Of Johnson's numerous places of residence in London, the only house remaining that can now be associated with him is number 17 Gough Square, Fleet Street. Since Johnson left it in 1758 the house must have suffered some strange vicissitudes. During the first decade of the present century it was in the occupation of a firm of printers, but it had become dilapidated, was fast falling into decay, and it appeared to be only a question of time when it would be pulled down to make way for a modern structure.

I may perhaps be allowed to quote here an appeal1 dated December, 1905, which I made for a Johnson Memorial in connection with the house in Gough Square. I said It is to be regretted that hardly any Johnson associations linger in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street which Johnson loved so well, and where he spent so many years of his life. Let the London County Council, before it is too late, purchase Johnson's house in Gough Square, and have it put into order (but not restored) for a Johnson Museum of relics and books. A fee might be charged to inspect the house, also for the use of rooms for the meetings of literary societies. It is further suggested that a full-length statue of Johnson be erected in Gough Square, or somewhere in the neighbourhood of Fleet Street."

The London County Council, however, was too much occupied with grandiose schemes for the improvement of London to heed this appeal to preserve an ancient building associated with one of the greatest of Londoners. There seemed, therefore, to be little hope of saving the house in Gough Square from a fate similar to that which had befallen other houses identified with Johnson. This last remaining one certainly bore on its walls a tablet commemorating the name of its illustrious occupant, but lovers of that great-hearted man must have sighed on beholding its forlorn and derelict condition.

When the lease fell in, and its last tenants departed, the situation seemed to be almost past saving, but the Press, and notably Mr. Clement Shorter, made a vigorous appeal to the public to preserve the building. At last a benefactor was found in the person of Mr. Cecil Harmsworth, M.P., who purchased the house in April, 1911, thus satisfying what I understand was an old desire. Mr. Alfred Burr, F.R.I.B.A., was entrusted with the work of restoration, a task which he carried out with admirable skill. The house was reconstructed, so far as one can judge, as it was in Johnson's time, and all its original features were retained. The pine panelling on the walls, the fine staircase and the attic where Johnson's amanuenses toiled over the Dictionary are now familiar to countless visitors who have seen the inside of this pleasant old mansion and have examined the collection of portraits, the books, autographs, letters and other relics of the Fleet Street sage preserved within its walls.

The full-length statue of Dr. Johnson, which was set up in August, 1910, outside the east end of the Church in which he worshipped, St. Clement Danes, Fleet Street, is the work and gift of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, an enthusiastic Johnsonian.

The Centenary of Dr. Johnson's death-December 13, 1884-was celebrated in London by the formation of a small club, at the suggestion of Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, the well-known publisher. For forty years members of the Johnson Club have maintained the object of its foundation, namely, of assembling regularly every three months to partake of a supper and to listen to papers read by their brethren or by guests and to engage in discussion.2 Of the original members the sole

1 Appended to an abridged version of Boswell's Life of Johnson (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1906). 2 The 140th anniversary of Johnson's death, Dec. 13, 1924, was celebrated in London by a service in the Church of St. Clement Danes, when Mr. J. C. Squire gave an address. In the evening of the same day the members of the Johnson Club met at Gough Square, and Mr. George Whale read a paper on the past history of the Club. Mr. Whale's lamented death on May 4, 1925, has since occurred.

survivor is Mr. Unwin, who, as the Bursar, an office which he has filled for many years, is still active in promoting the interests of the Club. Although not an original member, Mr. J. Frederick Green, at one time M.P. for Leicester, joined the Club shortly after its formation, and has long held the office of Scribe, whose duty it is to convene the meetings and to obtain readers of papers. The Johnson Club has numbered among its members many distinguished scholars of Dr. Johnson and his period. Mention may be made of some of those who have passed away, namely, Dr. J. Birkbeck Hill, John Sargeaunt, H. B. Wheatley, Austin Dobson, and Thomas Seccombe.

Two volumes, 2 containing selections of papers read at the Johnson Club, have been published. The first series, issued in 1899, edited by John Sargeaunt and George Whale, contains essays by the editors, by Dr. George Birkbeck Hill, Augustine Birrell, Sir George Radford, and others. The second series, which appeared in 1920 under the same editorship as the former volume, contains a selection of twelve papers.

The most notable collection in the world, of books and manuscripts of Dr. Johnson and his circle par excellence, is that which was formed by the late Mr. Robert Borthwick Adam, senior, of

Buffalo, N.Y., between the years 1880 and 1904, the year of his death. The collection is now in the possession of Mr. Robert Borthwick Adam, junior, who has made additions to it from time to time, and has printed, for private circulation, a magnificent catalogue of his treasures. Mr. Adam is not a man who gathers rarities that he alone may enjoy them, but he delights in sharing the pleasure of his possessions with others. With that object he has compiled a catalogue which, he says, contains a selection of the more important things from his collection. The famous Adam collection at Buffalo has for many years excited the curiosity of Johnson students, but only those who have been privileged to inspect it can have had any conception of its nature and scope. This collection of books and manuscripts, however, is too vast for anyone to obtain but a superficial knowledge by a cursory

1 Sir Francis Gould, who was an original member, died Jan. 1, 1925.

2 London: T. Fisher Unwin.

examination. The catalogue, therefore, is a revelation containing as it does a record of practically all the first editions of books by Dr. Johnson and Boswell, with a large number of their letters, manuscripts, and corrected proofs, as well as books and letters by nearly every one who was a member of Johnson's circle. To name only some of the outstanding treasures one may mention the actual letter that Johnson addressed to Macpherson, also the original manuscript and the corrected copies of his plan for a Dictionary, a memorandum book used by Boswell for noting conversations, etc., which he utilized in his Life of Johnson, and the proof-sheets, heavily corrected, of that famous book. The late Dr. Birkbeck Hill made these proof-sheets the subject of a Johnson Club paper many years ago, and Mr. Adam has issued for his friends a volume comprising facsimiles of a selected number of pages.

Although few names are more familiar to the Johnson student than that of Dr. John Taylor, of Ashbourne, his life-long friendship with Johnson has given rise to some misrepresentation. They were schoolfellows at Lichfield, and when Johnson went up to Pembroke, Taylor followed him to Oxford but not to the same college. Henceforward their friendship continued; it was to Dr. Taylor that Johnson turned for consolation on the death of his wife, and from time to time he journeyed to Ashbourne to spend some days under Dr. Taylor's roof. Dr. Taylor survived his old friend, and read the burial service at his funeral in Westminster Abbey. To the ordinary observer the two men would not appear to have had much in common, but Johnson valued old friendships. The suggested reason, however, for the attention that he paid to Taylor was that he expected to be made his heir. This suggestion and other errors were first shown to be false by the Rev. Thomas Taylor in his admirable Life of Dr. Taylor, 1 which constitutes the most important contribution to our knowledge of Dr. Johnson's relations with his oldest surviving friend. I was unable to obtain a portrait of Dr. Taylor for the first and second impressions of this edition of Boswell's Life of Johnson, but through the kindness of Mr. Taylor I am now in a position to make good this omission, as he has generously allowed me to reproduce from his book the two excellent portraits of Dr. Taylor which he published for the first time.

Mr. Aleyn Lyell Reade's privately printed volumes of Johnsonian Gleanings contain a mass of valuable information obviously the result of much patient research, for which he possesses a rare gift. No one of recent years has done so much as Mr. Reade to clear up doubtful points and to reveal new facts of Johnsonian interest. Besides his work on The Reades of Blackwood Hill and Dr. Johnson's Ancestry, 1906, he has printed of his Gleanings, Part I: "Notes on Dr. Johnson's Ancestors and Connexions and illustrative of his Early Life," 1909; Part II: "Francis Barber, the Doctor's Negro Servant," 1912; and Part III: "The Doctor's Boyhood," 1922. The bibliography of Johnson's works has occupied much of the attention of literary students and bibliophiles during the past twenty years. The most important discovery of late was made by Mr. R. W. Chapman, namely, of what appears to be the only recorded copy of Johnson's " Proposals" for his Edition of Shakespeare in 1756. This pamphlet of eight pages was sold in Messrs. Sotheby's Rooms on July 10, 1923. It was known to have been separately printed, as Johnson referred to it in a letter to Dr. Birch on June 22, 1756, and it was reprinted in the London Chronicle for April 12-14, 1757, and again in the second volume of Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces Printed for T. Davies, 1773. Mr. Chapman, who became the

1 London: St. Catherine Press.

The excellent Bibliography of Dr. Johnson 2 by the late late William Prideaux Courtney was, owing to the author's death, revised and seen through the Press by Mr. David Nichol Smith. This is an indispensable book of reference, as those know only too well who have tried to work out the subject for themselves before this work was issued.

