A selection from the Life of Samuel Johnson

Preface

There can certainly be no more profitable or pleasant task for the English teacher than to foster in pupils a liking for Boswell. In Bos well they will find a striking portrait of a wise and good man, who is made to appear at all times thoroughly human; at the same time BoswelPs biography is a remarkably vivid mirror of that interesting epoch, the eighteenth century. Students should carry away from Boswell many striking sentiments on life and literature, much plain wisdom regarding everyday affairs, and some acquaintance with the art of true conversation. BoswelPs narrative is, moreover, unique in its skill and accuracy as a biography, and is a model in that significant kind of writing. It is a common observation that few works have won for themselves so much affection as BoswelPs great record, and even those, who (like Macaulay) despise the author, read his production, and all writings that bear upon it, with unabated eagerness.

It should be the teacher's object in reading the following selections to encourage the student to read Boswell unabridged and to go on to the other literature that has accumulated around Johnson. To assist in this object a full list of suggestions for supplementary reading has been provided.

The attempt has been made in the actual selections to have Boswell tell (despite the large omissions) a story as nearly consecutive as possible, in which gaps should be not too obtrusive. The editor has been careful not to alter the words of Boswell. His spelling, however, has been modernized, and his punctuation, in a number of cases, altered.

The actual process of selection presented, of course, a bewilderment of riches. This is the apology that may be offered to readers who miss this or that favorite passage. Such readers may be assured that only exigencies of space and the limitations of the college entrance requirements occasioned the reluctant omission of many striking anecdotes and sayings.

iii

IV PREFACE

With some hesitation the division into chapters was adopted. These are lacking in the original editions of Boswell, and have been adopted in only one complete edition since Malone's. It seemed advisable, however, for pedagogical reasons, to adopt these sections and to provide some topical indication of the contents.

The choice of particular passages was often dictated by the fact that many teachers will unquestionably use Bosweirs biography in conjunction with Macaulay's Life of Johnson. The student will compare to his advantage the methods of two masters of the art of biography; and to enable him to do this more readily, passages in Boswell have been selected which contain facts on which Macaulay based his remarks. There is, of course, another point for the student to make at the same time: that Macaulay laid on the colors too thick, that he often exaggerated or misinterpreted. A set of exercises has been provided to guide the student in the task of comparison.

M. J. H.

February, 1916.

Contents

Page Introduction

James Boswell . . vii

Critical Opinions on Boswell and his Life of Jo hnson . xii

Introduction

James Boswell

The eccentric Scotch lawyer James Boswell has, since the appearance of his biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson, become one of the most baffling problems of English literature. His Life of Johnson at once took its place as perhaps the greatest of all biographies; but, the question was asked, how did a man apparently of such petty talents as Boswell possessed ever come to write this greatest of biographies? Some critics, like Macaulay, explained the difficulty by saying that BoswelPs work was so great because he himself was so petty. It soon became evident, however, that this explanation was as ridiculous as it would be to say that a horse pulled a load up a hill because he was so weak. Carlyle took the sensible view that there were in Boswell certain noble instincts that amply explained his production of so notable a work as the biography of Johnson. But even Carlyle did not see the whole truth.

James Boswell was born in Edinburgh on October 29, 1740. Alexander Boswell his father, a strong Whig and active member of the Scotch church, was by profession a lawyer, and in 1754 was raised to the bench with the title of Lord Au^hinleck. 1 To Lord Auchinleck James Boswell was as distracting a problem as the traditional ugly duckling among the hen's brood. From a very early period the son proved himself something of a ne'er-do-well. He was vain, inquisitive, boastful, given overmuch to the drinking of wine, and fond of rather boisterous company. Neither his opinions nor his principles were firmly fixed; and though he often made good resolutions, he was almost as often a backslider. In politics and in religion alike he vexed his father's heart, and there were frequently bitter quarrels between sire and son and sometimes threats of disinheritance,

