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 genuine desire to see life at its fullest, all human passions stimulated to the utmost by the conflict of multitudes, and shown in the greatest variety by the mixture of men of all ranks and conditions, to see the keenest intellects of the day roused to activity by constant intercourse, and to have before his eyes every variety of incident, from a change of Ministry to a procession of criminals to Tyburn tree. The insatiable curiosity is only stimulated by the circumstance that he is jostled aside by men of stronger fibre and obliged to look on or to play his part by 'a warm imagination' instead of actual participation. This, I take it, is why Boswell's rivals seem to give us merely a collection of detached anecdotes, while in Boswell all the persons seem to come suddenly to life and give us a real insight into the whole social sphere instead of being mere lay figures. Mme. d'Arblay perhaps deserves the exception made in her favour, in so far as she has the real novelist's instinct, and gives us lively accounts of incidents, instead of isolated facts. But Mme. d'Arblay scarcely sees more than one aspect of Johnson—the famous old moralist who likes to make a pet of a charming young woman, and relaxes into more than usual playfulness in course of