Let me
see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred,
so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.' With so much
ease and pleasantry could he talk of that prodigious labour which he had
undertaken to execute.
For the mechanical part he employed, as he told me, six amanuenses;
and let it be remembered by the natives of North-Britain, to whom he
is supposed to have been so hostile, that five of them were of that
country. There were two Messieurs Macbean; Mr. Shiels, who we shall
hereafter see partly wrote the Lives of the Poets to which the name of
Cibber is affixed; Mr. Stewart, son of Mr. George Stewart, bookseller at
Edinburgh; and a Mr. Maitland. The sixth of these humble assistants was
Mr. Peyton, who, I believe, taught French, and published some elementary
tracts.
To all these painful labourers, Johnson shewed a never-ceasing kindness,
so far as they stood in need of it. The elder Mr. Macbean had afterwards
the honour of being Librarian to Archibald, Duke of Argyle, for many
years, but was left without a shilling.
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