(September 1831) _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. Five
volumes, 8vo. London: 1831_
|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.” This edition is ill
compiled, ill arranged, ill written, and ill printed.
Nothing in the work has 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 book on which he undertook
to comment. We will give a few instances.
Mr. Croker tells us in a note that Derrick, who was master of the
ceremonies at Bath, died very poor in 1760. [Vol. i. 394.] We read on;
and, a few pages later, we find Dr. Johnson and Boswell talking of
this 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. [i.
404.] And all this is in 1763. The fact is, that Derrick died in 1769.
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. [Vol. iv. 321.] 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. [iv. 428.]
Mr. Croker informs us, that Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, the author
of the Life of Beattie, died in 1816. [ii. 262.] 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 Walter Scott lamented that event
in the introduction to the fourth canto of Marmion. Every schoolgirl
knows the lines:=
```“Scarce had lamented Forbes paid
```The tribute to his Minstrel’s shade;
```The tale of friendship scarce was told,
```Ere the narrator’s heart was cold:
```Far may we search before we find
```A heart so manly and so kind!”=
In one place, we are told, that Allan Ramsay, the painter, was born in
1709, and died in 1784; [iv. 105.] in another, that he died in 1784, in
the seventy-first year of his age. [v. 281.]
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. [i. 510.] In other places he says, that Mrs. Thrale’s
thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson’s seventieth. [iv. 271, 322.]
Johnson was born in 1709. If, therefore, Mrs. Thrale’s thirty-fifth year
coincided with Johnson’s seventieth, she could have been only twenty-one
years old in 1765. This is not all. Mr. 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. [iii. 463.] If
this date be correct, Mrs. Thrale must have been born in 1742, and
could have been only twenty-three when her acquaintance with Johnson
commenced. Mr. Croker therefore gives us three different statements
as to her age. Two of the three must be incorrect. We will not decide
between them; we will only say, that the reasons which Mr. Croker gives
for thinking that Mrs. Thrale was exactly thirty-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 years.” [ii. 151.] Lord Mansfield survived Dr. Johnson
just eight years and a quarter.
Johnson found in the library of a French lady, whom he visited during
his short visit to Paris, some works which he regarded with great
disdain. “I looked,” says he, “into the books in the lady’s closet, and,
in contempt, showed them to Mr. Thrale. Prince Titi, Bibliotheque des
Fees, and other books.” [iii. 271.] The History of Prince Titi, observes
Mr. Croker, “was said to be the autobiography of Frederick 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 Frederick or by Ralph, was certainly
never published. If Mr. Croker had taken the trouble to read with
attention that 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 is 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 Frederick, 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 Bibliotheque des Fees, 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. [v. 196.] Now Mr. Bate was then
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.
“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.” [Vol.
iv. 29.] 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 printemps vint et la
saison,” says Froissart, in June 1330, says Lord Hailes, whom Mr. Croker
cites as the authority for his statement.
Mr. Croker tells us that the great Marquis of Montrose was beheaded at
Edinburgh in 1650. [ii. 526.] There is not a forward boy at any school
in England who does not know that the marquis was hanged. The account of
the 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.” [iii. 52.] Can Mr. Croker possibly be ignorant that Lord
Townshend was made Secretary of State at the Accession of George I. 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 Charles Townshend, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, was “nephew of the Prime Minister, and son
of a peer who was Secretary of State, and leader of the House of Lords.”
[iii. 368.] Charles Townshend was not nephew, but grandnephew, 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.” [iv. 222.] General Bourgoyne 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.” [i. 298.] 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 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
falsifying history. But of this high literary misdemeanour we do without
hesitation accuse him that he has no adequate sense of the obligation
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 malice and corruption are
not imputed. We accuse him of having undertaken a work which, if not
performed with strict accuracy, must be very much worse than useless,
and of having performed it as if the difference between an accurate and
an inaccurate statement was not worth the trouble of looking into the
most common book of reference.
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 had taken place in
Gibbon’s religious opinions. That Gibbon when a lad at Oxford turned
Catholic is well known. “It is said,” cried Johnson, laughing, “that
he has been a Mahommedan.” “This sarcasm,” says the editor, “probably
alludes to the tenderness with which Gibbon’s malevolence to
Christianity induced him to treat Mahommedanism 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 Mahommedanism was not
published till 1788, twelve years after the date of this conversation,
and near four years after the death of Johnson.
