Poor old James Boswell, what a sorry life he led. He was such a distracting combination of disappointment, dipsomania, and sycophancy, with an untameable interest in visiting whores, that for a hundred and fifty years after his death his abilities as an author were completely overlooked. The Victorians thought he was an idiot who happened to have produced one of the best books ever written. That, of course, was Carlyle’s opinion, and listening to Carlyle was one of the silliest things (in a long list) the Victorians did.
Boswell did indeed contract venereal diseases many, many, times, but there's no evidence that syphilis was among them. And few would say that Johnson was his only friend. His schoolmates William Johnston Temple and John Johnston of Grange, at the very least, stuck with him for life. But this essay's general thesis can't be denied: Boswell loved people and could not tell a lie about anyone he ever met.
I feel like there's a great Boswell movie waiting to be made.
This makes me want to revisit Boswell's London Journal. I got an old paperback for fifty cents at a used bookstore but haven't read through it yet. Ars longa, vita brevis. Might bring it with me to England & read it on the plane.
Boswell did indeed contract venereal diseases many, many, times, but there's no evidence that syphilis was among them. And few would say that Johnson was his only friend. His schoolmates William Johnston Temple and John Johnston of Grange, at the very least, stuck with him for life. But this essay's general thesis can't be denied: Boswell loved people and could not tell a lie about anyone he ever met.
I feel like there's a great Boswell movie waiting to be made.
This makes me want to revisit Boswell's London Journal. I got an old paperback for fifty cents at a used bookstore but haven't read through it yet. Ars longa, vita brevis. Might bring it with me to England & read it on the plane.