Boswell the Biographer - George Mallory

As for myself, to please a worthy and respected father, one of our Scotch judges, I studied law, and am now fairly entered to the bar. I begin to like it. I can labour hard; I feel myself coming forward, and I hope to be useful to my country. Could your Lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter? I have been told how favourably your Lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and a Chatham is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame.

This letter illustrates much of Boswell's attitude towards the great, and it will be necessary to refer to it again in that connection; it shows, at least, how earnestly Boswell desired the friendship of the great man, and what a thrill of pleasure those letters from Chatham must have given him.

However much we may dislike this propensity of Boswell's disposition, while admitting that it is unpleasant in itself, although we would not and could not have Boswell without it, there is no reason to see in much of it a blacker vice than merely the ignorance of how to behave. And it was connected as we have shown with feelings not entirely selfish. But of the flagrant self-advertisement to which we have referred above no such agreeable things may be said. It is condemnable without compensation as an obtrusive egoism and foolish vanity. It must be written LIMITS OF EGOISM down frankly on the debit side of Boswell's peculiar genius, and it was as much opposed to the proper exercise of his biographical talents as to his more practical career.

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We are forced to wonder, and it is important that we should decide, whether in spite of his immoderate self-centredness Boswell was capable of acting without considering his own advantage in the interest of others. Had he, in the first place, any real care for the cause of Corsican liberty?

It is often far from easy to discover what Boswell's feelings were, because the balance between sentiment and expression was with him very ill-adjusted. By prolonged study of the Boswellian extravagances we may come to perceive, as we think, how much Boswell really felt; but even so it is hardly possible to explain any valid reason for judgments of this nature. Boswell was often guilty of extravagance; but it would be as false to believe that he felt none of the zeal he talks about so easily, as to believe that he felt as much as he says. He undoubtedly exaggerated, but he probably never made an absolute misstatement.

There is a passage of great enthusiasm for the Corsicans in a letter to Johnson:[⁴] 'Shall they not rise in the great cause of liberty, and break the galling yoke? And shall not every liberal soul be warm for them?' Boswell's heart must have been warm when he wrote that: but we are unfortunately still left in doubt by an anti-climax: 'No! while I live, Corsica and the cause of the brave islanders shall ever employ much of my attention, shall ever interest me in the sincerest manner.' The letter in which these quotations occur is dated April 26, 1768; it is possible that Boswell's ardour had begun to cool by that time and that the cause of liberty, though it might 'employ much of his attention' was less vital to him than he imagined. The 'Tour to Corsica,' however, gives an impression of genuine interest and sympathy with the Corsicans. Boswell seems to have liked very well these simple folk, who appreciated more readily than his countrymen the natural gaiety and good humour of his spirits.[⁵] How different is his attitude in the 'Tour to the Hebrides' towards the Scots! We must remember too that Boswell, whatever may have been his motives, did much in England and Scotland to help the Corsicans. Besides publishing his book, which was of value to their cause, he raised a subscription and sent out £700 worth of ordnance.[⁶] He also collected and published a volume of 'British Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans,' some of which he himself wrote.

Boswell had in fact a real generosity of character; he GENEROSITY hated anything mean, and expressed himself as anxious to cure his own 'narrowness.' He could be kind to his friends and was willing to lend money. He was interested as a lawyer in the decisions of the courts and readily bestowed his sympathy. On behalf of a certain Dr. Dodd, a divine who was under sentence of death for forgery, he wrote to Dr. Johnson: 'If for ten righteous men the Almighty would have spared Sodom, shall not a thousand acts of goodness done by Dr. Dodd counterbalance one crime?' And Dr. Johnson afterwards used his pen in Dr. Dodd's service. On another occasion he appealed for his friend's assistance in the case of a Scotch schoolmaster—a client of Boswell's, who had been 'deprived of his office for being somewhat severe in the chastisement of his scholars': Boswell in his letter to Johnson seems to have at heart both the interests of the schoolmaster and the principle of corporal punishment. For his friend Temple he more than once went out of his way to obtain some favour. He treated his tenants with the greatest consideration, and even made special provisions in his will for their future welfare.[⁷] But Boswell was not one of those who continually exercise these amiable qualities. It is probable indeed that, had he tried, he would have met with more rebuffs than encouragement. To be flagrantly kind with any success requires a good deal of cunning, and of that useful quality Boswell had extremely little: he was likely to appear in any good work more meddlesome than great-hearted. But if with him care for the happiness of others was not the first consideration, he was at bottom a sympathetic, kind-hearted man, and capable of generous actions.

It is very important that we should bear this in mind about Boswell. Those who are gifted with powers of expression are often in one sense primarily egoists—more so than other men because they are apt to become more completely absorbed—and Boswell, as we have shown, was not without his portion of egoism; but there may be a place in the lives of such men for unselfish feelings, and if we may think that Boswell had his due share of them we may judge less harshly in him the egoism which we cannot admire.