By Lord Houghton.

There is no word of vindication or appreciation to be added to Mr. Carlyle’s estimate of the character and merits of James Boswell. That judgment places him so high that the most fantastic dream of his own self-importance would have been fully realized, and yet there is no disguise of his follies or condonation of his vices. We understand at once the justice and the injustice of his contemporaries, and while we are amused at the thought of their astonishment could the future fame of the object of so much banter and rude criticism have been revealed to them, we doubt whether, had we been in their place, our misapprehension and depreciation would not have been still greater than theirs.

It was the object of Boswell’s life to connect his own name with that of Dr. Johnson; the one is now identified with the other. He aspired to transmit to future time the more transitory and evanescent forms of Johnson’s genius; he has become the repository of all that is most significant and permanent. The great “Dictionary” is superseded by wider and more accurate linguistic knowledge; the succinct and sententious biographies are replaced, where their subjects are sufficiently important, by closer criticisms and by antiquarian details, while in the majority of his subjects the Lives and Works of the writers are alike forgotten. The “Rambler” and the “Idler” stand among the British Essayists, dust-worn and silent; and though a well-informed Englishman would recognise a quotation from “Rasselas” or “London,” he would hardly be expected to remember the context.[1] But the “Johnsoniad” keeps fresh among us the noble image of the moralist and the man, and when a philosopher of our time says pleasantly of Boswell what Heinrich Heine said gravely of Goethe, that he measures the literary faculty of his friends by the extent of their appreciation of his idol, it is to a composite creation of the genius of the master and of the sympathetic talent of the disciple that is paid this singular homage. For it was assuredly a certain analogy of character that fitted Boswell to be the friendly devotee and intellectual servitor of Dr. Johnson, and the resemblances of style and manner which are visible even in the fragments brought together in this volume cannot be regarded as parodies or conscious imitations, but rather as illustrations of the mental harmony which enabled the reporter to produce with such signal fidelity, in the words of another, his own ideal of all that was good and great.

“Elia,” with his charming othersidedness, writes, in one place, “I love to lose myself in other men’s minds,” and in another, “the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above you instead of raising you, keeps you down; too frequent doses of original thinking from others restrains what lesser portion of that faculty you may possess in your own. You get entangled in another man’s mind, even as you lose yourself in another man’s ground; you are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides outpace yours to lassitude.” Both observations are true, and instances are not wanting of the spirit of reverence and the habit of waiting on the words and thoughts of those who are regarded as the spokesmen of authority, emasculating the self-reliance and thralling the free action of superior men. This is especially observable in political life, where a certain surrender of independence is indispensable to success, but where, if carried too far, it tends to dwarf the stature and plane down the beneficial varieties of public characters. But there will always be many forces that militate against this courtliness in the Republic of Letters; leading men will have their clique, and too often like to be kings of their company, but more damage is done to themselves than to those who serve them, and there is little fear of too rapid a succession of Boswells or Eckermanns.

In these days of ready and abundant writing the value of Conversation, as the oral tradition of social intercourse, is not what it was in times when speech was almost the exclusive communicator of intelligence between man and man. Yet there will ever be an appreciation of the peculiar talent which reproduces with vivacity those fabrics of the hour, and gives to the passing lights and shades of thought an artistic and picturesque coherence. This is the product of a genial spirit itself delighting in the verbal fray, and of a society at once familiar and intellectual. We have from other sources abundant details of the vivacity of the upper classes of the Scottish community in the latter half of the last century and the beginning of the present. It had the gaiety which is the due relaxation of stern and solid temperaments, and the humour which is the genuine reverse of a deep sense of realities and an inflexible logic. It was intemperate, not with the intemperance of other northern nations, to whom intoxication is either a diversion to the torpor of the senses, or a narcotic applied by a benevolent nature to an anxious and painful existence, but with a conviviality which physical soundness and moral determination enabled them to reconcile with the sharpest attention to their material interests and with the hardest professional work.

