. We heartily wish that Sir Robert, whose
classical attainments are well known, had been more frequently
consulted. Unhappily he was not always at his friend's elbow; and we
have therefore a rich abundance of the strangest errors. Boswell has
preserved a poor epigram by Johnson, inscribed "Ad Lauram parituram."
Mr. Croker censures the poet for applying the word puella to a lady in
Laura's situation, and for talking of the beauty of Lucina. "Lucina," he
says, "was never famed for her beauty."[1] If Sir Robert Peel had seen
this note, he probably would have again refuted Mr. Croker's criticisms
by an Appeal to Horace. In the secular ode, Lucina is used as one of the
names of Diana, and the beauty of Diana is extolled by all the most
orthodox doctors of the ancient mythology, from Homer in his Odyssey, to
Claudian in his Rape of Proserpine. In another ode, Horace describes
Diana as the goddess who assists the "laborantes utero puellas." But we
are ashamed to detain our readers with this fourth-form learning.

* * * * *

A very large proportion of the two thousand five hundred notes which the
editor boasts of having added to those of Boswell and Malone consists of
the flattest and poorest reflections, reflections such as the least
intelligent reader is quite competent to make for himself, and such as
no intelligent reader would think it worth while to utter aloud. They
remind us of nothing so much as of those profound and interesting
annotations which are penciled by sempstresses and apothecaries' boys on
the dog-eared margins of novels borrowed from circulating libraries;
"How beautiful!" "Cursed Prosy!" "I don't like Sir Reginald Malcolm at
all." "I think Pelham is a sad dandy." Mr. Croker is perpetually
stopping us in our progress through the most delightful narrative in the
language, to observe that really Dr. Johnson was very rude, that he
talked more for victory than for truth, that his taste for port wine
with capillaire in it was very odd, that Boswell was impertinent, that
it was foolish in Mrs. Thrale to marry the music-master; and so forth.

We cannot speak more favourably of the manner in which the notes are
written than of the matter of which they consist. We find in every page
words used in wrong senses, and constructions which violate the plainest
rules of grammar. We have the vulgarism of "mutual friend," for "common
friend." We have "fallacy" used as synonymous with "falsehoo