We have next a word to say of James Boswell. 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; confest 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 excessive; and as for the empty praise, it has
altogether been denied him. Men are unwiser than children; they do not
know the hand that feeds.
Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the
general eye; visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities
again, 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 confined with the very vices they lay contiguous to,
and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibler 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 inaptitude; all this unhappily is evident as
the sun at noon. The very look of Boswell seems to have signified so
much. In that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker
fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure, and
scent it from afar; in those bag-cheeks, hanging like half-filled
wine-skins, still able to contain more; in that coarsely protruded
shelf mouth, that fat dewlapped chin; in all this, who sees not
sensuality, pretension, boisterous imbecility enough; much that could
not have been ornamental in the temper of a great man's overfed great
man (what the Scotch name _flunky_), though it had been more natural
there. The under part of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish
character....
And now behold the worthy Bozzy, so pre-possessed and held back by
nature and by art, fly nevertheless like iron to its magnet, whither
his better genius called! You may surround the iron and the magnet
with what enclosures and encumbrances you please,--with wood, with
rubbish, with brass: it matters not, the two feel each other, they
struggle restlessly toward each Other, they _will_ be together. The
iron may be a Scottish squirelet, full of gulosity and "gigmanity";
the magnet an English plebeian, and moving rag-and-dust mountain,
coarse, proud, irascible, imperious; nevertheless, behold how they
embrace, and inseparably cleave to one another! It is one of the
strangest phenomena of the past century, that at a time when the old
reverent feeling of Discipleship (such as brought men from far
countries, with rich gifts, and prostrate soul, to the feet of the
Prophets) had passed utterly away from men's practical experience, was
no longer surmised to exist, (as it does,) perennial, indestructible,
in man's inmost heart,--James Boswell should have been the individual,
of all others, predestined to recall it, in such singular guise, to
the wondering, and, for a long while, laughing, and unrecognising
world. It has been commonly said, The man's vulgar vanity was all that
attached him to Johnson; he delighted to be seen near him, to be
thought connected with him. Now let it be at once granted that no
consideration springing out of vulgar vanity could well be absent from
the mind of James Boswell, in this his intercourse with Johnson, or in
any considerable transaction of his life.
At the same time ask yourself: Whether such vanity, and nothing else,
actuated him therein; whether this was the true essence and moving
principle of the phenomenon, or not rather its outward vesture, and
the accidental environment (and defacement) in which it came to light?
The man was, by nature and habit, vain; a sycophant-coxcomb, be it
granted; but had there been nothing more than vanity in him, was
Samuel Johnson the man of men to whom he must attach himself? At the
date when Johnson was a poor rusty-coated "scholar" dwelling in
Temple-lane, and indeed throughout their whole intercourse afterwards,
were there not chancellors and prime ministers enough; graceful
gentlemen, the glass of fashion; honor-giving noblemen; dinner giving
rich men; renowned fire-eaters, swordsmen, gownsmen; Quacks and
Realities of all hues,--any one of whom bulked much larger in the
world's eye than Johnson ever did? To any one of whom, by half that
submissiveness and assiduity, our Bozzy might have recommended
himself; and sat there, the envy of surrounding lickspittles;
pocketing now solid emolument, swallowing now well-cooked viands and
wines of rich vintage; in each case, also, shone on by some glittering
reflex of Renown or Notoriety, so as to be the observed of innumerable
observers. To no one of whom, however, though otherwise a most
diligent solicitor and purveyor, did he so attach himself: such vulgar
courtierships were his paid drudgery, or leisure-amusement; the
worship of Johnson was his grand, ideal, voluntary business. Does not
the frothy-hearted yet enthusiastic man, doffing his Advocate's wig,
regularly take post, and hurry up to London, for the sake of his Sage
chiefly; as to a Feast of Tabernacles, the Sabbath of his whole year?
The plate-licker and wine-bibler dives into Bolt Court, to sip muddy
coffee with a cynical old man, and a sour-tempered blind old woman
(feeling the cups, whether they are full, with her finger) and
patiently endured contradictions without end; too happy so he may but
be allowed to listen and live. Nay, it does not appear that vulgar
vanity could ever have been much flattered by Boswell's relation to
Johnson.
Mr. Croker says Johnson was, to the last, little regarded by the great
world; from which, for a vulgar vanity, all honor, as from its
fountain, descends. Bozzy, even among Johnson's friends, and special
admirers, seems rather to have been laughed at than envied; his
officious, whisking, consequential ways, the daily reproofs and
rebuffs he underwent, could gain from the world no golden, but only
leaden, opinions. His devout Discipleship seemed nothing more than a
mean Spanielship, in the general eye. His mighty "constellation," or
sun, round whom he, as satellite, observantly gyrated, was, for the
mass of men, but a huge, ill-snuffed tallow-light, and he a weak
night-moth, circling foolishly, dangerously about it, not knowing what
he wanted. If he enjoyed Highland dinners and toasts, as henchman to a
new sort of chieftain, Henry Erskine, in the domestic "Outer-House,"
could hand him a shilling "for the sight of his Bear." Doubtless the
man was laughed at, and often heard himself laughed at for his
Johnsonism. To be envied, is the grand and sole aim of vulgar vanity;
to be filled with good things is that of sensuality; for Johnson
perhaps no man living _envied_ poor Bozzy; and of good things (except
himself paid for them) there was no vestige in that acquaintanceship.
