Chapter C: Lamb (1)

20 _July_, 1819.

No punning or nonsense here. It is the most serious letter Lamb ever wrote--a letter so fine, so manly, so honorable in the man who wrote it, so honoring to the woman to whom it was addressed, that, knowing Lamb as we do, it can hardly be read without a lump in the throat and eyes suffused with tears.

The letter is folded and sealed and sent by a serving-maid to the lady, who lives hard by in Henrietta Street, just the other side of Covent Garden--and the curtain falls.

Before the next act we are at liberty to wonder how Lamb passed the time while Miss Kelly was writing her reply. Did he go off to the "dull drudgery of the desk's dead wood" at East India House, and there busy himself with the prices of silks or tea or indigo, or did he wander about the streets of his beloved London? I fancy the latter. In any event the curtain rises a few hours later, and Lamb and his sister are seen as before. She has laid aside her knitting. It is late afternoon. Lamb is seated at the table endeavoring to read, when a maid enters and hands him a letter; he breaks the seal eagerly. Again we look over his shoulder and read:--

HENRIETTA STREET, _July_ 20th, 1819.

An early & deeply rooted attachment has fixed my heart on one from
whom no worldly prospect can well induce me to withdraw it, but
while I thus frankly & decidedly decline your proposal, believe me,
I am not insensible to the high honour which the preference of such
a mind as yours confers upon me--let me, however, hope that all
thought upon this subject will end with this letter, & that you
henceforth encourage no other sentiment towards me than esteem in
my private character and a continuance of that approbation of my
humble talents which you have already expressed so much and so
often to my advantage and gratification.

Believe me I feel proud to acknowledge myself

Your obliged friend F. M. KELLY.

Lamb rises from his chair and attempts to walk over to where Mary is sitting; but his feelings overcome him, and he sinks back in his chair again as the curtain falls.

It moves quickly, the action of this little drama. The curtain is down but a moment, suggesting the passage of a single hour. When it is raised, Lamb is alone; he is but forty-five, but looks an old man. The curtains are drawn, lighted candles are on the table. We hear the rain against the windows. Lamb is writing, and for the last time we intrude upon his privacy.

Now poor Charles Lamb, now dear Charles Lamb, "Saint Charles," if you will! Our hearts go out to him; we would comfort him if we could. But read slowly one of the finest letters in all literature: a letter in which he accepts defeat instantly, but with a smile on his face; tears there may have been in his eyes, but she was not to see them. See Lamb in his supreme rôle--_of a man_. How often had he urged his friends to play that difficult part--which no one could play better than he. The letter reads:--

DEAR MISS KELLY,--

_Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a tittle._ I feel myself in a
lackadaisical no-how-ish kind of a humor. I believe it is the rain,
or something. I had thought to have written seriously, but I fancy
I succeed best in epistles of mere fun; puns & that nonsense. You
will be good friends with us, will you not? Let what has past
"break no bones" between us. You will not refuse us them next time
we send for them?

Yours very truly, C. L.

P.S. Do you observe the delicacy of not signing my full name?

N.B. Do not paste that last letter of mine into your book.

We sometimes, mistakenly, say that the English are not good losers. To think of Charles Lamb may help us to correct that opinion.

All good plays of the period have an epilogue. By all means this should have one; and ten days later Lamb himself provided it. It appeared in "The Examiner," where, speaking of Fanny Kelly's acting in "The Hypocrite," he said,--

"She is in truth not framed to tease or torment even in jest, but to utter a hearty Yes or No; to yield or refuse assent with a noble sincerity. We have not the pleasure of being acquainted with her, but we have been told that she carries the same cordial manners into private life."

The curtain falls! The play is at an end.

VI

JAMES BOSWELL--HIS BOOK

Sitting one evening with my favorite book and enjoying the company of a crackling wood fire, I was interrupted by a cheerful idiot who, entering unheard, announced himself with the remark, "This is what I call a library." Indifferent to a forced welcome, he looked about him and continued, "I see you are fond of Boswell. I always preferred Macaulay's 'Life of Johnson' to Boswell's--it's so much shorter. I read it in college."

Argument would have been wasted on him. If he had been alone in his opinion, I would have killed him and thus exterminated the species; but he is only one of a large class, who having once read Macaulay's essay, and that years ago, feel that they have received a peculiar insight into the character of Samuel Johnson and have a patent to sneer at his biographer.

Having a case of books by and about the dear old Doctor, I have acquired a reputation that plagues me. People ask to see my collection, not that they know anything about it, or care, but simply to please me, as they think. Climbing to unusual intellectual heights, when safe at the top, where there is said to be always room, they look about and with a knowing leer murmur, "Oh! rare Ben!" I have become quite expert at lowering them from their dangerous position without showing them the depths of their ignorance. This is a feat which demands such skill as can be acquired only by long practice.

Macaulay's essay is anathema to me. If it were a food-product, the authorities would long since have suppressed it on account of its artificial coloring matter; but prep.-school teachers and college professors go on "requiring" its reading from sheer force of habit; and as long as they continue to do so, the true Samuel Johnson and the real James Boswell will both remain unknown.

