talize our curiosity and excite our regret that there was no Boswell to preserve the conversation and illustrate the life and times of Addison, of Swift himself, of Milton, and, above all, of Shakspeare! We can hardly refrain from indulging ourselves with the imagination of works so instructive and delightful; but that were idle; except as it may tend to increase our obligation to the faithful and fortunate biographer of Dr. Johnson.

"Mr. Boswell's birth and education familiarized him with the highest of his acquaintance, and his good-nature and conviviality with the lowest. He describes society of all classes with the happiest discrimination. Even his foibles assisted his curiosity; he was sometimes laughed at, but always well received; he excited no envy, he imposed no restraint. It was well known that he made notes of every conversation, yet no timidity was alarmed, no delicacy demurred; and we are perhaps indebted to the lighter parts of his character for the patient indulgence with which everybody submitted to sit for their pictures.

"Nor were his talents inconsiderable. He had looked a good deal into books, and more into the world. The narrative portion of his work is written with good sense, in an easy and perspicuous style, and without (which seems odd enough) any palpable imitation of Johnson. But in recording conversations he is unrivalled: that he was eminently accurate in substance, we have the evidence of all his contemporaries; but he is also in a high degree characteristic-dramatic. The incidental observations with which he explains or enlivens the dialogue, are terse, appropriate, and picturesque-we not merely hear his company, we see them!

"Yet his father was, we are told, by no means satisfied with the life he led, nor his eldest son with the kind of reputation he attained: neither liked to hear of his connexion even with Paoli or Johnson; and both would have been better pleased if he had contented himself with a domestic life of sober respectability.

"The public, however, the dispenser of fame, has judged differently, and considers the biographer of Johnson as the most eminent part of the family pedigree. With less activity, less indiscretion, less curiosity, less enthusiasm, he might, perhaps, have been what the old lord would, no doubt, have thought more respectable; and have been pictured on the walls of Auchinleck (the very name of which we never should have heard) by some stiff, provincial painter, in a lawyer's wig or a squire's hunting cap; but his portrait by Rey

nolds, would not have been ten times engraved; his name could never have become as it is likely to be-as far spread and as lasting as the English language; and the world had wanted' a work to which it refers as a manual of amusement, a repository of wit, wisdom, and morals, and a lively and faithful history of the manners and literature of England, during a period hardly second in brilliancy, and superior in importance, even to the Augustan age of Anne."

To these masterly strictures of Mr. Croker we now append some of the passages in which other writers have recorded their estimation of Boswell; concluding with a few extracts from the periodical literature of our own times.

Malone.

Highly as this work is now estimated, it will, I am confident, be still more valued by posterity a century hence, when the excellent and extraordinary man, whose wit and wisdom are here recorded, shall be viewed at a still greater distance; and the instruction and entertainment they afford will at once produce reverential gratitude, admiration, and delight."-Preface, 1804.

Sir William Forbes.

"The circle of Mr. Boswell's acquaintance among the learned, the witty, and, indeed, among men of all ranks and professions, was extremely extensive, as his talents were considerable, and his convivial powers made his company much in request. His warmth of heart towards his friends was very great; and I have known few men who possessed a stronger sense of piety, or more fervent devotion (tinctured, no doubt, with some little share of superstition; which had, probably, in some degree, been fostered by his habits of intimacy with Dr. Johnson), perhaps not always sufficient to regulate his imagination, or direct his conduct, yet still genuine, and founded both in his understanding and his heart. His Life of that extraordinary man must be allowed to be one of the most characteristic and entertaining biographical works in the English language."-Life of Beattie, vol. ii., p. 166.

Cumberland.

"Under the hospitable roof of Mr. Dilly, the biographer of Johnson passed many jovial, joyous hours: here he has located some of the liveliest scenes

and most brilliant passages in his entertaining anecdotes of his friend Samuel Johnson, who yet lives and speaks in him. The book of Boswell is, ever as the year comes round, my winter-cvening's entertainment. I loved the man: he had great convivial powers, and an inexhaustible fund of good-humour in society; nobody could detail the spirit of a conversation in the true style and 1 character of the parties more happily than my friend James Boswell."— Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 227.

Farrington.

"Of those who were frequently at Sir Joshua Reynolds's parties; Mr. Boswell was very acceptable to him. He was a man of excellent temper, and with much gaiety of manner, possessed a shrewd understanding, and close observation of character. He had a happy faculty of dissipating that reserve, which too often damps the pleasure of English society. His good-nature and social feeling always inclined him to endeavour to produce that effect; which was so well known, that when he appeared, he was hailed as the harbinger of festivity. Sir Joshua was never more happy than when, on such occasion, Mr. Boswell was seated within his hearing. The Royal Society gratified Sir Joshua by electing Mr. Boswell their Secretary of Foreign Correspondence; which made him an Honorary Member of that body.”—Life of Sir Joshua Reynolds, p. 83.

