Arthur
Lee could not but be very obnoxious to Johnson, for he was
not only a patriot but an American.
Lee could not but be very obnoxious to Johnson, for he was
not only a patriot but an American.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v04 - Bes to Bro
"Now" (added Johnson), "every one
acquainted with microscopes knows that the more of them he
looks through, the less the object will appear. " "Why" (replied
the King), "this is not only telling an untruth, but telling it
clumsily; for if that be the case, every one who can look through
a microscope will be able to detect him. "
"I now" (said Johnson to his friends, when relating what
had passed) "began to consider that I was depreciating this
man in the estimation of his Sovereign, and thought it was
time for me to say something that might be more favorable. ”
He added, therefore, that Dr. Hill was notwithstanding a very
curious observer; and if he would have been contented to tell
the world no more than he knew, he might have been a very
considerable man, and needed not to have recourse to such
mean expedients to raise his reputation.
The King then talked of literary journals, mentioned particu-
larly the Journal des Savants, and asked Johnson if it was well
done. Johnson said it was formerly very well done, and gave
some account of the persons who began it, and carried it on for
some years; enlarging at the same time on the nature and use
of such works. The King asked him if it was well done now.
Johnson answered he had no reason to think that it was. The
King then asked him if there were any other literary journals.
published in this kingdom except the Monthly and Critical
Reviews; and on being answered there was no other, his Maj-
esty asked which of them was the best. Johnson answered that
the Monthly Review was done with most care, the Critical upon
## p. 2240 (#438) ###########################################
2240
JAMES BOSWELL
the best principles; adding that the authors of the Monthly
Review were enemies to the Church. This the King said he
was sorry to hear.
The conversation next turned on the Philosophical Trans-
actions, when Johnson observed that they had now a better
method of arranging their materials than formerly. "Ay" (said
the King), "they are obliged to Dr. Johnson for that;" for his
Majesty had heard and remembered the circumstance, which
Johnson himself had forgot.
His Majesty expressed a desire to have the literary biography
of this country ably executed, and proposed to Dr. Johnson to
undertake it. Johnson signified his readiness to comply with his
Majesty's wishes.
During the whole of this interview, Johnson talked to his
Majesty with profound respect, but still in his firm, manly man-
ner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued tone which
is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing-room. After
the King withdrew, Johnson showed himself highly pleased with
his Majesty's conversation and gracious behavior. He said to
Mr. Barnard, "Sir, they may talk of the King as they will; but
he is the finest gentleman that I have ever seen. " And he
afterwards observed to Mr. Langton, "Sir, his manners are those
of as fine a gentleman as we may suppose Lewis the Fourteenth
or Charles the Second. "
At Sir Joshua Reynolds's, where a circle of Johnson's friends
were collected round him to hear his account of this memorable
conversation, Dr. Joseph Warton, in his frank and lively manner,
was very active in pressing him to mention the particulars.
"Come now, sir, this is an interesting matter; do favor us with
it. " Johnson, with great good humor, complied.
He told them:-"I found his Majesty wished I should talk,
and I made it my business to talk. I find it does a man good
to be talked to by his Sovereign. In the first place, a man can-
not be in a passion-" Here some question interrupted him;
which is to be regretted, as he certainly would have pointed out
and illustrated many circumstances of advantage, from being in
a situation where the powers of the mind are at once excited to
vigorous exertion and tempered by reverential awe.
Mr. Macpherson little knew the character of Dr. Johnson if
he supposed that he could be easily intimidated; for no man was
ever more remarkable for personal courage. He had indeed an
1
## p. 2241 (#439) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2241
awful dread of death, or rather "of something after death"; and
what rational man, who seriously thinks of quitting all that he
has ever known and going into a new and unknown state of
being, can be without that dread? But his fear was from reflec-
tion; his courage natural. His fear, in that one instance, was
the result of philosophical and religious consideration. He feared
death, but he feared nothing else, not even what might occasion
death. Many instances of his resolution may be mentioned. One
day, at Mr. Beauclerk's house in the country, when two large
dogs were fighting, he went up to them and beat them till they
separated; and at another time, when told of the danger there
was that a gun might burst if charged with many balls, he put
in six or seven and fired it off against a wall. Mr. Langton
told me that when they were swimming together near Oxford,
he cautioned Dr. Johnson against a pool which was reckoned
particularly dangerous; upon which Johnson directly swam into
it. He told me himself that one night he was attacked in the
street by four men, to whom he would not yield, but
cept them
all at bay till the watch came up and carried both him and
them to the round-house. In the play-house at Lichfield, as Mr.
Garrick informed me, Johnson having for a moment quitted a
chair which was placed for him between the side-scenes, a gen-
tleman took possession of it, and when Johnson on his return
civilly demanded his seat, rudely refused to give it up; upon
which Johnson laid hold of it and tossed him and the chair into
the pit. Foote, who so successfully revived the old comedy by
exhibiting living characters, had resolved to imitate Johnson on
the stage, expecting great profits from his ridicule of so cele-
brated a man. Johnson being informed of his intention, and
being at dinner at Mr. Thomas Davies's the bookseller, from
whom I had the story, he asked Mr. Davies "what was the
common price of an oak stick "; and being answered sixpence,
"Why then, sir" (said he), "give me leave to send your servant
to purchase a shilling one. I'll have a double quantity; for I am
told Foote means to take me off, as he calls it, and I am deter-
mined the fellow shall not do it with impunity. " Davies took care
to acquaint Foote of this, which effectually checked the wanton-
ness of the mimic. Mr. Macpherson's menaces made Johnson
provide himself with the same implement of defense; and had he
been attacked, I have no doubt that, old as he was, he would have
made his corporal prowess be felt as much as his intellectual.
IV-141
## p. 2242 (#440) ###########################################
2242
JAMES BOSWELL
Mr. Hector was so good as to accompany me to see the great
works of Mr. Bolton [Boulton], at a place which he has called
Soho, about two miles from Birmingham, which the very ingen-
ious proprietor showed me himself to the best advantage. I
wished Johnson had been with us; for it was a scene which I
should have been glad to contemplate by his light. The vastness
and the contrivance of some of the machinery would have
"matched his mighty mind. " I shall never forget Mr. Bolton's
expression to me, "I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to
have-power. " He had about seven hundred people at work.
I contemplated him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be
a father to his tribe. One of them came to him, complaining
grievously of his landlord for having distrained his goods.
"Your landlord is in the right, Smith" (said Bolton). "But I'll
tell you what: find you a friend who will lay down one-half of
your rent, and I'll lay down the other half; and you shall have
your goods again. "
From Mr. Hector I now learned many particulars of Dr.
Johnson's early life, which, with others that he gave me at dif-
ferent times since, have contributed to the formation of this
work.
Dr. Johnson said to me in the morning, "You will see, sir, at
Mr. Hector's, his sister Mrs. Careless, a clergyman's widow.
She was the first woman with whom I was in love. It dropped
out of my head imperceptibly; but she and I will always have a
kindness for each other. " He laughed at the notion that a man
can never really be in love but once, and considered it as a mere
romantic fancy.
On our return from Mr. Bolton's, Mr. Hector took me to his
house, where we found Johnson sitting placidly at tea with his
first love; who, though now advanced in years, was a genteel
woman, very agreeable and well-bred,
Johnson lamented to Mr. Hector the state of one of their
schoolfellows, Mr. Charles Congreve, a clergyman, which he thus
described: "He obtained, I believe, considerable preferment in
Ireland, but now lives in London, quite as a valetudinarian,
afraid to go into any house but his own. He takes a short air-
ing in his post-chaise every day. He has an elderly woman,
whom he calls cousin, who lives with him, and jogs his elbow
when his glass has stood too long empty, and encourages him in
drinking, in which he is very willing to be encouraged; not that
## p. 2243 (#441) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2243
he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always
muddy. He confesses to one bottle of port every day, and he
probably drinks more. He is quite unsocial; his conversation is
quite monosyllabical; and when at my last visit I asked him
what o'clock it was, that signal of my departure had so pleasing
an effect upon him that he sprung up to look at his watch like
a greyhound bounding at a hare. " When Johnson took leave of
Mr. Hector, he said, "Don't grow like Congreve; nor let me
grow like him, when you are near me. "
When he talked again of Mrs. Careless to-night, he seemed to
have had his affection revived; for he said, "If I had married
her, it might have been as happy for me. "
Boswell - Pray, sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty
women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as
happy as with any one woman in particular?
Johnson-Ay, sir, fifty thousand.
Boswell-Then, sir, you are not of opinion with some that
imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each
other; and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counter-
parts.
Fohnson To be sure not, sir. I believe marriages would in
general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made
by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the char-
acters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice
in the matter.
-
I am now to record a very curious incident in Dr. Johnson's
life which fell under my own observation; of which pars magna
fui, and which I am persuaded will, with the liberal-minded, be
much to his credit.
My desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every
description had made me, much about the same time, obtain an
introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. .
Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all
mankind. They had even attacked one another with some asperity
in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both.
I could fully relish the excellence of each; for I have ever
delighted in that intellectual chymistry which can separate good
qualities from evil in the same person.
Sir John Pringle, "mine own friend and my father's friend,"
between whom and Dr. Johnson I in vain wished to establish
## p. 2244 (#442) ###########################################
2244
JAMES BOSWELL
an acquaintance, as I respected and lived in intimacy with both
of them, observed to me once very ingeniously, "It is not in
friendship as in mathematics, where two things, each equal to a
third, are equal between themselves. You agree with Johnson
as a middle quality, and you agree with me as a middle quality;
but Johnson and I should not agree. " Sir John was not suffi-
ciently flexible, so I desisted: knowing indeed that the repulsion
was equally strong on the part of Johnson; who, I know not
from what cause unless his being a Scotchman, had formed a
very erroneous opinion of Sir John. But I conceived an irre-
sistible wish, if possible, to bring Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes
together. How to manage it, was a nice and difficult matter.
