20 JOHNSON. 



he was forced to abandon the scheme. This took place 

 in 1739; and when the attempt failed, he made another 

 effort equally unsuccessful to practise as an advocate in 

 Doctors' Commons, the want of a still higher degree 

 proving there an insuperable obstacle. 



Among his contributions to the 'Gentleman's Magazine' 

 are the accounts which he drew up of the debates in 

 Parliament. They were given as proceedings in the 

 u Senate of Lilliput ;" the squeamishness of parliamentary 

 privilege men, even in those days, not permitting them to 

 suffer an open violation of the Standing Orders, which 

 their courage would not let them enforce. During the 

 three years 1740, 1741, and 1742, he carried on this 

 alone, obtaining only such help or hints as he could pick 

 up from frequenting a coffee-house in the neighbourhood 

 of the two Houses, and from original communications 

 made by the speakers themselves. The style of the 

 whole is plainly Johnson's own, and so was by far the 

 greater part of the matter. The supposed speech of 

 Lord Chatham, in answer to Horatio Walpole's attack on 

 his youth, is entirely Johnson's, as every reader must 

 perceive, and as he never affected to deny. Yet the 

 public were, for a while, deceived ; and as soon as he dis- 

 covered that these compositions passed for genuine, he 

 at once gave them up, being resolved that he should be 

 no party to a deception. Mr. Boswell says (I. 128), 

 that a short time before his death, he "expressed his 

 regret at having been the author of fictions which had 

 passed for realities." It is singular enough that any 

 person pretending to write on such subjects should have 

 had the simplicity to praise Johnson for the success with 

 which he had " exhibited the manner of each particular 