1 Pronounced as a dissyllable, "Affleck.'* vii

Vlll INTRODUCTION

James Boswell, however, had certain qualities which might perhaps have won him more approbation, had they been set on some other background than that of his apparently frivolous and foolish character. He had an ardent respect and admiration for learning, coupled perhaps with somewhat too high a view of his own attainments. He had, moreover, a particular veneration for great men, and the great men whom he chose for what Carlyle has called " hero-worship' 7 were such as did considerable honor to his own character. He showed indeed much discrimination in this respect, sometimes choosing for his personal regard great men of a type whom mere "men of the world" rather despised. As a matter of fact, the men whom Boswell most intensely admired, did not excite equal regard among the other members of Boswell's circle. They, unlike Boswell, often failed to see the greatness beneath the uncouth exterior.

Boswell, after a residence at the University of Edinburgh, resolved, with the reluctant consent of his father, to take what was called "the Grand Tour" on the Continent, beginning with a stay at the schools of Utrecht. It was before he set out, in 1763, that he made the acquaintance of Dr. Johnson, as described in the text. Before this time he had already tried his hand at various pamphlets and much foolish verse. On the Continent Boswell, with his usual persistence, managed to see a great deal that was worth while. Incidentally, he varied the usual course of the Grand Tour by visiting Corsica, where he made the acquaintance of a stalwart, noble soul, General Paoli, the would-be liberator of Corsica. Later, when Paoli was obliged to take refuge in England, his home in London became Boswell's residence when he was in that city, and Paoli exercised on Boswell the best of influences.

On his return, Boswell became a practising lawyer in Edinburgh, although he constantly longed to establish himself in London. He continued his fruitful friendship with Dr. Johnson, jotting down notes of his conversations with him, making the acquaintance of Johnson's circle, and ulti-

JAMES BOSWELL IX

mately being admitted to the famous Literary Club which Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds had founded. From a very early period he had formed the project of writing Johnson's biography, and many of his talks with the famous literary dictator, who was quite well aware of his admirer's design, were directed toward obtaining information regarding Johnson's early life. Johnson, it must be remembered, was more than fifty years old when Boswell first made his acquaintance. The relations between the two men were cordial, at moments affectionate. Johnson realized the deep veneration entertained for him by Boswell, and he could not have failed to perceive that the latter possessed certain noble qualities. Moreover, his own melancholy moods were dispelled by Boswell's high spirits. At times Boswell, under the influence of vanity or, worse still, of wine, was guilty of offences against good taste, but Johnson, like Paoli, exercised on the young Scotchman a wholesome and paternal influence.

While Johnson was still living, Boswell composed two works which served to prepare the way for the composition of his Life of Johnson. The first was an account of Boswell's experiences in Corsica, and here he already exhibited those qualities that were , to make his masterpiece notable — the power to render a situation graphically, to tell an anecdote in an effective fashion, and to characterize the persons of his story vividly. In 1769 Boswell had married his cousin and set up a home, still not without difficulties with his father, and in 1773 he and Johnson carried out a long-cherished idea of touring Scotland and the Hebrides. They were a remarkable pair, the clumsy, wise English lexicographer and the unimpressive, clever Scotch lawyer. They had some remarkable adventures, met many famous Scotchmen, and each in his way recorded interesting details of his tour. Johnson's account of the trip was published shortly; Boswell's, however, not until after Johnson's death.

The friendly intercourse between the two men continued, with some interruptions, until Johnson's death in 1784. Then Boswell set about preparing his collected material for

X INTRODUCTION

the press, first the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, then on Monday, May 16, 1791, by a lucky chance the twenty-eighth anniversary of his first meeting with Johnson, his magnum opus, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Thereafter BoswelPs life was but a sorry one. He cherished unwise political ambitions, he attempted to secure practice at the London bar, some of his bad personal habits again got the better of him. His only consolation was the preparation of a second edition of the Life, for it had been a great and immediate success, 1200 copies being disposed of in four months — a considerable number in those days. On May 19, 1795, he died, after an illness of five weeks, in his fifty-fifth year.

