"Boswell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "One would think," said Boswell, "that the proprietor of all this (Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsfield) must be happy." "Nay, sir," said Johnson, "all this excludes ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... precedence, came the Ploughman Poet and the Ettrick Shepherd, Boswell and Dr. Johnson, Dr. John Brown and Thomas Carlyle, Lady Nairne and Drummond of Hawthornden, Allan Ramsay and Sir Walter; and is it not a proof of the Wizard's magic art, that side by side with the wraiths of these real people walked, or seemed to walk, the Fair Maid of Perth, Jeanie Deans, Meg Merrilies, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of The Church, has indeed protested against my proposed appointment;[126] but I understand that a majority of the members of his own congregation at Cobourg approve of the appointment. Mr. Boswell, M.P.P., and Mr. Sheriff Rultan (the most influential churchmen in the District), have expressed themselves in favour of it in the strongest and warmest terms; as have Mr. Keefer, of Thorold (who is a magistrate of wealth, leisure and benevolence,—was foreman of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... achieved. Alexander is known but little to us, because we know so little of the details of his life. Caesar is much to us, because we have in truth been made acquainted with him. But Shakspeare, of whose absolute doings we know almost nothing, would not be nearer or dearer had he even had a Boswell to paint his daily portrait. The man of letters is, in truth, ever writing his own biography. What there is in his mind is being declared to the world at large by himself; and if he can so write that the world at ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... [Footnote: That Thayendanegea was the grandchild of one of these sachems who were so honoured appears from information given in an article published in the London Magazine; of July 1776. The material for this account of him is supposed to have been supplied by the famous author James Boswell, with whom, while on a visit to England in that year, he was intimate.] or petty king, of the Six Nations, and heard the old man tell the romantic story of his trip to England in the pear 1710, when Anne was sovereign ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... see, lay more in circulating library lore, and he was not deep in Johnson—as few of us would be, I'm afraid, if it were not for Boswell. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... communion at the time of her marriage. Dr Nugent eventually took up his residence with his son-in-law in London, and became a popular member of that famous group of men of letters and artists whom Boswell has made so familiar and so dear to all later generations. Burke, however, had no intention of being dependent. His consciousness of his own powers animated him with a most justifiable ambition, if ever there was one, to play ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... they once were to me. In my first essay in the "Atlantic," forty-six years ago (in 1860), I said that Johnson's periods acted like a lever of the third kind, and that the power applied always exceeded the weight raised; and this comparison seems to hit the mark very well. I did not read Boswell's Life of him till much later. In his conversation Johnson got the ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Tubarcolong (the White Man's Well), on the River Gambia, on the 30th of May, 1866. Under a heavy fire from the concealed enemy, by which one officer was killed and an officer and thirteen men severely wounded, Hodge, and another pioneer named Boswell, chopped and tore away with their hands the logs of wood forming the stockade, Boswell falling nobly just as an opening was effected. Again, in 1873, during the Ashanti War—when it was reported, on the 5th of December, by ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... This was a valuable but crotchety edition. In 1790 Edmund Malone published his famous edition in ten volumes. No Shakespearean scholar ranks higher than he in reputation. Numerous editions followed up to 1865, of which the most important is James Boswell's so-called Third Variorum in twenty-one volumes. In 1855-1861 was published J. O. Halliwell's edition in fifteen volumes, which contains enormous masses ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... resolved to be with him as much as he could, but that his not having done so was a proof of the fallacy of our resolutions, that he regretted. In Windham's diary are several Johnsoniana, after the manner of Boswell, only much shorter, his opinions on one or two subjects briefly given, some quotations and criticisms. I was much struck with his criticisms on Virgil, whom he seems to have held in great contempt, and to have regarded as inferior ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... and of disputatious doctors otherwise forgotten. Yet, in respect to even these, we feel justified in assenting to the opinion of one abundantly capable of appreciating the character of Baxter as a writer. "What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?" asked Boswell of Dr. Johnson. "Read any of them," was the answer, "for they are all good." He has left upon all the impress of his genius. Many of them contain sentiments which happily find favor with few in our time: philosophical and psychological disquisitions, which look ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... brings us to other familiar portraits, and at length to portraits painted by great native artists. Gainsborough and Reynolds appear in full rivalry. Here are Gainsborough's Johnson, the well-known profile portrait, and Sir Joshua's Boswell; Gainsborough's Garrick, a most delightful portrait of Garrick's pleasantest expression, and Sir Joshua's Gibbon, which looks as ugly and as conceited as the little man himself. One of Reynolds's most pleasing portraits is his likeness of himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... brought with him to the