Roy Lotz's Reviews > The Life of Samuel Johnson

The Life of Samuel Johnson is many things: charming, witty, vivacious, absorbing, edifying, beautiful; part philosophy and part history, with some politics and religion on the side. It is ironic, then, that one of the few things it most definitely is not is a biography.

James Boswell was not interested in creating a record of Johnson’s life, but a portrait of his personality. As a result, Boswell rapidly plowed through the time of Johnson’s life that the two weren’t acquainted—the first fifty years—and dedicated the bulk of the book to the time that the two were friends—the last twenty years of Johnson’s life. The book is less a narrative than a collection of quotes and anecdotes. In fact, a much more accurate title of this book would be The Idle Talk of Samuel Johnson.

If a book of this format had been written by almost any other person in the history of the world, I’m sure it would be unreadable. But Boswell has such a fine knack for suggestive details, for memorable quotes, for personality quirks—in short, for all the subtle and charming details of daily life—that the book is not only readable, but compulsively readable. Boswell’s Life is a testament to the fact that the idle talk of a drawing room can be just as momentous as the ebb and flow of human history, or the thoughts of the greatest philosophers. It is a celebration of the epic in the everyday, the magnificent in the mundane.

Not to say that Johnson is either everyday or mundane. Quite the opposite: he is as great a character as any in literature. Nay, more so. Because this book was so obviously the product of a fan-boy mentality, I have no idea what Johnson the man was actually like. But Boswell’s characterization of him couldn’t be surpassed, or even equaled, by the most skillful of novelists. Accurate or not, it is damned fine writing.

What really gives fire to this otherwise mundane collection of anecdotes is Boswell’s near-insane hero worship. Every mild opinion, every offhand quip, every casual remark uttered by Johnson is treated by Boswell as gospel. His reverence for the man is boundless; and his idolatry comes through in every sentence. It’s endearing at first; almost overpowering by the end. Boswell makes the man into a myth.

Nonetheless, it is, at times, hard to see what Boswell sees in Johnson. For every piece of wisdom or wit that Johnson produces, there are three pieces of folly. He hated the Scotch, the French, the Americans—basically everyone who wasn’t both an Englishman and a Tory—all for no reason whatsoever. No good reason, anyway. He was socially, religiously, and politically conservative. He was rude, overbearing, and often closed-minded. He would argue a point that even he didn't endorse, merely to command a conversation.

And Boswell doesn’t appear very likable, either. He was servile, toadyish, and invasive. However much he may have reverenced Johnson, Boswell did not respect the man’s privacy or confidence. In fact, it sometimes felt like Boswell’s entire purpose of hanging around Johnson was to advance his own literary career; and that his idealization of Johnson was just a form of self-service, since he was connected with the deceased writer. I can’t imagine having someone like that around me, hurrying off to jot down every thing I said—not that I’m at risk for such a thing.

Besides the unpleasantness of the two principal characters, this book has other flaws. Its most notable one is its lack of organization. Boswell just moves from one quip to the next, interspersing conversations with Johnson’s letters and diary entries. Boswell was incomparable for his attention to detail; but he apparently was unable to step back and see the forest, rather than just the trees. Even Johnson’s death is rendered as a series of disconnected pieces of information, rather than a simple narrative. In short, Boswell saw life through a magnifying glass; and it’s hard to put together a map with a magnifying glass.

But this is not a book that attempts to conceal its flaws. Rather, it glories in its own imperfection. And, now that I think of it, the most important message of Boswell’s book might be this: that the greatest things in life are great precisely because of their imperfections. Boswell's Life of Johnson certainly is.