The alliance of author with subject in Boswell’s Johnson is one of the happiest and most sympathetic the world has known.  So close is it that one cannot easily discern what great qualities the work owes to each.  While it surely derives more of its excellence than is commonly remarked from the art of Boswell, its greatness after all is ultimately that of its subject.  The noble qualities of Johnson have been well discerned by Carlyle, and his obvious peculiarities and prejudices somewhat magnified and distorted in Macaulay’s brilliant refractions.  One quality only shall I dwell upon, though that may be the sum of all the rest.  Johnson had a supreme capacity for human relationship.  In him this capacity amounted to genius.

In all respects he was of great stature.  His contemporaries called him a colossus, the literary Goliath, the Giant, the great Cham of literature, a tremendous companion.  His frame was majestic; he strode when he walked, and his physical strength and courage were heroic.  His mode of speaking was ‘very impressive,’ his utterance ‘deliberate and strong.’  His conversation was compared to ’an antique statue, where every vein and muscle is distinct and bold.’  From boyhood throughout his life his companions naturally deferred to him, and he dominated them without effort.  But what overcame the harshness of this autocracy, and made it reasonable, was the largeness of a nature that loved men and was ever hungry for knowledge of them.  ‘Sir,’ said he, ’I look upon every day lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance.’  And again:  ’Why, Sir, I am a man of the world.  I live in the world, and I take, in some degree, the color of the world as it moves along.’  Thus he was a part of all that he met, a central figure in his time, with whose opinion one must reckon in considering any important matter of his day.

His love of London is but a part of his hunger for men.  ’The happiness of London is not to be conceived but by those who have been in it.’  ’Why, Sir, you find no man at all intellectual who is willing to leave London:  No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.’  As he loved London, so he loved a tavern for its sociability.  ’Sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.’  ‘A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.’

Personal words are often upon his lips, such as ‘love’ and ‘hate,’ and vast is the number, range, and variety of people who at one time or another had been in some degree personally related with him, from Bet Flint and his black servant Francis, to the adored Duchess of Devonshire and the King himself.  To no one who passed a word with him was he personally indifferent.  Even fools received his personal attention.  Said one:  ‘But I don’t understand you, Sir.’  ’Sir, I have found you an argument.  I am not obliged to find you an understanding.’  ’Sir, you are irascible,’ said Boswell; ’you have no patience with folly or absurdity.’