prevented that enterprising traveller from publishing himself. Under
this fiction he continued to publish the debates of the British
parliament, hiding the names of persons and places by the transposition
of letters, in the way of anagram. These he contrived to explain to his
readers, by annexing to his volume for 1738, feigned proposals for
printing a work, to be called Anagrammata Rediviva. This list, and
others from different years, we give in the present edition, though we
have rejected the barbarous jargon from the speeches themselves. A
contemporary publication, the LONDON MAGAZINE, feigned to give the
debates of the Roman senate, and adapted Roman titles to the several
speakers. This expedient, as well as Cave's contrivance, sufficed to
protect its ingenious authors from parliamentary resentment; as the
resolution of the commons was never enforced.

The debates contained in the following volumes, commence with the 19th
November, 1740, and terminate with the 23d February, 1742-3. The
animated attempts that were made to remove sir Robert Walpole from
administration, seemed, in Cave's opinion, to call for an abler reporter
than Guthrie. Johnson was selected for the task; and his execution of it
may well justify the admiration which we have so often avowed for those
wonderful powers of mind, which, apparently, bade defiance to all
impediments of external fortune.

He was only thirty-two years of age, little acquainted with the world;
had never, perhaps, been in either house, and certainly had never
conversed with the men whose style and sentiments he took upon himself
to imitate. But so well and skilfully did he assume, not merely the
sedate and stately dignity of the lords, and the undaunted freedom of
the commons, but also the tone of the respective parties, that the
public imagined they recognised the individual manner of the different