Boswell the Biographer

by George Mallory

CHAPTER III

The portion of Boswell's career which we have been relating up to this point gives rise by natural sequence to the discussion of one or two interesting questions about his personality. We must know the part played in the main theme by his peculiar qualities. We must notice how they seem to assist or to impede his particular faculty for biography.

Allusion has already been made to the reasons for which Boswell was attracted by two great men, Dr. Johnson and General Paoli. We must see now in general the reason of that intimacy which he took care to cultivate with a large number of distinguished men.

Boswell, there can be no doubt, liked men in some way because they were distinguished. We must remember that the judgments of the world were always very real standards to him. If a man were great, he must be somehow good; and to be the friend of such a man, that was good too. It is not that Boswell judged of characters wholly by success. We may see that as he grew older he judged them more and more by the Johnsonian morality. He grew less tolerant of heresy under the influence of his moral guide. Hence the dislike of Gibbon:—'He is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our Literary Club to me.' Johnson probably shared this feeling and undoubtedly shared the reasons for it, which Boswell expresses in Johnsonian phrases: 'I think it is right that as fast as infidel wasps or venomous insects, whether creeping or flying, are hatched, they should be crushed.' This was said in reference to Gibbon's book; the sentiments were extended to Adam Smith. 'Murphy says that he has read thirty pages of Smith's "Wealth," but says that he shall read no more: Smith too is now of our Club. It has lost its select merit.' Personal antipathy in the one case and ignorance of economics in the other need not surprise us. But it comes as a shock, nevertheless, to discover Boswell's views upon the two men who were, intellectually, the most distinguished of his contemporaries. The Doctor's prejudices may have much to do with it. Boswell records a similar judgment in the 'Tour to the Hebrides': 'Infidelity in a Highland gentleman appeared to me peculiarly offensive. I was sorry for him as he had otherwise a good character.'

And yet he was probably always as he was in the early years far more tolerant than Johnson. There is an instructive passage also in the 'Tour to the Hebrides' about Hume. Johnson was talking about Hume's infidelity: 'He added something much too rough, DISTINGUISHED FRIENDS both as to Mr. Hume's head and heart, which I suppress. Violence is, in my opinion, not suitable to the Christian cause. Besides I always lived on good terms with Mr. Hume, though I have frankly told him I was not clear that it was right in me to keep company with him.' That he did not condemn the infidel Hume, shows that Boswell's prejudices were weaker, at least, than friendship. Boswell, besides, throughout his life gave a very high value to mere intellectual power. He complained of 'dull provinciality' in Scotland, because the people of Edinburgh were less intelligent than the Londoners. His love of London was founded upon the need he felt of conversing with clever people; and this need became in him with maturity, not weaker, as in most cases, but stronger.

In these early years Boswell was glad to make a friend of any particularly intelligent person, and his acquaintances included characters widely differing—Hume and Rousseau, Johnson and Lord Hailes, Wilkes and Paoli. Boswell clearly had pleasure in the society of them all; he did not, like Johnson, condemn them to a place beyond the range of his acquaintance; these men were specimens of human nature worthy to be studied; he saw some good in all of them. There is a characteristic passage in the 'Life' about the meeting of Johnson and Wilkes which illustrates the attitude:

My desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every description had made me, much about the same time, obtain an introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all mankind. They have even attacked one another with some asperity in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both. I could fully relish the excellence of each; for I have ever delighted in that intellectual chymistry which can separate good qualities from evil in the same person.

He looked upon men much as we look upon works of art, distinguishing that which, as art, has merit, and crediting with a certain value every design or idea which has been executed well, but attaching ourselves more particularly to a few rare objects which have some special significance or appeal for our own nature. Johnson and Paoli had this appeal for Boswell. Wilkes and Hume attracted him more because they were interesting individuals for whom, though he really disapproved of them, he might retain some slight affection because they were representative men. He might dislike the things they represented, but like them in spite of this: like them, one might almost say, for representing something.

With Hume, for instance, he had a considerable friendship at one time. He was of course, an individual to be studied; to Temple, Boswell related his conversations much as he recorded those of Johnson and Paoli. But he did not see him merely because he INTEREST IN MEN was interested; he liked him too: 'David is really amiable; I always regret to him his unlucky principles and he smiles at my faith.' It is probable that as he grew older Boswell grew less tolerant. He was always somewhat of an experimentalist, interested in various sides of life and fitting one or another to his own case; but though he became with maturity more definitely attached to the conventional Christianity, to 'belief,' as he termed it, as opposed to 'infidelity,' and less tolerant of the people who held different views, he never hated a man for being a Whig or an atheist as Johnson did.