JAMES BOSWELL (1740–1795)

James Boswell was the son of a Scotch laird at Auchinleck, in Ayrshire, and was prepared for the bar at Edinburgh and Glasgow. He also studied at Utrecht, later, entered the Middle Temple in London, and, in 1786, was admitted to the English bar. He traveled widely, cultivated assiduously the society of famous men, and made literary stock of their conversation and correspondence. During one of his tours he 'gratified his curiosity much in dining with Jean Jacques Rousseau,' then an exile in the wilds of Neufchatel.' At another time, he got as far as Corsica, published an Account on his return, and, when Paoli, the Corsican patriot, took refuge in London in 1776, became his constant guest. But the acquaintance which was particularly fruitful for English literature was that with Dr. Samuel Johnson, begun in 1763 and lasting until Johnson's death. Boswell was gifted with a high degree of curiosity, acute perception and a retentive memory, and he early formed the habit of keeping an exact journal. It is reported of him that he would lay down his knife and fork, and take out his tablets to record a good anecdote.' In spite of toadyism and vanity and his habit of taking notes, he had the faculty of making himself agreeable as a companion and, in 1773, Johnson got him elected to the Literary Club, thus vastly extending his opportunities for observation. The same year, the two toured the Hebrides together. During this journey Boswell allowed Johnson to read portions of his journal, and the great man acknowledged that it was a very exact picture of a portion of his life.' The year after Johnson's death Boswell published his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Dr. Johnson, and during the next few years, he brought to completion the Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791). This remarkable book is as vital and intimate as a masterpiece of fiction and has the additional interest that it is an authentic transcript from the life of a great and influential man of peculiar social qualities, the whole exhibiting,' as the title page has it, a view of literature and literary men in Great Britain for near half a century, during which he flourished.'

FROM THE LIFE OF JOHNSON

avowed principles, and become the tool of a government which he held to be founded in usurpation. I have taken care to have it in my power to refute 5 them from the most authentic information. Lord Bute told me that Mr. Wedderburne, now Lord Loughborough, was the person who first mentioned this subject to him. Lord Loughborough told me that the pension was granted to Johnson solely as the reward of his literary merit, without any stipulation whatever, or even tacit understanding that he should write for the administration. His lordship added, that he was confident the political tracts which Johnson afterwards did write, as they were entirely consonant with his own opinions, would have been written by him though no pension had been granted to him.

The accession of George the Third to the throne of these kingdoms, opened a new and brighter prospect to men of literary merit, who had been honored with no mark of royal favor in the preceding reign. His present Majesty's education in this country, as well as his taste and beneficence, prompted him to to be the patron of science and the arts; and early this year, Johnson having been represented to him as a very learned and good man, without any certain provision, his Majesty was pleased to grant him a 15 pension of three hundred pounds a year. The Earl of Bute, who was then prime minister, had the honor to announce this instance of his sovereign's bounty, concerning which, many and various stories, 20 all equally erroneous, have been propagated; maliciously representing it as a political bribe to Johnson, to desert his

Mr. Thomas Sheridan and Mr. Murphy, who then lived a good deal both with him and Mr. Wedderburne, told me

enforce obligation. You have conferred favors on a man who has neither alliance nor interest, who has not merited them by services, nor courted them by officiousness; 5 you have spared him the shame of solicitation, and the anxiety of suspense.

that they previously talked with John-
son upon this matter, and that it was
perfectly understood by all parties that
the pension was merely honorary. Sir
Joshua Reynolds told me, that Johnson
called on him after his Majesty's inten-
tion had been notified to him, and said he
wished to consult his friends as to the
propriety of his accepting this mark of
the royal favor, after the definitions 10
which he had given in his Dictionary of
'pension' and pensioners.' He said
he should not have Sir Joshua's answer
till next day, when he would call again,
and desired he might think of it. Sir 15
Joshua answered that he was clear to
give his opinion then, that there could
be no objection to his receiving from
the king a reward for literary merit;
and that certainly the definitions in his 20
Dictionary were not applicable to him.
Johnson, it should seem, was satisfied, for
he did not call again till he had accepted
the pension, and had waited on Lord
Bute to thank him. He then told Sir 25
Joshua that Lord Bute said to him ex-
pressly, It is not given you for any-
thing you are to do, but what you have
done.'

'What has been thus elegantly given, will, I hope, be not reproach fully enjoyed; I shall endeavor to give your Lordship the only recompense which generosity desires,- the gratification of finding that your benefits are not improperly bestowed. I am, my Lord, 'Your Lordship's most obliged, 'Most obedient, and most humble servant, 'SAM JOHNSON.'

