Boswell’s first choice of a subject was the Corsican hero, Pasquale Paoli, whom he visited in the autumn of 1765. Paoli became his fast friend, and Boswell’s first book was about Corsica and Paoli’s efforts to liberate it. The book was a success. But as the friendship with Dr. Johnson developed, Boswell began to realize that here was his perfect subject. The first edition of The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. appeared in 1791, to great acclaim. Boswell saw the second edition through the press in 1793 and was at work on the third when he died in 1795.
Boswell gave his soul to Dr. Johnson, and in return Johnson gave his heart to the strange young Scot. The old man had never had such a friend, at least since Mrs. Johnson’s death. And the famous old man did not mind at all that “Bozzie” was forever challenging him with statements, declarations, and propositions. He was at least half aware that Boswell was taking it all down, composing some sort of record. Others were, too, Johnson knew; but he did not love them the way he did Boswell. There was something very special about Boswell, Dr. Johnson thought, and he was right.
Boswell was also right to choose Samuel Johnson, LL.D., as his subject. Johnson was the most famous literary man in England. He had produced the best dictionary of the English language and also an edition of Shakespeare’s plays that was in every gentleman’s library. He wrote no more these days; he had once said that “No one but a fool writes except for money,” and he had money now, money of his own and money from admiring hosts like the Thrales (Mr. Thrale made beer, and Mrs. Thrale liked having Johnson at her dinner parties). All of his energies—still considerable—were spent on conversation; he was probably the greatest talker in England, and an aggressive talker, too; when he talked for victory, as a later critic said, you had better get out of his way. A young man with a good memory and a knowledge of shorthand would find much usable material if he could manage to spend enough time with Johnson. Boswell found the time, Johnson talked, and the result is a glorious book.
Johnson was a rich biographical subject, and not just because of his famous wit. He was also a very touching human being. Tall, with stooped shoulders and a craggy face scarred by scrofula (a sort of severe acne), he was also awkward in the extreme and possessed by every kind of tic and nervous ailment. At the same time, he was a thoughtful and caring man. He was a really good friend. He supported a household of servants and never complained when they did not serve him. He cared very much for his cat. And he was deeply concerned for his immortal soul.
All of this Boswell knew, and all of it he told. But the most important thing he knew was how to stand out of the spotlight and let Dr. Johnson shine. The best biographers know this, and Boswell was the first modern biographer.
Much has been learned about Dr. Johnson, and our time has witnessed the publication of several fine new biographies of this perennial subject. The publication of Boswell’s diaries, in eighteen volumes (1928–1934), has also taught us much about Boswell. It was customary, until these diaries were discovered—it had been supposed that they were lost—to view Boswell as a fortunate fool, a kind of recording machine who never really understood the meaning of his own words. The diaries show that to be untrue; Boswell was not only a man of complex aspirations but also a superb writer. In fact, his diaries, which constitute almost a complete autobiography, are one of the best examples of that genre.
Nevertheless, in the end it is probably true that the combination of Johnson and Boswell, or Boswell and Johnson, is greater than the sum of its parts. Boswell was fortunate to find Johnson, and Johnson to find Boswell. And we are lucky that they found one another.
The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. is the perfect book to read on a series of winter evenings—throughout an entire winter, perhaps—and a long one at that. It requires patience to read the whole book, but that patience is rewarded. Imagine yourself in London in, say, 1775; you are seated in a drawing room, and there is an excited whisper of anticipation: “Dr. Johnson is coming down!” Sit back and listen … .
ROBERT BURNS
1759–1796
Selected Poems
Robert Burns is the national poet of Scotland. So what else is new, you say. It is not new, but it is remarkable, for no other country has a national poet as Scotland has Burns. Each year his birthday, January 25, is celebrated with rites expressing a fervent and undying love that is associated with no other serious poet anywhere.
Burns was born in 1759 in Ayrshire, in the Lowlands of Scotland. The Highlands are not far away, and Burns often journeyed there in search of adventure, love, and, finally, peace. He received almost no schooling, being instead one of the most successful autodidacts; he read everything he could lay his hands on, which was a lot in eighteenth- century Scotland, a nation that was both literate and proud of its books. He began to write verses when he was about twenty, the time when he also first fell in love. “I never had the least thought,” he wrote, “or inclination of turning Poet till I once got heartily in Love, and then Rhyme and Song were, in a manner, a spontaneous language of my heart.” Some of his poems were in standard English, but many were in the Scottish dialect; in fact, he created a distinctly Scots-English idiom that now seems natural enough but that really did not exist before him. Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, published at Kilmarnock in 1786, was an immediate success. The world was ready for this farmer and farmer’s son who could either wring or uplift his readers’ hearts with the turn of a phrase.
Literary success meant fame and new friends, but little or no money. Burns already had a family, although he was as yet unmarried. His first illegitimate child had been born in 1785, and in 1786, a month or so before the publication of his book, Jean Armour produced twins. She and Burns were married in 1788, but the burden of his need to support her and her children had become heavy before that. Burns had no other work besides farming—not a lucrative profession in eighteenth-century Scotland. In fact, Robert Burns worked himself to death; he died in 1796, at the early age of thirty-seven, from the effects of too much work in his early years on an inadequate diet.
The last years of Burns’s life were devoted to songs; he is the greatest writer of songs in English, and perhaps in any language. He worked for ten years to collect old songs and to help edit a series of volumes that are unique in English; without those volumes, the heritage of English and Scottish song would be immeasurably poorer. Where the words of an old song survived, he transcribed them. Where a mere fragment existed, he wrote new words. Where only an old tune came down to him, he wrote a new song. If he had not been uncannily in tune with the spirit of Scottish minstrels he would be condemned today for having destroyed an ancient tradition. But instead he saved the tradition and made it richer than it had ever been.
Some recastings of old songs are very famous; for example, “Green Grow the Rashes O” and “A Red, Red Rose.” The most famous of all was not claimed by Burns, although he wrote most of what comes down to us. The chorus that we sing at midnight on New Year’s Eve was traditional, but these lovely verses were written by Burns to accompany the chorus: