It was in the year 1761," says Mr. | pressions respecting Home's play and Croker, that Goldsmith published his Macpherson's Ossian. Many men. Vicar of Wakefield. This leads the he said, "many women, and many editor to observe a more serious inac- children, might have written Douglas." curacy of Mrs. Piozzi, than Mr. Boswell Mr. Croker conceives that he has denotices, when he says Johnson left her rected an inaccuracy, and glories over table to go and sell the Vicar of Wake-poor Sir Joseph in a most characterfield for Goldsmith. Now Dr. Johnson istic manner. "I have quoted this was not acquainted with the Thrales anecdote solely with the view of showing 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. In the first place, Johnson became acquainted with the Thrales, not in 1765, but in 1764, and during the last weeks of 1764 dined with them every Thursday, as is written in Mrs. Piozzi's anecdotes. In the second place, Goldsmith published the Vicar of Wakefield, not in 1761, but in 1766. Mrs. Thrale does not pretend to remember the precise date of the summons which called Johnson from her table to the help of his friend. She says only that it was near the beginning of her acquaintance with Johnson, and certainly not later than 1766. Her accuracy is therefore completely vindicated. It was probably after one of her Thursday dinners in 1764 that the celebrated scene of the landlady, the sheriff's officer, and the bottle of Madeira, took place.t The very page which contains this monstrous blunder, contains another blunder, if possible, more monstrous still. Sir Joseph Mawbey, a foolish member of Parliament, at whose speeches and whose pig-styes the wits of Brookes's were, fifty years ago, in the habit of laughing most unmercifully, stated, on the authority of Garrick, that Johnson, while sitting in a coffee-house at Oxford, about the time of his doctor's degree, used some contemptuous exArabic learning would naturally be mentioned, and would give occasion to some jokes about the probability of his turning Mussulman. If such jokes were made, Johnson, who frequently visited Oxford, was very likely to hear of them. • V. 409. + This paragraph has been altered; and aslight inaccuracy immaterial to the argument. has been removed. 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. In the spring of 1776 §, he paid a visit to Oxford, and at this visit a conversation respecting the works or 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. We will not multiply instances of this scandalous 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 en We titled to no confidence whatever. Mr. | never have read the second and ninth Croker has committed an error of five satires of Juvenal. years with respect to the publication Indeed the decisions of this editor of Goldsmith's novel, an error of twelve on points of classical learning, though years with respect to the publication pronounced in a very authoritative of part of Gibbon's History, an error tone, are generally such that, if a of twenty-one years with respect to an schoolboy under our care were to utter event in Johnson's life so important as them, our soul assuredly should not the taking of the doctoral degree. spare for his crying. It is no disgrace Two of these three errors he has com- to a gentleman who has been engaged mitted, while ostentatiously displaying during near thirty years in political his own accuracy, and correcting what life that he has forgotten his Greek he represents as the loose assertions of and Latin. But he becomes justly others. How can his readers take on ridiculous if, when no longer able to trust his statements concerning the construe a plain sentence, he affects to births, marriages, divorces, and deaths sit in judgment on the most delicate of a crowd of people, whose names are questions of style and metre. From scarcely known to this generation? It one blunder, a blunder which no good is not likely that a person who is ig-scholar would have made, Mr. Croker norant of what almost every body was saved, as he informs us, by Sir knows can know that of which almost Robert Peel, who quoted a passage every body is ignorant. We did not exactly in point from Horace. open this book with any wish to find heartily wish that Sir Robert, whose blemishes in it. We have made no classical attainments are well known, curious researches. The work itself, had been more frequently consulted. and a very common knowledge of lite- Unhappily he was not always at his rary and political history, have enabled friend's elbow; and we have therefore us to detect the mistakes which we a rich abundance of the strangest have pointed out, and many other mis- errors. Boswell has preserved a poor takes of the same kind. We must say, epigram by Johnson, inscribed "Ad and we say it with regret, that we do Lauram parituram." Mr. Croker cennot consider the authority of Mr. sures the poet for applying the word Croker, unsupported by other evidence, puella to a lady in Laura's situation, as sufficient to justify any writer who and for talking of the beauty of Lumay follow him in relating a single cina. "Lucina," he says, "was never anecdote or in assigning a date to a famed for her beauty." "If Sir Robert single event. 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 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 . L. 167. Boswell found, in his tour to the Hebrides, an inscription written by a Scotch minister. It runs thus: "Joannes Macleod, &c., gentis su Philarchus, &c., Flora Macdonald matri • I. 133. moniali vinculo conjugatus turrem hanc | Croker ascribes to it without imminent Beganodunensem proævorum habita- danger of a flogging. culum longe vetustissimum, diu penitus labefactatam, anno æræ vulgaris MDCLXXXVI. instauravit."—" The minister," says Mr. Croker, "seems to have been no contemptible Latinist. Is not Philarchus a very happy term to express the paternal and kindly authority of the head of a 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 used the word pihapxos in the sense which we assign to it. Would Mr. Croker translate p-without lighting on a blunder. JohnAóropos, a man who acquires wisdom by means of love, or piλokepdǹs, 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 also given us a specimen of his skill in translating Latin. Johnson wrote a note in which he consulted his friend, Dr. Lawrence, on the propriety of losing some blood. The note contains these words: -"Si per te licet, imperatur nuncio Holderum ad me deducere." Johnson should rather have written "imperatum est." But the meaning of the words is perfectly clear. "If you say yes, the 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. Indeed we cannot open any volume of this work in any place, and turn it over for two minutes in any direction, was son, in his Life of Tickell, stated that a poem entitled The Royal Progress, which appears in the last volume of the Spectator, was written on the accession of George I. The word "arrival afterwards substituted for "accession." "The reader will observe," says Mr. Mr. Croker has favoured us with Croker," that the Whig term accession, some Greek of his own. "At the altar," which might imply legality, was altered says Dr. Johnson, "I recommended into a statement of the simple fact of my @ 4." "These letters," says the King George's arrival."† Now Johneditor, "(which Dr. Strahan seems not son, though a bigoted Tory, was not to have understood) probably mean quite such a fool as Mr. Croker here To poi, departed friends." John-represents him to be. In the Life son was not a first-rate Greek scholar; of Granville, Lord Lansdowne, which but he knew more Greek than most stands a very few pages from the Life boys when they leave school; and no of Tickell, mention is made of the acschoolboy could venture to use the cession of Anne, and of the accession word To in the sense which Mr. of George I. The word arrival was used in the Life of Tickel for the simplest of all reasons. It was used because the subject of the poem called The Royal Progress was the arrival of the king, and not his accession, which took place near two months before his arrival. • II. 458. IV. 251. An attempt was made to vindicate this blunder by quoting a grossly corrupt passage from the Ixérides of Euripides: βάθι καὶ ἀντίασον γονάτων, ἔπι χεῖρα βαλοῦσα, τέκνων τα θνατών κομίσαι δέμας. The editor's want of perspicacity is indeed very amusing. He is perpe tually telling us that he cannot undersomething in the The true reading, as every scholar knows, 13, τέμνων τεθνεώτων κομίσαι δέμας. Indeed without this emendation it would not be easy to construe the words, even if evar could bear the meaning which Mr. Croker stand assigns to it. - V. 17. text which is + IV. 425. as plain as language can make it. pletely. Sir William distributes twenty“Mattaire,” said Dr. Johnson, “wrote three hours among various employLatin verses from time to time, and ments. One hour is thus left for published a set in his old age, which devotion. The reader expects that he called Senilia, in which he shows the verse will end with "and one to so little learning or taste in writing, heaven." The whole point of the lines as to make Carteret a dactyl."* Here- consists in the unexpected substitution upon we have this note: "The editor of "all" for " one." The conceit is does not understand this objection, wretched enough but it is perfectly nor the following observation." The intelligible, and never, we will venture following observation, which Mr. Cro- to say, perplexed man, woman, or child ker cannot understand, is simply this before. "In matters of genealogy," says John- Poor Tom Davies, after failing in son, “it is necessary to give the bare business, tried to live by his pen. Johnnames as they are. But in poetry and son called him "an author generated in prose of any elegance in the writing, by the corruption of a bookseller." they require to have inflection given This is a very obvious, and even a to them." If Mr. Croker had told commonplace allusion to the famous Johnson that this was unintelligible, dogma of the old physiologists. Drythe doctor would probably have re- den made a similar allusion to that plied, as he replied on another occa- dogma before Johnson was born. Mr. sion, "I have found you a reason, sir; Croker, however, is unable to underI am not bound to find you an under-stand what the doctor meant. "The standing." Everybody who knows expression," he says, "seems not quite anything of Latinity knows that, in clear." And he proceeds to talk about genealogical tables, Joannes Baro de the generation of insects, about burstCarteret, or Vice-comes de Carteret, ing into gaudier life, and Heaven knows may be tolerated, but that in compo- what.* sitions which pretend to elegance, Carteretus, or some other forin which admits of inflection, ought to be used. All our readers have doubtless seen the two distichs of Sir William Jones, respecting the division of the time of a lawyer. One of the distichs is translated from some old Latin lines; the other is original. The former runs thus: "Six hours to sleep, to law's grave study six, Four spend in prayer, the rest on nature fix." Rather," says Sir William Jones, "Six hours to law, to soothing slumbers There is a still stranger instance of the editor's talent for finding out difficulty in what is perfectly plain. "No man," said Johnson, "can now be made a bishop for his learning and piety." "From this too just observation," says Boswell, "there are some eminent exceptions." Mr. Croker is puzzled by Boswell's very natural and simple language. "That a general observation should be pronounced too just, by the very person who admits that it is not universally just, is not a little odd."† A very large proportion of the two thousand five hundred notes which the editor boasts of having added to those of Boswell and Malone consists of the flattest and poorest reflections, reflections 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 penciled by sempstresses and apothecaries' boys on the dog-eared margins of novels ↑ IIL 228. • IV. 323. borrowed from circulating libraries; | rative is, without the shadow of a reason, "How beautiful!" "Cursed Prosy!" degraded to the appendix. The editor "I don't like Sir Reginald Malcolm at has also taken upon himself to alter or all." "I think Pelham is a sad dandy." omit passages which he considers as Mr. Croker is perpetually stopping us indecorous. This prudery is quite unin our progress through the most de- intelligible to us. There is nothing lightful narrative in the language, to immoral in Boswell's book, nothing observe that really Dr. Johnson was which tends to inflame the passions. very rude, that he talked more for He sometimes uses plain words. But victory than for truth, that his taste if this be a taint which requires exfor port wine with capillaire in it was purgation, it would be desirable to very odd, that Boswell was impertinent, begin by expurgating the morning and that it was foolish in Mrs. Thrale to evening lessons. The delicate office marry the music-master; and so forth. which Mr. Croker has undertaken he We cannot speak more favourably has performed in the most capricious of the manner in which the notes are manner. One strong, old-fashioned, written than of the matter of which English word, familiar to all who read they consist. We find in every page their Bibles, is changed for a softer words used in wrong senses, and con- synonyme in some passages, and sufstructions which violate the plainest fered to stand unaltered in others. In rules of grammar. We have the vul- one place a faint allusion made by garism of mutual friend," for "com-Johnson to an indelicate subject, an mon friend." We have "fallacy" used as synonymous with "falschood." We 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 Jortin and Thirlby, Johnson calls three contemporarics of great eminence." "Warburton himself did not feel, as Mr. Boswell was disposed to think he did, kindly or gratefully of Johnson." "It was him that Horace Walpole called a man who never made a bad figure but as an author." One or two of these solecisms should perhaps be attributed to the printer, who has certainly done his best to fill both the text and the notes with all sorts of blunders. In truth, he and the editor have between them made the book so bad, that we do not well see how it could have been worse. 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 Dr. Taylor on the same subject, expressed in the broadest language, 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. 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 Thucydides with extracts from Diodorus interspersed, or incorporate the Lives When we turn from the commentary of Suetonius with the History and of Mr. Croker to the work of our old Annals of Tacitus. Mr. Croker tells friend Boswell, we find it not only us, indeed, that he has done only what worse printed than in any other edition Boswell wished to do, and was prewith which we are acquainted, but vented from doing by the law of copymangled in the most wanton manner. right. We doubt this greatly. Boswell Much that Boswell inserted in his nar-has studiously abstained from availing • IV. $77. ↑ IV. 415. ↑ II. 461 himself of the information given by |