There At a loss for parallel cases. Indeed, write what | divine, this homely dialect, the dialect of plain Bunyan would, the baseness and cruelty of the workingmen, was perfectly sufficient. lawyers of those times "sinned up to it still," is no book in our literature on which we could and even went beyond it. The imaginary trial so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted of Faithful before a jury composed of personi- English language; no book which shows so fed vices, was just and merciful, when com- well how rich that language is in its own propared with the real trial of Lady Alice Lisle per wealth, and how little it has been improved before that tribunal where all the vices sat in by all that it has borrowed. the person of Jeffries. Cowper said, forty or fifty years ago, that he The style of Bunyan is delightful to every dared not name John Bunyan in his verse, fo reader, and invaluable as a study to every per- fear of moving a sneer. To our refined fore son who wishes to obtain a wide command fathers, we suppose, Lord Roscommon's Essay over the English language. The vocabulary on Translated Verse, and the Duke of Buck is the vocabulary of the common people. inghamshire's Essay on Poetry, appeared to There is not an expression, if we except a few be compositions infinitely superior to the alle technical terms of theology, which would puz-gory of the preaching tinker. zle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For magnificence, for pathos, for vehement exhortation, for subtle disquisition, for Every room cf the poet, the orator, and the We live in better times; and we are not afraid to say that, though there were many clever men in England during the latter half of the seven. teenth century, there were only two greal creative minds. One of those minds pro duced the Paradise Lost, the other the Pil grim's Progress CROKER'S EDITION OF BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.] A Sir William Forbes undoubtedly died in that year; but not the Sir William Forbes in question, whose death took place in 1806. It is notorious, indeed, that the biographer of Beattie lived just long enough to complete the history of his friend. Eight or nine years before the date which Mr. Croker has assigned for Sir William's death, Sir Wal ter Scott lamented that event, in the introduc tion, we think, to the fourth canto of Marmion. Every school-girl knows the lines: His work has greatly disappointed us. Beattie, died in 1816.* 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 assertions, or if he had even been well acquainted with the very book on which he undertook to comment. We wi!: give a few instances. "Scarce had lamented Forbes paid The tribute to his Minstrel's shade; In one place, we are told, that Ailan Ramsay In one place, Mr. Croker says, that at the commencement of the intimacy between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, in 1765, the lady was twenty-five years old. In other places he says, that Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's seventieth. Johnson was born in 1709. If, therefore, Mrs. Thrale's thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson's scventieth, she could have been only twenty-one This is not all. years old in 1765. Mr. Mr. Croker tells us, in a note, that Derrick, 1777 as the date of the complimentary lines Croker, in another place, assigns the year who was master of the ceremonies at Bath, which Johnson made on Mrs. Thrale's thirty.. died very poor, in 1760. We read on; and, a fifth birthday. If this date be correct, Mrs. few pages later, we find Dr. Johnson and Bos-Thrale must have been born in 1742, and could well talking of the same Derrick as still living have been only twenty-three when her ac and reigning, as having retrieved his character, quaintance with Johnson commenced. Two as possessing so much power over his subjects of Mr. Croker's three statements must be false. at Bath, that his opposition might be fatal to We will not decide between them; we will Sheridan's lectures on oratory. And all this only say, that the reasons which he gives for in 1763. The fact is, that Derrick died in thinking that Mrs. Thrale was exactly thirty 1769. the author of that In one note we read, that Sir Herbert Croft, pompous and foolish account of Young, which appears among the Lives of the Poets, died in 1805. Another note in the same volume states, that this same Sir Herbert Croft died at Paris, after residing abroad for fifteen years, on the 27th of April, 1816.9 Mr. Croker in forms us, that Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, the author of the life of The Life of Sum uel Johnson, LL.D.; including a ournal of a Tour to the Hebrides. By James Boswell, Esq. A Nero Edite + V. 184. IV. 321. 