SOURCE: "Self-Restraint and Self-Display in the Authorial Comments in the Life of Jonson," in New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of "The Life of Jonson," edited by Greg Clingham, pp. 162-73. Cambridge University Press, 1991.

[In the following essay, Danziger explores the authorial comments of Boswell in the Life of Johnson. In an effort to counteract their typically negative critical reception, Danziger argues that "these comments have their own interest in revealing an older, sadder Boswell trying to come to terms with personal loss, professional disappointment, and his feelings as a displaced Scotsman."]

Readers of the Life of Johnson are immediately aware of Boswell's presence not only as a participant in scenes and conversations with Johnson but also as a later self engaged in the process of writing and rethinking his material. His authorial comments have been deplored as "annoying" and "a continuing nuisance" for both their content and their tone.¹ But a closer scrutiny of the text shows that such "Boswellian intrusions after the fact"² are not all of the same kind—that although some indeed consist of unabashed self-display, others are deliberately reticent. Examples of his self-display are not hard to find, especially in the notorious passages on slavery and the French Revolution. But if we focus on less familiar authorial comments, limiting ourselves to those about his personal and professional life and his opinions as a Scotsman, we will find a greater moderation in the way he presents himself. Moreover, by taking into account Boswell's experiences while he was working on the Life, as revealed in his last journals and correspondence, we may be able to read some of the authorial comments—without ignoring their shortcomings—with greater understanding and even, in some instances, with greater sympathy.

In writing and revising the Life, Boswell was well aware of the danger of seeming too intrusive and particularly of including too much about his personal affairs. The biting attack in a pamphlet by "Verax" on his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), ridiculing his "egregious vanity,"³ and the comment on his egotism in the English Review of November 1785 must have rankled; he kept both the pamphlet and the review among his papers (now at Yale University). In the Tour he had not hesitated to pay a fulsome tribute to his wife Margaret for giving up their bedchamber during Johnson's visit—and, indeed, for marrying him in the first place. And he had made much of the infant Veronica's gurgling attention to Johnson.⁴ Edmond Malone, while helping Boswell to revise the Tour, had objected to this episode, considering it too personal and trivial; he wished, with their mutual friend John Courtenay, "that Veronica had been left quietly in her nursery."⁵ Malone had also warned Boswell against letting one thought lead him to another and called one of Boswell's more far-fetched digressions an "excrescence."⁶

Whether by his own inclination or because of these warnings, Boswell repeatedly made an effort not to intrude his private concerns in the Life. Asking his friend Sir William Forbes for copies of Johnson's and Forbes's letters about Boswell's coming to the English Bar, he wrote: "though as they entirely concern myself, I should think I ought not to insert them in my book",⁷ and, indeed, he ultimately did not include these letters. In his Dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds, furthermore, he declares that, having been mistaken for a fool by some of the readers of his Tour, he has been "more reserved" in the Life, and that although he has told "nothing but the truth," he has not always told "the whole truth" (1, 4). Within the text, when he discusses his family's affairs at some length in connection with the principle of entail, Boswell begins his presentation by explaining that he would not "obtrude [this matter] upon the world" were it not for Johnson's interesting ideas on the subject (II, 412-13). Eventually, close to the end, Boswell formally states that he will now "relieve the readers of this Work of any farther personal notice of its authour" and hopes they will not consider him "to have obtruded himself too much upon their attention" (IV, 380).Clearly Boswell felt the need to apologize when he shifted his focus away from Johnson and on to himself.

Perhaps it was these qualms that caused Boswell's remarkable self-restraint in his presentation of Margaret Boswell in the Life. Although she is discussed in his own and Johnson's letters, Boswell does not mention that while he was working on his draft of the Life, he was living through the last stages of her consumption and that he was torn by conflicting emotions: apprehension about her impending death, hope that she would survive the next bout of illness, and guilt about neglecting her. Only once does he allude to her death, which occurred in June 1789.

