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Updated: May 16, 2025
Yet his involuntary autobiography, compiled for some obscure reason or for private reference, but certainly never meant for publication, is as much the first in that line of literature as Boswell's book among biographies or Gibbon's among histories. As a race we are too afraid of giving ourselves away ever to produce a good autobiography.
Gibbon has himself told of all his own faults and Froude has omitted none of Carlyle's, so that these two books are useful aids in a study of human nature, in which respect they are real adjuncts of Boswell's Johnson. Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay had an insatiable love of reading; in their solitary hours they were seldom without books in their hands.
Boswell's request, and confer with you on the means of relieving my languid state, I am very desirous to avoid the appearance of asking money upon false pretences.
The underpart of Boswell's face is of a low, almost brutish character. This is character-painting with a vengeance. Portrait of a Scotch laird by the son of a Scotch peasant. Carlyle's Boswell is to me the very man. If so, Carlyle's paradox seems as great as Macaulay's, for though Carlyle does not call Boswell a great fool in plain set terms, he goes very near it.
Johnson was not yet leaving the Thrale family, for he joined them at Brighton, and he was living with them the following spring in Argyll-street. Nevertheless, if, as all Mrs. Thrale's friends strongly held, her second marriage was blameworthy, Boswell's remark admits of defence. Miss Burney in her diary and letters keeps the secret which Mrs. Thrale had confided to her of her attachment to Mr.
How it escaped Boswell's research is not known. A fragment of Johnson's Annals, also preserved by Barber, had in like manner never been seen by Boswell; ante, i. 35, note 1.
But I do not yet venture out, having been confined to the house from the thirteenth of December, now a quarter of a year. 'When it will be fit for me to travel as far as Auchinleck, I am not able to guess; but such a letter as Mrs. Boswell's might draw any man, not wholly motionless, a great way. Pray tell the dear lady how much her civility and kindness have touched and gratified me.
In silence he showed her to her bedchamber, and once the door separated him from her his smile departed and he relieved his feelings by muttering a name not complimentary to Mr. Boswell's relative.
This, some not incompetent judges have regarded as ranking next to Lockhart's Scott and Boswell's Johnson, and though its main attraction may be derived from Byron's very remarkable letters, still shows on the part of the biographer very unusual dexterity, good feeling, and taste.
Seneca's two epigrams on Corsica are quoted in Boswell's Corsica, first edition, p. 13.
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