As none of the Commissioners understood the subject much, it was of prime importance to the applicant, that the first clock and watchmaker in London (as Graham was) should come forward to verify the correctness of his allegations. But it brings under observation at a subsequent period, those Collegians whose conduct, with all the advantages of a learned education, was totally at variance with the bright example of this excellent person.

The rivalry alluded to (from which Dr. Halley must always be excepted, who, like Newton, preferred a Timekeeper) may be dated from the importation of Professor Mayer's Tables, in 1756, from the aid of which wonders were expected, while it was entirely forgotten that, while their utility is so much circumscribed by the laws of nature, the seaman is often not much better off than before. But waiving this consideration, what can be said to the moral attributes of these luminaries from Cam and Isis? Were they natives of Gotham ("born in thick Raotian air") who were incapable of profiting by the extraordinary merit of a layman thus recorded on their own minutes?* They might concoct passable discourses for the spiritual rostrum, yet they were "but as

* A novel and important remark, in the letters to young Stanhope, is -that in antient authors, particulars are admired, the counterparts of which pass unregarded in the neighbourhood. The same reasoning is frequently applicable to modern instances of recent date; for how many have heard and admired the case of Frederic 3rd and the Miller, who yet never knew an item of the particulars here given of George 3rd, although beyond comparison of more moral interest than those of the other affair, because of the trouble and perseverance they called for. Again, who is not aware of the immortality conferred by Pope on the Man of Ross, for his meritorious example in the use of riches, perhaps devolving on him by inheritance? while the use, not of wealth, but of a moderate competence (the fruits of his industry) heightened by a conquest over the baser passions of our nature, in George Graham, is as unknown to those whom it concerns, as the virtue of GEORGE III. OF THESE UNITED KINGDOMS. Pope, we believe, knew no more of him than as a superior mechanic, and possibly, his own watchmaker.

+ This position the Noble Writer appositely illustrates in the Letter numbered 162, 12th edition.

sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal," if their practice was so unequal to their precepts. Had this benevolent man, and excellent christian (we would say, though Calvin might have predestined him to be damned) done every thing he could to overset the views of the Candidate, instead of taking a refined pleasure (a pleasure they knew not) in promoting them, the common infirmity of human nature would have been pleaded in extenuation of such selfish demeanour towards a man, who he might have said, came to London "to take the bread out of his mouth :' :"* but no such set off could be brought to bear on their own case, for they were not of his trade, when they manifested so much envy, jealousy and meanness, particularly in refusing him a check on the computations, although (we repeat that) the commonest sense of equity called for it: and this moral deformity, were their old acquaintance, Juvenal, resuscitated, might have produced from the red-hot pincers, with which his muse was armed, a more biting satire than "words

*By the favour of a Correspondent, we are enabled to insert the following few particulars of this distinguished Mechanician.'George 'Graham was born in 1675, at Gratwick, an obscure village in the North ' of Cumberland. In 1688 he was sent to London, and apprenticed to a 'thirty-hour clockmaker. When he was out of his time, he entered the 'service of Mr. Tompion, one of whose nieces he married. This union 'proved unfortunate: Mrs. Graham had two sons, whose legitimacy her 'husband refused to acknowledge. On the 9th March, 1720, he was 'elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and admitted on the 16th of the 'same month. And that year, after having, in 1716, become an Assistant, 'he was chosen Master of the Clockmakers' Company. He died on the '16th November, 1751, and was interred in Westminster Abbey, on the '24th of that month.

'He left about £6,000; which was divided between his Widow and 'her two Sons: she survived him but a short time.'

+ Either from public reproach, or private compunction, they gave up this point, and tacitly admitted the injury that had been done him. After the return from Barbadoes, he was desired to name an equal number of Computers, on his own part; but it was then unnecessary, because he personally knew and respected the abilities and fitness of those named by the Board: so that he thought it sufficient to name one only himself to that office.

far bitterer than wormwood" can convey! in which, to

least, he would have evinced no more respect for their scientific designations, than he may be supposed to have had for those of Doctor Trypherus, a Professor of the Art of Carving; who, in his time, gave practical lectures, at which his pupils exercised themselves on all sorts of subjects in wood, and the hacking and hewing these resounded through the Suburra.*

No. 7.

SOME REMARKS ON THE RESPECTIVE CHARACTERS OF GEORGE III. AND DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON; SUGGESTED BY MR. CROKER'S ANNOTATIONS ON THE BIOGRAPHY OF THE MORALIST.

