Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-02-23
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

Those who believe in the worth of
| the older books are indebted to writer
| on this page who recently called at
| tention to the fact that James Boswell
| gave rather good portrait of DR.. Sam
| uel johnson centuries before the new
biography arrived upon the scene.
No one would sheer at the new
movement" if it is entitled to be called
such, which Lytton Strachey brought
| in with his splendid biography of Queen
Victoria, published about seven years
ago. 1t is generally conceded that Stra-
chey, whose delightful Elizabeth and
Essex has but recently appeared in
book form, was the initiator of such
worth as the so-called new biography
may possess.
Many readers, however, while recog-
MIXING these merits in the new, will hold
firm to the belief that there was q great
deal of the same sort of thing in the
old, although no doubt it has q certain
musty flavor today.
When one finishes Boswell's "The
Journal of Tour to the Hebrides With
Samuel Johnson" he has a sense of hav-
ing lived for time with a real man.
He knows his faults as well as his vir-
tues. The dictatorial old man lives
again in all his Nay, sir" and AYE,
sir"
When the worthy doctor calls waiter
rascal for putting lump of sugar
IN his lemonade with his fingers the
modern reader sees and understands
quite as we'll as If. the picture had been
completed only yesterday instead of
around the time of the American Rev.
olution.
" * X X
The reader who looks up Boswell's
account of the tour will get memorable
pictures, not page after page of them,
for the worthy Boswell was garrulous
man to whom everything was grist. but
enough of them between the other
words, as It were, to more than repay
him for his happy trouble.
We went to it, the other day, and
were struck afresh with the complete
job of portraiture which Boswell did
Lest any reader have not this volume
handy, we are tempted to extract his
fine picture of the infant terrible" of
English literature; here goes:
"Dr. Samuel Johnson's character,
religious, moral, political and literary,
nay, his figure and manners. are,
believe, more generally known than
those Of any man; yet 1t may not be
superfuouS here to attempt a sketch of
him.
Let my readers then remember that
he was sincere and jealous Christian,
of High Church of England and mo-
narchical principles, which he would not
tamely suffer to be questioned steady
and infiexible in maintaining the obli-
cations of piety and virtue, both from a.
regard to the order of society, and from
veneration for the Great Source of
all order; correct, nay stern in his
taste; hard to please and easily offended,
impetuous and irritable in his temper,
but of most humane and benevolent
heart; having mind stored with a
vast and various collection of learning
and knowledge, which he communicated
with peculiar perspicuity and force, in
rich and choice expression"
Men no longer write So-but it is
clear, is it not, despite the lengthy
rather involved, sentences? There is
nothing here in the least resembling
Sparks Washington; we are given to
understand that johnson was hard to
please, was easily offended, was i'm
petuous and irritable. He was not the
sort of man who would say Eyes" just
because he knew some one else wanted
him to- his beliefs he would not tamely
suffer to be questioned, but would spring
hot to their defense
What lesson this might become to
thousands of Americans who almost
literally spend their entire lives in the