journal. On the contrary, few, very few classical works have been favored with editors so accomplished for their task, who have entered into it more truly con amore, or whom their love for it has led patiently to submit to greater nicety and exactness of research. Mr. Croker tells us, with some apparent satisfaction, that his notes amount to twenty-five hundred. He must of course include in such a statement a great number which contain only the briefest possible references. But, all deductions made, what an example does it present of editorial devotedness and interest! They so swallow up the labors of his predecessors, that we were not surprised to hear from one of our literary friends, after perusing it, the confident conclusion, that Mr. Croker must have discarded most of the notes of Malone; and, we remember, these strike the eye, as pretty frequent in the previous editions. But he who makes a comparative examination, will find that he has done so but seldom; though it would be better still, if we could say, he had not at all. With all this profuseness of annotation, we are free to say, that the proportion is very small of such as one could wish either curtailed or dispensed with; having had so much curiosity as to turn over a number of pages by way of experiment as to this very point. Mr. Croker has done however in several instances, what strikes us as a matter of questionable courtesy, at least, if not propriety,-affixed his own name to notes, in substance, Boswell's or Malone's, to which he has superadded little, in some cases (if our discernment be not of the dullest) nothing whatever.

To Mr. Croker, delicate and ticklish as was the office before him, the praise of independence and impartiality, in our judgment, well belongs. His notes, as to Johnson himself, are what the paragraph in relation to him in the Preface prepares us to find them. It seems to us he has held an even-handed balance; not wanting in that due admiration for his hero, which, it is a critical axiom, is essential to a good editor; and, on the other hand, ever prompt to set forth, without scruple or fear, his failings, when the partiality of Boswell was too blind to see, or diligent to cover them.

Mrs. Piozzi, of all persons, is under obligation to Mr. Croker for her rescue, times without number, from the critical talons of Boswell and Malone. That this springs not from a spirit of gallantry, but a sense of wrong, is apparent

in this, that he is not an indiscriminate champion. One point of her history there is, on which he not only resigns her to her adversaries, but makes common cause with them,her unhappy mésalliance. Mr. Croker speaks of it as a sort of insanity; and it is curious enough to notice the consent of Johnson and all the biographers and editors on this topic, although at swords' points on every other. Even Boswell and Hawkins here unite their forces. But, for ourselves, we confess it would be pleasant to be a little more enlightened on this matter than we are now. There is some reason to complain of these biographers, that they say little more of this lady's second husband than to give his name, country, and occupation; while yet, by the strength of their expressions, they leave on every reader's mind a vague impression of the extreme meanness of Signor Piozzi, which, when he sets about to analyze, he finds himself at a loss.

However Sir John Hawkins may stand in point of general popularity, and he does not stand high, we apprehend,— we scruple not to thank Mr. Croker for generously interposing, in what seems almost going on a forlorn hope, the defence of that much abused writer. The knight's "malignity" has long been a sort of watch-word among the Johnsonian biographers. This has been the favorite term of Malone, Alexander Chalmers, and we may add, in the way of slight allusion, Arthur Murphy, they deeming it their duty, as legitimate successors of Mr. Boswell, to take up and renew the cry which he began. It has been rung so long, and with so little contradiction, that to many this may be tantamount to a proof. All readers remember how often Mr. Boswell is leaving the text in order to bring his antagonist before the public bar in the notes. These betray, in numerous instances, the mere humor of contradiction, a fretful endeavour to insult by insinuations of ignorance or stupidity; in others, this captiousness of temper is so at a loss for ways in which to vent itself, as to border on the ludicrous, and provoke a smile. Thus, adverting to the rival Life, he calls it, "Sir John's bulky tome"! A volume of scarcely more than six hundred pages was something of a monster in literature, we infer. They are no rarities certainly in our day. What other effect is such an impotent expression of the splenetic spirit likely to have, than a recoil on the writer? Sir John's biography, it is frankly owned, betrays in many parts of it 21,

VOL. XIV.

N. S. VOL. IX. NO. II.

a mind soured with mankind, and a judgment plainly distorted, in respect to Johnson in particular; but of malignity we can see no trace. Indeed, we appeal to any intelligent reader, if, after a careful comparison of both books, the lights and shadows in which the Doctor's more prominent traits appear on Hawkins's page, are not as true to nature, as the unmixed and glaring brightness with which he is invested by his overweeningly fond companion. And we cannot but observe here, that, aware as Sir John must doubtless have been of the extreme antipathy of his fellow-biographer, this, if secretly returned, at least was not repaid in kind. He allows not the reader to see it. So dignified is he in this respect, that the contrast is striking. While Mr. Boswell was preparing for him a place so conspicuous in his own work, the knight, forgetting the etiquette of politeness, mentions the other but once; and this is, as the Doctor's companion in the Hebridean Tour,-where he speaks of Mr. Boswell as one who highly valued him. Very likely indeed is it, that in this oversight the secret sore had its origin. Hinc illa lachrymæ !

