CHAPTER XII
The method we have been examining has revealed, in a sense, a second aspect of Boswell as the biographer, the natural complement of that scientific spirit which inspired the acute observation, the delicate experiments, the methodical accuracy; for he brought to the work of recording not merely the faculty for stating truthfully what he had seen, but the power of expressing his feelings; and it was particularly this feeling—an interest at the same time full-blooded, comprehensive and minute—that insisted upon expression.
The emotion which compels a man to bind himself to an ideal, and, having determined that something must be done under certain conditions, compels the doing of it without capitulation, is one which enters into many kinds of work and is to be found no doubt very often among scientists; but it is in a peculiar degree the possession of the artist. To him indeed it seems to be essential; for his value depends certainly not more on the quality of what he has to express than on the completeness with which he expresses it. And so perhaps we ought to connect the consistency, the truth, the faith of Boswell, and his disregard for obstacles, with his artistic rather than with his scientific qualities; so we ought to interpret Boswell's love of his labour and his conviction that it was good, and so to understand all the trouble that it cost to his mind and to the more sensitive part of him. The refusal to depart from his ideal which he made to Hannah More ('I would not cut off his claws, nor make my tiger a cat, to please anybody'),[1] and again to Bishop Percy when he declined, for the sake of 'authenticity,' to suppress the bishop's name,[2] is an indication of the need he had to express himself as an artist.[3]
But how was it that he came so to express himself? And what is it that he succeeded in expressing?
Of the impulse to expression and what it meant in Boswell's case something has been said already in these pages. We cannot understand the engine if we forget the power that drives it, and we must emphasise once again the force that Boswell obeyed. His passion for truth was not comprehensive: and it was for the truth of the realist, not the truth of the idealist. It did not include the whole of life; it did not attempt to view the entire scene in correct perspective; and TRUTH Boswell was decidedly not a philosopher. He did not greatly need explanations of the universe; he tended to accept such as seemed convenient. He had no logic about abstract theories, and only a very limited power of criticising evidence. One who cares for truth with respect to every fact and deduction is inclined to reject his first impressions, because experience has taught him that 'all men are liars.' The face of things is so often false! But Boswell was content to look no further; he sometimes deliberately disregarded the facts of existence; he lived one half his life in a glitter of his own creation. Nevertheless, the passion for truth was vivid and vital. It lived apart to work out its own consummation; and it was all the more vehement for being confined. It is perhaps for this reason—that the truth inherent in Boswell was confined within such strict limits—that it required expression. In these circumstances Boswell's buoyant nature had need of a safety-valve. Truth for him was concerned entirely with an external view of people. He was rarely analytical; he did not care for subtle states of mind and the feelings that composed them; he looked directly at actions and their primary motives. The vision was so clear and strong that Boswell by its very insistence was obliged to create an imperishable image.
The reasons that made it certain from the beginning that Johnson would become the vehicle for this expression extend beyond those qualities which made Boswell prefer and admire him above all other men; they depend upon Boswell's attitude towards mankind. We have seen that he apologises and justifies himself for relating the weaknesses and absurdities of Johnson. And yet he sometimes seems to have a peculiar delight in them. These shades in Johnson's character are dealt with not as an unpleasant but necessary task, to be despatched with a light touch as though it ill became him to speak of them, but with a full flavour of rich and lasting enjoyment.
They were in fact to Boswell the most striking and salient qualities of his great hero, and it was necessary therefore that they should be well and completely related. But in the story as we read it, we do not merely observe that the rude victories and uneven justice of Johnson were supremely significant in the eyes of the author. To Boswell the whole personality of Johnson was a source of the keenest pleasure. He took an insatiable delight in it. He loved to imitate the curious gestures and manner of the Doctor. He became, to use his own word, 'Johnsonised'; and no doubt he reached that state which he desired his readers to attain, and both 'talked and thought' Johnson. He was 'strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian æther'; and when he had drunk his fill and it had all soaked in, it was THE FUN OF JOHNSON reproduced with a relish of the joyous moments it had given him. The picture of Johnson, as he saw it, was a source of deep and satisfying enjoyment to Boswell: he overflowed with mere pleasure in the contemplation of a man, and expressed himself, as an artist, out of the abundance of this sympathy, in terms of 'Johnson.'
