Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John B. Radner is associate professor of English emeritus at George Mason University.

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Johnson and Boswell

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Preface..............................................................................................................................................ixIntroduction.........................................................................................................................................11 Taking Charge of Boswell (1763)....................................................................................................................112 "Perpetual Friendship"? (1764–1767)...........................................................................................................363 Jostling for Control (1768–1771)..............................................................................................................584 New Collaborations (1772)..........................................................................................................................825 Embracing the Biographer (1772–1773)..........................................................................................................996 Cooperation and Rivalry in Scotland (14 August to 22 November 1773)................................................................................1137 Negotiating and Competing for Narrative Control (14 August to 22 November 1773)....................................................................1328 Collaboration Manqué (November 1773 to May 1775)..............................................................................................1499 Renegotiating the Friendship, Part 1 (1775–1777): Depression, Defiance, and Dependency........................................................16910 Renegotiating the Friendship, Part 2 (1777–1778): Confrontation, Collaboration, and Celebration..............................................19211 "Strangers to Each Other" (May 1778 to March 1781)................................................................................................21412 The Lives of the Poets and Johnson's (Auto)biography (1777–1781).............................................................................23213 Reconnecting (1781–1783).....................................................................................................................24614 "Some Time Together before We Are Parted" (March 1783 to May 1784)................................................................................26515 "Love Me as Well as You Can" (1784)...............................................................................................................28416 Rewriting the Hebrides Trip (1785)................................................................................................................30117 Boswell Claiming His Inheritance (1786–1791).................................................................................................31518 Winning Johnson's Blessing........................................................................................................................339Appendix: Key Events in Lives of Samuel Johnson (SJ) and James Boswell (JB), Days They Were Together, and Letters They Exchanged.....................355Cue Titles and Abbreviations.........................................................................................................................359Notes................................................................................................................................................363Index................................................................................................................................................403

Chapter One

What did Johnson and Boswell each make of the other when they met on 16 May 1763, and what did each get from their time together during the next twelve weeks? What did their new friendship mean to each when they parted on 6 August? How did this change in the four months before Johnson finally replied to Boswell's August and October letters?

Keeping in mind that much is elusive about why people become friends, I want to begin answering these questions by charting the twenty-two days in 1763 when Johnson and Boswell were with each other, in each case noting where they met, whether they were in company or alone (or both), and whether they were together for just a few minutes (short), for a more substantial conversation (long), for several hours (hours), or for the whole day (all day). I have also included 25 December 1762, the first day Boswell attempted to meet Johnson, and have noted their letters during the final months of 1763.

Even apart from Boswell's reports of what he and Johnson said and did while together, this chart clearly indicates a developing friendship. There was a steady progression in the frequency of contact: from six meetings (three by chance) on five days during the first six weeks — through 26 June — to eighteen meetings on seventeen days during the next six weeks. In the first six weeks, they were only twice together for hours; but in the next three weeks, they spent three evenings together; and they had considerable time together, mostly alone, on eight occasions during the final three weeks. Boswell wrote soon after reaching Holland and again about seven weeks later. But curiously, Johnson responded only in December, four months after the two friends had parted.

Later I argue that what Johnson and Boswell experienced before Boswell left, combined with what happened — and what did not happen — afterward, created the longings that eventually led Boswell to become Johnson's biographer and that inclined Johnson to accept this transforming adjustment. So I want to be as clear as possible about what each experienced in 1763.

Boswell (16 May to 6 August): "Will you really take a charge of me?"

During his first months in London, Boswell delighted in his diverse moods, his whims and openness to new experience, even as he worked at constructing a unified, dignified self. He relished his "sensibility," his "romantic imagination," his capacity to be moved by music and literature and landscape. But he hoped to acquire sufficient resolution and firmness of mind to bear up under disappointments. Early in 1763, he agreed with the flattering declaration by the actor and playwright David Garrick, whom Boswell had met in 1760, that Boswell would "be a very great man," for, as Boswell described himself, "There is a blossom about me of something more distinguished than the generality of Mankind." But he worried that this blossom "will never swell into fruit": "I sometimes indulge noble Reveries of having a Regiment, of getting into parliament, making a figure, and becoming a man of consequence in the state. But these are checked by dispiriting reflections on my melancholy temper and imbecility of mind." Seeing himself as a work in process, Boswell hoped to "become sounder & stronger as I grow up."

To facilitate his progress Boswell had repeatedly sought authority and guidance from older men such as West Digges, a Scottish actor; Lord Kames, a Scottish philosopher and judge; and Sir John Pringle, a Scottish physician and Lord Auchinleck's oldest friend, though he also tried to maintain some "independency." Thomas Sheridan, an Irish actor and teacher of elocution, had been Boswell's mentor — "My Socrates" — from the summer of 1761 up through January 1763, when he...