The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [686]
Such was Samuel Johnson, a man whose talents, acquirements, and virtues, were so extraordinary, that the more his character is considered, the more he will be regarded by the present age, and by posterity, with admiration and reverence.
Appendix 1
Selected Variants in the First
Three Editions
The Life of Samuel Johnson was published first in two volumes in 1791. A second edition in three volumes (corrected, and enriched ‘with many valuable additions’) followed in 1793, accompanied by a slim volume entitled The Principal Corrections and Additions to the first edition of Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson, which purported to supply purchasers of the first edition with all the supplementary material made available in the second edition (now occasionally found bound at the end of the second volume of the first edition, as in the Bodleian copy, shelfmark 4° BS 554, 555). Boswell died in 1795, in the midst of preparing a third edition which would incorporate still more material, and in which the order of the whole work would be regularized. In the event, a third edition, in four volumes, was published in 1799 by Boswell’s friend and guide in the project of the Life of Johnson, Edmond Malone.
The history of the Life of Johnson as a printed book is therefore complicated, and there are a great many textual variants between the first three editions. The present edition is informed by a complete collation of the first three editions and the Principal Corrections and Additions, but it would be inappropriate in an edition of this nature to reprint that collation in its entirety. The variants given below are intended to give the reader the substance of some of the most extensive and important divergences between the various editions of the Life of Johnson, and also to allow the reader to sample the kinds of change that occurred during the first decade of the book’s existence as a published work. The several editions are denoted by the following abbreviations:
1791 the first edition of 1791, in two volumes
1793 the second edition of 1793, in three volumes
PCA The Principal Corrections and Additions to the first edition of Mr. Boswell’s Life of Dr. Johnson (1793)
1799 the third edition of 1799, in four volumes
The entries take the following form: text as published in this edition; square bracket; variant reading in other editions. ‘om.’ means ‘omitted in’.
p. 54, 25 November 1734
… but with what… Edmund Hector.]… and I am assured by Miss Seward, that he conceived a tender passion for Miss Lucy Porter, daughter of the lady whom he afterwards married. Miss Porter was sent very young on a visit to Lichfield, where Johnson had frequent opportunities of seeing and admiring her; and he addressed to her the following verses, on her presenting him with a nose-gay of myrtle: 1791
p. 97, Spring 1744
… any other language.]… any other language. This paper is well known to have been written by the celebrated Henry Fielding. But, I suppose, Johnson was not informed of his being indebted to him for this civility; for if he had been apprised of that circumstance, as he was very sensible of praise, he probably would not have spoken with so little respect of Fielding, as we shall find he afterwards did. 1791
p. 112, February 1749
… and a gold-laced hat… experience of it.] om. 1791
p. 125, 1750
… voluble and easy.] 1799 inserts the following note from Charles Burney: [When Johnson shewed me a proof-sheet of the character of Addison, in which he so highly extols his style, I could not help observing, that it had not been his own model, as no two styles could differ more from each other. – ‘Sir, Addison had his style, and I have mine.’ – When I ventured to ask him, whether the difference did not consist in this, that Addison’s style was full of idioms, colloquial phrases, and proverbs; and his own more strictly grammatical, and free from such