In personal appearance Boswell was rather above the middle height, says Charles Rogers, and inclined to corpulency. He walked with a stately gait, and in his costume observed the latest fashion. He had a large head, and wore a powdered wig; his prominent but well-set features beamed with perpetual good humor. "It was impossible," remarked a contemporary, "to look in his face without being moved by the comicality which always reigned upon it." He talked much and with rapidity, but his observant mind was not observant to those who met him only casually in society.

The view is sometimes entertained that Boswell wrote his great work with unconscious art, by accident, as it were. No view could be further from the mark. He himself in his introduction to the Life describes his methods in a way that shows he employed conscious art. He says: "Instead of melting down my materials into one mass and constantly speaking in my own person, by which I might have appeared to have more merit in the execution of the work, I have resolved to adopt and enlarge upon the excellent plan of Mr. Mason, in his Memoirs of Gray. Wherever narrative is necessary to explain, connect, and supply, I furnish it to the best of my abilities; but in the chronological series of Johnson's life, which I trace as distinctly as I can, year by year, I produce, wherever it is in my power, his own minutes, letters, or conversation, being convinced that this mode is more lively, and will make my readers better acquainted

JAMES BOSWELL XI

with him, than even most of those were who actually knew him, but could know him only partially; whereas there is here an accumulation of intelligence from various points, by which the character is more fully understood and illustrated/ ' Again, in a letter to his lifelong friend, William Johnson Temple, Boswell wrote: "I am absolutely certain that my mode of biography, which gives not only a history of Johnson's visible progress through the world and of his publications, but a view of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work that has ever appeared ," an opinion in which time has certainly justified him. In another letter he claimed of his book that it might be " without exception the most entertaining book ever read." Finally, he speaks of "the Flemish portrait" he draws of Johnson, from which "the most minute particulars" must not be absent.

Two of Johnson's closest friends have delivered illuminating opinions upon Bosw T eirs Life. Burke, the greatest of English orators, said: "He [Johnson] is greater in Boswell's books than in his own." In other words, Boswell gives posterity a finer and truer idea of the essential greatness of the renowned sage than a reading of Rasselas or The Lives of the Poets would give. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great painter, remarked that every word of Boswell's Life of Johnson might be depended upon as if delivered upon oath, and he permitted the book to be dedicated to him. This remark emphasizes one of Boswell's most admirable qualities — his indefatigable zeal in verifying every last detail of Johnson's life. No trouble was too great, no energy wasted, that enabled him to clinch a fact as true. Other qualities of Boswell are brought out in the remarks of critics upon him quoted elsewhere in this Introduction; the student should consult these. The reader whose curiosity has been aroused as to the strange character of James Boswell might remember the latter's observation regarding himself, that "from a certain peculiarly open, frank, and ostentatious disposition which he avows, his history, like that of the old Seigneur Michael de Montaigne, is to be traced in his writings."

XU INTRODUCTION

Critical Opinions on Boswell and His " Life of Johnson "

" Here Boswell lies! drop o'er his tomb a tear. Let no malignant tongue pursue him here; Bury his failings in the silent grave, And from unfriendly hands his memory save. Record the praise he purchased, let his name • Mount on the wings of literary fame, And to his honor say, ' Here Boswell lies, Whose pleasing pen adorned the good and wise. Whose memory down the stream of time shall flow Far as famed Johnson's or Paoli's go!'"

— Proposed Epitaph by Robert Boswell.

'"Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?' asked someone, amazed at the sudden intimacy. 'He is not a cur,' answered Goldsmith; 'you are too severe. He is only a burr. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport and he has the faculty of sticking.'"

— Sir James Prior.

