The pages of the Life of Samuel Johnson contain vivid impressions of two extraordinary characters, of their friendship, of the material world through which they moved, and of the imaginative world they created together. However, the Life of Johnson is in itself, as an artefact and as a literary project, just as fascinating as what it describes and preserves. In respect both of how it was put together and of the general ideas about biography by which it is informed, the book is as extraordinary as its subject.
The Life of Johnson is, self-evidently, a very large book. It is however also, and much less self-evidently, a work of furious compression. The volume of the Boswell papers discovered by Colonel Ralph H. Isham in Malahide Castle126 indicates how large and difficult to control was the mass of material which Boswell had over years accumulated in connection with the project of writing Johnson’s life. Exactly when Boswell began collecting this material is not quite clear.127 In March 1785 he wrote to Herbert Croft soliciting information about Johnson, and at the same time informing him that ‘for upwards of twenty Years, I with his knowledge Collected materials for writing his life, which will be a large work, and require a Considerable time to make it ready for publication.’128 ‘Upwards of twenty years’ from 1785 would place the decision to compose the Life very close to the first meeting of Boswell and Johnson in 1763, and it is very difficult to find evidence to corroborate this, unless a letter to Wilkes from Venice in 1765, expressing the hope that ‘could my feeble mind preserve but a faint impression of Johnson, it would be a glory to myself and a benefit to mankind’, might be thought to do so.129 Nevertheless, at the very beginning of the Life Boswell asserts that ‘I had the scheme of writing his [Johnson’s] life constantly in view,’ and he furthermore claims that Johnson ‘was well apprised of this circumstance, and from time to time obligingly satisfied my inquiries, by communicating to me the incidents of his early years’.130 Here again corroboration is thin on the ground. In particular the implicit claim that Johnson was aware of Boswell’s biographical plan from the outset, and approved of it, is hard to reconcile with the entry in Boswell’s journal for 31 March 1772, which reads, ‘I have a constant plan to write the life of Mr. Johnson. I have not told him of it yet, nor do I know if I should tell him.’131
Boswell may have taken the decision to write the Life of Johnson soon after meeting his subject, but the earliest evidence from within the Life itself that Johnson was aware of Boswell’s design comes from March 1772, in a fragment which derives from the same journal entry just quoted:
I said, that if it was not troublesome and presuming too much, I would request him to tell me all the little circumstances of his life; what schools he attended, when he came to Oxford, when he came to London, &c. &c. He did not disapprove of my curiosity as to these particulars; but said, ‘They’ll come out by degrees as we talk together.’132
In the following year, while Boswell and Johnson were on their Scottish tour, we find another important landmark in the composition of the Life:
That Sunday evening [22 August] that we sat by ourselves at Aberdeen, I asked him several particulars of his life from his early years, which he readily told me, and I marked down before him. This day I proceeded in my inquiries, also marking before him. I have them on separate leaves of paper. I shall lay up authentic materials for The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., and if I survive him, I shall be the one who shall most faithfully do honour to his memory. I have now a vast treasure of his conversation at different times since the year 1762 [1763] when I first obtained his acquaintance; and by assiduous inquiry I can make up for not knowing him sooner.133
And Boswell added this amplifying note: ‘It is no small satisfaction to me to reflect that Dr. Johnson read this, and, after being apprised of my intention, communicated to me, at subsequent periods, many particulars of his life, which probably could not otherwise have been preserved.’134
Alongside this, however, should be set Mrs Piozzi’s record of a conversation which she claims took place on 18 July 1773 (a bare month before Johnson arrived in Edinburgh to begin his tour of the Highlands), in which the subject of Johnson’s future biography was raised by Johnson himself:
‘And who will be my biographer (said he), do you think?’ Goldsmith, no doubt, replied I, and he will do it the best among us. ‘The dog would write it best to be sure, replied he; but his particular malice towards me, and general disregard for truth, would make the book useless to all, and injurious to my character.’ Oh! as to that, said I, we should all fasten upon him, and force him to do you justice; but the worst is, the Doctor does not know your life; nor can I tell indeed who does, except Dr. Taylor of Ashbourne. ‘Why Taylor, said he, is better acquainted with my heart than any man or woman now alive; and the history of my Oxford exploits lies all between him and Adams; but Dr. James knows my very early days better than he. After my coming to London to drive the world about a little, you must all go to Jack Hawkesworth for anecdotes: I lived in great familiarity with him (though I think there was not much affection) from the year 1753 till the time Mr. Thrale and you took me up. I intend, however, to disappoint the rogues, and either make you write the life, with Taylor’s intelligence; or, which is better, do it myself, after outliving you all. I am now (added he), keeping a diary, in hopes of using it for that purpose some time.’135
It may be that this autobiographical intention was suspended or discarded after Boswell had shown his hand to Johnson in Scotland a month or so later. It is nevertheless striking that the name of Boswell does not arise.
The first public announcement of the Life is easier to pin down. At the end of his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), Boswell included an ‘Advertisement’ for the Life, said to be ‘Preparing for the Press, in one Volume Quarto’. Its first paragraph confirms some details of the chronology of the project, and indicates the miscellaneous format of the eventual book:
Mr. Boswell has been collecting materials for this work for more than twenty years, during which he was honoured with the intimate friendship of Dr. Johnson; to whose memory he is ambitious to erect a literary monument, worthy of so great an authour, and so excellent a man. Dr. Johnson was well informed of his design, and obligingly communicated to him several curious particulars. With these will be interwoven the most authentick accounts that can be obtained from those who knew him best; many sketches of his conversation on a multiplicity of subjects, with various persons, some of them the most eminent of the age; a great number of letters from him at different periods, and several original pieces dictated by him to Mr. Boswell, distinguished by that peculiar energy, which marked every emanation of his mind.136
As it was calculated to do, this announcement raised public expectations. In January 1792 James Abercrombie mentioned to Boswell how he had been ‘most anxiously expecting’ the Life of Johnson ever since ‘your promise of it at the end of your Tour to the Hebrides, printed in 1785’.137