Peel, who quoted a passage exactly in point from Horace.  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 “falsehood.”  We have many such inextricable labyrinths of pronouns as that which follows:  “Lord Erskine was fond of this anecdote; he told it to the editor the first time that he had the honour of being in his company.”  Lastly, we have a plentiful supply of sentences resembling those which we subjoin.  “Markland, who, with Jortin and Thirlby, Johnson calls three contemporaries of great eminence."[2] “Warburton himself did not feel, as Mr. Boswell was disposed to think he