The hatred with which he views death shows us how completely a lover of life he was:
"I am not content to pass away 'like a weaver's shuttle.' Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity, and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacles here. I am content to stand still, at the age to which I am arrived.... I do not want ... to drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave. Any alteration, on this earth of mine ... puzzles and discomposes me ... a new state of being staggers me. Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fireside conversations, and innocent vanities, and jests, and irony itself—do these things go out with Life?"
If you can resist this, which to me is perhaps the most beautiful piece of English prose in existence, you must be a little less than human yourself. So you ask me again why you should read Lamb, and I answer: (1) because he has always something to say and conveys his thought "without smothering it in blankets"; (2) because in antique fancy, quip, oddity, whimsical jest, humour, wit and irony, rare gifts all, he is a supreme master; (3) because his limitations and tragedies were, like ours, many, but his courage in facing them, unlike ours, was cheerful and invincible; the best dramatic and literary critic of his time, he yet had no ear for music ("to read a book, all stops, and be obliged to supply the verbal matter"). He was prevented from becoming an actor by an impediment in his speech; drink went to his head at once and he was fond of it; himself the shining example of the sanity of true genius, his sister killed her father in a mad frenzy; holding women in reverence more than any man, he yet failed to marry the girl of his choice; designed by nature to be a scholar and an Oxford don, he was denied a university education and condemned to thirty-six years of drudgery in a city office ... the list of Life's little ironies in his case can be piled mountain high, but the supreme irony is that this sufferer at the hands of the malignant fates is our greatest humorist; and (4) because he takes the homely and familiar for his subjects and sheds fresh and beautiful light upon them, making even the most soured among us reconsider life and its possibilities.
IV
JAMES BOSWELL
Boswell is essentially a book for the pocket, to be opened at random while waiting for a train or a doctor or a dentist; busy men of affairs like Lord Rosebery have recognised it as the finest "night-cap" in the world. It is the fallacy of thinking that "skipping" is the sign of a shallow mind that has led to the avoidance of what is really the most absorbing study in the world, the revelation of the lives and characters of men of fame. And of all subjects for biography Dr Johnson stands easily first, because he embodies all the essential features of the English character; we see in him "our own magnified and glorified selves."
Furthermore, he has a genius for his biographer; as Sir Walter Raleigh says: "The accident which gave Boswell to Johnson and Johnson to Boswell is one of the most extraordinary pieces of good fortune in literary history."
It is mainly by his conversations that his character is depicted, and it is worth remembering that his mots are famous not only for their good sense and sound judgment, but for their freshness and unexpectedness.
"No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned ... a man in jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company." "Men know that women are an overmatch for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves." "Even ill-assorted marriages are preferable to cheerless celibacy." "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." "A peace will equally leave the warrior and relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie." "I am always for getting a boy forward with his learning ... I would let him at first read any English book ... because you have done a great deal when you have brought him to have entertainment from a book." "Sir, young men have more virtue than old men; they have more wit and humour and knowledge of life than we had; but then the dogs are not so good scholars."