I have only to add, that the proof-sheets of the present edition not having passed through my hands, I am not answerable for any typographical errors that may be found in it. Having, however, been printed at the very accurate press of Mr. Baldwin, I make no doubt it will be found not less perfect than the former edition; the greatest care having been taken, by correctness and elegance, to do justice to one of the most instructive and entertaining works in the English language.

8th April, 1799.

EDM. MALONE.

TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

In this edition are inserted some new letters, of which the greater part has been obligingly communicated by the Rev. Dr. Vyse, Rector of Lambeth. Those written by Dr. Johnson, concerning his mother in her last illness, furnish a new proof of his great piety and tenderness of heart, and therefore cannot but be acceptable to the readers of this very popular work. Some new notes also have been added, which, as well as the observations inserted in the third edition, and the letters now introduced, are carefully included within crochets, that the author may not be answerable for any thing which had not the sanction of his approbation. The remarks of his friends are distinguished as formerly, except those of Mr. Malone, to which the letter M. is now subjoined. Those to which the letter K. is affixed were communicated by my learned friend, the Rev. Dr. Kearney, formerly senior Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and now beneficed. in the diocese of Raphoe, in Ireland, of which he is archdeacon.

Of a work which has been before the public for thirteen years with increasing approbation, and of which near four thousand copies have been dispersed, it is not necessary to say more; yet I cannot refrain from adding, that, highly as it is now estimated, it will, I am confident, be still more valued by posterity a century hence, when all the actors in the scene shall be numbered with the dead; when the excellent and extraordinary man, whose wit and wisdom are here recorded, shall be viewed at a still greater distance; and the instruc

tion and entertainment they afford will at once produce reverential gratitude, admiration, and delight.

20th June, 1804.

E. M.

TO THE FIFTH EDITION.

In this fifth edition some errours of the press, which had crept into text and notes, in consequence of repeated impressions, have been corrected. Two letters written by Dr. Johnson and several new notes, have been added: by which, it is hoped, this valuable work is still further improved.

January 1st, 1807.

E. M.

TO THE SIXTH EDITION.

GREAT pains have been taken to make this sixth edition accurate, in point of typography. With this view the entire work has been read over by the author's second son, James Boswell, of the Inner Temple, Esq., by which means many errours of the press, occasioned by repeated impressions, have been discovered. All these have been carefully amended. Several new notes and some letters have been added and in the Index,-a very useful appendage to a book containing so much miscellaneous and unconnected matter,—many new articles have been inserted.

By these improvements, the present impression has been rendered the amplest, and it is hoped, will be found the most correct edition of this valuable work, which has yet appeared.

Foley Place, May 2nd, 1811.

E. M.

PREFACE TO MR. CROKER'S EDITION.

I

T were superfluous to expatiate on the merits, at least as a source of amusement, of Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON. Whatever doubts may have existed as to the prudence or the propriety of the original publication-however naturally private confidence was alarmed, or individual vanity offended, the voices of criticism and complaint were soon drowned in the general applause. And no wonder-the work combines within itself the four most entertaining classes of writing-biography, memoirs, familiar letters, and that assemblage of literary anecedotes which the French have taught us to distinguish by the termination Ana.

It was originally received with an eagerness and relished with a zest which undoubtedly were sharpened by the curiosity which the unexpected publication of the words and deeds of so many persons still living could not but excite. But this motive has gradually become weaker, and may now be said to be extinct; yet we do not find that the popularity of the work, though somewhat changed in quality, is really diminished; and as the interval which separates us from the actual time and scene increases, so appear to increase the interest and delight which we feel at being introduced, as it were, into that distinguished society of which Dr. Johnson formed the centre, and of which his biographer is the historian.

But though every year thus adds to the interest and instruction which this work affords, something is, on the other hand, deducted from the amusement which it gives, by the gradual obscurity that time throws over the persons and incidents of private life: many circumstances known to all the world when Mr. Boswell wrote are already obscure to the best informed, and wholly forgotten by the rest of mankind.

