r men
in Johnson's circle, whom he knew longer and respected more; but for
us, Boswell's position in relation to Johnson is unique. Beside him
the others, even Burke and Reynolds, are, in this connection, shadows.
They had their independent fields of greatness in which Johnson had no
share: Boswell's greatness is all Johnsonian. We cannot think of him
apart from Johnson: and he has so managed that we can scarcely think of
Johnson apart from him. No one who occupies himself with the one can
ignore the other: in interest and popularity they stand or fall
together. It may be well, therefore, before going further, to give the
bare facts of both their lives; dismissing Boswell first, as the less
important, and then devoting the rest of the chapter to Johnson.

{71}

James Boswell was born in 1740. He came of an ancient family, a fact
he never forgot, as, indeed, few people do who have the same advantage.
His father was a Scottish judge with the title of Lord Auchinleck. The
first of the family to hold the estate of Auchinleck, which is in
Ayrshire, was Thomas Boswell, who received a grant of it from James IV
in whose army he went to Flodden and shared the defeat and death of his
patron. The estate had therefore belonged to the Boswells over two
hundred years when the future biographer of Johnson was born. His
father and he were never congenial spirits. The judge was a Whig with
a practical view of life and had no sympathy with his son's romantic
propensities either in religion, politics or literature. A plain
Lowland Scot, he did not see why his son should take up with Toryism,
Anglicanism, or literary hero-worship. When James, after first
attaching himself to Paoli, the leader of the Corsican struggle for
independence, returned home and took up the discipleship to Johnson
which was to be the central fact in the rest of his life, his father
frankly despaired of him, and broke out, according to Walter Scott:
"There's nae hope for Jamie, mon. Jamie is gaen clean gyte. What do
you think, mon? He's done wi' Paoli--he's off wi' the {72} landlouping
scoundrel of a Corsican; and whose tail do you think he has pinned
himself to now, mon? A _dominie_, mon--an auld dominie: he keeped a
schule, and cau'd it an acaadamy." Well might Boswell say that they
were "so totally different that a good understanding is scarcely
possible." Beside disliking Paoli and Johnson, Lord Auchinleck cared
nothing for some of Boswell's st