This year his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, paid a visit of some weeks to his native county, Devonshire, in which he was accompanied by Johnson, who was much pleased with this jaunt, and declared he had derived from it a great accession of new ideas. He was entertained at the seats of several noblemen and gentlemen in the west of England,1 but the greatest part of this time was passed at Plymouth, where the magnificence of the navy, the ship-building and all its cir

cumstances, His lordship, he said, behaved in the handsomest manner. He repeated the 30 words twice, that he might be sure Johnson heard them, and thus set his mind perfectly at ease.

* * *

afforded him a grand

subject for contemplation. The commissioner of the dockyard paid him the compliment of ordering the yacht to convey him and his friend to the Eddystone, to which they accordingly sailed. But the

could not land. * *

*

But I shall not detain my readers longer by any words of my own, on a 35 weather was so tempestuous that they subject on which I am happily enabled, by the favor of the Earl of Bute, to present them with what Johnson himself wrote; his lordship having been pleased to communicate to me a copy of the fol- 40 lowing letter to his father, which does great honor both to the writer and to the noble person to whom it is addressed:

Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom I was obliged for my information concerning this excursion, mentions a very characteristical anecdote of Johnson while at Plymouth. Having observed that, in consequence of the dock-yard, a new town had arisen about two miles off as a rival to the old; and knowing, from his

To the Right Honorable the Earl of 45 sagacity and just observation of human Bute

'July 20, 1762.

'MY LORD-When the bills were yesterday delivered to me by Mr. Wedderburne, I was informed by him of the future favors 50 which his Majesty has, by your Lordship's recommendation, been induced to intend for

me.

'Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed; your Lordship's kindness includes every circumstance that can gratify delicacy, or

nature, that it is certain, if a man hates at all, he will hate his next neighbor, he concluded that this new and rising

In or

1 At one of these seats Dr. Amyat, physician in London, told me he happened to meet him. der to amuse him till dinner should be ready, he was taken out to walk in the garden. The master of the house, thinking it proper to introduce something scientific into the conversation, addressed him thus: 'Are you a botanist, Dr. Johnson?' 'No, 55 sir,' answered Johnson, I am not a botanist; and (alluding no doubt to his near-sightedness), should I wish to become a botanist, I must first turn myself into a reptile.'

him to live in the immense metropolis of London. Mr. Gentleman, a native of Ireland, who passed some years in Scotland as a player, and as an instructor 5 in the English language, a man whose talents and worth were depressed by misfortunes, had given me a representation of the figure and manner of DicTIONARY JOHNSON! as he was then generally called; and during my first visit to London, which was for three months in 1760, Mr. Derrick, the poet, who was Gentleman's friend and countryman, flattered me with hopes that he would in15 troduce me to Johnson, an honor of which I was very ambitious. But he never found an opportunity, which made me doubt that he had promised to do what was not in his power; till Johnson, some years afterwards, told me,Derrick, sir, might very well have introduced you. I had a kindness for Derrick, and am sorry he is dead.'

town could not but excite the envy and
jealousy of the old, in which conjecture
he was very soon confirmed; he, there-
fore, set himself resolutely on the side of
the old town, the established town, in
which his lot was cast, considering it
as a kind of duty to stand by it. He ac-
cordingly entered warmly into its in-
terests, and upon every occasion talked
of the dockers, as the inhabitants of the 10
new town were called, as upstarts and
aliens. Plymouth is very plentifully
supplied with water by a river brought
into it from a great distance, which is
so abundant that it runs to waste in the
town. The Dock, or New-town, being
totally destitute of water, petitioned
Plymouth that a small portion of the
conduit might be permitted to go to them,
and this was now under consideration. 20
Johnson, affecting to entertain the pas-
sions of the place, was violent in oppo-
sition; and half-laughing at himself for
his pretended zeal, where he had no con-
cern, exclaimed, 'No, no; I am against 25
the dockers; I am a Plymouth man.
Rogues! let them die of thirst. They
shall not have a drop!'

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30

In the summer of 1761 Mr. Thomas Sheridan was at Edinburgh, and delivered lectures upon the English language and public speaking to large and respectable audiences. I was often in his company, and heard him frequently expatiate upon Johnson's extraordinary knowledge, talents, and virtues, repeat his pointed sayings, describe his particularities, and boast of his being his guest sometimes till two or three in the morning. At his house I hoped to have many opportunities of seeing the sage, as Mr. Sheridan obligingly assured me I should not be disappointed.

