Young Boswell : chapters on James Boswell, the biographer, based largely on new material

Front matter

iP-n*.

V

^ ^^0^ :

Preface

To write the life of him who was himself the Great Biographer is a task which I have had no thought of attempting in this book. In the course of collecting the letters of Bo- /ell I have come across a good many new incidents in his career, which, it has seemed to me, might perhaps alter, or at least ameliorate, the view generally held of him, and which might propeny oe made the subject of a group of connected essays. In each essay there is, I think, a good deal of new information, for the sources of which I refer the reader to my forthcoming edition of Boswell's correspondence. But though a large part of my material is new, I have not hesitated to draw also upon older and more familiar matter. The quotations from Boswell's letters to Temple are from the original manuscript, now in the possession of Mr. James Pierpont Morgan, which has not been studied since 1857. I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Morgan for permitting me to copy it. In using extracts from it I have retained, as elsewhere, Boswell's spelling, but not his punctuation.

To my friend Dr. J. T. T. Brown of Glasgow, who has been a lifelong student of Boswell and who has taken a keen interest in my labours from

PREFACE

their inception, I offer my warmest thanks. Mr. Clement Shorter has kindly permitted me to reprint in Chapter ix a portion of the essay that I contributed to the ninth volume of his edition of BoswelFs Johnson, as an introduction to the Journal oj a Tour to the Hebrides.

In one way, perhaps, this book may be unique. James Boswell has fared rather badly at the hands of most people who have written about him. For myself, I frankly admit that I have enjoyed my association with him, and that I have had no desire either to patronise him or to sit in judgment on his occasional lapses from social propriety and moral standards. That Boswell was at times a very foolish young man any reader may see ; but he was not, I think, so foolish as many of his critics have been. When all is said, he had genius, and of that I have tried to make a sympathetic study, preferring to err, if I must err, on the side of appreciation.

C. B. T.

Yale Univkrbitt

February 23, 1922.

Contents

I. Young Boswell .... 1

II. In Holland and Germany . 27

III. With the French Philosophers . 49

Chapter I Young Boswell

You will laugh at my whim and be sorry for my weakness. — BoswELL to Temple, 12 July, 1763.

One of the rarest books in the world is a thin volume in quarto, called "An Ode to Tragedy," and described on the title-page as the work of "a Gentleman of Scotland." It is one of the earliest of James Boswell's fugitive works, and appeared at Edinburgh as a sixpenny pamphlet in the year 1761, although, by an odd error in proof-reading, the date on the title-page is 1661. The author, who was but twenty years of age, was certainly no poet. He aspired, he announced, to soar on pinions bold, "and, like the skylark, at heaven's gate to sing"; but his mechanical verses proved to be as dull as a music-box. There is, to be sure, a description of Garrick in the role of King Lear, which one reads with a sort of interest because of the intimacy which was later to exist between Boswell and the actor ; and there are references to Mason and the elder Sheridan which are worth a

A N

ODE

T O

TRAGEDY.

By a Gentleman of Scotland*

EDINBURGH:

Printed by A. Donaldson and J. R £ i D.

For Alex. Donaldson.

MDCLXI.

[Price Six Pence.]

glance ; but it is not in such allusions that the value of the book consists. The remarkable thing about it is its Dedication. It is inscribed to James Boswell, Esq. The author, with a humour worthy of a more famous publication, has genially dedicated the book to himself.