My worthy booksellers and friends, Messieurs Dilly in the
Poultry, at whose hospitable and well-covered table I have seen
a greater number of literary men than at any other except that
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, had invited me to meet Mr. Wilkes and
some more gentlemen on Wednesday, May 15th. "Pray" (said I),
"let us have Dr. Johnson. "—"What, with Mr. Wilkes? not for
the world" (said Mr. Edward Dilly): "Dr. Johnson would never
forgive me. "-"Come" (said I), "if you'll let me negotiate for
you, I will be answerable that all shall go well. "
Dilly-Nay, if you will take it upon you, I am sure I shall
be very happy to see them both here.
Notwithstanding the high veneration which I entertained for
Dr. Johnson, I was sensible that he was sometimes a little actu-
ated by the spirit of contradiction, and by means of that I
hoped I should gain my point. I was persuaded that if I had
come upon him with a direct proposal, “Sir, will you dine in
company with Jack Wilkes? " he would have flown into a pas-
sion, and would probably have answered, "Dine with Jack
Wilkes, sir! I'd as
soon dine with Jack Ketch. " I therefore,
while we were sitting quietly by ourselves at his house in an
evening, took occasion to open my plan thus:-
―――――――――
"Mr. Dilly, sir, sends his respectful compliments to you, and
would be happy if you would do him the honor to dine with
him on Wednesday next along with me, as I must soon go to
Scotland. "
Johnson-Sir, I am obliged to Mr. Dilly. I will wait
upon him
-
Boswell-Provided, sir, I suppose, that the company which
he is to have is agreeable to you.
## p. 2245 (#443) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2245
Johnson - What do you mean, sir? What do you take me
for? Do you think I am so ignorant of the world as to imagine
that I am to prescribe to a gentleman what company he is to
have at his table?
Boswell-I beg your pardon, sir, for wishing to prevent you
from meeting people whom you might not like. Perhaps he may
have some of what he calls his patriotic friends with him.
Johnson-Well, sir, and what then? What care I for his
patriotic friends? Poh!
Boswell-I should not be surprised to find Jack Wilkes
there.
Johnson-And if Jack Wilkes should be there, what is that
to me, sir? My dear friend, let us have no more of this. I am
sorry to be angry with you; but really it is treating me
strangely to talk to me as if I could not meet any company
whatever, occasionally.
But you
Thus I secured him, and told Dilly that he would find him
very well pleased to be one of his guests on the day appointed.
Upon the much-expected Wednesday I called on him about
half an hour before dinner, as I often did when we were to
dine out together, to see that he was ready in time, and to ac-
company him.
I found him buffeting his books, as upon a
former occasion, covered with dust, and making no preparation
for going abroad. "How is this, sir? " (said I).
"Don't you
recollect that you are to dine at Mr. Dilly's? "
Johnson - Sir, I did not think of going to Dilly's: it went
out of my head. I have ordered dinner at home with Mrs.
Williams.
Boswell-Pray forgive me, sir: I meant well.
shall meet whoever comes, for me.
Boswell-But, my dear sir, you know you were engaged to
Mr. Dilly, and I told him so. He will expect you, and will be
much disappointed if you don't come.
Johnson-You must talk to
Mrs. Williams about this.
Here was a sad dilemma. I feared that what I was so con-
fident I had secured, would yet be frustrated. He had accus-
tomed himself to show Mrs. Williams such a degree of humane
attention as frequently imposed some restraint upon him; and
I knew that if she should be obstinate, he would not stir. I
hastened down-stairs to the blind lady's room, and told her I
was in great uneasiness, for Dr. Johnson had engaged to me to
## p. 2246 (#444) ###########################################
2246
JAMES BOSWELL
dine this day at Mr. Dilly's, but that he had told me he had
forgotten his engagement, and had ordered dinner at home.
"Yes, sir" (said she, pretty peevishly), "Dr. Johnson is to dine
at home. " "Madam" (said I), "his respect for you is such that I
know he will not leave you, unless you absolutely desire it. But
as you have so much of his company, I hope you will be good
enough to forego it for a day; as Mr. Dilly is a very worthy
man, has frequently had agreeable parties at his house for Dr.
Johnson, and will be vexed if the Doctor neglects him to-day.
And then, madam, be pleased to consider my situation: I carried
the message, and I assured Mr. Dilly that Dr. Johnson was to
come; and no doubt he has made a dinner, and invited a com-
pany, and boasted of the honor he expected to have. I shall be
quite disgraced if the Doctor is not there. ”
She gradually softened to my solicitations, which were cer-
tainly as earnest as most entreaties to ladies upon any occasion,
and was graciously pleased to empower me to tell Dr. Johnson
"that, all things considered, she thought he should certainly go. "
I flew back to him, still in dust, and careless of what should be
the event, "indifferent in his choice to go or stay;" but as soon
as I had announced to him Mrs. Williams's consent, he roared,
"Frank, a clean shirt," and was very soon dressed. When I had
him fairly seated in a hackney-coach with me, I exulted as much
as a fortune-hunter who has got an heiress into a post-chaise
with him to set out for Gretna Green.
When we entered Mr. Dilly's drawing-room, he found himself
in the midst of a company he did not know. I kept myself
snug and silent, watching how he would conduct himself. I
observed him whispering to Mr. Dilly, "Who is that gentleman,
sir? " "Mr. Arthur Lee. " Johnson - "Too, too, too" (under his
breath), which was one of his habitual mutterings. Mr.
Arthur
Lee could not but be very obnoxious to Johnson, for he was
not only a patriot but an American. He was afterwards minister
from the United States at the court of Madrid. "And who is
the gentleman in lace? " "Mr. Wilkes, sir. " This information
confounded him still more; he had some difficulty to restrain
himself, and taking up a book, sat down upon a window-seat
and read, or at least kept his eye upon it intently for some
time, till he composed himself. His feelings, I dare say, were
awkward enough. But he no doubt recollected his having rated
me for supposing that he could be at all disconcerted by any
## p. 2247 (#445) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2247
company, and he therefore resolutely set himself to behave quite
as an easy man of the world, who could adapt himself at once
to the disposition and manners of those whom he might chance
to meet.
The cheering sound of "Dinner is upon the table» dissolved
his reverie, and we all sat down without any symptom of ill-
humor. There were present, besides Mr. Wilkes, and Mr. Arthur
Lee, who was an old companion of mine when he studied
physics at Edinburgh, Mr. (now Sir John) Miller, Dr. Lettson,
and Mr. Slater the druggist. Mr. Wilkes placed himself next to
Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and
politeness that he gained upon him insensibly. No man eat
more heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice and
delicate. Mr. Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some
fine veal. "Pray give me leave, sir-It is better here- A little
of the brown-Some fat, sir-A little of the stuffing- Some
gravy- Let me have the pleasure of giving you some butter—
Allow me to recommend a squeeze of this orange; or the lemon,
perhaps, may have more zest. " "Sir, sir, I am obliged to you,
sir," cried Johnson, bowing, and turning his head to him with a
look for some time of "surly virtue," but in a short while of
complacency.
―――
-
Sir William Forbes writes to me thus: "I inclose the
'Round Robin. ' This jeu d'esprit took its rise one day at din-
ner at our friend Sir Joshua Reynolds's. All the company present
except myself were friends and acquaintances of Dr. Goldsmith.
The Epitaph written for him by Dr. Johnson became the subject
of conversation, and various emendations were suggested, which
it was agreed should be suggested to the Doctor's consideration.
But the question was, who should have the courage to propose
them to him? At last it was hinted that there could be no way
so good as that of a 'Round Robin,' as the sailors call it, which
they make use of when they enter into a conspiracy, so as not
to let it be known who puts his name first or last to the paper.
This proposition was instantly assented to; and Dr. Barnard,
Dean of Derry, now Bishop of Killahoe, drew up an address to
Dr. Johnson on the occasion, replete with wit and humor, but
which it was feared the Doctor might think treated the subject.
with too much levity. Mr. Burke then proposed the address as
—
## p. 2248 (#446) ###########################################
2248
JAMES BOSWELL
it stands in the paper in writing, to which I had the honor to
officiate as clerk.
"Sir Joshua agreed to carry it to Dr. Johnson, who received
it with much good humor, and desired Sir Joshua to tell the
gentlemen that he would alter the Epitaph in any manner they
pleased, as to the sense of it; but he would never consent to dis-
grace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription.
"I consider this 'Round Robin' as a species of literary
curiosity worth preserving, as it marks in a certain degree Dr.
Johnson's character. "
Sir William Forbes's observation, is very just. The anecdote
now related proves in the strongest manner the reverence and
awe with which Johnson was regarded by some of the most
eminent men of his time, in various departments, and even by
such of them as lived most with him; while it also confirms what
I have again and again inculcated, that he was by no means of
that ferocious and irascible character which has been ignorantly
imagined.
This hasty composition is also one to be remarked as one of
the thousand instances which evince the extraordinary prompti-
tude of Mr. Burke; who, while he is equal to the greatest things,
can adorn the least; can with equal facility embrace the vast and
complicated speculations of politics or the ingenious topics of
literary investigation.
The character of Samuel Johnson has, I trust, been so devel-
oped in the course of this work that they who have honored it
with a perusal may be considered as well acquainted with him.
As, however, it may be expected that I should collect into one
view the capital and distinguishing features of this extraordinary
man, I shall endeavor to acquit myself of that part of my bio-
graphical undertaking, however difficult it may be to do that
which many of my readers will do better for themselves.
