Phillips Brooks once told the boys at Exeter that in reading biography
three men meet one another in close intimacy--the subject of the
biography, the author, and the reader. Of the three the most interesting
is, of course, the man about whom the book is written. The most
privileged is the reader, who is thus allowed to live familiarly with an
eminent man. Least regarded of the three is the author. It is his part
to introduce the others, and to develop between them an acquaintance,
perhaps a friendship, while he, though ever busy and solicitous,
withdraws into the background.
Some think that Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, did not sufficiently
realize his duty of self-effacement. He is too much in evidence,
too bustling, too anxious that his own opinion, though comparatively
unimportant, should get a hearing. In general, Boswell's faults are
easily noticed, and have been too much talked about. He was morbid,
restless, self-conscious, vain, insinuating; and, poor fellow, he died a
drunkard. But the essential Boswell, the skilful and devoted artist, is
almost unrecognized. As the creator of the Life of Johnson he is almost
as much effaced as is Homer in the Odyssey. He is indeed so closely
concealed that the reader suspects no art at all. Boswell's performance
looks easy enough--merely the more or less coherent stringing together
of a mass of memoranda. Nevertheless it was rare and difficult, as is
the highest achievement in art. Boswell is primarily the artist, and
he has created one of the great masterpieces of the world.* He created
nothing else, though his head was continually filling itself with
literary schemes that came to nought. But into his Life of Johnson he
poured all his artistic energies, as Milton poured his into Paradise
Lost, and Vergil his into the Aneid.
* Here I include his Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides as
essentially a part of the Life. The Journal of a Tour in
Corsica is but a propaedeutic study.
First, Boswell had the industry and the devotion to his task of an
artist. Twenty years and more he labored in collecting his material. He
speaks frankly of his methods. He recorded the talk of Johnson and
his associates partly by a rough shorthand of his own, partly by an
exceptional memory, which he carefully trained for this very purpose.
'O for shorthand to take this down!' said he to Mrs. Thrale as they
listened to Johnson; and she replied: 'You'll carry it all in your head;
a long head is as good as shorthand.' Miss Hannah More recalls a gay
meeting at the Garricks', in Johnson's absence, when Boswell was bold
enough to match his skill with no other than Garrick himself in
an imitation of Johnson. Though Garrick was more successful in his
Johnsonian recitation of poetry, Boswell won in reproducing his familiar
conversation. He lost no time in perfecting his notes both mental and
stenographic, and sat up many a night followed by a day of headache,
to write them in final form, that none of the freshness and glow might
fade. The sheer labor of this process, not to mention the difficulty,
can be measured only by one who attempts a similar feat. Let him try to
report the best conversation of a lively evening, following its
course, preserving its point, differentiating sharply the traits of the
participants, keeping the style, idiom, and exact words of each. Let him
reject all parts of it, however diverting, of which the charm and force
will evaporate with the occasion, and retain only that which will be as
amusing, significant, and lively as ever at the end of one hundred,
or, for all that we can see, one thousand years. He will then, in some
measure, realize the difficulty of Boswell's performance. When his work
appeared Boswell himself said: 'The stretch of mind and prompt assiduity
by which so many conversations are preserved, I myself, at some distance
of time, contemplate with wonder.'
He was indefatigable in hunting up and consulting all who had known
parts or aspects of Johnson's life which to him were inaccessible.
He mentions all told more than fifty names of men and women whom he
consulted for information, to which number many others should be added
of those who gave him nothing that he could use. 'I have sometimes been
obliged to run half over London, in order to fix a date correctly.' He
agonized over his work with the true devotion of an artist: 'You cannot
imagine,' he says, 'what labor, what perplexity, what vexation I
have endured in arranging a prodigious multiplicity of materials, in
supplying omissions, in searching for papers buried in different masses,
and all this besides the exertion of composing and polishing.' He
despairs of making his picture vivid or full enough, and of ever
realizing his preconception of his masterpiece.
