Boswell the Biographer

by George Mallory

Life is commonly somewhat of a battle. Blows are given and received. Flags are lost and won. Positions are captured and surrendered. Limbs are crushed and amputated. There are many ugly wounds; some bleed and fester; some are healed. It is natural to look back on life, as the general surveys the battlefield and the hospitals, to count the score. At the THE MODIFICATION OF BOSWELL end of all the struggle and the horror, the strange joys and the fantastic dreams, what has happened? What view does the fighter take himself? Was the cause worth struggling for, after all is done? Would he fight on the same side if he could start again? Would he refrain from fighting? Or would he fight with a different object? Is the essential man the same? Or have his ambitions and desires and the vital force of the man been modified? And if so how much? Can they be recognised as the same equipment with which he set forth, or has the consuming fire burnt out, and the bright flame grown pale and dim?

Boswell was not an old man when he died; and apart from the prostration caused by ill-health—for he was frequently ill towards the close of his life—his robust vigour seems hardly to have diminished. In July 1790, a year after Mrs. Boswell's death, he seems already to entertain some matrimonial scheme.[¹⁰] This apparently was the first of a fresh suite. In the spring of 1791 he is looking forward to the pleasure of meeting a certain Miss Bagnal, 'who may probably have six or seven hundred a year.' 'Here then I am, my Temple,' exclaims Boswell, 'my flattering self! A scheme, an adventure, seizes upon my fancy.' Assuredly this is the old Boswell.

In his whole outlook upon life Boswell, in fact, changed very little. He had failed in the main battle; the ambitious dreams which pleased him most had not come to pass. Neither as politician nor as barrister had he won the smallest degree of fame. He was, and is, famous in a rarer sort: yet he had esteemed literary fame at a much lower rate. And at the end of his life he still measured distinction by the same old standards. He felt that the struggle had gone against him: but he never doubted of the cause for which he was fighting. As late as August 1791, some months after the 'Life of Johnson' appeared, he wrote to Temple as though he were on the eve of a legal career:

I have gone the full round of the Home Circuit, to which I have returned, finding it much more pleasant, and, though I did not get a single brief, do not repent of the expense, as I am showing myself desirous of business and imbibing legal knowledge.

He still was building castles in the air of the old type; still, sometimes, he took an opportunity to be 'conspicuous' and made conscious efforts to 'be the great man.' Almost simultaneously with the 'Life,' he published a political poem, 'No Abolition of Slavery, or The Universal Empire of Love.' It was of a semi-frivolous nature, the argument being drawn from a premise that slavery is the most agreeable of 'goods,' when it is enforced by the chains of loving devotion. The name of Miss Bagnal is introduced, and it is difficult to tell whether the whole may not be an elaborate attempt to bring off a marriage with that AMBITION RETAINED lady. But it is evident from a remark to Temple, that the main purpose is political:

I am thinking to curtail my poem on the Slave Trade, and throw it into the world just before the great question comes on next Wednesday.

A rumour of war with Russia also rouses the public spirit of Boswell to seek distinction, and he hesitates

whether I should not write one of my characteristical pamphlets on this crisis—An Appeal to the People upon the threatened project of involving this country in a war with Russia, in order to assist the Turks.

At the end of his life Boswell had not deserted his ambition, and, as far as we can tell, he had not forgotten his disappointment. There are few 'Letters to Temple' during these last few years, and it is difficult to form an exact idea of Boswell's state of mind. For the year 1792 we have only one note of a few lines: it begins, 'Still I cannot write a long letter.' These words suggest, though they do not prove, that Boswell had been in low spirits; for such a condition was frequently a reason for neglecting to write. For the following year there are three letters. In the first, Boswell refers to the pain it gives him to visit Auchinleck; in the second, he discusses with remorse his habit of indulgence in wine; in the third, he says 'My spirits are somewhat better, but by no means right yet.' It is probable that Boswell wrote more regularly in 1794, but only one letter to Temple exists. This, the last letter written in his own hand, is much more cheerful in tone, and concerned more with Temple than with himself. But this alone is no evidence to prove that Boswell at the end of his life was contented with his lot and satisfied with the measure of success he had attained. The reverse is far more likely to be the case. As late as 1791 he had time, in the very throes of publishing the magnum opus, to brood over 'the disappointment of my hopes in life.' He clearly suffered from low spirits during the next two years, and it can hardly be supposed that his disappointment, though only one of several causes, had nothing to do with it.

The old standards had not changed. The same weights and measures, which were adopted early in life, still at the end of it were used to determine the deeds of men and fix their value. And yet a change had come. In the 'Letters to Temple' a certain difference of tone may be distinguished after Boswell lost his wife. It was partly that he began fully to realise the failure of his ambitious plans; and it was still more a different attitude which that realisation involved. When a man discovers that he cannot get what he wants, he is apt to pay more attention to what he already has.