His figure was large and well formed, and his countenance of
the cast of an ancient statue; yet his appearance was rendered
strange and somewhat uncouth by convulsive cramps, by the
scars of that distemper which it was once imagined the royal
touch could cure, and by a slovenly mode of dress. He had the
use only of one eye; yet so much does mind govern and even
supply the deficiency of organs, that his visual perceptions, as far
as they extended, were uncommonly quick and accurate. So
morbid was his temperament that he never knew the natural joy
## p. 2249 (#447) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2249
of a free and vigorous use of his limbs; when he walked, it was
like the struggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he had
no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a
balloon. That with his constitution and habits of life he should
have lived seventy-five years, is a proof that an inherent vivida
vis is a powerful preservative of the human frame.
Man is in general made up of contradictory qualities: and
these will ever show themselves in strange succession where a
consistency in appearance at least, if not in reality, has not been
attained by long habits of philosophical discipline. In propor-
tion to the native vigor of the mind, the contradictory qualities
will be the more prominent, and more difficult to be adjusted;
and therefore we are not to wonder that Johnson exhibited an
eminent example of this remark which I have made upon human
nature.
At different times he seemed a different man in some re-
spects; not, however, in any great or essential article, upon
which he had fully employed his mind and settled certain prin-
ciples of duty, but only in his manners, and in the display of
argument and fancy in his talk. He was prone to superstition,
but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him
to a belief of the marvelous and the mysterious, his vigorous
reason examined the evidence with jealousy. He was a sincere
and zealous Christian, of high Church-of-England and monarchical
principles, which he would not tamely suffer to be questioned;
and had perhaps at an early period narrowed his mind some-
what too much, both as to religion and politics. His being
impressed with the danger of extreme latitude in either, though
he was of a very independent spirit, occasioned his appearing
somewhat unfavorable to the prevalence of that noble freedom
of sentiment which is the best possession of man. Nor can it
be denied that he had many prejudices; which, however, fre-
quently suggested many of his pointed sayings, that rather show
a playfulness of fancy than any settled malignity. He was
steady and inflexible in maintaining the obligations of religion
and morality, both from a regard for the order of society, and
from a veneration for the Great Source of all order: correct.
nay, stern-in his taste; hard to please, and easily offended;
impetuous and irritable in his temper, but of a most humane
and benevolent heart, which showed itself not only in a most
liberal charity, as far as his circumstances would allow, but in a
## p. 2250 (#448) ###########################################
2250
JAMES BOSWELL
thousand instances of active benevolence. He was afflicted with
a bodily disease which made him often restless and fretful; and
with a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened
the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole
course of thinking. We therefore ought not to wonder at his
sallies of impatience and passion at any time, especially when
provoked by obtrusive ignorance or presuming petulance; and
allowance must be made for his uttering hasty and satirical sal-
lies even against his best friends. And surely, when it is
considered that "amidst sickness and sorrow" he exerted his
faculties in so many works for the benefit of mankind, and par-
ticularly that he achieved the great and admirable Dictionary of
our language, we must be astonished at his resolution.
The solemn text, "Of him to whom much is given, much is
expected," seems to have been ever present to his mind in a
rigorous sense, and to have made him dissatisfied with his labors
and acts of goodness, however comparatively great; so that the
unavoidable consciousness of his superiority was in that respect
a cause of disquiet. He suffered so much from this, and from
the gloom which perpetually haunted him and made solitude
frightful, that it may be said of him, "If in this life only he
had hope, he was of all men most miserable. " He loved praise
when it was brought to him, but was too proud to seek for it.
He was somewhat susceptible of flattery. As he was general
and unconfined in his studies, he cannot be considered as master
of any one particular science; but he had accumulated a vast
and various collection of learning and knowledge, which was so
arranged in his mind as to be ever in readiness to be brought
forth. But his superiority over other learned men consisted
chiefly in what may be called the art of thinking, the art of
using his mind; a certain continual power of seizing the useful
substance of all that he knew, and exhibiting it in a clear and
forcible manner; so that knowledge which we often see to be no
better than lumber in men of dull understanding, was in him
true, evident, and actual wisdom. His moral precepts are prac-
tical, for they are drawn from an intimate acquaintance with
human nature. His maxims carry conviction, for they are
founded on the basis of common-sense and a very attentive and
minute survey of real life. His mind was so full of imagery
that he might have been perpetually a poet; yet it is remarkable
that however rich his prose is in this respect, his poetical pieces,
1
## p. 2251 (#449) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2251
in general, have not much of that splendor, but are rather dis-
tinguished by strong sentiment and an acute observation, con-
veyed in harmonious and energetic verse, particularly in heroic
couplets.
Though usually grave and even awful in his deportment, he
possessed uncommon and peculiar powers of wit and humor; he
frequently indulged himself in colloquial pleasantry; and the
heartiest merriment was often enjoyed in his company, with this
great advantage, that as it was entirely free from any poisonous
tincture of vice or impiety, it was salutary to those who shared
in it. He had accustomed himself to such accuracy in his com-
mon conversation, that he at all times expressed his thoughts
with great force and an elegant choice of language, the effect of
which was aided by his having a loud voice and a slow deliber-
ate utterance. In him were united a most logical head with a
most fertile imagination, which gave him a most extraordinary
advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he
saw best for the moment. Exulting in his intellectual strength
and dexterity, he could when he pleased be the greatest soph-
ist that ever contended in the lists of declamation; and from
a spirit of contradiction, and a delight in showing his powers,
he would often maintain the wrong side with equal warmth and
ingenuity: so that when there was an audience, his real opinions
could seldom be gathered from his talk; though when he was in
company with a single friend, he would discuss a subject with
genuine fairness; but he was too conscientious to make error
permanent and pernicious by deliberately writing it; and in all
his numerous works he earnestly inculcated what appeared to
him to be the truth, his piety being constant and the ruling
principle of all his conduct.
Such was Samuel Johnson; a man whose talents, acquire-
ments, and virtues were so extraordinary, that the more his char-
acter is considered, the more he will be regarded by the present
age and by posterity with admiration and reverence.
## p. 2252 (#450) ###########################################
2252
PAUL BOURGET
(1852-)
RENCH by birth, born at Amiens of a Russian father and an
English mother, Paul Bourget inherited Anglo-Saxon as well
as Gallic intuitions. He is very proud of the cosmopolitan
spirit which exempts him from the usual French provincialism, and
has sought to develop it by travel and study. He endeavors to know
intimately the phases of life which he wishes to describe, and then
to treat them in the light of a large knowledge of many peoples.
Yet he feels a somewhat bitter realization that so general a view
as his own has necessarily an element
of weakness. He lacks convictions and
prejudices to express with whole-hearted
strength, and hence is always a dilettante.
His student life was passed at the Lycée
of Clermont, and later at the Collège de
Sainte-Barbe at Paris, where his scholar-
ship was rewarded by several prizes. But
his voracious reading of French and Eng-
lish poetry, fiction, and philosophy has
probably done more for him than scholastic
training. Like so many other novelists, he
began his literary life with journalism; and
PAUL BOURGET
in 1872 became collaborator on the Renais-
sance, living frugally meantime, and studying Paris from her cafés
and boulevards as any poor man may.
His first book, 'La Vie Inquiète' (Restless Life), a collection of
poems sad in tone, dainty in touch, echoed the French verses which
he loved best, but offered nothing very original. They show a tinge
of Baudelaire's fantastic love of morbid phases of life and beauty, and
also of Leconte de Lisle's exquisite phrasing. But Bourget lacks
poetic ardor, and in metre is always a little artificial. Although he
went on writing poetry for some years, he found few readers until
he turned to prose.
When the Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine'
appeared in 1883, the public were delighted with their original charm.
Taking five authors whom he knew and loved particularly,- Baude-
laire, Renan, Flaubert, Taine, and Stendhal,- he wrote a brilliant,
profoundly psychologic exposition of their minds and temperaments.
The scientific explanation was fervid with his own emotion over these
## p. 2253 (#451) ###########################################
PAUL BOURGET
2253
strong influences in his life, and thus comes indirectly as an inter-
pretation of himself. These studies, which he calls "a few notes
made to help the historian of the modern moral life in France during
the latter half of the nineteenth century," stand, as criticism, between
Brunetière's formal structure and Lemaître's appreciations. They
have been very popular, and Bourget has since written another vol-
ume of 'Nouveaux Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine,' and other
books of critical sketches called 'Études et Portraits. '
Certain qualities of his talent show forcibly in 'Sensations
d'Italie,' a delightful appreciation of beauty and sensuous charm.
The reader feels the author's joy close analysis, and his sensitive
discriminations. In 'Outre-Mer,' especially interesting to Americans
as a study of the United States, which he visited in 1894, he shows
the same receptivity to new feelings and new ideas. The book is
often ludicrously inaccurate, and fundamentally incomplete in that it
ignores the great middle class of our people, yet it is full of suggest-
ive comments on American character.
Most people know Bourget best as a novelist. As in criticism, his
method is psychologic dissection. Taking a set of men and women
who are individually interesting, he draws their environment with
careful detail and shows the reactions of their characters upon each
other. His subtlety of analysis comes out strongly in his pictures of
women, whose contradictory moods and emotional intuitions offer him
the refined complexities he loves. His first novel, 'L'Irréparable,'
lacks movement and is sometimes tedious in its over-elaboration. In
'Une Cruelle Énigme his strength is more evident. It is the story
of a young and high-minded man who discovers that the woman he
loves is unworthy, yet finds that he loves her notwithstanding. "Why
this love? " asks the author at the end of the book. "Why and whence
does it come? The question is without an answer, and like the falsity
of woman, like the weakness of man, like life itself, cruel, cruel
riddle. " Un Crime d'Amour,' one of his most popular novels, deals
with a woman who, being married to an uncongenial husband, falls
in love with a brilliant, heartless society man, with the usual result.
The crime is the hero's inability to understand the meaning of genu-
ine love. Mensonges' (Lies) is a striking picture of the endless
falsities of a Parisian woman of innocent Madonna-like beauty. It
was dramatized and played at the Vaudeville in 1889, but without
much success. 'Le Disciple' is an elaborate attempt to prove that
present scientific theories tend to corrupt manners and to encourage
pessimism. In 'Cosmopolis, a study of foreign life in Italy, Bourget
shows that the same passions dominate men, whatever their training.
From Dumas fils Bourget has learned to be a moralist with a
conscious wish to present society with object lessons. He himself
## p. 2254 (#452) ###########################################
PAUL BOURGET
2254
says, "A writer worthy to hold a pen has, as his first and last re-
quirement, to be a moralist. The moralist is the man who shows
life as it is, with its profound lessons of secret expiation which are
everywhere imprinted. To have shown the rancor of vice is to have
been a moralist. ”
Like most French novelists, he lacks humor. In their search for
happiness his characters suffer a great deal and know only temporary
ecstasy. They are often witty, but never genial.
His critics have said that his genius proves its own limitation, for
his analytic curiosity is apt to desert what is primitive and broadly
human in search of stimulus from the abnormal and out-of-the-way,
and there is lack of synthesis in his wealth of detail.
His literary
brethren are fond too of deriding his ardent appreciation of luxury
and wealth. He dwells upon niceties of toilet or the decorations of a
dinner-table with evident enjoyment. All social refinements are very
dear to him, and the moral struggles of fashionable men and women
far more interesting than the heart-aches of the working classes.
He is often called a pessimist, for his "heavy sadness of disil-
lusion"; but he is never bitter. Finding the universe incomprehensi-
ble, he stands baffled and passive, with a tender sympathy, almost an
envy, for those who still have faith. He is above all interesting as
a sane and characteristic product of the latest social conditions. His
is the tolerant, somewhat negative point of view of the man who
has found no new creed, yet disbelieves the old. Clarens says that
Bourget suffers from "the atrocious modern uneasiness which is
caused by regret that one can no longer believe, and dread of the
moral void. "
THE AMERICAN FAMILY
From 'Outre-Mer. Copyright 1894 and 1895, by James Gordon Bennett.
Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons
As
S THE American marriage appears to be above all a partner-
ship, so the American family appears to be more than
anything else an association, a sort of social camp, the
ties of which are more or less strong according to individual
sympathies, such as might exist between people not of the same
blood. I am certain, not from anecdotes but from experience,
that the friendship of brother and brother, or sister and sister,
is entirely elective. So it is with the relations between father
and son, mother and daughter. A young Frenchman much in
love with a New York girl said to me, in one of those moments
-
## p. 2255 (#453) ###########################################
PAUL BOURGET
2255
when the coldness of the woman you love drives you to be
cruelly frank:-
"She has so little heart that she went to the theatre five
weeks after her mother's death, and no one resented it. "
I knew that he was telling the truth. But what did it prove?
What do the inequalities permitted by the laws of inheritance
prove? Nothing, if not that our natural characteristics, instincts,
sensibilities, are not the same as those of the people of this
country. They have much less power of self-giving, much more
of personal reaction; and especially a much stronger will. Their
will rules their hearts as well as their minds. This seems to us
less tender. But are we good judges?
We must continually keep in mind this general want of asso-
ciation in family life if we would in any degree understand the
sort of soul-celibacy, if we may use the term, which the Amer-
ican woman keeps all through her married life. No more in this
second period of her life than in the first does love bear that
preponderating part which seems to us Frenchmen an essential
characteristic of the lot of woman. When a Parisian woman of
forty reviews her life, the story that memory tells her is the
story of her emotions. To an American woman of the same age
it is more often the story of her actions,- of what she calls,
by a word I have before cited, her experiences. She gained,
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, a conception of
her own self which was imposed upon her neither by her tra-
ditions—she has none; nor by the instructions of her parents —
they never gave her any; nor even by her own nature - for it
is characteristic of these easily "adaptable" minds that their
first instincts are chaotic and undetermined. They are like a
blank check, which the will undertakes to fill out. But what-
ever the will writes upon it, is written in letters that will never
be effaced. Action, action, always action,- this is the remorse-
less but unchanging device of such a woman. Whether she
seeks for a place in society, or is ambitious for artistic culture,
or addicts herself to sport, or organizes "classes," as they say,
for reading Browning, Emerson, or Shakespeare, with her friends;
whether she travels to Europe, India, or Japan, or gives an «< at
home" to have some young girl among her friends pour" tea
for her, be sure that she will be always and incessantly active,
indefatigably active, either in the lines of "refinement" or of
"excitement. "
-
<<
## p. 2256 (#454) ###########################################
2256
PAUL BOURGET
With what impressiveness these women utter both these
words! which we must not weary of returning to; for they per-
haps sum up the entire American soul. They are bandied about
in conversation like two formulæ, in which are revealed the per-
sistence of this creature, who, born of a stern race, and feeling
herself fine, wills to become finer and ever finer; who, reared
amid democratic surroundings, wills to become distinguished and
ever more distinguished; who, daughter of a land of enterprise,
loves to excite continually in herself the sensation of over-
strained nerves.
are the
When you see ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty like this, the character
of eccentricity, which you first found in them by comparison
with the women of Europe, disappears. A new type of feminine
attractiveness is revealed to you, less affecting than irritating,
enigmatic and slightly ambiguous by its indefinable blending of
supple grace and virile firmness, by the alliance of culture and
vigor, by the most thrilling nervous sensitiveness and the stur-
diest health. The true place of such a creature in this society
appears to you also, and the profound reason why these men,
themselves all action, leave these women free thus to act with
total independence. If it is permitted to apply an old legal
term to creatures so subtle, so delicate, these women
delegates to luxury in this utilitarian civilization. Their mis-
sion is to bring into it that which the American has not time to
create, and which he desires to have:-the flower of elegance,
something of beauty, and in a word, of aristocracy. They are
the nobility in this land of business, a nobility developed by the
very development of business; since the money which is made
in the offices comes at last to them, and manipulated by their
fingers, is transfigured, blossoming into precious decorations,
made intellectual in plays of fancy, in fact, unutilized. A
great artist, foremost of this epoch by the ardor of his efforts,
the conscientiousness of his study, and the sincerity of his vis-
ion, John Sargent, has shown what I have tried to express,
in a portrait I saw in an exhibition; that of a woman whose
name I do not know. It is a portrait such as the fifteenth-cen-
tury masters painted, who back of the individual found the real,
and back of the model a whole social order. The canvas might
be called The American Idol,' so representative is it.
The woman is standing, her feet side by side, her knees close
together, in an almost hieratic pose. Her body, rendered supple
-
-
-
## p. 2257 (#455) ###########################################
PAUL BOURGET
2257
by exercise, is sheathed-you might say molded-in a tight-
fitting black dress. Rubies, like drops of blood, sparkle on her
shoes. Her slender waist is encircled by a girdle of enormous
pearls, and from this dress, which makes an intensely dark back-
ground for the stony brilliance of the jewels, the arms and
shoulders shine out with another brilliance, that of a flower-like
flesh,-fine, white flesh, through which flows blood perpetually
invigorated by the air of the country and the ocean. The head,
intellectual and daring, with a countenance as of one who has
understood everything, has for a sort of aureole the vaguely
gilded design of one of those Renaissance stuffs which the
Venetians call soprarisso. The rounded arms, in which the mus-
cles can hardly be seen, are joined by the clasped hands, — firm
hands, the thumb almost too long, which might guide four
horses with the precision of an English coachman. It is the
picture of an energy at once delicate and invincible, momentarily
in repose; and all the Byzantine Madonna is in that face with
its wide-open eyes.
Yes, this woman is an idol, for whose service man labors,
which he has decked with the jewels of a queen, behind each
one of whose whims lie days and days spent in the ardent battle
of Wall Street. Frenzy of speculations in land, cities undertaken
and built by sheer force of millions, trains launched at full
speed over bridges built on a Babel-like sweep of arch, the
creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric cars, sliding
along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the dizzy ascent of
elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense wheat-fields.
of the West, its ranches, mines, colossal slaughter-houses,—all
the formidable traffic of this country of effort and struggle, all
its labor,- these are what have made possible this woman, this
living orchid, unexpected masterpiece of this civilization.
Did not the very painter consecrate to her his intense toil?
To be capable of such a picture, he must have absorbed some of
the ardor of the Spanish masters, caught the subtlety of the
great Italians, understood and practiced the curiosities of impres-
sionism, dreamed before the pictures in basilicas like Ravenna,
and read and thought. Ah, how much of culture, of reflection,
before one could fathom the secret depths of one's own race!
He has expressed one of the most essential characteristics of the
race,
the deification of woman, considered not as a Beatrice as
in Florence, nor as a courtesan as at Milan, but as a supreme
glory of the national spirit.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
IV-142
## p. 2258 (#456) ###########################################
2258
PAUL BOURGET
This woman can do without being loved. She has no need
of being loved. What she symbolizes is neither sensuality nor
tenderness. She is like a living object of art, the last fine work
of human skill, attesting that the Yankee, but yesterday despair-
ing, vanquished by the Old World, has been able to draw from
this savage world upon which fate has cast him a wholly new
civilization, incarnated in this woman, her luxury and her pride.
Everything is illuminated by this civilization, at the gaze of
these fathomless eyes, in the expression of which the painter
has succeeded in putting all the idealism of this country which
has no ideal; all that which perhaps will one day be its destruc-
tion, but up to the present time is still its greatness, a faith in
the human Will, absolute, unique, systematic, and indomitable.
Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
-
--
THE ARISTOCRATIC VISION OF M. RENAN
From the Study of M.
acquainted with microscopes knows that the more of them he
looks through, the less the object will appear. " "Why" (replied
the King), "this is not only telling an untruth, but telling it
clumsily; for if that be the case, every one who can look through
a microscope will be able to detect him. "
"I now" (said Johnson to his friends, when relating what
had passed) "began to consider that I was depreciating this
man in the estimation of his Sovereign, and thought it was
time for me to say something that might be more favorable. ”
He added, therefore, that Dr. Hill was notwithstanding a very
curious observer; and if he would have been contented to tell
the world no more than he knew, he might have been a very
considerable man, and needed not to have recourse to such
mean expedients to raise his reputation.
The King then talked of literary journals, mentioned particu-
larly the Journal des Savants, and asked Johnson if it was well
done. Johnson said it was formerly very well done, and gave
some account of the persons who began it, and carried it on for
some years; enlarging at the same time on the nature and use
of such works. The King asked him if it was well done now.
Johnson answered he had no reason to think that it was. The
King then asked him if there were any other literary journals.
published in this kingdom except the Monthly and Critical
Reviews; and on being answered there was no other, his Maj-
esty asked which of them was the best. Johnson answered that
the Monthly Review was done with most care, the Critical upon
## p. 2240 (#438) ###########################################
2240
JAMES BOSWELL
the best principles; adding that the authors of the Monthly
Review were enemies to the Church. This the King said he
was sorry to hear.
The conversation next turned on the Philosophical Trans-
actions, when Johnson observed that they had now a better
method of arranging their materials than formerly. "Ay" (said
the King), "they are obliged to Dr. Johnson for that;" for his
Majesty had heard and remembered the circumstance, which
Johnson himself had forgot.
His Majesty expressed a desire to have the literary biography
of this country ably executed, and proposed to Dr. Johnson to
undertake it. Johnson signified his readiness to comply with his
Majesty's wishes.
During the whole of this interview, Johnson talked to his
Majesty with profound respect, but still in his firm, manly man-
ner, with a sonorous voice, and never in that subdued tone which
is commonly used at the levee and in the drawing-room. After
the King withdrew, Johnson showed himself highly pleased with
his Majesty's conversation and gracious behavior. He said to
Mr. Barnard, "Sir, they may talk of the King as they will; but
he is the finest gentleman that I have ever seen. " And he
afterwards observed to Mr. Langton, "Sir, his manners are those
of as fine a gentleman as we may suppose Lewis the Fourteenth
or Charles the Second. "
At Sir Joshua Reynolds's, where a circle of Johnson's friends
were collected round him to hear his account of this memorable
conversation, Dr. Joseph Warton, in his frank and lively manner,
was very active in pressing him to mention the particulars.
"Come now, sir, this is an interesting matter; do favor us with
it. " Johnson, with great good humor, complied.
He told them:-"I found his Majesty wished I should talk,
and I made it my business to talk. I find it does a man good
to be talked to by his Sovereign. In the first place, a man can-
not be in a passion-" Here some question interrupted him;
which is to be regretted, as he certainly would have pointed out
and illustrated many circumstances of advantage, from being in
a situation where the powers of the mind are at once excited to
vigorous exertion and tempered by reverential awe.
Mr. Macpherson little knew the character of Dr. Johnson if
he supposed that he could be easily intimidated; for no man was
ever more remarkable for personal courage. He had indeed an
1
## p. 2241 (#439) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2241
awful dread of death, or rather "of something after death"; and
what rational man, who seriously thinks of quitting all that he
has ever known and going into a new and unknown state of
being, can be without that dread? But his fear was from reflec-
tion; his courage natural. His fear, in that one instance, was
the result of philosophical and religious consideration. He feared
death, but he feared nothing else, not even what might occasion
death. Many instances of his resolution may be mentioned. One
day, at Mr. Beauclerk's house in the country, when two large
dogs were fighting, he went up to them and beat them till they
separated; and at another time, when told of the danger there
was that a gun might burst if charged with many balls, he put
in six or seven and fired it off against a wall. Mr. Langton
told me that when they were swimming together near Oxford,
he cautioned Dr. Johnson against a pool which was reckoned
particularly dangerous; upon which Johnson directly swam into
it. He told me himself that one night he was attacked in the
street by four men, to whom he would not yield, but
cept them
all at bay till the watch came up and carried both him and
them to the round-house. In the play-house at Lichfield, as Mr.
Garrick informed me, Johnson having for a moment quitted a
chair which was placed for him between the side-scenes, a gen-
tleman took possession of it, and when Johnson on his return
civilly demanded his seat, rudely refused to give it up; upon
which Johnson laid hold of it and tossed him and the chair into
the pit. Foote, who so successfully revived the old comedy by
exhibiting living characters, had resolved to imitate Johnson on
the stage, expecting great profits from his ridicule of so cele-
brated a man. Johnson being informed of his intention, and
being at dinner at Mr. Thomas Davies's the bookseller, from
whom I had the story, he asked Mr. Davies "what was the
common price of an oak stick "; and being answered sixpence,
"Why then, sir" (said he), "give me leave to send your servant
to purchase a shilling one. I'll have a double quantity; for I am
told Foote means to take me off, as he calls it, and I am deter-
mined the fellow shall not do it with impunity. " Davies took care
to acquaint Foote of this, which effectually checked the wanton-
ness of the mimic. Mr. Macpherson's menaces made Johnson
provide himself with the same implement of defense; and had he
been attacked, I have no doubt that, old as he was, he would have
made his corporal prowess be felt as much as his intellectual.
IV-141
## p. 2242 (#440) ###########################################
2242
JAMES BOSWELL
Mr. Hector was so good as to accompany me to see the great
works of Mr. Bolton [Boulton], at a place which he has called
Soho, about two miles from Birmingham, which the very ingen-
ious proprietor showed me himself to the best advantage. I
wished Johnson had been with us; for it was a scene which I
should have been glad to contemplate by his light. The vastness
and the contrivance of some of the machinery would have
"matched his mighty mind. " I shall never forget Mr. Bolton's
expression to me, "I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to
have-power. " He had about seven hundred people at work.
I contemplated him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be
a father to his tribe. One of them came to him, complaining
grievously of his landlord for having distrained his goods.
"Your landlord is in the right, Smith" (said Bolton). "But I'll
tell you what: find you a friend who will lay down one-half of
your rent, and I'll lay down the other half; and you shall have
your goods again. "
From Mr. Hector I now learned many particulars of Dr.
Johnson's early life, which, with others that he gave me at dif-
ferent times since, have contributed to the formation of this
work.
Dr. Johnson said to me in the morning, "You will see, sir, at
Mr. Hector's, his sister Mrs. Careless, a clergyman's widow.
She was the first woman with whom I was in love. It dropped
out of my head imperceptibly; but she and I will always have a
kindness for each other. " He laughed at the notion that a man
can never really be in love but once, and considered it as a mere
romantic fancy.
On our return from Mr. Bolton's, Mr. Hector took me to his
house, where we found Johnson sitting placidly at tea with his
first love; who, though now advanced in years, was a genteel
woman, very agreeable and well-bred,
Johnson lamented to Mr. Hector the state of one of their
schoolfellows, Mr. Charles Congreve, a clergyman, which he thus
described: "He obtained, I believe, considerable preferment in
Ireland, but now lives in London, quite as a valetudinarian,
afraid to go into any house but his own. He takes a short air-
ing in his post-chaise every day. He has an elderly woman,
whom he calls cousin, who lives with him, and jogs his elbow
when his glass has stood too long empty, and encourages him in
drinking, in which he is very willing to be encouraged; not that
## p. 2243 (#441) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2243
he gets drunk, for he is a very pious man, but he is always
muddy. He confesses to one bottle of port every day, and he
probably drinks more. He is quite unsocial; his conversation is
quite monosyllabical; and when at my last visit I asked him
what o'clock it was, that signal of my departure had so pleasing
an effect upon him that he sprung up to look at his watch like
a greyhound bounding at a hare. " When Johnson took leave of
Mr. Hector, he said, "Don't grow like Congreve; nor let me
grow like him, when you are near me. "
When he talked again of Mrs. Careless to-night, he seemed to
have had his affection revived; for he said, "If I had married
her, it might have been as happy for me. "
Boswell - Pray, sir, do you not suppose that there are fifty
women in the world, with any one of whom a man may be as
happy as with any one woman in particular?
Johnson-Ay, sir, fifty thousand.
Boswell-Then, sir, you are not of opinion with some that
imagine that certain men and certain women are made for each
other; and that they cannot be happy if they miss their counter-
parts.
Fohnson To be sure not, sir. I believe marriages would in
general be as happy, and often more so, if they were all made
by the Lord Chancellor, upon a due consideration of the char-
acters and circumstances, without the parties having any choice
in the matter.
-
I am now to record a very curious incident in Dr. Johnson's
life which fell under my own observation; of which pars magna
fui, and which I am persuaded will, with the liberal-minded, be
much to his credit.
My desire of being acquainted with celebrated men of every
description had made me, much about the same time, obtain an
introduction to Dr. Samuel Johnson and to John Wilkes, Esq. .
Two men more different could perhaps not be selected out of all
mankind. They had even attacked one another with some asperity
in their writings; yet I lived in habits of friendship with both.
I could fully relish the excellence of each; for I have ever
delighted in that intellectual chymistry which can separate good
qualities from evil in the same person.
Sir John Pringle, "mine own friend and my father's friend,"
between whom and Dr. Johnson I in vain wished to establish
## p. 2244 (#442) ###########################################
2244
JAMES BOSWELL
an acquaintance, as I respected and lived in intimacy with both
of them, observed to me once very ingeniously, "It is not in
friendship as in mathematics, where two things, each equal to a
third, are equal between themselves. You agree with Johnson
as a middle quality, and you agree with me as a middle quality;
but Johnson and I should not agree. " Sir John was not suffi-
ciently flexible, so I desisted: knowing indeed that the repulsion
was equally strong on the part of Johnson; who, I know not
from what cause unless his being a Scotchman, had formed a
very erroneous opinion of Sir John. But I conceived an irre-
sistible wish, if possible, to bring Dr. Johnson and Mr. Wilkes
together. How to manage it, was a nice and difficult matter.
