CROKER'S EDITION OF BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.] IHIS 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 assertions, or if he had even been well acquainted with the very book on which he undertook to comment. We will give a few Mr. Croker tells us, in a note, that Derrick, who was master of the ceremonies at Bath, died very poor, in 1760. We read on; and, a few pages later, we find Dr. Johnson and Boswell talking of the same Derrick as still living and reigning, as having retrieved his character, as possessing so much power over his subjects at Bath, that his opposition might be fatal to Sheridan's lectures on oratory. And all this in 1763. The fact is, that Derrick died in Beattie, died in 1816. A Sir William Forber 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: "Scarce had lamented Forbes paid In one place, we are told, that Allan Ramsay the painter, was born in 1709, and died in 1784;t in another, that he died in 1784, in the statement be correct, he must have been born seventy-first year of his age. If the latter in or about 1713. Mr. commencement of the intimacy between Dr. In one place, Mr. Croker says, that at the 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 se ventieth, she could have been only twenty-one years old in 1765. This is not all. Croker, in another place, assigns the year 1777 as the date of the complimentary lines which Johnson made on Mrs. Thrale's thirty fifth birthday. If this date be correct, Mrs. Thrale must have been born in 1742, and could have been only twenty-three when her ac quaintance with Johnson commenced. Two of Mr. Croker's three statements must be false. We will not decide between them; we will only say, that the reasons which he gives for thinking that Mrs. Thrale was exactly thirtyfive 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. In one note we read, that Sir Herbert Croft, the author of that 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 Her-years. bert Croft died at Paris, after residing abroad for fifteen years, on the 27th of April, 1816.9 Mr. Croker informs us, that Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, the author of the life of 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 conteinpt, 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, "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 secretary, 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. 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 incredi- | ble to a person living in our time, that any human being should ever have stooped to fight with a writer in the Morning Post. execution is one of the finest passages in Lord "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 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 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 out. 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 falsify. ing 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 obligaity 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 nen maiice and corrup I. 298. * III. 52. + III. 368. IV. 222. tion are not imputed. We accuse him of hav- | Macpherson's Ossian. Many men," he said, ing 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, ard 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 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.* 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." "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. 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 Muster'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 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 sto ries. But their error is venial compared with that of Mr. Croker. "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 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. 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 contemptucus expressions respecting Home's play and that a person who is ignorant of what almost everybody knows can know that of which almost everybody is ignorant. We did not open this book with any wish to find blemishes in it. We have made no curious researches. The work itself, and a very common knowledge of literary and political history, have en abled us to detect the mistakes which we have pointed out, and many other mistakes of the 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, || 1. 405. + IV. 180. * V. 409. † 1. 262. III. 205. 111. 326. 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 as- authority of the head of the can?" The signing a date to a single event. 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 porcos, a man who acquires wisdom by means of love; or pcxegdas, 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. 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 SVT in the sense which Mr. Crcker 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 pagxos 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 Mr. Croker has favoured us with some if a schoolboy under our care were to utter Greek of his own. "At the altar," says Dr. them, our soul assuredly should not spare for Johnson, "I recommend my S. ." These lethis crying. It is no disgrace to a gentleman, ters," says the editor, "(which Dr. Strahan who has been engaged during nearly thirty seems not to have understood,) probably mean years in political life, that he has forgotten Tai piros, departed friends." Johnson was not 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 Peel, who quoted a passage exactly in point from Horace. We heartily wish that Sir Robert, whose classical attainments are well known, had been more frequently consulted. Unhappily he was not always at his friend's elbow, and we have therefore a rich abundance of the strangest errors. Boswell has preserved a poor epigram by Johnson, inscribed "Ad 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 66 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 "laborar.es utero puellas." But we are ashamed to detain our readers with this fourth-form learning. Boswell found, in his tour to the Hebrides, an inscription written by a Scotch minister. It runs tnus: "Joannes Macleod, &c., gentis suæ Philarchus, &c., Flora Macdonald matrimoniali vinculo conjugatus turrem hanc Beganodunensem pro vorum habitaculum 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 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 :-"81 per te licet, imperatur nuncio Holderum ad me deducere." Johnson should rather have writ ten "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 re solved to write on points of classical learning, we would advise him to begin by giving an hour every morning to our old friend Corderius. "The 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 after. wards substituted for "accession." 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 arrival of the king, and not his accession, which took place nearly two months before his arrival. The editor's want of perspicacity is indeed very amusing. He is perpetually telling us that he cannot understand something in the text which is as plain as language can make "Mattaire," said Dr. Johnson, "wrote Latin verses from time to time, and published a set in his old age, which he called Senilia, in which he shows so little learning or taste in writing, as to make Carteret a dactyl." Hereupon we have this note: "The editor does not understand this objection, nor the following observation." The following observation which Mr. Croker cannot understand is simply this: "In matters of genealogy," says Johnson, "it is necessary to give the bare names as they are. But in poetry, and in prose of any elegance in the writing, they require to have inflection given to them." If Mr. Croker had told Johnson that this was unintelligible, the doctor would probably have replied, as he replied on another occasion, "I have found you reason, sir; I am not bound to find you an understanding." Everybody who knows any thing of Latinity knows that, in genealogical tables, Joannes Baro de Carteret, or Vicecomes de Carteret, may be tolerated, but that in compositions which pretend to elegance, Carteretus, or some other form 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, "Rather," says Sir William Jones, Six hours to law, to soc thing slumbers seven, 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 of the old physiologists. Dryden made a simi lar allusion to the dogma before Johnson was born. Mr. Croker, however, is unable to under. stand it. "The expression," he says, "seems not quite clear." And he proceeds to talk about the generation of insects, about bursting into gaudier life, and Heaven knows what.* There is a still stranger instance of the edi tor'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 excep tions." 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 portion 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 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 Malcolm at all."-"I think Pelham is a sad dandy." Mr. Croker is perpetually stopping us in our progress through the most delightful 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 very odd; that Boswell was impertinent; that it was foolish in Mrs. Thrale to marry the 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 "mutua. friend," for "common friend." We have "fallacy" used as synonymous with "falsehood," or "misstatement." 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 Jartin and Thirlby, Johnson calls three contemporaries 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 au thor." We must add that the printer has done his best to fill both the text and notes. with all sorts of blunders; and he and the * IV. 323. III. 228. IV. 377. IV. 415. II. 461 |