I cannot conclude these notes without mentioning Mr. A. Edward Newton, a very ardent student and collector of Johnson books, who has written some interesting things about the Doctor in his The Amenities of Book-Collecting and other Affections, and

elsewhere.

3

PREFACE

Facsimile of the title-page to Dr. Johnson's "Proposals
for printing his edition of Shakspeare.

xvii

The good fortune that attended Johnson's house in Gough Square was unfortunately denied the house in which Boswell lived in Great Queen Street. Said to have been erected from a design of Inigo Jones, this fine old seventeenth-century building had not only been occupied by Boswell (the fact to which a plaque on its walls testified), but it was at one time the residence of Johnson's friend, John Hoole -the translator of Tasso-and later of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who quitted it in 1791. Efforts were made to save this most interesting house which, if successful, might have formed a place of pilgrimage for admirers of Boswell. No one, however, neither English, Scottish, nor American, came forward with the necessary money to

1 Oxford University Press.

2 Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1915.

3 John Lane, London.

prevent its destruction. Since the house in Great Portland Street, where Boswell died, is no longer standing, the Great Queen Street house, in which he is said to have prepared his Life of Johnson for the Press, should not have been destroyed.

Boswell believed, and rightly so, that he had raised, in his Life of Johnson, an enduring memorial to his friend and to himself. His passionate desire for fame, therefore, has long ago been realised. In 1909 a statue to this greatest of biographers, the handicraft of Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, was erected in the Market Square at Lichfield. Had Boswell known that such a tribute to his memory was in store for him it would have helped him to rest contented in the family vault at Auchinleck.

Boswell is one of the few whose names have supplied our language with new words. To Boswellise is to apply the method that he pursued in his Life of Johnson, namely, that of studying and recording at first hand every detail in the life, habits, and conversations of his subject. No one, however, played the Boswell to him, although his life has been written of late more than once. He had, however, a habit of recording his own opinions and thoughts and the events of his life as they occurred, but owing to the indifference and negligence of his literary executors a large quantity of his papers, including nearly all of the precious note-books used for his great biography, are said to have been destroyed some years after his death. His Diary, though at present unpublished, has survived. He was a voluminous writer, and such of his autobiographical jottings as have seen the light furnish considerable material for his memorists. Mr. George Mallory's Boswell the Biographer1 is an excellent study, which the author aptly describes as "less than a biography and more than an essay." He makes no claim to original research, but he has put to good use the available printed matter, such as Boswell's Letters to Temple and the Boswelliana, published by the Grampian Club in 1876. A new edition of the Letters to Temple, with an admirable introduction by that fine Johnsonian scholar, the late Thomas Seccombe, was published in 1908. This reprint was much needed, as the original edition had long been out of print. The publication, however, of Boswell's Letters,2 under the able editorship of Professor Chauncey Brewster Tinker, of Yale University, is an event of first importance. Professor Tinker has been fortunate in recovering a great many new letters, and has restored certain passages omitted by the original editor of the letters to Temple. This first collection of Boswell's correspondence reveals, without any reservations, the many sides of the character of this extraordinary man, such as the law student, the man-about-town, the earnest disciple of Johnson, the advocate, the country gentleman and landlord. In his earlier book, The Young Boswell, 3 Professor Tinker gave us one of the most vivid accounts of Johnson's biographer that we have. Professor Tinker, like Mr. Mallory, disclaims the idea of writing a "life" in the ordinary acceptance of the term, but his book has a character of its own, as it contains many hitherto unpublished facts, letters and stories, all of which are woven into a very amusing and lively narrative. Notwithstanding that the book mainly deals with his early years, it is perhaps the nearest thing we have to a Boswellised Boswell.

The interest shown of late in Boswell and Boswell's writings is steadily growing. It is significant that two Johnson students, one connected with the Oxford Press and the other with the Cambridge Press, should meet on common ground. Mr. R. W. Chapman found relief during his duties on active service to carry out the happy idea

1 London Smith, Elder & Co., 1911.

2 Oxford: The University Press, 1924.

3 New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1922.