41.)
The chief part of the lease consisted of the privilege to print Bibles and Prayer Books. I conjecture that Strahan had hoped to get a share in the lease.
VIII.
A letter about a cancel in Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland', dated Nov. 30, 1774.[In the possession of Messrs. Pearson and Co., 46, Pall Mall.]
'SIR,
'I waited on you this morning having forgotten your new engagement; for this you must not reproach me, for if I had looked upon your present station with malignity I could not have forgotten it. I came to consult you upon a little matter that gives me some uneasiness. In one of the pages there is a severe censure of the clergy of an English Cathedral which I am afraid is just, but I have since recollected that from me it may be thought improper, for the Dean did me a kindness about forty years ago. He is now very old, and I am not young. Reproach can do him no good, and in myself I know not whether it is zeal or wantonness. Can a leaf be cancelled without too much trouble? tell me what I shall do. I have no settled choice, but I would not wish to allow the charge. To cancel it seems the surer side. Determine for me.
'I am, Sir, Your most humble servant, 'SAM. JOHNSON.' 'Nov. 30, 1774.
'Tell me your mind: if you will cancel it I will write something to fill up the vacuum. Please to direct to the borough.'
Mr. Strahan's 'new engagement' was in the House of Commons at Westminster, to which he had been elected for the first time as member for Malmesbury. The new Parliament had met on Nov. 29, the day before the date of Johnson's letter (Parl. Hist, xviii. 23).
The leaf that Johnson cancelled contained pages 47, 48 in the first edition of his Journey to the Western Islands. It corresponds with pages 19-30 in vol. ix. of Johnson's Works (ed. 1825), beginning with the words 'could not enter,' and ending 'imperfect constitution.' The excision is marked by a ridge of paper, which was left that the revised leaf might be attached to it. Johnson describes how the lead which covered the Cathedrals of Elgin and Aberdeen had been stripped off by the order of the Scottish Council, and shipped to be sold in Holland. He continues:--'Let us not however make too much haste to despise our neighbours. Our own cathedrals are mouldering by unregarded dilapidation. It seems to be part of the despicable philosophy of the time to despise monuments of sacred magnificence, and we are in danger of doing that deliberately, which the Scots did not do but in the unsettled state of an imperfect constitution.'
In the copy of the first edition in the Bodleian Library, which had belonged to Gough the antiquary, there is written in his hand, as a foot-note to 'neighbours': 'There is now, as I have heard, a body of men not less decent or virtuous than the Scottish Council, longing to melt the lead of an English Cathedral. What they shall melt, it were just that they should swallow.' It can scarcely be doubted that this is the suppressed passage. The English Cathedral to which Johnson refers was, I believe, Lichfield. 'The roof,' says Harwood (History of Lichfield, p. 75), 'was formerly covered with lead, but now with slate.' Addenbroke, who had been Dean since 1745, was, we may assume, very old at the time when Johnson wrote. I had at first thought it not unlikely that it was Dr. Thomas Newton, Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop of Bristol, who was censured. He was a Lichfield man, and was known to Johnson (see ante, iv. 285, n. 3). He was, however, only seventy years old. I am informed moreover by the Rev. W. Sparrow Simpson, the learned editor of Documents illustrating the History of St. Paul's, that it is very improbable that at this time the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's entertained such a thought.
My friend Mr. C. E. Doble has kindly furnished me with the following curious parallel to Johnson's suppressed wish about the molten lead.
'The chappell of our Lady [at Wells], late repayred by Stillington, a place of great reverence and antiquitie, was likewise defaced, and such was their thirst after lead (I would they had drunke it scalding) that they tooke the dead bodies of bishops out of their leaden coffins, and cast abroad the carkases skarce throughly putrified.'--Harington's Nuga Antiquae, ii. 147 (ed. 1804).
In the postscript Johnson says 'Please to direct to the borough.' He was staying in Mr. Thrale's town-house in the Borough of Southwark. (See ante, i, 493.)
IX.
A letter about apprenticing a lad to Mr. Strahan, and about a presentation to the Blue Coat School, dated December 22, 1774. [In the possession of Messrs. Robson and Kerslake, 25, Coventry Street Haymarket.]
'Sir,
'When we meet we talk, and I know not whether I always recollect what I thought I had to say.
'You will please to remember that I once asked you to receive an apprentice, who is a scholar, and has always lived in a clergyman's house, but who is mishapen, though I think not so as to hinder him at the case. It will be expected that I should answer his Friend who has hitherto maintained him, whether I can help him to a place. He can give no money, but will be kept in cloaths.