Boswell's devotion to his work appears in even more extraordinary ways.
Throughout he repeatedly offers himself as a victim to illustrate his
great friend's wit, ill-humor, wisdom, affection, or goodness. He never
spares himself, except now and then to assume a somewhat diaphanous
anonymity. Without regard for his own dignity, he exhibits himself as
humiliated, or drunken, or hypochondriac, or inquisitive, or resorting
to petty subterfuge--anything for the accomplishment of his one main
purpose. 'Nay, Sir,' said Johnson, 'it was not the wine that made your
head ache, but the sense that I put into it.' 'What, Sir,' asks the
hapless Boswell, 'will sense make the head ache?' 'Yes, Sir, when it is
not used to it.'
Boswell is also the artist in his regard for truth. In him it was a
passion. Again and again he insists upon his authenticity. He developed
an infallible gusto and unerring relish of what was genuinely Johnsonian
in speech, writing, or action; and his own account leads to the
inference that he discarded, as worthless, masses of diverting material
which would have tempted a less scrupulous writer beyond resistance. 'I
observed to him,' said Boswell, 'that there were very few of his friends
so accurate as that I could venture to put down in writing what they
told me as his sayings.' The faithfulness of his portrait, even to
the minutest details, is his unremitting care, and he subjects all
contributed material to the sternest criticism.
Industry and love of truth alone will not make the artist. With only
these Boswell might have been merely a tireless transcriber. But he
had besides a keen sense of artistic values. This appears partly in the
unity of his vast work. Though it was years in the making, though the
details that demanded his attention were countless, yet they all centre
consistently in one figure, and are so focused upon it, that one can
hardly open the book at random to a line which has not its direct
bearing upon the one subject of the work. Nor is the unity of the book
that of an undeviating narrative in chronological order of one man's
life; it grows rather out of a single dominating personality exhibited
in all the vicissitudes of a manifold career. Boswell often speaks of
his work as a painting, a portrait, and of single incidents as pictures
or scenes in a drama. His eye is keen for contrasts, for picturesque
moments, for dramatic action. While it is always the same Johnson whom
he makes the central figure, he studies to shift the background, the
interlocutors, the light and shade, in search of new revelations and
effects. He presents a succession of many scenes, exquisitely wrought,
of Johnson amid widely various settings of Eighteenth-Century England.
And subject and setting are so closely allied that each borrows charm
and emphasis from the other. Let the devoted reader of Boswell ask
himself what glamor would fade from the church of St. Clement Danes,
from the Mitre, from Fleet Street, the Oxford coach, and Lichfield,
if the burly figure were withdrawn from them; or what charm and
illumination, of the man himself would have been lost apart from these
settings. It is the unseen hand of the artist Boswell that has wrought
them inseparably into this reciprocal effect.
The single scenes and pictures which Boswell has given us will all of
them bear close scrutiny for their precision, their economy of means,
their lifelikeness, their artistic effect. None was wrought more
beautifully, nor more ardently, than that of Johnson's interview with
the King. First we see the plain massive figure of the scholar amid the
elegant comfort of Buckingham House. He is intent on his book before the
fire. Then the approach of the King, lighted on his way by Mr. Barnard
with candles caught from a table; their entrance by a private door, with
Johnson's unconscious absorption, his sudden surprise, his starting up,
his dignity, the King's ease with him, their conversation, in which the
King courteously draws from Johnson knowledge of that in which Johnson
is expert, Johnson's manly bearing and voice throughout--all is set
forth with the unadorned vividness and permanent effect which seem
artless enough, but which are characteristic of only the greatest art.
