederick Barker.]

’SIR,

’I think I have pretty well disposed of my young friend George, who, if you approve of it, will be entered next Monday a Commoner of University College, and will be chosen next day a Scholar of the House.  The Scholarship is a trifle, but it gives him a right, upon a vacancy, to a Fellowship of more than sixty pounds a year if he resides, and I suppose of more than forty if he takes a Curacy or small living.  The College is almost filled with my friends, and he will be well treated.  The Master is informed of the particular state of his education, and thinks, what I think too, that for Greek he must get some private assistance, which a servitour of the College is very well qualified and will be very willing to afford him on very easy terms.