To the Editor of the "NortH-Cmixa pnu NEWS"
Sm,—It the great Dr. Johnson were alive today, he would undoubted-evince the keenest interest in what is taking place in this country. For 200 years ago, almost to the month, there was forged a literary link with China which endured to the end of his long life.
In August, 1738, in a letter to Mr. Cave, of the Gentleman's Magazine, Johnson advises that The Chinese stories may be had folded down when you please to send, in which I do not recollect that You ' desired any alterations to be made.
A footnote by Nichols in Boswell's Life of Johnson explains that Clu Halde's Description of China was then publishing by Mr. Cave in Weekly numbers, whence Johnson was to select pieces for the embellishment of the Magazine.
Johnson was then 29 years of age. but it will be shown that his acquaintance with, and interest China, derived from reading, been cultivated at a much care: pent. Indeed, in his very first prose work, executed in 1733, when he aged 24, there is ample evidence that he had already read a great deal, probably all that there available, about the Chinese. This was an abridgement and translation from the French of a Voyage to Abyssinia by Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit, which Johnson had read at Pembroke College. In the preface (in which Boswell says the Johnsonian begins to appear) occurs the following reference to the Chinese:
Here are no Hottentots without religious policy or articulate Jangu fectly skilled in al sciences.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.