Boswell the Biographer. George Mallory

and Pudding car'd;

      He had a large and pond'rous head,

      That seemed to be composed of lead;

      From which hung down such stiff, lank hair,

      As might the crows in Autumn scare.

      But besides being a somewhat light-headed poet, Boswell was anxious to appear as the 'young Buck.' 'The Epistle of a London Buck to his Friend' is the title of one of his publications in the 'Collection of Original Poems.' There is also a confused story of a club he formed in Edinburgh called the 'Soaping Club,' which existed apparently for Bacchanalian purposes; Boswell was the king of the Soapers and wrote some verses about himself:

      

      Boswell is pleasant and gay,

      For frolic by nature designed;

      He heedlessly rattles away

      When the company is to his mind.

      'This maxim,' he says, 'you may see,

      We never can have corn without chaff';

      So not a bent sixpence cares he,

      Whether with him, or at him you laugh.

      Boswell does women adore,

      And never once means to deceive,

      He's in love with at least half a score;

      If they're serious he smiles in his sleeve.

      He has all the bright fancy of youth,

      With the judgment of forty and five;

      In short, to declare the plain truth,

      There is no better fellow alive.

      Stories about 'frolic' (to use Boswell's word) are not as a rule very laughable, and we are perhaps too apt to consider them as merely childish and contemptible when they fail to amuse us. The exact atmosphere of the moment which accounts for its merriment is forgotten too often and seldom reproduced, and we are left cold after a recital of such behaviour as we may suppose the Club of Soapers to have indulged in. In Boswell's character there was a large vein of buffoonery which is apt when recounted by anyone but himself to appear stupid enough. But in reality it seems to have contained a true sense of the incongruous, and had at least the success of making people laugh. What an incomparable moment that must have been when Boswell, as one of the audience GAY BEHAVIOUR at Drury Lane theatre, took upon himself to imitate the lowing of a cow! 'I was so successful in this boyish frolic,' he relates, 'that the universal cry of the galleries was: "Encore the cow! Encore the cow!"'

      There is nothing very brilliant about Boswell's comic verses, but it is curious that those we have quoted should represent the facts so closely:

      So not a bent sixpence cares he

      Whether with him or at him you laugh;

      these lines express exactly the social principle which Boswell adopted. He had no objection to men laughing at his oddities so long as they laughed good-humouredly.

      He wished to find gaiety in every company, and it is just to say that he brought more than his share of mirth regardless of dignity.

      There are many other instances of these self-portraits, anonymous sometimes, but easily to be recognised. We can hardly do better than illustrate Boswell's life by his own words about himself, because upon this subject he found it necessary, when he had anything to say, to say it truthfully. In another early literary venture, the correspondence between Erskine and Boswell, which these two young gentlemen published, there is a letter of Boswell's containing an account of the author of the 'Ode to Tragedy,' which he had published anonymously; he thus describes himself:

      

      The author of the 'Ode to Tragedy,' is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient family in the West of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness; his parts are bright, and his education has been good; he has travelled in postchaises miles without number; he is fond of seeing much of the world; he eats of every good dish, especially apple-pie; he drinks old hock; he has a very fine temper; he is somewhat of a humourist, and a little tinctured with pride; he has a good, manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous; he has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast; he is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old; his shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles.

      The 'Letters between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell, Esq.' are the most remarkable in some ways of these early literary ventures. The letters were evidently written from the first with a view to publication. They are completely frivolous, but attempt to be satirical and amusing. Boswell and Erskine wish to appear as two young men of society who are budding poets and have brilliant wit. They hoped, perhaps, to take the world by storm like the Admirable Crichton and his friend Aldus. The result, if far from brilliant, is certainly clever and amusing.

      The rôle which Boswell played in this theatrical performance may be illustrated by some passages of his own letters. He was before everything else the knight of chivalry—a chivalry which was occupied LETTERS TO ERSKINE exclusively with an excess of romantic attachment and an adoring worship of female charm. Boswell in real life was extravagant enough, we may suppose, in his homage to women; but his performance can have hardly reached the standard set up in the letters to Erskine:

      Lady B—— entreats me to come and pass the Christmas holidays with her. Guess, O guess! what transport I felt at reading that; I did not know how to contain my elevation of spirits. I thought myself one of the greatest geniuses in Europe; I thought I could write all sorts of books and work at all handicraft trades; I imagined that I had fourscore millions of money out at interest, and, that I should actually be chosen Pope at the next election.

      It is conceivable of course that Boswell imagined that he had the fourscore millions; there is evidence which might suggest a misconception of this kind. And it is even possible that he entertained at some time the dream of becoming Pope. But that at all events is not meant to appear. It is meant as the froth of youthful gallantry. There is no deception. We are not expected to suppose that Boswell was like this: we are expected merely to be amused at the pose.

      He represents himself also as the bon-vivant. There are allusions to splendid feasts and there is an 'Ode to Gluttony.' The poet is always very much to the fore, and his behaviour is supposed to be marked occasionally by a vein of seriousness, which is to suggest the anxious cogitation of the philosopher:

      We had a splendid ball. … I exhibited my existence in a minuet, and as I was dressed in a full chocolate suit and wore my most solemn countenance, I looked, as you used to tell me, like the fifth act of a deep tragedy.

      Perhaps the most significant passages in these letters are where Boswell plays the cynic:

      A light heart may bid defiance to fortune. And yet, Erskine, I must tell you that I have been a little pensive of late, amorously pensive, and disposed to read Shenstone's 'Pastoral on Absence,' the tendency of which I greatly admire. A man who is in love is like a man who has got the toothache: he feels in most acute pain, while nobody pities him. In that situation I am at present, but well do I know that I will not be long so. So much for inconstancy!

      Boswell represented himself in the letters to Erskine very much as he affected to be in real life—the gay young wit with a serious background, the jolly good fellow and at the same time the budding genius, and finally, the cynical philosopher, such as he alludes to in the first letter to Temple. The whole picture is exaggerated and laughed at: yet we feel very often that the laughter has a hollow ring. It is the laughter in reality of one who wishes to protect himself from ridicule by jesting at his own expense. The real Boswell peeps through in many places. The remark about Shenstone's 'Pastoral on Absence' might equally well have been made in all seriousness to Temple.

      In another letter he says:

      Allow me a few more words. I live here in a remote corner of an old ruinous house, where my ancestors have been very jovial. What