The Bore Abroad: Boswell in Europe

For a men of twenty-four, James Boswell was startlingly pompous. He did, of course, have one of the beat proto types in England to study and, since Boswell is over adaptable, the blame might be all laid to Dr. Johnson. In this third volume of Boswell's journals, the Scot's pomposity has increased with his growing opinion of his own abilities.

It is because Boswell is frank in his conceit and self-evaluations, however, that his journals are a pleasure to road. Humorless, ambitious, stuffy, he wrote down what everyone occasionally thinks. This evidence cannot be used against him by the reader. Though one laughs at Boswell, one cannot but feel a sympathetic bond with him ever almost two hundred years.

His latest collection of memoirs covers the years 1762-64 when Boswell, realizing that he was not going to receive a commission in London, moves on to study Civil Law in Utrecht. Though be misses England and Dr. Johnson's companionship, Boswell finds himself surrounded by all the nobility of Gorman Court and the Hague. Nothing could be more to his liking.

High spots in the current volume, however, are Boswell's excursion into France and his interviews with Rousseau and Voltaire. Boswell recorded the conversations dutifully, even when they undoubtedly distressed him:

"Rosseau: 'I have seen the Scottish Highlanders in France. I love the Scots; not because my Lord Marischal is one of them but because he praises them. You are Irksome to me. It's my nature. I cannot help it.'

"Boswell: 'Do not stand on ceremony with me.'

"Rousseau; "Go away.'"

But Boswell was not easily discouraged. He saw Rousseau several more times, though the Frenchman threatened to have him keep his watch out on the table and allow him fifteen minutes. Boswell also brought his moral problems to Rousseau in spite of an unprecedented indifferences on the latter's part. Counseling Boswell was easy, however, as readers of his London Journal will remember: Rousseau advises him to leave the lady to her husband.

IF the diaries sometimes show Boswell's embarrassments, they also record his triumphs of wit and subtlety:

"Boswell: 'Dr. Johnson is an orthodox man, but very learned; has much genius and much worth.'

"Voltaire; 'He is then a dog. A superstitious dog. No worthy man was ever superstitious.'

"Boswell: 'He said the King of Prussia wrote like your foot boy.'

"Voltaire: 'He is a sensible man.'"

As Boswell concluded his tour, he was pleased with the results. With characteristic candor he wrote, "What a singular being do I find myself!... I have a noble soul which still shines forth, a certain degree of knowledge, a multiplicity of ideas of all kinds, an original humor and turn of expression, and, I really believe, a remarkable knowledge of human nature."

After finishing the Grand Tour with Boswell, the reader knows him too well to agree with all of this. The Journal, a means of study far superior to the psychiatrist's one-way mirror, allows us to know Boswell better than anyone did in his own generation. Whatever is the final judgment on his "Original humor: or "knowledge of human nature," one statement is undeniable. Boswell is a singular being.