They were in fact to Boswell the most striking and salient qualities of his great hero, and it was necessary therefore that they should be well and completely related. But in the story as we read it, we do not merely observe that the rude victories and uneven justice of Johnson were supremely significant in the eyes of the author. To Boswell the whole personality of Johnson was a source of the keenest pleasure. He took an insatiable delight in it. He loved to imitate the curious gestures and manner of the Doctor. He became, to use his own word, 'Johnsonised'; and no doubt he reached that state which he desired his readers to attain, and both 'talked and thought' Johnson. He was 'strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian æther'; and when he had drunk his fill and it had all soaked in, it was reproduced with a relish of the joyous moments it had given him. The picture of Johnson, as he saw it, was a source of deep and satisfying enjoyment to Boswell: he overflowed with mere pleasure in the contemplation of a man, and expressed himself, as an artist, out of the abundance of this sympathy, in terms of 'Johnson.' And the enjoyment, one may say, depending as it did very largely upon a certain dramatic quality of that curious figure, was concerned necessarily very much with the oddities and weaknesses of the man, and particularly with that greatest weakness of all, the abuse of strength. When it is said that Boswell is an artist, it is not meant that the whole of the 'Life of Johnson' was treated artistically. It exhibits, no doubt, a certain elegance of proportion; it is a good composition, well arranged, well spaced; and in as far as it has those qualities we may consider that it belongs to art. But it is not chiefly because, having recorded what happened in a perfectly straightforward manner, he then fitted together the fragments to make as it were a complete model of a man--it is not for the design--that we call Boswell an artist. It is because he did not very often, as we have seen, relate the facts quite simply, but related them in such a manner that the whole atmosphere of the scene, all that is most human and most humorous, strikes upon us. It is in what have been called his comedy scenes that we see the supreme art of Boswell. A characteristic passage relates an attempt to make fun of Johnson by inquiring if he took dancing lessons: I ventured to mention a ludicrous passage in the newspapers, that Dr. Johnson was learning to dance of Vestris. Lord Charlemont, wishing to excite him to talk, proposed in a whisper, that he should be asked whether it was true. 'Shall I ask him?' said his Lordship. We were by a great majority clear for the experiment.