Thus does poor Bozzy stand out to us as an ill-assorted, glaring
mixture of the highest and the lowest. What, indeed is man's life
generally but a kind of beast-godhead; the god in us triumphing more
and more over the beast; striving more and more to subdue it under his
feet? Did not the Ancients, in their wise, perennially significant
way, figure Nature itself, their sacred All, or Pan, as a portentous
commingling of these two discords; as musical, humane, oracular in its
upper part, yet ending below in the cloven hairy feet of a goat? The
union of melodious, celestial Freewill and Reason, with foul
Irrationality and Lust; in which, nevertheless, dwelt a mysterious
unspeakable Fear and half-mad _panic_ Awe; as for mortals there well
might! And is not man a microcosm, or epitomized mirror of that same
Universe; or, rather, is not that Universe even Himself, the reflex of
his own fearful and wonderful being, "the waste fantasy of his own
dream?" No wonder that man, that each man, and James Boswell like the
others, should resemble it! The peculiarity in his case was the
unusual defect of amalgamation and subordination: the highest lay side
by side with the lowest; not morally combined with it and spiritually
transfiguring it; but tumbling in half-mechanical juxtaposition with
it, and from time to time, as the mad alternation chanced, irradiating
it, or eclipsed by it....

As for the Book itself, questionless the universal favor entertained
for it is well merited. In worth as a Book we have rated it beyond any
other product of the eighteenth century; all Johnson's own Writings,
laborious and in their kind genuine above most, stand on a quite
inferior level to it; already, indeed, they are becoming obsolete for
this generation; and for some future generations, may be valuable
chiefly as Prolegomena and Expository Scholia to this _Johnsoniad_ of
Boswell. Which of us but remembers, as one of the sunny spots in his
existence, the day when he opened these airy volumes, fascinating him
by a true natural-magic! It was as if the curtains of the Past were
drawn aside, and we looked mysteriously into a kindred country, where
dwelt our Fathers; inexpressibly dear to us, but which had seemed
forever hidden from our eyes. For the dead Night had engulfed it; all
was gone, vanished as if it had not been. Nevertheless, wondrously
given back to us, there once more it lay; all bright, lucid, blooming;
a little island of Creation amid the