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James Boswell (1740-1795) |
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Scottish lawyer, essayist, known for his two-volume biography The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.
(1791), published seven years after the death of its subject. James Boswell
met Samuel Johnson in May 1763 in Davies's
London bookshop and the two became fast friends. He recorded in detail
Johnson's words and activities in a relatively short period. Later the
historian Thomas Macaulay (1800-1859) called Boswell's worship of Dr.
Johnson "Lues Boswelliana,
or disease of admiration." G.B. Shaw, who had the opposite opinion,
went as far as to claim that Johnson was a dramatic character created
by Boswell. "We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindness there is at last one which makes the heart run over." (from The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell, edited with an introduction by David Womersley, London: Penguin Books, p. 612) James Boswell was born in Edinburgh, the son of Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, who was a judge in the supreme courts of Scotland. Boswell's mother, Euphemia Erskine, was descended from a minor branch of Scottish royalty. His family had had for two-and-a-half centuries as its seat the estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire. Near the new mansion were the ruins of the Old Castle, which he eagerly showed to Johnson and other friends. Much of his life Boswell was plagued by his mother's suffocating Calvinism and his father's coldness. Lord Auchinleck remarried in 1769. After his death in 1782, Boswell became the Master of Auchinleck, but he never enjoyed his life there. At the age of 16, Boswell had a nervous breakdown, and he was sent to recuperate to the border village of Moffat. For a long period he was so afraid of ghost that he could not sleep alone. In one of his journals Boswell wrote: "I do not recollect having had any other valuable principle impressed upon me by my father except a strict regard for truth, which he impressed upon my mind by a hearty beating at an early age when I lied, and then talking of the dishonour of lying." (quoted in A Life of James Boswell by Peter Martin, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000, p. 25) He attended the University of Edinburgh (1753-1753), where he studied arts and law. He was already keeping a journal and writing poems when he was 18. At 19 he made his first visit to London and a few years later, on his second visit, Boswell met Dr. Johnson on 16 May, 1763, at Tom Davies's book shop. Boswell described the encounter in his journal and later his journals, in which he recorded Johnson's conversations, became the principal source for his biography. In 1759 Boswell's father send him to the University of Glasgow
to separate his son from an actress. Among his tutors there was Adam
Smith, the Professor of Moral Philosophy, whose advocacy of pure
English style impressed him deeply. After six months Boswell ran away
to London, where he embraced Roman Catholicism, planning to become a
monk. During his stay he met Laurence Sterne, the writer of Tristram
Shandy, and Edward, Duke of York, brother to Prince George, who
become King. Deciding the his future would be in London, he returned to
Edinburgh. The winter of 1763-64 he spent studying law in Utrecht,
Holland, and enjoying the company of a young lady named Belle de
Zuylen. After one term, Boswell left for a tour of Europe, meeting the
French intellectuals Jean Jacques Rousseau,
of whom he wrote a biographical sketch, and Voltaire.