"Few figures were better known in London artistic and literary society than his — paunchy and puffy, with red face, long cocked nose, protuberant mouth and chin, with much solemnity of manner and voice, with slow gait and slovenly dress — the clothes being loose, the wig untidy, the gestures restless so as to resemble his great master, of whom he incessantly spoke, and whose big manner and oddities he mimicked with infinite drollery, making listeners convulse with laughter at the exquisite, but irreverent copy of his 'revered friend.'" — Henry Gray Graham.

"Considering the eminent persons to whom it relates, the quantity of miscellaneous information and entertaining gossip which it brings together, [it] may be termed, without exception, the best parlorwindow book that was ever written." — Sir Walter Scott.

"It was a strange and fortunate concurrence, that one so prone to talk and who talked so well, should be brought into close contact and confidence with one so zealous and so able to record. Dr. Johnson was a man of extraordinary powers, but Mr. Boswell had qualities, in their own way, almost as rare. He united lively manners with indefatigable diligence, and the volatile curiosity of a man about town with the drudging patience of a chronicler with a very good opinion of himself; he was quick in discerning, and frank in applauding, the excellencies of others. Though proud of his own name and lineage, and ambitious of the countenance of the great, he was yet so cordial an admirer of merit, wherever found, that much public ridicule, and something like contempt, were excited by the modest assurance with which he pressed his acquaintance on all the notorieties of his time. His contemporaries indeed, not without

CRITICAL OPINIONS Xlll

some color of reason, occasionally complained of him as vain, inquisitive, troublesome, and giddy; but his vanity was inoffensive — his curiosity was commonly directed towards laudable objects — when he meddled he did so, generally, from good-natured motives — his giddiness was only an exuberant gayety, which never failed in the respect and reverence due to literature, morals, and religion."

— John Wilson Croker.

"The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspere is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all his competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere.

"We are not sure that there is in the whole history of the human intellect so strange a phenomenon as this book. Many of the greatest men that ever lived have written biography. Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, and he has beaten them all. He was, if we are to give any credit to his own account or to the united testimony of all who knew him, a man of the meanest and feeblest intellect. . . . Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot, bloated with family pride, and eternally blustering about the dignity of a born gentleman, yet stooping to be a tale-bearer, an eavesdropper, a common butt in the taverns of London, so curious to know everybody who Was talked about, that, Tory and high Churchman as he was, he manoeuvred, we have been told, for an introduction to Tom Paine, so vain of the most childish distinction, that when he had been to court, he drove to the office where his book was printing without changing his clothes, and summoned all the printer's devils to admire his new ruffles and sword; such was this man, and such he was content and proud to be. Everything which another man would have hidden, everything the publication of which would have made another man hang himself, was matter of gay and clamorous exultation to his weak and diseased mind. . . .

"That such a man should have written one of the best books in the world is strange enough. But this is not all. Many persons who have conducted themselves foolishly in active life, and whose conversation has indicated no superior powers of mind, have left us valuable works. Goldsmith was very justly described by one of his contemporaries as an inspired idiot, and by another as a being

'Who wrote like an angel, and talked like poor Poll.*

La Fontaine was in society a mere simpleton. His blunders would not come in amiss among the stories of Hierocles. But these men attained literary eminence in spite of their weaknesses. Boswell attained it by reason of his weaknesses. If he had not been a great

XIV INTRODUCTION

fool, he would never have been a great writer. Without all the qualities which made him the jest and the torment of those among whom he lived, without the officiousness, the inquisitiveness, the effrontery, the toad-eating, the insensibility to all reproof, he never could have produced so excellent a book. He was a slave, proud of his servitude, a Paul Pry, convinced that his own curiosity and garrulity were virtues, an unsafe companion who never scrupled to repay the most liberal hospitality by the basest violation of confidence, a man without delicacy, without shame, without sense enough to know when he was hurting the feelings of others or when he was exposing himself to derision; and because he was all this, he has, in an important department of literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and his own idle Johnson.

