ad few or no closer
friends than Reynolds, Burke, Goldsmith and Boswell. Of these the
first two were acknowledged as the greatest {235} painter and the
greatest orator then living in England or perhaps in Europe; the third,
when he died, had some claim to be the truest poet; and, what is more
remarkable, the lapse of over a hundred years has found little or
nothing to detract from the fame each won from his contemporaries. Of
Boswell it is enough to repeat that, while he could not compare with
these men in life or action or general powers of mind, and therefore
enjoyed no contemporary fame, he left a book behind him at his death
which every succeeding generation has increasingly recognized as
possessing that uniqueness of achievement which is another phrase for
genius. Four such men alone would make a society such as few men have
lived in. But Johnson's society is as remarkable for the variety and
quantity, as for the quality, of its distinction. No one can look
through the invaluable index of Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition of Boswell
without being struck by this. If one were to make a list of all the
people whom Johnson saw frequently or occasionally in the course of his
life it would include an astonishing number of interesting names. Part
of the fascination of Boswell's book lies in that. It is first and
foremost the portrait of a man, and everything is kept in subordination
to that. But it is also the picture of a whole {236} age and country.
Sir Leslie Stephen remarked that nearly every distinguished man of
letters of that time came into contact with Johnson. He mentions Hume
and Gray as the only exceptions. There may be others, as for instance
Sterne, to be added. But it remains true that Johnson was in
exceptionally close personal touch with the whole literary world of his
day. And Boswell has known how to make use of all that to give
interest and variety to his book. Nor was Johnson ever, as we have
seen, a mere narrow man of letters. He had a universal curiosity about
life and men. He could talk to every one, and every one found his talk
interesting, consequently Boswell's record of his acquaintance is by no
means a mere series of literary portraits. The society is of all the
sorts of men and women that intelligent men can care to meet, the talk
on almost all the subjects which such people can care to discuss.

Let us glance at some of the names that would find places in that list.
We may begin wi