And the enjoyment, one may say, depending as it did very largely upon a certain dramatic quality of that curious figure, was concerned necessarily very much with the oddities and weaknesses of the man, and particularly with that greatest weakness of all, the abuse of strength.
When it is said that Boswell is an artist, it is not meant that the whole of the 'Life of Johnson' was treated artistically. It exhibits, no doubt, a certain elegance of proportion; it is a good composition, well arranged, well spaced; and in as far as it has those qualities we may consider that it belongs to art. But it is not chiefly because, having recorded what happened in a perfectly straightforward manner, he then fitted together the fragments to make as it were a complete model of a man—it is not for the design—that we call Boswell an artist. It is because he did not very often, as we have seen, relate the facts quite simply, but related them in such a manner that the whole atmosphere of the scene, all that is most human and most humorous, strikes upon us. It is in what have been called his comedy scenes that we see the supreme art of Boswell.
A characteristic passage relates an attempt to make fun of Johnson by inquiring if he took dancing lessons:
I ventured to mention a ludicrous passage in the newspapers, that Dr. Johnson was learning to dance of Vestris. Lord Charlemont, wishing to excite him to talk, proposed in a whisper, that he should be asked whether it was true. 'Shall I ask him?' said his Lordship. We were by a great majority clear for the experiment.
In these few words Boswell has recalled the spirit of the scene. We have a vision of Johnson sitting terrible in the midst, and his hearers feeling and behaving like schoolboys in the presence of some bearish pedagogue. Some one proposes an audacious jest, and all await with eagerness the crucial moment. You may sit upon the edge of a volcano, or you may fire the train which shall explode a planet, but no expectancy is so keen as this.
His Lordship very gravely and with a courteous air said, 'Pray, sir, is it true that you are taking lessons of Vestris?' ... This was risking a good deal, and required the boldness of a General of Irish Volunteers to make the attempt.
The explosion unerringly follows, but the rumble dies away in rippling laughter:
COMEDY SCENE Johnson was at first startled and in some heat answered, 'How can your Lordship ask so simple a question?' But immediately recovering himself, whether from unwillingness to be deceived or to appear deceived, or whether from real good-humour, he kept up the joke....
Johnson in these scenes of comedy is always the dictator; the elements of the ridiculous are constantly present when someone who behaves with a pompous manner is rarely willing to be laughed at, and Boswell's sense of what was incongruous was near the surface and ready to make merry.
The company on one occasion were greatly tickled by a word applied in Johnson's most majestic manner to a rather laughable female character, and the incident furnishes Boswell with material for one of his best descriptions of this kind. Johnson had remarked 'The woman had a bottom of good sense.'
The word bottom [says Boswell] thus introduced, was so ludicrous when contrasted with his gravity, that most of us could not forbear tittering and laughing; though I recollect that the Bishop of Killaloe kept his countenance with perfect steadiness, while Miss Hannah More slyly hid her face behind a lady's back who sat on the same settee with her. His pride could not bear that any expression of his should excite ridicule, when he did not intend it; he therefore resolved to assume and exercise despotick power, glanced sternly around, and called out in a strong tone, 'Where's the merriment?' Then collecting himself, and looking aweful, to make us feel how he could impose restraint, and as it were searching his mind for a still more ludicrous word, he slowly pronounced, 'I say the woman was fundamentally sensible'; as if he had said, 'Hear this now, and laugh if you dare.' We all sat composed as at a funeral.
