Boz

“ The household gods of such, like Elia’s, strike a deep root.
In his descriptions of the Bardell party’s journey to Hampstead, which ended so disastrously, the art of Boz is shown as usual by supplying the notion of movement—he seems to take us along up the northern heights—we feel the pleasurable anticipations of a party of p. 64pleasure for the lower middle class. ”

“ It is, moreover, one of the busiest (Bozen people claim that it is the busiest) towns in Tyrol, with a population going on towards 20,000, including its outskirts, yet it possesses some most delightful gardens.
Seen from almost any point of the lower slopes of the surrounding hills, cactus, and vine-clad, and resembling in general luxuriance of vegetation Italy rather than the Tyrol of but a little further north, Bozen is charming. ”

“ No wonder Bozzy’s relatives got tired of his last hobby, his very subject himself got tired. “Sir,” said the sage, “you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.” Yet Bozzy knew what he was about when he stuck to his one topic. After his idol was gone, what was there for him but the bottle? It was one of the earliest recollections of Lord Jeffrey that he had assisted as a boy in putting the biographer to bed in a state of absolute unconsciousness. Next morning Boswell was told of the service rendered: he clapped the lad on the head, and complacently congratulated him. ”

“ The best I can think of is a sound sleep; so good-night.' In fact, like Sir Fretful Plagiary in the Critic, Bozzy was so covetous of popularity that he would rather be abused than be not mentioned at all. Little augury, too, of success at the bar could his father find in the following portrait of his son: 'the author of the Ode to Tragedy is a most excellent man; he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So I read and laugh over my Boswell in the library when the lamps are lit, buried in cushions and surrounded by every sign of civilisation, with the drawn curtains shutting out the garden and the country solitude so much disliked by both sage and disciple. Indeed, it is Bozzy who asserts that in the country the only things that make one happy are meals. "I was happy," he says, when stranded at a place called Corrichatachin in the Island of Skye, and unable to get out of it because of the rain,—"I was happy when tea came. Such I take it is the state of those who live in the country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Temple, too, was against this, and 'Temple thou reasonest well,' he cries, and thinks his abnegation will be a solace to his worthy father on his circuit. Freed now from Miss Blair and the Dutch divinity, he is devoted to la belle Irlandaise, 'just sixteen, with the sweetest countenance and a Dublin education.' Never till now had he been so truly in love; every flower is united, and she is a rose without a thorn. Her name 'Mary Anne' he has carved upon a tree, and cutting off a lock of her hair she had promised Bozzy not to marry a lord before March, or forget him. ”

“ That antiquary had been pressed by the Duke of Perth to come over to the Papists, and for some time embraced the ancient religion, until the rigid fasting led him to reconsider the controversy and he returned to Protestantism. Bozzy thought the remark of his friend, that as ladies love to see themselves in a glass, so a man likes to see and review himself in his journal, 'a very pretty allusion,' and we may be sure, in spite of his reticence, that his own case was present at the time to his mind. ”

“ Our means of knowledge of James Boswell are derived mainly from himself; he is his own incriminator. In addition to the life there is the Corsican tour, the Hebrides tour, the letters to Erskine and to Temple, and a few insignificant occasional publications in the shape of letters to the people of Scotland, etc. With these before him it is impossible for any biographer to approach Bozzy in a devotional attitude; he was all Carlyle calls him. ”

“ Numbers of artists pause at Bozen yearly on their way south into Italy via Verona to study the rich treasures in the galleries of the cities of Northern Italy, or to rest awhile on their return journey northwards. In Bozen is plenty to paint and plenty to admire, and the townsfolk are noted for the hospitality which still (notwithstanding the great influx of tourists of late years) distinguishes the frank and warm-hearted people of Tyrol in general. ”

“ His eyes swept away off toward a corner of the sky heavy with mist where it seemed to be moving with firetails, fishes, cats, and rabbits of slow changing stars.
"Bozo had buttons all over him," said the old man, "the buttons on Bozo fitted so tight, and there were so many buttons, that sometimes when he took his lungs full of new wind to go on talking a button would bust loose and fly into the face of whoever he was speaking to. Sometimes when he took new wind into his lungs two buttons would bust loose and fly into the faces of two people he was speaking to. ”

“ Hearts are caught in the rebound, and Bozzy had solaced his loss of the belle Irlandaise with the sympathy of his fellow-traveller. Having let his fancies roam so far abroad as Siena and Holland, the lover had now returned like the bird at evening to the nest from which it flew. She had no fortune, and 'the penniless lass wi' the lang pedigree,' related as she was to the Eglintoun branch and other high families, had not in the eyes of his father the landed qualifications of Miss Blair, whose property lay so convenient for the extension of the Boswell acres. ”

“ Boswell's Life of Johnson was not published till 1791; but the controversy kindled by the Tour to the Hebrides and the Anecdotes, raged fiercely enough to fix general attention and afford ample scope for ridicule: "The Bozzi &c. subjects," writes Hannah More 286 in April 1786, "are not exhausted, though everybody seems heartily sick of them. Everybody, however, conspires not to let them drop. That, the Cagliostro, and the Cardinal's necklace, spoil all conversation, and destroyed a very good evening at Mr. Pepys' last night." ”

“ They are more likely, I think, to get as far away as they can from the place. Come on. Let us jog along. We must get in before sunset, if possible.”
The citizens of Bozeman were accustomed, I suppose, to the sight of rough-looking strangers riding through their streets; and we were rough-looking enough, surely, with our elbows showing through our coat-sleeves and our knees through our trousers, with our hair down below our collars, and our faces so sunburned that Jack and Percy looked like a pair of Mexicans, while I was about the colour of the rising moon. ”