[A defence of this blunder was attempted. That the celebrated chapters
in which Gibbon has traced the progress of Mahommedanism were not
written in 1776 could not be denied. But it was confidently asserted
that his partiality to Mahommedanism appeared in his first volume. This
assertion is untrue. No passage which can by any art be construed into
the faintest indication of the faintest partiality for Mahommedanism
has ever been quoted or ever will be quoted from the first volume of the
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
To what, then, it has been asked, could Johnson allude? Possibly to some
anecdote or some conversation of which all trace is lost. One conjecture
may be offered, though with diffidence. Gibbon tells us in his Memoirs,
that at Oxford he took a fancy for studying Arabic, and was prevented
from doing so by the remonstrances of his tutor. Soon after this,
the young man fell in with Bossuet’s controversial writings, and was
speedily converted by them to the Roman Catholic faith. The apostasy of
a gentleman commoner would of course be for a time the chief subject
of conversation in the common room of Magdalene. His whim about Arabic
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.]
“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.” [Vol. v. 409]
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. [This paragraph has been altered; and a slight inaccuracy
immaterial to the argument, has been removed.]
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 expressions respecting Home’s play
and Macpherson’s Ossian. “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. [Vol. v. 409.] 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, [i. 262.] and
his Doctor’s degree in 1775. [iii. 205.] In the spring of 1776, [iii.
326.] he paid a visit to Oxford, and at this visit a conversation
respecting the works on 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. [i. 405.] 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 entitled to no
confidence whatever. Mr. Croker has committed an error of five years
with respect to the publication of Goldsmith’s novel, an error of twelve
years with respect to the publication of part of Gibbon’s History, an
error of twenty-one years with respect to an event in Johnson’s life
so important as the taking of the doctoral degree. Two of these three
errors he has committed, while ostentatiously displaying his own
accuracy, and correcting what he represents as the loose assertions of
others. How can his readers take on trust his statements concerning
the births, marriages, divorces, and deaths of a crowd of people, whose
names are scarcely known to this generation? It is not likely 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 enabled 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, as sufficient to justify any writer who
may follow him in relating a single anecdote or in assigning a date to a
single event.
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 anything 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.” [Vol. i. 167.] 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 near 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 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
says, “was never famed for her beauty.” [i. 133.] 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.
Boswell found, in his tour to the Hebrides, an inscription written by
a Scotch minister. It runs thus: “Joannes Macleod, etc. gentis suae
Philarchus, etc Florae Macdonald matrimoniali vinculo conjugatus turrem
hanc Beganodunensem proaevorum habitaculum longe vetustissimum, diu
penitus labefactatam anno aerae 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?” [ii. 458.] 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 philarchos in the sense which we assign to it. Would Mr. Croker
translate philosophos, a man who acquires wisdom by means of love,
or philokerdes, 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 recommended my th ph.” “These letters,” says the
editor, “(which Dr. Strahan seems not to have understood) probably mean
phnetoi philoi, departed friends.” [Vol. iv. 251. An attempt was made
to vindicate this blunder by quoting a grossly corrupt passage from the
Iketides of Euripides=
```bathi kai antiason gonaton, epi kheira balousa,
```teknon te thnaton komisai demas.=
[The true reading, as every scholar knows, is teknon, tethneoton komisai
demas. Indeed without this emendation it would not be easy to construe
the words, even if thnaton could bear the meaning which Mr. Croker
assigns to it.] 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 thnetoi in the sense which Mr. Croker ascribes
to it without imminent danger of a flogging.
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.” [v. 17.]
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 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” 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.” [iv.
425.] 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 a very few pages from 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 poem called “The
Royal Progress” was the arrival of the king, and not his accession,
which took place near 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 it. “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.” [iv. 335.] 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 a reason, sir; I am not bound
to find you an understanding.” Everybody who knows anything of Latinity
knows that, in genealogical tables, Joannes Baro de Carteret, or
Vice-comes 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,
```Four spend in prayer, the rest on nature fix.”=