But, one asks, was the reader supposed to discover the jest ? Boswell, I fancy, did not greatly care, one way or the other. He had given the reader a hint that he was up to mischief, for he wrote in the dedicatory letter : "I make no doubt. Sir, but you consider me as your very good friend ; although some people — and those, too, not destitute of wisdom — will not scruple to insinuate the contrary." If the reader were sharp-witted enough to detect the imposture, he would certainly spread the news of his discovery, and with it the fame of the young author. But if he missed the point, Boswell would be no loser, for he would then be regarded as the poet's patron. In either case, it might be hoped, people would talk about James Boswell. Perhaps, on the whole, he preferred the reputation of patron to that of poet, for he was ever ambitious to be deemed a Maecenas — a sufficiently rare ambition in a youth of twenty summers. Indeed, he had already appeared in this role. His friend, Francis Gentleman, an actor of Glasgow, had published an edition of the well-known tragedy of "Oroonoco" in the previous year, and had dedicated it to Boswell; the young man has been suspected, not without reason, of having written the dedicatory verses himself. Moreover, when, a few years later, his friend Derrick (Beau Nash*s successor as Master of Ceremonies at Bath) published a series of letters descriptive of Ireland and of the English Lakes, Boswell persuaded him to address one of them to "James Boswell, Esq., of Authenleck [so Derrick misprinted the name], North-Britain." It is clear that Boswell's ambition was peculiar. He desired to be known as the associate of authors. The glory, to his way of thinking, is to move in the world of literary men, to know what is going on, and in time, perhaps, to become an influence in the lives of these great ones. It was his ambition to shine, but he preferred to shine in a reflected light. Many years after, a relative remarked, " He preferred being a showman to keeping a shop of his own."

This ruling passion of Boswell's — the passion not to occupy the throne, or even to be the power behind it, but to stand near the throne as the monarch's acknowledged friend — is a suflSciently unusual phenomenon, and harshly has it been judged. It would be interesting to speculate why Boswell's desire to associate with men of genius should have moved the critics to violent indignation. It is surely a little odd that a man who has provided the world with two of the most delightful, profitable, and amusing books of all time should have been denounced as a toad-eater and a lick-spittle. One would think that the means by which he developed his innate genius might have been studied with seriousness, if not with sympathy, and that what most critics have been content to call an appetite for notoriety might have been discovered by the discriminating to be, in truth, a commendable ambition. But the fact is that few critics have been fitted to understand, much less to interpret, Boswell's curious sense of humour. He was a man who not only enjoyed a joke, but enjoyed it the more when it was directed at himself. He was not unwilling to be the butt, provided only that there might be wit and hilarity. In the year following the appearance of his *'Ode to Tragedy," he published another poem, celebrating his social exploits in London, entitled *'The Cub at Newmarket," and dedicated to the Duke of York. " Permit me to let the world know," he remarked in the Dedication, "that the same cub has been laughed at by the Duke of York." Boswell was, and ever remained, willing to sacrifice himself that the company might laugh.

And now, O reader, if all this disgusts or pains you, pray close the book and read in it no more.

for the story of James Boswell is not for you. There are serious and admirable books for those who wish to associate with an author who is consistently modest and dignified, and who, if he indulges in humour, never forgets to maintain a certain propriety, lest the reader call him a fool. But the story of James Boswell is for those who are ready and able to realise that greatness may be linked with folly or, indeed, spring out of it.

If, then, association with the Great on terms of easy intimacy was the ambition of his youth, it was no more than he had a right to feel that he might achieve. He was no social upstart. Nothing could be further from the truth than to conceive of him as coming out of some vague middle class, with a cheap desire to raise himself by catching at the skirts of the eminent. If it were permissible to employ the standards of fine society, it would not be unfair to say that in the association with Johnson it was Boswell who conferred upon the older man the social distinction. A descendant of Robert the Bruce, with the blood of half a dozen earls flowing in his veins, might, it is to be hoped, be pardoned for aspiring to associate with the son of a country bookseller ! There was, of course, a difference in age, nationality, and achievement that must be reckoned with; but, allowing for all this, there was no reason why young Boswell should hesitate to claim his right to enter the most distinguished society of the realm.