Boswell's Life of Johnson is further a masterpiece of art in that it
exerts the vigorous energy of a masterpiece, an abundance of what, for
want of a better word, we call personality. It is Boswell's confessed
endeavor to add this quality to the others, because he perceived that
it was an essential quality of Johnson himself, and he more than once
laments his inability to transmit the full force and vitality of his
original. Besides artistic perception and skill it required in him
admiration and enthusiasm to seize this characteristic and impart it to
his work. His admiration he confesses unashamed: 'I said I worshipped
him . . . I cannot help worshipping him, he is so much superior to other
men.' He studied his subject intensely. 'During all the course of my
long intimacy with him, my respectful attention never abated.' Upon such
intensity and such ardor and enthusiasm depend the energy and animation
of his portrait.
But it exhibits other personal qualities than these, which, if less
often remarked, are at any rate unconsciously enjoyed. Boswell had
great social charm. His friends are agreed upon his liveliness and good
nature. Johnson called him 'clubbable,' 'the best traveling companion
in the world,' 'one Scotchman who is cheerful,' 'a man whom everybody
likes,' 'a man who I believe never left a house without leaving a wish
for his return.' His vivacity, his love of fun, his passion for good
company and friendship, his sympathy, his amiability, which made him
acceptable everywhere, have mingled throughout with his own handiwork,
and cause it to radiate a kind of genial warmth. This geniality it may
be which has attracted so many readers to the book. They find themselves
in good company, in a comfortable, pleasant place, agreeably stimulated
with wit and fun, and cheered with friendliness. They are loth to leave
it, and would ever enter it again. This rare charm the book owes in
large measure to its creator.
The alliance of author with subject in Boswell's Johnson is one of the
happiest and most sympathetic the world has known. So close is it that
one cannot easily discern what great qualities the work owes to each.
While it surely derives more of its excellence than is commonly remarked
from the art of Boswell, its greatness after all is ultimately that of
its subject. The noble qualities of Johnson have been well discerned by
Carlyle, and his obvious peculiarities and prejudices somewhat magnified
and distorted in Macaulay's brilliant refractions. One quality only
shall I dwell upon, though that may be the sum of all the rest. Johnson
had a supreme capacity for human relationship. In him this capacity
amounted to genius.
In all respects he was of great stature. His contemporaries called him a
colossus, the literary Goliath, the Giant, the great Cham of literature,
a tremendous companion. His frame was majestic; he strode when he
walked, and his physical strength and courage were heroic. His mode of
speaking was 'very impressive,' his utterance 'deliberate and strong.'
His conversation was compared to 'an antique statue, where every vein
and muscle is distinct and bold.' From boyhood throughout his life his
companions naturally deferred to him, and he dominated them without
effort. But what overcame the harshness of this autocracy, and made it
reasonable, was the largeness of a nature that loved men and was ever
hungry for knowledge of them. 'Sir,' said he, 'I look upon every day
lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance.' And again: 'Why, Sir, I
am a man of the world. I live in the world, and I take, in some degree,
the color of the world as it moves along.' Thus he was a part of all
that he met, a central figure in his time, with whose opinion one must
reckon in considering any important matter of his day.
His love of London is but a part of his hunger for men. 'The happiness
of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.'
'Why, Sir, you find no man at all intellectual who is willing to leave
London: No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for
there is in London all that life can afford.' As he loved London, so he
loved a tavern for its sociability. 'Sir, there is nothing which has yet
been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a
good tavern.' 'A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.'
Personal words are often upon his lips, such as 'love' and 'hate,' and
vast is the number, range, and variety of people who at one time or
another had been in some degree personally related with him, from Bet
Flint and his black servant Francis, to the adored Duchess of Devonshire
and the King himself. To no one who passed a word with him was he
personally indifferent. Even fools received his personal attention.
Said one: 'But I don't understand you, Sir.' 'Sir, I have found you an
argument. I am not obliged to find you an understanding.' 'Sir, you
are irascible,' said Boswell; 'you have no patience with folly or
absurdity.'
