Current Literature BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON
Edited by George Birkbeck Hill
This is the standard edition of Boswell, for many years out of print, revised and enlarged by Mr. L. F. Powell, and printed by the Oxford University Press in a manner worthy of the occasion : it is a very fine and dignified example of modern book-making indeed, and those who enjoy Boswell and appreciate him in a fine setting will not grudge the £4 4s. for the four volumes if that is within their means. It is now 57 years since-Birkbeck-Hill published his edition, and the interval has seen the emergence of a considerable amount of new material and information about its subject, to a large extent consequent upon the stimulus provided by Birkbeck Hill himself. The need for a new edition became apparent some time ago, and twelve years ago the task of compiling it was entrusted to Mr. L. F. Powell, then " fresh from the severe discipline of the Oxford Dictionary.- The result makes one wish that a greater number of con- temporary scholars had had the advantages of a lexi- cographical training, for this is indeed the very model of what such an edition should be : it supersedes all previous editions, and is unlikely to be improved upon for many years, if indeed it ever will be, so rare today. are editors equipped with either the learning or the industry - of Mr. Powell. In the new edition the pagination corresponds exactly with that of the old, so that references to the old edition made in other works are not disturbed, an arrange- ment which must have required as much patience as ingenuity to. sustain ; the text has been revised by a complete collation of the first three editions, so that the many erroneous readings admitted by Birkbeck Hill, who used only the third edition as the basis of his text, have been corrected ; Dr. Hill's commentary has been amended and supplemented in the light of research undertaken subsequent to his edition. The corrections in the commentary naturally form the most important part of this edition, and Mr. Powell has put every student of Boswell and of Johnson in his debt by the thoroughness and perspicacity with which he has made them. Not least in interest are the new identifications. about a hundred in all, of persons described anonymously by Boswell ; many of them show the application of as much ingenuity as learning, and one may note with particular delight the detection of Boswell's veiled reference to himself (Hi: 27 and 474) as the " man who had been guilty of vicious actions." Books referred to in the text casually or with an inadequate description have been identified and are here described in full, as are many of the places and houses which Johnson visited. Dates are supplied, errors of fact cor- rected, quotations traced and allusions explained. In brief. everything that is a question of fact is authoritatively settled by Mr. Powell ; every student of Boswell has his own views in a dozen places or so where there is room for a difference of opinion, but this would not be the place to debate such points with Mr. Powell. His general editing is, as has been suggested, beyond praise. There are still two more volumes to come—the Tour to the Hebrides, and a general Index. Perhaps the latter will explain the two curious erratum slips to Vol. I—the first instructing one to read, on page 183, " Chenevix . for " Cheveniz, the second reversing the process. Neither word appears on the page mentioned.
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