conviction, and that roughness of temper which cannot rate dissent, were equally foreign from his nature.
An amusement of his more lonely hours largely exercised about this time, was the annotation of books under perusal—general remarks, anecdotes, or details gleaned from sources not generally familiar. These, after the discontinuance of his regular memoranda, diversified the labours on Shakspeare. Spence’s Anecdotes were thus taken in hand, and such notes added as came within range of his reading or conversational sources, and were published by an anonymous editor in 1820. Another was Mrs. Piozzi’s Anecdotes of Dr. Johnson. His leanings here, as already noticed, are all against the lady whose accuracy, though there seems little to find fault with, has been on many occasions impeached. Mr. Caldwell, writing to Bishop Percy (Sept. 1806), says, on Langbaine’s catalogue of old plays—“Malone told me he had copied all the notes from the original, and has besides added thrice as many as all his predecessors.”
From statements of the junior Boswell, it appears that in conversation on the versification of Shakspeare, so many freedoms had been taken with it by the caprice of editors, that Malone was induced to undertake an express essay on his metre and phraseology. Some progress was made when death arrested this among other critical contributions. There is, however, a paper on the subject in the last edition of which we may deem Boswell to be the writer.
Another and more favourite occupation was in revising and noting reprints of Boswell’s Johnson. In this work he was more at home than with Spence.
