has it, “he begets a temperance, to give it smoothness.”  He is, therefore, entitled to a dispassionate answer.  When Johnson wrote the prologue, it does appear that he was aware of the malignant artifices practised by Lauder.  In the postscript to Johnson’s preface, a subscription is proposed, for relieving the granddaughter of the author of Paradise Lost.  Dr. Towers will agree, that this shows Johnson’s alacrity in doing good.  That alacrity showed itself again, in the letter printed in the European Magazine, January, 1785, and there said to have appeared originally in the General Advertiser, 4th April, 1750, by which the public were invited to embrace the opportunity of paying a just regard to the illustrious dead, united with the pleasure of doing good to the living.  The letter adds, “To assist industrious indigence, struggling with distress, and debilitated by age, is a display of virtue, and an acquisition of happiness and honour.  Whoever, therefore, would be thought capable of pleasure, in reading the works of our incomparable Milton, and not so destitute of gratitude, as to refuse to lay out a trifle, in a rational and elegant entertainment, for the benefit of his living remains, for the exercise of their own virtue, the increase of their reputation, and the consciousness of doing good, should appear at Drury lane theatre, to-morrow, April 5, when Comus will be performed, for the benefit of Mrs. Elizabeth Foster, granddaughter to the author, and the only surviving branch of his family. Nota bene, there will be a new prologue on the occasion, written by the author of Irene, and spoken by Mr. Garrick.”  The man, who had thus exerted himself to serve the granddaughter, cannot be supposed to have entertained personal malice to the grandfather.  It is true, that the malevolence of Lauder, as well as the impostures of Archibald Bower, were fully detected by the labours, in the cause of truth, of the reverend Dr. Douglas, the late lord bishop of Salisbury,

—­“Diram qui contudit Hydram
  Notaque fatali portenta labore subegit.”

But the pamphlet, entitled, Milton vindicated from the Charge of Plagiarism brought against him by Mr. Lauder, and Lauder himself convicted of several forgeries, and gross impositions on the public, by John Douglas, M.A. rector of Eaton Constantine, Salop, was not published till the year 1751.  In that work, p. 77, Dr. Douglas says, “It is to be hoped, nay, it is expected, that the elegant and nervous writer, whose judicious sentiments, and inimitable style, point out the author of Lauder’s preface and postcript, will no longer allow a man to plume himself with his feathers, who appears so little to have deserved his assistance; an assistance which, I am persuaded, would never have been communicated, had there been the least suspicion of those facts, which I have been the instrument of conveying to the world.”  We have here a contemporary testimony to the integrity of Dr. Johnson, throughout the whole of that vile transaction.