exceedingly useful on very many occasions, and been grateful for the labour bestowed, which has often saved me a great deal of trouble. The present occasion is an instance. Mr. Fitzgerald has given hardly any references to the passages which he criticises; and I have had to find them by the help of Dr. Birkbeck Hill himself. In some cases, I have been unable to verify Mr. Fitzgerald's references even with that help, and I am forced to suspend my judgment of his criticisms. Thus (p. 13) he accuses Dr. Birkbeck Hill of giving 'sixteen passages' to illustrate the meaning of 'Hockley in the Hole.' In the only passage which I can find about 'Hockley in the Hole' (vol. Hi. 134), Dr. Birkbeck Hill illustrates the meaning by quotations from the Spectator, Fielding's Jonathan Wild, and the Beggars' Opera. That is, there are only three passages cited, and, as it seems to me, not one too many. But the absence of a reference leaves a bare possibility that Dr. Birkbeck Hill has quoted other passages elsewhere. Considering, however, the completeness of the index, I believe that Mr. Fitzgerald has somehow made an odd mistake in counting.
This is the more probable because I find other singular mistakes, which show that Mr. Fitzgerald, in accusing his author of inaccuracy—doubtless the worst of faults in an editor—has himself been inaccurate with the passages before his eyes, and his attention, one supposes, fully awake. At page 4 he says that Dr. Birkbeck Hill's index proves that the editor had never seen Boswell's first production—'certainly never read it.' The 'proof is that in the index it is mentioned in italics as 'The Club' at Newmarket. In the text, he adds, it is again written 'the Club.' Now the real title was the Cub, as any one must perceive who has read the book. I turn to the index (vol. vi. p. 25), and there find Cub at Newmarket correctly entered between 'critics' and 'curiosity.' I look back to the text (vol. i. 383, n. 3), and there, it is true, the word is written 'Club.' But as Dr. Birkbeck Hill quotes a