This, like the other scene, is extremely dramatic. Neither would have been so had not the writer himself realised the full humour of the situation. Perhaps the most remarkable quality of the descriptions is the amount left out.[4] The few details which Boswell gives us are sufficient to reveal the secret of everybody's feelings, and then Johnson strikes in with the characteristic remark. It is difficult to appreciate to the full the merit of these scenes without comparing them with those supplied by less talented pens; when we read the accounts of Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins, and even of Miss Burney, we realise the immeasurable superiority of Boswell's. They have the elusive quality of all impressionist[5] art; they might be ranked with the nocturnes of Whistler: if they were produced, as it almost seems they were, with as little apparent care, they were produced, however, only by the experience of a lifetime. By continually thinking 'Johnson,' Boswell was able to give the few necessary touches which expressed the inward vision.
JOHNSON'S DICTATORSHIPIn the two passages we have quoted, Boswell has revealed the humour of a situation; those supreme moments of Johnson's dictatorship were to him a never-failing treasure-house of priceless mirth; and he has given us a key which enables us to hear with him the magic thunder, to see each bright flash of the lightning, and with him to laugh the rich mellow laughter because it is so absurd, and yet so inevitable, and so good, that men should have been fashioned so.
Boswell delights in showing us the mind of Johnson, how he was prompted like the rest of us by all the little motives of men. He enjoys Johnson's humanity. Sometimes he is more solemn. One great subject is Johnson's tenderness—as in an account of an argument with Sir Joshua about drinking:
Johnson (who from drinking only water supposed everybody who drank wine to be elevated): 'I won't argue any more with you, Sir. You are too far gone.' Sir Joshua: 'I should have thought so indeed, Sir, had I made such a speech as you have now done.' Johnson (drawing himself in, and I really thought blushing): 'Nay, don't be angry. I did not mean to offend you.'
The best instance perhaps of Johnson's compunction after rudeness is on the occasion of Dr. Percy's defence of Dr. Mounsey:
Mr. Davies, who sat next to Dr. Percy, having after this had some conversation aside with him, made a discovery which, in his zeal to pay court to Dr. Johnson, he eagerly proclaimed aloud from the foot of the table: 'O, Sir, I have found out a very good reason why Dr. Percy never heard Mounsey swear or talk bawdy; for he tells me, he never saw him but at the Duke of Northumberland's table.' 'And so, Sir (said Johnson loudly, to Dr. Percy), you would shield this man from the charge of swearing and talking bawdy, because he did not do so at the Duke of Northumberland's table....' Dr. Percy seemed to be displeased, and soon afterwards left the company.
Later, in the course of conversation, Johnson denied any merit to Swift for writing 'The Conduct of the Allies'; then
recollecting that Mr. Davies, by acting as an informer, had been the occasion of his talking somewhat too harshly to his friend Dr. Percy, for which, probably, when the first ebullition was over, he felt some compunction,[6] he took an opportunity to give him a hit; so added, with a preparatory laugh, 'Why, Sir, Tom Davies might have written "The Conduct of the Allies."' Poor Tom being thus suddenly dragged into ludicrous notice in presence of the Scottish doctors, to whom he was ambitious of appearing to advantage, was grievously mortified.
The compunction, however, on this occasion seems to have had a short duration, for Boswell goes on to say:
When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning, I found him highly satisfied with his colloquial prowess the preceding evening: 'Well (said he), we had good talk.' Boswell: 'Yes, Sir, you tossed and gored several persons.'
THE JOHNSONIAN FLAVOURBoswell seems to have had the power of picking out all that was characteristic and important, of ruthlessly discarding unnecessary details and presenting only the salient points, of seeing a scene as a whole, with its more vivid colours flashing out as it were from a dull background, so that the whole impression is complete and clear. The smallest conversations, as we saw, were dealt with in this way. And as he 'Johnsonised' the talk which he had himself taken down, and 'Johnsonised' the stories given to him by Mr. Langton, he 'Johnsonised' in the same way these larger scenes. While retaining most of the words used by Johnson himself, Boswell seems to have added here and there a characteristic expression to make the whole more pointed, and to have compressed it all till it preserved nothing but the true Johnsonian flavour.
.....
