Johnson without Boswell

262 REVIEWS primarily for Coleridgeans rather than for scholars of the seventeenth century. As a contribution to Coleridge studies, the re-edited marginalia, thoroughly indexed and fully annotated, would have been of more permanent value. A clearer indication of chronological relation would also have been of great value, particularly since the extracts are arranged according to the direct association of material or opinion without regard to their relative dates. One would like to be able to answer such questions as: When did Coleridge first encounter Jereroy Taylor's or Burton's work? What was he looking for when he found certain works? Why did he persist in his reading of some authors Jar a great many years? Again, there are some curious inaccuracies: the Jeremy Taylor section opens with an extract from a letter that actually refers to Thomas Taylor. One wonders why materials published four years ago in Miss Coburn's book Inquiring Spirit are here described as "Printed for the first time." And it is a pity that the editor did not record the fact that the annotated books and manuscripts formerly in the possession of Mr. A. H. B. Coleridge are now preserved in the Victoria College Library. Nevertheless, this is-from a reader's point of view-a fine jungly book. To open it at random is to engage an active mind moving vividly-sometimes on soaring wings, sometimes with low heavy movement of the bustard, sometimes on "animalcular feet"-a mind sensitive, probing, discriminating, self-communing and most infectiously delighting in what it finds---delighting too in the discoveries of others. For the time being, until some resolute and volatile imagination can :find a way of fitting luminously together the corpus of Coleridge's fragmentary obiter dicta and fulguratiunculae. this collection will he an indispensable work of reference. To have a good text of scattered marginalia _and some manuscripts is good; to have these collated with early published versions is good too; to have extracts from the unindexed published works arranged in some sequential order is convenient. The book will have delineated more clearly -than has been shown before, Coleridge's preoccupation with a century of writing more various and immediate than we commonly suppose. It may also be the first step towards recognizing with systematic clarity something that has been noticed before but not clearly brought into the light: for Professor Bredvold observes in his Introduction "However deeply the philosophy of his German contemporaries may have influenced him, at the most it provided him with a modern approach to some ancient ways of thinking." GEORGE WHALLEY Johnson without Boswell The effect of the publication of Boswell's journals was inevitably to tum attention towards Samuel Johnson once it was realized that later instalments of the voluminous journals were unlikely to add to the impression of Boswell 's character made by the first, the London Journal, published in 1950. After its appearance one heard nothing but cries of admiration and surprise, REVIEWS 263 and there cannot have been a reviewer who did not say in one form. or another that Johnson's seeming greatness was derived from the genius of his biographer rather thao from his own achievement. Tbe principal difficulty in maintaining such an attitude for long was, of course, the contrast between the journals themselves and the biography. As a guide to eighteenth-century low life, as a sketch-book of famous contemporaries, as a field for the psychologist, and simply. and primarily. as an amusement the journals are unrivalled, but they obviously lack the quality which most distinguishes the biography- the quality of greatness. Was this quality then to be attributed not to the biographer but to his subject? Apparently so; aod attention was at once diverted from Boswell to Johnson in the search for confirmation. The quickest way to confirmation was to study Johnson without Boswell, in his Own writings and in that part of his life, the greater part, unrecorded in detail by Boswell. It had long been recognized that a distinct impression of Johnson during the fifty-four years of his life before his first meeting with Boswell could be gathered from many sources, but as these sources were...