Out of a thousand who have read this famous essay and remember its wonderfully balanced sentences, which stick in the memory like burrs in the hair, perhaps not more than one will be able to recall the circumstances under which it was written. Purporting to be a review of a new edition of Boswell's "Life of Johnson," edited by John Wilson Croker, it is really a personal attack on a bitter political enemy. Written at a time when political feeling ran high, it begins with a lie. Using the editorial "We," Macaulay opens by saying, "We are sorry to be obliged to say that the merits of Mr. Croker's performance are on a par with those of a certain leg of mutton on which Dr. Johnson dined while travelling from London to Oxford, and which he, with characteristic energy, pronounced to be as bad as could be."

_Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Engraved by John Jones_]

Let us see how sorry Macaulay really was. In a letter written to his sister just before Croker's book appeared he writes: "I am to review Croker's edition of Bozzy.... I detest Croker more than cold boiled veal.... See whether I do not dust the varlet's jacket in the next number of the 'Edinburgh Review.'" And he did, and the cloud of dust he then raised obscured Johnson, settled on Boswell, and for a time almost smothered him.

I suspect that Macaulay prepared himself for writing his smashing article by reading Croker's book through in half a dozen evenings, pencil in hand, searching for blemishes. After that, his serious work began. Blinded by his hatred of the editor, he makes Johnson grotesque and repulsive, and grossly insults Boswell. He started with the premise that Boswell was mean, but that his book was great. Then the proposition defined itself in his mind something like this: Boswell was one of the smallest men that ever lived, yet his "Life of Johnson" is one of the greatest books ever written. Boswell was always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, begging to be spit upon and trampled upon, yet as a biographer he ranks with Shakespeare as a dramatist; and so he goes on, until at last, made dizzy by the sweep of his verbal seesaw and the lilt of his own brutal rhetoric, he finally reaches the conclusion that, _because_ Boswell was a great fool, he was a very great writer.

Absurdity can go no further. Well may we ask ourselves what Boswell had done to be thus pilloried? Nothing! except that he had written a book which is universally admitted to be the best book of its kind in any language.

What manner of a man was James Boswell? He was, more than most men, a mass of contradictions. It would never, I think, have been easy to answer this question. Since Macaulay answered it, in his cocksure way, and answered it wrongly, to answer it rightly is most difficult. It is so easy to keep ringing the changes on Macaulay. Any fool with a pen can do it. Some time ago, apropos of the effort being made to preserve the house in Great Queen Street, in London, in which Boswell lived when he wrote the biography, some foolish writer in a magazine said, "Boswell shrivels more and more as we look at him.... It would be absurd to preserve a memorial to him alone."--"Shrivels!" Impossible! Johnson and Boswell as a partnership have been too long established for either member of the firm to "shrivel." Unconsciously perhaps, but consciously I think, Boswell has so managed it that, when the senior partner is thought of, the junior also comes to mind. Johnson's contribution to the business was experience and unlimited common sense; Boswell made him responsible for output: the product was words, merely spoken words, either of wisdom or of wit. Distribution is quite as important as production--any railroad man will tell you so. Boswell had a genius for packing and delivering the goods so that they are, if anything, improved by time and transportation.

Let me have one more fling at Macaulay. He missed, and for his sins he deserved to miss, two good things without which this world would be a sad place. He had no wife and he had no sense of humor. Either would have told him that he was writing sheer nonsense when he said, "The very wife of his [Boswell's] bosom laughed at his fooleries." What are wives for, I should like to know, if not to laugh at us?

But reputation is like a pendulum, and it is now swinging from Macaulay. James Boswell is coming into his own. The biographer will outlive the essayist, brilliant and wonderful writer though he be; and I venture the prophecy that, when the traveler from New Zealand takes his stand on the ruined arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's, he will have a pocket edition of Boswell with him, in which to read something of the lives of those strange people who inhabited that vast solitude when it was called London.

* * * * *

James Boswell was born in 1740. His father was a Scottish judge, with the title of Lord Auchinleck. Auchinleck is in Ayrshire, and the estate had belonged to the Boswells for over two hundred years when the biographer of Johnson was born. As a young man, he was rather a trial to his father, and showed his ability chiefly in circumventing the old man's wishes. The father destined him for the law; but he was not a good student, and was fond of society; so the choice of the son was for the army.

We, however, know Boswell better than he knew himself, and we know that when he fancied that he heard the call to arms, what he really wanted was to parade around in a scarlet uniform and make love to the ladies. But even in those early days there must have been something attractive about him, for when he and his father went up to London to solicit the good offices of the Duke of Argyle to secure a commission for him, the duke is reported to have declined, saying, "My Lord, I like your son. The boy must not be shot at for three shillings and six-pence a day."