We can appreciate how great was Boswell's self-control and how reluctant he was to reveal his feelings about Margaret in the Life by considering two authorial comments about dying and grief. When he discusses Johnson's Life of Edward Young, Boswell expresses his own admiration for "Night Thoughts," particularly for its "power of the Pathetick," and singles out one scene that must have touched him personally. But he couches his appreciation in deliberately impersonal terms:

He who does not feel his nerves shaken, and his heart pierced by many passages in this extraordinary work, particularly by that most affecting one, which describes the gradual torment suffered by the contemplation of an object of affectionate attachment, visibly and certainly decaying into dissolution, must be of a hard and obstinate frame. (IV, 61)⁸

With his highly generalized diction, Boswell suggests his own strong feelings but avoids any direct expression of them. The phrasing may strike modern readers as excessively abstract and elevated, but to Boswell and his readers this experiment in the Johnsonian style would have seemed quite appropriate to the solemn subject.

Some pages later, describing his visit with Johnson to the house in which Young had lived, Boswell records their discussion of Young's melancholy. Johnson declares it a regrettable lack of acceptance of Providence "to be gloomy because he has not obtained as much preferment as he expected … [or] to continue gloomy for the loss of his wife" and adds, "Grief has its time." Boswell, in retrospect differing from Johnson, finds the last remark purely theoretical. "Practically, we know that grief for the loss of a wife may be continued very long, in proportion as affection has been sincere. No man knew this better than Dr. Johnson" (IV, 121). Here again Boswell refrains from revealing his own feelings, the strong pangs of grief he was still experiencing when he revised this passage for the press; as late as March 17, 1791, for instance, he writes in his journal: "It is impossible to describe fully what I suffer … My thoughts are agitated with gloom and regret and tender sensation … The dismal circumstance that I am never again to have her cheering and affectionate society in this world is so afflicting that I am amazed how I can for a moment forget it, or ever be in the smallest degree easy."⁹ Yet in the Young episode in the Life he applies his observation only to Johnson. That his silence about his personal feelings is deliberate is indicated by the fact that he omits the additional detail, recorded in the journal entry he is transcribing, that his visit to Young's house reminds him of the pleasure with which he and Margaret read "Night Thoughts" together.¹⁰

The one specific reference to his wife's death that Boswell permits himself isvery brief indeed. After quoting Johnson's warning, in a letter of January 5, 1782, that losing Margaret would be like losing an anchor and being "tost, without stability, by the waves of life," Boswell adds a poignant footnote: "The truth of this has been proved by sad experience" (IV, 136). Again the personal statement, which sounds as if Boswell were completing to himself the thought that Johnson had begun for him, is expressed only in dignified abstract terms. Later, in a last-minute insertion in his "Additions" to the second edition (published in 1793, two years after the first edition), Boswell slips in an allusion to the spirit of Margaret. Having quoted a prayer of Johnson's pleading for his deceased wife's continued watchfulness over him, Boswell acknowledges that he has had comparable feelings and adds: "I, whom it has pleased GOD to afflict in a similar manner … have certain experience of benignant communication by dreams" (1, 236). Indeed, he experienced several such dreams, most notably one during the night between February 28 and March 1, 1791 in which, as he writes in his journal, Margaret "distinctly pointed out in her own handwriting the propitiation of our Saviour"¹¹ and thereby broke the spell of an extended depression. Since Boswell attached great importance to his dreams and took pains to record them, this allusion to Margaret in the Life, so oblique that it could easily be overlooked, is another sign of deliberate self-restraint.

What are we to make of these unobtrusive references to Margaret? The very fact that they are there at all suggests that Boswell wanted to express his feelings about her, to leave some mark of her in his work. Yet the brevity of the references suggests his conscious decision not to display those feelings—and at least some of the remarks are all the more poignant for what he leaves unsaid.