1831. I. 394. IV. 428. five years old when Johnson was seventy, appear to us utterly frivolous. Again, Mr. Croker informs his readers that "Lord Mansfield survived Johnson_full ten Lord Mansfield sarvived Dr. John son just eight years and a quarter. years."** Johnson found in the library of a French Paris, some works which he regarded with lady, whom he visited during his short visit to great disdain. "I looked," says he, "into the books in the lady's closet, and, in contempt, showed them to Mr. Thrale-Prince Titi; Biblothèque des Fées, and other books." "The 1. 510. ++ III 271 history of Prince Titi," observes Mr. Croker, execution is one of the finest passages in Lord was said to be the autobiography of Frederic Clarendon's History. We can scarcely sup Prince of Wales, but was probably written by pose that Mr. Croker has never read that pasRalph, his secretary." A mere absurd note sage; and yet we can scarcely suppose that never was penned. The history of Prince any person who has ever perused so noble and Titi, to which Mr. Croker refers, whether writ-pathetic a story can have utterly forgotten all ten by Prince Frederic or by Ralph, was cer- its most striking circumstances. tainly never published. If Mr. Croker had "Lord Townshend." says Mr. Croker, "was taken the trouble to read with attention the not secretary of state till 1720.”* Can Mr. very passage in Park's Royal and Noble Au- Croker possibly be ignorant that Lord Townthors, which he cites as his authority, he shend was made secretary of state at the acwould have seen that the manuscript was cession of George the First, in 1714, that he given up to the government. Even if this continued to be secretary of state till he was memoir had been printed, it was not very likely displaced by the intrigues of Sunderland and to find its way into a French lady's bookcase. Stanhope at the close of 1716, and that he reAnd would any man in his senses speak con- turned to the office of secretary of state, not in temptuously of a French lady, for having in 1720, but in 1721? Mr. Croker, indeed, is geher possession an English work so curious nerally unfortunate in his statements respectand interesting as a Life of Prince Frederic, ing the Townshend family. He tells us tha whether written by himself or by a confidential Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the ex secretary, must have been? The history at chequer, was "nephew of the prime minister, which Johnson laughed was a very proper and son of a peer who was secretary of state, companion to the Bibliothèque des Fées-a and leader of the House of Lords." Charles fairy tale about good Prince Titi and naughty Townshend was not nephew, but grand-nePrince Violent. Mr. Croker may find it in the phew of the Duke of Newcastle-not son, Magasin des Enfans, the first French book but grandson of the Lord Townshend who was which the little girls of England read to their secretary of state and leader of the House of governesses. Lords. Mr. Croker states, that Mr. Henry Bate, who afterwards assumed the name of Dudley, was proprietor of the Morning Herald, and fought | a duel with George Robinson Stoney, in consequence of some attacks on Lady Strathmore, which appeared in that paper.* Now Mr. Bate was connected, not with the Morning Herald, but with the Morning Post, and the dispute took place before the Morning Herald was in existence. The duel was fought in January, 1777. The Chronicle of the Annual Register for that year contains an account of the transaction, and distinctly states that Mr. Bate was editor of the Morning Post. The Morning Herald, as any person may see by looking at any number of it, was not established till some years after this affair. For this blunder there is, we must acknowledge, some excuse for it certainly seems almost incredible to a person living in our time, that any human being should ever have stooped to fight with a writer in the Morning Post. "General Burgoyne surrendered at Sarato ga," says Mr. Croker, "in March, 1778."‡ General Burgoyne surrendered on the 17th of October, 1777. "Nothing," says Mr. Croker, "can be more unfounded than the assertion that Byng fell a martyr to political party. By a strange coincidence of circumstances, it happened that there was a total change of administration between his condemnation and his death; so that one party presided at his trial and another at his execution; there can be no stronger proof that he was not a political martyr."