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Boswell on Politics in the Life of Johnson
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The self-portrait of James Boswell which emerges from the conversations, letters, and editorial comments of The Life of Johnson has lineaments of authority as well as uncertainty. There were subjects on which Boswell spoke consistently and with assurance. Nothing so much gives the lie to his old reputation of grovelling servitude as his steadfast opposition to Johnson's pronouncements on public affairs. All the difference of their years and of their characters are revealed in the younger man's opinions, which, despite a disclaimer in 1779 of interest or ability in “political speculation,” are numerous and sound assured. It is fascinating to isolate Boswell's views, to ponder their apparent contradictions, and finally to discover a complexity of convention and rebellion, tradition and modernity parallel to other expressions of his personality.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1965
References
1 Boswell had written to his friend Temple on 3 May, “I must candidly tell you that I think you should not puzzle yourself with political speculations more than I do. Neither of us is fit for that sort of mental labour.” James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., ed. George Birkbeck Hill, rev. L. F. Powell (Oxford, 1934), ii, 312, n. 4. References to this work (short title: The Life) will be cited hereafter by volume and page within parentheses in the text, Boswell's opinions in the biography being the primary concern and source of this article. I believe that my analysis complements Boswell's Political Career (New Haven, 1965), Professor Frank Brady's closely documented study of Boswell's lifelong quest for office.
2 See also i, 448, where Boswell expressed disgust with an author who showed no deference to noblemen when admitted into their company.
3 Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt.-Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham (privately printed in the U.S.A., 1928–34), xv, 173.
4 See The Life, ii, 178, where Boswell described the feudal lord as being kind in his authority over his vassals; and iv, 164: “there is a sort of kindly connection between a landlord and his tenants.”
5 Boswell argued an obligation to ancestral tradition, and in an editorial interpolation on p. 414, n. 2, cited a Biblical passage to confirm that the human species is transmitted through males.
6 Boswell's London Journal, edited by Frederick A. Pottle (New York, 1950), on page 284 proves this to be the case: “I told him all my story. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘your father has been wanting to make the man of you at twenty which you will be at thirty’.” Johnson later added, “ ‘Sir, a father and a son should part at a certain time of life. I never believed what my father said. I always thought that he spoke ex officio, as a priest does’.” (Copyright, 1950, by Yale University. Used by permission of the McGraw-Hill Book Company and the Editorial Committee of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell.)
7 William E. H. Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1892), ii, 307–314.
8 Ibid., ii, 312–315. See also J. H. Plumb, England in the. Eighteenth Century (Middlesex, England, 1951), p. 107.
9 Recounting the story of Johnson's rebuke to Lord Chesterfield, Boswell said that Dr. Adams regretted the letter having been written. “Dodsley, with the true feelings of trade, said ‘he was very sorry too; for that he had a property in the Dictionary, to which his Lordship's patronage might have been of consequence’.”
10 J. H. Plumb says that country gentlemen were spending more than 15% of their income in taxes as a consequence of the war of 1763 (England in the Eighteenth Century, p. 126).
11 No. iii, December 1777. Margery Bailey, Boswell's Column (London, 1951), p. 31.
12 Contemporary scholars point out that Johnson's definitions of Whig and Tory were also in the lexicographic tradition (i, 294, nn. 5 and 6).
13 The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830 (London, 1952), pp. 16–17.
14 Sir William Holdsworth, A History of English Law (London, 1938), x, 87; Steven Watson, The Reign of George III (Oxford, 1960), p. 58.
15 The Politics of Samuel Johnson (New Haven, 1960), p. 7.
16 Boswell quotes this in a review of Johnson's pamphlet (The Life, ii, 112).
17 Watson, The Reign of George III, p. 58; Greene, The Politics of Samuel Johnson, p. 7.
18 Greene, p. 13.
19 Frederick A. Pottle, “The Life of Boswell,” The Yale Review, xxxv (March 1946), 452–453.
20 Quoted by George Birkbeck Hill from “Letter to the People of Scotland,” The Life, iii, 64, n. 3.
21 Plumb, pp. 120–123.
22 See also Boswell's expression of pleasure at Johnson's “dignified spirit of freedom,” in i, 424.
23 A History of English Law, p. 104.
24 Boswell refers to the Boston Port-Bill, passed in 1774, which closed Boston as a port for the landing and shipping of goods.
25 In note 4 George Birkbeck Hill suggests that this decisive opinion must have been formed in three days, since a letter to Temple written on 18 March expresses uncertainty and confusion.
26 Holdsworth, x, 103. See also n. 7.
27 Ashton, p. 148.
28 Greene, p. 214.
29 “The Life of Boswell,” The Yale Review, p. 460.
30 Boswell quotes this as an example of Johnson's freedom from cant about the ancient Romans. It is from Johnson's review of the “Memoirs of the Court of Augustus.”
31 Pottle, The Yale Review, p. 459.
32 For example, Thurlow, Dundas, and Lord Liverpool supported the slave trade. Lecky, v, 341 and 344.
33 Ibid., p. 342.