though it contains some good passages, is not in his best manner.
The most valuable notes are those in which he had an opportunity
of showing how attentively he had during many years observed
human life and human nature. The best specimen is the note on
the character of Polonius. Nothing so good is to be found even
in Wilhelm Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. But here
praise must end. It would be difficult to name a more slovenly,
a more worthless edition of any great classic. The reader may
turn over play after play without finding one happy conjectural
emendation, or one ingenious and satisfactory explanation of a
passage which had baffled preceding commentators. Johnson had,
in his prospectus, told the world that he was peculiarly fitted
for the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a
lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of
the English language than any of his predecessors. That his
knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But,
unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of our
literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor
of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous to assert a
negative. Yet little will be risked by the assertion, that in
the two folio volumes of the English Dictionary there is not a
single passage quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age,
except Shakspeare and Ben. Even from Ben the quotations are few.
Johnson might easily, in a few months, have made himself well
acquainted with every old play that was extant. But it never
seems to have occurred to him that this was a necessary
preparation for the work which he had undertaken. He would
doubtless have admitted that it would be the height of absurdity
in a man who was not familiar with the works of Aeschylus and
Euripides to publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to