LIFE OF JAMES BOSWELL.

THE life of the biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson is essentially uneventful and commonplace. James Boswell was born at Edinburgh, October 29, 1740. His father was one of the Judges of the Court of Session, taking the title of Lord Auchinleck from the name of the family estate in Ayrshire. Lord Auchinleck would appear to have been a quiet, shrewd Scotsman, who thought that his son James, from his craze for great men, had a 'bee in his bonnet;' and, according to a popular anecdote, said of him on one occasion, 'There's nae hope for Jamie, mon; Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, man? He's done with Paoli, he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon? A dominie, mon, an auld dominie; he keepit a schule and cau'd it an acaudemy.' It was intended by James's father that he should follow the profes sion of advocate; and he therefore studied at the University of Glasgow; he went also in 1763 to the University of Utrecht. The same year he made the acquaintance of Johnson. Having spent a winter at Utrecht, he travelled through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; and at Corsica, through a letter of introduction from Rousseau, he made the acquaintance of the patriot Paoli. He published in 1768 an Account of Corsica, with Memoirs of General Pasquale di Paoli; his enthusiasm, which he frequently manifested in very silly ways, for Corsican independence, gained him the nickname of Corsica Boswell.' In 1766, Boswell became a member of the Faculty of Advocates; but though he subsequently entered at the English bar, neither in Scotland nor in England was he successful or enthusiastic as a lawyer. After a series of amours, not always reputable, of which we have an amusing account in the Letters of James Boswell, addressed to the Rev. W. J. Temple, from the original MSS., a posthumous volume published in 1856, he married in 1769 an Ayrshire lady, named Montgomery, by whom he had several children, and to whom, to do Bozzy justice, he was warmly attached. In 1773, he was admitted a member of the Literary Club founded by Johnson, and from that time to Johnson's death in 1784, his life was bound up with that of the sage whom he worshipped, and may, with truth, be said to have immortalized. He accompanied Johnson to Scotland and the Hebrides in 1773, published a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in 1785, and in 1791 appeared in two volumes his great work, his Life of Samuel Johnson. Boswell died in London, June 19, 1795. He left two sons. The elder, Sir Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, Baronet, was born in 1775. He was a man of great geniality, humour, and cleverness. Mr. Lockhart says that he had 'all his father Bozzy's cleverness, good-humour, and joviality, without one touch of his meaner qualities;' and his Songs chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which were published at Edinburgh in 1803, and which includes the much-appreciated Jenny dang the weaver,' have always been highly popular. Sir Alexander perished in a duel with Mr. Stuart of Dunearn in 1822, caused by some miserable newspaper personalities. James Boswell, junior, whose notes to his father's work are, many of them, highly valuable, died somewhat suddenly within about a fortnight of the death of his brother. He was a man of literary taste, as shown in his careful edition of Malone's Shakspeare, in twentyone volumes, which was published in 1821.

Of Boswell not much need be said. The great service he did the world was to write the Life of Johnson, and that service is so great that it ought to be allowed to cover a multitude of sins. Let us also say, with Mr. Carlyle, Boswell wrote a good book, because he had a

heart and an eye to discern wisdom and an utterance to render it forth; because of his free insight, his lively talent, above all, his love and childlike open-mindedness.' The great vice of Boswell is his utter want of, and inability to appreciate, reticence. His exposure of selfconsciousness is positively indecent; his deficiency in taste is absolutely incredible. Take a proof or two of this from his Letters to Temple. When Wilkes and I sat together, each glass of wine produced a flash of wit like gunpowder thrown on the fire-Puff! puff!' David Hume, on one occasion, spoke disparagingly of some of Johnson's sentiments, whereupon Boswell retorted by sheer impertinence. Yet he thus comments on the affair: 'Davy was finely punished for his treatment of my revered friend, and he deserved it richly, both for his petulance to so great a character, and for his talking so before me!' Sir John Hawkins was Boswell's special object of aversion, and he expresses it in this fashion: Hawkins is, no doubt, very malevolent. Observe how he talks of me as quite unknown.' As another evidence of the character of the man, take the following portrait of one of his numerous loves, whom he himself describes as La belle Irlandaise; it is the bathos of love, and Boswell all over: Figure to yourself, Temple, a young lady just sixteen, formed like a Grecian nymph, with the sweetest countenance, full of sensibility, accomplished, with a Dublin education, always half the year in the north of Ireland, her father a counsellor-at-law, with an estate of £1000 a year, and above £10,000 in ready money; her mother a sensible, well-bred woman; she the darling of her parents, and no other child but her sister. She is cousin to some cousins of mine in this country.' Lastly, who but Bozzy, overwhelmed with distress at the loss of his wife, would yet have noticed, much less placed on record, the fact that there were nineteen carriages followed the hearse' that conveyed her to her last resting-place?

But it is in these and such things that Boswell shows to the least advantage; he was utterly unable to see the proportions either of men or of things, and, above all, of himself. The bulk of his critics have, however, inferred that he had no good side. This is a mistake. Boswell was certainly neither a very great nor even a very good man, but was not deficient in vivacity; he was a bon camarade as well as a bon vivant; and, if we may believe various authorities, he sometimes, perhaps unconsciously, was capable of flashes of wit. It is also apparent that many of his impulses were good. He was kindly in disposition, and his domestic affections were strong; and much, as we know, is forgiven to those that love much. Then, again, although little remarkable in himself, he had the knack of discovering truly remarkable men: Johnson, Rousseau, and even Paoli, his admiration for whom procured him so much ridicule, were, after all, really worth knowing and writing about. And, finally, in days of payment by results,' we are bound to accord some little merit to the author of one book which is universally admitted to be the first in its own department of literature.

CONTENTS.

16

24

39

- Projected History of the War-Letters to

Langton, Baretti, etc.-Grant of Pension

CHAP. XIV. 1763. First Interview of Boswell

with Johnson-Meeting at 'The Mitre' Tavern-

Record of his Opinions of Gray, Goldsmith, etc. 109

CHAP. XV. 1763.-Account of Goldsmith-John-

son accompanies Boswell to Harwich, on his

intended Foreign Tour

244

1758-1759.-The Idler-Death of John-

son's Mother-Publication of Rasselas-Contro-

versy regarding Blackfriars Bridge

1760-1763.-Accession of George III.

LIST OF PERSONS AND PLACES.