Boswell

“ I vow to thee an eternal attachment. It shall be my study to do what I can to render your life happy: and if you die before me, I shall endeavour to do honour to your memory and, elevated by the remembrance of you, persist in noble piety. May God, the father of all beings, ever bless you! and may you continue to love your most affectionate friend, and devoted servant,—James Boswell.'
So early had Boswell made his resolve to be the biographer of Johnson. ”

“ Johnson and I walked arm-in-arm up the High street," says Boswell, "to my house in James's Court: it was a dusky night: I could not prevent his being assailed by the evening effluvia of Edinburgh. As we marched slowly along he grumbled in my ear, 'I smell you in the dark.'"
Mrs. Boswell had never seen Johnson before, and was by no means charmed with him, as Johnson was not slow to discover. In a matrimonial aside she whispered to her husband, "I have seen many a bear led by a man, but I never before saw a man led by a bear." ”

“ But we will never cease to pray that every honest man should study Boswell. There are many who have topped the rise of human felicity in that book: when reading it they feel the tide of intellect brim the mind with a unique fullness of satisfaction. It is not a mere commentary on life: it is life—it fills and floods every channel of the brain. It is a book that men make a hobby of, as golf or billiards. To know it is a liberal education. I could have understood Germany yearning to invade England in order to annex Boswell's Johnson. ”

“ If Boswell had not lived I wonder how much we should hear now of his huge friend? With Scotch persistence he has succeeded in inoculating the whole world with his hero worship. It was most natural that he should himself admire him. The relations between the two men were delightful and reflect all credit upon each. But they are not a safe basis from which any third person could argue. When they met, Boswell was in his twenty-third and Johnson in his fifty-fourth year. The one was a keen young Scot with a mind which was reverent and impressionable. ”

“ With eyes reverentially fixed on men whom he could admire without comprehending, stood Boswell, the minute chronicler of their sayings and doings; while the master of the house—mild, gentle, and unassuming, round in feature, florid in complexion, and of middle stature—listened with lively, but calm and refined intelligence, to the colloquial conflict of the wonderful specimens of the human race whose features his easel has, in immortal colors, transmitted to posterity. ”

“ Boswell broke a lance or two with me for the benefit of those present; but there was no man there of a calibre to awaken my interest, no opposing material of a surface rough enough to rub a spark from me. We returned in a chaise, and Boswell appeared so elated that I asked him the reason of his high spirits. Boswell: “Well, sir, I have rarely enjoyed conversation so much.” Johnson: “Words were uttered, even to weariness, but I heard no conversation.” Boswell: “Why, sir, they hung on your every utterance.” ”

“ On Monday, 16th May 1763, Boswell, then on a second visit to London, had the supreme happiness to make the acquaintance of the object of his almost idolatrous admiration, Dr Johnson. Their first interview in the back parlour of Mr Davies's shop in Russell Street was characteristic of both; the calm strength and ponderous wit of the one, the fluttering folly and childish servility of the other, are portrayed to the life in Boswell's own narrative. Few things are more singular than the intimacy which sprang up between two men so differently constituted. ”

“ Consequently, he has the courage to show us his hero, now wrong-headed and perverse, now rude almost to brutality, now so weak that the same resolution is repeated year after year only to be again broken and again renewed, now so gross and almost repulsive in his appearance and habits that it requires all his greatness to explain the welcome which well-bred men and refined women everywhere gave him. Nothing better shows the greatness of Boswell. ”

“ Boswell says, "The simple truth I had from Johnson himself. 'Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him. But it was not in his shop: it was in my own chamber.'" [l] Dr. ”

“ Boswell was somewhat disappointed at finding that the selection of the Poets in this series would not be Johnson’s, but that he was to furnish a Preface and Life to any Poet the booksellers pleased. “I asked him,” writes Boswell, “if he would do this to any dunce’s works, if they should ask him.” Johnson. “Yes, sir; and say he was a dunce.” ”

“ The special skill of Boswell is in his power of giving, not the felicitous phrase by itself, but the dramatic situation in which it was struck out, and to which, even in its unpolished state, it owed its impressiveness. In that he is not only superlative but, I fancy, unique. There are countless collections of 'anas' and 'table-talks' from which we get some impression of the good things said by famous men. ”

“ To be sure they will not be disappointed of the popular "Bozzy," ridiculous, vain, and a little vulgar, something of a snob, of a sycophant even, with an undignified zeal for notoriety and an imperfect moral sense; but beside him they will find another Boswell, the friend of Hume and Johnson, with his passion for excellence, generous nature, good understanding, and genius for observation—a man by no means to be despised. ”

“ We had a pleasing conviction of the commodiousness of civilisation, and heartily laughed at the ravings of those absurd visionaries who have attempted to persuade us of the superior advantages of a state of nature." With these visionaries Boswell himself sometimes sided. The people of Otaheite especially had won his admiration. "No, Sir;" said Johnson to him on one such occasion: "You are not to talk such paradox; let me have no more on't. It cannot entertain, far less can it instruct." "Don't cant in defence of savages," he said, on another occasion. ”

“ I would still hope that to many readers Boswell has been what he has certainly been to some, the first writer who gave them a love of English literature, and the most charming of all companions long after the bloom of novelty has departed. I subscribe most cheerfully to Mr. Lewes's statement that he estimates his acquaintances according to their estimate of Boswell. A man, indeed, may be a good Christian, and an excellent father of a family, without loving Johnson or Boswell, for a sense of humour is not one of the primary virtues. ”

“ Boswell realised this quite well:
"My desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every description, had made me, much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Dr Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all mankind. They had even attacked one another with some asperity in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each.... I conceived an irresistible wish, if possible, to bring Dr Johnson and Mr Wilkes together. ”

