'Deformities' have the same success, I shall be still a more extensive benefactor" (The Letters of Samuel Johnson, ed. R. W. Chapman [Oxford, 1952], II, 475).

7. Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. With Critical Observations on His Works (3rd ed.; Edinburgh, 1815), p. 231. Anderson is apparently incorrect in saying that Callender was Thomson's nephew.

8. There is apparently no copy of A Critical Review in the Bodleian.

9. In his Introduction to a recent reprint (New York, 1965) of John Rae's Life of Adam Smith (1895), Jacob Viner (who expresses his indebtedness to "Herman W. Liebert for bringing A Critical Review to my attention and for warning me that J. T. Callender, its author, was probably also the author of Deformities of Dr. Samuel Johnson") concludes that the quotation from John Callander in A Critical Review is sufficient "to acquit John Callander of any responsibility for authorship of either Deformities of Samuel Johnson or A Critical Review" (p. 68; see also pp. 62-69).

10. William P. Courtney and D. Nichol Smith, A Bibliography of Samuel Johnson (Oxford, 1915; reissued with facsimiles, 1925), p. 136.

11. Life, IV, 499. Callender's letter itself, reproduced in the R. B. Adam Library (III, 48), is now in the Hyde Collection. Dr. Powell, like Robert Anderson, says that James Thomson Callender was a nephew of the poet James Thomson, and gives the DNB as the source of his information.

12. In 1962, one of the present writers, J. E. Congleton, published an article on "James Thomson Callender, Johnson and Jefferson" (Johnsonian Studies [Cairo, 1962], pp. 161-172) which forms the basis of a part of the present introduction.

13. Life, III, 106, 107, 214, 488.

14. Ibid., III, 106.

15. Ibid., IV, 252-253, 526.

16. The work appeared well before 28 March 1782 when Johnson referred to it in the letter of Boswell cited above in note 6. In the Life (IV, 148), Boswell remarks that he had previously "informed" Johnson "that as 'The Beauties of Johnson' had been published in London, some obscure scribbler had published at Edinburgh, what he called 'The Deformities of Johnson.'"

17. On p. 63, Callender calls the work "a shilling pamphlet." We are grateful to the Pierpont Morgan Library for a photographic reproduction of its copy of the first edition of the Deformities.

18. Since its Preface is dated 21 November 1782, the second edition was presumably published after that time but before the beginning of 1783.

19. At the end of the second edition, Callender declares: "To collect every particle of inanity which may be found in our patriot's works is infinitely beyond the limits of an eighteen-pence pamphlet" (p. 88).

20. In a footnote on p. 51, Callender tells us that the "remarks" of the "judicious friend" appear in No. 12 of the Weekly Mirror, a periodical which, according to the CBEL (II, 665, 685), was published at Edinburgh from 22 September 1780 through 23 March 1781, for a total of 26 numbers; the editor was apparently James Tytler, the publisher J. Mennons.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The text of this facsimile reprint of the second edition of Callender's Deformities (1782) is published with the kind permission of the University of Chicago Library.

DEFORMITIES

O F

Dr SAMUEL JOHNSON.

SELECTED FROM HIS WORKS.

Nihil rerum mortalium tam instabile ac fluxum est, quam fama—Tacitus.

S E C O N D   E D I T I O N.

L O N D O N:
Printed for the Author; and sold by J. Stockdale;
and
W. Creech, Edinburgh.
M.DCC.LXXXII.

P R E F A C E

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

Man is endowed with sagacity sufficient to discover his errors, but seldom has fortitude to forsake them. Hence it arises that even the weakest of the species can point out the follies of his companions, and fancies that he can reform his own. We are amazed that a being like ourselves should thus deliberately act below the dignity of reason, but we forget that our own conduct may also be reviewed with contempt and pity.

The world is buried in prejudice: Every department of knowledge is deeply infected by its fatal poison. Thus we frequently respect or reprobate a book without a perusal, merely on account of the Author's name. Not one in ten thousand of his panegyrists hath ever comprehended the system of Newton.—What then is the value of their approbation? The public have long heard that a late English Dictionary is a most masterly performance; but is there a single man in England who ever read it half through? No. The school-boy imagines that it is above his capacity: The man of letters feels it to be below his; but being considered as a fashionable decoration in a closet of books, it is bought without the least chance of being perused, and WE (for the first time to be sure) have been admiring we know not what.

However as the variety of our sentiments is without end, it often happens, that while a philosopher is celebrated by one part of his readers, he is despised by some of the rest. Almost all the great authors of the present age have been more bitterly reviled than any other subjects of England, the Ministry excepted. But in a matter so frivolous as the merit of a book, the public are seldom guilty of gross injustice. Indeed, when an acute historian continues, in contempt of his own conviction, to persist in a falsehood, merely because he hath once affirmed it—when an elegant poet, in search of sublimity, soars, or rather sinks beyond the kenn of common sense[1]—when an astronomer treats his antagonist like a felon—when an advocate of piety impregnates his pages with slander, scurrility, and treason—then the world may be pardoned though they abate something of their veneration for the dignity of the learned.

We can hardly produce a stronger evidence of the prejudice, and the good nature of the public, than their indulgence to the foibles of Dr Samuel Johnson; nor a stronger evidence of the force of self-conceit, than that disdain of admonition which forms the capital feature in his character. He seems to