Boswell was only twenty when he first heard of the greatness of Samuel Johnson and formed a desire to meet him; but it was not until several years later that the great event occurred. What a meeting it was! It seems almost to have been foreordained. A proud, flippant, pushing young particle, irresponsible and practically unknown, meets one of the most distinguished men then living in London, a man more than thirty years his senior and in almost every respect his exact opposite, and so carries himself that, in spite of a rebuff or two at the start, we find Johnson a few days later shaking him by the hand and asking him why he does not come oftener to see him.

_Engraved by Zobel_]

The description of the first meeting between Johnson and Boswell, written many years afterwards, is a favorite passage with all good Boswellians. "At last, on Monday, the 16th of May[10] [1763], when I was sitting in Mr. Davies' back parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having perceived him through the glass-door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing toward us,--he announced his aweful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, 'Look, my Lord, it comes!'"

This is a good example of Boswell's style. In the fewest possible words he creates a picture which one never forgets. We not only hear the talk, we see the company, and soon come to know every member of it.

Without this meeting the world would have lost one of the most delightful books ever written, Boswell himself would probably never have been heard of, and Johnson to-day would be a mere name instead of being, as he is, next to Shakespeare, the most quoted of English authors. As Augustine Birrell has pointed out, we have only talk _about_ other talkers. Johnson's is a matter of record. Johnson stamped his image on his own generation, but it required the genius of Boswell to make him known to ours, and to all generations to come. "Great as Johnson is," says Burke, "he is greater in Boswell's books than in his own." That we now speak of the "Age of Johnson" is due rather to Boswell than to the author of the "Dictionary," "Rasselas," and endless "Ramblers."

Someone has said that the three greatest characters in English literature are Falstaff, Mr. Pickwick, and Dr. Johnson. Had James Boswell created the third of this great trio, he would indeed rank with Shakespeare and with Dickens; but Johnson was his own creation, and Boswell, posing as an artist, painted his portrait as mortal man has never been painted before. In his pages we see the many-sided Johnson, the great burly philosopher, scholar, wit, and ladies' man--Boswell makes him a shade too austere--more clearly than any other man who ever lived. As a portrait-painter, Boswell is the world's greatest artist; and he is not simply a portrait-painter--he is unsurpassed at composition, atmosphere, and color. His book is like Rembrandt's Night Watch--the canvas is crowded, the portraits all are faultless and distinct, but there is one dominating figure standing out from the rest--one masterly, unsurpassed, and immortal figure.

Boswell, when he first met Johnson, was twenty-two years of age. A year later he writes him: "It shall be my study to do what I can to render your life happy; and if you die before me, I shall endeavor to do honor to your memory." He kept his word. From that hour almost to the time of Johnson's death (I say almost, for just before the end there seems to have fallen upon their friendship a shadow, the cause of which has never been fully explained), they were unreservedly friends. Superficially they had little in common, but in essentials, all that was important; and they supplemented each other as no two men have ever done before or since. Reading the Life casually, as it is usually read, one would suppose that they were very much together; but such is not the case. Birkbeck Hill, Boswell's most painstaking editor, has calculated that, including the time when Boswell and Johnson were together in the Hebrides, they could have seen each other only for 790 days in all; and this on the assumption that Boswell, when in London, was always in Johnson's company, which we know was not the case; moreover, when they were apart there were gaps of years in their correspondence.

Boswell, however, weaves the story of Johnson's life so skillfully that we come to have the feeling that whenever Johnson was going to say anything important, Boswell was at his side. Johnson, in speaking of his Dictionary once said, "Why, Sir, I knew very well how to go about it and have done it very well." Boswell could have said the same of his great work. We had no great biography before his, and in comparison we have had none since. The combination of so great a subject for portraiture and so great an artist had never occurred before and may never occur again. Geniuses ordinarily do not run in couples.

Boswell hoped that his book would bring him fame. Over it he labored at a time when labor was especially difficult for him. For it he was prepared to sacrifice himself, his friends, anything. Whatever would add to his book's value he would include, at whatever cost. A more careful and exact biographer never lived. Reynolds said of him that he wrote as if he were under oath; and we all remember the reply he made to Hannah More, who, when she heard he was engaged in writing the life of her revered friend, urged him to mitigate somewhat the asperities of his disposition: "No, madam, I will not cut his claws or make my tiger a cat to please anyone."

And for writing this book Boswell has been held up to almost universal scorn. His defenders have been few and faint-hearted. I have never derived much satisfaction from Boswell's rescue (the word is Lowell's) by Carlyle. That unhappy old dyspeptic, unable to enjoy a good dinner himself, could not forgive Boswell his gusto for the good things of life.

What were Boswell's faults above those of other men, that stones should be thrown at him? He drank too much! True, but what of it? Who in his day did not? Johnson records that many of the most respectable people in his cathedral city of Lichfield went nightly to bed drunk.

He was an unfaithful husband! Admitted; but Mrs. Boswell forgave him, and why should not we?

He was proud! He was, but the pride of race is not unheard of in the scion of an old family; nor did he allow his pride to prevent his attaching himself to an old man who admitted that he hardly knew who was his grandfather.

