530
PARTISAN
REVIEW
into embarrassment by the suspicion of flattery. The fear of toadying
is an overwhelming obstacle to the production of an
hommage.
Nevertheless, we do have a great English classic in this vein;
one can say it outdoes the French, that when all the memories of
Gide and
Valt~ry
are at last gathered together-if an end to that
enterprise can be imagined- even then they will be mere fragments
by the side of Boswell's
Johnson.
Yet it is remarkable about this work
of genius that, though it is known and loved to a fabulous degree,
the spectacle of its coming into being has always struck a great many
right-thinking readers as repellent. Even a schoolgirl must shrink
with disgust from that loathsome young man, Boswell, "buttering
up" Dr. Johnson, hanging about his coattails like an insurance sales–
man after a policy, opening up topics and then with a diseased lack
of pride rushing home to write down the answers, as though he
wished somehow himself to partake of Johnson's magnificence, to
insinuate his own disturbing image on the screen of history. Dr.
Johnson is treasured, but odium attaches to his giddy memorialist.
Grateful as readers have always been for the book, they cannot
imagine themselves stooping to this peculiar method of composition.
Until fairly recently Boswell seemed both repugnant and insignificant
-everyone knows Dr. Johnson thought his friend missed his chance
for immortality by not having been alive when "The Dunciad" was
written. And one would have thought the amazing longevity of the
Boswell family's shame about this member would have been modified
by the undying popularity of his great work. Still they seemed to
think: that fourth bout of gonorrhea fully recorded elsewhere by
this dog-that is our kinsman! This other thing brings credit only to
Dr. Johnson who, unfortunately, is not even a connection of the
Boswell family.
Boswell is a stray-he arrived without antecedents and departed
without descendants. Anyone who wishes to see the more normal
strain we feel before the blank page of veneration may examine the
book
in
honor of Eliot's sixtieth birthday. This collection is one long
stutter, not about Eliot's greatness, but before the unique and almost
revolutionary act of proclaiming this greatness in anything except
an "objective" critical essay. From the first a profound inexperience
is displayed in the very organization of the project; the editors have
been so bold as to reveal the difference between the abstract request
