tion are not imputed. We accuse him of hav-| Macpherson's Ossian.
ing undertaken a work which, if not performed
with strict accuracy, must be very much worse
than useless, and of having performed it as
if the difference between an accurate and an
inaccurate statement was not worth the trouble
of looking into the most common book of re-
ference.

"Many men," he said, "many women, and many children might have written Douglas." Mr. Croker conceives that he has detected an inaccuracy, and glories over poor Sir Joseph in a most characteristic manner. "I have quoted this anecdote solely with the view of showing to how little credit hearsay anecdotes are in general entitled. But we must proceed. These volumes con- Here is a story published by Sir Joseph Mawtain mistakes more gross, if possible, than any bey, a member of the House of Commons, and that we have yet mentioned. Boswell has re- a person every way worthy of credit, who says corded some observations made by Johnson on he had it from Garrick. Now mark:-Johnthe changes which took place in Gibbon's re- son's visit to Oxford, about the time of his docligious opinions. "It is said," cried the doc- tor's degree, was in 1754, the first time he had tor, laughing, "that he has been a Mahome-been there since he left the university. But tan." "This sarcasm," says the editor, "pro- Douglas was not acted till 1756, and Ossian bably alludes to the tenderness with which not published till 1760. All, therefore, that is Gibbon's malevolence to Christianity induced new in Sir Joseph Mawbey's story is false.* him to treat Mahometanism in his history." "Assuredly we need not go far to find ample Now the sarcasm was uttered in 1776, and that part of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire which relates to Mahometanism was not published till 1788, twelve years after the date of this conversation, and nearly four years after the death of Johnson.

"It was in the year 1761," says Mr. Croker, "that Goldsmith published his Vicar of Wakefield. This leads the editor to observe a more serious inaccuracy of Mrs. Piozzi than Mr. Boswell notices, when he says Johnson left her table to go and sell the Vicar of Wakefield for Goldsmith. Now Dr. Johnson was not acquainted with the Thrales till 1765, four years after the book had been published." Mr. Croker, in reprehending the fancied inaccuracy of Mrs. Thrale, has himself shown a degree of inaccuracy, or, to speak more properly, a degree of ignorance, hardly credible. The Traveller was not published till 1765; and it is a fact as notorious as any in literary history that the Vicar of Wakefield, though written before the Traveller, was published after it. It is a fact which Mr. Croker may find in any common life of Goldsmith; in that written by Mr. Chalmers, for example. It is a fact which, as Boswell tells us, was distinctly stated by Johnson in a conversation with Sir Joshua Reynolds. It is therefore quite possible and probable that the celebrated scene of the landlady, the sheriff's officer, and the bottle of Madeira, may have taken place in 1765. Now Mrs. Thrale expressly says that it was near the beginning of her acquaintance with Johnson, in 1765, or at all events not later than 1766, that he left her table to succour his friend. Her accuracy is therefore completely vindicated.

In

proof that a member of the House of Commons
may commit a very gross error." Now mark,
say we, in the language of Mr. Croker. The
fact is, that Johnson took his Master's degree
in 1754,† and his Doctor's degree in 1775.
the spring of 1776§ he paid a visit to Oxford,
and at this visit a conversation respecting the
works of Home and Macpherson might have
taken place, and in all probability did take
place. The only real objection to the story Mr.
Croker has missed. Boswell states, apparent-
ly on the best authority, that as early at least
as the year 1763, Johnson, in conversation with
Blair, used the same expressions respecting Os-
sian which Sir Joseph represents him as hav-
ing used respecting Douglas.]
Sir Joseph or
Garrick confounded, we suspect, the two sto-
ries. But their error is venial compared with
that of Mr. Croker.