But it is in Johnson's capacity for friendship that his greatness is
specially revealed. 'Keep your friendships in good repair.' As the old
friends disappeared, new ones came to him. For Johnson seems never to
have sought out friends. He was not a common 'mixer.' He stooped to no
devices for the sake of popularity. He pours only scorn upon the lack of
mind and conviction which is necessary to him who is everybody's friend.
His friendships included all classes and all ages. He was a great
favorite with children, and knew how to meet them, from little
four-months-old Veronica Boswell to his godchild Jane Langton. 'Sir,'
said he, 'I love the acquaintance of young people, . . . young men have
more virtue than old men; they have more generous sentiments in every
respect.' At sixty-eight he said: 'I value myself upon this, that there
is nothing of the old man in my conversation.' Upon women of all classes
and ages he exerts without trying a charm the consciousness of which
would have turned any head less constant than his own, and with their
fulsome adoration he was pleased none the less for perceiving its real
value.
But the most important of his friendships developed between him and such
men of genius as Boswell, David Garrick, Oliver Goldsmith, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and Edmund Burke. Johnson's genius left no fit testimony of
itself from his own hand. With all the greatness of his mind he had no
talent in sufficient measure by which fully to express himself. He had
no ear for music and no eye for painting, and the finest qualities in
the creations of Goldsmith were lost upon him. But his genius found
its talents in others, and through the talents of his personal friends
expressed itself as it were by proxy. They rubbed their minds upon
his, and he set in motion for them ideas which they might use. But the
intelligence of genius is profounder and more personal than mere ideas.
It has within it something energetic, expansive, propulsive from mind to
mind, perennial, yet steady and controlled; and it was with such force
that Johnson's almost superhuman personality inspired the art of his
friends. Of this they were in some degree aware. Reynolds confessed that
Johnson formed his mind, and 'brushed from it a great deal of rubbish.'
Gibbon called Johnson 'Reynolds' oracle.' In one of his Discourses Sir
Joshua, mindful no doubt of his own experience, recommends that young
artists seek the companionship of such a man merely as a tonic to their
art. Boswell often testifies to the stimulating effect of Johnson's
presence. Once he speaks of 'an animating blaze of eloquence, which
roused every intellectual power in me to the highest pitch'; and again
of the 'full glow' of Johnson's conversation, in which he felt himself
'elevated as if brought into another state of being.' He says that all
members of Johnson's 'school' 'are distinguished for a love of truth and
accuracy which they would not have possessed in the same degree if they
had not been acquainted with Johnson.' He quotes Johnson at length and
repeatedly as the author of his own large conception of biography. He
was Goldsmith's 'great master,' Garrick feared his criticism, and
one cannot but recognize the power of Johnson's personality in the
increasing intelligence and consistency of Garrick's interpretations,
in the growing vigor and firmness of Goldsmith's stroke, in the charm,
finality, and exuberant life of Sir Joshua's portraits; and above all in
the skill, truth, brilliance, and lifelike spontaneity of Boswell's art.
It is in such works as these that we shall find the real Johnson, and
through them that he will exert the force of his personality upon us.
Biography is the literature of realized personality, of life as it
has been lived, of actual achievements or shortcomings, of success or
failure; it is not imaginary and embellished, not what might be or might
have been, not reduced to prescribed or artificial forms, but it is the
unvarnished story of that which was delightful, disappointing, possible,
or impossible, in a life spent in this world.
In this sense it is peculiarly the literature of truth and authenticity.
Elements of imagination and speculation must enter into all other forms
of literature, and as purely creative forms they may rank superior to
biography; but in each case it will be found that their authenticity,
their right to our attention and credence, ultimately rests upon the
biographical element which is basic in them, that is, upon what they
have derived by observation and experience from a human life seriously
lived. Biography contains this element in its purity. For this reason it
is more authentic than other kinds of literature, and more relevant. The
thing that most concerns me, the individual, whether I will or no, is
the management of myself in this world. The fundamental and essential
conditions of life are the same in any age, however the adventitious
circumstances may change. The beginning and the end are the same, the
average length the same, the problems and the prize the same. How, then,
have others managed, both those who failed and those who succeeded,
or those, in far greatest number, who did both? Let me know their
ambitions, their odds, their handicaps, obstacles, weaknesses, and
struggles, how they finally fared, and what they had to say about it.
