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Sometimes, however, as he himself told me, he had nothing more communicated to him than the names of the several speakers, and the part which they had taken in the debate.* * Johnson later told Boswell that 'as soon as he found that the speeches were thought genuine he determined that he would write no more of them: for "he would not be accessary to the propagation of falsehood."
Of the characters of those who lived in long-past ages we generally fail to have any clear idea, because we lack those close chronicles which are necessary for the purpose. What insight have we into the personality of Alexander the Great, or what insight had Plutarch, who wrote about him? As to Samuel Johnson, we seem to know every turn of his mind, having had a Boswell. Alexander had no Boswell.
From ground that would let for forty shillings you may have a large orchard; and you see it costs you only forty shillings. Nay, you may graze the ground when the trees are grown up; you cannot while they are young. BOSWELL. 'Is not a good garden a very common thing in England, Sir? JOHNSON. 'Not so common, Sir, as you imagine.
If the authours who apply to me have money, I bid them boldly print without a name; if they have written in order to get money, I tell them to go to the booksellers, and make the best bargain they can. BOSWELL. 'But, Sir, if a bookseller should bring you a manuscript to look at? JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, I would desire the bookseller to take it away.
Throughout his great work, Boswell shews ever a curious depreciation of Goldsmith. Rivalry for the good graces of their common friend Johnson, as Scott thought, and the fear of his older acquaintance as the possible biographer made him suspicious of the merits of the poet, who figures in the pages of Boswell as a foil for his gently patronizing tone, 'honest Goldsmith.
"He wrote it," says Boswell, "'con amore, both from the early possession which that writer had taken of his mind, and from the pleasure which he must have felt in for ever silencing all attempts to lessen his poetical fame. . . . I remember once to have heard Johnson say, 'Sir, a thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope."
At a moment when social discontent threatened literally to stop the building of the canal, the Department of Commerce and Labor employed Miss Helen Varick Boswell, of New York, to go to the Isthmus and organize the wives and daughters of Government employees into clubs. The Department knew that the clubs, once organized, would do the rest. Nor was it disappointed.
Our bulls and cows are all well; but we yet hate the man that had seen a bigger bull. Ib. p. 61. Quoted by Boswell in his Hebrides, Aug. 16, 1773. Horace, Odes, ii. 4. 'The tender glance, the red'ning cheek, O'erspread with rising blushes, A thousand various ways they speak A thousand various wishes. Hamilton's Poems, ed. 1760, p. 59. In the original, Now. Ib. p. 39.
And that is the same thing as saying that Boswell is not merely what every one has seen, a unique collector of material: he is also what so few have seen, an artist of the very highest rank. This is seen, too, in another important point. The danger of the hero-worshipping biographer is only too familiar to us. His book is usually a monotonous and insipid record of virtue or wisdom.
The truth was Lord Bolingbroke, who left the Jacobites, first used it; therefore, it was to be condemned. You may as well insist to have a word for old age. BOSWELL. 'Well, Sir, Senectus. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, to insist always that there should be one word to express a thing in English, because there is one in another language, is to change the language.
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