Boswell's Life of Johnson

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 gust 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.