(_Edinburgh Review_, September 1831.)
This {368}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
(1) _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.
{369}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. (1) 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. (2) 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. (3) 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. (4) Mr. Croker informs us,
that Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, the author of the Life of Beattie,
died in 1816. (5) 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
(1) I. 394.
(2) I. 404.
(3) IV. 321
(4) IV. 428.
(5) II. 262.
{370}lamented that event in the introduction to the fourth canto of
Marmion. Every school-girl 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: