Essay on Biography Author:Thomas Carlyle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Boswell's Life of Johnson WE have next a word to say of James Bos- well. Boswell has already been much commented upon it ; but rather in the way of censure an... more »d vituperation than of true recognition. He was a man that brought himself much before the world ; confessed that he eagerly coveted fame, or if that were not possible, notoriety ; of which latter as he gained far more than seemed his due, the public were incited, not only by their natural love of scandal, but by a special ground of envy, to say whatever ill of him could be said. Out of the fifteen millions that then lived, and had bed and board, in the British Islands, this man has provided us a greater pleasure than any other individual, at whose cost we now enjoy ourselves ; perhaps has done us a greater service than can be specially attributed to more than two or three : yet, ungrateful that we are, no written or spoken eulogy of James Boswell anywhere exists ; his recompense in solid pudding (so far as copyright went) was not excessive; and as for theempty praise, it has altogether been denied him. Men are unwiser than children ; they do not know the hand that feeds them. Frasers Magazine, 1832. Boswell was a person whose mean or bad qualities lay open to the general eye ; visible, palpable to the dullest. His good qualities, again, belonged not to the Time he lived in ; were far from common then ; indeed, in such a degree, were almost unexampled ; not recognizable therefore by every on ; nay, apt even (so strange had they grown) to be confounded with the very vices they lay contiguous to, and had sprung out of. That he was a wine-bibber and gross liver ; gluttonously fond of whatever would yield him a little solacement, were it only of a stomachic character, is undeniable enough. That he was vain, heedless, a...« less