11 - Self-restraint and self-display in the authorial comments in the Life of Johnson

Summary

Readers of the Life of Johnson are immediately aware of Boswell's presence not only as a participant in scenes and conversations with Johnson but also as a later self engaged in the process of writing and rethinking his material. His authorial comments have been deplored as “annoying” and “a continuing nuisance” for both their content and their tone. But a closer scrutiny of the text shows that such “Boswellian intrusions after the fact” are not all of the same kind – that although some indeed consist of unabashed self-display, others are deliberately reticent. Examples of his self-display are not hard to find, especially in the notorious passages on slavery and the French Revolution. But if we focus on less familiar authorial comments, limiting ourselves to those about his personal and professional life and his opinions as a Scotsman, we will find a greater moderation in the way he presents himself. Moreover, by taking into account Boswell's experiences while he was working on the Life, as revealed in his last journals and correspondence, we may be able to read some of the authorial comments – without ignoring their shortcomings – with greater understanding and even, in some instances, with greater sympathy.

In writing and revising the Life, Boswell was well aware of the danger of seeming too intrusive and particularly of including too much about his personal affairs. The biting attack in a pamphlet by “Verax” on his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785), ridiculing his “egregious vanity,” and the comment on his egotism in the English Review of November 1785 must have rankled; he kept both the pamphlet and the review among his papers (now at Yale University).