Boswell, James, immortal as the companion and biographer of Dr Johnson, was born at Edinburgh, 18th October 1740. He was the eldest son of Lord Auchinleck, a judge in the Court of Session, who had taken his title from an estate in Ayrshire, which had belonged to the family since the reign of James IV. He had his education at the Edinburgh High School and at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, but his impressionable nature and characteristic love of such distractions and dissipations as were available showed themselves early, and caused much dissatisfaction to the surly but shrewd old judge. A year in London at twenty spoiled him for ever for a provincial. That restless itch for writing, which was yet to lead him so far, made him, a boy of eighteen, keep an 'exact journal,' write poems and prologues to Edinburgh plays, and publish, at twenty-three, a series of would-be clever and witty letters that had passed between himself and a companion of equal age and experience. His capacity for making friends and for falling temporarily in love, and his eagerness to know people that were notorious for anything, were as deep-rooted in his nature as his love of letters and literary distinctions. During his second visit to London he had the supreme happiness to make the acquaintance of Dr Johnson in the back-parlour of Tom Davies's shop in Russell Street (May 16, 1763). The sincerity of the disciple's respect seems to have touched the master's heart, and the acquaintance quickly ripened into a warm friendship, which stood the strain of many a brutal rebuff on Johnson's part, and was kept in repair by frequent letters on both sides throughout the rest of Johnson's life. A few months later Dr Johnson accompanied Boswell to Harwich, on his journey to study civil law at Utrecht, and parted from him with counsels to be studious and steady, and many expressions of warm affection. At Utrecht Boswell spent one winter between study and dissipation, on an allowance from his father of £240 a year; after which, instead of returning home, he proceeded on a tour through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, making on the way, with his usual assiduity, the acquaintance of Voltaire and Rousseau. The latter gave him a letter of introduction to Paoli, and to that hero the indefatigable Boswell at once repaired. He was well received by the Corsicans, and for a time played the great Englishman to his heart's content, not forgetting the while to ask Paoli 'a thousand questions with regard to the most minute and private circumstances of his life.' Soon after his return he was admitted advocate (July 1766), and seems to have had some little professional success, and to have employed himself voluntarily at least in the last stages of the famous Douglas cause. His Account of Corsica appeared early in 1768, and had great success. Johnson said the journal was 'in a very high degree delightful and curious; but the poet Gray, whose eyes were undimmed by the partiality of friendship, called it, in a letter to Horace Walpole, 'a dialogue between a green goose and a hero.' Early in 1767 Boswell waited upon Chatham in Corsican costume to plead for Paoli, and was honoured some time after by a warm letter from the great statesman, which encouraged him in reply to the characteristic temerity of asking, 'Could your lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter? To correspond with a Paoli and with a Chatham is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of virtuous fame.' From this time Boswell's mind was much taken up with a succession of matrimonial schemes, which ended somewhat prosaically with his marriage, in November 1769, to his cousin, Margaret Montgomery, a prudent and amiable woman, who bore him seven children, and who proved herself a sensible and forgiving wife. On the same day his father married a cousin of his own, to the son's disgust and alarm. The old judge allowed his son £300 a year, and from time to time paid his debts for him, but not without much grumbling and many threats. Boswell never became a prosperous lawyer, and continued to make visits to London almost every year. In April 1773, fortunately for the world, but against the wishes of many of the members, he was elected, through Johnson's influence, a member of the famous Literary Club. Later in the same year occurred the memorable journey to the Hebrides. Neither the old judge nor Boswell's own wife could understand the enthusiasm for the uncouth-looking philosopher, and although the latter was studiously polite, she could not hide from the astute Johnson the fact that he was disliked. In 1775 Boswell began to keep his terms at the Inner Temple, and was ultimately called to the English bar in 1786; in 1776 the Auchinleck property was entailed upon him; and in the August of 1782 he succeeded, on his father's death, to an estate of £1600 a year. His last meeting with Johnson was at a dinner at Sir Joshua Reynolds's early in 1784, the year towards the close of which Johnson died. Croker calculated that Boswell met Johnson in all on 180 days, or 276 including the Scotch tour. Boswell now made some attempts to enter on a political career, for some years entertained hopes from the patronage of Lord Lonsdale, and could not understand Pitt's 'utter folly' in not seeing the value of 'my popular and pleasant talents;' but his sole reward was the recordership of Carlisle, which he resigned in a year, through resentment of his patron's treatment of him. In 1789 his wife died, and henceforward his drinking habits gained the better of him more completely. But indeed he had been drinking all his days, with fits of repentance and solemn promises of amendment between. From his drunkard's hypochondria and the pressure of difficulties for money he found refuge in the preparation of his life of Johnson, which occupied him several years. Spite of occasional despondency and the pinch of financial difficulty, he refused to part with the copyright, and his confidence was justified. The book appeared in the May of 1791, was received with delight, and sold rapidly. A second edition was issued in July 1793. But his success failed to lift him out of his gloom and intemperance, and his health began to give way. He died in London, after a brief illness, 19th May 1795.
Boswell's Life of Johnson is admittedly our greatest biography, and the remarkable merit of the book has led many to wonder how it could possibly have been written by a man of such egregious weakness and vanity as Boswell. Indeed, Macaulay advanced the preposterous paradox that it was because of his unrivalled qualities as a fool that its author had written the best life in existence. The true explanation, however, is that this vanity and folly by no means made up the whole mental equipment of Boswell, and that these unenviable qualities in his character have merely become so conspicuous because he had so much less reticence than ordinary men. The man who could retain the friendship of Samuel Johnson, and who could be described as 'the best travelling companion in the world,' was something more than a parasite and a fool. Nor could the most veracious fool have written such a dexterously artistic book. Nothing has suffered in his hands; indeed, we know from some evidence we happen to have about a few conversations, that these at any rate have gained greatly in point from his editorial touch. He adds not one word too much, but gives us the most vivid dramatic pictures by a few simple but subtle strokes. This is not the work of memory nearly so much as of artistic reproduction—it is not photographic and realistic half so much as it is idealistic and creative. We have here a special literary faculty, and, moreover, one of the rarest. This noisy, ugly, foolish, drunken Scotch lawyer and laird had in him something of the true Shakespearian secret.
The latest and best editions of Boswell's great work are those by Napier (4 vols. 1884; two supplementary vols. contain Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and 'Johnsoniana') and by Dr Birkbeck Hill (6 vols. 1887). Invaluable for the new light thrown on Boswell's inner character are his own lifelong Letters to Temple (1856), whose acquaintance he had made while yet a student at Edinburgh University, and Boswelliana (1874) by Charles Rogers. The famous essays by Macaulay and Carlyle contradict rather than correct each other; but the latter has much more truth in it than the former. There is a Life by Percy Fitzgerald (2 vols. 1891).
Boswell's eldest son, ALEXANDER, was born at Auchinleck in 1775, and educated along with his younger brother James at Westminster and Oxford. He settled at Auchinleck, and set up here a private press, at which he printed many rare books in early English and Scottish literature. He had all his father's industry and love of letters, and published many volumes of more or less meritorious verse. Already, in 1803, he had printed a volume of vigorous poems in the Ayrshire dialect, and in 1817 he contributed twelve songs to Thomson's Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, of which 'Good-night, and joy be wi' ye a', 'Jenny's Baubee,' and 'Jenny dang the Weaver' are still popular. A devoted admirer of Burns, Boswell raised by his exertions £2000 for the monument on the banks of the Doon. He was created a baronet in 1821 for a loyal song, 'Long live George the Fourth.' He died at Balnuto in Fife, 27th March 1822, of a wound received the day before in his duel with James Stuart of Dunearn, who had challenged him as the author of some anonymous political pasquinades.—JAMES BOSWELL, his younger brother, was born in 1778. He early became intimate with Malone, and assisted him in his Shakespeare work. His name is now known chiefly to Shakespeare scholars as the editor of what is known as the third Variorum Shakespeare (21 vols. 1821). He died suddenly at his chambers in the Temple, February 24, 1822.