His father, Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, was one of the most prominent members of the landed gentry of Southern Scotland, and an advocate of high distinction. Upon his elevation to the judicial bench, he had assumed, according to Scottish custom, the title of Lord Auchinleck.^ His estate at Auchinleck, in Ayrshire, had been conferred upon his ancestor, Thomas Boswell, by royal grant in 1504. This founder of a long line had been killed in battle at Flodden Field, together with the sovereign who had been his benefactor. Nor was Boswell's descent less distinguished on his mother's side. She was Euphemia Erskine, through whom he might claim kinship with the Earls of Mar and Dundonald. Finally, as he proudly relates, from his great grandfather, Alexander, Earl of Kincardine, the blood of Bruce flowed in his veins.

The estate of the family had been judiciously

increased until, in the days of Boswell, the laird

of Auchinleck could ride ten miles forward from

the door of his house without leaving his own

land; upon this vast tract were no less than six

1 This title, however, like episcopal titles in England, could not be inherited ; neither did it confer upon the holder's wife the privileges of a peeress. Thus Lord Auchinleck's wife remained "Mrs. Boswell."

hundred people, attached to him as overlord. Here Boswell's father had erected a palace declared (upon somewhat doubtful local testimony) to be the work of the Adam brothers, and a worthy centre to the family seat which it dominated. Above the Romanesque portal, in an elaborately carved tympanum, is the Boswellian crest — a hooded falcon proper — and other (^ allegorical symbols.

Through the grounds flow the river Lugar and a stream called the Dipple, which empties into it. There are deep chasms, steep descents to the water, and romantic cliffs. On the banks of the Lugar are the ruins of the original castle, and between these and the house, the remains of a former mansion. Boswell told Johnson that in youth he had "appropriated the finest descriptions in the ancient classics" to certain scenes on his ancestral estates. Years later, when Johnson visited the place, after the tour to the Hebrides, he wrote: "Lord Auchinleck has built a house of hewn stone, very stately and durable, and has advanced the value of his lands, with great tenderness to his tenants. I was, however, less delighted with the elegance of the modern mansion, r-

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15;

s than with the sullen dignity of the old castle." It was of this castle that he had said, when Boswell first described it to him, "I must be there. Sir, and we will live in the old castle ; and if there is not a room in it remaining, we will build one."

And yet all this was not enough to satisfy the young fellow who was heir apparent to it all. It was inconveniently distant from cities and the haunts of men. His father had, to be sure, a house in Edinburgh. In Edinburgh James had been born ; there he had gone to school ; there for a time he had attended the university./ But he longed for the true centre of culture and of social life, and that, he knew, was London. His father knew everybody in Scotland. There was no one there whom he, too, might not know. But the air of provinciality galled him, even in Edinburgh, In Auchinleck it was intolerable.

Over the main portal of the house at Auchinleck Boswell's father had had carved a quotation from the Epistles of Horace, in the choice of which, it might almost seem, he had his restless son in mind : —

Ulubrae, a town near the Pontine marshes of Latium, had been a byword among the Latin authors for its remoteness from Rome, and Boswell never scrupled to admit that he had not the animus oequus necessary to the enjoyment of a modern Scottish Ulubrae. Even after it was his own, he referred sarcastically to himself, when writing to John Wilkes, as the "Master of Ulubrae," and he remained consistently unwilling to exile himself there. Absent from London, he was ever restless. At the age of twenty, after his first visit to London, he spoke with transport of the town where his thoughts of happiness had "always centred," where he had got his mind filled with the most "gay ideas — getting into the Guards, being about Court, enjoying the happiness of the heau monde^ and the company of men of genius." And at the age of fifty-four, when his days were numbered, he wrote to his brother David from Auchinleck : —

I am pleased to see that the meeting of Parliament is prorogued to the twenty-fifth of November, as I shall have three weeks more without that additional impatience which the knowledge of the town being full, and important affairs agitated, and the Literary Club, &c., going on, cannot but produce. Perhaps I may weather it out here till January. . . . How hard it is that I do not enjoy this fine place.

But Boswell's desire for the society of the Great was of a peculiar kind. To the titled aristocracy and to the merely wealthy he was, on the whole, indifferent, unless they had something other to offer than rank or riches. At one time in his life, for example, he was privileged to meet and converse with King George III ; but the honour seems to have made slight impression on him, compared with his association with men of genius; for he makes but the vaguest reference to it in his works. It was literary genius that he desired to find.

Boswell first comes before us at the age of seventeen years and nine months; his biography before that is a mere skeleton of dates and anecdotes. On July 29, 1758, he wrote to his lifelong friend, William Temple, the first of his letters which has come down to us. There is much in it about the reading of history and of poetry; but the most significant passage, in the light of what Boswell was destined to become, is an account of his first meeting with David Hume. Temple had, in some way or other, been able to procure Boswell an introduction to him, and the account of the conversation is a clear indication of what Boswell sought in such intercourse. Hume, who was almost thirty years older than Boswell, had by now attained the age of forty-seven, and was engaged in completing his "History of England." In the previous year he had written his essay on the "Natural History of Religion," which had served to spread his popular reputation as an atheist.

Some days ago [writes Bos well], I was introduced to your friend Mr. Hume; he is a most discreet, affable man as ever I met with, and has realy a great deal of learning, and a choice collection of books. He is indeed an extraordinary man, few such people are to be met with nowadays. We talk a great deal of genius, fine language, improving our style, etc., but, I am afraid, soUid learning is much wore out. Mr. Hume, I think, is a very proper person for a young man to cultivate an acquaintance with; though he has not, perhaps, the most delicate taste, yet he has apply 'd himself with great attention to the study of the ancients, and is Hkeways a great historian, so that you are not only entertained in his company, but may reap a great deal of usefuU instruction. I own myself much obliged to you, dear Sir, for procuring me the pleasure of his acquaintance.

This, I submit, is rather remarkable from a youth of seventeen, writing to his chimi ! For Boswell, an ideal association with an older man implies "soUid learning," delicate taste, useful instruction, and an entertaining style. Any modern parent or teacher would be inclined to rest content with thus much ambition in a boy of seventeen, if, indeed, he could rid his mind of the fear that it was all a hoax. James sits in judgment upon the qualifications of David Hume, the philosopher, as calmly — and, perhaps, as discriminatingly— as his father pronounced judgment upon a poacher at the assizes. The boy detected a lack in Hume,

YOUNG BOSWELL IS

and it is the very one which the philosophers and bluestockings of the Parisian salons felt in him when he visited them five years later. Hume had not delicacy of taste. What he lacked was urbanity. Madame du Deffand described him as a gros drole, and Madame Geoffrin called him a peasant. Learning, according to our youthful critic, though it should be "soUid" need not be leaden.^

All this interest in wit and instructive conversation might easily, it would seem, have made young James into a prig. He was in a fair way to become that most dreadful of young things, a boy of large inexperience who fancies himself a philosopher and a man of the world. But he was in no danger of this. His love of convivial pleasure, which later plunged him into gulfs of misery, saved him at least from this. He had as much difficulty as any schoolboy ever had in sticking to his studies ; just as, later on, he found it impos-

* Years did not change the original impression which Boswell formed of the conversation of David Hume. He heard him talk often, but seldom found anything very pointed or profound to record. Nearly thirty years later, he wrote : " He was cheerful, obliging and instructive ; he was charitable to the poor ; and many an agreeable hour have I passed with him. I have preserved some entertaining and interesting memoirs of him, particularly when he knew himself to be dying, which I may, some time or other, communicate to the world." But it is significant that there was never suflScient interest to spur him to the fulfillment of his promise.

sible to stick to any course of reading that he might lay out for himself. His mind was eager and curious, rather than progressive. He resided, for brief periods, at Edinburgh University and at Glasgow University, but in both places his social instincts defeated anything like an orderly education. He had, it is true, more learning, liberal and professional, than his critics and biographers have been willing to allow him ; but his passion for companionship kept him always on the rove. At one time he attached himself to Sir David Dalrymple; at another time, to a company of actors. He knew no rest until he found his rest in Johnson.