He had a taste for knowing people highly placed! He had, and he came to number among his friends the greatest scholar, the greatest poet, the greatest painter, the greatest actor, the greatest historian, and most of the great statesmen of his day; and these men, though they laughed with him frequently, and at him sometimes, did not think him altogether a fool.

He was vain and foolish! Yes, and inquisitive; yet while neither wise nor witty himself, he had an exquisite appreciation of wit in others. He carried repartees and arguments with accuracy. Mrs. Thrale very cleverly said that his long-head was better than short-hand; yet, as some one has pointed out, to follow the hum of conversation with so much intelligence required unusual quickness of apprehension and cannot be reconciled with the opinion that he was simply endowed with memory.

He lived beyond his means and got into debt! I seem to have heard something of this of other men whose fathers were not enjoying a comfortable estate and whose children were not adequately provided for.

Let there be an end to a discussion of the weaknesses of Boswell. They have been sufficiently advertised and his good qualities overlooked. If a man is a genius, let his personal shortcomings be absorbed in the greatness of his work. The worst that can be fairly said of Boswell is that he was vain, inquisitive, and foolish. Let us forget the silly questions he sometimes put to Johnson, and remember how often he started something which made the old Doctor perform at his unrivaled best.

The difficulty is that Boswell told on himself. As he was speaking to Johnson one day of his weaknesses, the old man admitted that he had them, too, but added, "I don't tell of them. A man should be careful not to tell tales of himself to his own disadvantage." It would have been well if Boswell could have remembered this excellent bit of advice; but Johnson's advice, whether sought or unsought, was too frequently disregarded.

One of his most intimate friends, Sir Joshua Reynolds, has testified to his truthfulness, and even a casual reader of the Life will admit that he was courageous. Tossed and gored by Johnson, as he frequently was, he always came back; and, much as he respected the old man, he was never overawed by him. He differed with him on the wisdom of taxing the American Colonies, on the merits of the novels of Fielding, on the poetry of Gray, and on many other subjects. To differ with Johnson required courage and conversational ability of no common order. Indeed, it may be doubted whether, next to Johnson himself, Boswell was not the best talker in the circle--and Johnson's circle included the most brilliant men of his time. He was sometimes very happy in his reference to himself: as where, having brought Paoli and Johnson together, he compares himself to an isthmus connecting two great continents. Indeed, the great work is so famous as a biography of Johnson that few people realize to what an extent and how subtly Boswell has made it his own autobiography.

Johnson once said, "Sir, the biographical part of literature is what I love best." I am inclined to think that it is so with most of us. It would have been impossible for Boswell, the biographer _par excellence_, not to have told in one way or another the story of his own life. He told it in his account of the island of Corsica, and in his letters to his life-long friend, Temple. These deserve to be better known than they are. They are indeed just such letters as Samuel Pepys might have written in cipher to his closest friend, whom he had already provided with a key.

The first letter of this correspondence is dated Edinburgh, 29 July, 1758, when Boswell was eighteen years of age; and the last was on his writing-desk in London when the shadow of death fell upon him, thirty-seven years later.

The manner in which these letters came to be published is interesting. An English clergyman touring in France, having occasion to make some small purchases at a shop in Boulogne, observed that the paper in which they were wrapped was a fragment of an English letter. Upon inspection a date and some well-known names were observed, and further investigation showed that the piece of paper was part of a correspondence carried on nearly a century before between Boswell and a friend, the Reverend William Johnson Temple. On making inquiry, it was ascertained that this piece of paper had been taken from a large parcel recently purchased from a hawker, who was in the habit of passing through Boulogne once or twice a year, for the purpose of supplying the different shops with paper. Beyond this no further information could be obtained. The whole contents of the parcel were immediately secured.

At the death of the purchaser of these letters they passed into the hands of a nephew, from whom they were obtained, and published in 1857, after such editing and expurgating as was then fashionable. Who did the work has never been discovered, nor does it matter, as the letters fortunately passed into the collection of J. P. Morgan, and are now, finally, being edited, together with such other letters as are available, by Professor Tinker of Yale. Students of eighteenth-century literature have good reason for believing that a volume of supreme interest is in preparation for them; for such self-revealing letters, such human documents as those of James Boswell, could have been written only by their author, or by Samuel Pepys. As these letters are little known, let me give a few excerpts from them as originally published. On one of his journeys to London, Boswell writes:--

I have thought of making a good acquaintance in each town on the
road. No man has been more successful in making acquaintances
easily than I have been; I even bring people quickly on to a degree
of cordiality ... but I know not if I last sufficiently, though
surely, my dear Temple, there is always a warm place for you.

Further along on the road he writes again:--

I am in charming health and spirits. There is a handsome maid at
this inn, who interrupts me by coming sometimes into the room. I
have no confession to make, my priest; so be not curious.

On his way back to Edinburgh he goes somewhat out of his way to stop again at this inn and have another look at the handsome chambermaid,--her name was Matty,--and finds that she has disappeared, as handsome chambermaids have a way of doing; but Boswell comforts himself by reflecting that he can find mistresses wherever he goes. He remembers also that he had promised Dr. Johnson to accept a chest of books of the moralist's own selection, and to "read more and drink less."

