Having found, on a revision of the first edition of this work, that, notwithstanding my best care, a few observations had escaped me, which arose from the instant impression, the publication of which might perhaps be considered as passing the bounds of strict decorum, I immediately ordered that they should be omitted in subsequent editions. I was pleased to find that they did not amount in the whole to a page. If any of the same kind are yet left, it is owing to inadvertence alone, no man being more unwilling to give pain to others than I am.
When Boswell says that he is unwilling to give pain we may believe him unreservedly; there may have been particular cases when he lowered himself to the satisfaction of a grudge, but as a general statement it is true. That Boswell was good-natured is incontestable: it is admitted on all hands. 'Good-nature,' wrote Mr. Courtenay, 'was highly predominant in his character. He appeared to entertain sentiments of benevolence to all mankind, and it does not appear to me that he ever did, or could, injure any human being _intentionally_.' Mr. Malone wrote a letter for the _Gentleman's Magazine_ vindicating Boswell's character after his death. 'He had not only an inexhaustible fund of good-humour and good-nature, but was extremely warm in his attachments, and as ready to exert himself for his friends as any man.' His untiring kindness to Johnson might perhaps be refused as evidence that he was 'ready to exert himself for his friends.' Towards Temple and his wife also, from whom he had nothing to gain, 'he always played,' as Mr. Seccombe remarks, 'a very friendly part'; 'he made Johnson known to them, for instance; he took Paoli down to Mamhead, he had Temple up to town and took him and his daughter to Westminster Hall to see the trial of Warren Hastings. He took them more than once to Sir Joshua's studio in Leicester Square, he acted as godfather to one of the sons, and tipped another who was at Eton.' But the most remarkable testimony that Boswell had, as the French say, _le c[oe]ur bon_ is his will. We shall have to pay some attention to this document in a later chapter: it shows that Boswell could be remarkably considerate.
Boswell wrote and published the 'Tour' with a greedy enjoyment and uncontained expansiveness entirely typical of him, and in amazing ignorance of some of the strongest human feelings--of the proprietorship that men feel with respect to their own lives which surrounds them with a sacred halo of privacy, and of their inordinate desire to appear more virtuous and more successful than they are. He babbled of himself as he babbled of others, not unconscious of the folly that he committed and revealed, but not suspecting that he would be called a fool for admitting his folly. Truth, as these pages have already remarked, was of supreme importance to Boswell, and was not to be suppressed. He could hardly understand that plain fact could hurt anyone. A pamphleteer who wished to make Boswell ridiculous has suggested his attitude in a picturesque manner: Lord Macdonald is supposed to be threatening personal violence; Walcot writes: