In one note we read, that Sir Herbert Croft, the author of that pompous and foolish account of Young, which appears among the Lives of the Poets, died in 1805. (3) Another note in the same volume states, that this same Sir Herbert Croft died at Paris, after residing abroad for fifteen years, on the 27th of April 1816. (4) Mr. Croker informs us, that Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, the author of the Life of Beattie, died in 1816. (5) A Sir William Forbes undoubtedly died in that year, but not the Sir William Forbes in question, whose death took place in 1806. It is notorious, indeed, that the biographer of Beattie lived just long enough to complete the history of his friend. Eight or nine years before the date which Mr. Croker has assigned for Sir William’s death, Sir Walter Scott (1) I. 394. (2) I. 404. (3) IV. 321 (4) IV. 428. (5) II. 262. {370}lamented that event in the introduction to the fourth canto of Marmion. Every school-girl knows the lines: “Scarce had lamented Forbes paid The tribute to his Minstrel’s shade; The tale of friendship scarce was told, Ere the narrator’s heart was cold: Far may we search before we find A heart so manly and so kind!” In one place, we are told, that Allan Ramsay, the painter, was born in 1709, and died in 1784; (1) in another, that he died in 1784, in the seventy-first year of his age. (2) In one place, Mr. Croker says, that at the commencement of the intimacy between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, in 1765, the lady was twenty-five years old. (3) In other places he says, that Mrs. Thrale’s thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson’s seventieth.(4) Johnson was born in 1709. If, therefore, Mrs. Thrale’s thirty-fifth year coincided with Johnson’s seventieth, she could have been only twenty-one years old in 1765. This is not all. Mr. Croker, in another place, assigns the year 1777 as the date of the complimentary lines which Johnson made on Mrs. Thrale’s thirty-fifth birth-day. (5) If this date be correct, Mrs. Thrale must have been born in 1742, and could have been only twenty-three when her acquaintance with Johnson commenced. Mr. Croker therefore gives us three different statements as to her age. Two of the three must be incorrect. We will not decide between them; we will only say, that the reasons which Mr. Croker gives for thinking that Mrs. Thrale was exactly thirty-five years old when Johnson was seventy, appear to us utterly frivolous. (1) IV. 105. (2) V. 281. (3) I. 510. (4) IV. 271. 322. (5) III. 463. {371}Again, Mil Croker informs his readers that “Lord Mansfield survived Johnson full ten years.” (1) Lord Mansfield survived Dr. Johnson just eight years and a quarter.