,
and I have often felt that his work did not receive half the
encouragement that it deserved. We hear sometimes, at least in London,
of authors who advertise themselves. I rather fancy that all such
advertisement is monopolized by the novelist, and that the newspapers do
not trouble themselves very much about literary men who work in other
fields than that of fiction. Fiction has much to be said for it, but as
a rule it reaps its reward very promptly, both in finance and in fame. No
such rewards come to the writer of biography, to the writer of history,
to the literary editor. Dr. Hill's beautiful edition of Boswell's
_Life_, with all its fascinating annotation, did not reach a second
edition in his lifetime. I am afraid that the sum that he made out of
it, or that his publishers made out of it, would seem a very poor reward
indeed when gauged by the results in other fields of labour.

Within the past few weeks I have had the privilege of reading a book that
continues these researches. Mr. Aleyn Lyell Reade has published a
handsome tome, which he has privately printed, entitled _Dr. Johnson's
Ancestry_: _His Kinsfolk and Family Connexions_. I am glad to hear that
the Johnson Museum has purchased a copy, for such a work deserves every
encouragement. The author must have spent hundreds of pounds, without
the faintest possibility of obtaining either fame or money from the
transaction. He seems to have employed copyists in every town in
Staffordshire, to copy wills, registers of births and deaths, and kindred
records from the past. Now Dr. Birkbeck Hill could not have afforded to
do this; he was by no means a rich man. Mr. Reade has clearly been able
to spare no expense, with the result that here are many interesting facts
corrective of earlier students. The whole is a valuable record of the
ancestry of Dr. Johnson. It shows clearly that whereas Dr. Johnson
thought very little of his ancestry, and scarcely knew anything of his
grandfather on the paternal or the maternal side, he really sprang from a
very remarkable stock, notably on the maternal side; and that his
mother's family, the Fords, had among their connexions all kinds of
fairly prosperous people, clergymen, officials, professional men as well
as sturdy yeomen. These ancestors of Dr. Johnson did not help him much
to push his way in the world. Of some of them he had scarcely heard. All
the same it is of great interest to us to know this; it in a man