ANECDOTES BY GEORGE STEEPENS

��[PUBLISHED in the European Magazine^ January, 1785, p. 51, under the title of Johnsoniana. The editor says by way of introduction : ' Of the various anecdotes of Dr. Johnson which have been given to the Public Papers we select the present collection, as we have every reason to rely on their authenticity/

'These anecdotes were contributed by Steevens himself, and if they are not altogether fictitious, their language is coloured by their brutality/ W. P. COURTNEY, Diet. Nat. Biog. xi. 371. One or two of them which are told by Boswell I have omitted. Life, iv. 324. For Steevens's malignancy and untruthfulness see ib. iii. 281 ; iv. 178, n. i.]

��I HAVE been told, Dr. Johnson, says a friend, that your translation of Pope's Messiah was made either as a common exercise, or as an imposition for some negligence you had been guilty of at College x . ' No, Sir,' replied the Doctor. ' At Pembroke the former were always in prose 2 , and to the latter 3 I would not have submitted. I wrote it rather to shew the tutors what I could do, than what I was willing should be done. It answered

1 Hawkins (p. 13) states that it 2 For one of Johnson's exercises in

was imposed on him on account of prose see ib. i. 60, n. 7.

his * absenting himself from early 3 ' Johnson never used the phrases

prayers.' According to Boswell he the former and the latter' Ib. iv.

was asked by his tutor to do it as 190. a Christmas exercise. Life, i. 61.

my

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