Boswells Life of Johnson | Page 5

of Johnson's 'school' 'are distinguished for a love
of truth and accuracy which they would not have possessed in the same
degree if they had not been acquainted with Johnson.' He quotes
Johnson at length and repeatedly as the author of his own large
conception of biography. He was Goldsmith's 'great master,' Garrick
feared his criticism, and one cannot but recognize the power of
Johnson's personality in the increasing intelligence and consistency of
Garrick's interpretations, in the growing vigor and firmness of
Goldsmith's stroke, in the charm, finality, and exuberant life of Sir
Joshua's portraits; and above all in the skill, truth, brilliance, and
lifelike spontaneity of Boswell's art. It is in such works as these that we
shall find the real Johnson, and through them that he will exert the
force of his personality upon us.
Biography is the literature of realized personality, of life as it has been
lived, of actual achievements or shortcomings, of success or failure; it
is not imaginary and embellished, not what might be or might have
been, not reduced to prescribed or artificial forms, but it is the
unvarnished story of that which was delightful, disappointing, possible,
or impossible, in a life spent in this world.
In this sense it is peculiarly the literature of truth and authenticity.
Elements of imagination and speculation must enter into all other forms
of literature, and as purely creative forms they may rank superior to
biography; but in each case it will be found that their authenticity, their
right to our attention and credence, ultimately rests upon the
biographical element which is basic in them, that is, upon what they
have derived by observation and experience from a human life
seriously lived. Biography contains this element in its purity. For this
reason it is more authentic than other kinds of literature, and more
relevant. The thing that most concerns me, the individual, whether I
will or no, is the management of myself in this world. The fundamental
and essential conditions of life are the same in any age, however the
adventitious circumstances may change. The beginning and the end are
the same, the average length the same, the problems and the prize the
same. How, then, have others managed, both those who failed and

those who succeeded, or those, in far greatest number, who did both?
Let me know their ambitions, their odds, their handicaps, obstacles,
weaknesses, and struggles, how they finally fared, and what they had to
say about it. Let me know a great variety of such instances that I may
mark their disagreements, but more especially their agreement about it.
How did they play the game? How did they fight the fight that I am to
fight, and how in any case did they lose or win? To these questions
biography gives the direct answer. Such is its importance over other
literature. For such reasons, doubtless, Johnson 'loved' it most. For such
reasons the book which has been most cherished and revered for
well-nigh two thousand years is a biography.
Biography, then, is the chief text-book in the art of living, and
preeminent in its kind is the Life of Johnson. Here is the instance of a
man who was born into a life stripped of all ornament and artificiality.
His equipment in mind and stature was Olympian, but the odds against
him were proportionate to his powers. Without fear or complaint,
without boast or noise, he fairly joined issue with the world and
overcame it. He scorned circumstance, and laid bare the unvarying
realities of the contest. He was ever the sworn enemy of speciousness,
of nonsense, of idle and insincere speculation, of the mind that does not
take seriously the duty of making itself up, of neglect in the gravest
consideration of life. He insisted upon the rights and dignity of the
individual man, and at the same time upon the vital necessity to him of
reverence and submission, and no man ever more beautifully illustrated
their interdependence, and their exquisite combination in a noble
nature.
Boswell's Johnson is consistently and primarily the life of one man.
Incidentally it is more, for through it one is carried from his own
present limitations into a spacious and genial world. The reader there
meets a vast number of people, men, women, children, nay even
animals, from George the Third down to the cat Hodge. By the author's
magic each is alive, and the reader mingles with them as with his
acquaintances. It is a varied world, and includes the smoky and
swarming courts and highways of London, its stately drawing-rooms,
its cheerful inns, its shops and markets, and beyond is the highroad

which we travel in lumbering coach or speeding postchaise to
venerable Oxford with its polite and leisurely dons, or to the staunch
little cathedral