In all this, the artistic part of his work, Boswell was expressing his own conception of Johnson. But it has been doubted by some whether this is a true view of him, or whether the whole is not overdrawn. Dr. Birkbeck Hill says that Johnson was drawn by Boswell as 'too awful.'[7]
It is indeed, as has been said before, the awfulness of Johnson which Boswell had in mind when he wrote his 'comedy scenes,' and even in relating less pungent moments. The humour of it all depended so much upon that!
It must be remarked, at the outset, that several individuals may have quite different impressions of one man. Not only do the observers emphasise different qualities, so that the same person might be described by one as kind and affectionate, and by another as sentimental and stupid, without either account being untrue, except in so far as it is incomplete, but a man's behaviour often varies with the company. The truth of Boswell, since he expressed quite truthfully his own impressions, would be in nowise confounded if it were discovered that the majority did not share his view of Johnson; still less if he had seen what they saw, while they had not seen what he revealed.
But the fact is that Boswell's conception of Johnson as being 'awful' was the common one. The idea that he was not so is probably derived from Miss Burney's 'Diary.' It will be remembered, however, that Johnson's behaviour to Miss Burney was quite unlike his behaviour to the great majority of people: she was chosen to be the special object of his gallantry. It was extremely pleasant for her; she was naturally pleased to be continually the recipient of the most charming compliments; and her 'Diary' tells us all about it. Boswell was well aware that to her GAY SAM more than to anybody else Johnson showed the gayer side of his character, and he was anxious, as we have seen, to make use of her 'stores':
I want to show him as gay Sam, agreeable Sam, pleasant Sam; so you must help me with some of his beautiful billets to yourself.
Miss Burney indeed can hardly be excused for not giving her assistance to Boswell, since she afterwards talks of vindicating Johnson to his King and Queen,[8] which she would hardly have found necessary had she contributed largely herself to Boswell's 'Life.' And even Miss Burney alludes to the fear in which Johnson was held by his contemporaries, and reports a terrible, if deserved, rebuke to Hannah More, when Johnson, after politely bearing the lady's adulation for some little time, exclaimed, 'Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.'[9] Mrs. Piozzi, too, in whose house it was that she met Dr. Johnson, has, in her own account of him, emphasised very much the other side of the picture.
It must also be remembered that Boswell, though he loves to relate the roughness of Johnson and his imperiousness, is always at pains to show that he was a really kind and considerate man, and even seems to make allowance for the possibility that he has made the harshness too prominent, and takes care to explain that it was not so common as might be supposed:
How very false is the notion which has gone round the world of the rough, and passionate, and harsh manners of this great and good man. That he had occasional sallies of heat of temper, and that he was sometimes, perhaps, too 'easily provoked' by absurdity and folly, and sometimes too desirous of triumph in colloquial contest, must be allowed. The quickness both of his perception and sensibility disposed him to sudden explosions of satire; to which his extraordinary readiness of wit was a strong and almost irresistible incitement. I admit that the beadle within him was often so eager to apply the lash, that the judge had not time to consider the case with sufficient deliberation.[10]
Boswell is prepared to admit, as he is obliged to do, the dogmatist and the fighter in Johnson, but not that he was in the ordinary way disagreeable.
That he was occasionally remarkable for violence of temper may be granted: but let us ascertain the degree, and not let it be supposed that he was in a perpetual rage, and never without a club in his hand, to knock down everyone who approached him. On the contrary, the truth is, that by much the greatest part of his time he was civil, obliging, nay, polite in the true sense of the word; so much so, that many gentlemen, who were long acquainted with him, never received, or even heard a strong expression from him.