And who shall say that he was wrong.? After all possible perfection of systems and courses of study and methods of instruction, liberal education remains a personal relationship. Who would not barter the methods of all the schools for a conversation with Socrates ? Boswell's relations with Johnson, in which he found, not merely wit and instruction, but stimulus to achievement and the awakening of powers within himself which he had never realised, are a vindication of that instinct within him which drove him to seek out the society of men of letters. To assert that Boswell found in such society the fulfillment of the intellectual life of which he had dreamed is not to say that every bluestocking and moonstruck young philosoplier can do the same. The distinctive feature in Boswell is the capacity for reahsing and using the richness of the life to which he was admitted. For this, as we shall see later, he was specially qualified.

Another force which tended to keep him from priggishness was a naivete the equal of which it would be difficult to discover. Pepys's was no larger, though it was more natural ; Rousseau's was no larger, though it was less comic. Perhaps no better illustration of it can be given than the inscription which he himself wrote in a copy of a book called "The Government of the Tongue," — "Presented to me by my worthy freind, Bennet Langton, Esq : of Langton, as a Book by which I might be much improved, viz. by the Government of the Tongue. Pie gave me the Book and hoped I would read that treatise ; but said no more. I have expressed in words what I beleive was his meaning. It was a delicate admonition." A naive person, I suppose, is one who, being profoundly interested in his own personality, makes the unwarranted assumption that other people are similarly interested in it. A few sentences from an early letter to Sir David Dalrymple, regarding the approaching sojourn in Utrecht, are, it seems to me, a classical example of naivete : —

'py^A.

i.C^ P'Ty^.

J ^

BosweWs Inscription in his copy of The Government qf the Tongue "

My great object is to attain a proper conduct in life. How sad will it be, if I turn no better than I am. I have much vivacity, which leads me to dissipation and folly. This, I think, I can restrain. But I will be moderate, and not aim at a stiff sageness and buckram correctness. I must, however, own to you that I have at bottom a melancholy cast ; which dissipation relieves by making me thoughtless, and therefore, an easier, though a more contemptible animal. I dread a return of this malady. I am always apprehensive of it. Pray tell me if Utrecht be a place of a dull and severe cast, or if it be a place of decency and chearf uU politeness ? Tell me, too, if years do not strengthen the mind, and make it less susceptible of being hurt ? and if having a rational object will not keep up my spirits ?

There are those who find in such an utterly frank revelation of what is going on in a human breast something quite captivating. They learn to laugh at it without sneering at it. So, we may imagine, did Sir David. When Madame du Deffand read the "Tour to Corsica," she declared herseK (to Horace Walpole, of all people), "extremement contente'' ; and elsewhere, "J'aime I'auteur a la folic ; son coeur est excellent, son ame est pleine de vertus ; je vais etre en garde a ne pas laisser voir I'engouement que j'ai de son ouvrage." The blind sibyl of the Parisian salons, who had spent her life with sophistication, knew well the value of naivete — and the wisdom of concealing it.

Of the melancholy which Boswell describes to Sir David, and which he links with his dissipation, something must be said, if only for the reason that Boswell himself said so much of it. He perpetually insisted that he was, at bottom, a melancholy man. The fear of it was ever present in his mind ; it darkened his youth, and it shrouded his latter days in misery. He described its symptoms to all his friends, and made pathetic appeals to them to help him get the better of it. All this, not unnaturally, bored his friends exceedingly, for friends do not care to hear of your blues and your forebodings. It may be the duty of friends to help you bear your burden, but if you wish to retain them, it is best to bear it yourself without help. Perhaps Boswell's friends would have been more indulgent if the victim's melancholy had not taken flight immediately upon their arrival, whereupon they kindly assumed that his woes were imaginary. Perhaps they were. But what misery is more dreadful than that which resides in the imagination alone ? Are not the insane so afflicted ?

