Note 110 — THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.

I hope the authority of the great Master of our language will stop that curtailing innovation, by which we see critic, public, &c., frequently written instead of critick, publick, &c. BOSWELL. Boswell had always been nice in his spelling. In the Preface to his Corsica, published twenty-four years before The Life of Johnson, he defends his peculiarities, and says:—'If this work should at any future period be reprinted, I hope that care will be taken of my orthography.' Mr. Croker says that in a memorandum in Johnson's writing he has found 'cubic feet.'