My worthy booksellers and friends, Messieurs Dilly in the
Poultry, at whose hospitable and well-covered table I have seen
a greater number of literary men than at any other except that
of Sir Joshua Reynolds, had invited me to meet Mr. Wilkes and
some more gentlemen on Wednesday, May 15th. "Pray" (said I),
"let us have Dr. Johnson. "—"What, with Mr. Wilkes? not for
the world" (said Mr. Edward Dilly): "Dr. Johnson would never
forgive me. "-"Come" (said I), "if you'll let me negotiate for
you, I will be answerable that all shall go well. "
Dilly-Nay, if you will take it upon you, I am sure I shall
be very happy to see them both here.
Notwithstanding the high veneration which I entertained for
Dr. Johnson, I was sensible that he was sometimes a little actu-
ated by the spirit of contradiction, and by means of that I
hoped I should gain my point. I was persuaded that if I had
come upon him with a direct proposal, “Sir, will you dine in
company with Jack Wilkes? " he would have flown into a pas-
sion, and would probably have answered, "Dine with Jack
Wilkes, sir! I'd as
soon dine with Jack Ketch. " I therefore,
while we were sitting quietly by ourselves at his house in an
evening, took occasion to open my plan thus:-
―――――――――
"Mr. Dilly, sir, sends his respectful compliments to you, and
would be happy if you would do him the honor to dine with
him on Wednesday next along with me, as I must soon go to
Scotland. "
Johnson-Sir, I am obliged to Mr. Dilly. I will wait
upon him
-
Boswell-Provided, sir, I suppose, that the company which
he is to have is agreeable to you.
## p. 2245 (#443) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2245
Johnson - What do you mean, sir? What do you take me
for? Do you think I am so ignorant of the world as to imagine
that I am to prescribe to a gentleman what company he is to
have at his table?
Boswell-I beg your pardon, sir, for wishing to prevent you
from meeting people whom you might not like. Perhaps he may
have some of what he calls his patriotic friends with him.
Johnson-Well, sir, and what then? What care I for his
patriotic friends? Poh!
Boswell-I should not be surprised to find Jack Wilkes
there.
Johnson-And if Jack Wilkes should be there, what is that
to me, sir? My dear friend, let us have no more of this. I am
sorry to be angry with you; but really it is treating me
strangely to talk to me as if I could not meet any company
whatever, occasionally.
But you
Thus I secured him, and told Dilly that he would find him
very well pleased to be one of his guests on the day appointed.
Upon the much-expected Wednesday I called on him about
half an hour before dinner, as I often did when we were to
dine out together, to see that he was ready in time, and to ac-
company him.
I found him buffeting his books, as upon a
former occasion, covered with dust, and making no preparation
for going abroad. "How is this, sir? " (said I).
"Don't you
recollect that you are to dine at Mr. Dilly's? "
Johnson - Sir, I did not think of going to Dilly's: it went
out of my head. I have ordered dinner at home with Mrs.
Williams.
Boswell-Pray forgive me, sir: I meant well.
shall meet whoever comes, for me.
Boswell-But, my dear sir, you know you were engaged to
Mr. Dilly, and I told him so. He will expect you, and will be
much disappointed if you don't come.
Johnson-You must talk to
Mrs. Williams about this.
Here was a sad dilemma. I feared that what I was so con-
fident I had secured, would yet be frustrated. He had accus-
tomed himself to show Mrs. Williams such a degree of humane
attention as frequently imposed some restraint upon him; and
I knew that if she should be obstinate, he would not stir. I
hastened down-stairs to the blind lady's room, and told her I
was in great uneasiness, for Dr. Johnson had engaged to me to
## p. 2246 (#444) ###########################################
2246
JAMES BOSWELL
dine this day at Mr. Dilly's, but that he had told me he had
forgotten his engagement, and had ordered dinner at home.
"Yes, sir" (said she, pretty peevishly), "Dr. Johnson is to dine
at home. " "Madam" (said I), "his respect for you is such that I
know he will not leave you, unless you absolutely desire it. But
as you have so much of his company, I hope you will be good
enough to forego it for a day; as Mr. Dilly is a very worthy
man, has frequently had agreeable parties at his house for Dr.
Johnson, and will be vexed if the Doctor neglects him to-day.
And then, madam, be pleased to consider my situation: I carried
the message, and I assured Mr. Dilly that Dr. Johnson was to
come; and no doubt he has made a dinner, and invited a com-
pany, and boasted of the honor he expected to have. I shall be
quite disgraced if the Doctor is not there. ”
She gradually softened to my solicitations, which were cer-
tainly as earnest as most entreaties to ladies upon any occasion,
and was graciously pleased to empower me to tell Dr. Johnson
"that, all things considered, she thought he should certainly go. "
I flew back to him, still in dust, and careless of what should be
the event, "indifferent in his choice to go or stay;" but as soon
as I had announced to him Mrs. Williams's consent, he roared,
"Frank, a clean shirt," and was very soon dressed. When I had
him fairly seated in a hackney-coach with me, I exulted as much
as a fortune-hunter who has got an heiress into a post-chaise
with him to set out for Gretna Green.
When we entered Mr. Dilly's drawing-room, he found himself
in the midst of a company he did not know. I kept myself
snug and silent, watching how he would conduct himself. I
observed him whispering to Mr. Dilly, "Who is that gentleman,
sir? " "Mr. Arthur Lee. " Johnson - "Too, too, too" (under his
breath), which was one of his habitual mutterings. Mr.
Arthur
Lee could not but be very obnoxious to Johnson, for he was
not only a patriot but an American. He was afterwards minister
from the United States at the court of Madrid. "And who is
the gentleman in lace? " "Mr. Wilkes, sir. " This information
confounded him still more; he had some difficulty to restrain
himself, and taking up a book, sat down upon a window-seat
and read, or at least kept his eye upon it intently for some
time, till he composed himself. His feelings, I dare say, were
awkward enough. But he no doubt recollected his having rated
me for supposing that he could be at all disconcerted by any
## p. 2247 (#445) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2247
company, and he therefore resolutely set himself to behave quite
as an easy man of the world, who could adapt himself at once
to the disposition and manners of those whom he might chance
to meet.
The cheering sound of "Dinner is upon the table» dissolved
his reverie, and we all sat down without any symptom of ill-
humor. There were present, besides Mr. Wilkes, and Mr. Arthur
Lee, who was an old companion of mine when he studied
physics at Edinburgh, Mr. (now Sir John) Miller, Dr. Lettson,
and Mr. Slater the druggist. Mr. Wilkes placed himself next to
Dr. Johnson, and behaved to him with so much attention and
politeness that he gained upon him insensibly. No man eat
more heartily than Johnson, or loved better what was nice and
delicate. Mr. Wilkes was very assiduous in helping him to some
fine veal. "Pray give me leave, sir-It is better here- A little
of the brown-Some fat, sir-A little of the stuffing- Some
gravy- Let me have the pleasure of giving you some butter—
Allow me to recommend a squeeze of this orange; or the lemon,
perhaps, may have more zest. " "Sir, sir, I am obliged to you,
sir," cried Johnson, bowing, and turning his head to him with a
look for some time of "surly virtue," but in a short while of
complacency.
―――
-
Sir William Forbes writes to me thus: "I inclose the
'Round Robin. ' This jeu d'esprit took its rise one day at din-
ner at our friend Sir Joshua Reynolds's. All the company present
except myself were friends and acquaintances of Dr. Goldsmith.
The Epitaph written for him by Dr. Johnson became the subject
of conversation, and various emendations were suggested, which
it was agreed should be suggested to the Doctor's consideration.
But the question was, who should have the courage to propose
them to him? At last it was hinted that there could be no way
so good as that of a 'Round Robin,' as the sailors call it, which
they make use of when they enter into a conspiracy, so as not
to let it be known who puts his name first or last to the paper.
This proposition was instantly assented to; and Dr. Barnard,
Dean of Derry, now Bishop of Killahoe, drew up an address to
Dr. Johnson on the occasion, replete with wit and humor, but
which it was feared the Doctor might think treated the subject.
with too much levity. Mr. Burke then proposed the address as
—
## p. 2248 (#446) ###########################################
2248
JAMES BOSWELL
it stands in the paper in writing, to which I had the honor to
officiate as clerk.
"Sir Joshua agreed to carry it to Dr. Johnson, who received
it with much good humor, and desired Sir Joshua to tell the
gentlemen that he would alter the Epitaph in any manner they
pleased, as to the sense of it; but he would never consent to dis-
grace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription.
"I consider this 'Round Robin' as a species of literary
curiosity worth preserving, as it marks in a certain degree Dr.
Johnson's character. "
Sir William Forbes's observation, is very just. The anecdote
now related proves in the strongest manner the reverence and
awe with which Johnson was regarded by some of the most
eminent men of his time, in various departments, and even by
such of them as lived most with him; while it also confirms what
I have again and again inculcated, that he was by no means of
that ferocious and irascible character which has been ignorantly
imagined.
This hasty composition is also one to be remarked as one of
the thousand instances which evince the extraordinary prompti-
tude of Mr. Burke; who, while he is equal to the greatest things,
can adorn the least; can with equal facility embrace the vast and
complicated speculations of politics or the ingenious topics of
literary investigation.
The character of Samuel Johnson has, I trust, been so devel-
oped in the course of this work that they who have honored it
with a perusal may be considered as well acquainted with him.
As, however, it may be expected that I should collect into one
view the capital and distinguishing features of this extraordinary
man, I shall endeavor to acquit myself of that part of my bio-
graphical undertaking, however difficult it may be to do that
which many of my readers will do better for themselves.