We will not multiply instances of this scan dalous inaccuracy. It is clear that a writer who, even when warned by the text on which he is commenting, falls into such mistakes as these, is entitled to no confidence whatever. Mr. Croker has committed an error of four years with respect to the publication of Goldsmith's novel; an error of twelve years with respect to the publication of Gibbon's history: an error of twenty-one years with respect to one of the most remarkable events of Johnson's life. Two of these three errors he has committed while ostentatiously displaying his own accuracy, and correcting what he represents as the loose assertions of others. How can his readers take on trust his statements concerning the births, marriages, divorces, and deaths of a crowd of people whose names are scarcely known to this generation? It is not likely that a person who is ignorant of what almost The very page which contains this mon- everybody knows can know that of which alstrous blunder contains another blunder, if most everybody is ignorant. We did not open possible, more monstrous still. Sir Joseph this book with any wish to find blemishes in Mawbey, a foolish member of Parliament, at it. We have made no curious researches. whose speeches and whose pig-styes the wits The work itself, and a very common knowof Brookes's were fifty years ago in the habit ledge of literary and political history, have en of laughing most unmercifully, stated, on the abled us to detect the mistakes which we have authority of Garrick, that Johnson, while sit-pointed out, and many other mistakes of the ting in a coffee-house at Oxford about the time of his doctor's degree, used some contemptucas expressias respecting Home's play and ⚫ III. 336. + V. 409. + IV. 180. VOL. II. -18.

same kind. We must say, and we say it witn regret, that we do not consider the authority of Mr. Croker, unsupported by other evidence,

* V. 409. † 1. 262. III. 205.

111. 326, ||1 405. M 2

as sufficient to justify any writer who may fol- | happy term to express the paternal and kindly low him, in relating a single anecdote, or in assigning a date to a single event.

Mr. Croker shows almost as much ignorance and heedlessness in his criticisms as in his statements concerning facts. Dr. Johnson said, very reasonably as it appears to us, that some of the satires of Juvenal are too gross for imitation. Mr. Croker, who, by the way, is angry with Johnson for defending Prior's tales against the charge of indecency, resents this aspersion on Juvenal, and indeed refuses to believe that the doctor can have said any thing so absurd. "He probably said-some passages of them for there are none of Juvenal's satires to which the same objection may be made as to one of Horace's, that it is altogether gross and licentious." Surely Mr. Croker can never have read the second and ninth satires of Juvenal.

authority of the head of the clan ?"* The composition of this eminent Latinist, short as it is, contains several words that are just as much Coptic as Latin, to say nothing of the incorrect structure of the sentence. The word Philarchus, even if it were a happy term expressing a paternal and kindly authority, would prove nothing for the minister's Latin, whatever it might prove for his Greek. But it is clear that the word Philarchus means, not a man who rules by love, but a man who loves rule. The Attic writers of the best age use the word ges in the sense which we assign to it. Would Mr. Croker translate porcos, a man who acquires wisdom by means of love; or pixcxgns, a man who makes money by means of love? In fact it requires no Bentley or Casaubon to perceive that Philarchus is merely a false spelling for Phylarchus, the chief of a tribe.

Mr. Croker has favoured us with some Greek of his own. "At the altar," says Dr. Johnson, "I recommend my S. ." These letters," says the editor, "(which Dr. Strahan seems not to have understood,) probably mean vnra pos, departed friends." Johnson was not a first-rate Greek scholar; but he knew more Greek than most boys when they leave school; and no schoolboy could venture to use the word var in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes to it without imminent danger of a flogging.

