The Rambler, with some trivial exceptions, is the work of a single and unaided author, who composed it during his performance of a task which had fatigued "united academies and long successions of learned compilers[13]." He wrote, as he pathetically describes himself, "under the pressure of disease, obstructed by constitutional indolence, and when much of his time was spent in provision for the day that was passing over him[14]." The only contributions in aid of his work, all of which he acknowledges in his concluding Rambler, were the following papers. In Number 10, the four billets were written by Miss Mulso, daughter of Thomas Mulso, Esq. who came of an ancient family at Twywell, Northamptonshire. She is better known to the public as Mrs. Chapone. The above articles are said to have been her first literary productions[15]. For Number 30. Dr. Johnson was indebted to Miss Catherine Talbot, only daughter of the Rev. Edward Talbot, Archdeacon of Berks, and Preacher at the Rolls. She was provided for, by the liberal bequest of Archbishop Secker, with whom she had chiefly resided; and her composition in the Rambler, like all her other works, breathes a spirit of piety characteristic of her exemplary patron and protector. Numbers 44 and 100 were contributed by Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the justly celebrated translator of Epictetus, whose eminence in literature was only surpassed by her amiable deportment in the milder duties of domestic life[16]. Richardson, the author of Clarissa, Pamela, &c. wrote Number 97, to which allusion has already been made. The second letter, signed Amicus, in Number 107, was from an unknown correspondent.