BOSWELL, JAMES the biographer of Samuel Johnson, was born at Edinburgh on Oct. 29, 1740. He was the eldest son of Alexander Boswell, who on being raised to the bench took the title of Lord Auchinleck. According to the son's account, he had "all the dignified courtesy of an old baron"; but he was also an ardent Whig, whilst James, at the age of five, "wore a white cockade and prayed for King James." But one of his uncles gave him a shilling and the boy promptly prayed for King George instead. "So you see," said Boswell to Johnson in later years, "that Whigs of all ages are made in the same way." James was sent to the High School and afterwards to the University of Edin burgh. Here his friendship began with William Johnson Temple, afterwards vicar of Mamhead in Cornwall; at the end of their first term Boswell suggested that they should write to each other and thus was begun a correspondence which was to last 37 years.
The earliest extant letters from Boswell to Temple are dated July 29 and Dec. 16, 1758, and are thoroughly characteristic of the series. Boswell thanks God that he is in pretty good health and spirits; the violence of his passion for Miss W—t has given place to a rational esteem of her good qualities; he has but little hope of her hand since she is now a fortune of £3o,000, but how transporting to think of such a lady to entertain Temple at Auchin leck ! Meantime he is vastly happy with the thoughts of the northern circuit, though he contrasts his laborious study of the law with Temple's less exacting course at Cambridge. He has begun to keep an exact journal and to contribute trifles to the magazines. A few of his poems are enclosed for Temple's delecta tion.
Here is the authentic Bozzy, who two years later described him self in doggerel verse but with accurate self-perception: Boswell is pleasant and gay, For frolic by nature design'd ; He heedlessly rattles away When the company is to his mind.
"This maxim," he says, "you may see, We never can have corn without chaff"; So not a bent sixpence cares he, Whether with him or at him you laugh.
In 1759 Boswell sat under Adam Smith in Glasgow and in the following year came to London for the first time, his mind "filled with the most gay ideas—getting into the Guards, being about Court, enjoying the happiness of the beau monde, and the com pany of men of Genius." The first of these ambitions was unful filled, the duke of Argyll declaring to Lord Auchinleck that the boy "must not be shot at for three shillings and sixpence a day." On his second visit to London in 1762 Boswell moved, to his delight, in gay circles. He formed an alliance with the poet Der rick and dedicated his poem "The Cub at Newmarket" to the duke of York. Another poem belonging to this period is "An Ode to Tragedy," dedicated by Boswell to himself as relishing "the pro ductions of a serious muse" as strongly as "the most brilliant sallies of sportive fancy." The annus mirabilis in Boswell's early career, however, was 1763, the year in which he met Samuel Johnson. Johnson was 53 years old—his dictionary published, his dictatorship established— Boswell was 23, a young Scotch lawyer and an ardent hunter of celebrities. Boswell's own description of the meeting in the back parlour of Tom Davies's book-shop in Great Russell street is one of the best pages in English literature. Davies, after enjoying Boswell's temporary discomfiture, shrewdly reassured him : "Don't be uneasy: I can see he likes you very well." It was a true estimate. In a little more than a month Boswell was supping a deux with Johnson at the Mitre and sitting over a sober bottle till between one and two in the morning ; the friendship ripened quickly and, inter cilia, Johnson helped Boswell, who had earlier toyed with Roman Catholicism, to become "a rational Christian." Boswell was also making other and different friendships : he found John Wilkes, for instance, "a most agreeable companion." In Aug. 1763 Johnson gave a signal proof of his attachment to Boswell by travelling with him to Harwich, whence Boswell em barked upon his Continental tour. At Utrecht he divided his time between study and amusement and, in spite of "many beautifull and amiable ladies," claimed to have repelled dissipation. With one lady, however, Isabella de Zuylen (Zelide) Boswell f ormed a remarkable friendship, addressing to her from Berlin a long letter of discursive frankness. Even more remarkable were his letters to Rousseau with whom, as with Voltaire, he determined to obtain an interview. These two men were to him "greater objects than most statues and pictures." To Rousseau Boswell described himself as "a man of singular merit." "Open your door," he wrote, "to a man wh6 dares to say that he deserves to enter there. Trust a unique foreigner. You will never repent it. . . ." Later he was able to thank him for "a truly gracious welcome." Boswell was also successful in obtaining an hour's "very serious" conversation (the most brilliant he had ever heard) with Voltaire. At Naples, Boswell developed his intimacy with John Wilkes, who declared that Boswell, "the most liberal man he had ever met with," would be engraven upon his heart.
But the main objective of Boswell's continental tour was Corsica. He wished, he said, for "something more than just the common course of what is called the tour of Europe" and Corsica occurred to him as a place which nobody else had seen. Further, Corsica made a double appeal to Boswell's romantic sensibility: it suggested to him, first, the "state of nature" where there dwelt a "prisca gens mortalium" and, secondly, its people were a nation "actually fighting for liberty" against the Genoese under the heroic leadership of Pasquale Paoli. Boswell became a fervid enthusiast for the Corsican cause, regarding himself as the "am basciadore Inglese" and writing careful paragraphs about his progress for The London Chronicle. Finally, he cultivated the society of Paoli with that minute and skilful care which he was afterwards to bestow upon Johnson. In the costume of a Corsican chief he obtained an interview with Chatham; but, politically, his advocacy of the cause of the Corsicans was a failure. "We cannot be so foolish," said Lord Holland, "as to go to war because Mr. Boswell has been to Corsica." Meanwhile An Account of Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to that Island and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli had been published in 1768 by Charles Dilly, who paid one hundred guineas for the copyright. The Journal, which was rec ognized by others besides Johnson as "in a very high degree curi ous and delightful," was Boswell's first literary experiment of im portance and, in particular, the "Boswellizing" of Paoli was the first indication of Boswell's sureness of touch in biographical selec tion and composition. The writing of the Account of Corsica had, according to Boswell's own record, elevated his soul and made him spernere humum. On the other hand, he could never resist the allurements of sundry "little charmers." "Can I do better," he wrote to Temple, "than keep a dear infidel for my hours of Paphian bliss?" Then a little later he would be abashed and de termine to keep the strictest watch over his passions. For a time his letters are full of the praises of Miss Blair; then Zelide re appears; then in 1768, "la belle Irlandoise" (Miss Mary Anne Montgomery) had for a time no rival ; he had never, he wrote, been so much in love. But the charming Mary Anne would not treat him seriously and so he turned to his cousin Margaret Mont gomerie, who had been commended to him by Sir Alexander Dick as a lady of "nutritive" conversation. "Indeed," wrote Boswell, "it is such as nourishes me and like sweet milk, tempers and smooths my agitated mind." The marriage took place at Lainshaw in Ayrshire in Nov. 1769. Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Boswell, now at Malahide castle, shows her to have been a beauti ful woman.
As a lawyer, Boswell had not been wholly idle. He had been admitted as an advocate in 1766 and he told Temple that he earned 65 guineas in the winter of 1766-67. Shortly afterwards, the famous Douglas case came up for trial, the issue being whether Archibald Douglas was the real heir to the Douglas estates. In the court of session the claimant was defeated, but the decision was reversed by the House of Lords. Anything in the nature of a cause célèbre held a peculiar attraction for Boswell and in June 1767 he wrote a little book entitled Dorando, A Spanish Tale, in which the Douglas case was summarized under a thin dis guise. It was published just before the decision of the Scottish court was pronounced and three editions were published before it was suppressed. Later in the year Boswell wrote a more ambitious volume, Essence of the Douglas Cause, on the same subject.
For the first years after his marriage Boswell was not much in London and he found it hard to make Johnson a frequent or regular correspondent ; accordingly, he begged Mrs. Thrale, as a generous rival, to put "the Oracle" in mind to write to him. In 1772, however, Boswell visited London and was busy with his biographical note-book. In particular, he beheld, with reverential awe, the spectacle of Johnson studying his large folio Greek Testament during the course of Passion Week. The year 1773 was even more memorable in Boswell's career. He arrived in London on April 2, having previously addressed a charming letter of con gratulation to Goldsmith on the success of She Stoops to Conquer, its first night (March 15) coinciding with the birth of Boswell's eldest daughter, Veronica. It was during this visit to London that Boswell was elected to membership of the club and even more gratifying to him was Johnson's final consent to accompany him on a Scottish tour. The plan had been discussed ten years before, and on April 14, 1773, Boswell had the satisfaction of walking arm in-arm with his friend up the High street of Edinburgh, though he could not prevent "his being assailed by the evening effluvia." From Edinburgh the travellers went north to St. Andrews, Dun dee, Montrose and Aberdeen. At Aberdeen Johnson received the freedom of the city, "not in a gold box, but in good Latin." At Fort George they were entertained by Sir Eyre Coote and the 37th Foot ; by the side of Lochness Johnson found a woman living in an earth hovel and hardly able to speak a word of English. Crossing the Atlantic in an open boat from Skye, Johnson "sat high on the stern like a magnificent Triton"; and at Rasay he declared, "This is truly patriarchal life : this is what we came to find." These and many other "exquisite traits of character" are recorded in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785) . A visit on the way back from the Hebrides to Boswell's home was less fortunate : in spite of Johnson's promise to eschew political discussion with Lord Auchinleck, the talk turned inevitably to politics and "Whiggism and Presbyterianism, Toryism and Epis copacy were terribly buffeted." Boswell in his Journal expressed the charitable hope that both men had subsequently met in happi ness, and "in a place where there is no room for Whiggism." For the ten years after the tour to the Hebrides, the record of Boswell's life is a not very edifying story of quarrels with his father, difficulties in money matters, and failure to resist the pleasures of fermented liquor—"not drunk, but intoxicated," was his own careful description of himself on a particular evening. He generally contrived to visit London in the spring and made the best of his opportunities for intercourse with Johnson, accom panying him to Lichfield, Ashbourne and Oxford. One of Bos well's note-books for the years 1776 and 1777 (see bibliography) is good evidence both of the minute attention he was giving John sonian detail at this time and also of the literary skill with which the new material was fashioned into biographical narrative. Nor was Boswell idle as a journalist. For the London Magazine he wrote a series of about 7o papers called The Hypochondriack (1777-83). In 1782 Lord Auchinleck died, and succession to the family estate fired Boswell with political ambitions. He attacked Fox's India Bill with a pamphlet entitled A Letter to the People of Scotland and for a time contemplated candidature for Parlia ment. The Letter, in Boswell's own opinion, was an "excellent pamphlet," but Johnson warned him that it might not make him a Minister of State. At Sir Joshua Reynolds's house, on June 3o, 1784, Boswell dined with Johnson for the last time. After dinner they drove together as far as the entry to Bolt court. "When he had got down from the foot-pavement," writes Boswell, "he called out, `Fare you well' ; and, without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetick briskness. . ." On Dec. 13 Johnson died.