Hebrides his strong antipathy to everything Scotch, was often a prey to discontent and murmuring in these latitudes, and that in a moment of ill-humor he should have exclaimed to Boswell,—"Oh, Sir, a most dolorous country!" No wonder, that, his suspicions excited by the nakedness of the land and his preconceived notions of Scotch cupidity, he should, on occasion of losing his stout oaken stick, while ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, remarks that, "In following so very eminent a man from his cradle to his grave, every minute particular which can throw light on the progress of his mind, is interesting." Johnson himself, in ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... misbehaving himself most grossly; treating my opinions with no more respect than those of a schoolboy, and telling me to mind my horses and tailors, and not trouble myself about letters. His Scotch bear-leader, Mr. Boswell, was a butt of the first quality. I never saw such a figure as the fellow cut in what he called a Corsican habit, at one of Mrs. Cornely's balls, at Carlisle House, Soho. But that the stories connected with that same establishment are not the most profitable tales in the world, I could tell ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is characteristic of its owner this one is. It represents a sturdy fist clenching a baton from which depends a bulky wreath of laurel fastened in the middle by a lion's head. The worthy doctor, as we are told by Boswell, carried no key, nor did he permit any member of his oddly-selected household to possess one. At all times and seasons the house in Bolt Court was inhabited, and unquestionably the burly knocker resounded ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... York this morning. Received fifty thousand dollars from Uncle Darwent. We shall expect to meet you at the Hotel Boswell in Pittsburg Saturday. ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... terrier had its early home in the misty island of Skye; which is not to say that it was not also to be found in Lewis, Oronsay, Colonsay and others of the Hebrides, as well as on the mainland of Scotland. Dr. Johnson, who visited these islands with Boswell in 1773, noticed these terriers and observed that otters and weasels were plentiful in Skye, that the foxes were numerous, and that they were hunted by small dogs. He was so accurate an observer that one regrets he did not describe the Macleod's terriers and their work. ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... arose, I presume to say, out of the statement of Mr. Jebb. I never quoted the Irish edition. If C. can prove that Malone superintended it, he may fairly tax me with a violation of my new canon of criticism—not otherwise. What says Mr. James Boswell on that point? I must borrow his precise words: "The only edition for which Mr. Malone can be considered as responsible [is] his own in 1790." [Plays and poems of ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... explained, "to collect the horses and alarm the hundreds towards Boswell's, and the county lieutenant ordered me to take you away from here. No, I can 't ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... Boswell, Jonathan Palmer, and J. H. James (assignors to themselves and Thomas Starbuck), ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... their incapacity for judging a work of art on its own merits, their singular habit of allowing their disapprobation of a man's private character to depreciate his work, that an acknowledged critic like Macaulay could waste time in carefully considering whether Boswell was more fool or more knave, and triumphantly announce that he produced a good book by accident. Probably Boswell did not realise how matchless a biographer he was, though he was not disposed to belittle his own performances. But his unbridled interest in the smallest details, his power of hero-worship, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... pedant who thought himself a great philosopher and a great politician. Pedant he may have been; philosopher and politician he may not have been; but he was, nevertheless, the prince of biographers. Macaulay has praised Boswell's "Life of Johnson" as the best biography ever written. But was not Boswell a pedant? Was he a philosopher? Macaulay himself has penned many biographies. Most of them are quite above the pedantry of small facts. Instead, they are crammed with deep philosophy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... obtained an appointment as secretary to the Royal Academy of Painting, and became acquainted with Johnson, Garrick and others of that society. He was a frequent visitor at the Thrales'; and his name occurs repeatedly in Boswell's Life. In 1769 he was tried for murder, having had the misfortune to inflict a mortal wound with his fruit knife on a man who had assaulted him on the street. Johnson among others gave evidence in his favour at the trial, which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... p. 77).—Crumpet, according to Todd's Johnson, is derived from A.-S. [Anglo-Saxon: crompeht], which Boswell explains, "full of crumples, wrinkled." Perhaps muffin is derived from, or connected ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... had a very pleasant evening I need scarcely say, but to Boswell Sydney Smith would out-Boswell Boswell. He talked of course of Ireland and the Priests, and I gave good, and I trust true testimony to their being, before they took to politics—excellent parish priests, and he talked of Bishop Higgins and Repeal agitations, ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell. And this promises to be interesting. It would be a pity to ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... she also exerted herself to show many little pleasing attentions on our return to Windsor. It was that day Miss Burney came in, with an animation to which she had long been a stranger, to say she had met Mr Boswell—friend and survivor of the Great Lexicographer—near St. George's Chapel, on his way to view the alterations, and he ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... believed Dr. Johnson to be the greatest of men: the Doctor's words were constantly in his mouth; and he never travelled without Boswell's Life. Besides these, he read Caesar and Tacitus, "with translations, sir, with translations—I'm thankful that I kept some of my Latin from Grey Friars;" and he quoted sentences from the Latin Grammar, apropos ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... married the Governor's daughter, who brought him a fortune. He wrote a poem entitled 'The Sugar-cane.' This was sent over to London in MS., and was read at Sir Joshua Reynold's table to a literary coterie, who, according to Boswell, all burst out into a laugh when, after much blank-verse pomp, the poet ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... conversation between Boswell and Johnson, quoted at the beginning of the essay, occurred on the 26 October 1769, at the famous Mitre Tavern. In Stevenson's quotation, the word "all" should be inserted after the word "were" to correspond with the original text, and to make sense. Johnson, though constitutionally lazy, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... historian was born in 1726. He was educated at Eton, and afterwards studied civil law at Utrecht. In 1748, he was called to the Scotch bar, and in 1766 made a judge of session, when he assumed the name of Lord Hailes. Boswell states, that Dr. Johnson, in 1763, drank a bumper to him "as a man of worth, a scholar, and a wit." His "Annals of Scotland" the Doctor describes as "a work which has such a stability of dates, such a certainty of facts, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... a splendid erudition that specially qualified him for proposing this toast, he had also what many of you may think an equally exceptional qualification—he was a native of Lichfield; he was born in this fine city. As a Londoner—like Boswell when charged with the crime of being a Scotsman I may say that I cannot help it—I suppose I should come to you with hesitating footsteps. Perhaps it was rash of me to come at all, in spite of an invitation so kindly worded. Yet how gladly does any lover, not only of ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... a diary (in the manner of Boswell) of the conversation held at his house, and read it at the end of a week pro bono publico. Sir James Mackintosh made a considerable figure in it, and a celebrated poet none at all, merely answering Yes and No. With this result he was by no means satisfied, and talked incessantly ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... chief enemies of books. At short intervals, books and shelves ought to be dusted by the amateur himself. Even Dr. Johnson, who was careless of his person, and of volumes lent to him, was careful about the cleanliness of his own books. Boswell found him one day with big gloves on his hands beating the dust out of his library, as was his custom. There is nothing so hideous as a dirty thumb-mark on a white page. These marks are commonly made, ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... biographical works. The immense popularity which well-written books of this kind have acquired deserves the serious consideration of historians. Voltaire's Charles the Twelfth, Marmontel's Memoirs, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's account of Nelson, are perused with delight by the most frivolous and indolent. Whenever any tolerable book of the same description makes its appearance, the circulating libraries are mobbed; the book societies are ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... English has ever shown itself most keenly alive to the fear of making itself ridiculous; and among all, none has produced so many humorists, only one of them, indeed, so profound as Cervantes, yet all masters in their several ways. What English-speaking man, except Boswell, could have arrived at Weimar, as Goethe did, in that absurd Werthermontirung? And where, out of Germany, could he have found a reigning Grand Duke to put his whole court into the same sentimental livery of blue and yellow, leather breeches, boots, and all, excepting only Herder, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... ever more in need of a Boswell than Henley. Dr. Weir Mitchell once complained to me that in America nobody waited upon great men to report their sayings, while in England a young man was always somewhere near with a clean cuff to scribble them on. The enthusiast, ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... wrote this stanza, he had, no doubt, the following passage in Boswell's Johnson floating in his mind.... 'The grand object of all travelling is to see the shores of the Mediterranean. On those shores were the four great empires of the world—the Assyrian, the Persian, the Grecian, and the Roman' (Life of Johnson, 1876, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... literary class. Rasselas, in spite of its formality, is still a very impressive book. The literary critic may amuse himself with the question how Johnson came to acquire the peculiar style which imposed upon contemporaries and excited the ridicule of the next generation. According to Boswell, it was due to his reading of Sir Thomas Browne, and a kind of reversion to the earlier period in which the Latinisms of Browne were still natural, when the revolt to simple prose had not begun. Addison, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... St. Catharines, stated that Sir Francis had declared in his speech at the opening of the Parliament, that he knew of the rebellion long before it occurred, and that he was the cause of it. Mr. Boswell, of Cobourg, admitted that Sir Francis had said he knew a good deal. But the Governor was very fond of a fine style; he liked rounded periods, or, as Lord Melbourne had expressed it, "epigrammic" flights, so ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... and said, less an author than a talker; not a talker like Johnson, but like Coleridge. If Naigeon could only have contented himself with playing reporter, and could have been