be; and are for pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers
are for supporting the constitution both in church and state.[91] The
Critical Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books
through; but lay hold of a topick, and write chiefly from their own
minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men, and are glad to read the
books through.'

He talked of Lord Lyttelton's extreme anxiety as an authour; observing,
that 'he was thirty years in preparing his _History_, and that he
employed a man to point it for him; as if (laughing) another man could
point his sense better than himself.'[92] Mr. Murphy said, he understood
his history was kept back several years for fear of Smollet[93]. JOHNSON.
'This seems strange to Murphy and me, who never felt that anxiety, but
sent what we wrote to the press, and let it take its chance.' MRS.
THRALE. 'The time has been, Sir, when you felt it.' JOHNSON. 'Why
really, Madam, I do not recollect a time when that was the case.'

Talking of _The Spectator_, he said, 'It is wonderful that there is such
a proportion of bad papers, in the half of the work which was not
written by Addison; for there was all the world to write that half, yet
not a half of that half is good. One of the finest pieces in the English
language is the paper on Novelty,[94] yet we do not hear it talked of. It
was written by Grove, a dissenting _teacher_.' He would not, I
perceived, call him a _clergyman_, though he was candid enough to allow
very great merit to his composition. Mr. Murphy said, he remembered when
there were several people alive in London, who enjoyed a considerable
reputation merely from having written a paper in _The Spectator_. He
mentioned particularly Mr. Ince, who used to frequent Tom's
coffee-house. 'But (said Johnson,) you must consider how highly Steele
speaks of Mr. Ince[95].' He would not allow that the paper[96] on carrying