THE NEW BOSWELL

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 78, 29 September 1934, Page 24

THE NEW BOSWELL

HILL'S HEAD-LINES GONE

PAPER-SPARING BOSWELL?

(By "Ajax.")

Bpswell's' Life of Johnson: Together with Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hobrides and Johnson's • Diary of a Journey into North Wales. Edited by George Birkbeck Hill, D.C.L. Bevised and enlarged edition. By L. F. Powell. In six volumes, 9J x 6. Vols. I-IV. Oxford: Clarendon Press. London: !. Milford.- The set of six volumes . 105s n. Vols. I-IV separately, 84s . n. [London prices.] [sth Notice.] I

It had been staring me in the face for several weeks, and I could not see it. But now that I have once seen it, it will not leave me alone, and I feel more distressed at having made the discovery than ashamed at not having made it before. There is a defect, and to my mind a serious defect, in a book which after all the scholarship and caTe and industry and taste that had been lavished upon it I had confidently expected to find as nearly immaculate as human work could be.

Oue of the characteristics of the new edition that were enumerated by Mr. Powell in his Johnson Club paper on "The Revision of Dr. Birkbeck Hill's 'Boswell' " is described as follows: —

A new feature is the introduction of a head-line giving the date, Boswell's date, of the underlying narrative; this includes, when it is known, the month and the day of the week.

It was cheering to hear of the minuteness of the care that was being devoted to the task of making Hill's "Boswell" an even better book than he left it. The completion, when possible, of the date at the top of the page was a highly desirable, if not indispensable, addition which, doubtless like many other readers, I had supplied by pencilling in, through large parts of the book, the month and the day of the month. Mr. Powell's promise of the day of the week also savoured to my mind of luxury, but it was a very welcome luxury nevertheless, for which it was impossible to feel anything but gratitude as long as there was no suggestion of a price. It is the discovery of the price we are paving that has shocked me.

What roused my dull mind to a perception of the price was. the forlorn appearance of the head margins of the ten pages containing, Boswell's introduction. "Dr. Hill's Preface,""Dedication," "Advertisement to tho First Edition," etc., etc., are the running titles of the other preliminary matter. /'Wednesday, 18 September, 1709," is the head-line of the page in which a singlo rule separates the end of Boswell's introduction from the beginning of his narrative —a curious and rather mean-looking arrangement but quite worthy of the man who, from his opening sentence, "Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield," etc., to the very last one, allowed no chapter number or heading or othor division to mar the continuity of his text.

In "The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," the diary form necessitated divisions corresponding to the days, and Boswell actually allowed himself the luxury of a single rule to divide the daily record from the summary account of the last ten days. But in the "Life," which is a book about four times as large, there is, I believe, not even so much of a break as that. No wonder that Croker was constrained to commit the barbarity of carving the book into chapters. In tho slenderness of the division between the "Life" and the introduction some enemy of Boswell's nation might perhaps find another illustration of its passion for economy. There is less than a quarter of an inch of empty space on either side of the lino! The epithet of "papersparing" may have fitted Boswell as well as. Pope.. He could not spare paper enough to give his great Life a fair start on a clean page! But this by the way.

Aftei- almost completing my article I was struck by a remarkablo illustration of the value of a head-line, and am. compelled to return to this point in order to interpolate it here. By a happy chance "Paper-sparing Pope" caught my eye at the top of one of Dr. Hill's pages, and in the note the passage in Swift's "Advice to the GrubStreet Verse-Writers" in which the phrase occurs is quoted:— Get all your verses printed fair, Then let them well be dried; And Curll must have a special care To leave the margin wide. Lend these to paper-sparing Pope; And when he sits to write, No letter with •an envelope Could give him more delight. Nichols's note on the passage is also quoted, as follows: — The original copy of Pope's '"Homer" is almost entirely written on the covers of letters, and sometimes between the lines themselves. Here is probably as delightful a piece j of information as today's paper contains,' and my readers owe it entirely j to Hill's head-line.

The blankness of the upper margins of Boswell's introduction in the new edition is doubtless as Boswell himself left them, but if his lead was not followed in the rest of the book, why was it followed here? And why was not Dr. Hill followed who was a far better guide? Dr. Hill's head-linos to the introduction make excellent reading. Here is the whole series:—

The author's qualifications—The Life by Sir J. Hawkins—Warburton's View of Biography—The Author's Mode of Procedure —Not a Panegyrick, but a Life — Conversation best displays Character—Dr. Johnson on Biography—Reply to Possible Objections.

Could anything be more inviting for either the genuine reader or the casual dipper? It is hardly possible for U book-lover to pass any of them without being tempted to look, or look again, at what is underneath; and that is one of the valuable functions of a 'good head-line. In three dozen words Hill has provided an admirable introduction, not only to Boswell's introduction but to the art of biography as practised by its greatest master. Yet Mr. Powell, whoso reverence for Hill's work it is a pleasure to read and feel, has had to "scrap the lot." There is no speculation in those empty margins which when filled with Hill's headlines smiled their irresistible welcome to the great book.

I say that Mr. Powell has had to "scrap the lot" and not that he has dle'eted to do so, for one only has to look ahead in order to see that the sacrifice was dictated by the fulfilment

of his promise to give full particulars of the dates in his head-lines. Here are the headlines on two of his pages where tho chronology is fully known: — 398 Tuesday 24 May 1763 Actat. 54 Aetat. 54 Monday 13 June 1763 399 Dr. Hill's head-lines on the same pages aro as follows: —

398 Johnson's Mode of Life A.D. 17C3. Aetat 54 Johnson the horse-rider 399. It was plainly impossible for Mr. Powell to repeat what for ordinary readers, of whom I am one, is the most valuable part of Hill's headlines if he had to give so much space to tho chronology. And, to bo consistent, he had to omit this literary or narrative part even where, as in Boswell's introduction, there was no chronology at all. Hence those bald margins which gave me such a shock.

Though I have a great admiration for dates it seems to me that they may bo overdone. I see no particular value in proclaiming the day of the week in every head-line. Having always supposed that every reader who knew that Johnson was born in 1709 should bo credited with mathematics enough to calculate Ms ago in any particular year, I never saw much point in giving the age as well as the date, and regret that the new edition wastes valuable space in giving the age twice at every opening. But above all I deplore the clean sweep that has been made of Hill's head-lines. The President of Magdalen's volume of broadcast addresses on "Companionable Books," of course, includes one on Boswell's Johnson. Invaluable and even indispensable for the purposes of the scholar and the student the revised edition of Hill's book is certainly far less companionable than its predecessor.