plishments. He reveals the man by the most skilful indirection,
and by leaving his guard down, often allows the reader to score a point.
And of all devices of writing folk, none is finer than to please the
reader by allowing him to pat himself on the back.

If a writer is too clever he repels. Shakespeare avoids the difficulty,
and proves himself the master by keeping out of sight; Renan wins by a
great show of modesty and deferential fairness; Boswell assumes an
artlessness and ignorance that were really not parts of his nature. Every
man who reads Boswell considers himself the superior of Boswell, and
therefore is perfectly at home. It is not pleasant to be in the society of
those who are much your superiors. Any man who sits in the company of
Samuel Pepys for a half-hour feels a sort of half-patronizing pity for
him, and therefore is happy, for to patronize is bliss.

If Boswell has reinforced fact with fiction, and given us art for truth,
then his character of Samuel Johnson is the most vividly conceived and
deeply etched in all the realm of books. But if he gives merely the simple
facts, then Boswell is no less a genius, for he has omitted the irrelevant
and inconsequential, and by playing off the excellent against the absurd,
he has placed his subject among the few great wits who have ever lived--a
man who wrote remarkably well, but talked infinitely better.

* * * * *

Montaigne advises young men that if they will fall in love, why, to fall
in love with women older than themselves. His argument is that a young and
pretty woman makes such a demand on a man's time and attention that she is
sure, eventually, to wear love to the warp. So the wise old Gascon
suggests that it is the part of wisdom to give your affection to one who
is both plain and elderly--one who is not suffering from a surfeit of
love, and one whose head has not been turned by flattery. "Young women,"
says the philosopher, "demand attention as their right and often flout the
giver; whereas old women are very grateful."

Whether Samuel Johnson, of Lichfield, ever read Montaigne or not is a
question; but this we know, that when he was twenty-six he married the
Widow Porter, aged forty-nine.

Assuming that Johnson had read Montaigne and was mindful of his advice,
there were other excellent reasons why he did not link his fortunes with
those of a young and pretty woman.

Johnson in his youth, as well as throughout li