“ Nor will the reader find much fault in what the adverse critics have unduly emphasized—his interviewing or forcing himself upon men. A man, as Johnson said to him when seeking an interlocutor on this point, always makes himself greater as he increases his knowledge. When he was at Dunvegan on his northern tour, and Colonel Macleod seemed to hint at this, Bozzy offers as{52} his defence of what 'has procured me much happiness' the eagerness he ever felt to share the society of men distinguished by their rank or talents. ”

“ He was on the telephone long before breakfast, and when Mr. Clutterbuck came down he saw his secretary, dressed ready for driving into London.
"If Bozzy isn't in," said he, "I'll get out into Essex and see Morris. He's perfectly certain to know. But," he added, "I may be out all night." ”

“ He was called Bozza, a serving-man. Giovanni never entered my prison without saying something offensive to me. He came from the district of Prato, and had been an apothecary in the town there. Every evening he minutely examined the holdfasts of the hinges and the whole chamber, and I used to say:—"Keep a good watch over me, for I am resolved by all means to escape." [Pg 3379]
These words bred a great enmity between him and me, so that I was obliged to use precautions to conceal my tools; that is to say, my pincers and a great big poniard and other appurtenances. ”

“ ‘It seems to me that when you take a man’s money away he’s fit for nothing from that moment.’
‘No, not necessarily. If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can still keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, “I’m a free man in here”’–he tapped his forehead–‘and you’re all right.’
Bozo talked further in the same strain, and I listened with attention. ”

“ Things utterly out of the normal always do worry me, and Bo, which was the name Graves had learned for her, was, so far as I know, unique in human experience. In appearance she was like an unusually good-looking island girl observed through the wrong end of an opera-glass, but in habit and action she was different. She would catch flies and little grasshoppers and eat them all alive and kicking, and if you teased her more than she liked her ears would flatten the way a cat's do, and she would hiss like a snapping-turtle, and show her teeth. ”

“ Bobs laughed with him, then added merrily, “If it hadn’t been for my prunes and prisms, Sister Gwendolyn, I might never have ceased to be a tom-boy.”
“I hope you never will become like Gwen,” Dick said almost fiercely, “or like my sister Phyllis, either. They’re not our kind, though I’m sorry to say it.” Then noting a far-away, thoughtful expression which had crept into the girl’s eyes, the lad inquired: “Say, Bobs, have you any idea how Gwyn can earn a living? You’re the sort who can hold your own anywhere. You’d be willing to work, but Gwyn—well, I can’t picture her as a daily-bread earner.” ”

“ Don Teodoro was silent, bending his mind upon the hideous problem. Bosio misunderstood him and spoke again without moving.
"I know," he said. "You need not speak. I know by heart all the reproaches I deserve, and I know that no human being, much less a holy man like yourself, could possibly feel anything but horror at all this—"
"I am very far from being a holy man," interrupted the priest. "If I feel horror, it is for what has been, and may be, but not for you. Bosio—" he hesitated a moment. "Will you come with me to Muro, and leave all this?" ”

“ Thy face is black like those of the damned Saracens. You are all in league with the devil; it is the evil spirit who has led thee hither. Drive him out, and loose the dogs upon him.”
But the tender-hearted lady begged them to have mercy on the unhappy madman. Bos, pricked by his conscience, believing that everybody knew his sin, fled with his face in his hands, in horror of himself, and stayed not until he had reached a solitary bog. Night came, and the bell of Mount Campana began to toll. He heard the wheels of the faeries of the Bergonz humming. ”

“ I raised my old gun, and partly getting the scent, he turned his head upwards, and his eyes flashed fire in my face! But afore he could spring on me, I plumped a charge into his face and eyes, and dropped him, as Aunt Polly did the tory. Then Bose made a lunge on the critter; but he warn't dead yet, and in they grappled for life or death! Then dog's hair and painter's hair flew like flax in the brake, I tell you. And then there was growling and craunching, I reckon. I see Bose was going to be worsted, and I closed in to give him a lift. ”

“ It seemed strange to see that fragrant bit of springtime in a gloomy second-hand shop so far from the country where it might have blossomed. As Bobs gazed into the shop, she was suddenly conscious of a movement within, and then, out of the shadows, she saw forms emerging. An old man with a long flowing beard and the tight black skull cap so often worn by elderly men of the East Side was pushing a wheeled chair in which reclined a frail old woman, evidently his wife. In her face there was an expression of suffering patiently borne which touched the heart of the young girl. ”

“ You don’t know how sorry Gloria and I feel because Gwen has to be poor with the rest of us.” The boy had placed his hand over the one resting on his arm, but only for a moment. “You see,” Bobs explained, “Glow and I honestly feel that an adventure of a new and interesting kind awaits us, and, as for little Lena May, money means nothing to her. If she can just be with Gloria, that is all she asks of Fate.”
They had reached the Vandergrift gate and Bobs, drawing rein, reached out her hand, saying: “Goodbye, Dick.” Then, after a hesitating moment, she added sincerely, “I’m sorry, old pal. ”

“ The side show was thus left a little short of first-class freaks. So Stetson, with his customary ingenuity, had arranged for an entirely new sensation,—Bosko, a human snake-eater,—and the attraction, which was only an experiment at first, was now one of the best drawing cards.
Like all other good things in this world, however, it had its disadvantages. Bosko had to be watched constantly. Twice he had smuggled the little black bottle which was his constant companion, when not before the public, into the pen with him. ”