The New Lifetime Reading Plan

This is ali the consequence of a meeting in Davies's London bookshop on May 16, 1763, between the literary dicta- tor of England, then fifty-three, and an eager, hero-worship- ping Scot, then twenty-two. Sensing his own vocation, Boswell at once began to take notes of the great man's talk and habits and opinions. He continued this activity, with intermissions, up to Johnson's death in 1784. The result is a full-length portrait, complete with warts, of a stunning character; plus an equally lively picture of the swarming, noisy, brilliant literary and social life of the latter part of the eighteenth century, which boasted, in addition to Johnson, such colorful men as Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; plus an uncon- scious revelation of Boswell himself, who has turned out to be perhaps the most interesting of them ali.

Boswell was of good Scottish family. Trained in the law, he preferred other modes of experience: good conversation, liquor, wenching, travei, some abortive meddling in politics, and the company of any great man he could contrive to meet, including Voltaire [53] and Rousseau [57]. He was the proto- typical groupie. Above ali, however, he was a natural writer. He possessed most of the attributes of a supreme repуrter. He wrote easily. He had a phenomenal memory. He knew how to take notes, written or mental. He wrote things down when he heard them. He had a nose for the striking, concrete detail. He loved gossip and scandal. And he generally happened to be around when something new was being done or being said.

But beyond this, he knew how to create news. Had Boswell never existed, Johnson would still have been a great personal- ity. But we might never have known it. Boswell made Johnson talk. Not that he encountered any innate reluctance, but he forced Johnson into full flower, with the aid of naive or cun- ning questions, by irritating or flattering him, by caressing or exacerbating his prejudices, even by demeaning himself so as to permit Johnson to enjoy a recordable triumph over him. Johnson is a creation. And that is why Boswell is more than a superb repуrter. He is an artist, just as surely as Rembrandt or Hals or any other first-rate portrait painter is one.

In the last fifty years or so our view of Boswell has changed radically. Back of this shift lies what Christopher Morley called "the most exciting adventure in English letters." In 1927 Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Isham, a rich and persuasive con- noisseur, bought from the owners of Malahide Castle in Ireland some of BoswelPs papers that had been lying there

untouched for generations. This discovery had been preceded by others of a similar nature and was at once followed by more. Finally there was amassed an enormous collection of eigh- teenth-century material, by or about Boswell and other con- temporaries, which has given us radically new insights into the period. Of this material numerous volumes have been pub­lished. The first, BosweWs London Journal 1762-1763, is the most interesting to the general reader.

What we now see is a Boswell who is no longer merely the faithful recorder of Johnson's thunder. We have a fantastic fel- low, an odd genius, with a little of Hamlet in him, a damaged soul, a divided mind, a shrewd fool, a libertine—and a far finer writer than we had ever thought him. The fact is, that though Johnson was a great man and Boswell was not, the disciple is beginning to overshadow the master. In his subtleties, his despairs, his divisions of mind, his violent alternations of emo- tion, he seems to make a special appeal to our time. Consequently his masterpiece gains a dimension.

C.F.

60

THOMAS JEFFERSON and others

Basic Documents in American History edited by Richard B. Morris

This entry needs little commentary. Much as they have been modified, our basic political ideas are still to be found, classi- cally expressed, in a very few documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the Gettysburg Address, and a few others. The Declaration and the Constitution, in particular, deserve to be read slowly, carefully, and with deliberate attention to every word and phrase; that is how they were written, and that is how their meanings will disclose themselves to you.

Many handy collections of our important state papers exist; Morris's is quite serviceable. He prints about fifty documents, from the Mayflower Compact to almost our own time. Most are of interest mainly to students of history. As examples of the use of the language they get progressively worse after Lincoln (whose speeches also richly repay careful reading), a fact from which you may draw any conclusion you prefer.

C.F.

61

HAMILTON, MADISON, and JAY

The Federalist Papers

1787

edited by Clinton Rossiter