of whom would purchase it. To this circumstance Mr. Derrick alludes in the following lines of his Fortune, a Rhapsody:
'Will no kind patron Johnson own?
Shall Johnson friendless range the town?
And every publisher refuse
The offspring of his happy Muse[1]?'
But we have seen that the worthy, modest, and ingenious Mr. Robert Dodsley[2] had taste enough to perceive its uncommon merit, and thought it creditable to have a share in it. The fact is, that, at a future conference, he bargained for the whole property of it, for which he gave Johnson ten guineas[3]; who told me, 'I might, perhaps, have accepted of less; but that Paul Whitehead had a little before got ten guineas for a poem and I would not take less than Paul Whitehead.'
I may here observe, that Johnson appeared to me to undervalue Paul Whitehead upon every occasion when he was mentioned, and, in my opinion, did not do him justice; but when it is considered that Paul Whitehead was a member of a riotous and profane club[4], we may account for Johnson's having a prejudice against him. Paul Whitehead was, indeed, unfortunate in being not only slighted by
- ↑ Derrick was not merely a poet, but also Master of the Ceremonies at Bath; Post, May i6, 1763. For Johnson's opinion of his 'Muse' see Post, under March 30, 1783. Fortune, a Rhapsody, was published in Nov. 1751. Gent. Mag. xxi. 527. He is described in Humphrey Clinker in the letters of April 6 and May 6.
- ↑ See Post, March 20, 1776.
- ↑ Six years later Johnson thus wrote of Savage's Wanderer:—'From a poem so diligently laboured, and so successfully finished, it might be reasonably expected that he should have gained considerable advantage; nor can it without some degree of indignation and concern be told, that he sold the copy for ten guineas.' Johnson's Works, viii. 131. Mrs. Piozzi sold in 1788 the copyright of her collection of Johnson's Letters for £500; Post, Feb. 1767.
- ↑ The Monks of Medmenham Abbey. See Almon's Life of Wilkes, iii. 60, for Wilkes's account of this club. Horace Walpole (Letters, i. 92) calls Whitehead 'an infamous, but not despicable poet.'
