Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

Samuel Johnson. By Leslie Stephen. (English Men of Letters, edited by John Morley.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The constant increase of books is not, we are inclined to think, so great a curse or so wholly to be ascribed to malevolent intentions as many despondent people suppose. A very considerable, if not the greater, number of new works have for their aim not to add to, but to diminish, the literature of the world, and so to lighten the burden imposed on each successive generation of readers. The great bulk of the writers of our day are employed not in producing anything new, but in summarizing, epitomizing, and, as far as possible, suppressing, what their predecessors produced. Criticisms are offered to us as substitutes for the works criticised; volumes are tapped that their sap and pith may be extracted; the analyst takes our labor upon himself and generously presents us with the fruits. Up to a certain point the process is unobjectionable, and we have reason to be grateful to those who are skilful in it. It used, however, to be thought that there were limitations to the practice of it—that while it was lawful and right to treat as a caput mortuum any work containing merely a certain amount of useful information or of original thought, a sacredness attached to the masterpieces of literature and to books which, having survived the accidents of time and changes of fashion, were ranked as classics and κτἡματα ἐς ἀεἱ. These were held entitled to a place in every library, and, far from being subjected to condensation or abridgment, were too often supplemented by commentaries and illustrative matter exceeding in bulk the original text. It is less than half a century since the publication of Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson, "with numerous additions and notes," excited a prolonged tumult, and the editor was arrayed at the bar of criticism and solemnly condemned, not for having contributed elucidations to the text, but for having mutilated it by insertions which should have been relegated to an appendix. But now, while one literary craftsman announces an edition from which all that is "obsolete" or "unimportant" is to be expurgated, another offers us in lieu of the five venerated tomes a rifacimiento in a single volume of less than two hundred pages. It is, of course, not to be denied that Boswell's Life includes a large amount of matter wholly unimportant in itself, relating to persons and events that have no independent claim on the interest of readers of the present day. But it does not follow that such details are superfluous and may properly be weeded out. They give us the milieu, to use M. Taine's word, in which Johnson's character and intellect were developed and displayed, the perspective in which his career is to be viewed, the background from which his figure stands out in bold relief. The impression they make upon us is an essential part of the effect which is produced by the book, deepening the sense of reality and the charm of intimate familiarity which have so much to do with its abiding fascination. And the style and manner of the narration are no less an integral part of it. The book is not only a biography, but an autobiography. Johnson without Boswell is Don Quixote without Sancho, Lear without the Fool, Orestes without Pylades. It is safe to say, not only that a thousand incidents of Johnson's life and conversation would never have been preserved but for Boswell, but that some of the most amusing and remarkable of them would never have occurred. The tour to Scotland and the Hebrides, which may be said to have been the one romantic episode of Johnson's life, bringing him into scenes and among characters widely contrasted with his habitual surroundings, is one instance, and the memorable midnight "frisk" in the neighborhood of the Temple is another, among many that might be cited. To separate these two men, to reduce Boswell to the status of a mere "reporter" or "authority," to repeat his stories and records of conversation in any language but his own, to interlard them with the comments and reflections of a superior wisdom, seems to us a sort of moral offence as well as an impertinence. Mr. Leslie Stephen is, without doubt, a very skilful workman, and has brought to his task all the knowledge, taste and judgment, if not the perfectly sympathetic tone, which the most exacting reader could demand. It may, too, be urged on his behalf that he has written for those who have not the leisure to make themselves acquainted with the work which he has condensed. We can only reply that his talents would have found ample scope in a more fitting field, and that people who cannot spare the time to read Boswell can well afford to be ignorant of Johnson.

Books Received

A Concise History of Music from the Commencement of the Christian Era to the Present Time. By H.G. Bonavia Hunt. New Edition. Revised. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Savéli's Expiation: A Russian Story. Translated from the French of Henri Gréville. By Mary N. Sherwood. Philadelphia: T.B. Peterson & Brothers.

International Exhibitions. Paris—Philadelphia—Vienna. By Charles Gindriez and Prof. James Morgan Hart. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co.

Geographical Surveying: Its Uses, Methods and Results. By Frank de Yeaux Carpenter, C.E. New York: D. Van Nostrand.

Goethe's Faust. Edited by James Morgan Hart. German Classics for American Students. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Catholicity in its Relationship to Protestantism and Romanism. By Rev. F.C. Ewer, S.T.D. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

The Former and Present Number of our Indians. By Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Garrick Mallery. Philadelphia: Collins.

Gaddings with a Primitive People. By W.A. Baillie-Grohman. (Leisure-Hour Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

How to be Plump; or, Talks of Physiological Feeding. By T.C. Duncan, M.D. Chicago: Duncan Brothers.

Nobody's Business. By Jeannette Hadermann. (Satchel Series.) New York: The Authors' Publishing Co.

Railroads: Their Origin and Problems. By Charles Francis Adams, Jr. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Annual Report of the Chief Signal-Officer for the Year 1877. Washington: Government Printing-office.

How to Parse. By Rev. Edwin A. Abbott, D.D. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

Lines in the Sand. By Richard E. Day. Syracuse: John T. Roberts.

Roxy. By Edward Eggleston. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

1

I use the term "soldier" for the sake of definiteness. The soldier approaches the queen in size, and in many of the specimens the head is larger than that of the queen.

2

Hymenoptera of the British Museum: Formicidæa, p. 170.

3

A lofty bed is the Caucasian mountaineer's highest conception of luxury.

4

Frere's Old Deccan Days, p. 227.

5

Grimm's German Popular Tales, First Series, No. XX.

6

Mohammedan fasts generally end with the first sight of the new moon.