The remaining years of Boswell's life are marked by one not very importnnt appointment (the recordership of Carlisle), by a number of pathetic failures—his second Letter to the People of Scotland, his .dearth of briefs at the English bar, his unlucky speculations, his vain attempts to enter parliament—and by one supreme achievement, the publication of his Tour to the Hebrides (178 5) and of his Life of Samuel Johnson (i791). The immediate success of both volumes served to revive the author's waning self-esteem, but debts and dissipation induced a recurrent melan choly. Boswell had moved to London at the end of 1788. His wife, however, disapproved of London fogs and shortly returned to Auchinleck, where she died. Boswell reproached himself bit terly for leaving her—the reflection, he said, would pursue him to the grave. Two years later, however, he was contemplating "several matrimonial schemes"; among them one relating to the daughter of a dean, "a most agreeable woman, d'un certain age and with a fortune of f i o,000." But neither prospective dowries nor the spontaneous praise of literary critics could properly restore his earlier buoyancy. Worn out by the violence of his pleasures, he died in The study of Boswell's personality has, until lately, suffered an undue neglect. Macaulay, by far the most powerful influence on Victorian literary taste, settled the matter to his own satis faction in his famous essay of 1832 and, in spite of Carlyle's more penetrating view, it was Macaulay's essay that determined the English reader's attitude to Boswell for three generations. About Boswell the biographer Macaulay had no doubts : Eclipse was first and the rest nowhere. But what could be said of Bos well the man? "Servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and a sot. . . ." How could such a man have written the greatest biography in literature? Macaulay is ready with his famous lucus a non lucendo : "If he had not been a great fool, he would never have been a great writer." But the "inspired idiot" theory has by now been many times exploded. A reading of Boswell's letters, or even of his Advertisement to the first edi tion of the Life is, indeed, sufficient to confute the suggestion that his triumph is accidental. He had been obliged, he said, to run half over London, in order to fix a date correctly, and was genuinely astonished at his own determination. Those of his proof-sheets which have been preserved contribute further evi dence of his careful workmanship. "I am much pleased with this sheet as now arranged," he wrote on the "revise" of the first sheet. "As I have made a little alteration, which will only shorten a note a line or so, let me have another Revise . . ."; and again, on the fourth sheet, "Pray be very attentive that I may have no cancels and few Errata." Furthermore, Boswell was convinced not only that he was doing his work with thoroughness but that his "mode of biography" was "the most perfect that can be conceived." About this self-assessment there may still be legitimate difference of opinion, but few would dispute Bos well's claim that his book was "more of a Life than any work that [had] ever yet appeared." Boswell's peculiar skill lay in utilizing his qualities as a journalist in the building of his bio graphical structure. A born interviewer and note-taker, he realized that his notes and recollections were not merely to be thrown together to make a farrago of reminiscence, but were to be treated as the raw material of the literary artist. His instinct as a journalist prompted him to record a hundred incidents and conversations which the academic biographer would have discarded as incon siderable trifles; at the same time he knew that his first-hand knowledge, which was confined to a small portion of Johnson's life, must be supplemented by the hard labour of biographical research. As for the skill he displayed in welding his material into dramatic narrative, it is only necessary to recall such an account as that of the first meeting between Johnson and Wilkes. Finally, Boswell, for all his hero-worship, treated Johnson not merely as a commanding figure which inspired him to "Johnsonize the land," but as the centre of the i8th-century English scene. He knew that Johnson, whose greatest terror was loneliness, would appear at his best and most "characteristical" in the company of his contemporaries; and it is not the least of Boswell's glories that his book is at once an intimate portrait of the Great Lexicog rapher and an encyclopaedia of i8th-century social life. On his title-page he described his work as "exhibiting a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain for near half a century"; and the title-page, like the rest of the book, was drafted with de liberate care and accuracy. From first to last Boswell was the conscious artist.