A great charm of the Journal, also prophetic of the future, lies in the perfect frankness with which Boswell discusses his own feelings. 'We retired to another room to drink coffee. My timidity wore off. I no longer anxiously thought of myself; my whole attention was employed in listening to the illustrious commander of a nation.' Or again, 'I enjoyed a luxury of noble sentiment. Paoli became more affable with me. I made myself known to him. I forgot the great distance between us and had every day some hours of private conversation with him.' Boswell realised that a Journal is delightful only if it is quite informal. We have a pleasing sense of inconsequent freedom when we read in the Journal several pages quoted from the 'First Book of the Maccabees.' But it is not irrelevant to Boswell's purpose. It occurred to his thoughts; and that is a sufficient justification, whether it seem ludicrous or incongruous or ponderous, for its inclusion. There is no scene in the 'Tour in Corsica' which comes up to the best in the 'Life of Johnson,' but there are several descriptions, such as that quoted above, when Boswell played the pipe and sang 'Hearts of Oak,' which are really artistic and pleasing.
The book, at all events, had the effect of amusing people and it gave them an interest in Corsica too. Boswell had good accounts of it on all sides. 'My book,' he writes to Temple, 'has amazing celebrity:[8] Lord Lyttelton, Mr. Walpole, Mrs. Macaulay, Mr. Garrick, have all written me noble letters about it.' The sale must have been very rapid. The dedication to the first edition is dated October 29, 1767, and the preface to the third edition on the same day of October, his birthday, in the following year. In this preface he explains that he has acquired that literary fame which he desired:
May I be permitted to say that the success of this book has exceeded my warmest hopes. When I first ventured to send it into the world, I fairly owned an ardent desire for literary fame. I have obtained my desire; and whatever clouds may overcast my days, I can now walk here among the rocks and woods of my ancestors, with an agreeable consciousness that I have done something worthy.
There is nothing deserving particular remark in an author's desire for literary fame. But it is remarkable that a man should proclaim it to the world as Boswell did. The common ideal of an artist supposes that his work should be, in the first place, the expression of his own personality; an expression because to him it is necessary to reproduce in some form what he sees and feels: it is for himself and himself alone, and the world without is allowed to share, partly that the artist may earn a living, partly perhaps that he may have some justification for his self-absorption; and in greater part no doubt, in some cases more than in others, but in every case a little, that he may win the applause that we all like at bottom. None of these reasons, and, least of all, the desire for fame, is held to be a motive for producing art. There may be various impulses with varying circumstances; but there can be but one motive.