Inner Temple, London 1769.--

A present from my worthy friend Temple.

INSCRIPTION IN BOSWELL'S COPY OF MASON'S "ELFRIDA"]

Again he writes from Edinburgh:--

I have talked a great deal of my sweet little mistress; I am,
however, uneasy about her. Furnishing a house and maintaining her
with a maid will cost me a great deal of money, and it is too like
marriage, or too much a settled plan of licentiousness; but what
can I do? I have already taken the house, and the lady has agreed
to go in at Whitsuntide; I cannot in honour draw back.... Nor am I
tormented because my charmer has formerly loved others. Besides she
is ill-bred, quite a rompish girl. She debases my dignity: she has
no refinement, but she is very handsome and very lively. What is it
to me that she has formerly loved? So have I.

Temple's letters to Boswell have not been preserved, but he appears to have warned him of the danger of his course, for Boswell comes back with,--

I have a dear infidel, as you say; but don't think her unfaithful.
I could not love her if she was. There is a baseness in all deceit
which my soul is virtuous enough to abhor, and therefore I look
with horror on adultery. But my amiable mistress is no longer bound
to him who was her husband: he has used her shockingly ill; he has
deserted her, he lives with another. Is she not then free? She is,
it is clear, and no arguments can disguise it. She is now mine, and
were she to be unfaithful to me she ought to be pierced with a
Corsican poniard; but I believe she loves me sincerely. She has
done everything to please me; she is perfectly generous, and would
not hear of any present.

Boswell seemed to enjoy equally two very different things, namely, going to church and getting drunk. On Easter Sunday he "attends the solemn service at St. Paul's," and next day informs Mr. Temple that he had "received the holy sacrament, and was exalted in piety." But in the same letter he reports that he is enjoying "the metropolis to the full," and that he has had "too much dissipation."

He resolves to do better when his book on Corsica appears, and he has the reputation of a literary man to support. Meanwhile, he confesses:--

I last night unwarily exceeded my one bottle of old Hock; and
having once broke over the pale, I run wild, but I did not get
drunk. I was, however, intoxicated, and very ill next day. I ask
your forgiveness, and I shall be more cautious for the future. The
drunken manners of this country are very bad.

Boswell's affairs with chambermaids, grass widows, and women of the town moved along simultaneously with efforts to land an heiress. He asks Temple to help him in an affair with a Miss Blair. Temple did his best and failed. He reported his failure and Boswell was deeply dejected for five minutes; then he writes:

My dear friend, suppose what you please; suppose her affections
changed, as those of women too often are; suppose her offended at
my _Spanish stateliness_ [italics mine]; suppose her to have
resolved to be more reserved and coy in order to make me more in
love.

Then he felt that he must have a change of scene, and off he was to London.

I got into the fly at Buckden [he says], and had a very good
journey. An agreeable young widow nursed me, and supported my lame
foot on her knee. Am I not fortunate in having something about me
that interests most people at first sight in my favour?

In a letter to Mrs. Thrale, Johnson once wrote: "It has become so much the fashion to publish letters that in order to avoid it, I put as little into mine as I can." Boswell was not afraid of publication. His fear, as he said, was that letters, like sermons, would not continue to attract public curiosity, so he spiced his highly. Did he do or say a foolish thing, he at once sat down and told Temple all about it, usually adding that in the near future he intended to amend. His comment on his contemporaries is characteristic. "Hume," he says, "told me that he would give me half-a-crown for every page of Johnson's Dictionary in which he could not find an absurdity, if I would give him half-a-crown for every page in which he could find one."

He announces Adam Smith's election to membership in the famous literary club by saying: "Smith is now of our club--it has lost its select merit." Of Gibbon he says: "I hear nothing of the publication of his second volume. He is an ugly, affected, disgusting fellow, and poisons our literary club to me."

As he grows older and considers how unsuccessful his life has been, how he had failed at the bar both in Scotland and in London, he begins to complain. He can get no clients; he fears that, even were he entrusted with cases, he would fail utterly.

I am afraid [he says], that, were I to be tried, I should be found
so deficient in the forms, the quirks and the quiddities, which
early habit acquires, that I should expose myself. Yet the delusion
of Westminster Hall, of brilliant reputation and splendid fortune
as a barrister, still weighs upon my imagination. I must be seen in
the Courts, and must hope for some happy openings in causes of
importance. The Chancellor, as you observe, has not done as I
expected; but why did I expect it? I am going to put him to the
test. Could I be satisfied with being Baron of Auchinleck, with a
good income for a gentleman in Scotland, I might, no doubt, be
independent. What can be done to deaden the ambition which has ever
raged in my veins like a fever?

But the highest spirits will sometimes flag. Boswell, the friendly, obliging, generous roué, was getting old. He begins to speak of the past.

Do you remember when you and I sat up all night at Cambridge, and
read Gray with a noble enthusiasm; when we first used to read
Mason's "Elfrida," and when we talked of that elegant knot of
worthies, Gray, Mason and Walpole?

