Boswell the Biographer

by George Mallory

CHAPTER V

Biography is by its nature historical and suited to an historical method. The history of an institution is written in respect of its functions. The Christian Church, for instance, played a certain part in the life of society at the end of the fourth century, and another part when Clement proclaimed a Crusade to all Western Europe. The historian of the Church may well be expected to hold in view the later development during the whole course of his inquiry before that climax; he must analyse the primitive organism, having regard to its future growth, and explain how it was that those organs grew. The biographer has similar duties. We commonly consider the lives of men with reference to a few conspicuous events or remarkable achievements; and we want to know what were the essential qualities of the man and how they grew to those results. In Boswell's case the central theme is single, for he accomplished one thing of overwhelmingly greater importance than anything else in his life. But the growth which came to this glorious end was by no means a simple and serene development. It is concerned with an amazing war between the conventional and the real, the false and the true. We have now to investigate more closely the details of that struggle, and incidentally the effect on Johnson.

Boswell, in the first place, had a number of what may be called conventional prejudices; he had the common prejudices of the landed gentleman in the eighteenth century. He was brought up to believe that he would one day become the Laird of Auchinleck. He was proud of his family name and ancient lineage; he believed altogether the conventional idea, that a man was not only in a higher position and a greater person, but, in some indefinable way, better from the possession of land. Soil and mansion were not merely the insignia of the governing class or the boast of blood, but, further, the supreme expression of an ideal—the commonest practical ideal of the British people, 'to be as our fathers.' 'Holding an estate,' says Boswell, in the first of the political letters which he addressed to his compatriots,[¹] 'transmitted to me through my ancestors, by charters from a series of kings, the importance of a charter, the prerogative of a king, impresses my mind with seriousness and duty; and while animated, I hope, as much as any man, with genuine feelings of liberty, I shall ever adhere to our excellent Monarchy, that venerable institution under CONVENTIONAL PREJUDICES which liberty is best enjoyed.' The truth expressed by these extravagant words is that Boswell accepted, as a consequence of having inherited an estate, a certain outfit of principles and practical objects which was to be worn in the same way that a parson wears a black coat or a coachman a livery. In politics, therefore, he was a Monarchist and Tory. Property and the Constitution, these were his interests.

In the second political letter he shows that he strongly disapproved of innovation and of change in general; disapproved because he disliked and mistrusted them as by convention a man of property ought to do. Reform, however necessary, is never respectable. Boswell liked an order and formality which should go on for ever exactly as he knew it. It was for this reason and not from any æsthetic pleasure that he delighted in the ceremonial of the dinners in the Inner Temple and in the services which he was wont to attend in St. Paul's Cathedral each year, if he were able, upon Easter Day.

The same views found expression in a series of essays which Boswell wrote for the London Magazine. It is in fact in these essays rather than in his biographical writings that we should look for Boswell's opinions on general subjects. Comprehensive though the 'Life of Johnson' is, it necessarily refrains from giving the author's view on many occasions, and when Boswell speaks for himself he does so incidentally, and not directly. In the London Magazine he is free, and consequently the range is wider and the matter more diffuse.

'The Hypochondriack'—for such is the title under which Boswell wrote—appeared in twenty-seven numbers of the London Magazine from October, 1777, to December, 1779. The articles are not very long—three pages of close double-columns is the average length; but altogether they must contain enough printed matter to fill one volume of a moderate size in our day. The title explains the attitude of the writer in the whole series; Boswell wrote as a hypochondriac to others who suffered as he did from periodical depression, to divert them, as he said, by good-humour. 'I may, without ever offending them by excess of gaiety, insensibly communicate to them that good-humour which, if it does not make life rise to felicity, at least preserves it from wretchedness.'

It is remarkable that Boswell formed the plan of writing these papers at an earlier stage of his existence, during the years which he spent abroad from 1763-5. The tenth of the series was actually written then and was intended, so he tells us, to be published, in the London Magazine as Number X of 'The Hypochondriack.' The fact that it fulfilled its destiny, and that, though written in a rather more frivolous style, it is in no way out of place, is a testimony, if any further were needed besides the magnum opus, to the 'THE HYPOCHONDRIACK' capacity that Boswell had for carrying a literary project to its due accomplishment.

