Here is an excerpt from the introduction:
THE election of Boswell's century-and-a-half-old classic to a place in The Modern Library awards an accolade of modernity to a book which has easily held that distinction in the minds of thousands of readers.
Like the Bible-like Don Quixote-like Pepys-like many other' classics which continue to be best sellers, Boswell's, book is more modern, to the reader of today, than many a modernistic novel of last year or a modish magazine -of last season. Countless bon mots and sallies of Boswell's hero are current today as coin of the realm in conversation and in print.. The wit and wisdom of old Doctor Johnson is constantly being drawn upon to point a moral or adorn a tale in such up -to-the -minute places as a newspaper editorial, an after-dinner speech, a billboard advertisement, or a radio broadcast.
In many of the polemics occasioned by the great war, Johnson's definition of patriotism was a favorite text. It was much more surprising, even to a Johnson fan, to find a -quotation from Johnson emblazoned across the lobby Of the Broadway headquarters of a national billposting trust, as an argument for big-scale advertising in the modern manner.
The modernity of Boswell's Johnson lies deeper, however. Boswell's classic is a hotbed of human wisdom-deep in its implications of character, its shrewd discernment, its rugged common sense, its rapier thrusts at human frailties, its solace for the baffled, harried, world-beaten mind. In all of these rich assets, it functions for every generation. It answers to our human needs and is as fresh and stimulating today as it was a century ago.
In these sempiternal qualities, which it owes to Johnson's genius and character, Boswell's book is as modern as the day on which you read it.
Clearly, in these respects, Boswell's modernity is due to the good fortune of his subject matter-the wit and wisdom which -flowed so abundantly from. his hero and which he was skilful enough to record. But there is another aspect in which Boswell may claim a more astonishing modernity. His revolutionary method as a biographer, which set a new fashion in an art thousands of years old, is all the rage today. A striking phenomenon of the current literary scene has been the vogue of biography in the revelatory manner. Many of the best sellers of recent years have been the mordant, "modernistic" lives of the Strachey-Ludwig-Maurois-Bradford type which claim Boswell as their exemplar.
The chief practitioners of this current method in biography have all paid homage to Boswell's, Johnson as their model. Boswell's honesty-akin to the honesty of his subject, Johnson-in portraying his human weaknesses as well as his glories, set the new fashion in biogra h '. But unfortunately his disciples have exhibited traits that Boswell is wholly free from and which they certainly did not acquire from him-the -effort to pull a popular idol from his pedestal, to shock by revelation, to emphasize the minor frailties or indiscretions, out of air proportion to their true importance. Boswell is unfailingly sincere and sympathetic in his portrayal.. There is never any doubt in the reader's mind that he loves his Johnson all the more for his understanding of his faults, and he wants his readers to love him in the same-way.
The "Modern"~ biographer often makes the mistake of dissecting his subject like a prosecuting attorney out to get his man at all costs, generally to enhance his own reputation. No such biography can live, for it cannot create a warm flesh-and-blood character which will win its way to the heart of the reader.
- There, in sum, is the secret of the enduring charm of Boswell's Johnson. And here, too, is the solution of the old riddle of how so' simple a soul as Boswell could produce so great a masterpiece. Here was a lovable subject, treated by loving hands-honestly, warmly, and dramatically. Boswell was extremely lucky in having a great and admirable character to portray-but he was shrewd enough to see that to portray him realistically, as he really was, with all his idiosyncrasies and weaknesses, glossing over nothing, would bring him.- nearer to us and win our admiration and our affection.
An inferior character would, by thi's gruelling method, have been revealed as too petty to claim our respect; any otber treatment than Boswell's, applied to Johnson, would have made him a saint or an impossible creature,far removed from our human love and understanding.
The recent discoveries of Boswell's diaries and papers have naturally been of keen interest to every Johnsonian, but in the elation over their discovery there has been a tendency to exaggerate their importance. One enthusiast so far forgot himself as to declare that the complete publication of the papers would reveal Boswell to be an even greater genius than Johnson! As a matter of fact, the papers so far published reveal Boswell to be an even greater fool and tenacious interloper than we had all along known him to be-and the marvel grows over the patience of Johnson and the rest in tolerating his company-unless indeed, as seems likely they acquired the knack of keeping Boswell in his place.
The disposition in some quarters to canonize Boswell might be dismissed as sheer nonsense if it were not for the fact that there is still a tendency, even among able critics (unacquainted , of course, with Johnson's writings), to attribute Johnson's greatness entirely to the skill with which Boswell painted his portrait. A commonsense view will readily recognize. that Boswell's skill and Johnson's greatness were two equally essential elements in the chemical combination which produced this masterpiece,-but of the two, Johnson's greatness was certainly the more important.
Boswell's Johnson is a great biography because Boswell had either the wit or the instinct to subordinate himself to his subject in the role of a first-rate reporter-arid above all, because the subject of his reporting was one of the truest and most fascinating men who ever lived, perhaps the most sterling, the most lovable of all the lives of which we have an unadulterated record.
Never has a biographer been more fortunate in his choice of a subject. And the good fortune extends to the reader, who can chuckle over Johnson's sallies and warm the cockles of his heart at the enduring flame of a great pers onality. -- HERBERT ASKWITH.
| Price | $5.00 |
|---|---|
| Shipping & Handling | $3.50 |
| Total | SOLD |