1763: Aetat. 54. In 1763, he furnished to The Poetical Calendar, published by Fawkes and Woty, a character of Collins, which he afterwards ingrafted into his entire life of that admirable poet, in the collection of lives which he wrote for 35 the body of English poetry, formed and published by the booksellers of London. His account of the melancholy depression with which Collins was severely afflicted, and which brought him to his grave, is, 40 of 1762, to my surprise and regret I I think, one of the most tender and interesting passages in the whole series of his writings. * * *

When I returned to London in the end

found an irreconcilable difference had taken place between Johnson and Sheridan. A pension of two hundred pounds This is to me a memorable year; for a year had been given to Sheridan. in it I had the happiness to obtain the 45 Johnson, who thought slightingly of acquaintance of that extraordinary man. Sheridan's art, upon hearing that he was whose memoirs I am now writing: an also pensioned, exclaimed,What! have acquaintance which I shall ever esteem they given him a pension? Then it is as one of the most fortunate circumtime for me to give up mine.' Whether stances in my life. Though then but two- 50 this proceeded from a momentary indigand-twenty, I had for several years read nation, as if it were an affront to his his works with delight and instruction, exalted merit that a player should be reand had the highest reverence for their warded in the same manner with him, or author, which had grown up in my fancy was the sudden effect of a fit of peevishinto a kind of mysterious veneration, by 55 ness, it was unluckily said, and indeed figuring to myself a state of solemn, ele- cannot be justified. Mr. Sheridan's penvated abstraction in which I supposed sion was granted to him not as a player,

but as a sufferer in the cause of government, when he was manager of the Theater Royal in Ireland, when parties ran high in 1753. And it must also be allowed that he was a man of literature, and had considerably improved the arts of reading and speaking with distinctness and propriety. * * *

Her novel, entitled Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph, contains an excellent moral while it inculcates a future state of retribution; and what it teaches is 5 impressed upon the mind by a series of as deep distress as can affect humanity, in the amiable and pious heroine who goes to her grave unrelieved, but resigned, and full of hope of heaven's mercy.' Johnson paid her this high compliment upon it: I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much.'

Mr. Thomas Davies, the actor, who then kept a bookseller's shop in Russell Street, Covent Garden, told me that Johnson was very much his friend, and came frequently to his house, where he more than once invited me to meet him; but by some unlucky accident or other he was prevented from coming to us. Mr. Thomas Davies was a man of good understanding and talents, with the advantage of a liberal education. Though

Johnson complained that a man who disliked him repeated his sarcasm to Mr. 10 Sheridan, without telling him what followed, which was, that after a pause he added, However, I am glad that Mr. Sheridan has a pension, for he is a very good man.' Sheridan could never for- 15 give this hasty contemptuous expression. It rankled in his mind; and though I informed him of all that Johnson said, and that he would be very glad to meet him amicably, he positively declined repeated 20 offers which I made, and once went off abruptly from a house where he and I were engaged to dine, because he was told that Dr. Johnson was to be there. I have no sympathetic feeling with 25 somewhat pompous, he was an entertainsuch persevering resentment. It is painful when there is a breach between those who have lived together socially and cordially; and I wonder that there is not, in all such cases, a mutual wish that it should be healed. I could perceive that Mr. Sheridan was by no means satisfied with Johnson's acknowledging him to be a good man. That could not soothe his injured vanity. I could not but smile, at 35 the same time that I was offended, to observe Sheridan in The Life of Swift, which he afterwards published, attempting, in the writhings of his resentment, to depreciate Johnson, by characterizing 40 him as A writer of gigantic fame in these days of little men'; that very Johnson whom he once so highly admired and venerated. This rupture with Sheridan deprived Johnson of one of 45 his most agreeable resources for amusement in his lonely evenings; for Sheridan's well-informed, animated, and bustling mind never suffered conversation

ing companion; and his literary performances have no inconsiderable share of merit. He was a friendly and very hospitable man. Both he and his wife, (who 30 has been celebrated for her beauty), though upon the stage for many years, maintained an uniform decency of character; and Johnson esteemed them, and lived in as easy an intimacy with them, as with any family which he used to visit. Mr. Davies recollected several of Johnson's remarkable sayings, and was one of the best of the many imitators of his voice and manner, while relating them. He increased my impatience more and more to see the extraordinary man whose works I highly valued, and whose conversation was reported to be so peculiarly excellent.

At last, on Monday, the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's backparlor, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies hav

to stagnate; and Mrs. Sheridan was a 50 ing perceived him, through the glassmost agreeable companion to an intellectual man. She was sensible, ingenious, unassuming, yet communicative. I recollect, with satisfaction, many pleasing hours which I passed with her under the hospitable roof of her husband, who was to me a very kind friend.

door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing towards us, he announced his awful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the 55 part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, Look, my lord, it comes!' I