Rousseau, who suffered from health problems, informed Boswell that he
has to use a catheter to control his bladder. While in Corsica he become friends with General Pasquale Paoli. On a journey from Paris to London, the exhausted Boswell wrote that he was seduced in coach and inn 13 times by Rousseau's mistress Thérèse Le Vasseur, before they had reched Dover. Moving back to Scotland in 1766, Boswell was admitted to the bar and practised law in Edinburgh for 20 years. Although he first attracted a fair number of clients, never earned enough to pay off loans. He had also a reputation of being the defender of the poor and the needy. Boswell had a phenomenal memory, he loved gossip, good conversation, liquor, travel, and he was a natural writer. From 1760s onwards, he had wrote anonymously various pamphlets and verses. Moreover, throughout his life he was a passionate diarist. In 1768 Boswell published An Account of Corsica, based on his journey. The book, which was an immediate success and earned him the nickname 'Corsica Boswell,' was a defence of Corsica's abortive struggle for freedom against the republic of Genoa. Rousseau had earlier sparked Boswell's zeal for the cause of Corsican liberty. In 1769 Boswell appeared at a Shakespeare Jubilee dressed as a Corsican chief, armed with stiletto and pistols. Boswell wanted to become known as a great lover. He told about his adventures to his friends, William Temple and John Johnston, and once claimed that he had made love five times in a single evening. He was well-known among prostitutes in London's St. James Park – his sexuality was compulsive and he copulated after watching public hangings, a favorite pastime, and after personal bereavements. Over a period of 30 years he contracted gonorrhea 17 times. (The Wordsworth Book of Literary Anecdotes by Robert Hendrickson, Ware: Wordsworth Editions, p. 25) In a poem about himself Boswell wrote: "B— is
pleasant and gay, / For frolic by nature design'd, / He heedlessly
rattles away, / When the company is to his mind. / This maxim he says
you may see, / We can never have corn without chaff; / So not a bent
sixpence cares he, / Whether with him or at him you laugh." ('B—. A Song. To the Tune of Old Sir Symon, &c,' in A Collection of Original Poems. By Scotch Gentlemen, Volume II, Edinburgh: Printed by A. Donaldson and J. Reid For A. Donaldson, MDCCLXII, p. 91) He was very disappointed
when Catherine Blair, an heiress, rejected him and married a cousin,
Sir William Maxwell. Boswell wrote to William Temple: "The heiress is a
good Scots lass, but I must have an Englishwoman. You cannot say how fine a
woman I may marry. Perhaps a Howard, or some other of the noblest in the
kingdom." (Boswelliana: The Commonplace Book of James Boswell: With a Memoir and Annotations by Charles Rogers, introductory remarks by Lord Houghton, London: Printed for the Grampian Club, 1874, p. 74) In 1769 Boswell married Margaret Montgomerie, his cousin; they had two boys and three girls. From early on, he worried of her health and that he would be left alone. Though his visits to London were restricted to the vacations of the Court of Session, Boswell kept up his contacts with Johnson, and was elected to the Literary Club in 1773. The members included some of the most famous men of the time, such as the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, the actor David Garrick, the historian Edward Gibbon, and the political economist Adam Smith. With Johnson, who described Boswell as "the best travelling companion in the world", the friends made their celebrated tour of Scotland and the Hebrides. "Perhaps I put down too many things in this Journal. I have no fanners in my head, at least no good ones, to separate wheat from chaff. Yet for as much as I put down, what is written falls greatly short of the quantity of thought. A page of my Journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion." ('13 September 1773,' in Boswell's Journal of A Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Now First Published from the Original Manuscrit, Prepared for the Press, with Preface and Notes by Frederick A. Pottle and Charles H. Bennett, New York: The Viking Press, 1936, p. 165) The route followed that of the unfortunate rebel, Prince Charles Edward. One of Johnson's motives to undertake the journey was to investigate the authenticity of Macpherson's Ossian poems; he was sure that they were fakes. Between the years 1777 and 1783 Boswell wrote for The London Magazine a series of essays on such subjects as drinking, diaries, and hypochondria. Boswell saw Johnson for the last time on 30 June, 1784. After Johnson's death in December, Boswell began to write The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, published in 1785. It has been compared to a picaresque adventure, where Johnson is Don Quixote and Boswell has the role of Sancho Panza. Although reviews were good, it was questioned, was it right to reveal Johnson's follies and whims and private conversations. "Authenticity is my chief boast," answerd Boswell. (quoted in Boswell's Presumptuous Task: The Making of the Life of Dr. Johnson by Adam Sisman, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001, p. 105) Later this book was included in the Life of Johnson, which breaks off at the point where Tour begins and continues again where it finishes. Boswell moved to London, and although he was admitted to the
