a As I do not see any reason to give a different character of my illustrious friend now, from what I formerly gave, the greatest part of the sketch of him in my Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, is here adopted.
a In the Olla Podrida,1296 a collection of Essays published at Oxford, there is an admirable paper upon the character of Johnson, written by the Reverend Dr. Horne, the late excellent Bishop of Norwich. The following passage is eminently happy: ‘To reject wisdom, because the person of him who communicates it is uncouth, and his manners are inelegant; – what is it, but to throw away a pine-apple, and assign for a reason the roughness of its coat?’
a Though a perfect resemblance of Johnson is not to be found in any age, parts of his character are admirably expressed by Clarendon in drawing that of Lord Falkland, whom the noble and masterly historian describes at his seat near Oxford: – ‘Such an immenseness of wit, such a solidity of judgement, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination. – His acquaintance was cultivated by the most polite and accurate men, so that his house was an University in less volume, whither they came, not so much for repose as study, and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in conversation.’
Bayle’s account of Menage may also be quoted as exceedingly applicable to the great subject of this work: – ‘His illustrious friends erected a very glorious monument to him in the collection entitled Menagiana. Those who judge of things aright, will confess that this collection is very proper to shew the extent of genius and learning which was the character of Menage. And I may be bold to say, that the excellent works he published will not distinguish him from other learned men so advantageously as this. To publish books of great learning, to make Greek and Latin verses exceedingly well turned, is not a common talent, I own; neither is it extremely rare. It is incomparably more difficult to find men who can furnish discourse about an infinite number of things, and who can diversify them an hundred ways. How many authours are there, who are admired for their works, on account of the vast learning that is displayed in them, who are not able to sustain a conversation. Those who know Menage only by his books, might think he resembled those learned men: but if you shew the Menagiana, you distinguish him from them, and make him known by a talent which is given to very few learned men. There it appears that he was a man who spoke off-hand a thousand good things. His memory extended to what was ancient and modern; to the court and to the city; to the dead and to the living languages; to things serious and things jocose; in a word, to a thousand sorts of subjects. That which appeared a trifle to some readers of the Menagiana, who did not consider circumstances, caused admiration in other readers, who minded the difference between what a man speaks without preparation, and that which he prepares for the press. And, therefore, we cannot sufficiently commend the care which his illustrious friends took to erect a monument so capable of giving him immortal glory. They were not obliged to rectify what they had heard him say; for, in so doing, they had not been faithful historians of his conversations.’
NOTES
1. Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950, and London: Heinemann, 1951), pp. 43-4; 19 November 1762.
2. Joseph Addison, Cato (1713), V.i.1-9, p. 56.
3. London Journal, pp. 45-6.
4. Ibid., pp. 49–50.
5. Ibid., p. 139.
6. ‘I should live no more than I can record, as one should not have more corn growing than one can get in’ (journal entry for 17 March 1776: Boswelclass="underline" The Ominous Years, 1774–76, ed. Charles Ryskamp and Frederick A. Pottle (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), p. 265). Boswell slightly reworked this phrasing in his article on diaries in the London Magazine for March 1783: ‘Sometimes it has occurred to me that a man should not live more than he can record, as a farmer should not have a larger crop than he can gather in’ (Margery Bailey, ed., Boswell’s Column (London: William Kimber, 1951), p. 332).
7. London Journal, p. 149. Although it is run close by the scene (pp. 142-3) Boswell gives of a salacious conversation between himself, in the rakish character of ‘a valiant man who could gratify a lady’s loving desires five times in a night’, and a lady of fashion whom he calls ‘Lady Mirabel’. The name is an allusion to William Congreve’s The Way of the World (1700), where however it is the male lead who is called Mirabell. The reversal of names is typically Boswellian, in its revealing carelessness. Cf. also Boswell’s imagining himself as Macheath from The Beggar’s Opera (1728) when in a tavern with two whores: pp. 263-4.
8. Ibid., p. 260.
9. Life of Johnson, below, pp. 207-8.
10. For Boswell’s occasional backsliding and fitful commitment, from the consequences of which he was largely rescued by the assistance of Edmond Malone (who acted, in the words of Peter Martin, as ‘midwife’ to the Life of Johnson), see Peter Martin, Edmond Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A Literary Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 144 – 64; Paul Korshin, ‘Johnson’s Conversation’, in Greg Clingham, ed., New Light on Boswell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 186; and Bruce Redford, Designing the Life of Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 24-6. Direct evidence of Malone’s vital assistance can be found in Marshall Waingrow, ed., The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson, 2nd edn, corrected and enlarged (Edinburgh, New Haven and London: Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 227, 256, 258, 294 and 462.
11. Sir John Hawkins, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1787); Hester Lynch Thrale, later Piozzi, Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786); Isaac Reed and/or George Steevens, An Account of the Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Including Some Incidents of his Life (1784-5); Thomas Tyers, A Biographical Sketch of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1785); William Cooke, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785); William Shaw, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Late Dr. Samuel Johnson (1785); Joseph Towers, An Essay on the Life, Character, and Writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1786); James Harrison, The Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1786).
12. On the broader significance of the introduction of this pictorial detail, see Redford, Designing the Life, pp. 69–70 and 139–41.
13. Life of Johnson, below, p. 212.
14. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 117.
15. For a more typical expression of Boswell’s character, see the exchange of letters between Malone and Boswell over Boswell’s addition of the final four, self-praising, paragraphs to the ‘Advertisement’ to the second edition (Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., pp. 408-9).
16. Redford, Designing the Life.
17. Waingrow, ed., Correspondence &c., p. 326.