Although quite restrained in revealing his thoughts about Margaret's death, Boswell does present one telling anecdote that shows her in her prime. No doubt he could justify its inclusion because it was directly relevant to Johnson, although he plays it down by relegating it to a footnote. Having quoted Johnson's letter of November 27, 1773 in which he astutely acknowledges that Margaret must have been glad to see the last of him after his stay in Edinburgh, Boswell admits that Johnson had been a difficult guest and that Margaret, though she had been attentive, did not much like him:

She had not that high admiration of him which was felt by most of those who knew him; and what was very natural to a female mind, she thought he had too much influence over her husband. She once in a little warmth, made, with more point than justice, this remark upon that subject: "I have seen many a bear led by a man; but I never before saw a man led by a bear." (11, 269)

While the image Boswell gives of Margaret—her suppressed displeasure and asperity—is clear and vivid, his self-presentation in this passage is not so controlled. The complacent assumption that his wife could be expected to resent a possible rival and the patronizing reference to what is "natural to a female mind" are offset by the touch of pique in his assertion that her quip has "more point [i.e., wit] than justice," and the impression of masculine superiority he seems to be trying to create is deflated by Margaret's punchline, in which the joke is quite as much on him as on Johnson. And yet Boswell is honest enough to present her remark even though it was not to his credit.

Eventually Boswell seems to have had second thoughts about so conscientiously avoiding Margaret's name in the Life. In the second edition he identifies the anonymous lady of "admirable good sense and quickness of understanding," whose thoughtful comment about one of Johnson's remarks he quotes in the first edition, as "the late Margaret Montgomerie, my very valuable wife, and the very affectionate mother of my children, who, if they inherit her good qualities, will have no reason to complain of their lot" (III, 160, n. 1). Here the desire explicitly to pay tribute to her at least once seems to have outweighed his desire for reticence. The same pattern of restraint in the first edition and greater expansiveness in the second is apparent in Boswell's remark about the schooling of his sons (III, 12). Perhaps the success of the first edition made him feel less embarrassed about including such details. Perhaps, too, he felt freer to add a personal touch once Malone and Courtenay were no longer watching him so closely and warning him.¹²

About his general psychological state, the severe depression from which he periodically suffered all his life, Boswell could again be quite restrained in his authorial comments. A good example is his observation on the Prologue Johnson wrote to Goldsmith's Good-Natured Man (1768). Boswell finds the opening lines—"Press'd with the load of life, the weary mind / Surveys the general toil of human kind"—characteristic of the "dismal gloom of his [Johnson's] mind" and adds: "which in his case, as in the case of all who are distressed with the same malady of imagination, transfers to others its own feelings" (II, 45). His allusion to others distressed by melancholy, so brief that it, too, might be easily overlooked, is certainly an understatement when read in light of Boswell's own recurring fits of depondency, recorded in detail in his journals.¹³

Among the causes of Boswell's depression were some definite and practical problems—extreme financial difficulties, the end of all hope for a Parliamentary seat after his break with Lord Lonsdale in June 1790, and, with Malone's departure for Ireland in November of same year, the loss of much-needed support and help on the Life. About these problems Boswell retains a discreet silence in the text.

On the other hand, he could not resist commenting on another problem—his increasingly evident lack of professional success—when reporting the conversations he and Johnson had about his becoming a London barrister. By the time that Boswell was working on the Life, he had given up his Edinburgh practice, and although he was making little effort to attract London clients, he still had some hopes. Even when reviewing his situation in a mood of despondency, he wrote in his journal on May 29, 1790: "Still I dreamed of applying resolutely to the practice of the law, and of having it said, 'He never took fairly to the English bar till he was fifty.'"¹⁴ In at least two authorial comments in the Life, however, he expresses doubts about finding merit rewarded by success.

Boswell reveals such doubts after quoting Johnson's vehement refusal to complain about his lack of worldly success. Self-deprecatingly, Johnson had asserted that authors had no right to expect recognition and also that the failure of "a man of merit" was probably his own fault. When Boswell objected that barristers "of merit" do not get a practice, Johnson countered that this must be due to a prospective client's failure to recognize the merit but not to any intentional injustice. Having transcribed this exchange from his journal of March 23, 1783,¹⁵ Boswell, after an initial first-person reference, launches into a general reflection:

I cannot help thinking that men of merit, who have no success in life, may be forgiven for lamenting, if they are not allowed to complain. They may considerit as hard that their merit should not have its suitable distinction. Though there is no intentional injustice towards them on the part of the world, their merit not having been perceived, they may yet repine against fortune, or fate, or by whatever name they choose to call the supposed mythological power of Destiny." (IV, 172)

After dwelling on the injustice of not having one's merit recognized, Boswell answers himself with "a consolatory thought"—that by a compensatory balance some people are rewarded with success while others are granted higher satisfactions:

