the following selection should be considered interesting to your readers, I shall be happy to occupy a leisure moment by sending you one or two more specimens.

He tells us in his preface, that his intention originally was to admit "no testimony of living authors;" but he adds, "he departed from this resolution when some performance of uncommon excellence excited his veneration, when his memory supplied him, from late books, with an example that was wanting, or when his heart, in the tenderness of friendship, solicited admission for a favourite name." To which of the above three causes I am to attribute the quotation of himself as an authority, I know not; but I find the word idler illustrated by the following line from his own tragedy:

It was probably the tenderness of affection that induced him to quote from Goldsmith, but he quotes him wrong, as may be seen under the verb to breast, where he has these lines:

"The hardy Swiss

Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes."

GOLDSMITH.

The couplet runs thus in every copy of Goldsmith's Traveller which I have seen:

"Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,

Breathes the keen air, and carols as he goes."

It is evident he quoted from memory.

Beattie is another contemporary whom he uses as an authority; but his acquaintance with him did not commence till about the year 1770, at which time he was beginning to rise into notice, having then published, within a short space of each other, his Essay on Truth, and his Minstrel. I could almost be tempted to think that Johnson quoted him on one occasion merely to mark his friendship, for under the adverb of negation no, he introduces this line, " poor Edwin was no vulgar boy," from the first book of his Minstrel. But surely it did not require Dr. Beattie's example to strengthen those of Pope, Swift, and the translators of the Bible, all of whom Johnson cites. The other occaston, on which he quotes Beattie, is for a definition of the word

humble-bee, though I know not from what part of his writings it is taken, unless it be from his Theory of Language.

The word dimply, not a very elegant epithet, he inserts upon the single authority of Warton, another contemporary: "As the smooth surface of the dimply flood,

The silver-slipper'd virgin lightly trod."

The verb to giggle he also supports upon the single authority of his friend Garrick, in a couplet from one of his epilogues: "We show our present joking, giggling race,

True joy consists in gravity and grace.”

The word fabulist is also authorised by a line from Garrick. He quotes the authority of Richardson in the words devilkin and suicide.

In the verb to mounch, he quotes Mr. Macbean, one of his "humble friends," according to Mr. Boswell, as an authority for the definition of the word relatively to its meaning in Scotland, Macbean being considered no doubt a good evidence.

I have produced one instance where Johnson quoted himself as an authority. I find him using the same authority on another occasion, but modestly veiling it under the term anonymous. Thus, in the illustrations of the word mimick, I find the following line:

"Of France the mimick, and of Spain the prey."

ANON.

And in his London, a poem, is the following couplet:

"Sense, freedom, piety refin'd away,

Of France the mimick, and of Spain the prey."

The word rattlesnake is illustrated by a quotation from Edward Moore's comedy of the Foundling, an author whom I do not recollect to have been an associate of Johnson.

Another contemporary whom Johnson quotes, is his friend sir Joshua Reynolds; and when the reader is told that he quotes him in illustration of the word portrait, he will allow that he could not have quoted a better authority.

A very inelegant word, ridiculer, is supported by the single authority of the expected patron of his dictionary, lord Chesterfield:

"The ridiculer shall make only himself ridiculous."

I have confined myself in this letter, which I now hasten to conclude, to an enumeration of such instances of contemporary citation in Johnson's dictionary as I have happened to detect, and shall only further observe, that the words chit and bravado are introduced upon anonymous authority. In a subsequent communication I shall introduce instances where he evidently indulged his prejudices, literary, religious, and political, even in the severe and abstract labour of definition.

SMOLLETT.

The following particulars respecting some of the poems of that author, are extracted from a note attached to the "Poems and Plays of William Richardson, A. M. Professor of Humanity in the University of Glasgow," published in 1805.

His Ode to Independence was left in his own hand writing, with some other papers, to the late Robert Graham, esq. of Gartmore, who was one of his trustees, and who gave it to the author of the present publication, under whose inspection the first edition was elegantly printed by the celebrated messrs. Foulis, printers to the University of Glasgow. It is also proper to mention, that in the fifth line of the third antistrophe, the editor took the liberty of substituting one word in place of another. The line in Smollett's MS. was,

Where Insolence his wrinkled snout uprears.

No doubt the word snout presents a more complete image, and conveys, therefore, a more impressive meaning than the word front, which was introduced in its place; but it did not seem so suitable to the dignity of lyric poetry, or the peculiar loftiness of the Ode to Independence. If, however, the more distinct imagery, and consequent vigour, obtained by retaining the original expression, are capable of counterbalancing the considerations that urged the editor to its exclusion, it is proper that fu

ture editors may have it in their power to restore to the poet what certainly belongs to him.

By the above mentioned Mr. Graham, the following anecdote concerning another performance by Dr. Smollett, entitled the Tears of Scotland, was also communicated, and which he received from one of those who were present when the incident occurred. Some gentlemen having met at a tavern, were amusing themselves before supper with a game at cards, while Smollett, not choosing to play, sat down to write. One of the company, who also was nominated by him afterwards to be one of his trustees, observing his earnestness, asked him, if he was not writing verses. He accordingly read to them the first sketch of his Tears of Scotland, consisting only of six stanzas; and on their remarking, that the termination of the poem, being too strongly expressed, might give offence to persons whose political opinions were different, he made no reply; but, with an air of great indignation, subjoined the concluding stanza.

Concerning the obelisk erected in honour of Buchanan, it is necessary, on account of an inaccurate statement of the matter, though not intentionally so, in a work already before the public, to mention the following particulars. The first suggestion of this monument, as it is now executed, was by the late Robert Dunmore, esq. in a very numerous company, among whom was the author of this publication, in the house of a gentleman in the neighbourhood. A subscription for the purpose was then begun, and nearly filled up; and the design furnished, as his contribution, by Mr. Craig, an eminent architect, who was also present on that occasion.

P. S. In an interesting life of Dr. Smollet tby Dr. Anderson, who rouses, if I may use the energetic language of an ode addressed to him by the translator of Dante, who rouses

The Heliconian strain

The cause of virtue to sustain;

the anecdote respecting the poem entitled the Tears of Scotland, is mentioned, on the authority of Dr. Moore, with circumstances somewhat different from those communicated to the author by Mr. Graham. The writers will perhaps differ from the mere critics of poetry, concerning the probability of the two accounts.

KEMBLE'S PRONUNCIATION OF THE WORD ACHES.

A few years ago, when Mr. Kemble revived the play of "The Tempest," a knot of sciolists assailed him with the most illiberal abuse for pronouncing the word aches, in the following line, as a dissyllable.

"Fill all thy bones with aches; make thee roar."

Tempest, Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 42. edit. 1803.

That these unmanly carpers were "ignorance itself in this," is, I believe, pretty evident to any one however slightly acquainted with our old poets and dramatists. From the writings of Shakspeare and his contemporaries, down even as low as the days of Dryden and Swift, hundreds of instances may be adduced where the word must be pronounced as a dissyllable, to preserve the metre. And, though I may be mistaken, I am inclined to think, that the word when occurring as a noun was uniformly used as a dissyllable, and as a monosyllable when it occurs as a verb, by writers contemporaneous, or not far removed from, the times of Shakspeare.

I cannot "find in my heart to bestow all my tediousness" upon the proof of this proposition; but in support of the assertion that aches was used as a dissyllable by Shakspeare and his contemporaries, and after them to a very low date, I will adduce only one instance from Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Ford, D'Avenant, Dryden, and Swift.