In presenting the literary portrait of a man there can be no greater error than to indulge in controversy. It is an error which one may make very readily, for we have all at heart the love of battle; moreover, it is easy to contradict another, and difficult to give a whole picture of one's own. And in the case of Boswell there is matter for controversy particularly obvious and particularly inviting. Distinguished men have formed entirely different conceptions of his character and used the pen with more energy than wisdom to support their views. It seems clear now that Boswell has been widely misunderstood.
We are confronted at the outset by a sort of popular paradox. Not only Lord Macaulay, but most of Boswell's contemporaries and most of his editors, have thought of him as nothing more than a fool--they have supposed with the poet Gray, 'Any fool may write a most valuable book by chance.' No one has ever denied that the 'Life' is a good book. No one after his own generation, till Carlyle, ever denied that Boswell was a bad man, just the mean, snivelling creature imagined by Macaulay.
Modern criticism has done much to raise the besmirched name of the biographer, but has managed at the same time to envelop his character in a sort of generous obscurity. 'Boswell,' Professor Raleigh has boldly exclaimed, 'was a genius.' The Boswellian student will probably agree: but in agreeing we must be cautious not to confuse our ideas about Boswell's character; to say that a man is a genius is not to say that he is unaccountable for his actions, or even of necessity to imply that he is mad. The genius is often more complex than other men, but not more incomprehensible. It is possible, if we like, to look behind the veil that is drawn between humanity and a particular human being. We can see in a genius not less than in others the meaning of all the names which we use to describe life, of love and sympathy, greed and egoism, hate, fear, joy, and the rest; of all the qualities that form for better or for worse what we call character, what it is to be kind or cruel, vain or modest, false or true. Nor, when we say that Boswell is a genius, do we preclude the possibility of his being a fool. Boswell was indeed a fool, as is easy enough to show; but he was not, as was long supposed, a stupid fool.