then loudly expressed for parliamentary information, which Cave sought to gratify by the insertion of the debates in the gentleman’s magazine.  The jealousy of the houses, however, subjected that indefatigable man to the practices of stratagem for the accomplishment of his design.  He held the office of inspector of franks in the postoffice, which brought him into contact with the officers of both houses of parliament, and afforded him frequent and ready access to many of the members.  Cave, availing himself of this advantage, frequented the houses when any debate of public interest was expected, and, along with a friend, posted himself in the gallery of the house of commons, and in some retired station in that of the lords, where, unobserved, they took notes of the several speeches.  These notes were afterwards arranged and expanded by Guthrie, the historian, then in the employment of Cave, and presented to the public, monthly, in the Gentleman’s Magazine.  They first appeared in July, 1736 [Footnote:  Gent.  Mag. vol. vi.], and were perused with the greatest eagerness.  But it was soon intimated to Cave, that the speaker was offended with this freedom, which he regarded in the light of a breach of privilege, and would subject Cave, unless he desisted, to parliamentary censure, or perhaps punishment.  To escape this, and likewise to avoid an abridgment of his magazine, Cave had recourse to the following artifice.  He opened his magazine for June, 1738, with an article entitled, “Debates in the senate of Magna Lilliputia;” in which he artfully deplores the prohibition that forbids him to present his readers with the consultations of their own representatives, and expresses a hope that they will accept, as a substitute, those of that country which Gulliver had so lately rendered illustrious, and which untimely death had prevented that enterprising traveller from publishing himself.  Under this fiction he continued to publish the debates of the British parliament, hiding the names of persons and places by the transposition of letters, in the way of anagram.  These he contrived to explain to his readers, by annexing to his volume for 1738, feigned proposals for printing a work, to be called Anagrammata Rediviva.  This list, and others from different years, we give in the present edition, though we have rejected the barbarous jargon from the speeches themselves.  A contemporary publication, the London magazine, feigned to give the debates of the Roman senate, and adapted Roman titles to the several speakers.  This expedient, as well as Cave’s contrivance, sufficed to protect its ingenious authors from parliamentary resentment; as the resolution of the commons was never enforced.

The debates contained in the following volumes, commence with the 19th November, 1740, and terminate with the 23d February, 1742-3.  The animated attempts that were made to remove sir Robert Walpole from administration, seemed, in Cave’s opinion, to call for an abler reporter than Guthrie.  Johnson was selected for the task; and his execution of it may well justify the admiration which we have so often avowed for those wonderful powers of mind, which, apparently, bade defiance to all impediments of external fortune.