execution is one of the finest passages in Lord Clarendon's History. We can scarcely suppose that Mr. Croker has never read that passage; and yet we can scarcely suppose that any person who has ever perused so noble and pathetic a story can have utterly forgotten all its most striking circumstances. "Lord Townshend," says Mr. Croker, "was not secretary of state till 1720.”* Can Mr. Croker possibly be ignorant that Lord Townshend was made secretary of state at the accession of George the First, in 1714, that he continued to be secretary of state till he was displaced by the intrigues of Sunderland and Stanhope at the close of 1716, and that he returned to the office of secretary of state, not in 1720, but in 1721? Mr. Croker, indeed, is generally unfortunate in his statements respecting the Townshend family. He tells us that history of Prince Titi," observes Mr. Croker, "was said to be the autobiography of Frederic Prince of Wales, but was probably written by Ralph, his secretary." A more absurd note never was penned. The history of Prince Titi, to which Mr. Croker refers, whether written by Prince Frederic or by Ralph, was certainly never published. If Mr. Croker had taken the trouble to read with attention the very passage in Park's Royal and Noble Authors, which he cites as his authority, he would have seen that the manuscript was given up to the government. Even if this memoir had been printed, it was not very likely to find its way into a French lady's bookcase. And would any man in his senses speak contemptuously of a French lady, for having in her possession an English work so curious and interesting as a Life of Prince Frederic, whether written by himself or by a confidential | Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the exsecretary, must have been? The history at which Johnson laughed was a very proper companion to the Bibliothèque des Fées-a fairy tale about good Prince Titi and naughty Prince Violent. Mr. Croker may find it in the Magasin des Enfans, the first French book which the little girls of England read to their governesses. chequer, was "nephew of the prime minister, and son of a peer who was secretary of state, and leader of the House of Lords." Charles Townshend was not nephew, but grand-nephew of the Duke of Newcastle-not son, but grandson of the Lord Townshend who was secretary of state and leader of the House of Lords. "General Burgoyne surrendered at Saratoga," 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 coinci 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 Herad, but with the Morning Post, and the dis-dence of circumstances, it happened that there pute 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. was a total change of administration between his condemzation 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 absolutely 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 re"James de Duglas," says Mr. Croker, "was signed; the Duke of Devonshire became first requested by King Robert Bruce, in his last lord of the treasury, and Mr. Pitt secretary of hours, to repair with his heart to Jerusalem, state. This administration lasted till the month and humbly to deposit it at the sepulchre of of April, 1757. Byng's court-martial began to our Lord, which he did in 1329." Now it is sit on the 28th of December, 1756. He was well known that he did no such thing, and for shot on the 14th of March, 1757. There is a very sufficient reason-because he was killed something at once diverting and provoking in by the way. Nor was it in 1329 that he set the cool and authoritative manner in which Robert Bruce died in 1329, and the ex- Mr. Croker makes these random assertions. pedition of Douglas took place in the follow- We do not suspect him of intentionally falsifying year,-" quand le printems vint el la saison," ing history. But of this high literary misdesays Froissart, in June, 1330, says Lord meanor we do without hesitation accuse him Hailes, whom Mr. Croker cites as the author--that he has no adequate sense of the obliga ity for his statement. out. 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 when manice and corrup 1 tion are not imputed. We accuse him of hav- Macpherson's Ossian. 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 Mahometan." 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. 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. 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 doctor's degree, was in 1754, the first time he had been there since he left the university. But Douglas was not acted till 1756, and Ossian not published till 1760. All, therefore, that is new in Sir Joseph Mawbey's story is false.* Assuredly we need not go far to find ample 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, apparently on the best authority, that as early at least as the year 1763, Johnson, in conversation with Blair, used the same expressions respecting Ossian which Sir Joseph represents him as having used respecting Douglas. Sir Joseph or Garrick confounded, we suspect, the two stories. But their error is venial compared with that of Mr. Croker. In "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 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 i 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 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 expressins respecting Home's play and * III. 336. † V. 409. + IV. 180. VOL. II. -18. same kind. We must say, and we say it with regret, that we do not consider the authority of Mr. Croker, unsupported by other evidence, * V. 409. † 1. 262. III. 205. III. 326. IT 405 M 2 as sufficient to justify any writer who may follow him, in relating a single anecdote, or in assigning a date to a single event. happy term to express the paternal and kindly 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 it. Wouid Mr. Croker translate pipes, a man who acquires wisdom by means of love; or pcxgdns, 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 vara piños, 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 r in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes to it without imminent danger of a flogging. 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-word pages in the sense which we assign to 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. 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 messenger has orders to bring Holder to me." 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. 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. 