“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 exercises.” (1) Now, we did
(1) V. 233.
{384}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 consists 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 similar
allusion to that dogma before Johnson was born. Mr. Croker, However, is
unable to understand what the doctor meant. “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. (1)
There is still a 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.” (2)
A very large proportion of the two thousand five hundred notes which the
editor boasts of having added