Modern opinion has reinstated Theobald, and is inclined to adopt Foote's, rather than Johnson's, opinion of Warburton. When Foote visited Eton, the boy's came round him in the college quadrangle. 'Tell us, Mr. Foote,' said the leader, 'the best thing you ever said.' 'Why,' said Foote, 'I once saw a little blackguard imp of a chimney-sweeper, mounted on a noble steed, prancing and curvetting in all the pride and magnificence of nature,-There, said I, goes Warburton upon Shakespeare.'

Johnson himself would not have been ready to allow any weight to the critical opinions of stageplayers. One of his heterodox opinions, says Boswell, was a contempt for tragic acting. In the Idler he describes the Indian war-cry, and continues: 'I am of opinion that by a proper mixture of asses, bulls, turkeys, geese, and tragedians a noise might be procured equally horrid with the war-cry.' He was more than once reproached by Boswell for omitting all mention of Garrick in the Preface to Shakespeare, but he was not to be moved.. 'Has Garrick not brought Shakespeare into notice?' asked Boswell. 'Sir,' said Johnson, to allow that would be to lampoon the age. Many of Shakespeare's plays are the worse for being acted: Macbeth, for instance.' This was the belief also of Charles Lamb, who expounded it in his essay On the Tragedies of Shakespeare. There is somethng in the nature of acting,' he concludes, which levels all distinctions. . . . Did not Garrick shine, and was he not ambitious of shining in every drawling tragedy

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that his wretched day produced,—the productions of the Hills and the Murphys and the Browns,-and shall he have the honour to dwell in our minds for ever as an inseparable concomitant with Shakespeare? A kindred mind!' It is a strange kind of heresy that is the fixed belief of two such critics as Johnson and Lamb.

But let it be a heresy; one of the chief fascinations of Johnson's notes on Shakespeare is that they introduce us to not a few of his private heretical opinions, and record some of his most casual reminiscences. We are enabled to trace his reading in the Life of Sir Thomas More, and in Sir Walter Raleigh's political remains, and in the fashionable guide to conversation translated from the French of Scudery. We learn some things which Boswell does not tell us; some even (if a bold thought may be indulged) which Boswell did not know. We are introduced in the Life to Johnson's cat. Hodge, for whom Johnson used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. But we are not told, what is proved by a note on Cymbeline, that Johnson passionately protested against physiological experiments on live animals. Again, is it not certain that Boswell, if he had known it, would have told us that his hero wore his boots indifferently, either on either foot, and further, which is yet a stranger thing, believed that all other boot-wearers practise the same impartiality? Boswell can hardly have known this; yet Johnson's note on the tailor in King

John, who, in his haste, falsely thrusts his slippers upon contrary feet, leaves no room for doubt. Shakespeare,' says Johnson, seems to have confounded a man's shoes with his gloves. He that is frighted or hurried may put his hand into the wrong glove, but either shoe will equally admit either foot. The authour seems to be disturbed by the disorder which he describes.' This is a topic which demands, and would well repay, the expert labours of academic research. Very little is known about Johnson's boots.

A great part of an editor's work is in its nature perishable. Some of his notes are in time superseded; some are shown to be wrong; some are accepted and embodied in the common stock of knowledge. Of all Johnson's annotations on Shakespeare those which record his own tastes and habits have preserved most of freshness and interest. It is a privilege to be able to hear him talking without the intervention of Boswell; we can in some ways come closer to him when that eager presence is removed. It is the greatness of Boswell's achievement that he has made Johnson familiar to us; but the very zeal and reverence of the biographer inevitably infect the reader, who is admitted to the intimacies of a man of companionable genius as if to a shrine. Boswell made of biography a passionate science; and viewed his hero in a detached light. Nothing hurt him so much as the implication that any single detail or remark of his recording was inaccurately or carelessly set down. His self-abnegation was complete: where he permits himself to appear

it is only that he may exhibit his subject to greater advantage. He invented the experimental method, and applied it to the determination of human character. At great expenditure of time and forethought he brought Johnson into strange company, the better to display his character and behaviour. He plied him with absurd questions, in the hope of receiving valuable answers. All this was not the conduct of a friend, but of a remorseless investigator. And when to this is added Boswell's spirit of humble adoration, it is easy to understand how the whole process has made Johnson clear indeed in every outline, but a little too remote. His eccentricities take up too much of the picture, so that to the vulgar intelligence he has always seemed something of a monster. Even those who love Johnson fall too easily into Boswell's attitude, and observe, and listen, and wonder. It is good to remember that the dictator, when he was in a happy vein, was, above most men, sensible, courteous and friendly. The best of his notes on Shakespeare, like the best of his spoken remarks, invite discussion and quicken thought. What a conversation might have been started at the club by his brief observation on Gaunt's speech in Richard II:

Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow, And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow. 'It is matter of very melancholy consideration,' says Johnson, that all human advantages confer more power of doing evil than good.' No doubt the

reflection is highly characteristic of its author, but we are too much accustomed to let our interest in the character overshadow our interest in the truth. Johnson's talk was free from self-consciousness; but Boswell, when he was in the room, was conscious of one person only, so that a kind of self-consciousness by proxy is the impression conveyed. There is no

greater enemy to the freedom and delight of social intercourse than the man who is always going back on what has just been said, to praise its cleverness, to guess its motive, or to show how it illustrates the character of the speaker. Boswell was not, of course, guilty of this particular kind of ill-breeding; but the very necessities of his record produce something of a like effect. The reader who desires to have Johnson to himself for an hour, with no interpreter, cannot do better than turn to the notes on Shakespeare. They are written informally and fluently; they are packed full of observation and wisdom; and their only fault is that they are all too few.

WALTER RALEIGH.

OXFORD

May, 1908.