to Mary Queen of Scots_. It
was reviewed by Johnson. _Ante_, i. 354.

[747] Johnson's _Rasselas_ was published in either March or April, and
Goldsmith's _Polite Learning_ in April of 1759.I do not find that they
published any other works at the same time. If these are the works
meant, we have a proof that the two writers knew each other earlier than
was otherwise known.

[748] 'A learned prelate accidentally met Bentley in the days of
_Phalaris_; and after having complimented him on that noble piece of
criticism (the _Answer_ to the Oxford Writers) he bad him not be
discouraged at this run upon him, for tho' they had got the laughers on
their side, yet mere wit and raillery could not long hold out against a
work of so much merit. To which the other replied, "Indeed Dr. S.
[Sprat], I am in no pain about the matter. For I hold it as certain,
that no man was ever written out of reputation but by himself."'
_Warburton on Pope_, iv. 159, quoted in Person's _Tracts_, p. 345.
'Against personal abuse,' says Hawkins (_Life_, p. 348), 'Johnson was
ever armed by a reflection that I have heard him utter:--"Alas!
reputation would be of little worth, were it in the power of every
concealed enemy to deprive us of it."' He wrote to Baretti:--'A man of
genius has been seldom ruined but by himself.' _Ante_, i. 381. Voltaire
in his _Essay Sur les inconveniens attaches a la Litterature_ (_Works_,
ed. 1819, xliii. 173), after describing all that an author does to win
the favour of the critics, continues:--'Tous vos soins n'empechent pas
que quelque journaliste ne vous dechire. Vous lui repondez; il replique;
vous avez un proces par ecrit devant le public, qui condamne les deux
parties au ridicule.' See _ante_, ii. 61, note 4.

[749] However advantageous attacks may be, the feelings with which they
are regarded by authors are better described by Fielding when he
says:--'Nor shall we conclude the injury done this way to be very
slight, when we consider a book as the author's offspring, and indeed as
the child of his brain. The reader who hath suffered his muse to
continue hitherto in a virgin state can have but a very inadequate idea
of this kind of paternal fondness. To such we may parody the tender
exclamation of Macduff, "Alas! thou hast written no book."' _Tom Jones_,
bk. xi. ch. 1.

[750] It is strange that Johnson should not have known that the
_Adventures of a Guinea_ was written by a namesake of his own, Charles
Johnson. Being d