"Elfrida" calls itself on the title-page, "A Dramatic Poem written on the model of the Ancient Greek Tragedy." I happen to own and value highly the very copy of this once famous poem, which Boswell and Temple read together; on the fly leaf, under Boswell's signature, is a characteristic note in his bold, clear hand: "A present from my worthy friend Temple."

He becomes more than ever before the butt of his acquaintance. He tells his old friend of a trick which has been played on him--only one of many. He was staying at a great house crowded with guests.

I and two other gentlemen were laid in one room. On Thursday
morning my wig was missing; a strict search was made, all in vain.
I was obliged to go all day in my nightcap, and absent myself from
a party of ladies and gentlemen who went and dined with an Earl on
the banks of the lake, a piece of amusement which I was glad to
shun, as well as a dance which they had at night. But I was in a
ludicrous situation. I suspect a wanton trick, which some people
think witty; but I thought it very ill-timed to one in my
situation.

When his father dies and he comes into his estates, he is deeply in debt; he hates Scotland, he longs to be in London, to enjoy the Club, to see Johnson, to whom he writes of his difficulties, asking his advice. Johnson gives him just such advice as might be expected.

To come hither with such expectations at the expense of borrowed
money, which I find you know not where to borrow, can hardly be
considered prudent. I am sorry to find, what your solicitations
seem to imply, that you have already gone the length of your
credit. This is to set the quiet of your whole life at hazard. If
you anticipate your inheritance, you can at last inherit nothing;
all that you receive must pay for the past. You must get a place,
or pine in penury, with the empty name of a great estate. Poverty,
my dear friend, is so great an evil, that I cannot but earnestly
enjoin you to avoid it. Live on what you have; live, if you can, on
less; do not borrow either for vanity or pleasure; the vanity will
end in shame, and the pleasure in regret; stay therefore at home
till you have saved money for your journey hither.

His wife dies and Johnson dies. One by one the props are pulled from under him; he drinks, constantly gets drunk; is, in this condition, knocked down in the streets and robbed, and thinks with horror of giving up his soul, intoxicated, to his Maker. "Oh, Temple, Temple!" he writes, "is this realizing any of the towering hopes which have so often been the subject of our conversation and letters?" At last he begins a letter which he is never to finish. "I would fain write you in my own hand but really cannot." These were the last words poor Boswell ever wrote.

* * * * *

But Boswell's life is chiefly interesting where it impinges upon that of his great friend. A few months after the famous meeting in Davies's book-shop, he started for the Continent, with the idea, following the fashion of the time, of studying law at Utrecht, Johnson accompanying him on his way as far as Harwich.

After a short time at the University, during which he could have learned nothing, we find him wandering about Europe in search of celebrities,--big game,--the hunting of which was to be the chief interest of his life. He succeeded in bagging Voltaire and Rousseau,--there was none bigger,--and after a short stay in Rome he turned North, sailing from Leghorn to Corsica, where he met Paoli, the patriot, and finally returned home, escorting Thérèse Levasseur, Rousseau's mistress, as far as London. Hume at this time speaks of him as "a friend of mine, very good-humored, very agreeable and very mad."

Meanwhile his father, Lord Auchinleck, who had borne with admirable patience such stories as had reached him of his son's wild ways, insisted that it was time for him to settle down; but Boswell was too full of his adventures in the island of Corsica and his meeting with Paoli, to begin drudgery at the law. His accounts of his travels made him a welcome guest at London dinner-parties, and he had finally decided to write a book of his experiences.

At last the father, by a threat to cut off supplies, secured his son's return; but his desire to publish a book had not abated, and while he finally was admitted to the Scotch bar, we find him corresponding with his friend Mr. Dilly, the publisher, in regard to the book upon which he was busily employed. From an unpublished letter, which I was fortunate enough to secure quite recently from a book-seller in New York, Gabriel Wells, we may follow Boswell in his negotiations.

EDINBURGH, _6 August, 1767_.

SIR

I have received your letter agreeing to pay me One Hundred Guineas
for the Copy-Right of my Account of Corsica, &c., the money to be
due three months after the publication of the work in London, and
also agreeing that the first Edition shall be printed in Scotland,
under my direction, and a map of Corsica be engraved for the work
at your Expence.

In return to which, I do hereby agree that you shall have the sole
Property of the said work. Our Bargain therefore is now concluded
and I heartily wish that it may be of advantage to you.

I am Sir

Your most humble Servant JAMES BOSWELL.

TO MR. DILLY, Bookseller, London.

Through the kindness of my fellow collector and generous friend, Judge Patterson of Philadelphia, I own an interesting fragment of a brief in Boswell's hand, written at about this period. It appears therefrom that Boswell had been retained to secure the return of a stocking-frame of the value of a few shillings, which had been forcibly carried off. The outcome of the litigation is not known, but the paper bears the interesting indorsement, "This was the first Paper drawn by me as an Advocate. James Boswell."

But I am allowing my collector's passion to carry me too far afield. The preface of Boswell's "Account of Corsica" closes with an interesting bit of self-revelation. He says, characteristically,--

For my part I should be proud to be known as an author; I have an
ardent ambition for literary fame; for of all possessions I should
imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been
able to furnish a book which has been approved by the world has
established himself as a respectable character in distant society,
without any danger of having that character lessened by the
observation of his weaknesses. To preserve a uniform dignity among
those who see us every day is hardly possible; and to aim at it
must put us under the fetters of a perpetual restraint. The author
of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an easy play,
and yet indulge the pride of superior genius, when he considers
that by those who know him only as an author he never ceases to be
respected. Such an author in his hours of gloom and discontent may
have the consolation to think that his writings are at that very
time giving pleasure to numbers, and such an author may cherish the
hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great object
of the noblest minds in all ages.

A brief contemporary criticism sums up the merits of "Corsica" in a paragraph. "There is a deal about the Island and its dimensions that one doesn't care a straw about, but that part which relates to Paoli is amusing and interesting. The author has a rage for knowing anybody that was ever talked of."

Boswell thought that he was the first, but he proved to be the second Englishman (the first was an Englishwoman) who had ever set foot upon the island. He visited Paoli, and his accounts of his reception by the great patriot and his conversation with the people are amusing in the extreme. To his great satisfaction it was generally believed that he was on a public mission.

The more I disclaimed any such thing, the more they persevered in
affirming it; and I was considered as a very close young man. I
therefore just allowed them to make a minister of me, till time
should undeceive them.... The Ambasciadore Inglese--as the good
peasants and soldiers used to call me--became a great favorite
among them. I got a Corsican dress made, in which I walked about
with an air of true satisfaction.

On another occasion:--

When I rode out I was mounted on Paoli's own horse, with rich
furniture of crimson velvet, with broad gold lace, and had my guard
marching along with me. I allowed myself to indulge a momentary
pride in this parade, as I was curious to experience what should
really be the pleasure of state and distinction with which mankind
are so strangely intoxicated.

The success of this publication led Boswell into some absurd extravagances which he thought were necessary to support his position as a distinguished English author. Praise for his work he skillfully extracted from most of his friends, but Johnson proved obdurate. He had expressed a qualified approval of the book when it appeared; but when Boswell in a letter sought more than this, the old Doctor charged him to empty his head of "Corsica," which he said he thought had filled it rather too long.

Boswell wrote at least two of what we should to-day call press notices of himself. One is reminded of the story of the man in a hired dress-suit at a charity ball rushing about inquiring the whereabouts of the man who puts your name in the paper. To such an one Boswell presented this brief account of himself on the occasion of the famous Shakespeare Jubilee.

One of the most remarkable masks upon this occasion was James
Boswell, Esq., in the dress of an armed Corsican Chief. He entered
the amphitheatre about twelve o'clock. He wore a short
dark-coloured coat of coarse cloth, scarlet waistcoat and breeches,
and black spatter-dashes; his cap or bonnet was of black cloth; on
the front of it was embroidered in gold letters, "Viva la Liberta,"
and on one side of it was a handsome blue feather and cockade, so
that it had an elegant as well as a warlike appearance. On the
breast of his coat was sewed a Moor's head, the crest of Corsica,
surrounded with branches of laurel. He had also a cartridge-pouch
into which was stuck a stiletto, and on his left side a pistol was
hung upon the belt of his cartridge-pouch. He had a fusee slung
across his shoulder, wore no powder in his hair, but had it plaited
at full length with a knot of blue ribbon at the end of it. He had,
by way of staff, a very curious vine all of one piece, with a bird
finely carved upon it emblematical of the sweet bard of Avon. He
wore no mask, saying that it was not proper for a gallant Corsican.
So soon as he came into the room he drew universal attention. The
novelty of the Corsican dress, its becoming appearance, and the
character of that brave nation concurred to distinguish the armed
Corsican Chief.

May we not suppose that several bottles of "Old Hock" contributed to his enjoyment of this occasion? Here is the other one:--

Boswell, the author, is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient
family in the West of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a
little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future
greatness. His parts are bright, and his education has been good.
He has travelled in post-chaises miles without number. He is fond
of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially
apple pie. He drinks Old Hock. He has a very fine temper. He is
somewhat of a humorist and a little tinctured with pride. He has a
good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has
infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy
cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather
young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears
spectacles.

The success of "Corsica" was not very great, but it sufficed to turn Boswell's head completely. He spent as much time in London as he could contrive to, and led there the life of a dissipated man of fashion. He quarreled with his father, and after a series of escapades with women of the town and love-affairs with heiresses, he finally married his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie, a girl without a fortune. Much to Boswell's disgust, his father, on the very same day, married for the second time, and married his cousin.

For a time after marriage he seemed to take his profession seriously, but he deceived neither his father nor his clients. The old man said that Jamie was simply taking a toot on a new horn. Meanwhile Boswell never allowed his interest in Johnson to cool for a moment. When he was in London,--and he went there on one excuse or another as often as his means permitted,--he was much with Johnson; and when he was at home, he was constantly worrying Johnson for some evidence of his affection for him. Finally Johnson writes, "My regard for you is greater almost than I have words to express" (this from the maker of a dictionary); "but I do not chuse to be always repeating it; write it down in the first leaf of your pocketbook, and never doubt of it again."

