[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF DR. JOHNSON BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, PROBABLY IDEALIZED. THE DOCTOR IS WEARING A TIE-WIG AND HOLDS A COPY OF "IRENE"
The description of the first meeting between Johnson and Boswell, written many years afterwards, is a favorite passage with all good Boswellians. "At last, on Monday, the 16th of May[10] [1763], when I was sitting in Mr. Davies' back parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs. Davies, Johnson unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr. Davies, having perceived him through the glass-door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing toward us,--he announced his aweful approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost, 'Look, my Lord, it comes!'"
This is a good example of Boswell's style. In the fewest possible words he creates a picture which one never forgets. We not only hear the talk, we see the company, and soon come to know every member of it.
Without this meeting the world would have lost one of the most delightful books ever written, Boswell himself would probably never have been heard of, and Johnson to-day would be a mere name instead of being, as he is, next to Shakespeare, the most quoted of English authors. As Augustine Birrell has pointed out, we have only talk _about_ other talkers. Johnson's is a matter of record. Johnson stamped his image on his own generation, but it required the genius of Boswell to make him known to ours, and to all generations to come. "Great as Johnson is," says Burke, "he is greater in Boswell's books than in his own." That we now speak of the "Age of Johnson" is due rather to Boswell than to the author of the "Dictionary," "Rasselas," and endless "Ramblers."
Someone has said that the three greatest characters in English literature are Falstaff, Mr. Pickwick, and Dr. Johnson. Had James Boswell created the third of this great trio, he would indeed rank with Shakespeare and with Dickens; but Johnson was his own creation, and Boswell, posing as an artist, painted his portrait as mortal man has never been painted before. In his pages we see the many-sided Johnson, the great burly philosopher, scholar, wit, and ladies' man--Boswell makes him a shade too austere--more clearly than any other man who ever lived. As a portrait-painter, Boswell is the world's greatest artist; and he is not simply a portrait-painter--he is unsurpassed at composition, atmosphere, and color. His book is like Rembrandt's Night Watch--the canvas is crowded, the portraits all are faultless and distinct, but there is one dominating figure standing out from the rest--one masterly, unsurpassed, and immortal figure.
