* * * * * ANACHRONISMS RESPECTING DR. JOHNSON. (_To the Editor of the Mirror_.) "I am corrected, sir; but hear me speak-- When admiration glows with such a fire As to o'ertop the memory, error then May merit mercy." _Old Play_. In justice to myself and the readers of the MIRROR, I must be allowed to offer a few apologetic remarks on the almost unpardonable anachronisms which I so inadvertently suffered to occur in my communication on the subject of Dr. Johnson's Residence in Bolt Court. But when I state that the chronological metathesis occurred entirely in consequence of my referring to that most treacherous portion of human intellect, the memory; and that it is upwards of seven years since I read "Boswell's Life of Johnson," or "Johnson's Poets," it may be some mitigation of the censure I so justly deserve. Yet I may be suffered to suggest to your correspondent, who has so kindly corrected me, that my paper was more in the suppository style than he seems to have imagined; and that I did not assert that Boswell, Savage, and Johnson, met at the latter's "house in Bolt Court, and discussed subjects of polite literature." The expression used is, "We can _imagine_," &c. constituting a creation of the fancy rather than a positive portraiture. Certain it is that Johnson's dwelling was in the neighbourhood of Temple Bar at the time of the nocturnal perambulation alluded to; and that it was Savage (to whom he was so unaccountably attached, in spite of the "bastard's" frailties) who enticed the doctor from his bed to a midnight ramble. My primary mistake consists in transposing the date of the doctor's residence in Bolt Court, and introducing Savage at the era of Boswell's acquaintance with Johnson; whereas the wayward poet finished his miserable existence in a prison, at Bristol, 21 years prior to that event. Here I may be allowed a remark or two on the animadversion which has been heaped on Johnson for that beautiful piece of biography, "The Life of Richard Savage." It has hitherto been somewhat of a mystery that the stern critic whose strictures so severely exposed the minutest derelictions of genius in all other instances, should have adopted "the melting mood" in detailing the life of such a man as Savage; for, much as we may admire the concentrated smiles and tears of his two poems, "The Bastard," and "The Wanderer," pitying the fortunes and miseries of the author, yet his ungovernable temper and depraved propensities, which led to his embruing his hands in blood, his ingratitude to his patrons and benefactors, (but chiefly to Pope,) and his degraded misemployment of talents which might have raised him to the capital of the proud column of intellect of that day,--all conduce to petrify the tear of mingled mercy and compassion, which the misfortunes of such a being might otherwise demand. Nevertheless, as was lately observed by a respectable journal, "there must have been _something_ good about him,