The most cunning theft is
the tag which adorns the title-page of his book:
Little villains oft submit to fate
That great ones may enjoy the world in state.
Thus he quotes from Gay, and you applaud the aptness of the quotation,
until you discover that already it was used by Steele in his
appreciation of the heroic Smith! However, Johnson has his uses, and
those to whom the masterpiece of Captain Alexander is inaccessible will
turn with pleasure to the General History of the lives and adventures
of the most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c., and will
feel no regret that for once they are receiving stolen goods.
Though Johnson fell immeasurably below his predecessor in talent, he
manifestly excelled him in scholarship. A sojourn at the University had
supplied him with a fine assortment of Latin tags, and he delighted to
prove his erudition by the citation of the Chronicles. Had he possessed
a sense of humour, he might have smiled at the irony of committing a
theft upon the historian of thieves. But he was too vain and too pompous
to smile at his own weakness, and thus he would pretend himself a
venturesome highwayman, a brave writer, and a profound scholar. Indeed,
so far did his pride carry him, that he would have the world believe
him the same Charles Johnson, who wrote The Gentleman Cully and The
Successful Pyrate. Thus with a boastful chuckle he would quote:
Johnson, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning
Thus, ignoring the insult, he would plume himself after his drunken
fashion that he, too, was an enemy of Pope.
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