[747] Johnson’s Rasselas was published in either March or April, and Goldsmith’s Polite Learning in April of 1759.I do not find that they published any other works at the same time.  If these are the works meant, we have a proof that the two writers knew each other earlier than was otherwise known.

[748] ’A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of Phalaris; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of criticism (the Answer to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be discouraged at this run upon him, for tho’ they had got the laughers on their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a work of so much merit.  To which the other replied, “Indeed Dr. S. [Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter.  For I hold it as certain, that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."’ Warburton on Pope, iv. 159, quoted in Person’s Tracts, p. 345.  ‘Against personal abuse,’ says Hawkins (Life, p. 348), ’Johnson was ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:—­“Alas! reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every concealed enemy to deprive us of it."’ He wrote to Baretti:—­’A man of genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.’ Ante, i. 381.  Voltaire in his Essay Sur les inconveniens attaches a la Litterature (Works, ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win the favour of the critics, continues:—­’Tous vos soins n’empechent pas que quelque journaliste ne vous dechire.  Vous lui repondez; il replique; vous avez un proces par ecrit devant le public, qui condamne les deux parties au ridicule.’  See ante, ii. 61, note 4.

[749] However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he says:—­’Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very slight, when we consider a book as the author’s offspring, and indeed as the child of his brain.  The reader who hath suffered his muse to continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea of this kind of paternal fondness.  To such we may parody the tender exclamation of Macduff, “Alas! thou hast written no book."’ Tom Jones, bk. xi. ch. 1.

[750] It is strange that Johnson should not have known that the Adventures of a Guinea was written by a namesake of his own, Charles Johnson.  Being disqualified for the bar, which was his profession, by a supervening deafness, he went to India, and made some fortune, and died there about 1800.  WALTER SCOTT.

[751] Salusbury, not Salisbury.

[752] Horace Walpole (Letters, .ii 57) mentions in 1746 his cousin Sir John Philipps, of Picton Castle; ’a noted Jacobite.’...  He thus mentions Lady Philipps in 1788 when she was ‘very aged.’  ’They have a favourite black, who has lived with them a great many years, and is remarkably sensible.  To amuse Lady Philipps under a long illness, they had read to her the account of the Pelew Islands.  Somebody happened to say we were sending a ship thither; the black, who was in the room, exclaimed, “Then there is an end of their happiness.”  What a satire on Europe!’ Ib. ix. 157.