smith, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, and Edmund Burke. Johnson's genius left no fit testimony of
itself from his own hand. With all the greatness of his mind he had no
talent in sufficient measure by which fully to express himself. He had
no ear for music and no eye for painting, and the finest qualities in
the creations of Goldsmith were lost upon him. But his genius found
its talents in others, and through the talents of his personal friends
expressed itself as it were by proxy. They rubbed their minds upon
his, and he set in motion for them ideas which they might use. But the
intelligence of genius is profounder and more personal than mere ideas.
It has within it something energetic, expansive, propulsive from mind to
mind, perennial, yet steady and controlled; and it was with such force
that Johnson's almost superhuman personality inspired the art of his
friends. Of this they were in some degree aware. Reynolds confessed that
Johnson formed his mind, and 'brushed from it a great deal of rubbish.'
Gibbon called Johnson 'Reynolds' oracle.' In one of his Discourses Sir
Joshua, mindful no doubt of his own experience, recommends that young
artists seek the companionship of such a man merely as a tonic to their
art. Boswell often testifies to the stimulating effect of Johnson's
presence. Once he speaks of 'an animating blaze of eloquence, which
roused every intellectual power in me to the highest pitch'; and again
of the 'full glow' of Johnson's conversation, in which he felt himself
'elevated as if brought into another state of being.' He says that all
members of Johnson's 'school' 'are distinguished for a love of truth and
accuracy which they would not have possessed in the same degree if they
had not been acquainted with Johnson.' He quotes Johnson at length and
repeatedly as the author of his own large conception of biography. He
was Goldsmith's 'great master,' Garrick feared his criticism, and
one cannot but recognize the power of Johnson's personality in the
increasing intelligence and consistency of Garrick's interpretations,
in the growing vigor and firmness of Goldsmith's stroke, in the charm,
finality, and exuberant life of Sir Joshua's portraits; and above all in
the skill, truth, brilliance, and lifelike spontaneity of Boswell's art.
It is in such works as these that we shall find the real Johnson, and
through them that he will exert the force of his personality upon us.

Biography is the literature of realized person