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AND

MISCELLANEOUS

ESSAYS.

BY

T. BABINGTON MACAULAY.

New and Rebised Edition.

VOL. II.

NEW YORK:

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,

443 & 445 BROADWAY.

M.DCCC.LXI.

30472.7.5

HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

THE BEQUEST OF

THEODORE JEWETT EASTMAN

1931

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MACAULAY'S MISCELLANIES.

CROKER'S EDITION OF BOSWELL'S LIFE OF

JOHNSON.*

[Edinburgh Review.]

THIS work has greatly disappointed us. Whatever faults we may have been prepared to find in it, we fully expected that it would be a valuable addition to English literature, that it would contain many curious facts and many judicious remarks; that the style of the notes would be neat, clear, and precise; and that the typographical execution would be, as in new editions of classical works it ought to be, almost faultless. We are sorry to be obliged to say, that the merits of Mr. Croker's performance are on a par with those of a certain leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined, while travelling from London to Oxford, and which he, with characteristic energy, pronounced to be, "as bad as bad could be; ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-dressed." That part of the volumes before us, for which the editor is responsible, is ill-compiled, ill-arranged, ill-expressed, and ill-printed.

Nothing in the work had astonished us so much as the ignorance or carelessness of Mr. Croker with respect to facts and dates. Many of his blunders are such as we should be surprised to hear any well-educated gentleman commit, even in conversation. The notes absolutely swarm with misstatements, into which the editor never would have fallen, if he had taken the slightest pains to investigate the truth of his

The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.; including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. By James Boswell, Esq. A New Edition, with numerous Additions and Notes. By JOHN WILSON CROKER, LL.D., F.R.S. 5 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.

† V. 184.

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