Cartoon drawing of Boswell  
 
If we were asked (we have not been asked) to name a day the world ought to celebrate and does not, we would name the 16th of May. For on that day, in the year 1763, James Boswell first met Dr. Samuel Johnson.
 
This great event, which enriched the world with one of the most vivid panoramas of human nature known to man, happened in Tom Davies's bookshop in Covent Garden. Mr. and Mrs. Davies were friends of the Doctor, who frequently visited their shop. Of them Boswell remarks quaintly that though they had been on the stage for many years, they "maintained an uniform decency of character." The shop seems to have been a charming place: one went there not merely to buy books, but also to have a cup of tea in the back parlor. It is sad to think that though we have been hanging round bookshops for a number of years, we have never yet met a bookseller who invited us into the private office for a quiet cup. Wait a moment, though, we are forgetting Dr. Rosenbach, the famous bookseller of Philadelphia. But his collations, held in amazed memory by many editioneers, rarely descend to anything so humble as tea. One recalls a confused glamor of ortolans, trussed guinea-hens, strawberries reclining in a bowl carved out of solid ice, and what used to be known as vintages. It is a pity that Dr. Johnson died too soon to take lunch with Dr. Rosenbach.
 
"At last, on Monday, the 16th of May," says Boswell, "when I was sitting in Mr. Davies's back parlor, 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, announced his awful approach to me. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated." The volatile Boswell may be forgiven his agitation. We also would have trembled not a little. Boswell was only twenty-two, and probably felt that his whole life and career hung upon the great man's mood. But embarrassment is a comely emotion for a young man in the face of greatness; and the Doctor was speedily put in a good humor by an opportunity to utter his favorite pleasantry at the expense of the Scotch. "I do, indeed, come from Scotland," cried Boswell, after Davies had let the cat out of the bag; "but I cannot help it." "That, sir," said Doctor Johnson, "is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help."
 
The great book that dated from that meeting in Davies's back parlor has become one of the most intimately cherished possessions of the race. One finds its admirers and students scattered over the globe. No man who loves human nature in all its quirks and pangs, seasoned with bluff honesty and the genuineness of a cliff or a tree, can afford to step into a hearse until he has made it his own. And it is a noteworthy illustration of the biblical saying that whosoever will rule, let him be a servant. Boswell made himself the servant of Johnson, and became one of the masters of English literature.
 
It used to annoy us to hear Karl Rosner referred to as "the Kaiser's Boswell." For to boswellize (which is a verb that has gone into our dictionaries) means not merely to transcribe faithfully the acts and moods and import of a man's life; it implies also that the man so delineated be a good man and a great. Horace Traubel was perhaps a Boswell; but Rosner never.
 
It is pleasant to know that Boswell was not merely a kind of animated note-book. He was a droll, vain, erring, bibulous, warm-hearted creature, a good deal of a Pepys, in fact, with all the Pepysian vices and virtues. Mr. A. Edward Newton's "Amenities of Book Collecting" makes Boswell very human to us. How jolly it is to learn that Jamie (like many lesser fry since) wrote press notices about himself. Here is one of his own blurbs, which we quote from Mr. Newton's book:
 
Boswell, the author, is a most excellent man: he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness. His parts are bright, and his education has been good. He has traveled in post chaises miles without number. He is fond of seeing much of the world. He eats of every good dish, especially apple pie. He drinks Old Hock. He has a very fine temper. He is somewhat of a humorist and a little tinctured with pride. He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous. He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles.
This brings the excellent Boswell very close to us indeed: he might almost be a member of the Authors' League. "Especially apple pie, bless his heart!"
 
When we said that Boswell was a kind of Pepys, we fell by chance into a happy comparison. Not only by his volatile errors was he of the tribe of Samuel, but in his outstanding character by which he becomes of importance to posterity—that of one of the great diarists. Now there is no human failing upon which we look with more affectionate lenience than that of keeping a diary. All of us, in our pilgrimage through the difficult thickets of this world, have moods and moments when we have to fall back on ourselves for the only complete understanding and absolution we will ever find. In such times, how pleasant it is to record our emotions and misgivings in the sure and secret pages of some privy notebook; and how entertaining to read them again in later years! Dr. Johnson himself advised Bozzy to keep a journal, though he little suspected to what use it would be put. The cynical will say that he did so in order that Bozzy would have less time to pester him, but we believe his advice was sincere. It must have been, for the Doctor kept one himself, of which more in a moment.
 
"He recommended to me," Boswell says, "to keep a journal of my life, full and unreserved. He said it would be a very good exercise and would yield me great satisfaction when the particulars were faded from my remembrance. He counselled me to keep it private, and said I might surely have a friend who would burn it in case of my death."
 
Happily it was not burned. The Great Doctor never seemed so near to me as the other day when I saw a little notebook, bound in soft brown leather and interleaved with blotting paper, in which Bozzy's busy pen had jotted down memoranda of his talks with his friend, while they were still echoing in his mind. From this notebook (which must have been one of many) the paragraphs were transferred practically unaltered into the Life. This superb treasure, now owned by Mr. Adam of Buffalo, almost makes one hear the Doctor's voice; and one imagines Boswell sitting up at night with his candle, methodically recording the remarks of the day. The first entry was dated September 22, 1777, so Bozzy must have carried it in his pocket when Dr. Johnson and he were visiting Dr. Taylor in Ashbourne. It was during this junket that Dr. Johnson tried to pole the large dead cat over Dr. Taylor's dam, an incident that Boswell recorded as part of his "Flemish picture of my friend." It was then also that Mrs. Killingley, mistress of Ashbourne's leading inn, The Green Man, begged Boswell "to name the house to his extensive acquaintance." Certainly Bozzy's acquaintance was to be far more extensive than good Mrs. Killingley ever dreamed. It was he who "named the house" to me, and for this reason The Green Man profited in fourpence worth of cider, 134 years later.
 
There is another day we have vowed to commemorate, by drinking great flaggonage of tea, and that is the 18th of September, Dr. Johnson's birthday. The Great Cham needs no champion; his speech and person have become part of our common heritage. Yet the extraordinary scenario in which Boswell filmed him for us has attained that curious estate of great literature the characteristic of which is that every man imagines he has read it, though he may never have opened its pages. It is like the historic landmark of one's home town, which foreigners from overseas come to study, but which the denizen has hardly entered. It is like Niagara Falls: we have a very fair mental picture of the spectacle and little zeal to visit the uproar itself. And so, though we all use Doctor Johnson's sharply stamped coinages, we generally are too lax about visiting the mint.
 
But we will never cease to pray that every honest man should study Boswell. There are many who have topped the rise of human felicity in that book: when reading it they feel the tide of intellect brim the mind with a unique fullness of satisfaction. It is not a mere commentary on life: it is life—it fills and floods every channel of the brain. It is a book that men make a hobby of, as golf or billiards. To know it is a liberal education. I could have understood Germany yearning to invade England in order to annex Boswe............