Materials for a Boswellian Problem, by Ronald Knox

In this masterly spoof on Quellenforschung, Monsignor Ronald Knox (1888-1957) detects three main sources (C = the Chronicler, W = the We-passages, and D = the Dialogist) in Boswell's Life of Johnson.

It is a circumstance little creditable to the ingenuity of modern criticism that a work like Boswell’s Johnson should have been thumbed for over a century by learned and simple, without any question being raised as to the sources from which so remarkable a book was compiled. The name of Boswell, like that of Homer, Shakespeare, or Luke, is no doubt a convenient symbol; and to discard its use altogether would be pedantic, and possibly misleading. But, while we are content to use the name, we must not allow the superficial unity of the work to which it is prefixed blind us to the fact that it is a compilation -- a compilation from sources widely different in their manner of treatment, and, to some extent, in their portrayal of the facts.

In such cases it is sometimes urged that the probabilities are, ceteris paribus, against a composite authorship; that scissors were less cheap, and paste was less adhesive, in ancient days than in our own; that, for all the hundreds of sources which scholars have postulated to subserve their critical theories, no single one has ever been discovered existing in its uncomposite form; that (in short) the traditional authorship of any work has a prescriptive right, and holds the field until such time as sure arguments can be produced to disprove it. Whatever may be the value of such contentions (and they are contentions which have found little favour among scholars these last hundred years), they clearly do not apply to the matter in hand. For (1) the age of Boswell was an age of literary forgeries; we remember Chatterton, we remember Macpherson’s Ossian, we remember the History of Formosa. (2) The age of Boswell was an age of pseudepigraphy; does not the work itself describe how Rolt went over to Dublin and printed Akenside’s Pleasures of the Imagination bodily under his own name; how a firm of Booksellers commissioned one Shiels to write the Lives of the Poets, and then got leave from Theophilus Cibber to write “Mr. Cibber” on the title-page, so that the work might pass for Colley Cibber’s production? Let it be observed, too, that Johnson wrote a preface for one of Rolt’s books, and employed Shiels as an amanuensis; pseudepigraphy, therefore, had eaten into the very heart of the Johnsonian circle. (3) The age of Boswell was an age of literary patchwork. Johnson himself supplied lines to Goldsmith’s Traveller and to his Deserted Village; and (conversely) he printed among his Lives of the Poets, without acknowledgment, a notice of Young written by one Croft. There can scarcely have been any coterie so baffling in its literary ramifications, so unscrupulous in its literary conscience, as the coterie which mystified the public with the Letters of Junius, and bamboozled it with the Ballad of Harthacnute.

The presumption, then, is actually in favour of a composite authorship for Boswell. And no reader who has once dallied with the thought can fail to observe, even upon the most cursory perusal, three different divisions running through the work. It will be as well to distinguish these at once, before considering the detailed proof of their independence. Of course, these three are only the main divisions; when you have disentangled them, you are in the position of one who has unpicked the strands of a rope, without dissolving these, in turn, into their component fibres. When we speak of “sources,” we do not feel bound to mention every isolated tributary that has fed them.

(1) You find, first of all, a plain, unvarnished biography of the alleged Doctor, careful to name the informants from which its matter is derived, incorporating large numbers of apparently genuine letters, some few of which are addressed to James Boswell, Esq. It is doubtful whether the author of this document had ever met or even seen Johnson. The few passages which begin “He told me” or “He communicated to me” are probably taken wholesale from some other source. It is characteristic of this document that in its earlier part it always refers to its hero as “Johnson,” unlike the “We”-passages, which dignify him with the title of Doctor in 1763, two years before his doctorate was given him by Dublin (p. 248, etc.*).

* The page references are to the “Everyman” edition throughout.

(2) You enter at once into a new atmosphere when you encounter the “We”-passages. Here you have a document which was apparently kept in diary form, recording few facts, numerous conversations; distinguishing each of these by the day of the month, not merely by the year. The author was (or professes to have been) on terms of daily intimacy with Johnson and his friends.

