Boswell the Biographer. George Mallory
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to take him quite seriously; if a man plays the buffoon sometimes we are in danger of being fooled if we give him credit for being in earnest; and so, if we are to preserve our amour propre, which is what everybody wants to do, we must laugh at a buffoon whatever he does.
A most notable piece of Boswell's buffoonery was in connection with the Shakespeare Jubilee at Stratford-on-Avon in 1769. He attended this festival dressed as an armed Corsican chief. This perhaps was not particularly odd; the form of rejoicing which the company indulged in was a 'Mask.' It is dangerous even so, and hardly decent, to blow the personal trumpet so loudly. Boswell, however, was not content merely with the public advertisement of his connexion with Corsica; he wrote to the London Magazine11 an elaborate unsigned account of himself and his costume: it was entitled 'Account of the Armed Corsican Chief at the Masquerade at Shakespeare's Jubilee, with a fine whole-length portrait of James Boswell, Esq., in the dress of an armed Corsican chief, as he appeared at the Jubilee Mask.' There is no need to give here the text of this document: it has been quoted at length a number of times, and it suffices to say that there can be no possible doubt that Boswell wrote it and that he wrote it to exhibit himself in a favourable light. The incident is characteristic of Boswell. It is not the mad whim that may occur once in a lifetime, the event which stands as it were by itself apart from the man; it is not an experiment miscarried, that has taken him away from his usual self and so must remain unexplained or be put to the long account of genius: rather it is the sort of oddity that we come to expect of Boswell.
Frolics of this kind naturally deprived Boswell of the respect which he desired for himself as a man of letters. The 'Tour to Corsica' was an admirable beginning to a literary career; he had then the chance of founding the reputation he wanted as a person of weight, a man whose judgment must be accounted of some importance by the world at large. His writings about Corsica had been widely read and his views had found general sympathy. Moreover the popular poetess, Mrs. Barbauld, had paid homage in verse to his fame as an explorer. But by such behaviour as this at Stratford these hopes were frustrated. And to him, though perhaps not to us, this was the tragedy of his life.
1: Samuel Johnson, by Walter Raleigh, 1907.
2: This remark we may suppose was deliberately misinterpreted by some of Boswell's contemporaries and he finds it necessary to introduce a defence of it: 'I am willing to believe that I meant this as light pleasantry to soothe and conciliate him, and not as humiliating abasement at the expense of my country.' It was of course an apology for coming from Scotland, but an absurd apology of which he saw the absurdity, as though a man were to apologise for being six feet high.
3: London Magazine, vol. li., p. 359.
4: In August 1763.
5: Life of Johnson, iii., 331.
6: Tour to Corsica, pp. 320–1.
7: Private Correspondence of David Hume, 1820.
8: It is an interesting fact that it was translated into German, Dutch, Italian, and French (Gentleman's Magazine, June 1795—Letter from J. B. R.) The Life, I believe, has never been translated. The same correspondent says, 'It was received with extraordinary approbation.'
9: For Boswell's views on spelling see this same preface.
10: Mr. Malone, speaking of the Life, said, 'That in this work he had not both fame and profit in view, would be idle to assert; but to suppose that these were his principal objects is to know nothing of the author, and nothing of human nature.' Gentleman's Magazine, June 1795.
11: September 1769.
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