The qualities required of a biographer, which Boswell had in so supreme a measure, are not those which necessarily make a good essayist. But Boswell was by no means contemptible as a writer of essays. A great thinker he never professed to be, and never could have become; he had, however, what for his purpose was even more valuable than profound thought or comprehensive originality—the art of self-expression. We are obliged to read anything that Boswell wrote because, by some enchanter's magic, he is there talking to us. This is not the place to probe the mystery of Orpheus with his lute; perhaps, in any case, it is better that the mystery should remain for ever dark; for the charm of Orpheus might be perceptibly less if we knew its mechanism. And it may be no more than an accomplishment which, when exercised with particular grace, gives, in the common way, the capricious illusion of facility. Whatever it be in the art of letters, Boswell had it. He inevitably produced his effect; and it is himself. We are made to feel good-humoured and agreeable; and we wish to leave it at that and trouble our heads no further. A less easy style will draw our attention to the technique of words. With Boswell, it is clear midday on the dial, and we have no desire to bother with the wheels inside.

'The Hypochondriack,' however, is scarcely so gay as one might expect. Truly this is not the serious business of life; he is out for a spree. 'The pleasure of writing a short essay,' says the lively physician of melancholy, 'is like taking a pleasant airing that enlivens and invigorates by the exercise which it yields, while the design is gratified in its completion.' Boswell the essayist has not the solemn responsibility of showing a great example to the world; and he has no need to be the grave judge. Yet there is a very serious background to the thoughts of this jolly author. When he chooses a theme he searches in the depths. Religion, Death and Conscience, Fear, Truth, Pleasure and Pride, Matrimony and Offspring, Youth and Age, Pity and Prudence, Excess, Drinking, Flattery, and Hypochondria itself—such are the subjects with which he sets forth to divert his fellow-sufferers. And having chosen thus, Boswell naturally, on many occasions, says earnestly what he sincerely thinks. He faithfully describes in one place the discomfort of his own depression:

To be overpowered with languor must make a man very unhappy. He is tantalized with a thousand ineffectual wishes which he cannot realise. For as Tantalus is fabled to have been tormented by the objects of his desire being ever in his near view, yet ever receding from his touch as he endeavoured to approach them, the languid Hypochondriack has the sad mystification of being disappointed of realising every wish, by the wretched defect of his own activity. While in that situation time passes over him only to be loaded with regrets. The important duties of life, the benevolent offices of friendship are neglected, though he is sensible that he shall upbraid himself for that neglect till he is glad to take shelter under cover of disease.

In this account there is no ill-placed levity and no extravagance such as we might fear to find. It is a simple and effective account of an unpleasant experience. The advice which he gives to hypochondriacs from time to time is similarly grave and sympathetic, and concerned with defeating the dangers of their state of mind; his view is that the disease is nearly always curable; he unwillingly admits that there are cases beyond hope, and condemns pessimistic fatalism:

We should guard against imagining that there is a volcano within us, a melancholy so dreadful that we can do nothing in opposition to it.

It would be a mistake to suppose when we read such grave advice that Boswell had a serious view of himself as the spiritual adviser of hypochondriacs. His object, as he tells us, was to divert them; and in that frame of mind no doubt he began to write. He became grave and even earnest because he had a very strong vein of seriousness. In the ordinary way of life he was light-hearted enough, and easily dispensed with his thoughts when they began to be uncomfortable: but when he had set himself to write from a text he persevered with his serious reflections and they found expression. He was able to reach considerable heights; a famous epitaph, when he is writing upon a motto from Cicero about the duties of Conscience, stirs him to a noble feeling:

The epitaph upon Sir Christopher Wren in St. Paul's Church, of which he was the architect, has been justly admired as sublime: 'Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice'; 'Reader, if you would see his monument, cast your eyes around you,' so that the whole Church is made his Mausoleum. In my opinion there is a similar sublimity about this sentiment, by which a man, upon the ancient principle of τίμα σεαυτὸυ, 'reverence thyself,' is taught to expand his mind into a grand theatre of self-observation.

Occasionally Boswell, on account of this same seriousness, has an outburst of Johnsonian anger. He tells of a French writer that he published a book, 'Réflexions sur ceux qui sont morts en plaisantant,' that he succeeded in collecting a good number of instances both ancient and modern: 'But I,' says Boswell 'hold all such extraordinary appearances to be unnatural, affected, and thoughtless.'

However, when all is said about the gravity of the Hypochondriack, he is essentially the easy, good-humoured companion he set out to be. He is often dignified, never indecorous; rarely is he even light-hearted, for while he supports the cares of this world with smiling equanimity he leaves the impression that they matter; still more rarely is he flippant. The effect is never depressing. He is for the most part a soothing optimist; and if that seem scant praise, be it remembered that one may resist the optimist's persuasion and yet fall a victim to the cheerful manners that accompany it. Such is the attitude of Boswell as an essayist; and, when we consider what he chose to write about, it is a remarkable performance.

The lightness of touch which was necessary for Boswell's purpose was obtained partly by anecdote and image. A wide acquaintance with books evidently supplied Boswell with a store of anecdotes; and he both selected them well and used them relevantly. One instance, where Boswell, in an essay about Excess, is speaking of the dangers of wealth, will suffice to illustrate his method:

The Dutch, who have much sagacity of contrivance in many respects, have in what they call a 'verbeetering huys' (that is to say, a correcting and amending house, a house for making people better) an admirable method of curing laziness. A fellow who will not work is put into a large reservoir, which takes him up to the chin; a cock is then turned so as to let more water run in upon him, and he is then shown a pump. If he exerts himself with active force he prevents the water from rising, and breathes freely; but if he does not ply the pump, the water soon gets up upon him and he is suffocated. An inundation of wealth will be equally fatal to a man's happiness, if he does not throw it off by vigorous exertion. Aurum potabile will choak him; and, when drowning in Pactolus's streams, it will be no consolation to him to know that they have golden sands.

Boswell's images, sometimes employed in imitation of Dr. Johnson's manner, if they are apt to be slightly extravagant, are generally pointed and help the sense. 'A Dogmatist,' he says, 'is a man that has got a pair of shoes that fit him exactly well, and therefore he thinks them so very good that he flies in a passion against those who cannot wear them.' An image is often used far more gracefully to bring the argument to a head as in the following admirable passage:

But old men forget in a wonderful degree their own feelings in the early part of life, are angry because the young are not as sedate in the season of effervescence as they are, would have the fruit where in the course of nature there should be only the blossom, and complain because another generation has not been able to ascend the steep of prudence in a fourth part of the time which they themselves have taken.

These few quotations may suffice to show that Boswell's essays are worthy of some attention. They can be read with pleasure because Boswell was both a capable writer and an agreeable man. And, moreover, Boswell was a good man. It is a somewhat ridiculous exclamation, because the fact is so striking and so indisputable. One might dispute the proposition that to write an unrivalled biography a man must be good: BOSWELL AS ESSAYIST it would probably be a foolish discussion, for the common sense of mortals refuses to believe that one who has done a supremely good thing is not himself essentially good. But to dispute it in the case of Boswell—when we consider how many hearts he has won, and with how excellent a wooing, surely that would be preposterous! He was not wholly good more than other men, nor less than the majority; but he possessed a quantity of good that might be envied of the best. And this is true, not of the man only, but of the writer. The test is a very simple one: the plain fact is that it is impossible to read Boswell without feeling better. Boswell does not edify in the spiritual fashion of Michael Angelo or Milton; but he edifies just as truly. With Boswell we never want to leave the world for something better, but we want to live in it and enjoy life to the full; and we want especially to love other men. It is not a small matter that we should feel this: and as we may feel it in the 'Life of Johnson,' we may feel it also, though in a less degree, in the essays.

But 'The Hypochondriack' is not to be read for the sake of the author's opinions, nor even for the arguments by which he supports them. For Boswell writes from a conventional point of view. His conclusions are not his very own. He has never been tossed in the great void and fought long doubtful battles for a sure place to stand on. His children have not been begotten with pangs, but adopted for pleasure.

And here we return to the main battle. Boswell was conventional. But this is by no means a sufficient explanation. Clearly, in some respects, it is not even true. What then is the range of Boswell's conventionality and what are its limits?

Beliefs are the result, as a rule, either of tradition, or of emotional experience, or of mere desire. In a few rare spirits they may be determined in more intellectual fashion; but Reason is seldom mistress, and very often she is servant and nurse. By reason, we seek to justify our prejudices and convictions. With varying degrees of intellectual dishonesty we make use of reason to reject what we dislike and nourish what we prefer.

