hers, but a
man who kept himself always close to the realities of things. And when
to this, which had been always there, was added the special charm of
the _Lives of the Poets_, the old man speaking, often in the first
person, without reserve or mystery, out of the fullness of his
knowledge of books and men and the general life which is greater than
either, then the feeling entertained for him grew into something not
very unlike affection. The man who could not be concealed even by the
grave abstractions of the earlier works, was now seen and heard as a
friend speaking face to face with those who understood him. The
wisdom, and learning and piety, the shrewdness and vigour and wit, the
invincible common sense, took visible shape in the face of Samuel
Johnson, were heard in his audible voice, became known and honoured and
loved as a kind of national glory, the embodiment of the mind and
character of the English people. And then, of course, came Boswell.
And what might have died away as a memory or a legend was made secure
from mortality by a work of genius. At the moment Boswell had only to
complete an impression already made. But, strong as it was at the
time, without Boswell it could {37} not have lasted. Those who had sat
with Johnson at the Mitre or "The Club" could not long survive, and
could not leave their eyes and ears behind them. Literary fashions
changed; popular taste began to ask evermore for amusement and less for
instruction or edification; and the works of Johnson were no longer
read, except by students of English literature. But for Boswell the
great man's name might soon have been unknown to any but bookish men.
It is due to Boswell that journalists quote him, and cabmen tell
stories about him. Johnson had himself almost every quality that makes
for survival except genius; and that, by the happiest of fates for
himself and for us, he found in his biographer.

CHAPTER II

THE GENIUS OF BOSWELL

The word genius seems a strange one to apply to Boswell. Macaulay has
had his hour of authority with most of us, and, unluckily for him and
for us, the worst passages in his _Essays_ are often better remembered
{38} than the greatest chapters in his _History_. It has proved his
ill-fortune as well as his glory to have written so vividly that the
mind's eye will still see what he wrote clear before it, though twenty
years may lie between it and the actual sight of the printed page. At
his wor