Boswell the Biographer. George Mallory
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felt that he had accomplished something of which he could be justly proud. He knew himself to be in the public eye. 'No apology shall be made,' he writes in the preface to his book, 'for presenting the world with "An Account of Corsica." It has been for some time expected from me; and I own that the ardour of publick opinion has both encouraged and intimidated me.' Johnson wrote him a letter which he quoted without permission in the 'Tour to Corsica'—'Come home and expect such a welcome as is due to him whom a wise and noble curiosity has led where perhaps no native of this country ever was before.' He said no doubt what he really felt.
When Boswell returned to England in 1766 he became therefore, quite naturally, the champion of Corsican liberty. But this was only one phase of the ACCOUNT OF CORSICA fame to which he aspired; there was still, and there was always, the desire to shine in the great and elevated sphere of literature, and the opportunity had now arrived to write a book of universal interest.
It was in 1768 that the first literary work of any magnitude which Boswell produced, 'An Account of Corsica, the journal of a tour to that island; and memoirs of Pascal Paoli,' was published. The title explains exactly the scope of the book. The account of Corsica is historical; the journal is in its method much like other books of travel, except for the biographical part which deals with Paoli. Of the historical part of the book there is nothing particular to be said: it is, as Johnson remarked, 'like other histories.' 'Your History,' he told him, 'was copied from books; your Journal rose out of your own experience and observation.' The chief interest of the book is that it is the earliest example of Boswell's biographical method. The memoirs that we have here of Paoli aim at giving a picture of a man in much the same way as does the 'Life of Johnson.' The question as to what exactly was Boswell's method will be discussed later; but we are reminded here that the man who preserved the conversations of Paoli and 'came in upon him without ceremony while he was dressing,' in order to see how he conducted himself before his valet de chambre, was becoming an adept in his own peculiar art.
A great charm of the Journal, also prophetic of the future, lies in the perfect frankness with which Boswell discusses his own feelings. 'We retired to another room to drink coffee. My timidity wore off. I no longer anxiously thought of myself; my whole attention was employed in listening to the illustrious commander of a nation.' Or again, 'I enjoyed a luxury of noble sentiment. Paoli became more affable with me. I made myself known to him. I forgot the great distance between us and had every day some hours of private conversation with him.' Boswell realised that a Journal is delightful only if it is quite informal. We have a pleasing sense of inconsequent freedom when we read in the Journal several pages quoted from the 'First Book of the Maccabees.' But it is not irrelevant to Boswell's purpose. It occurred to his thoughts; and that is a sufficient justification, whether it seem ludicrous or incongruous or ponderous, for its inclusion. There is no scene in the 'Tour in Corsica' which comes up to the best in the 'Life of Johnson,' but there are several descriptions, such as that quoted above, when Boswell played the pipe and sang 'Hearts of Oak,' which are really artistic and pleasing.
The book, at all events, had the effect of amusing people and it gave them an interest in Corsica too. Boswell had good accounts of it on all sides. 'My A SUCCESSFUL BOOK book,' he writes to Temple, 'has amazing celebrity:8 Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Walpole, Mrs. Macaulay, Mr. Garrick, have all written me noble letters about it.' The sale must have been very rapid. The dedication to the first edition is dated October 29, 1767, and the preface to the third edition on the same day of October, his birthday, in the following year. In this preface he explains that he has acquired that literary fame which he desired:
May I be permitted to say that the success of this book has exceeded my warmest hopes. When I first ventured to send it into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for literary fame. I have obtained my desire; and whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy.
There is nothing deserving particular remark in an author's desire for literary fame. But it is remarkable that a man should proclaim it to the world as Boswell did. The common ideal of an artist supposes that his work should be, in the first place, the expression of his own personality; an expression because to him it is necessary to reproduce in some form what he sees and feels: it is for himself and himself alone, and the world without is allowed to share, partly that the artist may earn a living, partly perhaps that he may have some justification for his self-absorption; and in greater part no doubt, in some cases more than in others, but in every case a little, that he may win the applause that we all like at bottom. None of these reasons, and, least of all, the desire for fame, is held to be a motive for producing art. There may be various impulses with varying circumstances; but there can be but one motive.
The ambition which Boswell had, and which he expressed so freely, is peculiar in some ways for the end desired, but it is not essentially different from that of other artists.
He who publishes a book, affecting not to be an 'authour',9 and professing an indifference for literary fame, may possibly impose upon many people such an idea of his consequence as he wishes may be received. For my part, I should be proud to be known as an authour and I have an ardent ambition for literary fame; for of all possessions I should imagine literary fame to be the most valuable. A man who has been able to furnish a book which has been approved by the world, has established himself as a respectable character in distant society, without any danger of having that character lessened by the observation of his weaknesses. To preserve an uniform dignity among those who see us every day is hardly possible; and to aim at it must put us under the fetters of a perpetual LITERARY AMBITION restraint. The authour of an approved book may allow his natural disposition an easy play, and yet indulge the pride of superiour genius when he considers that, by those who know him only as an authour, he never ceases to be respected. Such an authour, when in his hours of discontent, may have the consolation to think that his writings are at that very time giving pleasure to numbers; and such an authour may cherish the hope of being remembered after death, which has been a great object to the noblest minds in all ages.
The nature of the desire for fame which he had is revealed to us by Boswell in this curious passage. It does not compromise his character as an artist.10 He wished to obtain the public esteem, to have the reputation of an ingenious and worthy man; and literature was considered as a means to this end. But we cannot argue that he must therefore have pandered to the public taste: he wrote, as he proclaimed at a later date in a contribution to a periodical, 'from the primary motive of pleasing himself.' This ambition is not in its nature an attitude towards art but towards the world. In all his writings, even in the frivolous publications of his youth, Boswell has expressed his own person in a peculiar degree. We must not suppose, when we see an eagerness for literary fame, which, from the frankness of his expression, may appear extravagant, that he lacked a literary conscience, for he had an excellent one; nor indeed that it mattered at all to him whether opinion in general should care about his book, except in so far as it approved of him, of the real Boswell, which it could not but find there.
Boswell's ideal of the literary man's position is well expressed in one of the letters to Temple:
Temple, I wish to be at last an uniform, pretty man. I am astonishingly so already, but I wish to be a man who deserves Miss B. … I am always for fixing some period for my perfection as far as possible. Let it be when my account of Corsica is published; I shall then have a character which I must support. I will swear, like an ancient disciple of Pythagoras, to observe silence; I will be grave and reserved, though cheerful and communicative of what is verum atque decens. One great fault of mine is talking at random; I will guard against it.
It is amusing to think of Boswell in this rôle. Already we may see the great contest in his life between natural candour and commonplace ambition—the charm of the 'Tour to Corsica' was the charm of candour, and it was dangerous to dreams of future greatness in the sphere of public affairs. Boswell understood that to gain respect he must be more serious. But this he never was able to