The hero-worshipper
Allan Massie
The Moth and The Candle: A Life of James Boswell lain Finlayson (Constable £9.95)
oswell was the sort of man often
described as his own worst enemy, though he lost that distinction when Macaulay came to write about him. 'If he had not been a great fool, he would not have been a great writer' . . . of his Observations 'we do not remember one Which is above the intellectual capacity of a 13°Y of fifteen . . . he was a dunce, a Parasite and a coxcomb.' The periods roll, the antitheses clang, their victim ought to °e buried. But of course he isn't. Whatever contempt and ridicule are piled upon him, 8.0zzy surfaces. The great Yale edition of _ill's Papers has made him a delight to our uaY and deepened our appreciation of his Masterpiece. So indeed has all the work Inne on Johnson before Boswell, for it has confirmed the soundness of his judgment and the justice of his discrimination. In- clikeed, Boswell has lasted very much better `j 'an Macaulay — he seems far less out of l'a.te, and wiser in his hero-worship.. Now ka.ln Finlayson has written an admirable Ao ?raPhY, drawing on the mass of matenal 1pJailable and distilling it elegantly, Judi- b°1181Y and very readably; it is his first ook and a notably good beginning. . °f course, Boswell was often foolish. ruespite his pride of birth and position, he wepeatedly forced himself into situations nere he could only appear absurd. At the 4rtratford Shakespeare Jubilee celebra- c1,, he decked himself out as a Corsican lef, and began to recite an ode of his own Position which was all the feebler for ving pretentiously strenuous. He was
howled down. This lack of a sense of his own dignity, for all his protestations to the contrary, stayed with him to the end. The humiliations he endured at the hands of Lord Lonsdale from whom he hoped to receive a Parliamentary nomination are painful even to read about; they must have been excruciating to live through, especial- ly for one so morbidly sensitive as Boswell. (They are, by the way, a salutary reminder that politics was as shaming and undigni- fied a pursuit in an aristocratic age as it is in a democratic one.) In addition to this, he was drunken, lecherous, inconsistent to the point of giddiness, vain, self-important; it is easy enough to consider him negligible.
Easy, that is, for one so cocksure and unsubtle as Macaulay. Wiser men, of whom Johnson was one, judged different- ly. Johnson suffered neither fools nor toadies gladly. He was too near melancholy-madness himself to be im- pressed by an affectation of sensibility. But he did much more than put up with Boswell; he enjoyed his company and loved him. Their jaunt through the High- lands was the sort of experience, the being thrown together, which would have broken a weaker friendship. When he said to Boswell, 'Sir, are you so grossly ignorant of human nature as not to know that a man may be perfectly sincere in good principles, without having good practice?' he spoke defensively; but what he said is true, and the words applied to Boswell himself. Essentially, he was a good man. Johnson had penetration enough to see it; so had Boswell's admirable wife, Peggie, whose enduring if sometimes disheartened love is testimony to his worth. So did the Corsican hero Paoli. He had first thought him an imposter and then 'I thought in my mind he
was an espy', but finally judged him 'a very good man. I love him dearly; so cheerful! So gay! So pleasant!'
There were those who saw Boswell's addiction to the great as tuft-hunting. His stern father observed that `Jamie's gane clean daft. He's aff wi' the land-louper Paoli, and he's ta'en up wi a dominie, an auld dominie wha' keepit a schule and ca'ed if an academy,' but toadies are not loved by those they flatter, and in nothing did Boswell show his quality more clearly than in his capacity for hero-worship and his choice of heroes. One is reminded of that other apparent lightweight and com- pulsive diarist, Chips Channon, and his adoration of Lord Wavell.
Boswell's lack of robust self-sufficiency is one reason for his enduring attraction. He was not by any means an average man, but he is a man in whom anyone at all self-conscious can recognise much of him- Self. Desmond MacCarthy saw this self- consciousness as the key to understanding him. 'No man,' he wrote, 'was ever more acutely conscious of himself than Boswell, and therefore more painfully aware of being a bundle of confused and contradic- tory impulses. His will was naturally weak (at the end of his life, after the deaths of Johnson and Mrs Boswell, it became com- pletely dilapidated), and he longed pas- sionately to pull himself together. Men who had nobly succeeded had an irresist- able attraction for him. With them for a while, his better self was uppermost . . I am sure this is true — even though I doubt if 'dilapidated' is an adjective which can properly be applied to the will — and it puts in their place all those who have sneered at Boswell's pursuit of the great. The fact is that hero-worship, being at its deepest level evidence of a capacity for reverence, is an admirable quality; an antidote to egoism. Here too, Boswell's lack of a sense of the ridiculous came to his rescue; he could not see that Johnson was odd, but the spectacle, which some found ridicu- lous, of Mr Boswell of Auchinleck dancing attendance on the uncouth intellectual, didn't faze him a jot. It was to his credit that he could love the highest he encoun- tered.
For Boswell was in fact the opposite of your average rake who, to preserve a remnant of his self-respect, will associate with those he recognises as inferiors till, at last, he is only at ease in such company; on the contrary, his awareness of his failings drew him to those he could admire.
Boswell's enduring fascination lies in the contradictory nature he presents. Restless, whimsical, hypochondriac, he was capable of great and meticulous industry. Endlessly self-conscious, he charmed by his spon- taneity. Neurotic and melancholy, he was the gayest and most delightful of compan- ions. Given to almost obsessive self- examination, he could yet lose that self in admiration of those he considered his moral and intellectual superiors. Mr Fin- layson does him justice in this continuously entertaining biography.
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