CHAPTER VIII
There is one redeeming feature, the most important feature of all, in the last years of Boswell's life.
The biographer had gradually during the life of Johnson relaxed his efforts in collecting material for the magnum opus; we can see in the 'Life' how he grew less industrious in recording conversations; for though even in the later part many are preserved at great length, he neglected to write up his journal more often than in the early years of the friendship. This was due no doubt in part to his drinking habits. Conviviality of that kind has a curious effect upon the memory. But Boswell had still very firmly the purpose of writing the 'Life,' after Johnson had died, though he was not the person chosen to do so by the literary executors.[1]
The 'Life of Johnson' was published about six years later than the 'Tour to the Hebrides,' in the spring of 1791. The latter, it is clear from its nature, required far less labour from the author than his magnum opus: the whole scope of the book is infinitely smaller, and there was none of the endless trouble of collecting and verifying the materials of others as in the great biography; for the 'Tour' deals only with Johnson as observed by Boswell himself during their journey in the Hebrides. Boswell, moreover, had wanted to publish his journal during Johnson's lifetime, and we cannot doubt that he had written up a good deal. It would be quite unjust therefore to say that the biographer became more idle, as he was more dissipated, after 1785. The reverse is nearer the truth. It is remarkable and it is praiseworthy that Boswell, in spite of his political schemes, the depression which followed the death of his wife, and the illness which was the consequence of his unhealthy habits of life and in particular the habit of drink, should still have worked hard at the 'Life.' He may have become less regular, but he retained the energy of earlier years.
There was, in fact, in him the need to satisfy somehow those better qualities. His intense belief in the merit of his work and the almost endless trouble he took to verify the accuracy of the smallest fact and to discover the minutest information about Johnson—to satisfy, in a word, his 'sacred love of truth'—are the expression of this need within him. Sometimes, indeed, he is despondent about his book: 'Many a time have I thought of giving it up.' 'I am in such bad spirits that I have every fear concerning it.' INDUSTRY IN WRITING Sometimes he feels the immensity of the labour without the enthusiasm which has urged him on: 'Though I am now in woeful indifference, I trust that before it is finished a taste or relish shall return.' The vastness of the task seems almost to weigh him down. In November 1789 he writes to Temple explaining that he cannot pay him a visit because he must stay in London to receive Malone's help, Malone who is 'Johnsonianissimus,' in revising the 'Life':
You cannot imagine what labour, 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: many a time have I thought of giving it up.
And yet he has the firmest conviction that the book will be a masterpiece; it will be an unparalleled history of a man; and for that reason of supreme importance to the world:
However, though I shall be uneasily sensible of its many deficiencies, it will certainly be to the world a very valuable and peculiar volume of biography, full of literary and characteristical anecdotes told with authenticity and in a lively manner. Would that it were in the booksellers' shops! Methinks if I had this magnum opus launched, the public has no further claim upon me; for I have promised no more, and I may die in peace, or retire into dull obscurity, reddarque tenebris.
It is a curious mixture, this, of weariness and optimism; it shows that there was something in Boswell which drove him on, in spite of a good many difficulties, though he himself (as we see in the last sentence) understood little of its nature. 'The "Life of Johnson,"' he says in another place, 'still keeps me up; I must bring that forth.'[2]
At times his enthusiasm breaks out and he expresses his real conviction of the supreme merit of his work:
The next [day] I am in Malone's study revising my 'Life of Johnson,' of which I have the highest expectations both as to fame and profit. I surely have the art of writing agreeably. The Lord Chancellor told me he had read every word of my Hebridean Journal; he could not help it; adding, 'Could you give a rule how to write a book that a man must read? I believe Longinus could not.'[3]
Boswell understood the scale and interest of his book:
In truth it is a view of much of the literature, and many of the literary men, of Great Britain for more than half a century.[4]
'I think,' he says, in the same letter to Temple, 'it will be without exception the most entertaining book you ever read.' To Mr. Dempster he BELIEF IN HIS WORK said: 'I really think it will be the most entertaining collection that has appeared in this age.'[5]
Boswell's belief in his own work was based not so much upon his literary powers as upon his conception of biography:
Mason's 'Life of Gray' is excellent, because it is interspersed with letters which show us the man. His 'Life of Whitehead' is not a life at all, because there is neither a letter nor a saying from first to last. I am absolutely certain that my mode of biography, which gives not only a history of Johnson's visible progress through the world, and of his publications, but a view of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work that has ever yet appeared.[6]
To Bishop Percy he writes in February 1788:
I do it chronologically, giving year by year his publications, if there were any; his letters, his conversations, and everything else that I can collect. It appears to me that mine is the best plan of biography that can be conceived; for my readers will, as near as may be, accompany Johnson in his progress, and as it were see each scene as it happened.[7]
The conviction that Boswell had that his was the best possible conception of biography seems never to have been in doubt, though he might be sometimes depressed or indifferent, and exactly the same conception as that which we have seen in his letters to Temple and Bishop Percy was expressed more fully later in the 'Life' itself.