Had nothing other or better than vanity and sensuality been there,
Johnson and Boswell had never come together, or had soon and finally
separated again....
Consider, too, with what force, diligence, and vivacity, he has
rendered back, all this which, in Johnson's neighborhood, his "open
sense" had so eagerly and freely taken in. That loose-flowing,
careless-looking Work of his is as a picture by one of Nature's own
Artists; the best possible resemblance of a Reality; like the very
image thereof in a clear mirror. Which indeed it was; let but the
mirror be _clear_, this is the great point; the picture must and will
be genuine. How the babbling Bozzy, inspired only by Love, and the
recognition and vision which love can lend, epitomizes nightly the
words of Wisdom, the deeds and aspects of Wisdom, and so, by little
and little, unconsciously works together for us a whole _Johnsoniad_;
a more free, perfect, sunlit, and spirit-speaking likeness, than for
many centuries had been drawn by man of man! Scarcely since the days
of Homer has the feat been equaled; indeed, in many senses this also
is a kind of Heroic Poem. The fit _Odyssey_ of our unheroic age was to
be written, not sung; of a Thinker, not a Fighter; and (for want of a
Homer) by the first open soul that might offer,--looked such even
through the organs of a Boswell. We do the man's intellectual
endowments great wrong, if we measure it by its mere logical outcome;
though here, too, there is not wanting a light ingenuity, a
figurativeness, and fanciful sport, with glimpses of insight far
deeper than the common. But Boswell's grand intellectual talent was
(as such ever is) an _unconscious_ one, of far higher reach and
significance than Logic; and showed itself in the whole, not in parts.
Here again we have that old saying verified, "The heart sees farther
than the head."
Thus does poor Bozzy stand out to us as an ill-assorted, glaring
mixture of the highest and the lowest. What, indeed is man's life
generally but a kind of beast-godhead; the god in us triumphing more
and more over the beast; striving more and more to subdue it under his
feet? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, perennially significant
way, figure Nature itself, their sacred All, or Pan, as a portentous
commingling of these two discords; as musical, humane, oracular in its
upper part, yet ending below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? The
union of melodious, celestial Freewill and Reason, with foul
Irrationality and Lust; in which, nevertheless, dwelt a mysterious
unspeakable Fear and half-mad _panic_ Awe; as for mortals there well
might! And is not man a microcosm, or epitomized mirror of that same
Universe; or, rather, is not that Universe even Himself, the reflex of
his own fearful and wonderful being, "the waste fantasy of his own
dream?" No wonder that man, that each man, and James Boswell like the
others, should resemble it! The peculiarity in his case was the
unusual defect of amalgamation and subordination: the highest lay side
by side with the lowest; not morally combined with it and spiritually
transfiguring it; but tumbling in half-mechanical juxtaposition with
it, and from time to time, as the mad alternation chanced, irradiating
it, or eclipsed by it....
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 generations, 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 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.
Thus for _Boswell's Life of Johnson_ has Time done, is Time still
doing, what no ornament of Art or Artifice could have done for it.
Rough Samuel and sleek wheedling James _were_, and _are not_. Their
Life and whole personal Environment has melted into air. The Mitre
Tavern still stands in Fleet Street; but where now is its scot-and-lot
paying, beef-and-ale loving, cocked-hatted, potbellied Landlord; its
rosy-faced, assiduous Landlady, with all her shining brass-pans, waxed
tables, well-filled larder-shelves; her cooks, and bootjacks, and
errand-boys, and watery-mouthed hangers-on? Gone! Gone! The becking
waiter, that with wreathed smiles, wont to spread for Samuel and Bozzy
their "supper of the gods," has long since pocketed his last sixpence;
and vanished, sixpence and all, like a ghost at cock-crowing. The
Bottles they drank out of are all broken, the Chairs they sat on all
rotted and burnt; the very Knives and Forks they ate with have rusted
to the heart, and become brown oxide of iron, and mingled with the
indiscriminate clay. All, all, has vanished; in very deed and truth,
like that baseless fabric of Prospero's air-vision. Of the Mitre
Tavern nothing but the bare walls remain there; of London, of England,
of the World, nothing but the bare walls remain; and these also
decaying, (were they of adamant,) only slower. The mysterious River of
Existence rushes on: a new Billow thereof has arrived, and lashes
wildly as ever round the old embankments; but the former Billow with
_its_ loud, mad eddyings, where is it?--Where?--Now this Book of
Boswell's, this is precisely a Revocation of the Edict of Destiny; so
that Time shall not utterly, not so soon by several centuries, have
dominion over us. A little row of Naphtha-lamps, with its line of
Naphtha-light burns clear and holy through the dead Night of the
Past: they who are gone are still here; though hidden they are
revealed, though dead they yet speak. There it shines, that little
miraculously lamp-lit Pathway; shedding its feebler and feebler
twilight into the boundless dark Oblivion, for that that our Johnson
_touched_ has become illuminated for us: on which miraculous little
Pathway we can still travel, and see wonders.