How much harder would it be if the same persons had both all the merit and all the prosperity. Would not this be a miserable distribution for the poor dunces? Would men of merit exchange their intellectual superiority, and the enjoyments arising from it, for external distinction and the pleasures of wealth? If they would not, let them not envy others who are poor where they are rich, a compensation which is made to them. Let them look inwards to be satisfied … (IV, 173)

In his 1783 journal entry Boswell assumes that Johnson is referring to a mutual friend, William Johnson Temple, when he mentions someone who has retired to the country, has written a book or two that no one reads, and complains of neglect. Later, in reworking his material for the Life, Boswell must have realized that the shoe fit him as well, and seeks solace in his rationalization.

This passage is just the kind of "excrescence" Malone had warned him against, and it may be no accident that Boswell apparently inserted it shortly before or during January 1791¹⁶ when Malone was temporarily away from London and not available to restrain him. While high-mindedly claiming to prefer merit to worldly success, Boswell seems strangely unaware of how snobbish he sounds as he counts himself among the intellectually superior and assumes that the others are dunces. And his thought about a compensatory balance is certainly facile. Yet is there not also something touching in Boswell's attempt to console himself, as if he were whistling in the dark?

By the time of the second edition, even Boswell's slender hope for success as a barrister was dashed. Although he had taken chambers in the Inner Temple in January 1791, he could not bring himself to spend time in them and gave them up at the end of the second year, and he envied the lawyers he saw with their briefs while he had none.¹⁷ On December 21, 1792 he wrote in his journal: "The delusive hope of perhaps getting into some practice at the bar was now dead, or at least torpid."¹⁸ It was in this despondent mood that Boswell added a footnote to a passage describing another conversation with Johnson, on September 20, 1777, about moving to the English Bar. A "very sensible lawyer" had informed Johnson that in London there were many candidates but only a few successful barristers. Johnson's informant had conceded that intelligence, application, and work on a few cases might testify to a barrister's merit and bring clients, but Johnson then added his own warning about the risks (III. 179). In his footnote, written fifteen years later, Boswell acknowledges sadly: "However true the opinion of Dr. Johnson's legal friend may have been some time ago, the same certainty of success cannot now be promised to the same display of merit." Actually, he was assuming that the "very sensible lawyer's" opinion was more encouraging than it had been in its context. Boswell then expresses his discouragement in the impersonal terms in which he liked to couch his feelings: "The reasons, however, of the rapid riseof some, and the disappointment of others equally respectable, are such as it might seem invidious to mention, and would require a longer detail than would be proper in this work." Certainly his understated refusal to complain is more dignified than the earlier self-pity and rationalization.

Boswell's disconcerting habit of stating that he could say more if he would—a rhetorical device he uses several times in the Life—may be irritating to modern readers who prefer greater forthrightness. And his formal, highly generalized diction, quite possibly encouraged by Malone,¹⁹ is also no longer to our taste. Yet we can hardly blame Boswell for adopting a formal style when he shifts from the scenes and conversations with Johnson to his own observations, considering that this style was used in his time by Johnson, Reynolds, Gibbon, and Burke, to name only a few.²⁰ In any case, we can at least understand that Boswell was trying not to present his private experiences directly.

On the other hand, the very fact that Boswell alludes to his professional problems suggests his need to bring his frustrations, too, into his work. In writing about them in the impersonal terms he prefers, he seems to be working through them, consoling himself, and, at least in the last-mentioned passage, trying to come to terms with his disappointment.

As for his authorial comments as a Scotsman—chiefly about his countrymen—Boswell again shows considerable reticence concerning his own unsettling experiences. His sense that Scotland was too narrow and confining, which had driven him to try the English Bar, was strong while he was working on the Life. Although he was usually pleased to be in London, he intermittently felt guilty about not being at Auchinleck. And he was subjected to conflicting pressures—from Malone, who advised him to stay in town to work on the Life, from Margaret and his brother T. D. Boswell who urged him to return to his profession and estate in Scotland.²¹ He realized that his countrymen did not approve of his "partiality to England," but also that in London he was at times not treated with the respect due to a landed Scottish gentleman.²² From 1788 on, he felt increasingly removed from Scotland, and after Margaret's death he could hardly bear to go to Auchinleck even on a visit. Furthermore, though he retained his strong national pride, he disliked any reminders of Scotland, whether these came from encounters with his countrymen or merely from reading Scottish newspapers.²³ For the most part, however, Boswell does not reveal his increasingly ambivalent feelings about his native land in the Life.