§ Now, what will our readers think of this writer when we assure them that this statement, so confidently made respecting events so notorious, is abso lutely untrue? One and the same administration was in office when the court-martial on Byng commenced its sittings, through the whole trial, at the condemnation, and at the execution. In the month of November, 1756, the Duke of Newcastle and Lord Hardwicke resigned; the Duke of Devonshire became first lord of the treasury, and Mr. Pitt secretary of state. This administration lasted till the month of April, 1757. Byng's court-martial began to sit on the 28th of December, 1756. He was shot on the 14th of March, 1757. There is something at once diverting and provoking in the cool and authoritative manner in which Mr. Croker makes these random assertions. We do not suspect him of intentionally falsify. ing history. But of this high literary misdemeanor we do without hesitation accuse him "James de Duglas," says Mr. Croker, "was requested by King Robert Bruce, in his last hours, to repair with his heart to Jerusalem, and humbly to deposit it at the sepulchre of our Lord, which he did in 1329." Now it is well known that he did no such thing, and for a very sufficient reason-because he was killed by the way. Nor was it in 1329 that he set out. Robert Bruce died in 1329, and the expedition of Douglas took place in the following year," quand le printems vint et la saison," says Froissart, in June, 1330, says Lord Hailes, whom Mr. Croker cites as the author--that he has no adequate sense of the obliga ity for his statement. tion which a writer, who professes to relate facts, owes to the public. We accuse him of a negligence and an ignorance analogous to that crassa negligentia and that crassa ignorantia on which the law animadverts in magistrates and surgeons even vnen maiice and corrup non are not imfuted. We accuse him of hav- | Macpherson's Ossian. "Many men,” he said .ng undertaken a work which, if not performed " many women, and many children might have with strict accuracy, must be very much worse written Douglas." Mr. Croker conceives that than useless, and of having performed it as he has detected an inaccuracy, and glories if the difference between an accurate and an over poor Sir Joseph in a most characteristic inaccurate statement was not worth the trouble manner. "I have quoted this anecdote solely of looking into the most common book of re- with the view of showing to how little credit ference. hearsay anecdotes are in general entitled. Here is a story published by Sir Joseph Mawbey, a member of the House of Commons, and a person every way worthy of credit, who says he had it from Garrick. Now mark :-Johnson's visit to Oxford, about the time of his doc. tor's degree, was in 1754, the first time he had But we must proceed. These volumes contain mistakes more gross, if possible, than any that we have yet mentioned. Boswell has recorded some observations made by Johnson on the changes which took place in Gibbon's religious opinions. "It is said," cried the doctor, laughing, "that he has been a Mahome-been there since he left the university. But lan." “This sarcasm," says the editor, "probably alludes to the tenderness with which Gibbon's malevolence to Christianity induced him to treat Mahometanism in his history."* 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. In Douglas was not acted till 1756, and Össian "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 Thraies 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 We will not multiply instances of this scan Traveller was not published till 1765; and it dalous inaccuracy. It is clear that a writer is a fact as notorious as any in literary his- who, even when warned by the text on which tory that the Vicar of Wakefield, though writ- he is commenting, falls into such mistakes as ten before the Traveller, was published after these, is entitled to no confidence whatever. it. It is a fact which Mr. Croker may find in Mr. Croker has committed an error of four any common life of Goldsmith; in that written years with respect to the publication of Goldby Mr. Chalmers, for example. It is a fact smith's novel; an error of twelve years with which, as Boswell tells us, was distinctly respect to the publication of Gibbon's history; stated by Johnson in a conversation with Sir an error of twenty-one years with respect to Joshua Reynolds. It is therefore quite possi- one of the most remarkable events of Johnble and probable that the celebrated scene of son's life. Two of these three errors he has the landlady, the sheriff's officer, and the bottle committed while ostentatiously displaying his of Madeira, may have taken place in 1765. own accuracy, and correcting what he repreNow Mrs. Thrale expressly says that it was sents as the loose assertions of others. How can near the beginning of her acquaintance with his readers take on trust his statements concernJohnson, in 1765, or at all events not later than ing the births, marriages, divorces, and deaths 1766, that he left her table to succour his friend. of a crowd of people whose names are scarceHer accuracy is therefore completely vindi-ly known to this generation? It is not likely cated that a person who is ignorant of what almost + IV. 180. * V. 409. † 1. 262. III. 205. |