It was presumably in some degree because he realised that Johnson was fond of him that Boswell was able to endure his rudeness. It must be remembered, however, that it was deliberately in most cases brought upon himself, and there was then no real cause to take offence. You cannot complain if JOHNSON'S REPROOFS by your own fault you have made a man angry, whatever he may say—especially if he is thirty years older than yourself. It is one of Boswell's chief merits that he was able to see this. He may have been often annoyed, but he came afterwards to see that it was but the natural result of his method of treating Johnson—the method which enabled him to write in the end the immortal 'Life.'
Boswell in the rôle of biographer will claim a more detailed attention later in this book. It will suffice to say here that the attitude which he presented in the scene at Lochbuy, and on all those occasions when he led Johnson to talk or arranged some situation for the sake of observing his behaviour, is that which is most typical of Boswell, that by which he was famous, or, as some might have said, notorious among his contemporaries.
The relations between these two friends which we see so pleasantly revealed in Boswell's journal of the 'Tour to the Hebrides,' in 1773, containing as they did all that is best between the old and the young, remained unimpaired to the death of Johnson in 1784: Boswell never neglected to pay at least one visit in the year to England, and preserved to the end his affection, his careful and kind attention, his pride and respect, and above all his humour and curiosity. It would be idle to suggest, though it may be difficult to understand or explain the fact, that his absence from Johnson's death-bed is significant in any way of a declining interest and affection.
Boswell himself was feeling ill and melancholy during a considerable part of the year, and was much upset by Johnson's charges of affectation: it is easily conceivable that he shrank from the pain of being present at the death-bed of his friend, and believed too that his own distress could only irritate the other.[8] But, whatever may have been the cause of his absence, it is impossible, if we consider his own words about the final parting, to doubt the sincerity of his affection.[9]
He asked me whether I would not go with him to his house; I declined it, from an apprehension that my spirits would sink. We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot-pavement, he called out, 'Fare you well,' and without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetic briskness, if I may use the expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our long, long separation.[10]
Johnson in one of his last letters said: 'I consider your fidelity and tenderness as a great part of the comforts which are yet left me'; and Boswell, JOHNSON'S DEATH speaking of his death, says enough when he says no more than this: 'I trust I shall not be accused of affectation when I declare that I find myself unable to express all that I felt upon the loss of such a Guide, Philosopher, and Friend.'
The loss was indeed a severe one for Boswell. He made a friend of Johnson at the age of twenty-two and was forty-four at the date of Johnson's death. For more than twenty years he had been accustomed implicitly to trust the judgment of the older man.
Its mere duration in time is some testimony to the value of the friendship, the more so when we remember that Boswell when he died himself was but fifty-five years old. The friend who was the hero of Boswell's youth, and his constant adviser, saw within the space of a few years the beginning of his professional life at the Scotch Bar, the publication of his first serious book, his marriage to an admirable lady, and his election to the Literary Club; he died but two years after Boswell had become the Laird of Auchinleck, at a time when he was showing an increased activity, and before the political and legal hopes that he indulged had brought about by their failure the disappointment of his later life.
From the few facts which have been related here something may be gleaned, if not a complete conception of the part which Johnson played in Boswell's life. Boswell has revealed himself as a friend and in particular as the friend of Johnson. So great a devotion is a real asset in life. Whatever its definite value may be as regards events, and it is often small, it serves to fix more clearly and fuse together the intricate moving forms of a land of dreams into a simple mundane shape. It may be an end in itself. And devotion in Boswell's case belonged to the essence of his genius. It was an important part of that abnormal ingredient in him which was to blaze forth in an imperishable flame.
What Johnson accomplished for Boswell was primarily in the realm of ideals. The aspirations of Boswell were concentrated by his admiration. But what was the final result? When Johnson died, the ship that carried that heavy load of Boswell's hopes was sailing steadily towards a definite harbour, though not the harbour he intended to reach: what had Johnson to do with this? Was his the hand at the helm?—the breath in the sails?