James Boswell (1) (1740–1795)

At the end of his Life of Johnson, James Boswell admits to many of his subject's faults: Johnson's irascibility, his prejudices, his narrow-mindedness in religion and politics. Johnson was a conservative with a capital C, and he is outright dismissive of many of the important philosophical ideas of his time (there is little consideration of Locke, Hume or Smith, much less Kant).

Instead, Johnson is known has the foremost literary figure of 18th Century London. He was not a man of ideas; show more rather, he was a man of language, and his greatest achievement was to codify that language in his Dictionary. Again, this project was an essentially conservative endeavor, an attempt to protect and elevate the language so that the uneducated masses could be kept in their linguistic place.

The Romantics that followed represented a rebellion against this staid, elitist, infighting group of literati that includes Addison, Steele, Pope and Johnson. Instead of engaging in a game of wits against their intellectual rivals, the Romantics sought to expand the possibilities of language by infusing it with a more natural, vernacular, personal and passionate approach. The writers of the Age of Johnson were essentially backwards looking, translating and retranslating the Greeks and Romans, writing criticism on Shakespeare. The Romantics were visionary and progressive. johnson would have probably scoffed at the likes of a Keats or a Blake as being too radical and impolite in their poetic visions.

Boswell's life of Johnson is confusing in that, while it is a warts and all depiction of the good doctor, the reader is a left with a sense that Boswell looks at his subject through the rose-colored lenses of a literary acolyte. What are we meant to think of this complicated man? show less

This is the third volume of the diaries to be published, following on directly from Boswell in Holland. At the end of his gap year at the University of Utrecht, in June 1764, Boswell gets permission from his father to travel on for a while through Switzerland and Germany. (His plan is to go on to Italy, but Lord Auchinleck being what he is, Boswell knows better than to ask for too much parental indulgence all at once.)

For the moment, Boswell has three great celebrity scalps in his sights: show more Frederick the Great, Rousseau, and Voltaire. With a mixture of charm, influence and foot-in-the-door, he manages to see all three, but only gets actual face to face time with the last two. Frederick turns out to be too canny, or too well protected, to put himself in the way of any of the traps Boswell sets for him. But the sessions with the two great philosophes more than make up for this, particularly since he met them both (Rousseau at Môtiers and Voltaire at Ferney) in December 1764, just before Voltaire published damaging revelations about Rousseau's private life that eventually forced him to leave Môtiers and go on the run again.

Boswell's strategies for hooking the interest of both great men are classics - with Rousseau he holds a letter of introduction from a man Rousseau owes big favours to, Lord Marischal, but he declines to use it, instead writing his own letter in which he proves - citing the logic of Rousseau's own writings - that he is "a man of singular merit". With Voltaire he gets in the first time on a letter of recommendation, then when he wants to come back for a longer visit, he writes to Voltaire's niece (knowing that her uncle will see it) a wonderfully comic letter in which, inter alia, he manages to imply that he wants to get into Ferney castle to seduce the niece's femme de chambre. Stalking, in modern terms, but stalking of more literary and psychological subtlety than you would expect from the average 24-year-old Inter-Railer...

There's lots of other interesting and amusing stuff in this book - visits to several minor German courts as well as Berlin and Potsdam, some pretty graphic tales of the discomforts of travelling in Germany, a few walk-on appearances by notables of the time, a few passing references to sexual escapades, and of course the background is-it-or-isn't-it romance with Belle van Zuylen, the young Dutch intellectual he'd made friends with in Utrecht but subsequently decided it might be rather fun to marry (she didn't think so, as we already know from the letters Pottle included in the previous volume). And Boswell's continuing worries about religion, masturbation, his own mental and physical health, his father's plans for him to become a lawyer, and the incongruity of imagining himself as the future Laird of Auchinleck. A treasure.

Minor disappointment: I didn't really think about this before starting, but apart from Frederick, there wasn't all that much of literary interest going on in Germany in 1764. Boswell certainly didn't meet any important German writers, and he would have had to talk to them in French or Dutch if he had. But of course Goethe and Schiller were still at school - a few years later, Boswell's ignorance of the German language wouldn't have been something he could get away with, but in Frederick's Berlin French was de rigueur anyway...

The absence of detailed musical interest is a pity too - Boswell stops in Leipzig, but there's no reason for him to be aware of J S Bach (d.1750), whom no-one outside the Lutheran church music world would have heard of at that time, so he doesn't even mention the Thomaskirche. Then in Mannheim - possibly the most exciting place in northern Europe for a musician at the time - he merely says that the music was "marvellous", without telling us anything about the musicians involved or what they were playing.

On to Italy, Corsica and France in the next volume... show less

With the London Diary just finished, my enthusiasm for Boswell was high. This tour is great reading. Boswell is admirable for the crafty yet intelligent inveigling he adopts in order to be presented to notables and princes. He does not hesitate to advocate his qualities as an honourable, educated milord.
He succeeds too, obtaining interviews with Rousseau, Voltaire and with the Court at Brunswick and at Potsdam among others on his itinerary. His major failure was not to be invited to an show more audience with Frederick The Great at Berlin, but not through any lack of putting his case to meet him.
He is a most likeable man-about-town; he has a highly attuned wit, but can plunge into depression. He is tortured by the wish to please his father and settle to the life of the laird on one hand, and on the other driven by the great urge to see and meet the world.
He is hardy in his travels, but also has the ability to be charming and to be held in esteem by his hosts and hostesses.
I love the man and his roguish honesty. show less

The best way to read Boswell's Life of Johnson is this way: via a somewhat cheesy, "classic library" volume of a Great Classics type of series. The book looks like one of those books you would find in the movie set of a lawyer's office, trying to look distinguished and old, although it feels plasticy.

We learn from other sources (outside of Boswell) that Boswell himself was something of an annoying 18th century star f__ker, but thank God he was - because reading this book is like being a part show more of a hundred dinner and parlour conversations with the wits and men of power in 18th century England. Funny bastards some of them were, too.

Skill in the art of conversation was the most highly prized talent, and Johnson was considered king of them all. This is a world steeped in The Classics, post Renaissance but pre Industrial/Scientific Revolution - that sweet spot where men were expected to venture to come up with a theory and interpretation about anything: how to talk, the way to cook a meal, where to travel, you name it. And Johnson always had an interesting and strong Theory of Anything.

Somehow it seems like nobody worked, they were just able to go to each other's houses, eat too much, drink hard, and talk smack about each other full time. Good times.

Today, Johnson would be considered a blowhard; narrow minded, reactionary, pompous, and egotistical. But that's why he's actually interesting.

This was a cool era because you would address your best friend as "Sir".

Ironically, Boswell's writing holds up better than Johnson's himself, but who cares about that history of literature crap.

If each book had a smell, this book would smell like really good roast beef, with some hard licks thrown in.

Sir, I am,

Your most humble reviewer,

&tc &tc show less