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 postscript, will no
    longer allow one 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 in these sheets.” p. 77. 8vo. 1751.

In Boswell’s Life, i. 209, ed. 1816, Mr. Boswell thus writes, in a note:  “His lordship (Dr. Douglas, then bishop of Salisbury) has been pleased now to authorise me to say, in the strongest manner, that there is no ground whatever for any unfavourable reflection against Dr. Johnson, who expressed the strongest indignation against Lauder.”—­Ed.

[2] Essay upon the civil wars of France, and also upon the epick poetry
   of the European nations, from Homer down to Milton, 8vo. 1727,
   p. 103.

[3] Preface to a review of the text of the twelve books of Milton’s
    Paradise Lost, in which the chief of Dr. Bentley’s emendations are
    considered, 8vo. 1733.

[4] New memoirs of Mr. John Milton, by Francis Peck. 4to. 1740. p. 52.

A LETTER
TO THE REVEREND MR. DOUGLAS,
OCCASIONED BY HIS
VINDICATION OF MILTON.

To which are subjoined several curious original letters from the authors of the Universal History, Mr. Ainsworth, Mr. Mac-Laurin, &c.

BY WILLIAM LAUDER, A.M.

  Quem paenitet peccasse pene est innocens. SENECA.
  Corpora magnanimo satis est prostrasse Leoni: 
    Pugna suum finem, quum jacet hostis, habet. OVID.
      —­Praetuli clementiam
  Juris rigori.—­ GROTII Adamus Exul.

FIRST PRINTED THE YEAR 1751.

PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS.

Dr. Johnson no sooner discovered the iniquitous conduct and designs of Lauder, than he compelled him to confess and recant, in the following letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, which he drew up for him:  but scarcely had Lauder exhibited this sign of contrition, when he addressed an apology to the archbishop of Canterbury, soliciting his patronage for an edition of the very poets whose works he had so misapplied, and concluding his address in the following spirit:  “As for the interpolations for which I am so highly blamed, when passion is subsided, and the minds of men can patiently attend to truth, I promise amply to replace them with passages equivalent in value, that are genuine, that the public may be convinced that it was rather passion and resentment, than a penury of evidence, the twentieth part of which has not yet been produced, that obliged me to make use of them.”  This did not satiate his malice:  in 1752, he published the first volume of the proposed edition of the Latin