It had attributed to Caecilius words
remembered by the whole audience to be spoken by M. Agrippa.' (_Gent.
Mag_. xii. 512). The report of the debate of Feb. 13, 1741, in the
_London Magazine_ fills more than twenty-two columns of the _Parl.
Hist_. (xi. 1130) with a speech by Lord Bathurst. That he did speak is
shewn by Secker (_ib_. p. 1062). No mention of him is made, however, in
the report in the _Gent. Mag_. (xi. 339). But, on the other hand, it
reports eleven speakers, while the _London Magazine_ gives but five.
Secker shows that there were nineteen. Though the _London Magazine_ was
generally earlier in publishing the debates, it does not therefore
follow that Johnson had seen their reports when he wrote his. His may
have been kept back by Cave's timidity for some months even after they
had been set up in type. In the staleness of the debate there was some
safeguard against a parliamentary prosecution.
Mr. Croker maintains (Croker's _Boswell_, p. 44) that Johnson wrote the
_Debates_ from the time (June 1738) that they assumed the _Lilliputian_
title till 1744. In this he is certainly wrong. Even if we had not
Johnson's own statement, from the style of the earlier _Debates_ we
could have seen that they were not written by him. No doubt we come
across numerous traces of his work; but this we should have expected.
Boswell tells us that Guthrie's reports were sent to Johnson for
revision (_ante_, p.
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