His figure was large and well formed, and his countenance of
the cast of an ancient statue; yet his appearance was rendered
strange and somewhat uncouth by convulsive cramps, by the
scars of that distemper which it was once imagined the royal
touch could cure, and by a slovenly mode of dress. He had the
use only of one eye; yet so much does mind govern and even
supply the deficiency of organs, that his visual perceptions, as far
as they extended, were uncommonly quick and accurate. So
morbid was his temperament that he never knew the natural joy
## p. 2249 (#447) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2249
of a free and vigorous use of his limbs; when he walked, it was
like the struggling gait of one in fetters; when he rode, he had
no command or direction of his horse, but was carried as if in a
balloon. That with his constitution and habits of life he should
have lived seventy-five years, is a proof that an inherent vivida
vis is a powerful preservative of the human frame.
Man is in general made up of contradictory qualities: and
these will ever show themselves in strange succession where a
consistency in appearance at least, if not in reality, has not been
attained by long habits of philosophical discipline. In propor-
tion to the native vigor of the mind, the contradictory qualities
will be the more prominent, and more difficult to be adjusted;
and therefore we are not to wonder that Johnson exhibited an
eminent example of this remark which I have made upon human
nature.
At different times he seemed a different man in some re-
spects; not, however, in any great or essential article, upon
which he had fully employed his mind and settled certain prin-
ciples of duty, but only in his manners, and in the display of
argument and fancy in his talk. He was prone to superstition,
but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him
to a belief of the marvelous and the mysterious, his vigorous
reason examined the evidence with jealousy. He was a sincere
and zealous Christian, of high Church-of-England and monarchical
principles, which he would not tamely suffer to be questioned;
and had perhaps at an early period narrowed his mind some-
what too much, both as to religion and politics. His being
impressed with the danger of extreme latitude in either, though
he was of a very independent spirit, occasioned his appearing
somewhat unfavorable to the prevalence of that noble freedom
of sentiment which is the best possession of man. Nor can it
be denied that he had many prejudices; which, however, fre-
quently suggested many of his pointed sayings, that rather show
a playfulness of fancy than any settled malignity. He was
steady and inflexible in maintaining the obligations of religion
and morality, both from a regard for the order of society, and
from a veneration for the Great Source of all order: correct.
nay, stern-in his taste; hard to please, and easily offended;
impetuous and irritable in his temper, but of a most humane
and benevolent heart, which showed itself not only in a most
liberal charity, as far as his circumstances would allow, but in a
## p. 2250 (#448) ###########################################
2250
JAMES BOSWELL
thousand instances of active benevolence. He was afflicted with
a bodily disease which made him often restless and fretful; and
with a constitutional melancholy, the clouds of which darkened
the brightness of his fancy, and gave a gloomy cast to his whole
course of thinking. We therefore ought not to wonder at his
sallies of impatience and passion at any time, especially when
provoked by obtrusive ignorance or presuming petulance; and
allowance must be made for his uttering hasty and satirical sal-
lies even against his best friends. And surely, when it is
considered that "amidst sickness and sorrow" he exerted his
faculties in so many works for the benefit of mankind, and par-
ticularly that he achieved the great and admirable Dictionary of
our language, we must be astonished at his resolution.
The solemn text, "Of him to whom much is given, much is
expected," seems to have been ever present to his mind in a
rigorous sense, and to have made him dissatisfied with his labors
and acts of goodness, however comparatively great; so that the
unavoidable consciousness of his superiority was in that respect
a cause of disquiet. He suffered so much from this, and from
the gloom which perpetually haunted him and made solitude
frightful, that it may be said of him, "If in this life only he
had hope, he was of all men most miserable. " He loved praise
when it was brought to him, but was too proud to seek for it.
He was somewhat susceptible of flattery. As he was general
and unconfined in his studies, he cannot be considered as master
of any one particular science; but he had accumulated a vast
and various collection of learning and knowledge, which was so
arranged in his mind as to be ever in readiness to be brought
forth. But his superiority over other learned men consisted
chiefly in what may be called the art of thinking, the art of
using his mind; a certain continual power of seizing the useful
substance of all that he knew, and exhibiting it in a clear and
forcible manner; so that knowledge which we often see to be no
better than lumber in men of dull understanding, was in him
true, evident, and actual wisdom. His moral precepts are prac-
tical, for they are drawn from an intimate acquaintance with
human nature. His maxims carry conviction, for they are
founded on the basis of common-sense and a very attentive and
minute survey of real life. His mind was so full of imagery
that he might have been perpetually a poet; yet it is remarkable
that however rich his prose is in this respect, his poetical pieces,
1
## p. 2251 (#449) ###########################################
JAMES BOSWELL
2251
in general, have not much of that splendor, but are rather dis-
tinguished by strong sentiment and an acute observation, con-
veyed in harmonious and energetic verse, particularly in heroic
couplets.
Though usually grave and even awful in his deportment, he
possessed uncommon and peculiar powers of wit and humor; he
frequently indulged himself in colloquial pleasantry; and the
heartiest merriment was often enjoyed in his company, with this
great advantage, that as it was entirely free from any poisonous
tincture of vice or impiety, it was salutary to those who shared
in it. He had accustomed himself to such accuracy in his com-
mon conversation, that he at all times expressed his thoughts
with great force and an elegant choice of language, the effect of
which was aided by his having a loud voice and a slow deliber-
ate utterance. In him were united a most logical head with a
most fertile imagination, which gave him a most extraordinary
advantage in arguing; for he could reason close or wide, as he
saw best for the moment. Exulting in his intellectual strength
and dexterity, he could when he pleased be the greatest soph-
ist that ever contended in the lists of declamation; and from
a spirit of contradiction, and a delight in showing his powers,
he would often maintain the wrong side with equal warmth and
ingenuity: so that when there was an audience, his real opinions
could seldom be gathered from his talk; though when he was in
company with a single friend, he would discuss a subject with
genuine fairness; but he was too conscientious to make error
permanent and pernicious by deliberately writing it; and in all
his numerous works he earnestly inculcated what appeared to
him to be the truth, his piety being constant and the ruling
principle of all his conduct.
Such was Samuel Johnson; a man whose talents, acquire-
ments, and virtues were so extraordinary, that the more his char-
acter is considered, the more he will be regarded by the present
age and by posterity with admiration and reverence.
## p. 2252 (#450) ###########################################
2252
PAUL BOURGET
(1852-)
RENCH by birth, born at Amiens of a Russian father and an
English mother, Paul Bourget inherited Anglo-Saxon as well
as Gallic intuitions. He is very proud of the cosmopolitan
spirit which exempts him from the usual French provincialism, and
has sought to develop it by travel and study. He endeavors to know
intimately the phases of life which he wishes to describe, and then
to treat them in the light of a large knowledge of many peoples.
Yet he feels a somewhat bitter realization that so general a view
as his own has necessarily an element
of weakness. He lacks convictions and
prejudices to express with whole-hearted
strength, and hence is always a dilettante.
His student life was passed at the Lycée
of Clermont, and later at the Collège de
Sainte-Barbe at Paris, where his scholar-
ship was rewarded by several prizes. But
his voracious reading of French and Eng-
lish poetry, fiction, and philosophy has
probably done more for him than scholastic
training. Like so many other novelists, he
began his literary life with journalism; and
PAUL BOURGET
in 1872 became collaborator on the Renais-
sance, living frugally meantime, and studying Paris from her cafés
and boulevards as any poor man may.
His first book, 'La Vie Inquiète' (Restless Life), a collection of
poems sad in tone, dainty in touch, echoed the French verses which
he loved best, but offered nothing very original. They show a tinge
of Baudelaire's fantastic love of morbid phases of life and beauty, and
also of Leconte de Lisle's exquisite phrasing. But Bourget lacks
poetic ardor, and in metre is always a little artificial. Although he
went on writing poetry for some years, he found few readers until
he turned to prose.
When the Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine'
appeared in 1883, the public were delighted with their original charm.
Taking five authors whom he knew and loved particularly,- Baude-
laire, Renan, Flaubert, Taine, and Stendhal,- he wrote a brilliant,
profoundly psychologic exposition of their minds and temperaments.
The scientific explanation was fervid with his own emotion over these
## p. 2253 (#451) ###########################################
PAUL BOURGET
2253
strong influences in his life, and thus comes indirectly as an inter-
pretation of himself. These studies, which he calls "a few notes
made to help the historian of the modern moral life in France during
the latter half of the nineteenth century," stand, as criticism, between
Brunetière's formal structure and Lemaître's appreciations. They
have been very popular, and Bourget has since written another vol-
ume of 'Nouveaux Essais de Psychologie Contemporaine,' and other
books of critical sketches called 'Études et Portraits. '
Certain qualities of his talent show forcibly in 'Sensations
d'Italie,' a delightful appreciation of beauty and sensuous charm.
The reader feels the author's joy close analysis, and his sensitive
discriminations. In 'Outre-Mer,' especially interesting to Americans
as a study of the United States, which he visited in 1894, he shows
the same receptivity to new feelings and new ideas. The book is
often ludicrously inaccurate, and fundamentally incomplete in that it
ignores the great middle class of our people, yet it is full of suggest-
ive comments on American character.
Most people know Bourget best as a novelist. As in criticism, his
method is psychologic dissection. Taking a set of men and women
who are individually interesting, he draws their environment with
careful detail and shows the reactions of their characters upon each
other. His subtlety of analysis comes out strongly in his pictures of
women, whose contradictory moods and emotional intuitions offer him
the refined complexities he loves. His first novel, 'L'Irréparable,'
lacks movement and is sometimes tedious in its over-elaboration. In
'Une Cruelle Énigme his strength is more evident. It is the story
of a young and high-minded man who discovers that the woman he
loves is unworthy, yet finds that he loves her notwithstanding. "Why
this love? " asks the author at the end of the book. "Why and whence
does it come? The question is without an answer, and like the falsity
of woman, like the weakness of man, like life itself, cruel, cruel
riddle. " Un Crime d'Amour,' one of his most popular novels, deals
with a woman who, being married to an uncongenial husband, falls
in love with a brilliant, heartless society man, with the usual result.
