and improvement of the productions
of other contributors, like that employed in levelling ground, can be
perceived only by those who had an opportunity of comparing the original
with the altered copy. What we certainly know to have been done by him
in this way, was the Debates in both houses of Parliament, under the
name of 'The Senate of Lilliput,' sometimes with feigned denominations
of the several speakers, sometimes with denominations formed of the
letters of their real names, in the manner of what is called anagram, so
that they might easily be decyphered. Parliament then kept the press in
a kind of mysterious awe, which made it necessary to have recourse to
such devices. In our time it has acquired an unrestrained freedom, so
that the people in all parts of the kingdom have a fair, open, and
exact report of the actual proceedings of their representatives and
legislators, which in our constitution is highly to be valued; though,
unquestionably, there has of late been too much reason to complain of
the petulance with which obscure scribblers have presumed to treat men
of the most respectable character and situation.

This important article of the Gentlemen's Magazine was, for several
years, executed by Mr. William Guthrie, a man who deserves to be
respectably recorded in the literary annals of this country. The debates
in Parliament, which were brought home and digested by Guthrie, whose
memory, though surpassed by others who have since followed him in the
same department, was yet very quick and tenacious, were sent by Cave
to Johnson for his revision; and, after some time, when Guthrie had
attained to greater variety of employment, and the speeches were more
and more enriched by the accession of Johnson's genius, it was resolved
that he should do the whole himself, from the scanty notes furnished
by persons employed to attend in both houses of Parliament. Sometimes,
however, as he himself told me, he had nothing more communicated to
him than the names of the several speakers, and the part which they had
taken in the debate.*

* Johnson later told Boswell that 'as soon as he found that
the speeches were thought genuine he determined that he
would write no more of them: for "he would not be accessary
to the propagation of falsehood." And such was the
tenderness of his conscience, that a short time before his
death he expressed his regret for his having been the
authour of fiction