For instance, when he relates [vol. i., p. 172] that a "great personage" called the English Divines of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

Giants," we conclude that George III. was the great personage; but all my inquiries (and some of His Majesty's illustrious family. have condescended to permit these inquiries to extend even to them) have failed to ascertain to what person or on what occasion that happy expression was used.

Again: When Mr. Boswell's capricious delicacy induced him to suppress names and to substitute such descriptions as "an eminent friend," "a young gentleman," "a distinguished orator," these were well understood by the society of the day; but it is become necessary to apprise the reader of our times, that Mr. Burke, Mr. Sheridan, and Mr. Fox were respectively meant. Nor is it always easy to appropriate Mr. Boswell's circumlocutory designations. It will be seen in the course of this work, that several of them have become so obscure that even the surviving members of the Johnsonian Society were unable to recollect who were meant, and it was on one of these occasions that Sir James Mackintosh told me that "my work had, at least, not come too soon."

Mr. Boswell's delicacy is termed capricious, because he is on some occasions candid even to indiscretion, and on others unaccountably mysterious. In the report of a conversation he will clearly designate half the interlocutors, while the other half, without any apparent reason, he casts into studied obscurity.

Considering himself to be (as he certainly has been to a greater degree than he could have contemplated) one of the distributors of fame, he has sometimes indulged his partialities or prejudices by throwing more or less light, and lights more or less favourable, on the different persons of his scene; some of whom he obtrudes into broad day, while others he only "adumbrates" by imperfect allusions. But many, even of those the most clearly designated and spoken of as familiar to every eye and ear, have already lived their day, and are hardly to be heard of except in this work. Yet this work must be read with imperfect pleasure, without some knowledge of the history of those more than half-forgotten persons.

Facts, too, fade from memory as well as names; and fashions and follies are still more transient. But, in a book mainly composed of familiar conversation, how large a portion most bear on the facts, the follies, and the fashions of the time!

To clear up these obscurities-to supply these deficiencies-to retrieve obsolete and to collect scattered circumstances-and so to

restore to the work as much as possible of its original clearness and freshness, were the main objects of the present Editor. I am but too well aware how unequal I am to the task, and how imperfectly I have accomplished it. But as the time was rapidly passing away in which any aid could be expected from the contemporaries of Johnson, or even of Boswell, I determined to undertake the work-believing that, however ill I might perform it, I should still do it better than, twenty years later, it could be done by any diligence of research or any felicity of conjecture.

But there were also deficiencies to be supplied. Notwithstanding the diligence and minuteness with which Mr. Boswell detailed what he saw of Dr. Johnson's life, his book left large chasms. It must be recollected that they never resided in the same neighbourhood, and that the detailed account of Johnson's domestic life and conversation is limited to the opportunities afforded by Mr. Boswell's occasional visits to London-by the Scottish Tour-and by one meeting at Dr. Taylor's in Derbyshire. Of above twenty years, therefore, that their acquaintance lasted, periods equivalent in the whole to about threequarters of a year only fell under the personal notice of Boswell-and thus has been left many a long hiatus-valde deflendus, and now, alas, quite irreparable!

Mr. Boswell endeavoured, indeed, to fill up these chasms as well as he could with letters, memoranda, notes, and anecdotes collected from every quarter; but the appearance of his work was so long delayed, that Sir John Hawkins, Mrs. Piozzi, Dr. Strahan, Mr. Tyers, Mr. Nichols, and many others, had anticipated much of what he would have been glad to tell. Some squabbles about copyright had warned him that he must not avail himself of their publications; and he was on such bad terms with his rival biographers that he could not expect any assistance or countenance from them. He nevertheless went as far as he thought the law would allow in making frequent quotations from the preceding publications; but as to all the rest, which he did not venture to appropriate to his own use,-the grapes were sour—and he took every opportunity of representing the anecdotes of his rivals as extremely inaccurate and generally undeserving of credit.

It is certain that none of them have attained—indeed they do not pretend to that extreme verbal accuracy with which Mr. Boswell had, by great zeal and diligence, learned to record conversations; nor