Let me know a great variety of such instances that I may mark their
disagreements, but more especially their agreement about it. How did
they play the game? How did they fight the fight that I am to fight, and
how in any case did they lose or win? To these questions biography gives
the direct answer. Such is its importance over other literature. For
such reasons, doubtless, Johnson 'loved' it most. For such reasons
the book which has been most cherished and revered for well-nigh two
thousand years is a biography.
Biography, then, is the chief text-book in the art of living, and
preeminent in its kind is the Life of Johnson. Here is the instance of a
man who was born into a life stripped of all ornament and artificiality.
His equipment in mind and stature was Olympian, but the odds against
him were proportionate to his powers. Without fear or complaint, without
boast or noise, he fairly joined issue with the world and overcame it.
He scorned circumstance, and laid bare the unvarying realities of the
contest. He was ever the sworn enemy of speciousness, of nonsense, of
idle and insincere speculation, of the mind that does not take seriously
the duty of making itself up, of neglect in the gravest consideration of
life. He insisted upon the rights and dignity of the individual man,
and at the same time upon the vital necessity to him of reverence
and submission, and no man ever more beautifully illustrated their
interdependence, and their exquisite combination in a noble nature.
Boswell's Johnson is consistently and primarily the life of one man.
Incidentally it is more, for through it one is carried from his own
present limitations into a spacious and genial world. The reader there
meets a vast number of people, men, women, children, nay even animals,
from George the Third down to the cat Hodge. By the author's magic each
is alive, and the reader mingles with them as with his acquaintances.
It is a varied world, and includes the smoky and swarming courts and
highways of London, its stately drawing-rooms, its cheerful inns,
its shops and markets, and beyond is the highroad which we travel in
lumbering coach or speeding postchaise to venerable Oxford with its
polite and leisurely dons, or to the staunch little cathedral city of
Lichfield, welcoming back its famous son to dinner and tea, or to the
seat of a country squire, or ducal castle, or village tavern, or the
grim but hospitable feudal life of the Hebrides. And wherever we go
with Johnson there is the lively traffic in ideas, lending vitality and
significance to everything about him.
A part of education and culture is the extension of one's narrow range
of living to include wider possibilities or actualities, such as may be
gathered from other fields of thought, other times, other men; in short,
to use a Johnsonian phrase, it is 'multiplicity of consciousness.' There
is no book more effective through long familiarity to such extension and
such multiplication than Boswell's Life of Johnson. It adds a new world
to one's own, it increases one's acquaintance among people who think, it
gives intimate companionship with a great and friendly man.
The Life of Johnson is not a book on first acquaintance to be read
through from the first page to the end. 'No, Sir, do YOU read books
through?' asked Johnson. His way is probably the best one of undertaking
this book. Open at random, read here and there, forward and back, wholly
according to inclination; follow the practice of Johnson and all good
readers, of 'tearing the heart' out of it. In this way you most readily
come within the reach of its charm and power. Then, not content with
a part, seek the unabridged whole, and grow into the infinite
possibilities of it.
But the supreme end of education, we are told, is expert discernment in
all things--the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from
the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and
the counterfeit. This is the supreme end of the talk of Socrates, and
it is the supreme end of the talk of Johnson. 'My dear friend,' said he,
'clear your mind of cant; . . . don't THINK foolishly.' The effect of
long companionship with Boswell's Johnson is just this. As Sir Joshua
said, 'it brushes away the rubbish'; it clears the mind of cant; it
instills the habit of singling out the essential thing; it imparts
discernment. Thus, through his friendship with Boswell, Johnson will
realize his wish, still to be teaching as the years increase.