YOUNG BOSWELL CHAPTER I YOUNG BOSWELL You will laugh at my whim and be sorry for my weakness. -BOSWELL to TEMPLE, 12 July, 1763. ONE of the rarest books in the world is a thin volume in quarto, called "An Ode to Tragedy," and described on the title-page as the work of “a Gentleman of Scotland." It is one of the earliest of James Boswell's fugitive works, and appeared at Edinburgh as a sixpenny pamphlet in the year 1761, although, by an odd error in proof-reading, the date on the title-page is 1661. The author, who was but twenty years of age, was certainly no poet. He aspired, he announced, to soar on pinions bold, "and, like the skylark, at heaven's gate to sing"; but his mechanical verses proved to be as dull as a music-box. There is, to be sure, a description of Garrick in the rôle of King Lear, which one reads with a sort of interest because of the intimacy which was later to exist between Boswell and the actor; and there are references to Mason and the elder Sheridan which are worth a glance; but it is not in such allusions that the value of the book consists. The remarkable thing about it is its Dedication. It is inscribed to James Boswell, Esq. The author, with a humour worthy of a more famous publication, has genially dedicated the book to himself. But, one asks, was the reader supposed to discover the jest? Boswell, I fancy, did not greatly care, one way or the other. He had given the reader a hint that he was up to mischief, for he wrote in the dedicatory letter: "I make no doubt, Sir, but you consider me as your very good friend; although some people and those, too, not destitute of wisdom-will not scruple to insinuate the contrary." If the reader were sharp-witted enough to detect the imposture, he would certainly spread the news of his discovery, and with it the fame of the young author. But if he missed the point, Boswell would be no loser, for he would then be regarded as the poet's patron. In either case, it might be hoped, people would talk about James Boswell. Perhaps, on the whole, he preferred the reputation of patron to that of poet, for he was ever ambitious to be deemed a Mecenas a sufficiently rare ambition in a youth of twenty summers. Indeed, he had already appeared in this rôle. His friend, Francis Gentleman, an actor of Glasgow, had published an edition of the well-known tragedy of "Oroonoco" in the previous year, and had dedicated it to Boswell; the young man has been suspected, not without reason, of having written the dedicatory verses himself. Moreover, when, a few years later, his friend Derrick (Beau Nash's successor as Master of Ceremonies at Bath) published a series of letters descriptive of Ireland and of the English Lakes, Boswell persuaded him to address one of them to "James Boswell, Esq., of Authenleck [so Derrick misprinted the name], North-Britain." It is clear that Boswell's ambition was peculiar. He desired to be known as the associate of authors. The glory, to his way of thinking, is to move in the world of literary men, to know what is going on, and in time, perhaps, to become an influence in the lives of these great ones. It was his ambition to shine, but he preferred to shine in a reflected light. Many years after, a relative remarked, "He preferred being a showman to keeping a shop of his own." This ruling passion of Boswell's the passion not to occupy the throne, or even to be the power behind it, but to stand near the throne as the monarch's acknowledged friend — is a sufficiently unusual phenomenon, and harshly has it been judged. It would be interesting to speculate why Boswell's desire to associate with men of genius should have moved the critics to violent indig nation. It is surely a little odd that a man who has provided the world with two of the most delightful, profitable, and amusing books of all time should have been denounced as a toad-eater and a lick-spittle. One would think that the means by which he developed his innate genius might have been studied with seriousness, if not with sympathy, and that what most critics have been content to call an appetite for notoriety might have been discovered by the discriminating to be, in truth, a commendable ambition. But the fact is that few critics have been fitted to understand, much less to interpret, Boswell's curious sense of humour. He was a man who not only enjoyed a joke, but enjoyed it the more when it was directed at himself. He was not unwilling to be the butt, provided only that there might be wit and hilarity. In the year following the appearance of his "Ode to Tragedy," he published another poem, celebrating his social exploits in London, entitled "The Cub at Newmarket," and dedicated to the Duke of York. "Permit me to let the world know," he remarked in the Dedication, "that the same cub has been laughed at by the Duke of York." Boswell was, and ever remained, willing to sacrifice himself that the company might laugh. And now, O reader, if all this disgusts or pains you, pray close the book and read in it no more, |