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Some Notes on Johnson and the Gentleman's Magazine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

D. J. Greene
D. J. Greene*
Affiliation:
Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass.
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Extract

Perhaps someone will eventually undertake the heroic task of making a really systematic study of the file of the Gentleman's Magazine, in the hope of arriving at a more satisfying account of Johnson's part in it than we now have. The following observations do not represent such an attempt; they are the product of a relatively cursory inspection of some of the early volumes, and are offered with the expectation that they will raise more questions than they will answer. Still, such questions ought to be raised, in the hope that a consideration of them will in the end contribute to the higher standards of comprehensiveness and precision in Johnson studies which modern students would like to see attained.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , March 1959 , pp. 75 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1959

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References

1 In quotations from the GM I have generally reduced spelling and printing style to modern usage.

2 Jacob Leed has pointed out to me one other occurrence of the signature “S.J.” in the early numbers of the GM. It is appended to a letter (GM, July 1744, pp. 370–371) introducing some excerpts from Patrick Delany's Fifteen Sermons upon Social Duties. The few sentences that make up the letter and an introductory comment on the first extract seem to me of no great stylistic distinction, though it is not impossible to believe that Johnson could have written them. Certainly the subject matter of Delany's sermons would have interested Johnson.

3 Life, ed. Birkbeck Hill-L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934–50), i, 150. All subsequent references to the Life will be to this edition.

4 What was apparently an earlier attempt by the GM to compile a list of Johnson's biographical contributions appears in the issue of Oct. 1750, p. 464, as a footnote to a reprint of Rambler 60. Referring to Johnson's statement, “I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful,” the GM says:

We have the pleasure of being able to confirm this truth, by the lives of several persons in different stations, inserted in our magazine, which we find to have been singularly acceptable to our readers.—See particularly the Life of Father Paul, in Vol. viii. of Dr. Boerhaave, Vol. ix. Adm. Blake, Vol. x. Sir Francis Drake and Barrelier, Vol. x, and xi. Dr. Morin, Vol. xi. of Peter Burman and Dr. Sydenham, Vol. xii.

Johnson is not mentioned by name, but his authorship of the Rambler was widely known. On the next page, the GM comments that “many… know that the Ramblers are sent into the world from St. John's Gate.” On Cave's connection with the Rambler, see W. P. Courtney, Bibliography (Oxford, 1925), p. 31.