he
Boswellian recipe for being graphic--the possession of an open, loving
heart, and what follows from the possession of such. Like White of
Selborne, with his sparrows and cockchafers, Boswell, too, has copied
some true sentences from the inspired book of nature.

But however this may account for his insight--the heart seeing farther
than the head--it will not account for his literary qualities. Of all
his contemporaries, Goldsmith and Burke excepted, no one is a greater
master of a pure prose style than Boswell, and for ease of narrative,
felicity of phrase, and rounded diction he is incomparable. Macaulay
believed a London apprentice could detect Scotticisms in Robertson;
Hume's style is often vicious by Gallicisms and Scots law phrases which
nothing but his expository gifts have obscured from the critics. Beattie
confesses learning English as a dead language and taking several years
over the task. But Boswell, 'scarce by North Britons now esteemed a
Scot,' writes with an ease that renders his style his own. 'The fact
is,' says Mr Cotter Morison, 'that no dramatist or novelist of the whole
century surpassed or even equalled Boswell in rounded and clear and
picturesque presentation, or in real dramatic faculty.'

Let us take one portrait from the Boswell gallery--the meeting of the
two old Pembroke men, Johnson and Oliver Edwards.

'It was in Butcher Row that this meeting happened. Mr Edwards,
who was a decent-looking elderly man in gray clothes and a wig
of many curls, accosted Johnson with familiar confidence,
knowing who he was, while Johnson returned his salutation with
a courteous formality, as to a stranger. But as soon as Edwards
had brought to his recollection their having been at Pembroke
College together nine-and-forty years ago, he seemed much
pleased, asked where he lived, and said he should be glad to
see him in Bolt Court. EDWARDS: "Ah, sir! we are old men now."
JOHNSON (who never liked to think of being old): "Don't let us
discourage one another." EDWARDS: "Why, Doctor, you look stout
and hearty. I am happy to see you so; for the newspapers told
us you were very ill." JOHNSON: "Ay, sir, they are always
telling lies of _us old fellows_."

Wishing to be present at more of so singular a conversation as
that between two fellow collegians, who had lived forty years
in London without ever having chanced to meet, I whispered to
Mr Edw