Oh! he was to the work of writing down all I say. Indeed I was angry. But soon I discover he was no impostor and no espy; and I only find I was myself the monster he had come to discern. Oh! he is a very good man; I love him indeed; so cheerful, so gay, so pleasant! but at the first, oh! I was indeed angry.' Mme. D'Arblay's Diary, ii. 155. Boswell not only recorded the conversations, he often stimulated them. On one occasion 'he assumed,' he said, 'an air of ignorance to incite Dr. Johnson to talk, for which it was often necessary to employ some address.' See post, April 12, 1776. 'Tom Tyers,' said Johnson, 'described me the best. He once said to me, "Sir, you are like a ghost: you never speak till you are spoken to."' Boswell's Hebrides, Aug. 20, 1773. Boswell writing of this Tour said:--'I also may be allowed to claim some merit in leading the conversation; I do not mean leading, as in an orchestra, by playing the first fiddle; but leading as one does in examining a witness--starting topics, and making him pursue them.' Ib. Sept. 28. One day he recorded:--'I did not exert myself to get Dr. Johnson to talk, that I might not have the labour of writing down his conversation.' Ib. Sept. 7. His industry grew much less towards the close of Johnson's life. Under May 8, 1781, he records:--'Of his conversation on that and other occasions during this period, I neglected to keep any regular record.' On May 15, 1783:--'I have no minute of any interview with Johnson [from May 1] till May 15. 'May 15, 1784:--'Of these days and others on which I saw him I have no memorials.'
[62] It is an interesting question how far Boswell derived his love of truth from himself, and how far from Johnson's training. He was one of Johnson's school. He himself quotes Reynolds's observation, 'that all who were of his 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' (post, under March 30, 1778). Writing to Temple in 1789, he said:--'Johnson taught me to cross-question in common life.' Letters of Boswell, p. 280. His quotations, nevertheless, are not unfrequently inaccurate. Yet to him might fairly be applied the words that Gibbon used of Tillemont:--'His inimitable accuracy almost assumes the character of genius.' Gibbon's Misc. Words, i. 213.
[63] 'The revision of my Life of Johnson, by so acute and knowing a critic as Mr. Malone, is of most essential consequence, especially as he is Johnsonianissimum.' Letters of Boswell, p. 310. A few weeks earlier he had written:--'Yesterday afternoon Malone and I made ready for the press thirty pages of Johnson's Life; he is much pleased with it; but I feel a sad indifference [he had lately lost his wife], and he says, "I have not the use of my faculties."' Ib. p. 308.
[64] Horace, Odes, i. 3. 1.
[65] He had published an answer to Hume's Essay on Miracles. See post, March 20, 1776.
[66] Macleod asked if it was not wrong in Orrery to expose the defects of a man [Swift] with whom he lived in intimacy, Johnson, 'Why no, Sir, after the man is dead; for then it is done historically.' Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 22, 1773. See also post, Sept 17, 1777.
[67] See Mr. Malone's Preface to his edition of Shakspeare. BOSWELL.
[68] 'April 6, 1791.
'My Life of Johnson is at last drawing to a closc.... I really hope to publish it on the 25th current.... I am at present in such bad spirits that I have every fear concerning it--that I may get no profit, nay, may lose--that the Public may be disappointed, and think that I have done it poorly--that I may make many enemies, and even have quarrels. Yet perhaps the very reverse of all this may happen.' Letters of Boswell, p. 335.
'August 22, 1791.
'My magnum opus sells wonderfully; twelve hundred are now gone, and we hope the whole seventeen hundred may be gone before Christmas.' Ib. p. 342.
Malone in his Preface to the fourth edition, dated June 20, 1804, says that 'near four thousand copies have been dispersed.' The first edition was in 2 vols., quarto; the second (1793) in 3 vols., octavo; the third (1799), the fourth (1804), the fifth (1807), and the sixth (1811), were each in 4 vols., octavo. The last four were edited by Malone, Boswell having died while he was preparing notes for the third edition.
[69] 'Burke affirmed that Boswell's Life was a greater monument to Johnson's fame than all his writings put together.' Life of Mackintosh, i. 92.
[70] It is a pamphlet of forty-two pages, under the title of The Principal Corrections and Additions to the First Edition of Mr. Boswell's Life Of Johnson. Price two shillings and sixpence.
[71] Reynolds died on Feb. 23, 1792.
[72] Sir Joshua in his will left L200 to Mr. Boswell 'to be expended, if he thought proper, in the purchase of a picture at the sale of his paintings, to be kept for his sake.' Taylor's Reynolds, ii. 636.
[73] Of the seventy-five years that Johnson lived, he and Boswell did not spend two years and two months in the same neighbourhood.