SUPPLEMENTING BOSWELL
Netboy, Anthony
Supplementing Boswell SAMUEL JOHNSON, by Joseph Wood Krutch. Holt. $3"50. Reviewed by anthony netboy THE Samuel Johnson who lives in the popular imagination is almost entirely the product of...
...You may talk in this manner...
...In his famous letter to Chesterfield, he spoke for the entire ignoble fraternity of letters...
...The pleasure of cursing the House of Hanover is amply overbalanced by 300 pounds a year...
...JOHNSON was also a staunch enemy of cant...
...Johnson made the profession of writing honorable...
...The government of George III afterward rewarded Johnson with a pension...
...Johnson was thus a true egalitarian...
...You will find most of them in Boswell and in Krutch and a few, which Boswell did not hear, in Krutch only...
...Krutch"s style is always vibrant, and if he has not produced a startlingly original work, he has at least written a thoroughly readable one...
...Johnson is also well worth' our acquaintance because in his writings and conversation he displayed so eminently that rare quality—common sense...
...Evaluating Dr...
...Reviewed by anthony netboy THE Samuel Johnson who lives in the popular imagination is almost entirely the product of Boswell's prodigious gift for reportage...
...Etc...
...but don't think foolishly...
...And this, in a way, marked a turning point in English literature, for it betokened that an honest poet was just as deserving of the public bounty as unscrupulous politicians or servile journalists...
...Boswell, that vain and often silly dipsomaniac, who mixed an astonishing capacity for idolatry with an equally astonishing lack of self-knowledge, has given us the fullest and best biography in the English language...
...But better a noble Tory like Johnson than a stocratic democrats like Burke, who was driven to a state of frenzy by the revolution of the enslaved masses of France...
...Johnson in the 150 years since its publication...
...You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, 'Sir, I am your most humble servant.' You are not his humble servant...
...You tell a man, 'I am sorry you had such bad weather the last day of your journey, and were so much wet.' You don't care sixpence whether he was wet or dry...
...Before him, a writer, if he did not have independent means, lived largely by shameless flattery of wealthy patrons...
...Johnson, after years of hack writing and penury, showed that a man of letters could keep alive without lordly patronage...
...Johnson said a lot of other memorable things, such as: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel...
...Although he eventually became the idol of noblemen and of the most illustrous minds in England, he believed in the inherent virtue and decency of the common people, pretty much as Lincoln did, though of course he was a Tory in politics...
...He had no patience with the time-servers and hypocrites who in those days crowded the salons and drawing-rooms and gave their stamp to English society...
...Starting with the premise that "human life has much to be endured and but little to be enjoyed," he argued that everyone must help to mitigate the sufferings of humanity so far as he can...
...For this reason, few people have attempted to write another full-length study of Dr...
...Johnson in the light of our time, what does he stand for...
...His book is particularly strong in the account of Johnson's life before he met Boswell...
...Joseph Wood Krutch stepped in where many eminent literary historians feared to tread, and he has performed a valuable service in assembling much material to supplement Boswell...
...My dear friend, clear your mind of cant," he once remarked...
...Marriage has many pains, but celebacy has no pleasures...
...it is the mode of talking in society...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 16