+REGRET at seeing the merits of this Prince disregarded by those courtiers, or those philosophers, or, whoever the people were whose impenetrable os frontis would have entitled them to some mention in the Dunciad, draws attention to that marked superiority in points of no small importance by general consent, which the one occupant of St. James's, or Buckingham House, shows over the other of Bolt-court, Fleet-street. All readers,

* A street which, we are told, answered to the Strand in London. This refinement on civilization, is perhaps equalled by "A treatise on the Art of tieing the neckcloth, explained by cuts," which we lately heard of; and to which, the Author having prefixed his portrait, we cannot doubt he attaches adequate importance.

+ The Note, page 15, continued.

where the English language extends, are under signal obligations to Mr. Croker, for detecting the latent source of what is called one of the Doctor's prejudices*—much too mild a term, we opine, for the slanderous aspersion of a whole class of public functionaries, certainly entitled to the same protection as a Secretary of the Admiralty, to wit. It gives but a humiliating view of human nature, when so learned and intellectual a man as Dr. Johnson reduces himself to a level with the illiterate mass, whose prejudices are excusable because they have not his discriminating judgment to be enabled to shake them off. His own opinion of Cibber is brought to recollection by this inconsistent weakness. He was one day speaking in disparagement of Colley (one half of whose conversation was made up of oaths) and when some person reminded him of the merit of his comedies, Johnson was not disposed to allow much weight to that consideration: because as he said, it was his trade to write them. The remark might be conceded, but with a proviso here, for it was his own trade to write Ramblers and Idlers, or what you will, and to inculcate the best rules for our conduct in every department of social life (particularly to avoid prejudices) but it might be the trade of others, if they would, to put them in practice.

The Jacobite prejudices of the literary colossus were laugh

* Johnson, in his Dictionary, defines " EXCISE, a hateful tax, levied upon commodities, and adjudged, not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid;" and in the Idler (No. 65) he calls a Commissioner of Excise "one of the lowest of all human beings." This violence of language seems so little reasonable, that the editor was induced to suspect some cause of personal animosity; this mention of the trade [by his father] in parchment (an exciseable article) afforded a clue, which has led to the confirmation of that suspicion. In the records of the Excise Board, is to be found the following letter, addressed to the supervisor of excise at Lichfield:-"July 25th, 1725.-The Commissioners received yours of the 22nd instant; and since the justices would not give judgment against Mr. Michael Johnson, the tanner, notwithstanding the facts were fairly against him, the Board directs, that the next time he offends, you do not lay an information against him, but send an affidavit of the fact, that he may be prosecuted in the Exchequer."

able enough, but not so here, for it was that impatience of the control of the laws, and indeed of all control, which characterizes the turbulent democrat of any period, and more especially our own. We scruple not to retort his epithet, he was himself a wretch, when he could thus stigmatize as "the lowest of all human beings," officials employed and paid by the state to collect one of the most important branches of the revenue, and whose bounden duty it became to detect any evasion, or concealment, like that which Michael Johnson seems to have been guilty of: for the facts are stated to have been "fairly against him." Under those circumstances, the officers appear to have adopted the more lenient course, by laying an information against him before the magistrates, which was doubtless less expensive and ruinous than a prosecution by the Exchequer —a forbearance which, if it did not elicit some gratitude from the Bookseller's Son, ought to have neutralized his resentment. How came Mr. Croker to overlook the coincidence between the Jacobite Johnson's hatred of an excise tax, and the democratical outcry against any tax they dislike, including tithes, which leads to unlawful combinations in Ireland at present? We do not know a more curious illustration of the commonplace truism, that “extremes always meet" than this affair affords, and-to improve the joke, we learn further, that, being one of those interesting men who are the founders of their own fortune, Mr. Croker was himself heretofore in an inferior grade of the Irish excise. This jostling might have been expected to induce some acerbity towards the departed philosopher: for could Johnson have been resuscitated, and had some humourist informed him that his biography was annotated by a quondam gauger of spirits above proof, he would have mustered as much ineffable contempt in the expression of his countenance, as the old Lord Auchenleek is described to have shown, while he commented in his native dialect on Jamie keeping such hopeful company.

The author of the Idler was unfortunate in pulling an old house over his head, when he vilified the Commissioners of