xceptionally
well-chosen party at an exceptional country house, or in the old dining
societies of London, such as Johnson's own, "The Club," of famous
memory. Its modern rarity may, however, only make it the more precious
in a book, and it is certainly not the least important element in the
popularity of Boswell's work.

That work has always been praised from the day of its appearance. Lord
Thurlow, then Chancellor, wrote to Boswell of the _Tour to the
Hebrides_, which is essentially, though not formally, its first
instalment, that {48} he had read every word of it, because he could
not help it: and added the flattering question, "Could you give a rule
how to write a book that a man _must_ read?" Scott, a little later,
spoke of it as "without exception the best parlour window book that
ever was written." Six editions were issued within twenty years of its
appearance, a strong proof of popularity in the case of a voluminous
and expensive book. And the praise and popularity have gone on growing
ever since. But the strange thing is that the man who wrote it has
commonly been treated with insult, and even with contempt. The fact is
at first sight so inexplicable that it is worth a little looking into.
A man who has done us all such a service as Boswell, who has by the
admission even of Macaulay utterly out-distanced all competition in
such an important kind of literature as biography, would naturally have
been loaded with the gratitude and admiration of posterity. Yet all
fools and some wise men have thought themselves entitled to throw a
scornful stone at Boswell.

The truth is that Boswell was a man of very obvious weaknesses, the
weaknesses to which every fool feels himself superior, and of some
grave vices of a sort to which wise men feel little temptation. And,
unfortunately, he conquered neither. Rather they conquered {49} him,
and made his last years a degradation, and his memory one which his
friends were glad to forget. After the death of Johnson in 1784,
followed in 1789 by that of Mrs. Boswell, whom Johnson once justly and
generously described as the prop and stay of her husband's life, he had
no one left to lean on. And he was not a man strong enough to stand
alone. But it is time to insist that, when all this has been
confessed, we are very far from having told the whole truth about
Boswell. The fact is that justice will never be fully done to his
memory till Macaulay and some others have been c