Sir John's principal weakness as a writer is, without dispute, that on which the wits and satirists have bestowed so liberally their ridicule, his continual aberrations from his subject. He flies away at a tangent, whenever an agreeable opportunity for excursion offers, and for some twenty or thirty pages together, as it may chance, shows a most amusing forgetfulness of having any other subject in hand. We do not at this instant recollect so strong a case of rambling biography; yet it seems to us rather too much to say (as it is somewhere said), that Johnson is quite lost in the pages of the writer. The above quality of Sir John's book, with other vulnerable points, was very pleasantly and keenly satirized in three successive papers in "The Gentleman's Magazine" for 1787, (entitled "Hawkins versus Johnson,") which, it has since appeared, came from the pen of Professor Porson.

If an exception were taken to the specific editorial qualities we began with claiming for Mr. Croker, it is natural to expect it might be by Mr. Boswell himself, or those who are partial to him. Mr. Croker's prejudice towards him whom he was mainly to illustrate, steals forth in numberless instances. We confess ourselves unable to divine its cause. Those par

ticulars concerning distant individuals which can be most easily

traced, furnish no clue,-political sympathies, for example. Herein we suppose them to be substantially alike; true sons of the church, and, in affairs of the state, tories imo pectore. Johnson himself, indeed, could he have dictated and arranged this point while living, it may be thought, could not have found men more after his own heart, to rear the monument to his memory. There is just that fitness and proportion between the hero and his biographers and editors, which, whether their principles agree with our own or not, we like to see all being thorough-paced tories, Johnson, Boswell, Malone, Alexander Chalmers (who conducted the edition of 1822, intervening between Malone's and Croker's), and last, though not least, John Wilson Croker; the last certainly as yet, and if we make bold to call him so prospectively, it is because to his successors, if he shall have them, nothing, so to speak, is left to perform.

ART. III. Woman, in her Social and Domestic Character. By Mrs. JOHN SANDFORD. From the London Edition. Boston. Leonard C. Bowles. 1833. 12mo. pp. 180.

WITHOUT believing that woman needs to be reminded of her duty more frequently and directly than man, but being ready to welcome any good book of advice addressed to either sex, we recommend this volume to those for whose benefit it was intended, and whose happiness and usefulness we think it well adapted to promote. It does not discuss the question, nor is it one which we shall discuss, whether sons or daughters, brothers or sisters, husbands or wives, fathers or mothers, best discharge their respective duties, but it aims to teach woman how to fulfill, in the best manner, her several callings and stations, whether man fulfills his own well or ill; assuming the principle as a truth, which doubtless is a truth, that the good conduct of the one sex will have a favorable and not injurious effect on the behaviour of the other. A wise person will never refuse wholesome counsel, on the plea that it is as much or more needed by another. On the contrary, it will generally be found, that they who least require, are the most willing to receive it, and act upon it. This very circumstance, in fact, has had

no small influence in raising them to their moral superiority. They have always been accustomed to profit by instruction, rather than lose their time in curiously, or perhaps captiously, inquiring why it is particularly offered to them. Convinced that they are not perfect, they desire to go on toward perfection, and are thankful for every help by the way.

On this ground it is, that Mrs. Sandford, though she refers to the greater neglect of religion by men, urges a still increased attention to it on women, in two excellent chapters, the one entitled, "Importance of Religion to Woman," and the other, "Female Influence on Religion." It is as hard to deny the truth, as it is to be blind to the beauty, of the following paragraphs.

"Christian ethics are the only true morality; for they are the only morality which is both universal and minute. They are not a code, but a charter; not an institute, but a principle. They give to woman precisely that dignity which is consistent with her dependence: a dignity not of station, but of feeling, which makes her morally great, but practically subordinate.

"All that the world can offer her is, in fact, of little value. Neither the blaze of rank, the triumph of coquetry, nor the éclat of beauty or fashion, can really elevate her. They may all impart a mock lustre, but confer no true dignity.

"Religion is her only elevating principle. It identifies itself with the movement of her heart, and with the action of her life, spiritualizing the one, and ennobling the other. Duties, however subordinate, are to the religious woman never degrading; their principle is their apology. She does not live amidst the clouds, or abandon herself to mystic excitement she is raised above the sordidness, but not above the concerns of earth; above its disquietudes, but not above its cares.

'Religion is just what woman needs. Without it she is ever restless or unhappy; ever wishing to be relieved from duty, or from time. She is either ambitious of display, or greedy of pleasure, or sinks into a listless apathy, useless to others, and unworthy of herself. But when the light from heaven shines upon her path, it invests every object with a reflected radiance. Duties, occupations, nay, even trials, are seen through a bright medium; and the sunshine, which gilds her course on earth, is but the dawning of a far clearer day." pp. 50-52.

Mrs. Sandford always speaks of home as if her own heart was there, and as of the place where every woman's heart