full-length with all the blotches
and pimples revealed ("I will not make my tiger a cat to please
anybody," wrote "Bozzy"). It may be overmuch an exhibition of oddities,
but it is also, be it remembered, a pioneer application of the
experimental method to the determination of human character. Its size
and lack of divisions (to divide it into chapters was an original device
of Croker's) are a drawback, and have prevented Boswell's _Life_ from
that assured triumph abroad which has fallen to the lot of various
English classics such as _Robinson Crusoe_ or _Gulliver's Travels_. But
wherever English is spoken, it has become a veritable sacred book and
has pervaded English life and thought in the same way, that the Bible,
Shakespeare and Bunyan have done. Boswell has successfully (to use his
own phrase) "Johnsonized" Britain, but has not yet Johnsonized the
planet. The model originally proposed to himself by Boswell was Mason's
_Life of Gray_, but he far surpassed that, or indeed any other, model.
The fashion that Boswell adopted of giving the conversations not in the
neutral tints of _oratio obliqua_ but in full _oratio recta_ was a
stroke of genius. But he is far from being the mere mechanical
transmitter of good things. He is a dramatic and descriptive artist of
the first order. The extraordinary vitality of his figures postulates a
certain admixture of fiction, and it is certain that Boswell exaggerates
the sympathy expressed in word or deed by Johnson for some of his own
tenderer foibles. But, on the whole, the best judges are of opinion that
Boswell's accuracy is exceptional, as it is undoubtedly seconded by a
power of observation of a singular retentiveness and intensity. The
difficulty of dramatic description can only be realized, as Jowett well
pointed out, by those who have attempted it, and it is not until we
compare Boswell's reports with those of less skilful hearers that we can
appreciate the skill with which the essence of a conversation is
extracted, and the whole scene indicated by a few telling touches. The
result is that Johnson, not, it is true, in the early days of his
poverty, total idleness and the pride of literature, but in the fulness
of fame and competence of fortune from 1763 to 1784, is better known to
us than any other man in history. The old theory to explain such a
marvel (originally propounded by Gray when the _Tour in Corsica_
appeared) that "any fool may write a valuable book by chance" is no