“ It is a melancholy thing that Boswell's descendants should have seen their famous ancestor's faults so clearly as to have been unable to enjoy that pride which was so justly their due, in being sprung from a man of such real, if curious genius. ”

“ Of all great men, dead or alive, he is the best known to us; yet perhaps he was greater than we know.
The accident which gave Boswell to Johnson and Johnson to Boswell is one of the most extraordinary pieces of good fortune in literary history. Boswell was a man of genius; the idle paradox which presents him in the likeness of a lucky dunce was never tenable by serious criticism, and has long since been rejected by all who bring thought to bear on the problems of literature. ”

“ Seward with him. Horace having been mentioned; BOSWELL. 'There is a great deal of thinking in his works. One finds there almost every thing but religion.' SEWARD. 'He speaks of his returning to it, in his Ode Parcus Deorum cultor et infrequens.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, he was not in earnest: this was merely poetical.' BOSWELL. 'There are, I am afraid, many people who have no religion at all.' SEWARD. 'And sensible people too.' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, not sensible in that respect. There must be either a natural or a moral stupidity, if one lives in a total neglect of so very important a concern. ”

“ He did not like to have this recalled, or, perhaps, thinking that I boasted improperly, resolved to have a witty stroke at me: 'Nay, Sir, it was not the wine that made your head ache, but the sense that I put into it.' BOSWELL. 'What, Sir! will sense make the head ache?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir, (with a smile) when it is not used to it.'—No man who has a true relish of pleasantry could be offended at this; especially if Johnson in a long intimacy had given him repeated proofs of his regard and good estimation. ”

“ The affectation or extravagance of Boswell appears also from time to time in his pious and moral remarks.
Being in a frame of mind which I hope, for the felicity of human nature, many experience—in fine weather—at the country house of a friend—consoled and elevated by pious exercises—I expressed myself with an unrestrained fervour to my 'Guide, Philosopher and Friend': 'My dear Sir, I could fain be a good man; and I am very good now. I fear God and honour the king, I wish to do no ill, and to be benevolent to all mankind.'25 ”

“ The intimate relations which sprang up between Boswell and Paoli were, as we may judge from Boswell's own account, very similar to those already in existence between himself and Johnson.
The taste for the heroic may be satisfied easily. Even about the scamp Wilkes in exile there was a glamour which appealed to the imaginative young Bozzy. But for the real Boswellian admiration something more was required—the portentous possession of the 'solid virtues.' The probity of Paoli could never be in question. ”

“ Of the talents which ordinarily raise men to eminence as writers, Boswell had absolutely none. There is not in all his books a single remark of his own on literature, politics, religion, or society, which is not either commonplace or absurd. ”

“ I remain, Sir, with grateful respect,
'Your obliged and obedient servant,
'MARGARET BOSWELL.'
The death of Mr. Thrale had made a very material alteration with respect to Johnson's reception in that family. The manly authority of the husband no longer curbed the lively exuberance of the lady; and as her vanity had been fully gratified, by having the Colossus of Literature attached to her for many years, she gradually became less assiduous to please him. ”

“ It is easy indeed to understand the motives of Boswell. His childish and unrestrained love of merriment, his insatiable desire to be the wag and the buffoon, enabled him to give vent in the most mirthful fashion to his passion for self-advertisement, to explain how he had been honoured by the attention of kings and how he intended to have an introduction to the great Minister ”

“ This continued his principal occupation for some years, and, as Boswell truly observes, "served to relieve his constitutional melancholy by the steady, yet not oppressive, employment it secured him." In its unity, too, and gigantic size, the task seemed fitted for the powers of so strong a man; and although he says he dismissed it at last with "frigid tranquillity," he had no doubt felt its influence during the time to be at once that of a protecting guardian and of an inspiring genius. ”

“ Poor Boswell is almost ashamed to record what he calls "this most ludicrous exhibition of the aweful, melancholy, and venerable Johnson," but most of his readers prefer this picture of Johnson staggering in helpless laughter down Fleet Street to the most impressive essay in The Rambler.
Johnson's oddities in the street must often have made people turn round to look at him. ”

“ It was Boswell. He took the gag out of my mouth, and said—
"Perhaps I needn't tell you where you are, Mr. Vavasour—on the lowest floor of Melwood Priory. There is only one door by which you could get out, and it is bolted and barred and well guarded. There are six men at my call, everyone well armed. Resistance is hopeless, and can only end in your being baldy mauled. I am going to cut your cords, and I hope for your own sake you won't try to play any pranks." ”

“ Boswell. 'My dear Sir! you may turn anything into ridicule ... a great player does what very few are capable to do: his art is a very rare faculty. Who can repeat Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be, or not to be," as Garrick does it?' Johnson. 'Anybody may. Jemmy, there (a boy about eight years old, who was in the room) , will do it as well in a week.' Boswell. 'No, no, Sir: and as a proof of the merit of great acting, and of the value which [Pg 90] mankind set upon it, Garrick has got a hundred thousand pounds.' Johnson. 'Is getting a hundred thousand pounds a proof of excellence? ”

“ He is, in a certain way, his own Boswell—less obtrusive, however, and, as a consequence, more concise. There is no subject so insignificant that he thinks it below his dignity to discuss it; there is none so exalted that he refrains from expressing his opinion upon it. ”

“ The young Scot is commonly shy, reserved, and self-conscious; independent in temper, sensible to affront, slow to make friends, and wary in society. Boswell was the opposite of all these things. He made himself at home in all societies, and charmed others into a like ease and confidence. Under the spell of his effervescent good-humour the melancholy Highlanders were willing to tell stories of the supernatural. 'Mr. Boswell's frankness and gayety,' says Johnson, 'made everybody communicative.'
And Boswell himself took no trouble to conceal, but rather published this truth. ”