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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. By James Boswell, Esq. A New Edition. Edited and illustrated with numerous biographical and historical Notes. By the Right Hon. John Wilson Croker. 5 vols. 5 vols. London. 1831.

IN

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N the history of Mr. Croker's reputation the year 1831 will ever form a remarkable epoch. Till then, however adequately his talents and acquirements may have been appreciated within the range of personal familiarity, the impression actually received among the nation at large does not, certainly, appear to have been such as is now on all sides acknowledged. Within a few months, the clever, sharp man of subordinate official details' has raised himself in the House of Commons to the rank of a first-rate parliamentary debater, and been received among their foremost leaders-equally qualified for the station by industry, perspicacity, extent of knowledge, vigour of intellect, courage, and decision-by one of the great conflicting parties in the state. And precisely in the midst of those unparalleled exertions, which have thus astonished friendly and confounded hostile politicians, appears a work which, by all but universal consent, lifts the same person into a literary position, not less enviably superior to what he had previously seemed to occupy in that earlier field of his distinction. Judging from the casual gossip of contemporary journals, the vulgar notion had been, that he held undoubtedly the pen of a most shrewd dialectician and cutting satirist, but would grapple in vain, if he should be rash enough to make such an attempt, with any of the weightier matters either of moral or of critical scrutiny. In these volumes the double question has been put to the test, and the result may teach some of our 'public instructors,' as well as more important persons, to pause a little on future occasions, ere, perceiving and admitting the existence of genius, they presume to determine the range of its capacity-upon uncertain data,-in the exercise, with all due respect be it said, of imperfect powers of discrimination-and even under, perhaps, to a certain extent, the unconscious influence of something like jealousy. Meantime, the mist being once thoroughly dispelled, we entertain no apprehension of seeing it

VOL. XLVI. NO. XCI.

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again gather. His hostages have at length been given and accepted, and, as Voltaire says

'On en vaut mieux quand on est regardé :

L'œil du public est aiguillon de gloire.'

That a book overflowing with personal anecdotes and allusions, published by one who, with all his ineffable follies, was a gentleman of birth, station, and unsullied honour, while almost all the individuals concerned in its stories or glanced at in its hints were living, the greater part of them too in much the same circles with its author-that such a book would have need of a diligent and skilful annotator, after the lapse of nearly half a century, was sufficiently obvious. Had the task been much longer deferred, hardly a single individual that had ever moved in the society of Johnson and his worshipping biographer would have remained. Even the generation that had fed in youth upon the table-talk of the great doctor's surviving associates, were beginning to be thinned among us. Mr. Croker's character and position offered, of course, the readiest access to such living sources of information as could still be appealed to; and probably few would have questioned his sagacity in detecting the proper points of inquiry-his prompt and unwearied diligence in following out hints and suggestions; in short, his abundant qualifications for discharging, in regard to such a book, all the editorial functions which were likely to have occurred to the mind of a Malone. But if Mr. Croker had only done in the most satisfactory manner what was thus looked for at his hands, we should have had a far different book before us, and his general reputation would have owed little, if anything, to the achievement. He has gone a long way, indeed, beyond the usual scope and purpose of anecdotical note-makers. Not satisfied with hunting out whatever facts could be explained as to detail, or added to the already enormous mass, from the dust of forgotten pamphlets, the scattered stores of manuscript correspondence, and the oral communications of persons of all ranks and conditions, from Lord Stowell, Sir Walter Scott, Sir James Mackintosh, Mr. D'Israeli, and Mr. Markland, down to the obscurest descendants of Johnson's connexions in early provincial life ;-not satisfied with equalling, to all appearance, in this sort of diligence the utmost exertions of any commentator that ever staked his glory on the rectification of a date, he has brought his own piercing, strong, and liberal understanding, enriched with most multifarious knowledge of books, more especially of literary and political biography, and expanded by as extensive observation of men and manners, as has fallen to the lot of any living person-he has brought, in a word, the whole vigour of his own mental resources to bear upon this, at first sight, sufficiently un

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