The crime is the hero's inability to understand the meaning of genu-
ine love. Mensonges' (Lies) is a striking picture of the endless
falsities of a Parisian woman of innocent Madonna-like beauty. It
was dramatized and played at the Vaudeville in 1889, but without
much success. 'Le Disciple' is an elaborate attempt to prove that
present scientific theories tend to corrupt manners and to encourage
pessimism. In 'Cosmopolis, a study of foreign life in Italy, Bourget
shows that the same passions dominate men, whatever their training.
From Dumas fils Bourget has learned to be a moralist with a
conscious wish to present society with object lessons. He himself
## p. 2254 (#452) ###########################################
PAUL BOURGET
2254
says, "A writer worthy to hold a pen has, as his first and last re-
quirement, to be a moralist. The moralist is the man who shows
life as it is, with its profound lessons of secret expiation which are
everywhere imprinted. To have shown the rancor of vice is to have
been a moralist. ”
Like most French novelists, he lacks humor. In their search for
happiness his characters suffer a great deal and know only temporary
ecstasy. They are often witty, but never genial.
His critics have said that his genius proves its own limitation, for
his analytic curiosity is apt to desert what is primitive and broadly
human in search of stimulus from the abnormal and out-of-the-way,
and there is lack of synthesis in his wealth of detail.
His literary
brethren are fond too of deriding his ardent appreciation of luxury
and wealth. He dwells upon niceties of toilet or the decorations of a
dinner-table with evident enjoyment. All social refinements are very
dear to him, and the moral struggles of fashionable men and women
far more interesting than the heart-aches of the working classes.
He is often called a pessimist, for his "heavy sadness of disil-
lusion"; but he is never bitter. Finding the universe incomprehensi-
ble, he stands baffled and passive, with a tender sympathy, almost an
envy, for those who still have faith. He is above all interesting as
a sane and characteristic product of the latest social conditions. His
is the tolerant, somewhat negative point of view of the man who
has found no new creed, yet disbelieves the old. Clarens says that
Bourget suffers from "the atrocious modern uneasiness which is
caused by regret that one can no longer believe, and dread of the
moral void. "
THE AMERICAN FAMILY
From 'Outre-Mer. Copyright 1894 and 1895, by James Gordon Bennett.
Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons
As
S THE American marriage appears to be above all a partner-
ship, so the American family appears to be more than
anything else an association, a sort of social camp, the
ties of which are more or less strong according to individual
sympathies, such as might exist between people not of the same
blood. I am certain, not from anecdotes but from experience,
that the friendship of brother and brother, or sister and sister,
is entirely elective. So it is with the relations between father
and son, mother and daughter. A young Frenchman much in
love with a New York girl said to me, in one of those moments
-
## p. 2255 (#453) ###########################################
PAUL BOURGET
2255
when the coldness of the woman you love drives you to be
cruelly frank:-
"She has so little heart that she went to the theatre five
weeks after her mother's death, and no one resented it. "
I knew that he was telling the truth. But what did it prove?
What do the inequalities permitted by the laws of inheritance
prove? Nothing, if not that our natural characteristics, instincts,
sensibilities, are not the same as those of the people of this
country. They have much less power of self-giving, much more
of personal reaction; and especially a much stronger will. Their
will rules their hearts as well as their minds. This seems to us
less tender. But are we good judges?
We must continually keep in mind this general want of asso-
ciation in family life if we would in any degree understand the
sort of soul-celibacy, if we may use the term, which the Amer-
ican woman keeps all through her married life. No more in this
second period of her life than in the first does love bear that
preponderating part which seems to us Frenchmen an essential
characteristic of the lot of woman. When a Parisian woman of
forty reviews her life, the story that memory tells her is the
story of her emotions. To an American woman of the same age
it is more often the story of her actions,- of what she calls,
by a word I have before cited, her experiences. She gained,
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, a conception of
her own self which was imposed upon her neither by her tra-
ditions—she has none; nor by the instructions of her parents —
they never gave her any; nor even by her own nature - for it
is characteristic of these easily "adaptable" minds that their
first instincts are chaotic and undetermined. They are like a
blank check, which the will undertakes to fill out. But what-
ever the will writes upon it, is written in letters that will never
be effaced. Action, action, always action,- this is the remorse-
less but unchanging device of such a woman. Whether she
seeks for a place in society, or is ambitious for artistic culture,
or addicts herself to sport, or organizes "classes," as they say,
for reading Browning, Emerson, or Shakespeare, with her friends;
whether she travels to Europe, India, or Japan, or gives an «< at
home" to have some young girl among her friends pour" tea
for her, be sure that she will be always and incessantly active,
indefatigably active, either in the lines of "refinement" or of
"excitement. "
-
<<
## p. 2256 (#454) ###########################################
2256
PAUL BOURGET
With what impressiveness these women utter both these
words! which we must not weary of returning to; for they per-
haps sum up the entire American soul. They are bandied about
in conversation like two formulæ, in which are revealed the per-
sistence of this creature, who, born of a stern race, and feeling
herself fine, wills to become finer and ever finer; who, reared
amid democratic surroundings, wills to become distinguished and
ever more distinguished; who, daughter of a land of enterprise,
loves to excite continually in herself the sensation of over-
strained nerves.
are the
When you see ten, fifteen, thirty, fifty like this, the character
of eccentricity, which you first found in them by comparison
with the women of Europe, disappears. A new type of feminine
attractiveness is revealed to you, less affecting than irritating,
enigmatic and slightly ambiguous by its indefinable blending of
supple grace and virile firmness, by the alliance of culture and
vigor, by the most thrilling nervous sensitiveness and the stur-
diest health. The true place of such a creature in this society
appears to you also, and the profound reason why these men,
themselves all action, leave these women free thus to act with
total independence. If it is permitted to apply an old legal
term to creatures so subtle, so delicate, these women
delegates to luxury in this utilitarian civilization. Their mis-
sion is to bring into it that which the American has not time to
create, and which he desires to have:-the flower of elegance,
something of beauty, and in a word, of aristocracy. They are
the nobility in this land of business, a nobility developed by the
very development of business; since the money which is made
in the offices comes at last to them, and manipulated by their
fingers, is transfigured, blossoming into precious decorations,
made intellectual in plays of fancy, in fact, unutilized. A
great artist, foremost of this epoch by the ardor of his efforts,
the conscientiousness of his study, and the sincerity of his vis-
ion, John Sargent, has shown what I have tried to express,
in a portrait I saw in an exhibition; that of a woman whose
name I do not know. It is a portrait such as the fifteenth-cen-
tury masters painted, who back of the individual found the real,
and back of the model a whole social order. The canvas might
be called The American Idol,' so representative is it.
The woman is standing, her feet side by side, her knees close
together, in an almost hieratic pose. Her body, rendered supple
-
-
-
## p. 2257 (#455) ###########################################
PAUL BOURGET
2257
by exercise, is sheathed-you might say molded-in a tight-
fitting black dress. Rubies, like drops of blood, sparkle on her
shoes. Her slender waist is encircled by a girdle of enormous
pearls, and from this dress, which makes an intensely dark back-
ground for the stony brilliance of the jewels, the arms and
shoulders shine out with another brilliance, that of a flower-like
flesh,-fine, white flesh, through which flows blood perpetually
invigorated by the air of the country and the ocean. The head,
intellectual and daring, with a countenance as of one who has
understood everything, has for a sort of aureole the vaguely
gilded design of one of those Renaissance stuffs which the
Venetians call soprarisso. The rounded arms, in which the mus-
cles can hardly be seen, are joined by the clasped hands, — firm
hands, the thumb almost too long, which might guide four
horses with the precision of an English coachman. It is the
picture of an energy at once delicate and invincible, momentarily
in repose; and all the Byzantine Madonna is in that face with
its wide-open eyes.
Yes, this woman is an idol, for whose service man labors,
which he has decked with the jewels of a queen, behind each
one of whose whims lie days and days spent in the ardent battle
of Wall Street. Frenzy of speculations in land, cities undertaken
and built by sheer force of millions, trains launched at full
speed over bridges built on a Babel-like sweep of arch, the
creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric cars, sliding
along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the dizzy ascent of
elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense wheat-fields.
of the West, its ranches, mines, colossal slaughter-houses,—all
the formidable traffic of this country of effort and struggle, all
its labor,- these are what have made possible this woman, this
living orchid, unexpected masterpiece of this civilization.
Did not the very painter consecrate to her his intense toil?
To be capable of such a picture, he must have absorbed some of
the ardor of the Spanish masters, caught the subtlety of the
great Italians, understood and practiced the curiosities of impres-
sionism, dreamed before the pictures in basilicas like Ravenna,
and read and thought. Ah, how much of culture, of reflection,
before one could fathom the secret depths of one's own race!
He has expressed one of the most essential characteristics of the
race,
the deification of woman, considered not as a Beatrice as
in Florence, nor as a courtesan as at Milan, but as a supreme
glory of the national spirit.
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IV-142
## p. 2258 (#456) ###########################################
2258
PAUL BOURGET
This woman can do without being loved. She has no need
of being loved. What she symbolizes is neither sensuality nor
tenderness. She is like a living object of art, the last fine work
of human skill, attesting that the Yankee, but yesterday despair-
ing, vanquished by the Old World, has been able to draw from
this savage world upon which fate has cast him a wholly new
civilization, incarnated in this woman, her luxury and her pride.
Everything is illuminated by this civilization, at the gaze of
these fathomless eyes, in the expression of which the painter
has succeeded in putting all the idealism of this country which
has no ideal; all that which perhaps will one day be its destruc-
tion, but up to the present time is still its greatness, a faith in
the human Will, absolute, unique, systematic, and indomitable.
Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
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THE ARISTOCRATIC VISION OF M. RENAN
From the Study of M.
