Authors, Scottish -- 18th century -- Biography; Biographers -- Great Britain -- Biography; Boswell, James, 1740-1795
During the course of the trial the _Tour in Corsica_ had been preparing.
Early in 1768 it was issued from the celebrated press of Robert and
Andrew Foulis in Glasgow, and the publishers were the Dillys in the
Poultry, London, who were to act for him in all his literary
undertakings to the end of his life. It was a lull in the storm of the
Douglas crisis, and the old judge, eager enough to see his son
associated with anything rational, was not unpleased with its appearing
as a pledge of better things. 'Jamie,' he admitted, 'had taen a toot on
a new horn.' The account of Corsica which had been made up from various
sources of information ran to two hundred and thirty-nine pages; but the
real interest of the volume attaches to the _Journal_ which occupies a
hundred and twenty. The translations from Seneca were done by Thomas
Day, then very young, the author of _Sandford and Merton_, and the
creator of that constellation of excellence, Mr Barlow, whose connection
in any degree with Boswell is almost provocative of a smile. The
peculiar orthography of the writer is defended in the preface, for he
allows himself not only such divergencies as 'tremenduous,' 'authour,'
'ambassadour,' but also 'authentick' and 'panegyrick.' The dedication of
the first edition to Paoli was dated on his own birthday, and the book
ran to a third edition before the October of the same year. As purchased
by the Dillys for a hundred guineas it would appear to have been a
profitable speculation, and the wide circulation to which it attained we
shall see was not merely due to accident but to more solid qualities.
'Pray read,' says Horace Walpole to his friend Gray, 'the new account of
Corsica. The author is a strange being, and has a rage of knowing
everybody that ever was talked of. He forced himself upon me at Paris in
spite of my teeth and my doors.' 'Mr B.'s book,' replies Gray--with a
curious anticipation of the Carlylean canon of criticism--'has pleased
and moved me strangely; all I mean that relates to Paoli. The pamphlet
proves, what I have always maintained, that any fool may write a most
valuable book by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and saw
_with veracity_. Of Mr B.'s book I have not the least suspicion, because
I am sure he could invent nothing of the kind. The title of this part of
his work is a dialogue between a Green Goose and a Hero.' But Gray was
fastidious, in this case blindly so. The merits of Goldsmith he could
when dying perceive, but the rollicking humour of Bozzy in this his
first book was sealed to the recluse critic who 'never spoke out,' a
thing that never could be safely asserted of the author of the _Tour in
Corsica_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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