Indeed, the decisions of this editor on points of classical learning, though pronounced in a very authoritative tone, are generally such, that if a schoolboy under our care were to utter them, our soul assuredly should not spare for his crying. It is no disgrace to a gentleman, who has been engaged during nearly thirty years in political life, that he has forgotten his Greek and Latin. But he becomes justly ridiculous, if, when no longer able to construe a plain sentence, he affects to sit in judgment on the most delicate questions of style and metre. From one blunder, a blunder which no good scholar would have made, Mr. Croker was saved, as he informs us, by Sir Robert Mr. Croker has also given us a specimen of Peel, who quoted a passage exactly in point his skill in translating Latin. Johnson wrote from Horace. We heartily wish that Sir Ro- a note in which he consulted his friend, Dr. bert, whose classical attainments are well Lawrence, on the propriety of losing some known, had been more frequently consulted. blood. The note contains these words :—“ Si Unhappily he was not always at his friend's per te licet, imperatur nuncio Holderum ad me elbow, and we have therefore a rich abundance deducere." Johnson should rather have writof the strangest errors. Boswell has preserved ten "imperatum est." But the meaning of the a poor epigram by Johnson, inscribed "Adwords is perfectly clear. "If you say yes, the Lauram parituram." Mr. Croker censures the poet for applying the word puella to a lady in Laura's situation, and for talking of the beauty of Lucina. Lucina," he says, was never famed for her beauty." If Sir Robert Peel had seen this note, he probably would have again refuted Mr. Croker's criticisms by an appeal to Horace. In the secular ode, Lucina is used as one of the names of Diana, and the beauty of Diana is extolled by all the most orthodox doctors of the ancient mythology, from Homer, in his Odyssey, to Claudian, in his Rape of Proserpine. In another ode, Horace describes Diana as the goddess who assists the "laborantes utero puellas." But we are ashamed to detain our readers with this fourth-form learning.

"

messenger has orders to bring Holder to me." Mr. Croker translates the words as follows: "If you consent, pray tell the messenger to bring Holder to me." If Mr. Croker is resolved to write on points of classical learning, we would advise him to begin by giving an hour every morning to our old friend Corderius.

was after

Indeed, we cannot open any volume of this work in any place, and turn it over for two minutes in any direction, without lighting on a blunder. Johnson, in his Life of Tickell, stated that the poem entitled "The Royal Pro gress," which appears in the last volume of the Spectator, was written on the accession of George I. The word "arrival wards substituted for "accession." "The reader will observe," says Mr. Croker, "that the Whig term accession, which might imply legality, was altered into a statement of the simple fact of King George's arrival."§ Now Johnson, though a bigoted Tory, was not quite such a fool as Mr. Croker here represents him to be. In the Life of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, which stands next to the Life of Tickell, mention is made of the accession of Anne, and of the accession of George I. The

word arrival was used in the Life of Tickell for the simplest of all reasons. It was used because the subject of the "Royal Progress " was the arrivai of the king, and not his accession, which took place nearly two months befere his arrival.

editor have between them made the book so bad, that we do not well see how it could have been worse.

crease would have been discernible.
whole would appear one and indivisible,
"Ut per læve severos
Effundat junctura ungues."

The

This is not the case with Mr. Croker's insertions. They are not chosen as Boswell would have chosen them. They are not introduced as Boswell would have introduced them. They differ from the quotations scattered through the original Life of Johnson, as a withered bough stuck in the ground differs from a tree skilfully transplanted, with all its life about it.

When we turn from the commentary of Mr. Croker to the work of our old friend Boswell, we find it not only worse printed than in any other edition with which we are acquainted, but mangled in the most wanton manner. Much that Boswell inserted in his narrative is, without the shadow of a reason, degraded to the appendix. The editor has also taken upon himself to alter or omit passages which he considers as indecorous. This prudery is quite unintelligible to us. There is nothing immoral in Boswell's book-nothing which tends to inflame the passions. He sometimes uses plain words. But if this be a taint which requires expurgation, it would be desirable to begin by expurgating the morning and evening lessons. Mr. Croker has performed the delicate office which he has undertaken in the most capricious manner. A strong, old-fashioned, English word, familiar to all who read their Bibles, is exchanged for a softer synonyme in some passages, and suffered to stand unaltered in others. In one place, a faint allusion made by Johnson to an indelicate subject-an allusion so faint that, till Mr. Croker's note pointed it out to us, we had never noticed it, and of which we are quite sure that the meaning would never be discovered by any of those for whose sake books are expurgated-is alto- The course which Mr. Croker ought to have gether omitted. In another place, a coarse taken is quite clear. He should have reprinted and stupid jest of Doctor Taylor, on the same Boswell's narrative precisely as Boswell wrote subject, expressed in the broadest language-it; and in the notes or the appendix he should almost the only passage, as far as we remember, in all Boswell's book, which we should have been inclined to leave out-is suffered to remain.