Again, it is true that Boswell's melancholy was of that strikingly familiar kind which descends upon us just as we approach some period of protracted work. His spirits always revived at the prospect of a holiday. In a word, our Boswell was lazy. But this is not an end of the matter. If your friend is sick, it may be that there is a remedy that will restore him to health ; but so long as he does not use it, he will remain sick. It may well be that Boswell's melancholy was of a sort which afflicts the majority of men, and which the majority of men get rid of by a little dogged pluck ; but the fact remains that Boswell did not get rid of his, except at moments, and we shall understand him the better if we do not belittle his suffering. Imaginary or not, it was there, and there it remained. He talked about it too much, and for that his friends have found it hard to forgive him.

The letter that follows was addressed to one of his dearest friends, but one of whom the readers of his biography know little — John Johnston of Grange. He was, as the following letter makes evident, a boyhood friend, who had become a solicitor and who had taken charge of Boswell's private affairs during his absence from Scotland. There was nothing literary about the friendship between the two, and therefore Boswell never had occasion to mention Johnston, as he did almost all his other friends, when he published the "Life of Johnson." But Johnston was apparently a quiet and affectionate person, and is mentioned in the letters several times as "worthy Grange." This is the only letter of Boswell's to him which is known to exist.

London, 30 June^ 1763.

My deae Friend, —

I have been dissapointed in not hearing from you a second time before now, and as I intended to answer that expected letter, I have delayed writing for a post or two.

I hope you approve of my plan of going abroad. I never could be able to make anything of my army schemes. My father's rooted aversion would have allways prevented me from rising in that way. By falling in with his schemes, I make him easy and happy, and I have a better prospect of doing well in the world, as I will have no up-hill work, but all will go smooth. I have had a letter from my father in which he expresses much affection, and declares that he has not had so much satisfaction these four years. I wish from my heart that I may be able to make myself a Man, and to become steady and sensible in my conduct. But, alas, this miserable melancholy is allways weighing me down, and rendering me indifferent to all pursuits. For these two days past, I have been very bad (owing to thick, rainy weather) and have been viewing all things in the most dissagreeable light. I have now got relief and am pretty easy and chearfull. I sympath[ise] very heartily with your distress. It is indeed a most severe affliction. You are right in thinking that we cannot drive it away. I advise you to study it carefully. Observe its effects, and find out by what methods to render yourself tollerably easy while it lasts. What I want to do is to bring myself to that aequality of behaviour that, whether my spirits are high or low, people may see little odds upon me. I am perswaded that when I can restrain my flightiness and keep an even external tenour, that my mind will attain a settled serenity. My dear friend ! do all you can to keep free of it. Mix business and amusement, so that your mind may be allways employed and no time left for the gloomy broodings of a distempered fancy.

My father inclines that I should pass next winter at Utrecht and afterwards proceed to the south of Europe. At Utrecht I am told that I shall have a most beautifull city to Hve in; very genteel people to be acquainted with ; an opportunity of learning the French language, and easy opportunity of jaunting about to the Hague, Roterdam, and, in short, up and down all the seven Provinces. I am also to hear the lectures on civil law, and put myself on the plan of acquiring a habit of study and application. Too much of that would be bad for me. But idleness is still worse. And now, my friend, don't you think that I am upon a better plan than forcing myself into the Guards, in time of peace, where I should be continaly fighting — not against the French — but against my father's inclination ? Don't you think, too, that I am now upon a more independent and extensive plan, and that a Man with such a mind as I have should rather embrace soft measures ? My dear Johnston ! you may figure the many spirited, gay ideas which I entertain when I consider that I am now a young man of fortune, just going to set out on his travels. That time which I have often at a distance looked forward to is arrived. My father wants to have me go as soon as possible. So that I shall set out in a fortnight or less.