1770 Publication of The False Alarm.
1771 Publication of Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting Falkland’s Islands.
1773 Tour of the highlands of Scotland and the Hebrides.
1774 Publication of The Patriot; tour of Wales with the Thrales.
1775 DCL, Oxford; visits Paris with the Thrales; publication of A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Taxation No Tyranny.
1777 Begins work on the The Lives of the English Poets.
1779 Publication of first instalment of The Lives of the English Poets.
1781 Publication of second instalment of The Lives of the English Poets.
1783 Founding of the Essex Head Club.
1784 Dies on 13 December.
JAMES BOSWELL
1740 Born on 29 October in Edinburgh.
1753 Admitted to University of Edinburgh.
1759 Admitted to University of Glasgow.
1762 Passes examination in Civil Law.
Leaves Edinburgh for London on 15 November.
1763 Publishes Letters between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq.
Meets Samuel Johnson on 16 May.
August: goes to Utrecht to study law.
1764 Tour of Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Corsica and France.
1766 Returns to London on 12 February.
26 July: begins legal career as member of Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh.
1768 Publishes An Account of Corsica on 18 February.
1769 Marries Margaret Montgomerie on 25 November.
1777 Begins publishing essays in the London Magazine as ‘The Hypochondriack’.
1782 Death of his father, Lord Auchinleck, on 30 August makes Boswell laird of the family estate.
1785 Publishes The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides on 1 October.
1786 Called to the English bar on 13 February.
1789 Death of his wife on 4 June.
1791 Publishes The Life of Samuel Johnson on 16 May.
1795 Dies in London on 19 May.
Buried in family vault at Auchinleck on 8 June.
Introduction
James Boswell met Samuel Johnson on 16 May 1763, while drinking tea in the back room of Thomas Davies’s bookshop in Covent Garden. Boswell had arrived in London during the previous winter, and in his journal he recorded his sentiments when the capital was laid out before his eyes:
When we came upon Highgate hill and had a view of London, I was all life and joy. I repeated Cato’s soliloquy on the immortality of the soul, and my soul bounded forth to a certain prospect of happy futurity. I sung all manner of songs, and began to make one about an amorous meeting with a pretty girl, the burthen of which was as follows:
She gave me this, I gave her that;
And tell me, had she not tit for tat?
I gave three huzzas, and we went briskly in.1
‘Cato’s soliloquy’ is, of course, the famous speech from the coda to Joseph Addison’s immensely popular play in which, on the point of being defeated by Caesar’s forces and contemplating suicide, Cato the Younger is persuaded by the arguments advanced by Socrates in the Phaedo concerning the immortality of the souclass="underline"
It must be so – Plato, thou reasonest well –
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
’Tis the divinity that stirs within us:
’Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.2
It is typical of Boswell that his recollection of this high-minded and improving speech should be followed immediately by an intimation of a more earthly kind of future happiness, in his extemporized song about a sexual encounter with a ‘pretty girl’. The pages of his London journal oscillate between moments of pious, hopeful sobriety –
I went to Mayfair Chapel and heard prayers and an excellent sermon from the Book of Job on the comforts of piety. I was in a fine frame. And I thought that God really designed us to be happy. I shall certainly be a religious old man. I was much so in youth. I have now and then flashes of devotion, and it will one day burn with a steady flame.3
– and episodes of debauch, occasionally furtive –
I was really unhappy for want of women. I thought it hard to be in such a place without them. I picked up a girl in the Strand; went into a court with intention to enjoy her in armour [i.e. a condom]. But she had none. I toyed with her. She wondered at my size, and said if I ever took a girl’s maidenhead, I would make her squeak.4
– occasionally more uninhibited, as in his consummation of his liaison with the actress he refers to as ‘Louisa’:
A more voluptuous night I never enjoyed. Five times was I fairly lost in supreme rapture. Louisa was madly fond of me; she declared I was a prodigy, and asked me if this was not extraordinary for human nature. I said twice as much might be, but this was not, although in my own mind I was somewhat proud of my performance.5
However, beneath the varied surface of Boswell’s London life there lies a common denominator. Boswell’s piety and profligacy are both informed by the self-dramatizing, self-regarding quality of his character. In this respect Boswell’s journal is not a record of his actions, nor even a record of the impressions that his actions made upon himself. It is rather the transcript of his appreciation of actions undertaken with more than half an eye to their eventual reception and remembrance.6 Boswell’s London life was a dramatic performance, and metaphors of the theatre run insistently through his journal entries, perhaps most strikingly in this encounter with Louisa: ‘When I came to Louisa’s, I felt myself stout and well, and most courageously did I plunge into the fount of love, and had vast pleasure as I enjoyed her as an actress who had played many a fine lady’s part.’7 It would be hard to find a more concentrated example of Boswell’s performative idea of character, so perfectly parallel are its reflecting planes of performance and reception.
Into this strange worldof dissoluteness, fantasyand delusion walked Samuel Johnson. At the time, Boswell recorded Johnson’s arrival with these words:
I drank tea at Davies’s in Russell Street, and about seven came in the great Mr. Samuel Johnson, whom I haveso long wishedto see. Mr. Davies introduced me to him. As I knew his mortal antipathy at the Scotch, I cried to Davies, ‘Don’t tell where I come from.’ However, he said, ‘From Scotland.’ ‘Mr. Johnson,’ said I, ‘indeed I come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.’ ‘Sir,’ replied he, ‘that, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.’ Mr. Johnson is a man of a most dreadful appearance. He is a very big man, is troubled with sore eyes, the palsy, and the king’s evil. He is very slovenly in his dress and speaks with a most uncouth voice. Yet his great knowledge and strength of expression command vast respect and render him very excellent company. He has great humour and is a worthy man. But his dogmatical roughness of manners is disagreeable. I shall mark what I remember of his conversation.8