Boswells Life of Johnson

Boswell's Life of Johnson

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Life of Johnson, by James Boswell
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Life of Johnson Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by
Charles Grosvenor Osgood
Author: James Boswell
Editor: Charles Grosvenor Osgood
Release Date: May 12, 2006 [EBook #1564]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF
JOHNSON ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON
By James Boswell

Abridged and edited, with an introduction
by Charles Grosvenor Osgood
Professor of English at Princeton University

Preface
In making this abridgement of Boswell's Life of Johnson I have omitted
most of Boswell's criticisms, comments, and notes, all of Johnson's
opinions in legal cases, most of the letters, and parts of the conversation
dealing with matters which were of greater importance in Boswell's day
than now. I have kept in mind an old habit, common enough, I dare say,
among its devotees, of opening the book of random, and reading
wherever the eye falls upon a passage of especial interest. All such
passages, I hope, have been retained, and enough of the whole book to
illustrate all the phases of Johnson's mind and of his time which
Boswell observed.
Loyal Johnsonians may look upon such a book with a measure of scorn.
I could not have made it, had I not believed that it would be the means
of drawing new readers to Boswell, and eventually of finding for them
in the complete work what many have already found--days and years of
growing enlightenment and happy companionship, and an innocent
refuge from the cares and perturbations of life.
Princeton, June 28, 1917.

INTRODUCTION
Phillips Brooks once told the boys at Exeter that in reading biography
three men meet one another in close intimacy--the subject of the
biography, the author, and the reader. Of the three the most interesting
is, of course, the man about whom the book is written. The most
privileged is the reader, who is thus allowed to live familiarly with an

eminent man. Least regarded of the three is the author. It is his part to
introduce the others, and to develop between them an acquaintance,
perhaps a friendship, while he, though ever busy and solicitous,
withdraws into the background.
Some think that Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, did not sufficiently
realize his duty of self-effacement. He is too much in evidence, too
bustling, too anxious that his own opinion, though comparatively
unimportant, should get a hearing. In general, Boswell's faults are
easily noticed, and have been too much talked about. He was morbid,
restless, self-conscious, vain, insinuating; and, poor fellow, he died a
drunkard. But the essential Boswell, the skilful and devoted artist, is
almost unrecognized. As the creator of the Life of Johnson he is almost
as much effaced as is Homer in the Odyssey. He is indeed so closely
concealed that the reader suspects no art at all. Boswell's performance
looks easy enough--merely the more or less coherent stringing together
of a mass of memoranda. Nevertheless it was rare and difficult, as is the
highest achievement in art. Boswell is primarily the artist, and he has
created one of the great masterpieces of the world.* He created nothing
else, though his head was continually filling itself with literary schemes
that came to nought. But into his Life of Johnson he poured all his
artistic energies, as Milton poured his into Paradise Lost, and Vergil his
into the Aneid.
* Here I include his Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides as essentially a
part of the Life. The Journal of a Tour in Corsica is but a propaedeutic
study.
First, Boswell had the industry and the devotion to his task of an artist.
Twenty years and more he labored in collecting his material. He speaks
frankly of his methods. He recorded the talk of Johnson and his
associates partly by a rough shorthand of his own, partly by an
exceptional memory, which he carefully trained for this very purpose.
'O for shorthand to take this down!' said he to Mrs. Thrale as they
listened to Johnson; and she replied: 'You'll carry it all in your head; a
long head is as good as shorthand.' Miss Hannah More recalls a gay
meeting at the Garricks', in Johnson's absence, when Boswell was bold

enough to match his skill with no other than Garrick himself in an
imitation of Johnson. Though Garrick was more successful in his
Johnsonian recitation of poetry, Boswell won in reproducing his
familiar conversation. He lost