Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/446

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Boswell
438
Boswell


founded on the Douglas cause), 1767. 13. ‘Decision upon the Question of Literary Property in the Cause of Hunter v. Donaldson,’ 1774. 14. ‘A Letter to the People of Scotland on the Present State of the Nation,’ 1783. 15. ‘The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., by James Boswell, Esq., containing some Poetioal Pieces by Dr. Johnson relative to the tour, and never before published: a series of his Conversations, Literary Anecdotes, and Opinions of Men and Books, with an authentick account of the Distresses and Escape of the Grandson of King James II in the year 1746’ (three editions in 1786). 16. ‘A Letter to the People of Scotland on the alarming Attempt to infringe the Articles of Union and introduce a most pernicious innovation by diminishing the number of the Lords of Session,' 1786. 17. ‘The Celebrated Letter from Samuel Johnson, LL.D., to Philip Damer Stanh e, Earl of Chesterfield, now first published, with notes by James Bose well, Esq.;' and ‘A Conversation between His Most Sacred Majesty George III and Samuel Johnson, LL.D., illustrated with observations by James Boswell, Esq.,’ both in 1790. 18. ‘The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., comprehending an Account of his Studies and numerous Works, in chronological order; a series of his Epistolary Correspondence and Conversations with many Eminent Persons; and various original pieces of his composition never before published. The whole exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain for more than half ac entury during which he flourished, in two volumes, by James Boswell,' 1791. The principal corrections and additions to the second edition were published separately in 1793.

He also mentions as published in 1791 (Roger's, Boswell, 173; and Letters to Temple, p. 337) a poem upon the ‘Slave Trade,’ which has disappeared.

Boswell died while preparing a third edition of the life of Johnson; the revision of this edition was completed by Malone, who superintended also the next three editions, the last of which (the sixth of the work) appeared in 1811. He introduced various notes, distinguishing them from Boswell's own work, and revised the text. In 1831 Croker published the eleventh edition, in which many useful, together with many impertinent notes, were added, and a great deal of matter from Piozzi, Ilawkins, and others interpolated in the text. The whole arrangement wss severely criticised by Carliyle and Macaulay in well-known essays. he arrangement was altered in subsequent editions ; in an edition published in 1835, revised and enlarged under Mr. Crolaer’s direction by John Wright, the passages interpolated by Croker were removed to the ninth and tent volumes (fcap. 8vo), with the exce tion of the ‘Tour to the Hebrides,’ which still remained in the body of the work. This edition and the reprints were, till lately, the most convenient form of the life. In 1874 Mr. Percy Fitzgerald republished the original text of the first edition (without the division into chapters afterwards introduced), with an indication of the various changes made by Boswell in the second edition. The ‘Tour to the Hebrides' forms the last part of the third (and concluding) volume. liii 1884 an edition edited by the Rev. Alexander Napier was published by Bell in live volumes, the fourt containing the ‘Tour to the Hebrides;’ the fifth, the ‘Collectanea Johnsoniana,' with the journal of Dr. Campbell, not previously published in England. An edition in four volumes, edited by Mr. Birkbeck Hill, is now (1885) advertised.

[A short memoir of Boswell by Malone is given in Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, ii. 400, reprinted in the later editions of Johnson. The fullest information about his life is given in his works as above, and in the following: Letters of James Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple, now first published from the original manuscripts, with an introduction and notes, Bentley, 1857. This consists of a series of letters, accidentally discovered in a parcel of waste paper at Boulogne. They had been in the possession of Temple's son-in-law, who had settled in France (Notes and Queries, ind ser. iii. 381), and are undoubtedly genuine; Boswelliana, the Commonplace Book of James Boswell, with a memoir and annotations by the Rev. Charles Rogers, LL.D., and introductory remarks by Lord Houghton, published for the Grampian Club. The Commonplace Book was sold with Boswell’s library at London, and came into the possession of Lord Houghton. In the accompanying biography Dr. Rogers has made use of some unpublished materials. Part of the Boswelliana had been published in the second volume of the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society.]

L. S.

BOSWELL, JAMES, the younger (1778–1822), barrister-at-law, second surviving son of the biographer of Johnson [see Boswell, James], was born in 1778. He received his early education at an academy in Soho Square and at Westminster School, and is spoken of by the elder Roswell as ‘an extraordinary boy, very much of his father,' who destined him for the bar. Entered at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1797, he took his B.A. degree in 1801, proceeding M.A. in 1806, and was elected a fellow on the Vinerian foundation. While a student at Brasenose he contributed notes