Yet after all, I have always had my doubts about the supposed “asininity” of Boswell. As his Great Friend said, “A man who talks nonsense so well must know that he is talking nonsense.” It is only fair to accept his own explanation and allow that when he said or did ridiculous things it was, partly at least, in order to draw out his Tremendous Companion. Thus we may think with pleasure of Boswell taking a rise out of Johnson. But we do not need to imagine Johnson taking a rise out of Boswell; it was not necessary; he rose of his own accord. He made a candid record of these diverting incidents because, though self-complacent, he was not touchy, and he had sense enough to see that the sure way to be entirely entertaining is to be quite frank. Boswell threw a stone at one bird and brought down two. His triumphant effort to write the life of his Immense Hero just as it was, with all its surroundings, appurtenances, and eccentricities, has won for himself a singular honour: his proper name has become a common noun. It is hardly necessary to use a capital letter when we allude to a boswell. His pious boast that he had “Johnsonized the land,” is no more correct than it would be to say, (and if he were alive he would certainly say it,) that he had boswellized biography. The success of the book appears the more remarkable when we remember that of the seventy-five years of Samuel Johnson’s life not more than two years and two months were passed in the society of James Boswell. Yet one would almost think that they had been rocked in the same cradle, or, (if this figure of speech seem irreverent,) that the Laird of Auchinleck had slept in a little trundle-bed beside the couch of the Mighty Lexicographer. I do not mean by this that the record is trivial and cubicular, but simply that Boswell has put into his book as much of Johnson as it will hold. Let no one imagine, however, that a like success can be secured by following the same recipe with any chance subject. The exact portraiture of an insignificant person confers information where there is no curiosity, and becomes tedious in proportion as it is precise.[19] The first thing needful is to catch a giant for your hero; and in this little world it is seldom that one like Johnson comes to the net.