of the speakers, the side they took, and the order in which they rose, together with notes of the arguments advanced in the course of the debate.  The whole was afterwards communicated to me, and I composed the speeches in the form which they now have in the parliamentary debates.”  To this discovery, Dr. Francis made answer:  “Then, sir, you have exceeded Demosthenes himself; for to say, that you have exceeded Francis’s Demosthenes, would be saying nothing.”  The rest of the company bestowed lavish encomiums on Johnson:  one, in particular, praised his impartiality; observing, that he dealt out reason and eloquence, with an equal hand to both parties.  “That is not quite true,” said Johnson; “I saved appearances tolerably well; but I took care that the whig dogs should not have the best of it.”  The sale of the magazine was greatly increased by the parliamentary debates, which were continued by Johnson till the month of March, 1742-3.  From that time the magazine was conducted by Dr. Hawkesworth.

In 1743-4, Osborne, the bookseller, who kept a shop in Gray’s inn, purchased the earl of Oxford’s library, at the price of thirteen thousand pounds.  He projected a catalogue in five octavo volumes, at five shillings each.  Johnson was employed in that painful drudgery.  He was, likewise, to collect all such small tracts as were, in any degree, worth preserving, in order to reprint and publish the whole in a collection, called The Harleian Miscellany.  The catalogue was completed; and the miscellany, in 1749, was published in eight quarto volumes.  In this business Johnson was a day-labourer for immediate subsistence, not unlike Gustavus Vasa, working in the mines of Dalecarlia.  What Wilcox, a bookseller of eminence in the Strand, said to Johnson, on his first arrival in town, was now almost confirmed.  He lent our author five guineas, and then asked him, “How do you mean to earn your livelihood in this town?” “By my literary labours,” was the answer.  Wilcox, staring at him, shook his head:  “By your literary labours!  You had better buy a porter’s knot.”  Johnson used to tell this anecdote to Mr. Nichols:  but he said, “Wilcox was one of my best friends, and he meant well.”  In fact, Johnson, while employed in Gray’s inn, may be said to have carried a porter’s knot.  He paused occasionally to peruse the book that came to his hand.  Osborne thought that such curiosity tended to nothing but delay, and objected to it with all the pride and insolence of a man who knew that he paid daily wages.  In the dispute that of course ensued, Osborne, with that roughness which was natural to him, enforced his argument by giving the lie.  Johnson seized a folio, and knocked the bookseller down.  This story has been related as an instance of Johnson’s ferocity; but merit cannot always take the spurns of the unworthy with a patient spirit[k].