English bar, he concentrated on the writing of The Life of Samuel
Johnson. The work proceeded slowly, owing partly to Boswell's
drinking habit, fits of depression. and hypochondria. It took years to
gather material – letters, memoirs, interviews – and sort, select, and
edit it. In the editing, he was helped by the Irish scholar Edmond
Malone, a fellow-member of the Literary Club, with whom he had
collaborated in the Tour. Before Boswell finally published his magnum
opus on 16 May, 1791, he wrote a long racist poem, No Abolition of Slavery; or, the Universal
Empire of Love: A Poem,
in which he defended slavery. Ev'n at their labour hear them sing. /
While time flies quick on downy wing; / Finish'd the bus'ness of the
day, / No human beings are more gay: / Of food, clothes, cleanly lodging sure, / Each has his property secure". (No Abolition of Slavery; or, the Universal
Empire of Love: A Poem, London: Printed for R. Faulder, MDCCXCI, p. 21) Boswell thought that an
abolition of the slave trade would prevent slaves from being exposed to
the civilizing effects of British rule. The Life of Johnson was a commercial success despite its high price. Reviews were favorable. "Perhaps no man was ever so perfectly painted as you have painted your hero," said Boswell's old friend William Temple. "You have given us him in every point of view and exhibited him under every shade and under every colour." (The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell: Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson, edited by Marshall Waingrow, London: Heinemann, 1969, p. 423) However, Boswell's own literary skill's as a writer were not recognized in the extraordinary vivid biography, and for a long time, until the publication of Boswelliana (1874), he was labelled as a mere "stenographer." Boswell's remaining years were mainly unhappy, and he no longer had a clear course for his life. Some of his frieds avoided him, afraid that he would record their conversation – or perhaps that they were not worthy of it. Boswell's pursuit of a political career turned out to be unsuccessful. His wife, who coughed and spitted blood while in London, moved back to Scotland and after her death in 1789, he had difficulties with his "Edinburgh-mannered" daughters, who did much as they pleased. James Boswell died in London, on May 19, 1795. His body was taken to Auchinleck and laid in the family vault. According to a literary anecdote the first governor-general of British India, Warren Hastings (1732-1818), was asked what he thought of the Life of Samuel Johnson. "Sir," he replied, "it's the dirtiest book in my library." (The Wordsworth Book of Literary Anecdotes, p. 26) Hastings himself was impeached for corruption in his administration. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson is perhaps the greatest biography in the English language. Boswell made notes on the spot during Johnson's conversation and he questioned Johnson's friends, transforming details into a lifelike portrait. In this work Boswell was aided by Edmund Malone (1741-1812), an Irish literary critic and Shakespearean scholar, who went over the final draft of Johnson's biography. By flattering, cunning questions, and demeaning himself, Boswell provoked Johnson into giving his best, making him talk. Without diminishing the stature of Johnson, Boswell is now considered not only a faithful recorder of an exceptional personality, but the creator of a masterpiece. For further reading: Dr Johnson och James Boswell: en bok om engelskt liv och lynne by Yrjö Hirn (1922); Boswell by Claude Colleer Abbott (1946); James Boswell by Philip Collins (1965); The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs. Thrale by Mary Hyde (1973); Boswell's Creative Gloom: A Study of Imagery and Melancholy in the Writings of James Boswell by Allan Ingham (1982); Boswell's Literary Art: An Annotated Bibliography of Critical Studies, 1900-1985 by Hamilton E. Cochrane (1992); Boswellian Studies: A Bibliography by Anthony E. Brown (1992); Catalogue of the Papers of James Boswell at Yale University: Research Edition, ed. by Marion S. Pottle, et al (1993); Johnson and Boswell in Scotland: A Journey to the Hebrides, ed. by Pat Rogers, et al (1993); Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters, ed. by Irma S. Lustig (1995); James Boswell: Psychological Interpretations. ed. by Donald J. Newman (1995); All the Sweets of Being: A Life of James Boswell by Roger Hutchinson (1996); A Life of James Boswell by Peter Martin (2000); Boswell's Presumptuous Task by Adam Sisman (2001); James Boswell: As His Contemporaries Saw Him, edited by Lyle Larsen (2008); Boswell and The Press: Essays on the Ephemeral Writing of James Boswell, edited by Donald J. Newman (2021); Reading Samuel Johnson: Reception and Representation, 1750-1970 by Phil Jones (2023) - Place to visit in London: Dr. Johnson House, 17 Gough Square, where Johnson lived and wrote his Dictionary. Houses memorablia and manuscripts. Selected writings:
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