In transcribing Johnson's anti-Scottish jokes from his journals to the Life, Boswell usually offers no further remarks of his own, and so he appears to accept the role as the loyal representative of Scotland that Johnson usually assigns to him. Yet Boswell gives a glimpse of his more ambivalent feelings when he quotes Johnson's witticism that the pity is not that England is lost but that the Scots have found it—presumably alluding to the many Scotsmen who had risen to prominence in England—and inserts a footnote that emphasizes his deliberate lack of comment: "It would not become me to expatiate on this strong and pointed remark, in which a very great deal of meaning is condensed" (III, 78 and n. 3). Again suggesting he could say more if he wished, he seems to be hinting that, as a Scotsman, he will not speak ill of his countrymen, but at the same time he registers no objection to Johnson's anti-Scottish sentiment.

Boswell is more explicit on a question that had long interested him: what a Scotsman could or should do about his pronunciation. A long digression—truly another "excrescence"—about Thomas Sheridan leads him to Alexander Wedderburn, by then Lord Loughborough, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, who had benefited from Sheridan's elocution lessons, and Wedderburn's experience gives Boswell the opportunity to indicate that he thoroughly approves of getting rid of coarser accents but that—speaking momentarily as a loyal Scot—he would "heartily despise" any Scotsman who eliminated all Scottish flavor from his speech (I, 386-7).

Boswell's remark gives no hint that he is indulging in tacit self-justification here. We are made aware of this possibility by another conversation about accents in the Life in which he mentions that he, too, took elocution lessons early in his career and alludes to the traces of Scottish accent in his own speech (he quotes Johnson's soothing "Sir, your pronunciation is not offensive"). Avoiding any revelation about himself in this second conversation as well, Boswell offers general advice to his countrymen: they should not strive for a perfect "High English" accent because the effort of maintaining this would be unpleasantly noticeable (II, 160). Ironically, while urging others to cultivate their English accent but not to shun a few Scottish inflections, Boswell was making an effort to ensure that his youngest daughter, Betsy, would be free of any Scottish accent whatsoever; to prevent her from losing the English she was acquiring at her boarding school, he allowed her only brief visits to his London house in Great Portland Street, run by a Scottish housekeeper.²⁴ In his own life he was becoming more of an Anglophile than he reveals in his work; in this instance, though he tells the truth in the Life, he does not tell the whole truth.

In several of the authorial comments Boswell gives his opinion—couched yet again in impersonal terms—of his countrymen in England. On this topic, of special interest to him now that he was established in London, his views appear to have changed. Early in the Life Boswell takes Wedderburn as an example of what an ambitious Scot can achieve, calling him "an animating encouragement to other gentlemen of North-Britain to try their fortunes in the southern part of the Island" (I, 387). But later Boswell focuses rather on what he considers the obnoxious arrivistes. For instance, he suggests that Johnson might have been less prejudiced against the Scots if he had not seen "the worst part of the Scottish nation, the needy adventurers, many of whom he thought were advanced above their merits, by means which he did not approve" and if, instead, he had known "the worthy, sensible, independent gentlemen, who live rationally and hospitably at home" (IV, 169). Furthermore, in extolling the advantages of an English education for "Scotch gentlemen of talents and ambition," Boswell writes feelingly about another group:

I own, indeed, that it is no small misfortune for Scotch gentlemen, who have neither talents nor ambition, to be educated in England, where they may be perhaps distinguished only by a nick-name, lavish their fortune in giving expensive entertainments to those who laugh at them, and saunter about as mere idle insignificant hangers on even upon the foolish great; when if they had been judiciously brought up at home, they might have been comfortable and creditable members of society. (IV, 131-2)

The journals do not provide a key to who in particular is meant, but they are full of references to the crudeness and other shortcomings of the Scotsmen who crossed Boswell's path in London. And no doubt he had plenty of opportunity to observe his countrymen mocked by the Englishmen they were trying to impress.