Scotland had had the remarkable destiny in its earlier history of assimilating to itself the elements of a finer civilisation without losing its independence or national character; and it had even interchanged with the continent of Europe various influences of manners and speech. It had thus retained a certain intellectual self-sufficiency, especially in its relations with English society and literature, which never showed itself more distinctly than in its estimate of Dr. Johnson and of his connection with Boswell. In the pamphlets, and verses, and pictures of the time, Boswell appears as a monomaniac, and Johnson as an impostor. The oblong quarto of Caricatures which followed their journey to the Hebrides shows that Boswell not only did not gain any favour from his countrymen, by introducing among them the writer, who, however little understood in his entire worth, nevertheless held a high place among English wits and men of letters, but brought abundant ridicule on himself, his family, and his friend. It required all Boswell’s invincible good humour to withstand the sarcasm that assailed him. Dr. Johnson certainly repaid with interest the prejudice and ill-will he encountered, but it remains surprising that so good and intelligent a company did not better recognise so great a man. We did not so receive Burns and Walter Scott. The agreeable reminiscences of Lord Cockburn and Dean Ramsay have given us the evening lights of the long day of social brightness which Scotland, and especially Edinburgh, enjoyed; and if this pleasantness is now a thing of the past, the citizens of the modern Athens have only shared the lot of other sections of mankind, even of France, par excellence, the country of Conversation.[2]

This decadence in the art and practice of the communication of ideas, and in the cultivation of facile and coloured language, is commonly attributed to the wide extension of literature and the press, which give to every man all the knowledge of matters of interest which he can require without the intervention of a fellow-creature. It may be that men may now read and think too much to talk, but the change is, perhaps, rather the effect of certain alterations in the structure of society itself, accompanied by the fastidiousness that tries to make up by silence and seclusion for the arbitrary distinctions and recognised barriers, which limited and defined the game of life, but admitted so much pleasant freedom within the rules. We can however, still acknowledge the value of such records as those of the late Mr. Nassau, Senior, whose “Conversations” with the most eminent politicians and men of action of his time, especially in France, afford trustworthy and interesting materials for the future historian, and where a legal mind and well-trained observation take the place of vivid representation and literary skill. “Quand un bon mot,” writes Monsieur L.’Enfant in one of his prefaces to his “Poggiana” “est en mÊme temps un trait d’Histoire, on fait aisÈment grace À’ce qui peut lui manquer du cÔtÉ de la force et du sel.”

The title of “Boswelliana,” which the editor has taken from the original manuscript, is hardly correct. This is, in fact, one of the note-books of the anecdotes and facetiÆ of the society in which Boswell lived; and though such a use of the termination may find some analogy in the Luculliana,—cherries that Lucullus brought from Pontus—and the Appiana—apples introduced into Rome by him of the Appian way,—yet the term “Ana,” in its most important applications, has always referred not to the collector, but to the personage or at any rate to the subject-matter of the book. Some vindication for its use on the present occasion may, however, be found in those instances in which Boswell acts as Bozzy to himself, and where the opinions and the mode of enunciating them are so thoroughly Boswellian that they give a characteristic flavour to the whole. What can be more delightfully his own than the prefixes “Uxoriana,” and “My son Alexander?”

There is some mystery in the insertion of certain occasional Johnsoniana, which could hardly have found their way into this collection, if Boswell had at the time been keeping special memoranda of his great Oracle. They are not very numerous nor consecutive, nor do they imply that at the time they were taken down they were intended as portions of the magnum opus. Most of them, however, are incorporated in it, and are only repeated here to preserve the integrity of the manuscript. The few omissions, such as they are, are of the same character as the lacunÆ in the Temple letters.

The historical and biographical annotation of these anecdotes has been a work requiring considerable local knowledge and antiquarian research. Executed, as it is, by Dr. Rogers, it affords an interesting social picture of the Scotland of the day, and there are many families still living, who will here gladly recognise and welcome the words and thoughts of their ancestors.