BOOKS.

THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON.*

IF Dr. Johnson could revisit his beloved London and turn over the books old and new, after his wont, on a bookseller's counter, he would note with delight the latest presentment of his immortal biography. His prejudices against America and the Americans would be softened by the compliment paid him in these ten volumes, each with its introductory chapter of scholarly pane- gyric, and he would admire the perfection of that inestimable art which softens and refines the effort of reading and the physical strain which too often accompanies it. The printing and the paper, the careful and artful spacing and arrangement of the page, and the application of every sound device known to the publishers for embellishing a book, have made this edition very pleasant to read. It stands as a monument to a monumental work, fit to adorn the most dignified of libraries. Though it is not, I confess, quite the sort of book which Johnson meant when he said that the best book was one that you could hold easily in your hand and carry to the fire, its paper, at any rate, is not so overweighted with clay as to make it intolerably ponderous and shiny. Indeed, considering the size and thickness of these octavo volumes, it is astonishing how easily they are held.

Dr. Johnson, on the famous occasion when he took his dinner at the posting-house with the two American ladies, described the mutton set before them in what is perhaps the most compre- hensive piece of invective in the English language : "It is as bad as bad can be ; it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-dressed." If he had come to this edition he would, I believe, have said exactly the reverse: "It is as good as good can be ; it is well edited, well presented, well printed, and well bound." I must own that there is no originality in this application, because Macaulay, quoted in the bibliographical introduction, evidently had the mutton passage in his mind when he declared that Croker's famous edition was "ill compiled, ill arranged, ill written, and ill printed."

Mr. Clement Shorter's introduction is short without being inadequate, and I believe that its general tone will secure the endorsement of all true lovers of Boswell's book. Especially is this true in regard to the overweighting of the book with too much comment. I do not go quite so far as Mr. Shorter in the condemnation of notes, for, after all, Gibbons's footnotes

• The Life of Samuel Johnson. By James Boswell. Edited by Clement Shorter. Ten Volumes. New York : Printed for Gabriel Wells by Doubleday, Page and Company,

are some of the most pungent things in literature ; but I do agree that if, as Mr. Shorter tells us, the reprinting of all the

commenting notes would swell the present ten volumes into• twenty it is better to be without them. Before I leave Mr. Shorter's workmanlike commentary I should like to say with what personal pleasure I, who have a natural inhibition against spelling correctly, note what he says about the spelling of the careful Boswell. Boswell, apparently, did not always spell his own name in the same way—a freedom for which I greatly envy him. Though I would not dare in this age of critical exactitude to follow his example, I have often longed for so complete a liberty. There are days when one would immensely enjoy a

change of spelling—a name spelling is a coat one has worn for sixty years—and there are occasions, as when the east wind blows its worst, when one feels that a desiccated signature would best fit the climatic conditions.

Of the ten excellent introductions I find a special pleasure in Mr. Walter De La Mare's little essay for the eighth volume. It is a charming wreath of violets laid on the steps of the great cenotaph, and shows the wisdom of the editor's selec- tion. The chapter is as light as air, as one might have expected from this fascinating writer, but what one specially likes about it is the sense of something great behind it. Also, there is a feeling new and strange in reading the whole-hearted delight of this most delicate of writers in the coarse if deified Johnson.

It reminds one of a Greek gem, Eros caressing a bear, or of that immortal anticipation of Albano in which Theocritus tells us how Aphrodite's winged attendants bound and led in fetters the great grisled rover :— " One dragged him at a rope's end, E'en as s vanquished foe. One went behind and drave him, And smote him with his bow."

Mr. De La Mare does not, of course, smite Dr. Johnson even

in play, but, all the same, he throws the flowery wreath of imagination round him in a way that adds a new interpretation, or, at any rate, presents the great and comprehensive genius of Johnson from a new angle. Very characteristic is his refer- ence to the two secret quarto volumes about which Johnson made the soul-shaking remark as to what would have happened if they had fallen into bad hands : "Sir, I should have gone mad." Elusively penetrating is the way in which Mr. De La Mare deals with that curious window into Johnson's soul opened by the parenthetical remark which he made literally on his death-bed over a letter "An odd thought strikes me : we shall have no letters in the grave."

I cannot leave Dr. Johnson, childish as it may seem, without resort to the Sortss Boswelliance. 1 open the eighth volume

at random and hit on page 109 and at the following lines: Boswell asked him whether it was true that he had said : "I am for the King against Fox, but I am for Fox against Pitt." Johnson replied : "Yes, sir, the King is my master; but I do not know Pitt, and Fox is my friend." That is very delightful and very human, and yet Fox, the great, fat, coarse Alcibiades of our politics, was just the man whom, in another mood, Dr. Johnson would have denounced and Pitt the man of whom he would have approved. It is for that very reason that I am proud to have chanced upon the very last sublimation and essential liqueur in the Johnsonian spirit. Johnson was always an expert in the art of friendship. When he was your friend he loved you, and loved you for ever. "Sir, if you call a dog Harvey I shall love him." In the last resort, what we love Johnson for is not his adamantine common sense, his love of literature, or his morality, but the deep emotionalism of the man's nature. That emotion was not, I believe, consciously understood by

Boswell, but so sensitive a film was the mind of Boswell that there was transferred to it the true Johnsonian spirit. And so Boa. well's record, strangest of all strange vicissitudes, becomes, in spite of itself, one of the most emotional books in the world. Remember the poignant passage about the revenant tavern

waiter and the women of the town, or again that about the Lord Chancellorship, for the strange thing about Dr. Johnson is that he moves you most deeply when he is dealing with something apparently utterly commonplace. Take for example the passage on children's dreams and the dreadful and always present shadow across the page of death and eternal torment. " ` What do you mean by damned ? ' Johnson (passionately and loudly) 'Sent to hell, sir, and punished everlastingly.'"

J. ST. LOB STRACHEY.'