The Life of Samuel Johnson, vol 1 | Page 4

boast. My hopes were increased by the elegance and the accuracy
of the typography with which my publishers, Messrs. De La Rue & Co.,
adorned this reprint. I was disappointed in my expectations. These
curious Letters met with a neglect which they did not deserve. Twice,
moreover, I was drawn away from the task that I had set before me by
other works. By the death of my uncle, Sir Rowland Hill, I was called
upon to edit his History of the Penny Postage, and to write his Life.

Later on General Gordon's correspondence during the first six years of
his government of the Soudan was entrusted to me to prepare for the
press. In my Colonel Gordon in Central Africa I attempted to do justice
to the rare genius, to the wise and pure enthusiasm, and to the exalted
beneficence of that great man. The labour that I gave to these works
was, as regards my main purpose, by no means wholly thrown away. I
was trained by it in the duties of an editor, and by studying the
character of two such men, who, though wide as the poles asunder in
many things, were as devoted to truth and accuracy as they were patient
in their pursuit, I was strengthened in my hatred of carelessness and
error.
With all these interruptions the summer of 1885 was upon me before I
was ready for the compositors to make a beginning with my work. In
revising my proofs very rarely indeed have I contented myself in
verifying my quotations with comparing them merely with my own
manuscript. In almost all instances I have once more examined the
originals. 'Diligence and accuracy,' writes Gibbon, 'are the only merits
which an historical writer may ascribe to himself; if any merit indeed
can be assumed from the performance of an indispensable duty[4].' By
diligence and accuracy I have striven to win for myself a place in
Johnson's school--'a school distinguished,' as Sir Joshua Reynolds said,
'for a love of truth and accuracy[5].' I have steadily set before myself
Boswell's example where he says:--'Let me only observe, as a specimen
of my trouble, that I have sometimes been obliged to run half over
London, in order to fix a date correctly; which, when I had
accomplished, I well knew would obtain me no praise, though a failure
would have been to my discredit[6].' When the variety and the number
of my notes are considered, when it is known that a great many of the
authors I do not myself possess, but that they could only be examined
in the Bodleian or the British Museum, it will be seen that the labour of
revising the proofs was, indeed, unusually severe. In the course of the
eighteen months during which they have been passing through the press,
fresh reading has given fresh information, and caused many an addition,
and not a few corrections moreover to be made, in passages which I
had previously presumed to think already complete. Had it been merely
the biography of a great man of letters that I was illustrating, such

anxious care would scarcely have been needful. But Boswell's Life of
Johnson, as its author with just pride boasts on its title-page, 'exhibits a
view of literature and literary men in Great Britain, for near half a
century during which Johnson flourished.' Wide, indeed, is the gulf by
which this half-century is separated from us. The reaction against the
thought and style of the age over which Pope ruled in its prime, and
Johnson in its decline,--this reaction, wise as it was in many ways and
extravagant as it was perhaps in more, is very far from having spent its
force. Young men are still far too often found in our Universities who
think that one proof of their originality is a contempt of authors whose
writings they have never read. Books which were in the hands of
almost every reader of the Life when it first appeared are now read only
by the curious. Allusions and quotations which once fell upon a
familiar and a friendly ear now fall dead. Men whose names were
known to every one, now often have not even a line in a Dictionary of
Biography. Over manners too a change has come, and as Johnson justly
observes, 'all works which describe manners require notes in sixty or
seventy years, or less[7].' But it is not only Boswell's narrative that
needs illustration. Johnson in his talk ranges over a vast number of
subjects. In his capacious memory were stored up the fruits of an
almost boundless curiosity, and a wide and varied reading. I have
sought to follow him wherever a remark of his required illustration, and
have read through many a book that I might trace to