It will be seen from his lengthy defence of Johnson against what he considered a common accusation and an unjust one, and it may be seen also from other JOHNSON'S 'AWEFULNESS' passages, that Boswell regards his own life of Johnson as likely to weaken the prevalent opinions about Johnson's rough behaviour. Mrs. Piozzi is violently attacked by him for having exaggerated and maliciously enlarged upon this part of his character.[11]
It is not to be supposed that the conception of Johnson's 'awfulness' depended entirely upon his capacity for giving rude blows to his antagonists in conversation. There is a certain gravity of demeanour, amounting almost to pompousness, which Boswell loves to depict. It may seem that the Doctor is not sufficiently good-humoured. No doubt it was Boswell's particular delight to represent the majesty of the great man of letters, and the many occasions on which Johnson is jovial and pleasant are, for him perhaps, the exceptions to a rule. But how many there are! The 'Tour to the Hebrides' especially (and in considering Boswell's presentation of Johnson we must consider always the 'Tour' with the 'Life') is full of instances of this kind of behaviour. It was indeed a serious departure from Boswell's ideal that the Rambler should take upon his knee a Highland lady, but it would be difficult to count the number of times that Johnson is reported quite naturally to have laughed and to have been good-humoured. He is even reported to have perverted a line of Shakespeare, with the spontaneous merrymaking of a schoolboy, to suit his companion. Surely it could be said by no one that his impression of Johnson after reading Boswell's 'Life' and the 'Tour to the Hebrides' was that of a cross and grave old man.
Boswell perhaps does not give the picture of affability and even gaiety which Miss Burney gives; but her account too is qualified. 'Dr. Johnson,' she says, 'has more fun and comical humour, and love of nonsense about him, than almost anybody I ever saw: I mean when with those he likes; for otherwise he can be as severe and as bitter as report relates him.'[12] On another occasion she speaks of 'a formality that accompanies whatever he says,' which conveys exactly the impression of 'awfulness' that we get so often from Boswell.[13]
The criticism which could perhaps be made with most justice of the Johnson whom we know from Boswell is that he is not playful enough. Miss Burney's Johnson may seem a jollier man. She alludes to his 'love of nonsense' and 'a turn for burlesque humour.'[14] But it must be remembered that behaviour of this kind is mentioned very seldom—only four or five times at the most, even in Miss Burney's 'Diary.' And it would be not unnatural (from the circumstances mentioned before) that Miss Burney would see more of this side of his character than other people.
Boswell, in the preface to the second edition of RECEPTION OF BOSWELL'S JOHNSON the 'Life,' tells us that the book had been received with favour, that he had obtained a great deal of spontaneous praise, and that Sir Joshua Reynolds lived to give the strongest testimony to its fidelity. These are expressions which he could not use, had they been untrue, in that place; for they would invite a damaging attack from the reviewers. But a book which upset the popular conception of a figure like Johnson, or even one which merely overdrew the 'shades' in his character, would hardly have been received like that. And Boswell in fact was never attacked in print for these faults, which, considering what a number of enemies he had, and the disputes in which he was engaged after the publication of the 'Life,' is almost conclusive evidence that his accounts of Johnson's 'awfulness' corresponded with the observations of other people. Courtenay was a good judge when he wrote the following lines about the 'Tour to the Hebrides':
"With Reynolds' pencil, vivid, bold, and true,
So fervent Boswell gives him to our view:
In every trait we see his mind expand;
The master rises by the pupil's hand.
We love the writer, praise his happy vein,
Grac'd with the naïveté of the sage Montaigne.
Hence not alone are brighter parts display'd,
But e'en the specks of character pourtray'd:
We see the Rambler with fastidious smile...."[15]
[1:] Autobiography, Letters, &c., of Mrs. Piozzi, ii, 403.
[2:] Nichols' Illustrations, vii, 313.
[3:] Henley, in Views and Reviews, speaks of Boswell as an artist.
[4:] Fitzgerald and Birkbeck Hill both say something of this.
[5:] I use this term not in a particular technical sense (as applied to a school of French painters) but in a general sense, of all art that neglects details for the sake of general effect.
[6:] The italics are mine.
[7:] Life of Johnson, ii. 262, n. 2.
[8:] Miss Burney's Diary, iv, 478.
[9:] Ib., i, 100.
[10:] Life of Johnson, iii, 80-1.
[11:] Life of Johnson, iv, 340 et seq.
[12:] Miss Burney's Diary, i, 211.
[13:] Ib., i, 231.
[14:] Ib., i, 102.
[15:] Life of Johnson, ii, 268.