Note 410 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. (continued 2)

The first of the definitions given by Johnson of to remember is to bear in mind anything; not to forget. To recollect he defines to recover to memory. We may, perhaps, assume that Boswell said, 'I did not recollect that the chair was broken;' and that Johnson replied, 'you mean, you did not remember. That you did not remember is your own fault. It was in your mind that it was broken, and therefore you ought to have remembered it. It was not a case of recollecting; for we recollect, that is, recover to memory, what is not in our mind.' In the passage ante, i. 112, which begins, 'I indeed doubt if he could have remembered,' we find in the first two editions not remembered, but recollected. Perhaps this change is due to euphony, as collected comes a few lines before. Horace Walpole, in one of his Letters (i. 15), distinguishes the two words, on his revisiting his old school, Eton:—'By the way, the clock strikes the old cracked sound—I recollect so much, and remember so little.'