The Life of Samuel Johnson - James Boswell [3]
However, when it came to writing this up in The Life of Samuel Johnson, Boswell chose slightly different words, and a more elaborate treatment:
At last, on Monday the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr. Davies’s 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 towards 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.’ I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson’s figure, from the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his Dictionary, in the attitude of sitting in his easy chair in deep meditation, which was the first picture his friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly presented to me, and from which an engraving has been made for this work. Mr. Davies mentioned my name, and respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to Davies, ‘Don’t tell where I come from.’ – ‘From Scotland,’ cried Davies roguishly. ‘Mr. Johnson, (said I) I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.’ I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as an humiliating abasement at the expence of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky; for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression ‘come from Scotland,’ which I used in the sense of being of that country, and, as if I had said that I had come away from it, or left it, retorted, ‘That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.’ This stroke stunned me a good deal; and when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed, and apprehensive of what might come next.9
Comparing the two versions, one notices at once the fuller and more ceremonious form the episode takes in the Life; next, perhaps, the softening of Boswell’s original sense of Johnson’s disagreeableness into the milder emotion of nonplussed embarrassment. But it is the characteristic Boswellian allusion to the theatre – ‘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”’ – which is the pivotal element in the transformation of the original impression into the eventual work of literary art. The encounter between Hamlet and his father’s ghost is the event which determines the shape of, and gives direction to, young Hamlet’s life; at the same time, it is the occasion when old Hamlet lays an obligation on his son to do for him what death prevents him from doing for himself. Boswell’s reference to Hamlet was apt to his own case – in addition, of course, (and this is once again characteristically Boswellian) to being ludicrously self-flattering, casting Boswell as the glamorous protagonist in the momentous drama of his own life. But it was pertinent also to the case of Johnson. The task of memorializing Johnson gave shape and direction to Boswell’s life (and it was a task he performed with occasional Hamlet-like waverings and delays).10 Moreover, the friendship launched by that meeting in Davies’s back-parlour bestowed on Johnson a posthumous reach which would