BOOKS.
MR. FITZGERALD'S LIFE OF BOSWELL.* "ANY fool," said the poet Gray, after reading Boa well's account of Corsica, "may write a most valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and said with. veracity." Perhaps Macaulay had this saying in his mind, when, with his usual love of paradox, he described the greatest of biographers as one of the smallest and most contemptible of men. That Boswell was morally contemptible, no one will care to question, nor can it be doubted that, like the most love- able of Johnson's friends, he often acted like a fool; but when he took the pen in hand, he could use it with consummate art, and, as Mr. Leslie Stephen justly says, "has a little of the true Shakespearian secret. He lets his characters show themselves without obtruding unnecessary comment."
It would be pleasant to praise a man who for a hundred years has given readers so much pleasure, and we hoped, not very reasonably perhaps, that Mr. Fitzgerald'e elaborate bit). graphy might convey a somewhat better impression of Boswell than that usually entertained. The writer has, however, the merit of being an honest chronicler, and his rather loosely written volumes serve to give some point to Macaulay's saying that Boswell's fame "marvelously resembles infamy."
One of the most curious facts in his early career is that he became a Roman Catholic, probably because he was in love with an actress of the same persuasion, with whom he is said to have eloped. It matters little to what Church a man like Boswell belonged, but he appears to have soon returned to the creed of his fathers. "Plunged into the dissipations of London," says his biographer, "he was likely enough to have discarded his new principles with his mistress."
Boswell had an admiration for intellectual and moral great- ness, and he had also a complacency of disposition that enabled him to bear rebuffs which would have shrivelled up a more sensitive nature ; but apart from these qualities, there is no phase of character in Johnson's biographer upon which the mind can rest with pleasure. From his youth until his death, which was hastened by dissipation, at the age of fifty-five, Boswell was in the habit of writing or talking piously, and of acting viciously. He was always repenting until the next temptation occurred, and then, as a matter of course, he sinned again. He had. conscience enough to suffer from. depression of spirits when he went astray, and in order to forget the melancholy that haunted him, resorted to the bottle. He presents the anomaly of the grossest sensuality joined to pious proclivities that had no influence upon conduct. If he went to bed drunk, he made solemn vows in the morning when, he was sober, and read books of devotion. He was fully as vain as Goldsmith, without his sweetness of disposition ; and. Goldsmith would have scorned to act as a mischief .maker, or to treat women with rudeness. When Johnson said Boswell had no manners, he pointed out an obvious blot in his • Life of James Boswell (of Auchinleck), with an Account of his Sayings, Doings, and Writings. By Percy Fitzgerald, LA. 2 vole. London: Ch itto aid Windus„
character ; but Johnson might have added, with equal truthfulness, that he had no morals. There are bad men with generous qualities that claim our admiration, but Boswell arouses contempt or disgust rather than sympathy, and few readers will find with Mr. Fitzgerald," the question of his rather perplexing character an interesting and almost fascinating subject." The author's varied estimates of his hero are a little contra- dictory. We can well believe with him that Boswell was "a butt of the first order," that he was a man panting to be known and talked of, that he was often betrayed into breaches of decorum, that he was flippant, malicious, and spiteful to women, that experienced judges had taken the measure of his foolish- ness, and that he could be hopelessly insensible to the fact that he was making himself ridiculous ; but when the bio- grapher writes of Boswelrs winning nature, of his usual clear good sense, and of the pleasant earnestness habitual to him, and asserts that his was no trivial character, we are unable to agree with him. And how does he reconcile these statements with the admission that Boswell wholly failed in the serious business of life ? It is difficult, also, to see how "complete laxity in practice" can be "neutralised by sound moral and even pious sentiments," or how Boswell could be personally good-natured, with "no malice or ill-will," and yet "full of hatred, malice, envy, and all the meaner passions" in his book. "Most readers will have noticed," the author writes, "how persistently Boswell contrives to depreciate Goldsmith, recording every little weakness or blunder that can make him ridiculous." And again, "I suppose no more ingeniously venomous display could be conceived than his attack on Mrs. Thrale," and yet Mr. Fitzgerald would ask us to believe that Boswell was wholly without malice or ill-will towards either of them until he wrote his Life of Johnson.
Boswell's passion for notoriety was assisted by his stu- pendous assurance. To that he owed his acquaintance with Wilkes, with Voltaire, and with Rousseau, his introduction to Paoli, his friendship with Johnson, and his interview and correspondence with Lord Chatham, in which he hopes that the great Minister will find time to honour him now and then with a letter. "I have been told," he writes, "how favourably your Lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and a Chatham is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of a virtuous fame." It could not have been from any ardour in the pursuit of virtue that he was at that time delighting in the companionship of Wilkes, whose ingrained, almost Satanic corruption," must, in his bio- grapher's judgment, have greatly injured Boswell.
The society of Wilkes, as well as that of Dr. Johnson, served to feed his vanity. He thought himself one of the best fellows alive, and was anxious that other people should think so too. Greatly flattered, too, was he by the acquaintance of Paoli, who gave him good moral advice—much needed, no doubt—and also presented him with a pair of pistols :—
" Long after, when in England, Paoli entertained a party at Streatham with a rather ludicrous account of his fussy and im- portunate guest :—` He came to my country sudden, and he fetched me some letters of recommending him. But I was of the belief he might in the verity be no other person but one impostor. And I supposed, in my mente, he was in the privacy one espy; for I look away from him to my other companies, and in one moment when I look back to him, I behold it in his hands his tablet and one pencil ! 0, he was at the work, I give it you my honour, of writing down all what I say to some persons whatsoever in the 'room! Indeed I was angry enough. Pretty much so I give it you my word. But soon after I discern he was no impostor, and besides, no espy; for soon I find it out I was myself only the monster he came to observe, and to describe with one pencil in his tablet ! 0, is a very good man Mr. Boswell in the bottom ! so cheerful, so witty, so gentle, so talkable. But at the first, 0 I was indeed fache of the sufficient. I was in one passion, in my mode, very well.'"
Boswell, it is well known, was not so well treated by every famous man into whose society he thrust himself. It is fair to him, however, to quote, as Mr. Fitzgerald does, his excuse for this propensity :—
" It has procured me much happiness., I hope it does not 'deserve so hard a name as either forwardness or impudence. If I know myself, it is nothing more than an eagerness to share the society of men distinguished either by their rank or their talents, and a diligence to attain what I desire."
This is well put from the writer's point of view ; but Boswell, squatting behind a great man's chair with pencil and note- book, was not a guest to be desired.
Mr. Fitzgerald writes in plain language of his loose and dissipated life, and of his "indulgence in general de- bauchery," and he thinks it clear that Johnson did not sus- pect the laxities of his friend. In a measure, however, he was acquainted with Boswell's vices, for he knew that he was prone to take too much wine, and on a memorable occasion had seen him in a drunken state. The "sage," as Boswell loves to call him, exercised no lasting influence on his conduct, but he was far too shrewd an observer not to discern the hopeless weak- ness of his character. In losing his wife, Johnson warned him that he would lose his anchor, and "be tost without stability on the waves of life," the truth of which Boswell pathetically confesses was proved by sad experience.
Mr. Fitzgerald states that for many years he has been col- lecting materials for these volumes, and we regret that, in spite of the labour that has been evidently expended upon them, the result is far from satisfactory. Much that he gives the reader might have been omitted with advantage, and his frequent ejaculatory remarks on the sayings and doings of his hero are almost comical. A long criticism in singularly bad taste upon Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition of Boswell's Johnson deforms the second volume. It will be remembered that Mr. Fitzgerald has himself published an edition of the work.
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