Although Boswell is quite outspoken here, he does not disclose the personal experiences that prompted his views. Actually, this digression about the advantages and dangers of an English education is a reworking of a journal entry of June 5, 1781 about a conversation with Johnson concerning Boswell's wish to settle in England. In that conversation he reports that Margaret considers an English schooling advantageous for their son, and he himself insists that once in England, he will make sure his son retains his affection for his native place, whereupon Johnson says drily: "That … you could not."²⁵ Recasting this passage in the Life, Boswell makes no mention of Johnson's doubts, focuses on his own point that frequent visits to their home might prevent Scottish gentlemen "from being totally estranged from their native country," and moves on to the sycophantic Scotsmen who have been spoiled by an English education. Avoiding any conclusions about his own estrangement from his native country—and, perhaps understandably, giving no sign that he recognizes himself as a hanger-on in the train of Lord Lonsdale—Boswell yet again depersonalizes his experiences in the Life.

But his presentation is not always so impersonal. In one vivid comment, in which Boswell adopts a complex pose of at once distancing himself from his countrymen and maintaining his right to speak as one of them, Boswell reveals himself as conspicuously selfcentered. He does so while arguing that Scotsmen need not be offended by Johnson's criticisms of them in his Journey to the Western Isles. Without denying Johnson's prejudice against the Scots, Boswell points to extenuating circumstances: that Johnson was no more critical of them than he generally was of his friends, that he was praised by several Scotsmen of unquestioned patriotism, and that the accuracy of his descriptions was corroborated by one of these who subsequently made the same tour. Then comes the undeniable self-display:

And let me add, that, citizen of the world as I hold myself to be, I have that degree of predilection for my natale sol/im, nay, I have that just sense of the merit of an ancient nation, which has been forever renowned for its valour, which in former times maintained its independence against a powerful neighbour, and in modern times has been equally distinguished for its ingenuity and industry in civilized life, that I should have felt a generous indignation at any injustice done to it. (11, 306)

That Boswell was fond of seeing himself as a cosmopolitan is evident from the fact that he already uses this image in the Tour to the Hebrides. There he declares, "I am, I flatter myself, completely a citizen of the world," and he maintains that his own experience of having travelled widely abroad enables him to discount the narrow-minded contempt for Scotland shown by the English, including Johnson (V, 20). With a significant change of focus, Boswell uses the same self-image in the Life to defend Johnson's view of Scotland—yet another sign of Boswell's shifting allegiance.

Considered in isolation, this passage with its formal diction and elevated tone certainly sounds self-important as well as patronizing towards the Scots. Yet in the context of Boswell's life, his statement is not just empty boasting. Boswell did have intense feelings about his native soil—feelings that led him to purchase the estate of Knockroon, once part of the Auchinleck lands, in the fall of 1790 even though he had to go heavily into debt to acquire it.²⁶ Furthermore, compared with the patriotic Scotsmen he mentioned, Boswell was indeed a man of the world, someone who had travelled widely on the continent and now moved in London society with Reynolds, Malone, Courtenay, Windham, the Wartons, and other prominent people of the day. Nor is the self-presentation gratuitous here, for in the build-up of his argument, Boswell is creating a rhetorical emphasis for an important point. He is suggesting that not only Scotsmen but someone with a broader perspective could recognize that Johnson was not basically hostile to the Scots he met on his tour. Significantly, Boswell follows his own remark with that of no less an authority than Sir Joshua Reynolds, who knew Johnson well and who confirmed his general critical bent. Boswell, in his eagerness to defend Johnson, may not have been aware of how snobbish he sounds in this passage, but his self-presentation is not inaccurate.

This citizen-of-the-world passage is, however, an exception; most of the authorial comments about Scotland—and they are remarkably few in view of the importance of the subject to Boswell—avoid such personal display. Still, all the remarks we have considered are revealing. That Boswell should take it for granted that the Scots in England would make an effort to overcome their native accent and that he should look down on numbers of his countrymen suggests how detached he was becoming from Scotland while writing the Life. At the same time, the very fact that he could present himself as a loyal Scot at one point and insist on being a cosmopolitan at another suggests how much he lived in two worlds, not fully at home in either.