(3) Interspersed with these are extracts from yet a third document, written in dramatic or dialogue form throughout. The subject is introduced by a short rubric, and the remarks made upon it are prefaced by the names of the interlocutors, turn and turn about, as in a play. A typical instance will begin as follows: “I introduced the subject of toleration. JOHNSON. Every society has a right to preserve publick peace” and so on. It is characteristic of this document that it records no events, only scattered utterances or logia of the great man; that it assigns no dates to them, and indeed has been used by the compiler at haphazard, without due reference to dating; that it records Johnson’s arguments with his friends, not with his natural enemies, such as Wilkes and Gibbon.

For purposes of convenience, I shall call the author of the first document C, or the Chronicler; that of the We-passages W; and that of the third document D, or the Dialogist. We must further make allowance for at least two Redactors (R 1 and R 2), who have reduced the whole composition to its present shape. The following table will give some idea of the distribution of these sources, beginning with Vol. I:

C. Pages 1-240, 297-311, 320-341, 381-407, 447-451, etc.
W. Pages 241-270, 285-296, 312-314, 342-365, 378-380, 425-446, etc.
D. Pages 271-284, 315-319, 366-378, 408-424, etc.

It must be observed, however, that isolated passages from D are let in, here and there, in the middle of C or W extracts, their peculiar form lending itself to this treatment. There are between thirty and forty of these D-insertions in the pages ascribed to C and W above.

The discrepancies between C and D are manifest, though not usually important. Thus, in C Rolt is credited with a “Dictionary of Trade and Commerce” which becomes a “Dictionary of Commerce” merely, in D (Vol. I, pp. 221, 545) and C’s “Universal Visiter” is “The Universal Visitor” in D (Vol. I, pp. 186, 546). But occasionally the differences are more significant. Thus we read in a D-insertion, Vol. I, p. 28, of Jorden, Johnson’s Oxford tutor:

“He was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instructions.... The first day after I came to College, I waited upon him, and then stayed away four. On the sixth, Mr. Jorden asked me why I had not attended. I answered, I had been sliding in Christ Church meadow. BOSWELL: That, sir, was great fortitude of mind. JOHNSON No, Sir, stark insensibility.”

The same incident is recorded in quite different terms by C, which here incorporates some reminiscences of Dr. Warton (Vol. I, p. 162): “He much regretted that his first tutor was dead, for whom he seemed to entertain the greatest regard. He said, I had once been a whole morning sliding in Christ Church meadows, and missed his lecture in logick. After dinner he sent for me to his room. I expected a sharp rebuke for my idleness, and went with a beating heart. When we were seated, he told me he had sent for me to drink a glass of wine with him, and to tell me he was not angry with me for missing his lecture.”

It will be noticed that D, here as always, is at pains to introduce a logion of the Doctor’s, probably at the expense of truth. A reminiscence has been turned into a retort. At the same time, it seems clear that D did not depend on C here, but that the two presuppose a common original. In other passages, it would appear that D gives us the correct version, while C has improved it out of all recognition. So a conversation on Foote, the mimic, is thus recorded by D (Vol. I, p. 369):

“B0SWELL: Did he not think of exhibiting you, sir? JOHNSON: Sir, fear restrained him; he knew I would have broken his bones.”

Now let us observe what C has made out of this chance remark (Vol. I, p. 517): “Foote . . . had resolved to imitate Johnson on the stage. . . . Johnson being informed of his intention, and being at dinner at Mr. Thomas Davies’ the bookseller, from whom I had the story, he asked Mr. Davies what was the price of a common oak stick; and being answered sixpence, Why then, sir, (said he) give me leave to send your servant to purchase me a shilling one.”

I fancy that if we still possessed X, the lost original of C and D, we should find it a document considerably more colourless than either of its descendants.

The interdependence of D and W is equally loose. We may instance the following comparison of W (Vol. I, p. 258) with D (Vol. II, p. 176):

W. “Campbell is not always rigidly careful of truth in his conversation, but I do not believe there is anything of this carelessness in his books. Campbell is a good man, a pious man. I am afraid he has not been in the inside of a church for many years, but he never passes a church without pulling off his hat. That shows that he has good principles.”

D. “I do not know that Campbell ever lied with pen and ink, but you could not entirely depend on anything he told you in conversation. . . . However, I loved Campbell: he was a solid orthodox man: he had a reverence for religion. Though defective in practice, he was religious in principle.”

