is to be said as to those really great writers who, from the nature of their productions most especially demanding annotation, have never received it at all? On the whole body of our later comedians, from Congreve to Foote, crammed as they of course are, more than any other series of authors in the language, with passages the very soul and spirit of which depend on evanescent allusions, it may we believe be asserted, that not one single scrap of annotation has, down to this time, been bestowed! Very nearly the same thing may be said of the great comic novelists, dramatists in all but name and form-and more than dramatists will ever again be in power-of the days of George II. But all these omissions are trivial as compared to graver cases still; take, for one example out of at least twenty, Hume's History of England. That book has taken its place as the classical record, and can no more be supplanted by anything else on the same subject than Macbeth, or the Paradise Lost, or the Dunciad. Yet though new lights as to the details of many of the most important periods have been pouring on the world in floods since Hume wrote, it is only now, at the close of 1831, that any one seems to have opened his eyes to the propriety of condensing the pith and essence of this information at the foot of Hume's beautiful pages. In place of this we have had ever and anon some new History of England,' which, after at best tumbling half seen in the wake of the good ship David for a few years, has sunk for ever, to be replaced by some equally short-lived specimen of book-craft. To drive Hume out of the market is impossible. The nation is no more disposed to welcome a new history than a new constitution; but in the former case, at all events, the application of a firm, though respectful hand, to correct admitted errors, and fill up inconvenient blanks, will be sure of a zealous reception. Admiring, as we do, the many graces of thought and diction scattered over Sir James Mackintosh's recent volumes, and the profound learning and, here and there, original and masterly conceptions of Mr. Palgrave, we hope to be pardoned for expressing our opinion that even pens like theirs would have been better employed in annotating and commenting on Hume, than in anything like an attempt to re-write the immortal history of Great Britain. With respect to Dr. Lingard and the others who have been labouring with more solemn pretensions in this vain walk, we are sure the best compliment they need look for at the hands of posterity will be the finding room for a few extracts and abridgments from their operose tomes at the end of the permanent and inimitable narrator's paragraphs or chapters.

The present miserable stagnation for which the book market, like most other markets, feels duly obliged to Lord Grey, will hardly, it is to be hoped, endure much longer; and as, when that terminates, the usual re-action, and even a redoubled

spring,

spring, may be anticipated, we are anxious to avail ourselves of the temporary pause, to urge some of these matters on the consideration of the metropolitan publishers. They must all perceive that this business, owing principally to the application of steam to printing, is about to undergo a complete revolution; and whether that revolution shall end in great good, or in immeasurable evil, to the literature of the country, and the intellectual cultivation of the people, will as undoubtedly depend in no trivial measure upon them. If they persist in applying the new facilities for feeding an indefinitely extending market, to the forcing of new books, a few good new books may, no doubt, be elicited in the course of their exertions, but the general effect will be to swamp the solid classics of the land amidst a chaos of crude abridgments, and tasteless rifaccimentos. It was a saying of, if we recollect rightly, Bishop Warburton- there are two things every man thinks himself fit for-managing a small farm and driving a whiskey.' To write a compendious history of any given great man or na

tion

Pour diriger et l'esprit et le cœur,

Avec préface et l'avis au lecteur

would now appear to be an achievement within the reach of any individual, male or female, who has ever been permitted to scribble a page in a magazine, or report a speech in the House of Commons. The booksellers will, however, discover in the course of time, that this particular species of ambition may be indulged somewhat to their cost, and sooner or later arrive at the conclusion which we beg leave to recommend to their attention now -to wit, that it would be safer and better for themselves, as well as infinitely more conducive to the spread of real information, and the maintenance of manly tastes, were they to direct their thoughts to a more rational system of editing, in conjunction with their daily and hourly expanding means of circulating, the good books that are.

It is also probable, that many of those industrious persons who are now employed in the manufacture of flimsy novelties, might, in the end, be gainers in purse, as well as reputation, by having their field of exertion changed in the manner we have been now suggesting. We know, for instance, few English books of reference which might not be doubled in value, merely by that patient examination of works on similar subjects extant in the German alone, which any man of decent education and industry might accomplish. Even in this department, however, the modern Mecænases must be on their guard, and not be too ready to consider that the best bargain which infers the least immediate outlay. To edit worthily any book, the chief value of

which lies elsewhere than in the mere accumulation of facts, will always demand talents very far above those which of late have presumed to trample so audaciously upon the difficult and delicate, though not, perhaps, dignified art, of epitomizing; and if the course we are recommending should be pursued by the booksellers, the fastidiousness of the public will, of necessity, be year after year, visibly on the increase. A few such specimens as that now on our table would, indeed, go far to banish from all that is worth consideration in this department, dull plodding drudgery on the one hand, and on the other, what is a worse, as well as now-a-days a more common thing, smart, impudent, jobbing shallowness.

And

We have no doubt, that to the early education and mental habits of the lawyer, we owe the chief merits, both of this edition of Boswell, and of its editor's late anti-revolutionary stand in the House of Commons. In either exertion we trace the same, perhaps, in these days, unrivalled combination of the patience that deems no detail too minute to be below notice, and the intellectual grasp that, clutching no matter how many apparently worldwide details together, can squeeze out of the mass results which hardly any one could have clearly anticipated, and yet in which, when once eliminated, no thinker can hesitate to acquiesce. it will hardly be denied, that there was no book in the language more worthy of calling the latter at least of these qualifications into play. Though, in many respects, the best of biographers, Boswell was perhaps more utterly devoid of some of the most important requisites for that species of composition, in regard to such a subject as Dr. Johnson, than any other author of his class whose performance has obtained general approbation. Never did any man tell a story with such liveliness and fidelity, and yet contrive to leave so strong an impression that he did not himself understand it. This is, in one view, the main charm of his book. A person accustomed to exercise his mind in critical research feels, in reading it, as a practised juryman may be supposed to do, when the individual in the box is giving a clear and satisfactory evidence, obviously unconscious, all the while, of the real gist and bearing of the facts he is narrating. One of the oldest adages in Westminster-hall is, in a bad case, the most dangerous of witnesses is a child;' and it holds not less true, that, in a good cause, a child is the best. But all jurymen cannot be expected to combine and apply for themselves, with readiness, or to much purpose, a long array of details, dropped threadless and unconnected from the lips of veracious simplicity. Comparatively few, in a difficult case, can turn such evidence to much use, until they have had their clue from the summing up; and, if

the

the judge happens to be a Wynford or a Lyndhurst, wielding strong intellectual energies with equal quickness, firmness, and fairness, the most accomplished of the assize will probably be not the least thankful for the benefit of his Notes.

If, however, this charming narrative had need of a commentator of a higher cast of mind than belonged to its penman, just as the nine books of Herodotus have gained immeasurably in solid value from the comprehensive resumé in the first sections of Thucydides, no one, most assuredly, will wish that the original task of biographizing Dr. Johnson should have fallen to any hands but Boswell's, any more, if we may hazard so lofty a comparison, than that the immortal stories of Salamis and Marathon should have been reserved for some other spirit, no matter how much more profound, so it were also more ambitious, fastidious, and disposed to generalize, than that of the father of profane history. Who, to put the strongest possible case, would, with his Boswell before him, wish that the author had been too modest to grapple with a theme unquestionably worthy of the greatest talents, and that a humbler and really more just self-appreciation on his part, had devolved the task upon the only associate of Johnson, whom posterity classes in the same intellectual rank with himself, Mr. Burke? Happy indeed for the lovers of wit and wisdom, the students of human character, above all for those who are in any degree capable of sympathising with the struggles, the sorrows, and the triumphs of genius-happy for all such persons, were the day and the hour that first brought the unmeasuring enthusiasm, the omnivorous curiosity, the unblushing, utterly unconscious indelicacy, the ebullient self-love, combined with almost total negation of self-respect, and the perhaps unrivalled memory, of the young laird of Auchinleck, into contact with that man whom, of all living men, one would have à priori pronounced the least likely to tolerate those innumerable weaknesses, absurdities, and impertinencies, which rendered him, in the eyes of general society, at best a walking caricatura, and a harmless butt-only wanting a slight tinge of gravity-or perhaps in those days, a coronet might have served the turn-to take rank as the very beau-ideal of the genus Bore.

To that casual introduction at good Mr. Dilly's dinner-table, we owe, however, not only a more satisfactory style of record, than any other human being was at all likely to have adopted, but much also of what is most amusing, and even instructive, in the subject matter of the record itself. But for Boswell, Johnson would never have gone to the Hebrides-he would probably have died without having virtually extended his sphere of personal observation

servation beyond Litchfield and London-certainly without having had any opportunity of enlarging his sympathies, by the contemplation of a totally and most picturesquely new system of natural scenery, and human manners. We should have lost the northern tour-the best and most characteristic, except the Lives of the Poets, of all his prose works. But it was not merely by taking his chief to the Ultima Thule, that the most assiduous of henchmen rendered us good service in this way. We owe still more, perhaps, to the Scotch optics, which, whether in the Canongate of Edinburgh, or amid the wilds of Sky

'Ponti profundis clausa recessibus,
Strepens procellis, rupibus obsita'

or in the Mitre tavern (while Johnson took his ease in his inn), or in Mrs. Montague's boudoir, or in the kind brewer's warm diningroom at Streatham, or amidst the sober repose of Dr. Taylor's rectory, wherever, in short, another touch was to be added to the eternal picture, James Boswell could not help carrying about with himself. It is to this circumstance at least, that the readers of other countries, and distant times, will owe some of their weightiest obligations. Much about Johnson, which would have been passed over as too familiar for special notice, by any Englishman, was quite new, and, being Johnsonian, of grand importance to his Ostade-and of this much, not a little is already almost as remote from the actual observation of living Englishmen, as it could then have been note-worthy in the eyes of a Scotchman of Boswell's condition. In like manner, in talking with one whom, as being a Scotchman, he always assumed to be grossly ignorant of England, Johnson was naturally led to speak out his views and opinions on a thousand questions, which, under other circumstances, he might never in all probability have thought of stirring questions nevertheless of lasting interest, and views and opinions, which were it but that they mark what could be said in regard to such questions by a man of genius and authority, at that particular time, would gain in historical value by every year that passes over the record. The interfusion of the three nations, as to manners, opinions, feelings, and in a word, character, has proceeded at so rapid a pace within the last half-century, and is so likely to go on, and to end in all but a complete amalgamation before another period of similar extent shall have expired, that if it were but for having given us, ere it was too late, a complete portrait of the real native uncontaminated Englishman, with all his tastes and prejudices fresh and strong about him, even if it were possible to consider Boswell's delineation of Samuel Johnson merely as a character in a novel of that period, the world would have owed him, and acknowledged, no trivial obligation.

But