Boswell's case was somewhat uncommon. He was clearly not very critical. Having once adopted an attitude he marched through life without looking back. We have seen something of the outlook he adopted conventionally. He deceived himself, however, far less than most men of those opinions. And in the effort to believe what he wished to believe, Boswell used reason in a curiously deliberate fashion. He accepted the conventional beliefs and standards in an unconventional manner—not chaotically and aimlessly, but perceiving what the conventional aim essentially was, and approving it as a mode of living.

Boswell's philosophy of life, as far as he had a BELIEFS philosophy, was to have in all (including, that is, the future life of happiness which he flattered himself that he would be able to enjoy) the maximum amount of pleasure. Pleasure and happiness, these are ends in themselves; and except in so far as pleasure must be restrained for the sake of happiness either in this state of being or in another—and Boswell can hardly be said to have practised restraint in any remarkable degree—they are not distinguished. Pleasure he speaks of as 'not only the aim but the end of our being.' 'To be happy,' he says, 'as far as mortality and human imperfection allow, is the wisest study of men.'

In the 'Hypochondriack' essays we see how entirely Boswell's philosophy of life is a philosophy of comfort. With regard, for instance, to Love—a subject which, since three papers of 'The Hypochondriack' are devoted to it, must have been considered important—though too logical to be entirely conventional, his doctrine is frankly based upon his view of happiness:

As no disorder of the imagination has produced more evils than the passion of love, it behoves us to guard ourselves with caution against its first appearance.

However coldness or indifference is unpleasant, yet excess of love or fondness is bad, not only as it is not lasting, but also because it is disagreeable at the time.

It is in his religious views that we see best this attitude of Boswell. While his opinions were on the one hand completely conventional, they yet depended quite consciously upon this doctrine of happiness.

The religious fear which I mean to inculcate, is that reverential awe for the Most High Ruler of the Universe, mixed with affectionate gratitude and hope, by which our minds are kept steady, calm, and placid, at once exalted by the contemplation of greatness, and warmed by the contemplation of goodness, while both are contemplated with a reference to ourselves.[²]

However 'romantic' Boswell may have been in other matters, there is no shadow of romance in his conception of a Deity. His admiration for what seems to be merely a superior human being admitted of no spiritual disquiet. Rather the 'steady, calm, and placid' temper so produced was to serve as an antidote to hypochondria.

In order to have these comforts which not only relieve but 'delight the soul,' the Hypochondriack must take care to have the principles of our holy religion firmly established in his mind, when it is sound and clear, and by the habit and exercise of piety to strengthen it, so that the flame may live even in the damp and foul vapour of melancholy.[³]

Further instructions as to how these comforts are to be enjoyed are given in the 'Life' where his final view is expressed:

RELIGIOUS VIEWSThis I have learned from a pretty hard course of experience, and would, from sincere benevolence, impress upon all who honour this book with a perusal, that until a steady conviction is obtained that the present life is an imperfect state, and only a passage to a better, if we comply with the divine scheme of progressive improvement; and also that it is part of the mysterious plan of Providence that intellectual beings must be 'made perfect through suffering'; there will be a continual recurrence of disappointment and uneasiness. But if we walk with hope in 'the mid-day sun of revelation' our temper and disposition will be such that the comforts and enjoyments in our way will be relished, while we patiently support the inconveniences and pains.

The argument is clear: we must choose the path where 'uneasiness' is avoided and 'comforts and enjoyments' are in store for us. The part to be played by the intellect is not doubtful. The power of reasoning may be valuable up to a certain point; beyond that point it is unsafe for it to pass:

After much speculation and various reasonings, I acknowledge myself convinced of the truth of Voltaire's conclusion, 'Après tout, c'est un monde passable.' But we must not think too deeply;

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise

is, in many respects, more than poetically just. Let us cultivate, under the command of good principles, 'la théorie des sensations agréables'; and, as Mr. Burke once counselled a grave and anxious gentleman, 'live pleasant.'

