The apotheosis of Boswell
J. B. Priestley
B. Priestley, who died last week at the age of 89, wrote his first article for the Spectator in 1922. It appeared in the issue of 14 Octo- ber, a review of Young Boswell by Chaun- cey Brewster Tinker (Putnam 15s).
One of the most unfailing sources of entertainment in a literature full of such things is the apparently endless rise and fall of Boswell. By this time, the Pushing little biographer has been cast for every part on the literary stage, from the inspired idiot to the self-sacrificing servant of genius. . . . In his own day, Boswell was regarded as either a good-natured fool or a Poisonous little busybody. After the Life and the Tour had taken the place they are never likely to lose, the tide of opinion began to flow in all directions. Scott, whose critical pronouncements are too often ignored, writing shortly after the event, said that 'Johnson found in James rioswell such a biographer as no man but himself ever had or ever deserved to have'. Washington Irving called him 'the incarna- tion of toadyism'. That emperor of the bold antithesis, Macaulay, hinted that idio- cy was the passport to inspired biography. Carlyle, scenting a worshipper of true greatness, rescued Boswell once more; G. II. Lewes, an experienced hand if no genius, took the cue and spoke of Bos- well's vision and courage; and Leslie Stephen, himself a great biographer, did not scruple to make much of Boswell's art and declared that he had 'a little of the true Shakesperean secret'. But then Percy Fitz- gerald, who had made a special study of the period, came forward to swear that 1° ‘°zzY' was nothing but a bold, cunning rascal, who had had no particular rever- ence for Johnson but had simply led him by the nose for his own purposes, who had really compiled the Life as his own biogra- PhY and had treated Johnson very scurvily In it, who had, in short, come to bury Johnson rather than to praise him. Fitz- ferald put forward this thesis with great earning and ingenuity; indeed there is nothing wanting in it but common sense, which would have told him that the very L necessity for such careful proof defeated argument at the outset, for anyone who has read the Life feels that he knows all about Johnson, whereas we are still arguing about Boswell. But so it went on. And nd now, from the other side of the Atlantic (from Yale University), there comes a new and very thoroughgoing vindication of Boswell from the hand of Mr 1,Inker, one of the best Johnsonian scho- v"ris in America. This new book, a fine, big (l'unte, amply provided with reproduc-
tions of portraits and amusing cartoons and facsimiles of letters and title-pages, is based largely on new material, for the most part certain of Boswell's letters now in the possession of Mr James Pierpont Mor- gan. . . . In the chapters on Boswell's celebrity hunting on the Continent, Mr Tinker successfully defends him against the charge of mere silly toadysim. Boswell hunted men of genius as Squire Western and his friends hunted the fox: it was his vocation. Mr Tinker hints that this charac- teristic was the result of his holding a sort of Great Man philosophy of his own, not unlike that which Carlyle developed later;
but into these depths we cannot follow our author. So, too, Mr Tinker proves by an examination of Boswell's fee-book that that gentleman's attainments in the law were far from being negligible. He never liked the profession, and entered it unwil- lingly; indeed, there is a delicious passage in his Commonplace Book (in which, you will remember, he always wrote of himself in the third person) on this very subject, beginning: Boswell had a great aversion to the law, but forced himself to enter upon the laborious profession in compliance with the anxious desire of his father, for whom he had the greatest regard...
But still, he acquired sufficient knowledge of Scots law to become a fairly successful young advocate: English law he never mastered, though he made an attempt to learn it later in life. There are some entertaining chapters on his love affairs (the respectable ones), his courtship and marriage, the two last of which are prob- ably misleading, as they do not involve the same person, for the several ladies whom Boswell courted he did not marry, and the lady he did eventually marry he does not seem to have courted. Indeed, there was nothing commonplace about Boswell ex- cept his vices: he is a unique figure, an amazing composite of Sandford and Mer- ton, Young Lochinvar, Tony Lumpkin and Plutarch. He is, too, one of the great comic figures of our literature; it is hardly possi- ble to discover an aspect of him that is not somehow comic. Mr Tinker, as befits a biographer, treats his subject gravely and would have us do likewise; and yet once he is in the swing of his delightful narrative he can no more resist the promptings of the Comic Spirit than the most irreverent of his readers. He begins his very first chapter with a description of that 'Ode to Tragedy' by a 'Gentleman of Scotland' (published Edin., 1761) which was dedicated to James Boswell, Esquire, and was also written by James Boswell, Esquire. Mr. Tinker does well to call him 'Young Boswell', for he always seemed at once precocious and naive, which is probably the secret of his comical appeal. Even his relations with the great do not show us the whole man so well as his relations with the ladies. Mr Tinker cannot be thanked too often for his divert- ing chapters on this theme, and in particu- lar the one that describes in detail Bos- well's courtship of the difficult Miss Blair. Who could resist the appeal of that paper of instructions which the youthful Boswell wrote out for his friend, the mild young clergyman, and entitled 'Instructions for Mr Temple, on his Tour to Auchinleck and Adamtown'?
Give Miss Blair my letter. Salute her and her mother; ask to walk. See the place fully; think what improvemnts should be made. Talk of my mare, the purse, the chocolate. Tell you are my very old and intimate friend. Praise me for my good qualities — you know them; but talk also how odd, how inconstant, how impetuous, how much accustomed to women of intrigue. Ask gravely, 'Pray don't you imagine there is something of madness in that family?' Talk of my various travels German princes, Voltaire and Rous- seau. . . . Think of me as the 'great man' at Admatown — quite classical, too! Study the mother. Remember what passes. Stay tea. . . . Be a man of as much ease as possible. Consider what a romantic expedi- tion you are on. Take notes; perhaps you now fix me for life.
All of which diverting matter must not make us forget that Mr Tinker has com- pletely vindicated the artist in the biog- rapher, and by putting side by side Bos- well's rough notes and the parallel passage in the Life has given us perhaps the best account we possess of Boswell's peculiar method. Young Boswell is both capital fun and excellent criticism: let us hope that a waft of its incense somehow reaches the unsubstantial but still eager nose of the great little biographer wherever he is and whatever lordly shade he is beseeching for advice.
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