Neither wife nor father could understand the feeling of reverence and affection which their Jamie had for Johnson. I always delight in the story of his father saying to an old friend, "There's nae hope for Jamie, mon. Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do you think, mon? He's done wi' Paoli--he's off wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned himself to now, mon? A dominie, mon--an auld dominie: he keeped a schule, and ca'd it an academy."

Mrs. Boswell, a sensible, cold, rather shadowy person, saw but little of Johnson, and was satisfied that it should be so. There is one good story to her credit. Unaccustomed to the ways of genius, she caught Johnson, who was nearsighted, one evening burnishing a lighted candle on her carpet to make it burn more brightly, and remarked, "I have seen many a bear led by a man, but never before have I seen a man led by a bear." Boswell was just the fellow to appreciate this, and promptly repeated it to Johnson, who failed to see the humor of it.

In 1782 his father died and he came into the estate, but by his improvident management he soon found himself in financial difficulties. Johnson's death two years later removed a restraining influence that he much needed. He tried to practice law, but he was unsuccessful. Never an abstemious man, he now drank heavily and constantly, and as constantly resolved to turn over a new leaf.

Shortly after Johnson's death, Boswell published his "Journal of the Tour of the Hebrides," which reached a third edition within the year and established his reputation as a writer of a new kind, in which anecdotes and conversation are woven into a narrative with a fidelity and skill which were as easy to him as they were impossible to others.

The great success of this book encouraged him to begin, and continue to work upon, the great biography of Johnson on which his fame so securely rests. Others had published before him. Mrs. Piozzi's "Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson" had sold well, and Hawkins, the "unclubable Knight," as Johnson called him, had been commissioned by the booksellers of London to write a formal biography, which appeared in 1787; while of lesser publications there was seemingly no end; nevertheless, Boswell persevered, and wrote his friend Temple that his

mode of biography which gives not only a history of Johnson's
visible progress through the world, and of his publications, but a
view of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the most
perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a life than any
work that has yet appeared.

He had been preparing for the task for more than twenty years; he had, in season and out, been taking notes of Johnson's conversations, and Johnson himself had supplied him with much of the material. Thus in poverty, interrupted by periods of dissipation, amid the sneers of many, he continued his work. While it was in progress his wife died, and he, poor fellow, justly upbraided himself for his neglect of her.

_Engraved by Trotter_]

Meanwhile, a "new horn" was presented to him. He had, or thought he had, a chance of being elected to Parliament, or at least of securing a place under government; but in all this he was destined to be disappointed. It would be difficult to imagine conditions more unfavorable to sustained effort than those under which Boswell labored. He was desperately hard up. Always subject to fits of the blues, which amounted almost to melancholia, he many a time thought of giving up the task from which he hoped to derive fame and profit. He considered selling his rights in the publication for a thousand pounds. But it would go to his heart, he said, to accept such a sum; and again, "I am in such bad spirits that I have fear concerning it--I may get no profit, nay, may lose--the public may be disappointed and think I have done it poorly--I may make enemies, and even have quarrels." Then the depression would pass and he could write: "It will be, without exception, the most entertaining book you ever read." When his friends heard that the Life would make two large volumes quarto, and that the price was two guineas, they shook their heads and Boswell's fears began again.

At last, on May 16, 1791, the book appeared, with the imprint of Charles Dilly, in the Poultry; and so successful was it that by August twelve hundred copies had been disposed of, and the entire edition was exhausted before the end of the year. The writer confesses to such a passion for this book that of this edition he owns at present four copies in various states, the one he prizes most having an inscription in Boswell's hand: "To James Boswell, Esquire, Junior, from his affectionate father, the Authour." Of other editions--but why display one's weakness?

"Should there," in Boswell's phrase, "be any cold-blooded and morose mortals who really dislike it," I am sorry for them. To me it has for thirty years been a never-ending source of profit--and pleasure, which is as important. It is a book to ramble in--and with. I have never, I think, read it through from cover to cover, as the saying is, but some day I will; meanwhile let me make a confession. There are parts of it which are deadly dull; the judicious reader will skip these without hint from me. I have, indeed, always had a certain sympathy with George Henry Lewes, who for years threatened to publish an abridgment of it. It could be done: indeed, the work could be either expanded or contracted at will; but every good Boswellian will wish to do this for himself; tampering with a classic is somewhat like tampering with a will--it is good form not to.

The Authour.]

What is really needed is a complete index to the sayings of Johnson--his _dicta_, spoken or written. It would be an heroic task, but heroic tasks are constantly being undertaken. My friend Osgood, of Princeton, a ripe scholar and an ardent Johnsonian, has been devoting the scanty leisure of years to a concordance of Spenser. No one less competent than he should undertake to supervise such a labor of love.