Not only do these anecdotes disfigure Boswell's book; they are themselves disfigured by being inserted in his book. The charm of Mrs. Thrale's little volume is utterly destroyed. The feminine quickness of observation, the feminine softness of heart, the colloquial incorrectness and vivacity of style, the little amus ing airs of a half-learned lady, the delightful garrulity, the "dear Doctor Johnson," the "it was so comical," all disappear in Mr. Croker's quotations. The lady ceases to speak in the first person; and her anecdotes, in the process of transfusion, become as flat as champagne in decanters, or Herodotus in Beloe's version. Sir John Hawkins, it is true, loses nothing; and for the best of reasons. Sir John had nothing to lose.

have placed any anecdotes which he might have thought it advisable to quote from other writers. This would have been a much more convenient course for the reader, who has now constantly to keep his eye on the margin in order to see whether he is perusing Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, Murphy, Hawkins, Tyers, Cradock, or Mr. Croker. We greatly doubt whether even the Tour to the Hebrides ought to have been inserted in the midst of the Life. There is one marked distinction between the two works. Most of the Tour was seen by

that he ever saw any part of the Life.

We complain, however, much more of the additions than of the omissions. We have half of Mrs. Thrale's book, scraps of Mr. Tyers, scraps of Mr. Murphy, scraps of Mr. Cradock, long prosings of Sir John Hawkins, and connecting observations by Mr. Croker himself, inserted into the midst of Boswell's text. To this practice we most decidedly object. An editor might as well publish Thucy-Johnson in manuscript. It does not appear dides with extracts from Diodorus interspersed, or incorporate the Lives of Suetonius with the History and Annals of Tacitus. Mr. Croker tells us, indeed, that he has done only what Boswell wished to do, and was prevented from doing by the law of copyright. We doubt this greatly. Boswell has studiously abstained from availing himself of the information contained in the works of his rivals, on many occasions on which he might have done so without subjecting himself to the charge of piracy. Mr. Croker has himself, on one occasion, remarked very justly that Boswell was very reluctant to owe any obligations to Hawkins. But be this as it may, if Boswell had quoted from Sir John and from Mrs. Thrale, he would | have been guided by his own taste and judgment in selecting his quotations. On what he qucted, he would have commented with perfect freedom, and the borrowed passages, so selected, and accompanied by such comments, would have become original. They would have dovetailed into the work: no hitch, no

We love, we own, to read the great productions of the human mind as they were written. We have this feeling even about scientific treatises; though we know that the sciences are always in a state of progression, and that the alterations made by a modern editor in an old book on any branch of natural or political philosophy are likely to be improvements. Many errors have been detected by writers of this generation in the speculations of Adam Smith. A short cut has been made to much knowledge, at which Sir Isaac Newton arrived through arduous and circuitous paths. Yet we still look with peculiar veneration on the Wealth of Nations and on the Principia, and should regret to see either of those great works garbled even by the ablest hands. But in works which owe much of their interest to the character and situation of the writers, the case is infinitely stronger. What man of taste and feeling can endure harmonies, rifacimentos abridgments, expurgated editions? Who ever

reads a stage-copy of a play, when he can procure the original? Who ever cut open Mrs. Siddons's Milton? Who ever got through ten pages of Mr. Gilpin's translation of John Bunyan's Pilgrim into modern English? Who would lose, in the confusion of a diatesseron, the peculiar charm which belongs to the narrative of the disciple whom Jesus loved? The feeling of a reader who has become intimate with any great original work, is that which Adam expressed towards his bride:

"Should God create another Eve, and I Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart."