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" was afterwards 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 BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. word arrival was used in the Life of Tickell of the old physiologists. Dryden made a simi- The editor's want of perspicacity is indeed All our readers have doubtless seen the two "Six hours to sleep, to law's grave study six, Rather," says Sir William Jones, "Six hours to law, to soothing slumbers seven, Ten to the world allot, and all to heaven." The second couplet puzzles Mr. Croker strangely. "Sir William," says he, "has shortened his day to twenty-three hours, and the general advice of 'all to heaven,' destroys the peculiar appropriation of a certain period to religious exercise." Now, we did not think that it was in human dulness to miss the meaning of the lines so completely. Sir William distributes twenty-three hours among various employments. One hour is thus left for devotion. The reader expects that the verse will end with-"and one to heaven." The whole point of the lines consist in the unexpected substitution of "all" for "one." The conceit is wretched enough; but it is perfectly intelligible, and never, we will venture to say, perplexed man, woman, or child before. Poor Tom Davies, after failing in business, tried to live by his pen. Johnson called him "an author generated by the corruption of a bookseller." This is a very obvious, and even a commonplace allusion to the famous dogma † V. 233. * IV. 335. "seems And he proceeds to talk about the generation of insects, about bursting not quite clear." There is a still stranger instance of the ediinto gaudier life, and Heaven knows what." "No man," said Johnson, tor's talent for finding out difficulty in what is "can now be made a bishop for his learning perfectly plain. "From this too just observation," and piety." Mr. Croker is puzzled by Boswell's "That a says Boswell, "there are some eminent exceptions." very natural and simple language. general observation should be pronounced too just, by the very person who admits that it is A very large portion of the two thousand five not universally just, is not a little odd."+ hundred notes which the editor boasts of hav ing added to those of Boswell and Malone, consists of the flattest and poorest reflectionsreflections such as the least intelligent reader/ is quite competent to make for himself, and such as no intelligent reader would think it worth while to utter aloud. They remind us of nothing so much as of those profound and interesting annotations which are pencilled by sempstresses and apothecaries' boys on the dog-eared margins of novels borrowed from circulating libraries-"How beautiful !”— "cursed prosy"-"I don't like Sir Reginald Mr. Croker is perpetually stopping Malcolm at all."-"I think Pelham is a sad us in our progress through the most delightful dandy." narrative in the language, to observe, that really Dr. Johnson was very rude; that he talked more for victory than for truth; that his taste for port-wine with capillaire in it was it was foolish in Mrs. Thrale to marry the very odd; that Boswell was impertinent; that music-master; and other "merderies" of the same kind, to borrow the energetic word of Rabelais. We cannot speak more favourably of the manner in which the notes are written, than of the matter of which they consist. We find in every page words used in wrong senses, and constructions which violate the plainest rules of grammar. We have the low vulgarism of "fallacy" used as synonymous with We have "mutual friend," for "common friend." We "falsehood," or "misstatement." have " many such inextricable labyrinths of pronouns as that which follows: "Lord Erskine was fond of this anecdote; he told it to the editor the first time that he had the honour of being in his company." Lastly, we have a plentiful supply of sentences resembling those which we subjoin. "Markland, who, with Jartin and Thirlby, Johnson calls three contemporaries of great eminence." "Warburton himself did he did, kindly or gratefully of Johnson ?" "It not feel, as Mr. Boswell was disposed to think was him that Horace Walpole called a man We must add that the printer has who never made a bad figure but as an author." done his best to fill both the text and notes with all sorts of blunders; and he and the * IV. 323. III. 229. IV. 377. V. 415. II. 461 140 editor have between them made the book so whole would appear one and indivisible, sertions. 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 Much that Boswell inserted in his narrative manner. 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. immoral in Boswell's book-nothing which There is nothing 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 altogether omitted. In another place, a coarse and stupid jest of Doctor Taylor, on the same subject, expressed in the broadest language-it; 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. We complain, however, much more of the additions than of the omissions. half of Mrs. Thrale's book, scraps of Mr. We have 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 Thucydides 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 judginent in selecting his quotations. On what he quoted, 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 ine work: no hitch, no well's book; they are themselves disfigured Not only do these anecdotes disfigure Bosby being inserted in his book. Mrs. Thrale's little volume is utterly destroyed. The charm of 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. thing to lose. Sir John had no taken is quite clear. He should have reprinted The course which Mr. Croker ought to have Boswell's narrative precisely as Boswell wrote and in the notes or the appendix he should have placed any anecdotes which he might have thought it advisable to quote from other writers. This would have been a much more constantly to keep his eye on the margin in convenient course for the reader, who has now Mrs. Thrale, Murphy, Hawkins, Tyers, Craorder to see whether he is perusing Boswell, dock, 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. Johnson in manuscript. It does not appear Most of the Tour was seen by that he ever saw any part of the Life. tions of the human mind as they were written We love, we own, to read the great producWe 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. 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. works which owe much of their interest to the character and situation of the writers, the case But in is infinitely stronger. What man of taste and feeling can endure harmonies, rifacimentos abridgments, expurgated editions? Yet Who ever |