Redactor 2 has altered the present tense to the past in D, since he found the incident inserted under a date when Campbell was no longer alive; but this is, without question, a doublet of the same logion. The common source here is more likely to have been oral than written. The same consideration arises from a comparison of Vol. I, p. 422, with Vol. II, p. 470.In the former place, D has “Promiscuous hospitality is not the way to gain real influence. . . No, sir, the way to make sure of power and influence is, by lending money to your neighbours at a small interest, or perhaps at no interest at all, and having their bonds in your possession.” W has the version, “No, sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality.” The discrepancies sometimes extend beyond mere turns of phrase; thus W (II, 55) reports Johnson as saying of Mrs. Rudd, the actress, “Boswell is in the right; I should have visited her myself, were it not that they have now a trick of putting everything into the newspapers,” whereas D (II, 235) has: “JOHNSON: Fifteen years ago I should have gone to see her. SPOTISWOODE: Because she was fifteen years younger? JOHNSON: No, sir; but now they have a trick of putting everything into the newspapers.”

Other doublets between W and D (e.g. I, 345 and 4i1; I, 277 and II, 54; II, 268 and 530) are less interesting. On the whole, it is probable that D is a better representative than W of their common original, which I will call Y. For instance, W has the folloint (II, 167): “Talking of ghosts, he said, It is wonderful that 5,000 years have now elapsed since the creation of the world, and still it is undecided whether or not there has ever been an instance of the spirit of any person appearing after death. All argument is against it, but all belief is for it. He said, John Wesley’s conversation is good.” Naturally the reader is at a loss to follow the transition of thought. Let him turn to D’s account on p. 213 of Vol. II: “Of John Wesley, he said he can talk well on any subject. B0SWELL: Pray, sir, what has he made of his story of a ghost? JOHNSON: Why, sir, he believes it, but not on sufficient authority. He did not take time enough to examine the girl. MISS SEWARD: What, sir! About a ghost? JOHNSON: Yes, madam; this is a question which, after 5,000 years, is still undecided.” D, in spite of its erratic use by the compiler, has obviously succeeded in giving the logion its true setting.

Discrepancies between C and W are less numerous. But the following instance will suffice to prove it. C had the words (I. 109) “Mr. Shiels, who partly wrote the Lives of the Poets to which the name of Cibber is attached”; and Redactor 2, conscious of a doublet, attempted to soften it down by inserting the words “as we shall hereafter see” after the word “who.” Alas for human prudence! He had neglected to observe that W’s statement (II, 23) was something quite different: “He told us, that the book entitled the Lives of the Poets, by Mr. Cibber, was entirely compiled by Mr. Shiels.” The two statements are not, of course, inconsistent, but the allegation contained differs in the two cases.

And now, what of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides? This, too, is manifestly a composite document, but there is none of C’s work in it, except a passage which has been borrowed from him by a We-passage in the Journal, so curiously that it deserves to be set out at full length:

The most casual observer cannot fail to note that it is the Journal which has borrowed from C, and not vice versa. The later scribe has exaggerated, with the natural tendency of the human mind towards mythology, the grossness of the Doctor’s person, and, omitting the loss of the one eye, he has gratuitously implied that the sight of the other was weak.

But, if C has deserted us, W and D persist, though it is highly doubtful whether the W and D of the Journal are, respectively, the W and D of the Life. On the contrary, verbal resemblances occur between D of the Life and W of the Journal, e.g. “The noblest prospect that (which) a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England (London).” The logion is referred by D to a party at the Mitre, by W to a scene which purports to have taken place at Edinburgh Castle (Life, Vol. I, p. 264; Journal, under November 10). On the other hand, the logion about Walmsley and Toryism is verbally identical in W (Life, Vol. I, p. 267) and in a We-passage of the Journal (under November 10). Johnson’s contention that Swift could not have written the Tale of a Tub, because it was too good, is recorded in the Life by D (I. 280) and by W (I. 530), and also by a We-passage of the Journal (under August 16). It is safest, then, to assume that both the documents used in the Journal owed some (at least) of their inspiration to Y, the common original of D and W in the Life; I have designated these Journal-sources by the letters small d and small w.

