Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/100

96 greater advantage. He invented the experimental method, and applied it to the determination of human character. At great expenditure of time and forethought he brought Johnson into strange company, the better to display his character and behaviour. He plied him with absurd questions, in the hope of receiving valuable answers. All this was not the conduct of a friend, but of a remorseless investigator. And when to this is added Boswell’s spirit of humble adoration, it is easy to understand how the whole process has made Johnson clear indeed in every outline, but a little too remote. His eccentricities take up too much of the picture, so that to the vulgar intelligence he has always seemed something of a monster. Even those who love Johnson fall too easily into Boswell’s attitude, and observe, and listen, and wonder. It is good to remember that the dictator, when he was in a happy vein, was, above most men, sensible, courteous, and friendly. The best of his notes on Shakespeare, like the best of his spoken remarks, invite discussion and quicken thought. What a conversation might have been started at the club by his brief observation on Gaunt’s speech in Richard II.:

‘It is matter of very melancholy consideration,’ says Johnson, ‘that all human advantages confer more power of doing evil than good.’ No doubt the reflection is highly characteristic of its author, but we are too much accustomed to let our interest in the character overshadow our interest in the truth. Johnson’s talk was free from self-consciousness; but Boswell, when he was in the room, was conscious of one person only, so that