Tyers, scraps of Mr.Murphy, scraps of Mr.Cradock, long prosings of Sir John Hawkins, and connecting observations by Mr.Croker himself, inserted into the midst of Boswell's text.To this practice we most decidedly object.An editor might as well publish Thucydides with extracts from Diodorus interspersed, or incorporate the Lives of Suetonius with the History and Annals of Tacitus.Mr.Croker tells us, indeed, that he has done only what Boswell wished to do, and was prevented from doing by the law of copyright.We doubt this greatly.Boswell has studiously abstained from availing himself of the information given by his rivals, on many occasions on which he might have cited them without subjecting himself to the charge of piracy.Mr.Croker has himself, on one occasion, remarked very justly that Boswell was unwilling to owe any obligation to Hawkins.But, be this as it may, if Boswell had quoted from Sir John and from Mrs.Thrale, he would have been guided by his own taste and judgment in selecting his quotations.On what Boswell quoted he would have commented with perfect freedom; and the borrowed passages, so selected, and accompanied by such comments, would have become original.They would have dovetailed into the work.No hitch, no crease, would have been discernible.The whole would appear one and indivisible.
"Ut per laeve severos Effundat junctura ungues."This is not the case with Mr.Croker's insertions.They are not chosen as Boswell would have chosen them.They are not introduced as Boswell would have introduced them.They differ from the quotations scattered through the original Life of Johnson, as a withered bough stuck in the ground differs from a tree skilfully transplanted with all its life about it.
Not only do these anecdotes disfigure Boswell's book; they are themselves disfigured by being inserted in his book.The charm of Mrs.Thrale's little volume is utterly destroyed.The feminine quickness of observation, the feminine softness of heart, the colloquial incorrectness and vivacity of style, the little amusing airs of a half-learned lady, the delightful garrulity, the "dear Doctor Johnson," the "it was so comical," all disappear in Mr.Croker's quotations.The lady ceases to speak in the first person; and her anecdotes, in the process of transfusion, become as flat as Champagne in decanters, or Herodotus in Beloe's version.Sir John Hawkins, it is true, loses nothing; and for the best of reasons.Sir John Hawkins has nothing to lose.
The course which Mr.Croker ought to have taken is quite clear.
He should have reprinted Boswell's narrative precisely as Boswell wrote it; and in the notes or the appendix he should have placed any anecdote which he might have thought it advisable to quote from other writers.This would have been a much more convenient course for the reader, who has now constantly to keep his eye on the margin in order to see whether he is perusing Boswell, Mrs.
Thrale, Murphy, Hawkins, Tyers, Cradock, or Mr.Croker.We greatly doubt whether even the Tour to the Hebrides ought to have been inserted in the midst of the Life.There is one marked distinction between the two works.Most of the Tour was seen by Johnson in manuscript.It does not appear that he ever saw any part of the Life.
We love, we own, to read the great productions of the human mind as they were written.We have this feeling even about scientific treatises; though we know that the sciences are always in a state of progression, and that the alterations made by a modern editor in an old book on any branch of natural or political philosophy are likely to be improvements.Some errors have been detected by writers of this generation in the speculations of Adam Smith.Ashort cut has been made to much knowledge at which Sir Isaac Newton arrived through arduous and circuitous paths.Yet we still look with peculiar veneration on the Wealth of Nations and on the Principia, and should regret to see either of those great works garbled even by the ablest hands.But in works which owe much of their interest to the character and situation of the writers, the case is infinitely stronger.What man of taste and feeling can endure rifacimenti, harmonies, abridgments, expurgated editions?
Who ever reads a stage-copy of a play when he can procure the original? Who ever cut open Mrs.Siddons's Milton? Who ever got through ten pages of Mr.Gilpin's translation of John Bunyan's Pilgrim into modern English? Who would lose, in the confusion of a Diatessaron, the peculiar charm which belongs to the narrative of the disciple whom Jesus loved? The feeling of a reader who has become intimate with any great original work is that which Adam expressed towards his bride:
"Should God create another Eve, and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee Would never from my heart."No substitute, however exquisitely formed, will fill the void left by the original.The second beauty may be equal or superior to the first; but still it is not she.
The reasons which Mr.Croker has given for incorporating passages from Sir John Hawkins and Mrs.Thrale with the narrative of Boswell, would vindicate the adulteration of half the classical works in the language.If Pepys's Diary and Mrs.Hutchinson's Memoirs had been published a hundred years ago, no human being can doubt that Mr.Hume would have made great use of those books in his History of England.But would it, on that account, be judicious in a writer of our own times to publish an edition of Hume's History of England, in which large extracts from Pepys and Mrs.Hutchinson should be incorporated with the original text?