"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. His dissertations on hereditary gentility, on the slave-trade, and on the entailing of landed estates, may serve as examples. To say that these passages are sophistical would be to pay them an extravagant compliment. They have no pretence to argument, or even to meaning. He has reported innumerable observations made by himself in the course of conversation. Of those observations we do not remember one which is above the intellectual capacity of a boy of fifteen. He has printed many of his own letters, and in these letters he is always ranting or twaddling. Logic, eloquence, wit, taste, all those things which are generally considered as making a book valuable, were utterly wanting in him. He had, indeed, a quick observation and a retentive memory. These qualities, if he had been a man of sense and virtue, would scarcely of themselves have sufficed to make him conspicuous; but, because he was a dunce, a parasite, and a coxcomb, they have made him immortal."

— Thomas Bdbington Macaulay.

"Boswell has already been much commented upon; but rather in the way of censure and vituperation, than of true recognition. He was a man that brought himself much before the world; confessed that he eagerly coveted fame, or if that were not possible, notoriety; of which latter as he gained far more than seemed his due, the public were incited, not only by their natural love of scandal, but by a special ground of envy, to say whatever ill of him could be said. Out of the fifteen millions that then lived, and had bed and board, in the British Islands, this man has provided us a greater pleasure than any other individual, at whose cost we now enjoy ourselves; perhaps has done us a greater service than can be specially attributed to more than two or three; yet, ungrateful that we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James Boswell anywhere exists; his recompense in solid pudding (so far as copyright went) was not ex-

CRITICAL OPINIONS XV

cessive; and as for the empty praise, it has altogether been denied him. Men are un wiser than children; they do not know the hand that feeds them.

"Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the general eye; visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities belonged not to the Time he lived in; were far from common then; indeed, in such a degree, were almost unexampled; not recognizable therefore by every one; nay, apt even [so strange had they grown] to be confounded with the very vices they lay contiguous to and had sprung out of. That he was a winebibber and gross liver; gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit, had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee with a riband, imprinted 'Corsica Boswell,' round his hat;* and in short, if you will, lived no day of his life without doing and saying more than one pretentious ineptitude: all this unhappily is evident as the sun at noon. . . .

"Unfortunately, on the other hand, what great and genuine good lay in him was nowise so self-evident. That Boswell was a hunter after spiritual Notabilities, that he loved such, and longed, and even crept and crawled to be near them; that he first (in old Touchwood Auchinleck's phraseology) 'took on with Paoli;' and then being off with 'the Corsican landlouper/ took on with a schoolmaster, 'ane that keeped a schule, and ca'd it an academy:' that he did all this, and could not help doing it, we account a very singular merit. The man, once for all, had an ' open sense,' an open loving heart, which so few have: where Excellence existed, he was compelled to acknowledge it; was drawn towards it, and (let the old sulphur-brand of a Laird say what he liked) could not but walk with it, — if not as superior, if not as equal, then as inferior and lackey, better so than not at all." — Thomas Carlyle.

"As for the Book itself, questionless the universal favor entertained for it is well merited. In worth as a Book we have rated it beyond any other product of the eighteenth century: all Johnson's, own writings, laborious and in their kind genuine above most, stand on a quite inferior level to it; already, indeed, they are becoming obsolete for this generation; and for some future generation may be valuable chiefly as Prolegomena and expository Scholia to this Johnsoniad of Boswell. Which of us but remembers, as one of the sunny spots in his existence, the day when he opened these airy volumes, fascinating him by a true natural-magic! It was as if the

* Investigation has now proved that this story of Boswell and his riband is quite without foundation. — Ed.

XVI INTRODUCTION

curtains of the past were drawn aside, and we looked mysteriously into a kindred country, where dwelt our Fathers; inexpressibly dear to us, but which had seemed forever hidden from our eyes. For the dead Night had engulfed it; all was gone, vanished as if it had not been. Nevertheless, wondrously given back to us, there once more it lay; all bright, lucid, blooming; a little island of Creation amid the circumambient Void. There it still lies; like a thing stationary, imperishable, over which changeful Time were now accumulating itself in vain, and could not, any longer, harm it or hide it."