No substitute, however exquisitely formed, will fill the void left by the original. The second beauty may be equal or superior to the first; but still it is not she.

intellect. Johnson described him as a fellow who had missed his only chance of immortality, by not having been alive when the Dunciad was written. Beauclerk used his name as a proverbial expression for a bore. He was the laughing-stock of the whole of that brilliant society which has owed to him the greater part of its fame. He was always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon and trampled upon. He was always earning some ridiculous nickname, and then "binding it as a crown unto him," -not merely in metaphor, but literally. He exhibited himself at the Shakspeare Jubilee, to all the crowd which filled Stafford-on-Avon, with a placard around his hat bearing the inscription of Corsica Boswell. In his Tour, he proclaimed to all the world, that at Edinburgh The reasons which Mr. Croker has given he was known by the appellation of Paoli Bosfor incorporating passages from Sir John well. Servile and impertinent-shallow and Hawkins and Mrs. Thrale with the narrative pedantic-a bigot and a sot-bloated with faof Boswell, would vindicate the adulteration mily pride, and eternally blustering about the of half the classical works in the language. dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be If Pepys's Diary and Mrs. Hutchinson's Me- a talebearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt moirs had been published a hundred years ago, in the taverns of London-so curious to know no human being can doubt that Mr. Hume everybody who was talked about, that, Tory and would have made great use of those books in High Churchman as he was, he manœuvred, his History of England. But would it, on that we have been told, for an introduction to account, be judicious in a writer of our times Tom Paine-so vain of the most childish disto publish an edition of Hume's History of tinctions, that, when he had been to court, he England, in which large additions from Pepys drove to the office where his book was being and Mrs. Hutchinson should be incorporated printed without changing his clothes, and sumwith the original text? Surely not. Hume's moned all the printer's devils to admire his history, be its faults what they may, is now new ruffles and sword;-such was this man: one great entire work-the production of one and such he was content and proud to be. vigorous mind, working on such materials Every thing which another man would have as were within its reach. Additions made by hidden-every thing, the publication of which another hand may supply a particular defi- would have made another man hang himself, ciency, but would grievously injure the gene- was matter of gay and clamorous exultation ral effect. With Boswell's book the case is to his weak and diseased mind. What silly stronger. There is scarcely, in the whole things he said-what bitter retorts he provoked compass of literature, a book which bears in--how at one place he was troubled with evil terpolation so ill. We know no production of the human mind which has so much of what may be called the race, so much of the peculiar flavour of the soil from which it sprang. The work could never have been written, if the writer had not been precisely what he was. His character is displayed in every page, and this display of character gives a delightful interest to many passages which have no other interest.

presentiments which came to nothing-how at another place, on waking from a drunken doze, he read the Prayer-book, and took a hair of the dog that had bitten him-how he went to see men hanged, and came away maudlin-how he added five hundred pounds to the fortune of one of his babies, because she was not frightened at Johnson's ugly face-how he was frightened out of his wits at sea-and how the sailors quieted him as they would have quieted The life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a a child-how tipsy he was at Lady Cork's one very great work. Homer is not more decided- evening, and how much his merriment annoyed ly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not the ladies-how impertinent he was to the Duchmore decidedly the first of dramatists, Demos-ess of Argyle, and with what stately contempt thenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly, that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.

she put down his impertinence-how Colonel Macleod sneered to his face at his impudent obtrusiveness-how his father and the very wife of his bosom laughed and fretted at his fooleries

all these things he proclaimed to all the world, as if they had been subjects for pride and ostenWe are not sure that there is in the whole tatious rejoicing. All the caprices of his tem history of the human intellect so strange a per, all the illusions of his vanity, all the hypo phenomenon as this book. Many of the great-chondriac whimsies, all his castles in the air, est men that ever lived have written biogra- he displayed with a cool self-complacency, a phy. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived; and he has beaten them all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his own account, or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a man of the meanest and feeblest

perfect unconsciousness that he was making a fool of himself, to which it is impossible to find a parallel in the whole history of mankind. He has used many people ill, but assu redly he has used nobody so ill as himself.