BOSWELL HE contemporaries of Boswell had a higher opinion TH of his abilities than prevails at present. Lord Buchan said he "had genius, but wanted ballast to counteract his whim." Dr. Johnson, in his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, bore testimony to his "acuteness, and gaiety of conversation."2 Sir William Forbes acknowledged that "his talents were considerable," and a writer, who was probably Isaac Reed, described him in the European Magazine "as a man of excellent natural parts, on which he had engrafted a great deal of knowledge." 4 His social powers were universally recognised. "If general approbation,” Johnson wrote to him in 1778, "will add anything to your enjoyment, I can tell you that I have heard you mentioned as a man whom everybody likes. I think life has little more to give." The next year Johnson writes to him, "the oftener you are seen, the more you will be liked"; and, describing him to a lady, he said, "Boswell is a man who I believe never left a house without leaving a wish for his return." David Hume speaks of him in a letter as being "very good-humoured, very agreeable, and [Johnsoniana, No. 638.] 2 [Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland; Works, vol. viii. p. 205.] 3 [Forbes's Life of Beattie, vol. ii. p. 167, note.] 4 [Johnsoniana, No. 675.] 6 [Ibid., p. 640.] " [Boswell's Johnson, p. 619.] very mad." Burke doubted if he were fit to be a member of the Literary Club, but it was before they were acquainted, and when he was elected the great statesman was won over by an hilarity so abounding and spontaneous that he maintained it to be no more meritorious than to possess a good constitution.2 To Boswell's other qualities for enlivening a circle was joined a talent for mimicry, which was then in fashion among the wits of the metropolis, most of whom employed it, as he tells in his Life of Johnson, to add piquancy to their anecdotes. In his boyhood he had imitated in the pit of Drury Lane Theatre the lowing of a cow with such success, that there was a general cry in the gallery, "Encore the cow!" He attempted to vary the performance with very inferior effect, and Dr. Hugh Blair, who sat next him, whispered in his ear, "My dear sir, I would confine myself to the cow!"3 His proficiency in the art increased with years, and in a trial of skill between himself and Garrick to see which could give the best personation of Johnson, he absolutely outdid the incomparable actor, who was famous for the faculty, in the conversational part, and was only surpassed by him in the inferior branch of taking off their friend's method of reciting verse. Hannah More was the umpire.1 1 [Hume to Countess de Boufflers, Jan. 12, 1766; Hume's Private Correspondence, p. 131.] 2 [Boswell's Johnson, p. 288; Johnsoniana, No. 675.] 3 [Boswell's Johnson, p. 402. Stick to the cow, mon," is the version of Dr. Blair's speech given by Sir Walter Scott. Boswell's own account is, "My reverend friend, anxious for my fame, with an air of the utmost gravity and earnestness, addressed me thus: 'My dear sir, I would confine myself to the cow. Boswell's "addressed me thus" is an announcement that he quoted the very words of Blair, and the point of this part of the story was in Blair's disproportionate "gravity and earnestness," on so trivial an occasion. Scott set down the version he had heard in conversation, but it was simple in him to think that he was correcting Boswell's authentic text by the substitution of a traditional report, which had been purposely corrupted, perhaps, under the notion of improving it, and which had anyhow been exposed to the adulterations that attend upon oral anecdotes, in their passage from mouth to mouth.-MS. note to Boswell's Johnson. 4 [Memoirs of Hannah More, vol. i. p. 213.] THE LIFE OF JOHNSON 239 With the accuracy of distinction for which he was celebrated, Johnson has remarked that mimicry requires great powers, though it is to make a mean use of them,-" great acuteness of observation, great retention of what is observed, and great pliancy of organs to represent what is observed." It is not a little singular that a work which has conferred an immortality upon Boswell far beyond what the most indulgent of his applauding friends would have supposed him capable of attaining, should be the very ground with posterity for questioning his abilities. That a dunce should have produced a biography which, by general confession, stands at the head of its own department of literature—a department so difficult that it can boast fewer masterpieces than any other species of composition-is without a parallel, and hardly conceivable. Imbecility and absurdity could not of themselves give birth to excellence. To exaggerate Boswell's weaknesses was perhaps impossible, but the talents which mingled with them have sometimes been denied or underrated, and a paradoxical antithesis has been set up between the folly of the man and the greatness of his book. His reasoning faculties were, no doubt, small; he was childishly vain, and often silly in his conduct; all of which may be equally affirmed of Lord Nelson, and yet did not prevent the coexistence of genius. The Life of Johnson is rendered in some degree more entertaining by the foibles of its author, but its plan and execution, everything which constitutes its enduring interest and value, are due to mind and skill, and not to the absence of these qualities. Johnson asserted in 1773 that up to that period there had been no good biography of any literary man in England. "Besides," he said, "the common incidents of life, it should tell us his studies, his mode of living, the means by which he attained to excellence, and his opinion of his own works." There were two things which he was confident he could do well-state what a book ought to 1 [Boswell's Johnson, p. 230.] 2 [Ibid., p. 346.] 1 |