Instead of melting down my materials into one mass, and constantly speaking in my own person, by which I might have appeared to have more merit in the execution of the work, I have resolved to adopt and enlarge upon the excellent plan of Mr. Mason, in his Memoirs of Gray. Wherever narrative is necessary to explain, connect, and supply, I furnish it to the best of my abilities; but in the chronological series of Johnson's life, which I trace as distinctly as I can, year by year, I produce, wherever it is in my power, his own minutes, letters, or conversation, being convinced that this mode is more lively, and will make my readers better acquainted with him, than even most of those were, who actually knew him, but could know him only partially; whereas there is here an accumulation of intelligence from various points, by which his character is more fully understood and illustrated.
Indeed I cannot conceive a more perfect mode of writing any man's life, than not only relating all the most important events of it in their order, but interweaving what he privately wrote, and said, and thought, by which mankind are enabled as it were to see him live, and to 'live o'er each scene' with him, as he actually advanced through the several stages of his life. Had his other friends been as diligent and ardent as I was, he might have been almost entirely preserved. As it is, I will venture to say that he will be seen in this work more completely than any man who has ever yet lived.
And he will be seen as he really was; for I profess IDEAL OF BIOGRAPHY to write not his panegyrick, which must be all praise, but his Life; which, great and good as he was, must not be supposed to be entirely perfect. To be as he was, is indeed subject of panegyrick enough to any man in this state of being; but in every picture there should be shade as well as light, and when I delineate him without reserve, I do what he himself recommended, both by his precept and his example.[8]
The 'Life' then is, as Boswell intended, a complete picture of Johnson; complete, inasmuch as it gives a picture of Johnson in every phase of his living, as the writer, the talker, the correspondent, and most of all simply as a man in his dealings with other men, and in all these gives a living picture: complete especially in this, that it gives not merely what there is to praise in Johnson, but every little detail as it occurred, the shade as well as the light.
But Boswell had something further in his mind as he wrote the 'Life.' He was, as we have said before, essentially the moralist. He seems to have had a purpose as he wrote, not only of not doing moral harm, but of doing moral good. When he talks of the faults of Dr. Johnson he does so with a kind of apology and explanation, with quotations from the great moralist himself, to show that to mention the vices of a famous man may as well do good as harm:
When I objected [evidently for the sake of argument] to the danger of telling that Parnell drank to excess, he said, that 'it would produce an instructive caution to avoid drinking, when it was seen that even the learning and genius of Parnell could be debased by it.' And in the Hebrides he maintained, as appears from my journal, that a man's intimate friend should mention his faults, if he writes his life.
After saying that 'it must not be concealed, that like many other good and pious men, among whom we may place the Apostle Paul upon his own authority, Johnson was not free from propensities which were ever "warring against the law of his mind," and that in his combat with them, he was sometimes overcome,' he gives a moral lecture to his readers:
But let no man encourage or soothe himself in 'presumptuous sin,' from knowing that Johnson was sometimes hurried into indulgences which he thought criminal. I have exhibited this circumstance as a shade in so great a character, both from my sacred love of truth, and to shew that he was not so weakly scrupulous as he has been represented by those who imagine that the sins, of which a deep sense was on his mind, were merely such little venial trifles as pouring milk into his tea on Good Friday.
In the 'Advertisement to the Second Edition,' Boswell seems to go further:
His strong, clear, and animated enforcement of religion, morality, loyalty, and subordination, while it delights and improves the wise and the good, will, I trust, prove an effectual antidote to that detestable sophistry which has been lately imported from France, MORAL APTITUDE under the false name of Philosophy, and with a malignant industry has been employed against the peace, good order, and happiness of society, in our free and prosperous country; but thanks be to God, without producing the pernicious effects which were hoped for by its propagators.
This history of the deeds and words and thoughts of his hero is compared by Boswell to the Odyssey. He seems almost to think that the merit of Homer's epic lies in the good behaviour of Ulysses, just as he conceives that the value of his own work is in the excellence of Johnson:—
——Quid virtus et quid sapientia possit,
Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssen.
It is not perhaps remarkable in itself that Boswell should have had this attitude towards his work; it is the attitude in some degree of most biographers, the attitude especially of the age in which he lived, and the attitude of Johnson himself. Boswell's principles as a biographer are indeed the same as Johnson's. We cannot suppose, when he has revealed so clearly his supreme faculty for biography, that there was anything of this which was not entirely his own. But he took the trouble to find out on several occasions the opinions of his great friend, to ask him about particular doubts which troubled him from time to time, and obtain his approval. He had a profound respect for Johnson's manner of estimating character. Mr. Pennant, 'a traveller in Scotland,' is censured in the 'Life' for a book of travel which is compared to Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands' and then quoted on the subject of Johnson; the quotation speaks of 'the numerous weaknesses and prejudices which his friends have kindly taken care to draw from their dread abode.' Boswell's note is:
This is the common cant against faithful biography. Does the worthy gentleman mean that I, who was taught discrimination of character by Johnson, should have omitted his frailties, and in short, have bedaubed him, as the worthy gentleman has bedaubed Scotland?
It was also due in some degree to the influence of Johnson that Boswell himself was so much a moralist: it was something of the same influence, it was in part the honest ruggedness which exalted that morality, by denuding it of excessive and affected sentiment, that enabled Boswell to be a moralist without being (in the Johnsonian phraseology) a canting moralist. Boswell, indeed, became a moralist because he wanted to be respectable; but he was not entirely respectable because he succeeded in being a moralist. A man who is a moralist to the extent that Boswell and Johnson were moralists may be too respectable to be an honest biographer. It does not become the stainless respectability of the moralist to bring to light the blemishes of a man in a book; in HONEST BIOGRAPHY conversation that may be done; there is no harm in a few people knowing; but it would be dangerous and improper to reveal them in print to the public gaze; and so it was not respectable in Boswell to say anything about the sexual temptations of Johnson, and Miss Burney and Hannah More would no doubt be shocked. But the love of truth which Johnson nourished was fundamental in Boswell, and it was irrepressible; we know Johnson, chiefly for this reason, better than any other man whose life has been recorded.
It is remarkable for other reasons besides this—that he was a moralist—that Boswell produced an impartial biography. He was by no means free from personal animosities. Sir John Hawkins had written the official life at the request of Johnson's literary executors, and Boswell, naturally, was jealous of him on this account. A matter for greater irritation was that Boswell himself had been almost entirely ignored,[9] the one slighting mention of his name being worse than no mention of his connection with Johnson. And Mrs. Thrale also, who had published her 'Anecdotes,' had alluded to Boswell only in one contemptuous passage. Boswell therefore had the deliberate intention of showing up the faults of these two rivals; a long paragraph is introduced as early as possible, explaining fully why the 'Life' by Sir John Hawkins is a bad book, and ending thus:
There is throughout the whole of it a dark uncharitable cast, by which the most unfavourable construction is put upon almost every circumstance in the character and conduct of my illustrious friend; who, I trust, will, by a true and fair delineation, be vindicated both from the injurious misrepresentations of this author, and from the slighter aspersions of a lady who once lived in great intimacy with him.[10]
The same lady was alluded to afterwards in a note of peculiar malice:
I am obliged in so many instances to notice Mrs. Piozzi's incorrectness of relation, that I gladly seize this opportunity of acknowledging that, however often, she is not always inaccurate.
It was not only for his personal grievances that Boswell was anxious to contradict Sir John Hawkins and Mrs. Piozzi, but also because he had a different conception of Johnson, a far more loving appreciation and veneration, which was a reason in itself that he should write the life of his friend; to vindicate his character and express his admiration would be some tribute to their long friendship. Boswell, indeed, always retained something of the 'mysterious veneration' of his early years. Johnson to him was always the hero; he was the 'literary Colossus,' the 'Rambler,' the 'awful and majestick Philosopher.' The thought REVERENCE that he might lose his reverence was a source of anxiety to Boswell:
In my interview with Dr. Johnson this evening, I was quite easy, quite as his companion; upon which I find in my journal the following reflection: 'So ready is my mind to suggest matter for dissatisfaction that I felt a sort of regret that I was so easy. I missed that awful reverence with which I used to contemplate Mr. Samuel Johnson, in the complex magnitude of his literary, moral, and religious character. I have a wonderful superstitious love of mystery.'
Boswell, as a matter of fact, as we may see from the 'Life,' preserved his 'reverence,' and his view of Johnson as the solemn and wise writer and moralist has tinged the biography. He records a jovial mood of Johnson's as a most extraordinary moment in a man of his dignified character:
I have known him at times exceedingly diverted at what seemed to others a very small sport. He now laughed immoderately, without any reason that we could perceive, at our friend's making his will; called him the testator, and added, 'I daresay, he thinks he has done a mighty thing.' ... In this playful manner did he run on, exulting in his own pleasantry, which certainly was not such as might be expected from the authour of The Rambler, but which is here preserved, that my readers may be acquainted even with the slightest occasional characteristicks of so eminent a man.
He goes on to tell how Dr. Johnson 'could not stop his merriment, but continued it all the way till he got without the Temple Gate. He then burst into such a fit of laughter that he appeared to be almost in a convulsion; and, in order to support himself, laid hold of one of the posts at the side of the foot pavement, and sent forth peals so loud, that in the silence of the night his voice seemed to resound from Temple Bar to Fleetditch.' Boswell talks of the episode as 'this most ludicrous exhibition of the awful, melancholy, and venerable Johnson.'
[1:] Sir John Hawkins wrote the official life.
[2:] Letters to Temple, p. 252.
[3:] Ib., p. 267.
[4:] Ib., p. 265.
[5:] Letters to Temple, p. 338.
[6:] Ib., p. 218.
[7:] Nichols' Illustrations, vii, 309.
[8:] Life of Johnson, i, 29-30.
[9:] Memoirs of Sir J. Hawkins, i, 235.
[10:] Life of Johnson, i, 28.