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Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21133, 7 April 1934, Page 15

The last two volumes (17 and 18) of the great "Boswell Papers" are now in the hands of the fortunate subscribers, thus completing (except for the Index volume now in compilation) this extraordinary work", says Mr Christopher Morley in a recent note. It is a lasting monument of human comedy and one looks forward with eagerness to its eventual publication in popularform also. It is a monument not only to Eoswell himself, but to the owner of the documents (Colonel Ralph Isham), the printer (William Edwin Rudge), and the editors and experts who collaborated. After the lamented death of Geoffrey Scott Professor Frederick A. Pottle took 'charge. Among the Acknowledgments rendered by Professor Pottle in the final volume is a remarkable tribute to one of the youngest of the eighteenth century scholars: To Helen Chan I acknowledge indebtedness that amounts to co-editor-ship Every word in these 18 volumes has 'passed under her scrutiny. She reads BosweU's hand better than anyone else in the world, -and she can read it through any number of layers of superimposed ink. I think that it will be of interest to the subscribers to know that after six years of work on the Boswell Papers, she is still only 24 years old.

A nole by "Janus" in the "Spectator": In his admirably phrased wireless tribute to King Albert on Sunday, Sir John Simon—l wonder how many of his hearers noticed it —made one minor slip. Quoting most appropriately, Shirley's well-known lines, he made a singular word plural, thus: The glories of our blo6d and state Are shadows, not substantial things, There is no armour against fate; Death lay his icy hands on kings. But what Shirley wrote was "his icy hand." And what a difference. In the singular the fateful remorseless touch that ends all things; in the plural the idea of violence and seizure and struggle. Tenniel's historic cartoon. "General Fevrier Turned Traitor" (of Czar Nicholas I, who died in the second February of the Crimean War), might have had Shirley's actual line as its text, but never the inaccurately amended line.

There are many suggestions for] the best way in which to commemorate the centenary of Charles Lamb's death, which occurred on December 27, 1834. Mr E. V. Lucas in his book, "At the Shrine of St. Charles," writes: "I, personally, should like to see a seated statue of him, in the manner of Boehm's Carry le, just inside the railings facing 2 Crown Office Row: an ideal situation. An alternative site is the little garden of Christ Church (where as a Bluecoat boy Lamb worshipped every day for seven years) just off Newgate Street."

rield-Marshal Lord Byng on being congratulated on accepting the post of Chief of Police., in London, wrote to Mr E. V. Lucas a letter now printed in "Postbag Diversions": "Thank you. I pleaded Old Age, Varicose Veins and Senility, Corns, Craziness and Inferior Complex, Liver, Lumbago and Laziness, Giddiness, Girth Galls and Gaggadom, Melancholia, Mysticism and Mucus Membrane. But to no purpose. Hinc illae lacrymae. I finally capitulated, and must now endeavour to get your finger-prints.''