Boswell the Biographer

by George Mallory

Stories about 'frolic' (to use Boswell's word) are not as a rule very laughable, and we are perhaps too apt to consider them as merely childish and contemptible when they fail to amuse us. The exact atmosphere of the moment which accounts for its merriment is forgotten too often and seldom reproduced, and we are left cold after a recital of such behaviour as we may suppose the Club of Soapers to have indulged in. In Boswell's character there was a large vein of buffoonery which is apt when recounted by anyone but himself to appear stupid enough. But in reality it seems to have contained a true sense of the incongruous, and had at least the success of making people laugh. What an incomparable moment that must have been when Boswell, as one of the audience GAY BEHAVIOUR at Drury Lane theatre, took upon himself to imitate the lowing of a cow! 'I was so successful in this boyish frolic,' he relates, 'that the universal cry of the galleries was: "Encore the cow! Encore the cow!"'

There is nothing very brilliant about Boswell's comic verses, but it is curious that those we have quoted should represent the facts so closely:

So not a bent sixpence cares he

Whether with him or at him you laugh;

these lines express exactly the social principle which Boswell adopted. He had no objection to men laughing at his oddities so long as they laughed good-humouredly.

He wished to find gaiety in every company, and it is just to say that he brought more than his share of mirth regardless of dignity.

There are many other instances of these self-portraits, anonymous sometimes, but easily to be recognised. We can hardly do better than illustrate Boswell's life by his own words about himself, because upon this subject he found it necessary, when he had anything to say, to say it truthfully. In another early literary venture, the correspondence between Erskine and Boswell, which these two young gentlemen published, there is a letter of Boswell's containing an account of the author of the 'Ode to Tragedy,' which he had published anonymously; he thus describes himself:

The author of the 'Ode to Tragedy,' is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient family in the West of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness; his parts are bright, and his education has been good; he has travelled in postchaises miles without number; he is fond of seeing much of the world; he eats of every good dish, especially apple-pie; he drinks old hock; he has a very fine temper; he is somewhat of a humourist, and a little tinctured with pride; he has a good, manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous; he has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast; he is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old; his shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles.

The 'Letters between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq.' are the most remarkable in some ways of these early literary ventures. The letters were evidently written from the first with a view to publication. They are completely frivolous, but attempt to be satirical and amusing. Boswell and Erskine wish to appear as two young men of society who are budding poets and have brilliant wit. They hoped, perhaps, to take the world by storm like the Admirable Crichton and his friend Aldus. The result, if far from brilliant, is certainly clever and amusing.