he has upon the works of others; and he whom
Nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his
vanity by the name of 'critic,'"

But the greatest literary light of his day has been thrown into the shadow
by a man whom no one suspected of being able to write entertainingly. In
the world of letters the great Cham exists only as a lesser luminary; just
as the once-noted novelist, George Henry Lewes, is now known only as the
husband of George Eliot.

And yet no one is so rash as to say that the name of Boswell would now be
known were it not for Johnson. And conversely (or otherwise), if it were
the proper place, I could show that were it not for George Henry Lewes we
should never have had "Adam Bede" or "The Mill on the Floss."

Boswell wrote the best "Life" ever written. Nothing like it was ever
written before; nothing to equal it has been written since. It has had
hundreds of imitators, but no competitors. Matthew Arnold said that no man
ever had so good a subject, but Arnold for the moment seemed to forget
that Hawkins, a professional literary man, published his "Life of Johnson"
long before Boswell's was sent to the printer--and who reads Hawkins?

Surely Boswell had a great subject, and he rises to the level of his theme
and makes the most of it. At times I have wondered if Boswell were not
really a genius so great and profound that he was willing to play the
fool, as Edgar in "Lear" plays the maniac, and allow himself to be snubbed
(in print) in order to make his telling point! Millionaires can well
afford to wear ragged coats. Second-rate man Boswell may have been, as he
himself so oft admits, yet as a biographer he stands first in the front
rank. But suppose his extreme ignorance was only the domino disguising a
cleverness so subtle that it was not discovered until after his death! And
what if he smiles now, as from out of Elysium he looks and beholds how, as
a writer, he has eclipsed old Ursa Major, and thus clipped the claws that
were ready for any chance Scot who might pass that way!

John Hay has suggested that possibly the insight, piquancy and calm wisdom
of Omar Khayyam are two-thirds essence of FitzGerald. If so, the joke is
on Omar, not on FitzGerald.

A dozen of Johnson's contemporaries wrote about him, and all make him out
a profound scholar, a deep philosopher, a facile writer. Boswell by his
innocent quoting and recounting makes his conversation outstrip all of his
other accom