fool.' Macaulay was not exactly Beau Nash, nor was
Boswell 'the great Dr. Clarke'; but, as Macaulay, working on Wolcot's
lines, was presently to show, Boswell did right to describe the world as
'a great fool,' and to regret in respect of his own silliness that in the
_Tour_ he had been 'arrogant enough to suppose that the tenour of the
rest of the book would sufficiently guard against such a strange
imputation.' In the same way he showed himself fully alive to the
enduring merits of his achievement. 'I will venture to say,' he writes,
'that he (Johnson) will be seen in this work more completely than any man
who has ever lived.' He had his own idea of biography; he had
demonstrated its value triumphantly in the _Tour_ which, though
organically complete, is plainly not a record of travel but a
biographical essay. In the _Tour_, that is, he had approved himself an
original master of selection, composition, and design; of the art of
working a large number of essential details into a uniform and living
whole; and of that most difficult and telling of accomplishments, the
reproduction of talk. In the _Life_ he repeated the proof on a larger
scale and with a finer mastery of construction and effect; and in what
his best editor describes as 'the task of correcting, amending, and
adding to his darling work' he spent his few remaining years. That he
drifted into greatness, produced his two masterpieces unconsciously, and
developed a genius for biography as one develops a disease, is 'a
ridiculous conception,' as Mr. Napier rightly says. In proof of it we
have Boswell's own words, and we have the books themselves. Such
testimony is not to be overborne by any number of paradoxes, however
ingenious, nor by any superflux of rhetoric, however plausible and
persuasive. That Boswell was a gossip, a busybody, and something of a
sot, and that many did and still do call him fool, is certain; but that
is no reason why he should not have been an artist, and none why he
should be credited with the fame of having devoted the best part of his
life to the production of a couple of masterpieces--as M. Jourdain talked
prose--without knowing what he was doing. Turner chose to go
a-masquerading as 'Puggy Booth'; but as yet nobody has put forward the
assertion that Turner was unconscious of the romance and splendour of his
_Ulysses and Polyphemus_, or that he painted his _Rain_, _Speed_, _and
Steam_ in absolute ignorance of the impression i