Boswell the Biographer

by George Mallory

CHAPTER V

Biography is by its nature historical and suited to an historical method. The history of an institution is written in respect of its functions. The Christian Church, for instance, played a certain part in the life of society at the end of the fourth century, and another part when Clement proclaimed a Crusade to all Western Europe. The historian of the Church may well be expected to hold in view the later development during the whole course of his inquiry before that climax; he must analyse the primitive organism, having regard to its future growth, and explain how it was that those organs grew. The biographer has similar duties. We commonly consider the lives of men with reference to a few conspicuous events or remarkable achievements; and we want to know what were the essential qualities of the man and how they grew to those results. In Boswell's case the central theme is single, for he accomplished one thing of overwhelmingly greater importance than anything else in his life. But the growth which came to this glorious end was by no means a simple and serene development. It is concerned with an amazing war between the conventional and the real, the false and the true. We have now to investigate more closely the details of that struggle, and incidentally the effect on Johnson.

Boswell, in the first place, had a number of what may be called conventional prejudices; he had the common prejudices of the landed gentleman in the eighteenth century. He was brought up to believe that he would one day become the Laird of Auchinleck. He was proud of his family name and ancient lineage; he believed altogether the conventional idea, that a man was not only in a higher position and a greater person, but, in some indefinable way, better from the possession of land. Soil and mansion were not merely the insignia of the governing class or the boast of blood, but, further, the supreme expression of an ideal—the commonest practical ideal of the British people, 'to be as our fathers.' 'Holding an estate,' says Boswell, in the first of the political letters which he addressed to his compatriots,[¹] 'transmitted to me through my ancestors, by charters from a series of kings, the importance of a charter, the prerogative of a king, impresses my mind with seriousness and duty; and while animated, I hope, as much as any man, with genuine feelings of liberty, I shall ever adhere to our excellent Monarchy, that venerable institution under CONVENTIONAL PREJUDICES which liberty is best enjoyed.' The truth expressed by these extravagant words is that Boswell accepted, as a consequence of having inherited an estate, a certain outfit of principles and practical objects which was to be worn in the same way that a parson wears a black coat or a coachman a livery. In politics, therefore, he was a Monarchist and Tory. Property and the Constitution, these were his interests.

In the second political letter he shows that he strongly disapproved of innovation and of change in general; disapproved because he disliked and mistrusted them as by convention a man of property ought to do. Reform, however necessary, is never respectable. Boswell liked an order and formality which should go on for ever exactly as he knew it. It was for this reason and not from any æsthetic pleasure that he delighted in the ceremonial of the dinners in the Inner Temple and in the services which he was wont to attend in St. Paul's Cathedral each year, if he were able, upon Easter Day.

The same views found expression in a series of essays which Boswell wrote for the London Magazine. It is in fact in these essays rather than in his biographical writings that we should look for Boswell's opinions on general subjects. Comprehensive though the 'Life of Johnson' is, it necessarily refrains from giving the author's view on many occasions, and when Boswell speaks for himself he does so incidentally, and not directly. In the London Magazine he is free, and consequently the range is wider and the matter more diffuse.

'The Hypochondriack'—for such is the title under which Boswell wrote—appeared in twenty-seven numbers of the London Magazine from October, 1777, to December, 1779. The articles are not very long—three pages of close double-columns is the average length; but altogether they must contain enough printed matter to fill one volume of a moderate size in our day. The title explains the attitude of the writer in the whole series; Boswell wrote as a hypochondriac to others who suffered as he did from periodical depression, to divert them, as he said, by good-humour. 'I may, without ever offending them by excess of gaiety, insensibly communicate to them that good-humour which, if it does not make life rise to felicity, at least preserves it from wretchedness.'

It is remarkable that Boswell formed the plan of writing these papers at an earlier stage of his existence, during the years which he spent abroad from 1763-5. The tenth of the series was actually written then and was intended, so he tells us, to be published, in the London Magazine as Number X of 'The Hypochondriack.' The fact that it fulfilled its destiny, and that, though written in a rather more frivolous style, it is in no way out of place, is a testimony, if any further were needed besides the magnum opus, to the 'THE HYPOCHONDRIACK' capacity that Boswell had for carrying a literary project to its due accomplishment.

The qualities required of a biographer, which Boswell had in so supreme a measure, are not those which necessarily make a good essayist. But Boswell was by no means contemptible as a writer of essays. A great thinker he never professed to be, and never could have become; he had, however, what for his purpose was even more valuable than profound thought or comprehensive originality—the art of self-expression. We are obliged to read anything that Boswell wrote because, by some enchanter's magic, he is there talking to us. This is not the place to probe the mystery of Orpheus with his lute; perhaps, in any case, it is better that the mystery should remain for ever dark; for the charm of Orpheus might be perceptibly less if we knew its mechanism. And it may be no more than an accomplishment which, when exercised with particular grace, gives, in the common way, the capricious illusion of facility. Whatever it be in the art of letters, Boswell had it. He inevitably produced his effect; and it is himself. We are made to feel good-humoured and agreeable; and we wish to leave it at that and trouble our heads no further. A less easy style will draw our attention to the technique of words. With Boswell, it is clear midday on the dial, and we have no desire to bother with the wheels inside.

'The Hypochondriack,' however, is scarcely so gay as one might expect. Truly this is not the serious business of life; he is out for a spree. 'The pleasure of writing a short essay,' says the lively physician of melancholy, 'is like taking a pleasant airing that enlivens and invigorates by the exercise which it yields, while the design is gratified in its completion.' Boswell the essayist has not the solemn responsibility of showing a great example to the world; and he has no need to be the grave judge. Yet there is a very serious background to the thoughts of this jolly author. When he chooses a theme he searches in the depths. Religion, Death and Conscience, Fear, Truth, Pleasure and Pride, Matrimony and Offspring, Youth and Age, Pity and Prudence, Excess, Drinking, Flattery, and Hypochondria itself—such are the subjects with which he sets forth to divert his fellow-sufferers. And having chosen thus, Boswell naturally, on many occasions, says earnestly what he sincerely thinks. He faithfully describes in one place the discomfort of his own depression: