understood well enough to come from the first; others by penny-post[1], and others by the speakers themselves, who have been pleased to visit St. John's Gate, and show particular marks of their being pleased[2].'
There is no reason, I believe, to doubt the veracity of Cave. It is, however, remarkable, that none of these letters are in the years during which Johnson alone furnished the Debates, and one of them is in the very year after he ceased from that labour, Johnson told me that as soon as he found that the speeches were thought genuine, he determined that he would write no more of them; for 'he would not be accessary to the propagation of falsehood.' And such was the tenderness of his conscience, that a short time before his death he expressed his regret for having been the authour of fictions, which had passed for realities[3].
He nevertheless agreed with me in thinking, that the debates which he had framed were to be valued as orations upon questions of publick importance. They have accordingly been collected in volumes, properly arranged, and recommended to the notice of parliamentary speakers by a preface, written by no inferior hand[4]. I must, however, observe, that although there is in those debates a wonderful store of political information, and very powerful eloquence,
- ↑ The delivery of letters by the penny-post 'was originally confined to the cities of London and Westminster, the borough of Southwark and the respective suburbs thereof.' In 1801 the postage was raised to two-pence. The term 'suburbs' must have had a very limited signification, for it was not till 1831 that the limits of this delivery were extended to all places within three miles of the General Post Office. Ninth Report of the Commissioners of the Post Office, 1837, p. 4.
- ↑ Birch's MSS. in the British Museum, 4302. Boswell.
- ↑ See Post, Dec. 1784, in Nichols's Anecdotes. If we may trust Hawkins, it is likely that Johnson's 'tenderness of conscience' cost Cave a good deal; for he writes that, while Johnson composed the Debates, the sale of the Magazine increased from ten to fifteen thousand copies a month. 'Cave manifested his good fortune by buying an old coach and a pair of older horses.' Hawkins's Johnson, p. 123.
- ↑ I am assured that the editor is Mr. George Chalmers, whose commercial works are well known and esteemed. Boswell.
