It is said, upon good authority, that Johnson once received from lord
Chesterfield the sum of ten pounds. It were to be wished that the secret
had never transpired. It was mean to receive it, and meaner to give it.
It may be imagined, that for Johnson's ferocity, as it has been called,
there was some foundation in his finances; and, as his Dictionary was
brought to a conclusion, that money was now to flow in upon him. The
reverse was the case. For his subsistence, during the progress of the
work, he had received, at different times, the amount of his contract;
and, when his receipts were produced to him at a tavern dinner, given by
the booksellers, it appeared, that he had been paid a hundred pounds and
upwards more than his due. The author of a book, called Lexiphanes[s],
written by a Mr. Campbell, a Scotchman, and purser of a man of war,
endeavoured to blast his laurels, but in vain. The world applauded, and
Johnson never replied. "Abuse," he said, "is often of service: there is
nothing so dangerous to an author as silence; his name, like a
shittlecock [Transcriber's note: sic], must be beat backward and forward,
or it falls to the ground." Lexiphanes professed to be an imitation of the
pleasant manner of Lucian; but humour was not the talent of the writer of
Lexiphanes. As Dryden says, "he had too much horse-play in his raillery."

It was in the summer, 1754, that the present writer became acquainted
with Dr. Johnson. The cause of his first visit is related by Mrs.
Piozzi, nearly in the following manner:--Mr. Murphy being engaged in a
periodical paper, the Gray's inn Journal, was at a friend's house in the
country, and, not being disposed to lose pleasure for business, wished
to content his bookseller by some unstudied essay. He, therefore, took
up a French Journal Littéraire, and, translating something he liked,
sent it away to town. Time, however, discovered that he translated from
the French, a Rambler, which had been taken from the English, without