Horwall ated by Marewry stanford University Press. Two volumes, C415.
These 70 essays, navy Srst reprint-Jed from the files of the London Magazine, where they appeared [from time to time between 1777 and 1783, have been reconed from an. undeserved oblivion by an assistant} professor in the department of English in Stanford University. Dr. Bailey hes done a thorough piece Jof work, supplying an elaborate introduction and an exhaustive com. mentary, while her university has won its share in the credit of the undertaking by giving ta these vol lumes a handsome former and the dignity of fine paper, excellent type and appropriate illustrations.
If it is somewhat curious that the work of rescue has not been accom. lished before now, it is not at all strange that now ct length it has been done, for the reprint comes at, 'a time when the devoted attention of Professor Tinker, Mr. Newton and Jother scholars has awakened a new and lively interest in James Boswell and Doctor Johnson, Miss Bailey's introduction covers: the ground thoroughly; she writes of the history of the publication of these serial essays, of Boswell an essayist, of the audience for which he wrote and of that beekground of fashionable melancholy which in-pired the essayist to select the somewhat quaint title for the series, the Great Tradition Boswell is, as an essayist, in the great eighteenth century tradition of Addison, Steele and Johnson himself, Nor are his papers unworthy of that tradition, Undeniably they are more ively and more entertaining tha most of the productions of his celebrated predecessors; and, what is more remarkable, they contain more substance of real worth, Even to-day. mest of them are still genuinely readable; and they dovnent " pouser Whether he writes on love of marriage, war, cookery or authorship, Boswell has something to say that!
worth saying. reading him is that he is thinking:
The impression one gets while
aloud; that often he commence paper with hardly nother thought} san to accomplish his mouthy tint"; but that with pen in hand his thoughts arrange themselves jand that when the task? is finished he himself disowvers that he has had more to say worth saying than he himself had imagined when he began to write. Often his notions overflow tthe allotted space. and the same sub-
Ject inas to be carried over from one installment to the next. His own chief intention in writing was, as ho announces in his first essay, to communicate good humour and to alley ate unhappiness, Doubticss writing elevated his own thought as well as that of his readers. There is common sense in plenty in these discourses, as would be expected froma the companion of Doctor Johnsor; but "there is also an epigrammatic ality that is not so expected.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.