It is plain that D and d do not depend entirely on a common source. Thus D (I. 510) has “If a man were to go by chance at the same time with Burke under a shed, to shun a shower, he would say, This is an extraordinary man.” Whereas d substitutes (under August 15) “Burke, sir, is such a man that if you met him for the first time in the street where you were stopped by a drove of oxen, and you and he stepped aside to take shelter but for five minutes, he’d talk to you in such a manner that, when you parted, you would say, This is an extraordinary man.” This latter version appears to be corrupt -- one does not take shelter from oxen; the former may perhaps point to a verse original (cf. the alliteration of ”shed, to shun a shower “). On the other hand, the resemblances between W and w are clearly marked (cf. I. 485 with Journal of October 14, II. 220 with Journal of August 20).

Perhaps the most instructive doublet of all is the famous logion which compares a ship to a prison. The Journal for August 31, gives this: “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.” And under September 23 the same document gives “The man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company, AND IS IN SAFETY.” C in the Life (1.215) reproduces both these logia, but omits the words “and is in safety“ in the second. A footnote gives references to the passages in the Journal. Elsewhere in the Life (I. 612), W gives us the following: “A ship is worse than a gaol (sic). There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger.” It would be hard to find a more interesting instance of literary transmission. There was, in the original source from which C and W borrowed, a logion which insisted that a prison was only equal to a ship in respect of discomfort, and superior to it in respect of safety. C and W have their respective versions of it. Then d, who has access to C and W, borrows the two quotations from C, and adds, from W, the rider “and is in safety.” Finally, Redactor 2 confuses the trail by giving us references to the Journal in footnotes to the Life.

We may now represent our results in the following tabular form:

It would be interesting, but somewhat laborious, to examine the characteristic differences between these various sources in the picture which they give of their hero. It is certain, for example, that those passages which represent Dr. Johnson as favourable to the Catholic religion are due entirely to D (cf. I. 375, 376-377, 411, 484; II. 520), whereas his true attitude was on the whole one of repugnance, as may be seen from W’s portrayal of him (I. 610; II. 14; II. 289). The reference in II. 14 appears, indeed, in the dialogue form, and might have been attributed to D, but the exact mark of date shows that it is a We-passage: probably the word “said” has dropped out after the word “Johnson.” Compare especially Johnson’s attitude on the Invocation of Saints, as reported in II. 289, with his defence of the doctrine in two of the D-passages. Again, D tends to give us the impression that Dr. Johnson was something of a temperance fanatic (I. 436, 439; II. 29, 177, 233, 239); w.hereas W shows that if anything he was in favour of drinking (II. 39, 125, 270, 275). But it is not always easy to trace these discrepancies to their true source. For example, Johnson’s famous account of the tour is called A Journey to the Hebrides in I. 500 (C), 502 (C), 507 (C); II. 189 (D), 232 (D), whereas it is A Journey to the Western Islands in I. 517 (C), 557 (W); II. 73 (C), 103 (W), 127 (W), and 216 (D).

A more serious question naturally presents itself: How much, in either book, gives us authentic information; how much is to be taken with a grain of salt? On the whole, it may be said that C is a careful narrative, documented from various sources and giving a consistent picture of the Doctor’s life and character. Can we say as much for D or for W? C gives you the picture of a voracious reader and a prolific author, who would have (one would think) little time for convivial company, or for unnecessary conversation. Whereas a perusal of D or W conveys the impression that the man was for ever talking and hobnobbing with his cronies; he never pleads an engagement or complains of any press of work; in short, it is the picture of an idler. Can the two really be reconciled? And is there any real evidence that Johnson was fond of talking? On the contrary, there is good reason to believe that he was reserved and shy in company. So at least we read in a passage probably attributable to C (II. 220), “Tom Tyers described me the best: Sir (he said) you are like a ghost; you never speak till you are spoken to,” an estimate which w repeats under August 20. Can it be said that Johnson, in D or in W, ever waits till he is spoken to? On the contrary, it seems impossible for anybody else to get a word in edgeways.

