Boswell, in fact, became less extravagant and affected towards the end of life. He was less often carried away by his 'warm imagination.' He lived less in his 'castles in the air,' and nearer the solid earth. * * * * * The next cause of this development is not far to seek. It lies in the result of the main struggle in Boswell's life. Truth had won the day. The irrepressible quality of Boswell's genius had triumphed in spite of his commonplace aims and the conventionality of his beliefs and standards; and it had found its expression in biography. The nature of that triumph reacted inevitably upon Boswell. The highest of his qualifications for writing the 'Life of Johnson' was simply honesty. He was honest about human nature. He had related without omission and without perversion the story of a man as he had witnessed it. All his powers of observing and of judging character had been brought to bear upon the great work of his life. His own character had developed in the process. It is impossible for a man to concentrate all his mind upon the effort to understand the human being, without involving himself in his investigations; and Boswell was no exception. He had always been interested in his own character, though in a rather uncritical fashion; and no doubt, as often happens, his knowledge of others began with himself. He was himself both the primer of psychology and the standard for comparison, upon which his whole view of individuals was based; and it is often clear, when he is discussing some moral question, that he has his own case in mind. The 'Life of Johnson' was necessarily concerned with Boswell in some degree; and so it was that the author, when he came to record his observations of Johnson and his friends and acquaintances, found that the process which he applied to others was being applied to himself. Nothing in Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' is more remarkable, as nothing is more charming, than the author's candour when his own person is concerned. He does not obtrude himself upon the reader's notice; he relates the events quite naturally as they occurred. And though Boswell was not a little vain, he was able to relate what was not to his credit. Most of the stories of Boswell's folly we know from himself. He has recorded the sledge-hammer blows of Johnson provoked by his own absurdity; he has told us of occasions when he lacked in manners, even when, more than once, he was drunk in a lady's drawing-room; he has described at length, in the 'Tour to the Hebrides,' the story of a carouse at Corrichatachin, and has not failed to mention how very ill he felt next morning, and how much he dreaded Johnson's rebuke; it is in his own account that we read of the ridiculous figure he cut in a storm at sea; it is from his own correspondence with Johnson that we learn of all the weaknesses that earned the Doctor's reproof.