Page:Johnsonian Miscellanies I.djvu/13

Rh with the original manuscript preserved in the library of Pembroke College, Oxford, I have made some corrections in the text, and supplied some omissions. On one entry which had been suppressed I wish light could be thrown. Who was 'dying Jenny' for whose spiritual comfort Johnson provided ? Was she some poor outcast, like the wretched woman he carried home and nursed there for thirteen weeks ?

An interesting collection of manuscripts which had once belonged to Miss Reynolds I am allowed to use by the kindness of Lady Colomb, of Dronquinna, Kenmare, a descendant of Sir Joshua's sister, Mary. Most of them are given in Croker's edition, but not all. I have revised his version, and have supplied omissions, and corrected the text where it was faulty. Some letters which he had not seen or had passed over are now printed for the first time, as well as the corrections which Johnson made in 'Renny's' verses when he 'mended some bad rhymes .'

To my friend, Mr. Robert B. Adam, of Buffalo, whose Johnsonian collection far surpasses any we have on this side of the Atlantic, I am greatly indebted for the liberality with which he has placed all his treasures at my service. I wish every collector of autographs were like him, free from that petty selfishness which makes a man hug some famous author's letter as a miser hugs his gold, rejoicing in it all the more as he keeps it entirely to himself.

My kinsman, Mr. Horatio Percy Symonds, of Beaumont Street, Oxford, has allowed me to make use of the curious manuscript notes on the margin of a copy of the first edition of