Sir Walter Scott.

"Of all the men distinguished in this or any other age, Dr. Johnson has left upon posterity the strongest and most vivid impression, so far as person, manners, disposition, and conversation are concerned. We do but name him, or open a book which he has written, and the sound or action recall to the imagination at once his form, his merits, his peculiarities, nay, the very uncouthness of his gestures, and the deep impressive tone of his voice. We learn not only what he said, but form an idea how he said it; and have, at the same time, a shrewd guess of the secret motive why he did so, and whether he spoke in sport or in anger, in the desire of conviction, or for the love of debate. It was said of a noted wag, that his bon-mots did not give full satis faction when published, because he could not print his face. But with respect to Dr. Johnson, this has been in some degree accomplished; and, although the greater part of the present generation never saw him, yet he is, in our mind's eye, a personification as lively as that of Siddons in Lady Macbeth, or

Kemble in Cardinal Wolsey. All this, as the world knows, arises from his having found in James Boswell such a biographer as no man but himself ever had, or ever deserved to have. Considering the eminent persons to whom it relates, and the quantity of miscellaneous information and entertaining gossip which it brings together, his Life of Johnson may be termed, without exception, the best parlour-window book that ever was written."-Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. i., p. 260.

Edinburgh Review.

"Boswell was the very prince of retail wits and philosophers. One principal attraction of his Life of Johnson is the contrast which, in some respects, it presents to the Doctor's own works. Instead of the pompous commonplaces which he was in the habit of piling together and rounding into periods in his closet, his behaviour and conversation in company might be described as a continued exercise of spleen, an indulgence of irritable humours, a masterly display of character. He made none but home-thrusts, but desperate lounges, but palpable hits. No turgidity; no flaccidness; no bloated flesh : all was muscular strength and agility. It was this vigorous and voluntary exercise of his faculties, when freed from all restraint, in the intercourse of private society, that has left such a rich harvest for his Biographer; and it cannot be denied that it has been well and carefully got in. Other works furnish us with curious particulars, but minute and disjointed :—they want picturesque grouping and dramatic effect. We have the opinions and sayings of eminent men: but they do not grow out of the occasion: we do not know at whose house such a thing happened, nor the effect it had on those who were present. We have good things served up in sandwiches, but we do not sit down, as in Boswell, to 'an ordinary of fine discourse.' There is no eating and drinking going on. We have nothing like Wilkes's plying Johnson with the best bits at Dilly's table, and overcoming his Tory prejudices by the good things he offered and the good things he said; nor does any Goldsmith drop in after tea with his peach-coloured coat, like one dropped from the clouds, bewildered, with his finery and the success of a new work."-No. lxvi. 1820.

"The Life of Johnson' is one of the best books in the world. It 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 distanced all his competitors so decidedly, that it is not worth while to place them: Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere. We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so singular a phenomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography-Boswell has beaten them all. This book resembles nothing so much as the conversation of the inmates of the Palace of Truth."-No. cxii. 1832.

Quarterly Review.

"Our vivacious neighbours, more fond of talk, found a pleasure, when silent, in writing down the talk of others, even to their Arlequiniana, for Harlequin too must talk in France. Of their flock, the bell-weather is the Menagiana. Yet the four volumes are eclipsed by the singular splendour of Boswell's Johnson. All other Ana are usually confined to a single person, and chiefly run on the particular subject connected with that person; but Boswell's is the Ana of all mankind; nor can the world speedily hope to receive a similar gift; for it is scarcely more practicable to find another Boswell than another Johnson."-No. xlvi. 1820.

"Boswell's Life of Johnson is, we suspect, the richest dictionary of wit and wisdom any language can boast. Even if it were possible to consider his delineation of Johnson merely as a character in a novel of the period, the world would have owed him, and acknowledged, no trival obligation. But what can the best character in any novel ever be, compared to a full-length of the reality of genius; and what specimen of such reality will ever surpass the 'OMNIS votivâ veluti depicta tabellâ VITA SENIS?'-the first, and as yet by far the most complete picture of the whole life and conversation of one of that rare order of beings, the rarest, the most influential of all, whose mere genius entitles and enables them to act as great independent controlling powers upon the general tone of thought and feeling of their kind, and invests the very soil where it can be shown they ever set foot, with a living and sacred charm of interest, years and ages after the loftiest of the contemporaries, that did or did not condescend to notice them, shall be as much forgotten as if they had never strutted their hour on the glittering stage? Boswell's 'Johnson' is, without doubt,-excepting, yet hardly excepting, a few immortal monuments of creative genius,-that English book which, were this island to be sunk to.