'If this work,' he
writes, 'should at any future period be reprinted, I hope that care will
be taken of my orthography[39].' The punctuation too has been preserved.
I should be wanting in justice were I not to acknowledge that I owe much
to the labours of Mr. Croker. No one can know better than I do his great
failings as an editor. His remarks and criticisms far too often deserve
the contempt that Macaulay so liberally poured on them. Without being
deeply versed in books, he was shallow in himself. Johnson's strong
character was never known to him. Its breadth and length, and depth and
height were far beyond his measure. With his writings even he shows few
signs of being familiar. Boswell's genius, a genius which even to Lord
Macaulay was foolishness, was altogether hidden from his dull eye. No
one surely but a 'blockhead,' a 'barren rascal[40],' could with scissors
and paste-pot have mangled the biography which of all others is the
delight and the boast of the English-speaking world. He is careless in
small matters, and his blunders are numerous. These I have only noticed
in the more important cases, remembering what Johnson somewhere points
out, that the triumphs of one critic over another only fatigue and
disgust the reader. Yet he has added considerably to our knowledge of
Johnson. He knew men who had intimately known both the hero and his
biographer, and he gathered much that but for his care would have been
lost for ever.
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