Of William Woty's life little need be said; the _DNB_, relying essentially on the _Gentleman's Magazine_, gives the salient events: after preparing to enter the law, he became companion and a kind of legal secretary to Washington, Earl Ferrers, who prior to his death in 1778 made Woty independent by establishing an annuity of £150 for him. His first book of verse was _The Sporting Club_, 1758; the next, _The Shrubs of Parnassus_, by "James Copywell," he published in 1760. Two others, which he acknowledged, followed in the next three years; then in 1763 he joined Francis Fawkes in editing _The Poetical Calendar_, in 12 volumes, to which Samuel Johnson contributed a character sketch of William Collins (Boswell's _Life_, ed. Hill-Powell, I, 382). In 1770, Woty issued a two-volume _Poetical Works_. The _Gentleman's Magazine_, mentioning four other publications from 1770 to 1775, adds, "and some other miscellaneous pieces since that time." These, possibly unnamed because published outside of London, included _Poems on Several Occasions_, Derby, 1780 (in which, as noted above, he reprinted _The Graces_), _Fugitive and Original Poems_, Derby, 1786, and _Poetical Amusements_, Nottingham, 1789. "Mr. W. was a true _bon vivant_," the notice continues, "but by a too great indulgence of his passion for conviviality and society he unfortunately injured his constitution." He died in March 1791, "aged about 60." Woty seems to have been on the periphery of Samuel Johnson's list of acquaintances. Under what circumstances Johnson agreed to write the sketch of Collins for the _Poetical Calendar_, Boswell does not specify--whether for Woty or for Fawkes or for J. Coote, the publisher--but write it he did. The index to the Hill-Powell Boswell lists Woty (and Fawkes) only in this connection, but someone had sufficient interest with the lexicographer to induce him to subscribe to Woty's anonymous _Shrubs of Parnassus_, 1760; the subscription list of some 500 names includes not only Samuel Johnson, A.M., but David Garrick, Mr. William Mason, Dr. Smollett, Mr. Strahan, and Mr. Newbery, of St. Paul's Church Yard, who bought 6 books--not unnaturally, for he was the publisher. A decade later, the subscribers to _The Poetical Works of William Woty_ included James Boswell, Esq., George Colman, Esq., Mr. Garrick, Dr. Johnson, and this time for but one set, Mr. Newbery. After still another decade, when Woty published in Derby his _Poems on Several Occasions_, the list of subscribers included none of these names, even though this collection included _The Graces_, with its dozen lines on Samuel Johnson (now omitting from page 11 the couplet on Bute) which reveal no degree of intimacy, but do show respect and admiration for him. * * * * *