'We must not think too deeply'—because it is not pleasant. 'I most willingly admit,' he says elsewhere, 'that of all kinds of misery, the misery of thought is the severest.' He wished to escape from thought, and found his religion a very pleasant substitute. It enabled him to believe all that he found most pleasant in beliefs, and to reject what he found disquieting. The fear of death, he discovered, could best be alleviated by believing in the divine revelation; accordingly he proceeded to adopt this belief.

But the pleasure which Boswell obtained in this way was not merely the pleasure of a mind lulled to tranquillity, it was the pleasure also of possessing a point of view. He wanted to be entirely respectable. And respectability was to be achieved by adopting wholesale the respectable beliefs. Boswell perhaps could never have been otherwise than conventional in his ethical and religious thought; but he did at one time think, and he deliberately ceased to think; with the consequence that all those views which he might or might not have arrived at by thought and experience, instead of being deeply founded within him, were only an ill-balanced superstructure.

.....

INFLUENCE OF JOHNSONThe effect of Johnson upon this development was a very remarkable one. Johnson himself was pre-eminently a conformist, and it was partly, no doubt, from his example that Boswell derived his desire to be respectable—to be, as he expressed it, 'an uniform pretty man.'

Boswell's own words show us that he was influenced in this way. A meeting had been arranged between Johnson and one of Boswell's friends, George Dempster, who held the sceptical views of Hume and Rousseau; a discussion took place in which Johnson, whether by force of argument or power of lungs, was victorious. 'I had infinite satisfaction,' says Boswell, 'in hearing solid truth confuting vain subtilty. I thank God that I have got acquainted with Mr. Johnson. He has done me infinite service. He has assisted me to obtain peace of mind, he has assisted me to become a rational Christian.'

How much are we to assume from this? How much of Boswell's respectability came directly from Johnson?

There could be nothing more unreasonable than to dogmatise about the extent of a personal influence. How subtle and intricate it is in the thousand chances of a mind's development, of acquiescence and rebellion, of mere time and place! how difficult to see the beginning and the end, to know even approximately the value of any one force in a number of causes! The distinction alone between a conscious or unconscious acceptance, what a difference it makes!

That which determines individuality in men more than any other factor is the freedom of choice. But there is more than one way of choosing. There are some who choose to march upon the high road where tall fences on either side prevent the possibility of wandering astray; and there are others who select the by-paths deliberately. All who choose are in search of treasure. Those who have rejected the high roads hardly know what they so urgently desire; but when they come upon a rare flower in the wilderness which pleases them particularly they cull it; they are then refreshed and go forward with more certain step, and there hangs about them something of the fragrance they inhaled, so that other men when they meet them are reminded of that flower which they too have seen and smelt. The rest press forward more directly; when they have chosen the way there is no deviation; they will pause for nothing unless it be of precious metal. And when their quest is rewarded they surround themselves with a cloud of gold-dust, as it seems to them, and cannot be seen except through this strange mist.

Boswell, it would seem, was among these last. He chose freely, but did not wander far afield. He was one of those in pursuit of ideal treasure; and when he found in Dr. Johnson all that he desired, and the ideal was satisfied, he impregnated himself with the priceless essence. But, inasmuch as it was the essence he had chosen to seek, even this exterior atmosphere was entirely of himself.

We expect, indeed, to see in Boswell beyond his own real nature the marks of a stronger personality. But we may admit the Johnsonian flavour without impugning the originality of Boswell or degrading him to the level of a mere imitator. All the conventional prejudices, the strong conformity which was so pronounced in Johnson, existed in Boswell independently. The 'old Tory sentiments' inasmuch as they exceeded the sentiments of Johnson (which they occasionally did, e.g. on the subject of slavery), were definitely a part of the true Boswell. It is remarkable that in the 'Letters to Temple' the opinions of Johnson are very rarely mentioned; Boswell on one occasion was 'confirmed in his Toryism'; and Johnson is quoted two or three times: but his name appears far less often than we should expect. It is clear, indeed, when we read the 'Life of Johnson,' that Boswell, however he might be a worshipper, was far from being a slave: his passion for truth would not allow him to pass lightly by an opinion he disapproved, and his conviction that Johnson was wrong, or at least that his own opinions remained unaltered, is frankly if respectfully stated more than once.