— Thomas Carlyle.

"Boswell's unconscious art is wonderful, and so is the result attained. The book has arrested, as never book did before, time and decay. Bozzy is really a wizard: he makes the sun stand still.". ^__ — Alexander Smith.

"Boswell's Johnson is for me a sort of test-book: according to a man's judgment of it, I am apt to form my judgment of him. It may not always be a very good test, but it is never a very bad one." L — George Henry Lewes.

"Boswell's charm for us is ever his inextinguishable and instinctive humanity — the transparent way in which, through the infinite variety of moods that chase one another over the surface of his mind, he thinks aloud (as primitive men and criminals, it is said, are wont to do) and in the thinking aloud reveals the iridescent Everyman that lurks in each one of us." — Thomas Seccombe.

"His singular gifts as an observer could only escape notice from a careless or inexperienced reader. Boswell has a little of the true Shakespearian secret. He lets his characters show themselves without obtruding unnecessary comment. He never misses the point of a story, though he does not ostentatiously call our attention to it. He gives just what is wanted to indicate character, or to explain the full meaning of a repartee. It is not till we compare his reports with those of less skillful hearers, that we can appreciate the skill with which the essence of a conversation is extracted, and the whole scene indicated by a few telling touches. We are tempted to fancy that we have heard the very thing, really infer that Boswell was simply the mechanical transmitter of the good things uttered. Anyone who will try to put down the pith of a brilliant conversation within the same space, may soon satisfy himself of the absurdity of such an hypothesis, and will learn to appreciate Boswell 's powers not only of memory but artistic representation. Such a feat implies not only admirable quickness of appreciation, but a rare literary faculty. Boswell's accuracy is remarkable; but it is the least part of his merit." — Leslie Stephen.

"The universal verdict of mankind has placed this work among the five or six most interesting and stimulating of the world's books."

— Edmund Gosse.

CRITICAL OPINIONS XV11

"What would the world have thought of Samuel Johnson at the end of a hundred years if a silly little Scottish laird had not made a hero of him, to be worshipped as no literary man was ever worshipped before or since, and if he had not written a biography of him which is the best in any language, and the model for all others?"

— Lawrence Hutton.

"Those who think that James Boswell was a vain and shallow coxcomb of mediocre abilities, without intellectual gifts of any eminence, are confronted with the fact that this supposed fool was the unaided author of two of the most graphic and most readable works which the eighteenth century has left us. It is right that Boswell's claim to a high independent place in literature should be vindicated, and the fact is that, after Burke and Goldsmith, he is by far the most considerable of the literary companions of Johnson. That he has risen into fame on the shoulders of that great man is true, but the fact has been insisted upon until his own genuine and peculiar merits have been most unduly overlooked."

— Edmund Gosse.

"The extraordinary vitality of Johnson is one of the most interesting phenomena in literary history. That the greater part of it did not exhale with the fading memory of his friends is due to the genius of his principal disciple. It has been customary to deny capacity of every kind to James Boswell, who had, indeed, several of the characteristics of a fool; but the qualities which render the Life of Johnson one of the great books of the world are not accidental, and it would be an equal injustice to consider them inherent in the subject. The life and letters of Gray, which Mason had published in 1775, gave Boswell a model for his form, but it was a model which he excelled in every feature. By Mason and Boswell a species of literature was introduced into England which was destined to enjoy a popularity that never stood higher than it does at this moment. Biographies had up to this time been perfunctory affairs, either trivial or unessential collections of anecdotes, or else pompous eulogies from which the breath of life was absent. But Mason and Boswell made their heroes paint their own portraits, by the skillful interpolation of letters, by the use of anecdotes, by the manipulation of the recollections of others; they adapted to biography the newly discovered formulas of the anti-romantic novelists, and aimed at the production of a figure that should be interesting, lifelike, and true." — Edmund Gosse.