We all know how frequently bons mots are attributed to Dr. Johnson or to Sydney Smith, when in fact their origin is much later or much earlier. If some of the bons mots attributed to Dr. Johnson are spurious, why not all? The more so since (as I have abundantly shown) the exact form of expression in them and even the point conveyed by them is often differently represented by the different sources. It seems evident upon a closer view that C gives us a true, though not a very interesting biography, whose hero is an awkward recluse, distinguished only as a man of letters; that subsequent legends have grown up round his name (represented by W and D), which would represent him as a master of the social arts and graces. To emphasize the distinction between the two pictures, I need only notice that C in II. 614 tells us Johnson “when he rode had no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a balloon”; yet W has the effrontery to print the words “I told him I had been to see Johnson ride upon three horses “! *

* A friend has suggested to me that this “Johnson” is someone else of the same name; surely this is mere special pleading. Everywhere else in the Life the name “Johnson” has only one meaning.

And if we are to write down W and D in the Life as apocryphal, what of the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides? Can we suppose that this has any foundation in fact? Dr. Johnson himself, of course, wrote an account of such a Journey, but it is improbable that anyone was meant to take this seriously, in an age when bogus travels were so commonly published. The only passage in the Lffe which suggests that Dr. Johnson did actually make such a tour is a brief statement on p. 491 of Vol. I, supported by a few letters supposed to have passed between Johnson and his friend. (There is no allusion to it in letters to any other person.) The passage on p. 491 is of a highly suspicious character; it definitely states that Johnson arrived in Scotland on August 18th, whereas the Journal brings him to Edinburgh on August 14th. Is it not clear that we are in the realm of mythology? The more so as the Journal itself abounds in improbabilities. It relates, for example, the whole Flora Macdonald saga as if it were fact. The Tour to the Hebrides, if I may so express myself, is a tour de force. What (men asked themselves) would have happened if Dr. Johnson, the well-known hater of the Scots, had actually made a pilgrimage North of the Border? What would have been his reactions on seeing the Scots at home? Such speculations tend to clothe themselves, before long, in the dress of reported facts. So often had Dr. Johnson made merry over the theories of Lord Monboddo -- let us bring the two men meet face to face, nay, let us make Lord Monboddo offer the shelter of his roof to Dr. Johnson! So, insensibly, the myth builds itself up, aided by the fact that there was little accurate knowledge, in those days, to correct the fancy picture given of the Hebrides. It is a fantasia; and indeed it may be questioned whether the whole conception of Dr. Johnson has not been influenced by that of Dr. Syntax.

Although it is highly doubtful, as we have seen, whether Samuel Johnson really uttered any of those numerous dicta with which the credulity or carelessness of contemporary writers has credited him, we must not therefore suppose that such a book as Boswell’s Life has no permanent value. There is a higher truth than that of mere fact; and the portrait which the book gives of its hero, however destitute of an historical foundation, will not cease to be an inspiration to many thoughtful people, and to mould the ideals of posterity. Dr. Johnson will not, perhaps, be so great a figure to our descendants as he was to our forefathers. It is now recognized that the six. “amanuenses” whom he employed were, in fact, the authors of the Dictionary which goes by his name, while he imself added little except his name and a few unimportant redactions. Though we cannot positively assert, we can at least give good reasons for suspecting, that Rasselas is a skit on the Johnsonian manner, produced by the same lively talent which gave us the Letters of Junius.* But Johnson will remain a tradition and a legend, for generations of Englishmen to admire. He will be remembered as one who, with a natural tendency towards ill-health, struggled manfully against the disqualifications imposed upon him by disease; as one who was born in a humble station, yet rose, through the editing of several newspapers, into a position of intimacy with rich men; as a lover of London, and an early patron of its principal restaurants. If the facts of his life are now mostly disputed, and the authenticity of his works largely denied, that is, after all, but the penalty of having matriculated two hundred years ago -- it may as well come now, since it would have had to come sooner or later. “Facts,” says the Bishop of Much Wenlock in the current number of his Diocesan Magazine, “are only the steam which obscures the mirror of truth.”

* Rasselas was published “in March or April of 1759,” and it can hardly be a coincidence that its title, “Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia” is the anagram of the words “April, i.e. Ass-season, by Francis.”