He knew that Johnson's opinions might be formed only to refute an adversary: 'But it is not improbable that if one had taken the other side he might have reasoned differently.' Not infrequently Boswell ventures to criticise his philosopher's argument. On one occasion, when predestination had been discussed, he even goes so far as to excuse Johnson's prejudices:

He avoided the question which has excruciated philosophers and divines beyond any other. I did not press it further, when I perceived that he was displeased, and shrunk from any abridgment of an attribute usually ascribed to the divinity, however irreconcilable in its full extent with the grand system of moral government. His supposed orthodoxy here cramped the vigorous powers of his understanding. He was confined by a chain, which early imagination and long habit made him think massy and strong, but which, had he ventured to try, he could at once have snapped asunder.

Boswell's attitude in this passage is very far from being intellectually dependent on Johnson or on anyone else. And it is not an unusual attitude. We sometimes see another side—Boswell, apparently in fetters, a prisoner in the citadel of respectability. But it cannot be asserted too often that Boswell was essentially an independent individual, one who was capable of pursuing his own true vision, inflexible and careless of the consequences.

There is no need to infer from this that the influence of Johnson was negligible, or even small. We cannot suppose that the guide, philosopher and friend of Boswell, for whom he had a 'mysterious veneration,' whose 'just frown' he so greatly dreaded, whom upon so many occasions he eagerly consulted, can have been of small account. Boswell himself was far from thinking so; he knew the value of Johnson to him when, reflecting that death must soon rob him of his friend, he wrote to Temple, in Johnsonian words: 'it will be like a limb amputated.'

If influence is to be defined it may be said perhaps that it is a quality which makes us see what we should not have seen without it. We cannot doubt that Boswell learnt many things by his intercourse with Dr. Johnson. The influence of Johnson was in the first place, as we remarked above, an influence for truth, for honesty. It helped Boswell in his early life to see the self which he came in the end to understand so well. He must long have remembered the letter which he received from Johnson at Utrecht.

Boswell, in his desire to make an impression as the young genius, then regarded himself as a peculiar mortal who had no need to regulate his conduct by the ordinary standards. Johnson begins by describing this state of mind:

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.... You know a gentleman who, when first he set his foot in the gay world, as he prepared himself to whirl in the vortex of pleasure, imagined a total indifference and universal negligence to be the most agreeable concomitants of youth, and the strongest indication of an airy temper and a quick apprehension.

The result which he particularly deplored was Boswell's idleness:

Vacant to every object, and sensible of every impulse, he thought that all appearance of diligence would deduct something from the reputation of genius; and hoped that he should appear to attain, amidst all the ease of carelessness, and all the tumults of diversion, that knowledge and those accomplishments which mortals of the common fabrick obtain only by mute abstraction and solitary drudgery.

He then alludes to the wrong conclusions which might be drawn by one in Boswell's mental condition from the difficulties which attend a return to a normal course of life:

He tried this scheme of life awhile; was made weary of it by his sense and his virtue; he then wished to return to his studies; and finding long habits of idleness and pleasure harder to be cured than he expected, still willing to retain his claim to some extraordinary prerogatives, resolved the common consequences of irregularity into an unalterable decree of destiny, and concluded that Nature had originally formed him incapable of rational employment.

And finally he gives some very solemn advice:

Let all such fancies, illusive and destructive, be banished henceforward from your thoughts for ever. Resolution will sometimes relax, and diligence will sometimes be interrupted; but let no accidental surprise or deviation, whether short or long, dispose you to despondency. Consider these failings as incident to all mankind.

Boswell was too honest not to realise the truth of what Johnson said, and we cannot but think of this letter when we read a number of years later, in the London Magazine of 1778, an attack written by Boswell upon the association by Aristotle of melancholy with genius; for this essay seems to aim at undermining the same kind of affectation as that which Johnson had seen in him.

Similarly the effect of Johnson in making Boswell more respectable was produced less by example than by dislike of affectation. Johnson was pre-eminently a conformist; and Boswell desired the same happy state for himself. But Johnson was honest in his conformity, and he cared less for the conformity than for the honesty. And so he was able, when he saw Boswell affecting sentiments which he did not wholly feel, to reprove him. It was not that the sentiments in themselves were not good sentiments, for they often were, but that in Boswell they were unreal.

