Strahan the
printer told me, that Johnson wrote it, that with the profits he might
defray the expence of his mother's funeral, and pay some little debts
which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he composed it in
the evenings of one week, sent it to the press in portions as it was
written, and had never since read it over. Mr. Strahan, Mr. Johnston,
and Mr. Dodsley purchased it for a hundred pounds, but afterwards paid
him twenty-five pounds more, when it came to a second edition.
Voltaire's Candide, written to refute the system of Optimism, which it
has accomplished with brilliant success, is wonderfully similar in its
plan and conduct to Johnson's Rasselas; insomuch, that I have heard
Johnson say, that if they had not been published so closely one after
the other that there was not time for imitation, it would have been in
vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from
the other. Though the proposition illustrated by both these works was
the same, namely, that in our present state there is more evil than
good, the intention of the writers was very different.
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