James Boswell | Scottish Biographer & Journalist (2024)

James Boswell (born October 18 [October 29, New Style], 1740, Edinburgh, Scotland—died May 19, 1795, London, England) was a friend and biographer of Samuel Johnson (Life of Johnson, 2 vol., 1791). The 20th-century publication of his journals proved him to be also one of the world’s greatest diarists.

Edinburgh and London

Boswell’s father, Alexander Boswell, advocate and laird of Auchinleck in Ayrshire from 1749, was raised to the bench with the judicial title of Lord Auchinleck in 1754. The Boswells were an old and well-connected family, and James was subjected to the strong pressure of an ambitious family.

Boswell hated the select day school to which he was sent at age 5, and from 8 to 13 he was taught at home by tutors. From 1753 to 1758 he went through the arts course at the University of Edinburgh. Returning to the university in 1758 to study law, he became enthralled by the theatre and fell in love with a Roman Catholic actress. Lord Auchinleck thought it prudent to send him to the University of Glasgow, where he attended the lectures of Adam Smith. In the spring of 1760 he ran away to London. He was, he soon found, passionately fond of metropolitan culture, gregarious, high-spirited, sensual, and attractive to women; and London offered just the combination of gross and refined pleasures that seemed to fulfill him. At this time he contracted gonorrhea, an affliction that he was to endure many times in the course of his life.

From 1760 to 1762 Boswell studied law at home under strict supervision and sought release from boredom in gallantry, in a waggish society called the Soaping Club, and in scribbling. His publications (many in verse and most of them anonymous) give no indication of conspicuous talent.

When Boswell came of age, he was eager to enter the foot guards. Lord Auchinleck agreed that if he passed his trials in civil law, he would receive a supplementary annuity and be allowed to go to London to seek a commission through influence. Boswell passed the examination in July 1762.

Anticipating great happiness, Boswell began, in the autumn, the journal that was to be the central expression of his genius. His great zest for life was not fully savoured until life was all written down, and he had a rare faculty for imaginative verbal reconstruction. His journal is much more dramatic than most because he wrote up each event as though he were still living through it, as if he had no knowledge of anything that had happened later. People in his journal talk and are given their characteristic gestures.

Boswell’s second London visit lasted from November 1762 to August 1763. Soon after his arrival, he was informed of the birth in Scotland of a son, Charles, for whom he arranged Anglican Baptism. The mother (Peggy Doig) was probably a servant. He met Oliver Goldsmith, the novelist, playwright, and poet, as well as John Wilkes, the radical politician and polemicist. And on May 16, 1763, in the back parlour of the actor and bookseller Thomas Davies, he secured an unexpected introduction to Samuel Johnson, whose works he admired and whom he had long been trying to meet. Johnson was rough with him, but Boswell kept his temper, went to call a week later, and found himself liked—a great friendship was initiated. Johnson was 53 years old when they met, Boswell 22. There was condescension on both sides on account of differences in rank and intelligence. Having become genuinely convinced that the scheme to join the guards was not practicable, Boswell capitulated to his father and consented to become a lawyer. It was agreed that he should spend a winter studying civil law at Utrecht and should then make a modest foreign tour.

Continental tour

In Holland Boswell befriended and unsuccessfully courted the novelist Isabella van Tuyll van Serooskerken (later called Isabelle de Charrière). He had been deeply affected by Johnson’s piety and on Christmas Day, in the ambassador’s chapel at The Hague, received communion for the first time in the Church of England. His pious program proved stimulating for a time but palled when it had lost its novelty. He received word that his little boy had died. In the depression that ensued he had recurring nightmares of being hanged. He was discouraged to find that dissipation brought him more happiness than chastity and hard work, and he soon lapsed into his former promiscuity.

From Utrecht, Boswell traveled to Berlin in the company of the old Jacobite Earl Marischal, friend and counselor of Frederick the Great, but he was never able to meet the king. Passing through Switzerland (December 1764), he secured interviews with both Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Voltaire. Boswell stayed nine months in Italy, devoting himself systematically to sightseeing. At Naples he established an intimacy with Wilkes (then outlawed) and traveled with Lord Mountstuart, eldest son of the earl of Bute, the chief target of Wilkes’s scurrilities.

The most original act of his life followed when he made a six weeks’ tour of the island of Corsica (autumn 1765) to interview the heroic Corsican chieftain Pasquale de Paoli, then engaged in establishing his country’s independence of Genoa. Paoli succumbed to his charm and became his lifelong friend. On his return to the mainland, Boswell sent off paragraphs to the newspapers, mingling facts with fantastic political speculation.