Boswell, with all his experience, never attained the mellow Sadduceeism of the diner-out. As a reward, he never lost the literary conscience, the capacity for labour, the assiduity and veracity that have set his work upon a pedestal of its own. The dedication to Reynolds, a masterly piece of writing, will shew the trouble that he took over his method, 'obliged to run half over London in order to fix a date correctly.' And he knew the value of his work, which the man with the note-book never does. In his moments of self-complacency he could compare his _Johnsoniad_ with the _Odyssey_; and he will not repress his 'satisfaction in the consciousness of having largely provided for the instruction and entertainment of mankind.' Literary models before him he had none. Scott suggests the life of the philosopher Demophon in Lucian, but Boswell was not likely to have known it. He modestly himself says he has enlarged on the plan of Mason's _Life of Gray_; but his merits are his own. For the history of the period it is, as Cardinal Duperron said of Rabelais, _le livre_--_the_ book--'in worth as a book,' decides Carlyle, 'beyond any other production of the eighteenth century.' Time has dealt gently with both Johnson and Boswell. 'The chief glory of every people,' said the former in the preface to his _Dictionary_ 'arises from its authors: whether I shall add anything to the reputation of English literature must be left to time.' In the constituency of the present no dead writer addresses such an audience as Johnson does. Of Johnson Boswell might have said, as Cervantes did of his great creation Don Quixote, he and his subject were born for each other. There is no greater figure, no more familiar face in our literature than 'the old man eloquent'; and as the inseparable companion 'held in my heart of hearts, whose fidelity and tenderness I consider as a great part of the comforts which are yet left to me,' rises the figure of his biographer, the Bozzy no more of countless follies and fatuities, but Boswell, the prince of biographers, the inheritor of unfulfilled renown, now become, like his hero himself, an ancient. And they are still in the heyday of their great fame. Along the stream of time the little bark, as he hoped, sails attendant, pursues the triumph and partakes the gale. With James Boswell it has happened, as Mark Pattison says of Milton, to have passed beyond the critics into a region of his own. That 'mighty civil gentlewoman,' the mistress of the _Green Man_ at Ashbourne, M. Killingley, who waited on him with the note of introduction to his extensive acquaintance--'a singular favour conferr'd on one who has it not in her power to make any other return but her most grateful thanks, &c.,'--is but a symbol of the feelings of the readers who ever wish well to the name and the fame of James Boswell. THE END.