The rationale of this new annotation is explained above,
pp. xxiv -vi. In accordance with the general plan of this
edition, sources are generally not noted unless direct quotation
is made.

p. 8, line 10. For "an ordinary composer" Boswell originally
wrote "an Arne or even a -----," changing the reading
before he had decided on the second name. Thomas Arne had
died in 1778.

p. 11, line 15 and n. 15. The identification is certain: Boswell
gives Mme. du Boccage's name in reporting the anecdote in
his journal, 23 March 1776. "Told me" would better have
been "told me subsequently," for Johnson did not visit Paris
till the autumn of 1775.

p. 13, line 8. The copy, the proofs, and the first two editions
read "our own bedchamber." "Her own" of the third edition
is perhaps unauthorized. Boswell and his wife never had
separate rooms.

p. 14 n. 3. We based our assertion on the fact that no deed
providing Veronica with additional fortune appears among
Boswell's settlements registered in the Books of Council and
Session, but we should have remembered that registration is
optional. Boswell did, in fact, discharge his promise; and when
Colonel Isham was at Malahide Castle in 1937, he turned up
the document, which is one of Boswell's more grandiose per-
formances. It is entirely in his own hand, was written eleven
weeks before his death, on 3 March 1795, "in the house of
Parsloe in St. James's Street, in the City of Westminster, at
which the Literary Club of which Doctor Johnson was an
original member meets," and was witnessed by the Duke of
Leeds, Earl Macartney, Viscount Palmerston, and Sir William
Scott. It runs in part, "I, James Boswell, Esquire, of Auchin-

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