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,