If you will find a copy of Boswell's _Life of {193} Johnson_--remember, it is a large book, in four volumes--and turn to the index at the end, you will discover under the heading Johnson, His Character and Manners, numbers indicating the pages where are printed some stories that you will enjoy reading. On pages 162 and 163 of the fourth volume, we read of his love for children, and his affection for Hodge, his cat, for whom he used to buy oysters. Almost every page contains good reading, as, for instance, beginning at page 300, in the same volume, we may read of his conversation with a young man whom he thought presumptuous, followed immediately by an account of the plan of some of his friends to send him to Italy since he was ill, and of how greatly touched Johnson was by their kindness. Boswell's _Life of Johnson_ is one of the books which the world has enjoyed reading ever since it was written. And now we come to something about this biography that may seem curious. If Boswell had tried to describe Dr. Johnson as being handsome, and polite, instead of unprepossessing and sometimes rude, he likely would have made him seem not nearly as great a man as Johnson really is. The biography would not have been a true picture of Dr. Johnson. A true picture makes a far deeper impression than a picture which is not true; and this is one of the very most important things we can learn about a book. {194} CHAPTER XXVIII READING FOR WHAT YOU WANT TO BE Biography is not only interesting reading, it helps us to understand other people. In this chapter we may discover that there are few better ways of finding out what kind of work we want to undertake than by reading biography. First of all, let us think of a very few famous biographies, such books as Plutarch's _Lives_, Boswell's _Johnson_, Lockhart's _Scott_, Forster's _Dickens_, Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, Churchill's _Lord Randolph Churchill_, Page's _Life and Letters_, Sir Sidney Lee's _Shakespeare_. Numberless people have read and used Plutarch's _Lives of Illustrious Men_. We know that Shakespeare did. If you will turn to the last life in Plutarch's book, the life of Brutus, you will find that Shakespeare must have used this biography of Brutus when he wrote the play _Julius Cæsar_. Now we may think of biography as a magic key that will help you to unlock the door behind which you may find what work you are going to do. Let us ask ourselves what occupations these famous men followed whose lives appear in the list given above.