SITTING one evening with my favorite book and enjoying the company of a crackling wood fire, I was interrupted by a cheerful idiot who, entering unheard, announced himself with the remark, "This is what I call a library." Indifferent to a forced welcome, he looked about him and continued, "I see you are fond of Boswell. I always preferred Macaulay's 'Life of Johnson' to Boswell's - it's so much shorter. I read it in college."

Argument would have been wasted on him. If he had been alone in his opinion, I would have killed him and thus exterminated the species; but he is only one of a large class, who having once read Macaulay's essay, and that years ago, feel that they have received a peculiar insight into the character of Samuel Johnson and have a patent to sneer at his biographer.

Having a case of books by and about the dear old Doctor, I have acquired a reputation that plagues me. People ask to see my collection, not that they know anything about it, or care, but simply to please me, as they think. Climbing to unusual intellectual heights, when safe at the top, where there is said to be always room, they look about and with a knowing leer murmur, "Oh! rare Ben!" I have become quite expert at lowering them from their dangerous position

without showing them the depths of their ignorance. This is a feat which demands such skill as can be acquired only by long practice.

Macaulay's essay is anathema to me. If it were a food-product, the authorities would long since have suppressed it on account of its artificial coloring matter; but prep.-school teachers and college professors go on "requiring" its reading from sheer force of habit; and as long as they continue to do so, the true Samuel Johnson and the real James Boswell will both remain unknown.

Out of a thousand who have read this famous essay and remember its wonderfully balanced sentences, which stick in the memory like burrs in the hair, perhaps not more than one will be able to recall the circumstances under which it was written. Purporting to be a review of a new edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," edited by John Wilson Croker, it is really a personal attack on a bitter political enemy. Written at a time when political feeling ran high, it begins with a lie. Using the editorial "We," Macaulay opens by saying, "We are sorry to be obliged to say that the merits of Mr. Croker's performance are on a par with those of a certain leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined while travelling from London to Oxford, and which he, with characteristic energy, pronounced to be as bad as could be."

Let us see how sorry Macaulay really was. In a letter written to his sister just before Croker's book appeared he writes: "I am to review Croker's edition

without showing them the depths of their ignorance. This is a feat which demands such skill as can be acquired only by long practice.

Macaulay's essay is anathema to me. If it were a food-product, the authorities would long since have suppressed it on account of its artificial coloring matter; but prep.-school teachers and college professors go on "requiring" its reading from sheer force of habit; and as long as they continue to do so, the true Samuel Johnson and the real James Boswell will both remain unknown.

Out of a thousand who have read this famous essay and remember its wonderfully balanced sentences, which stick in the memory like burrs in the hair, perhaps not more than one will be able to recall the circumstances under which it was written. Purporting to be a review of a new edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," edited by John Wilson Croker, it is really a personal attack on a bitter political enemy. Written at a time when political feeling ran high, it begins with a lie. Using the editorial "We," Macaulay opens by saying, “We are sorry to be obliged to say that the merits of Mr. Croker's performance are on a par with those of a certain leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined while travelling from London to Oxford, and which he, with characteristic energy, pronounced to be as bad as could be."

Let us see how sorry Macaulay really was. In a letter written to his sister just before Croker's book appeared he writes: "I am to review Croker's edition