did, kindly or gratefully of Johnson."[3] “It was him that Horace Walpole called a man who never made a bad figure but as an author."[4] 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.

[2] IV. 377. [3] IV. 415. [4] II. 461.

When we turn from the commentary of Mr. Croker to the work of our old friend Boswell, we find it not only worse printed than in any other edition with which we are acquainted, but mangled in the most wanton manner.  Much that Boswell inserted in his narrative is, without the shadow of a reason, degraded to the appendix.  The editor has also taken upon himself to alter or omit passages which he considers as indecorous.  This prudery is quite unintelligible to us.  There is nothing immoral in Boswell’s book, nothing which tends to inflame the passions.  He sometimes uses plain words.  But if this be a taint which requires expurgation, it would be desirable to begin by expurgating the morning and evening lessons.  The delicate office which Mr. Croker has undertaken he has performed in the most capricious manner.  One strong, old-fashioned, English word, familiar to all who read their Bibles, is changed for a softer synonyme in some passages, and suffered to stand unaltered in others.  In one place a faint allusion made by Johnson to an indelicate subject, an 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 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.

* * * * *

The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work.  Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators than Boswell is the first of biographers.  He has no second.  He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them.  Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.