The eighteenth-century man presents a number of excellent features for literary portraiture, because he is a compound of formality and explosiveness.  The formal manners and dress and ponderous courtesy of the eighteenth century, combined with an outspoken way of calling things by their right names and a boyish petulance and quickness of temper, make a contrast that is essentially humorous, and more attractive than the philosophic and broad-minded temper of earlier times or the reticence and indifference of our own day.  Dr. Johnson was a typical eighteenth-century man, and epitomized these contrasts.  Personally, too, he was a man for whom we must feel the most profound regard and respect.  He represents the normal Englishman, a compound of moral integrity, rooted prejudice, and hatred of shams, with a mind which works mechanically and a kind heart.  We instinctively recognize this compound as the ancestral type of our race, and are drawn to it.  The real power of our race depends upon the simplicity and solid humanity of this central type, the heavy-armed and disciplined infantry about which are grouped the more gifted and erratic types, the scouts and light-horse of civilization.  For these general reasons Samuel Johnson seems to us the best sitter for a literary portrait that ever fell into the hands of a literary painter, and the excellence of his biography to depend quite as much upon the fact that it is a life of Samuel Johnson as upon the fact that it is a life by James Boswell.

Boswell’s private character is outside the question in a consideration of his writings.  Macaulay calls him a drunkard.  If this be true, it seems a little severe to call a Scotchman to account for being intoxicated one hundred years ago.  He also speaks of him as a toady; but he was a friend of Johnson, whose detestation of sycophancy was a positive principle.  Hume speaks of him as a “friend of mine, very good-humored, very agreeable, and very mad.”  Macaulay’s and Carlyle’s essays may be considered as mutually corrective.  The truth is that Boswell was absolutely frank, and if a man is frank about himself on paper he must write himself down a fool, unless he belongs to a higher type than Boswell or his critics.

[Illustration:  Charles F. Johnson Signature]

AN ACCOUNT OF CORSICA

Having said so much of the genius and character of the Corsicans, I must beg leave to present my readers with a very distinguished Corsican character, that of Signor Clemente de’ Paoli, brother of the General.

This gentleman is the eldest son of the old General Giacinto Paoli.  He is about fifty years of age, of a middle size and dark complexion; his eyes are quick and piercing, and he has something in the form of his mouth which renders his appearance very particular.  His understanding is of the first rate, and he has by no means suffered it to lie neglected.  He was married, and has an only daughter, the wife of Signor Barbaggi, one of the first men in the island.