I cannot forbear another excursion into the region of Johnsonian autobiography (or pseudo-autobiography) even at the increased risk of committing a scholarly sin against which I have myself protested. In my own defense I can say that I know the highly conjectural nature of what I am doing. Johnson's pride may have suffered when he was arrested for debt in the presence of unsympathetic onlookers. This is sheer hypothesizing. But when, in _Henry IV_, Worcester speaks the following words: For, bear ourselves as even as we can, The King will always think him in our debt; And think, we deem ourselves unsatisfy'd, Till he hath found a time to pay us home. (I.iii.285-8) and Johnson comments: "This is a natural description of the state of mind between those who have conferred, and those that have received, obligations too great to be satisfied," we may protest that such a reaction is by no means universal. The suspicion that Johnson is speaking for himself is strengthened by an observation made by Sir Joshua Reynolds and recorded by his biographer, Junes Northcote. Reynolds remarks "that if any drew [Johnson] into a state of obligation without his own consent, that man was the first he would affront, by way of clearing off the account" (see Boswell's _Life_, III, 345, n.l). Johnson's note may nov be looked upon as a possible personal confession. Other conjectures are justified, I believe, by still other notes, but it may be preferable to list, without comment, some of the topics upon which Johnson has his say in the notes to Shakespeare. He comments on melancholy, falsehood, the lightness with which vows are made, cruelty to animals, "the pain of deformity," the horrors of solitude, kindness to dependents, friendship, slavery, guilt, the "unsocial mind," the "mean" and the "great"--and a host of others. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand why the editor of _The Beauties of Johnson_ quoted so often from the notes to Shakespeare. The University of Illinois copy of the 1773 Shakespeare has been used. It is unique, I believe, in that the last volume contains a list of "Cancels In Shakespeare. This List not to be bound up with the Book, being only to direct the Binder," one of the earliest of these forgotten directions to the binder to be recorded. There is another point of bibliographical interest in the edition. L. F. Powell states that there are three Appendices in the last volume of the edition (_Life_. II, 490), as does T. J. Monaghan (_RES_, 1953, p. 238). Yet the Illinois copy has only two appendices, and a check of copies in some six large American libraries reveals the same number. The copy with the three Appendices would seem quite rare.