Boswell: 'Perhaps, Sir, I should be the less happy for being in Parliament. I never would sell my vote, and I should be vexed if things went wrong.' Johnson: 'That's cant, Sir. It would not vex you more in the House than in the Gallery: publick affairs vex no man.'

Boswell was probably annoyed at this retort; it is very annoying to be told the truth about oneself. He now tries to make Johnson admit that he has been vexed himself 'by all the turbulence of this reign.'

Johnson: 'Sir, I have never slept an hour less, nor ate an ounce less meat. I would have knocked the factious dogs on the head, to be sure; but I was not vexed.'

The argument is too strong:

Boswell: 'I declare, Sir, upon my honour, I did imagine I was vexed, and took a pride in it; but it was, perhaps, cant; for I own I neither ate less, nor slept less.' Johnson: 'My dear friend, clear your mind of cant. You may talk as other people do; you may say to a man, "Sir, I am your most humble servant." ... You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in society: but don't think foolishly.'

The result of Johnson's honesty acting upon Boswell's conventional affectations was not to make him less but rather more conventional. It gave him a surer foundation. An affectation does not as a rule become less affected but rather the reverse. But Boswell's affectations tended rather to become the substantial and real expression of a mind as he came to understand that they were affectations. He saw that the manners and opinions which he affected because they pleased him had a value in life and a value for him. The lessons which he learnt from Johnson in this way were, for the most part, moral; they were concerned with the piety and goodness which were so much a part of Johnson himself. Boswell was able to reinforce a set of religious beliefs with a little real piety, and a set of moral axioms with a little real goodness. If it were necessary to point to one definite quality in the Johnsonian atmosphere which we might suppose to be of special value to Boswell, it would be the genuine kind-heartedness and benevolent interest, the 'tenderness' which we find so carefully recorded in the 'Life.' It was to some purpose that the naturally egotistical Boswell was reminded of a duty towards other men, was told more than once without compromise that he must be kind to his father and kind to his wife.

But it is not so much in any minute particular that Johnson was reflected by his biographer, but rather in a more general way, in a whole attitude towards life, in the one significant fact that Boswell himself as we see him, not only in the biographical writings but in his own letters too, is essentially a moralist. The one difficulty which his conscience found in writing the 'Life' was that he might, by showing the failings of so great a man, give support to those who were inclined to the same faults so that they should conceive themselves to be justified by that example. And so he points out with zealous care that, where the 'practice' of Johnson does not agree with his 'principle,' it is not because the principle is not good but that even so great a man was not quite perfect; humanum est errare.

Undoubtedly the influence of Johnson was a moral influence; this in itself may be considered as one aspect of its complete respectability. Johnson wanted Boswell to be a sober, honest, contented citizen, a hard-working, successful lawyer, a good son, a good husband, a good friend and a religious man. 'I have always loved and valued you,' he wrote in 1769, 'and shall love you and value you still more, as you become more regular and useful.' And again, in 1771:

I never was so much pleased as now with your account of yourself; and sincerely hope, that between publick business, improving studies, and domestick pleasures, neither melancholy nor caprice will find any place for entrance. Whatever philosophy may determine of material nature, it is certainly true of intellectual nature that it 'abhors a vacuum'; our minds cannot be empty; and evil will break in upon them, if they are not preoccupied by good. My dear Sir, mind your studies, mind your business, make your lady happy, and be a good Christian.

There was no place for any intellectual unquiet—and herein it was essentially respectable—in Johnson's scheme of life as he presented it to others. If a subject were unpleasant to think of, it were better not to heed it. He wished himself to walk through life in a calm, majestic, and dignified way, with firm knowledge of good and a resolute purpose to follow it. He never, if we may judge from Boswell, was in any serious doubt as to the right course, and he seems to have thought the matter as easy for Boswell as it was for him. It is because he himself desired to be like this that Boswell found Johnson such a valuable friend. But it was unfortunate, as it turned out, that he attached so much importance to mere success in the world, in his profession, in politics; in these, with the encouragement of Johnson, he so completely believed, that when he discovered that he had failed, or had at least fallen far short of his ambitions, he was bitterly disappointed.

[1:] For Boswell's political career see pp. [174]-182. He published this letter in 1783, and a second two years later.

[2:] London Magazine, vol. xlvi, pp. 492-3.

[3:] Ibid., vol. xlix, p. 542.