Summing up, we can conclude that although in some of his authorial comments in the Life Boswell indeed indulges in the self-display to which a few of his contemporaries as well as modern critics have objected, in many more he takes the trouble to recast his personal experiences into more generalized observations. Although these may sound overly formal to twentiethcentury readers, we can hardly blame Boswell for adopting a style that was practiced by 'some of the most respected writers of his day. In any case, such passages become more meaningful and, in some instances, more touching when one knows the full extent of the personal experiences behind them. Nor has Boswell been given sufficient credit for those comments, especially about matters close to him, in which he gives only glimpses of his feelings with poignant brevity.

Readers who are interested in the Life of Johnson primarily as a biography of Johnson will argue that Boswell's authorial comments "after the fact" should not have been included in the first place, and that they are merely a sign of Boswell's selfindulgence. On the other hand, those of us who consider the double focus on Boswell as well as Johnson one of the strengths of the Life of Johnson may find that these comments have their own interest in revealing an older, sadder Boswell trying to come to terms with personal loss, professional disappointment, and his feelings as a displaced Scotsman.

Notes

¹ Leopold Damrosch, "The Life of Johnson. An Anti-Theory," Eighteenth-Century Studies, 6 (1973), 499-500; see also Donald Greene, "'Tis a Pretty Book, Mr. Boswell, But—," in New Questions, New Answers, p. 123, and Frederick A. Pottle, "The Adequacy as Biography of Boswell's Life of Johnson," in New Questions, New Answers, p. 158.

² Paul K. Alkon, "Boswell's Control of Aesthetic Distance," in James Boswell's "Life of Samuel Johnson," ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1986), p. 44. Alkon is, however, less critical of Boswell as narrator than hisphrase suggests. See also David L. Passler, Time, Form, and Style in Boswell's Life of Johnson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), pp. 6-9.

³Remarks on the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), pp. 13-19.

⁴Life, V, 24-6. All references to Life subsequently included in the text.

⁵ Malone to Boswell, October 5, 1783, Corr: Garrick, Burke, Malone, p. 200. Boswell's praise of Margaret for changing her bedchamber is also mocked in the English Review of November 1785.

⁶ Malone to Boswell, October 19, 1785, Corr: Garrick, Burke, Malone, p. 229.

⁷ Boswell to Forbes, May 8, 1787, Fettercairn Papers, Acc. 4796/87, quoted by kind permission of the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

⁸ Hill identifies the episode as the death of Narcissa in the third "Night Thoughts" and suggests the association with the dying Margaret (IV, 61, n. 1).

⁹Great Biographer, p. 136.

¹⁰ Journal of June 2, 1718, Laird, p. 373.

¹¹Great Biographer, p. 131.

¹² Malone's restraining influence is noted by Peter S. Baker, "Introduction: Malone," Corr: Garrick, Burke, Malone, pp. 179-80, Courtenay's influence is suggested by his advice to Boswell to tone down his criticism of Mrs. Piozzi (see Boswell's journal of February 22, 1791, Great Biographer, p. 127).

¹³English Experiment, pp. 93-6, 146-9, 151-5, 165-99, 196-201; Great Biographer, pp. 61-2, 64-6, 69-79, 116-27.

¹⁴Great Biographer, p. 56.

¹⁵Applause, pp. 79-80.

¹⁶ A footnote in the first edition gives the date.

¹⁷Great Biographer, pp. 117, 139 and n. 5, 194.

¹⁸Great Biographer, p. 208.

¹⁹ Baker, "Introduction," p. 175.

²⁰ James R. Sutherland, On English Prose (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1957), pp. 78-80.

²¹English Experiment, pp. 123, 133, 138, 140, 147, 154, 190-1.

²²English Experiment, pp. 124, 196-7.

²³English Experiment, pp. 60, 68, 121. 124, 194, 268; Great Biographer, pp. 16, 95, 122, 191, 205.

²⁴ Journal of July 28, 1790, Great Biographer, p. 97.

²⁵Laird, p. 337.

²⁶ Brady, Later Years, p. 415.