A Life of JAMES BOSWELL

Insight on the News, Dec 25, 2000 by Paul Johnson

Best known for his famous biography of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell is subject of a new study that reveals his rich literary and social life, as well as his intemperate habits.

James Boswell left behind more material about himself than any other person in the 18th century, including Thomas Jefferson. His diaries have been published in full -- and excellent they are, from start to finish -- but other papers still are being published by the Yale University Press in special research editions. And while there is a good two-volume biography of Boswell by Frederick Pottle and Frank Brady, Peter Martin's A Life of Boswell (Yale University Press, $35, 613 pp) is the first one-volume study which makes full use of all the documents so far discovered.

The book has the merit of a unifying theme -- Boswell's lifelong affliction by depression, which was his strongest physical characteristic and often a determining factor in his life. He analyzed it and wrote about it and recorded its ravages in his journal. But Martin thinks he also was proud of it, holding the widespread belief that it was associated with genius. Indeed, it was something he had in common with his great subject, Samuel Johnson.

Dr. Johnson chiefly relied on work and prayer to counter depression. His dark moods were relieved by spells of intense productivity, which as a rule his habitual sloth prevented. And he prayed with the intensity of a saint, writing his own prayers, probably the best ever composed by a layman.

Boswell took a different route to fight his demon. His Christian faith was adequate for social purposes, but lengthy struggles with an agonized conscience were not for him. His resource was activity. Unfortunately, as Martin shows, he could not or would not make a career for himself at the Scottish bar -- this was the wish of his stern and unsympathetic father, a judge --and he failed to make the grade in London where legal competition was fierce. He also tried the provincial circuits but fell short even there.

The only appointment Boswell secured, despite much canvassing of powerful men, was as recorder of Carlisle, in return for which he had to become a creature of the odious Earl of Lonsdale, who controlled more parliamentary seats than any other magnate and ran what we now call the Lake District. The "Bad Earl," as he was known, treated Boswell as an ill-used upper servant, and Boswell's vivid description of his slavery to this man is one of the highlights of his diary.

The truth is, Boswell hated the law and was ill-suited to it. He was by nature, as Martin makes clear, a man-about-town and a man of letters. His literary talent was considerable. Both his books about Johnson -- the Life of Samuel Johnson and the Tour of the Hebrides--are masterpieces. His book on Corsica also is first-class and won the approval of no less a Corsican hero than Napoleon Bonaparte.

Boswell also engaged in journalism and pamphleteering, but all these activities put together scarcely occupied half his energies. So the rest of the time he spent socializing, for which he had a huge appetite and talent. Through Johnson and friends such as David Garrick and Joshua Reynolds, Boswell built up one of the largest circles of acquaintance in London. His journals (which have sold more than 1 million copies) recorded in detail the endless dinners and receptions he attended.

But these parties meant drink, and therein lay Boswell's downfall. Johnson always told him, truly, that the worst possible palliative to depression was alcohol, having learned from experience to give it up completely. Boswell may have been intellectually convinced by this argument and made several efforts to go on the wagon. But he found it difficult to face company without alcohol, and to resort to Johnson's tea-drinking regime was, he felt, too demeaning for a Scots laird.

There is no evidence that Boswell ever became a solitary drinker, but whenever he was in jovial male company (and sometimes in mixed company, too) he "drank hard." He often was drunk, and his hangovers envenomed his depression. Some diary entries consist just of one word -- "Sunk."

Boswell's drinking inflamed what Johnson termed his "amorous propensities." He would issue from a roaring dinner and make his way home on foot through alleys thronged with streetwalkers. His innumerable sessions with these women filled him with remorse the next day and added yet another layer of self-disgust to his depressive overload. They also subjected him to constant bouts of venereal disease. Boswell seems to have contracted gonorrhea more than a dozen times, as his journals show, and these episodes, which caused him immense pain and sometimes took months to cure, did permanent damage. It seems likely that his comparatively sudden and early death in his mid-50s from kidney failure and uremia was due at least in part to his weakness for drink plus sex.

Still, as Thomas Carlyle wrote of the Life of Samuel Johnson, "Boswell has given greater pleasure than any other man of his time," and that was long before the diaries and other papers were discovered. We now regard Boswell not only as the father of modern biography but as one of the pillars of our literature, a delightful companion to the life of 18th-century England, and an endlessly fascinating personality in his own right. We are grateful to his misspent life and to the assiduity with which he recorded it. Peter Martin has now provided us with a super introduction to this entertaining subject.