VII

BOSWELL AND HIS BOOK[54]

We have next a word to say of James Boswell. Boswell has already been
much commented upon; but rather in the way of censure and vituperation
than of true recognition. He was a man that brought himself much
before the world; confest that he eagerly coveted fame, or if that
were not possible, notoriety; of which latter, as he gained far more
than seemed his due, the public were incited, not only by their
natural love of scandal, but by a special ground of envy, to say
whatever ill of him could be said. Out of the fifteen millions that
then lived, and had bed and board, in the British Islands, this man
has provided us a greater pleasure than any other individual, at whose
cost we now enjoy ourselves; perhaps has done us a greater service
than can be specially attributed to more than two or three: yet,
ungrateful that we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James Boswell
anywhere exists; his recompense in solid pudding (so far as copyright
went) was not excessive; and as for the empty praise, it has
altogether been denied him. Men are unwiser than children; they do not
know the hand that feeds.

Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the
general eye; visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities
again, belonged not to the time he lived in; were far from common
then, indeed, in such a degree, were almost unexampled; not
recognizable therefore by every one; nay, apt even (so strange had
they grown) to be confined with the very vices they lay contiguous to,
and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibler and gross liver;
gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little solacement,
were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he
was vain, heedless, a babbler; had much of the sycophant, alternating
with the braggadocio, curiously spiced too with an all-pervading dash
of the coxcomb; that he gloried much when the Tailor, by a court-suit,
had made a new man of him; that he appeared at the Shakespeare Jubilee
with a riband, imprinted "Corsica Boswell," round his hat; and in
short, if you will, lived no day of his life without doing and saying
more than one pretentious inaptitude; all this unhappily is evident as
the sun at noon. The very look of Boswell seems to have signified so
much. In that cocked nose, cocked partly in triumph over his weaker
fellow-creatures, partly to snuff up the smell of coming pleasure, and
scent it from afar; in