A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Douglas,

£2,200 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

Fleeman 51.1LLD. Rothschild 1312. Lauder’s apology - dictated by Samuel Johnson - for suggesting that Milton plagiarised sections of Paradise Lost . William Lauder’s (c.1710-c.1771) famous claim that Milton had used sections of an earlier Latin poem by Jacobus Masenius when writing Paradise Lost was eventually debunked by John Douglas in his Milton vindicated from the charge of plagiarism (c. 1750). Samuel Johnson had initially been intrigued by Lauder’s argument - Paul Baines in the ODNB suggests that Johnson, “to some degree countenanced Lauder’s claims—partly no doubt out of political antipathy towards Milton, but also out of his habitual charity towards poor scholars and a genuine liking for modern Latin verse”. When Johnson became aware of the hoax he “immediately caused Lauder to publish a dictated confession, apologising for the offences listed by Douglas and revealing the other offences for which evidence was lacking” ( ODNB ). Lauder writes at the beginning of this work: “I will not so far dissemble my Weakness, or my Fault, as not to confess that my Wish was to have passed undetected; but since it has been my Fortune to fail in my original design, to have the suppositious Passages which I have inserted in my Quotations made know to the World, and the Shade which began to gather on the Splendour of Milton totally dispersed, I cannot but count in an Alleviation of my Pain, that I have been defeated by a Man who knows how to use Advantages with so much Moderation, and

• Year: 1751

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