blessed by nature with the rare art of Boswell. "We wanted," as Carlyle says, "to see and know how it stood with the bodily man, the working and warfaring Denis Diderot; how he looked and lived, what he did, what he said." Instead of which, nothing but "a dull, sulky, snuffling, droning, interminable lecture on Atheistic Philosophy," delivered ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... attachment to that amiable physician, whose professional knowledge might undoubtedly have enabled him to offer hints to Johnson in the progress of composition. Thus we may account for the references to recondite medical writers in No. 39, which so staggered Boswell and Malone in pronouncing on the genuineness of this paper. Those who are familiar with Johnson's writings can have little hesitation, we conceive, in recognising his style, and manner, and sentiments in those papers which are now published under his name. They may be considered ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham, eldest daughter of Sir Charles Bingham, created, in 1776, Baron Lucan of Castlebar. Sir Charles was a man of culture, who was intimate with Johnson, Goldsmith, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Burke. He is frequently pleasantly mentioned by Boswell. He had married, in 1760, Margaret, daughter of James Smith, M.P., a lady of great good sense and rare accomplishments, and three lovely daughters were the issue from this union. Reynolds found in them most pleasing subjects for his pencil. ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... All readers of Boswell know how the "Vicar of Wakefield" found a publisher. How Goldsmith's landlady arrested him for his rent, and how he wrote to Johnson in his distress. How the kind lexicographer sent a guinea at once, and followed to find the guinea ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... moralist Dr. S. JOHNSON, his biographer Boswell tells us, "was a man of very nice discernment in the science of cookery," and talked of good eating with uncommon satisfaction. "Some people," said he, "have a foolish way of not minding, or pretending not to mind, what they ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... central figure among the English men of letters of that generation was Samuel Johnson (1709-84), whose memory has been preserved less by his own writings than by James Boswell's famous Life of Johnson, published in 1791. Boswell was a Scotch laird and advocate, who first met Johnson in London, when the latter was fifty-four years old. Boswell was not a very wise or witty person, but he reverenced the worth and intellect which shone through his subject's uncouth ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Boswell,' said the old schoolmaster. 'I had no right to brag of my Greek to the gentleman, and he has answered ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I rescued from the shelf? A Boswell, writing out himself! For though he changes dress and name, The man beneath is still the same, Laughing or sad, by fits and starts, One actor in a dozen parts, And whatsoe'er the mask may be, The voice ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... born in Boswell, Oklahoma. My mother and father was both slaves some wha in the eastern states. Soon as freedom was declared they kept going till I was born. They finally come back and farmed round Pine Bluff. My folks last time I heard from them was at Garland City. There's wha my mother died. I had three ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... a bird-of-paradise Queen Hatshepset was, and all the history she made!" enthusiastically exclaimed my historical Boswell. She was the daughter of King Thothmes I., who gave her a Pullman palace car name; she was regarded as the Boadicea of the Orient. "Hattie" built temples, fought battles, and was, in fact, found on the firing line ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... to the Scotch; for, if he had been conscious of that, he never would have thrown himself into the bosom of their country, and trusted to the protection of its remote inhabitants with a fearless confidence."—BOSWELL'S JOHNSON. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the "Literary Club," with Johnson, and Garrick, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Goldsmith sitting in perpetuity in Boswell. The Doctor has been talking there for a hundred years, and there will he talk for many a hundred more. And we of another generation, and with other things to think about, can enter any night we please, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... with the Doctor till 1763, when I was presented to him at the Mitre Tavern by Mr. James Boswell, a young Scotchman of excellent Family and great Learning, but small Wit, whose metrical Effusions I had ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Ana in the English language—and, indeed, in any language—is to be found in a work which does not correspond to the normal type either in name or in form. In his Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., Boswell relates that to his remark, a propos of French literature, "Their Ana are good,'' Johnson replied, "A few of them are good; but we have one book of that kind better than any of them—Selden's Table-Talk.'' Boswell's own ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... melancholy to reflect," says Boswell, "that Johnson and Savage were sometimes in such extreme indigence that they could not pay for a lodging; so that they have wandered together whole nights in the streets. Yet in these almost incredible scenes of distress, we may suppose ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... too, remains a valuable one; for so far as it goes we can collate it with the first edition of The Traveller, and exactly discover the emendations made by Johnson, or by Goldsmith after discussion with Johnson. Boswell tells us that the Doctor "in the year 1783, at my request, marked with a pencil the lines which he had furnished, which are only line 420, 'To stop too faithful, and too faint to go,' and the concluding ten lines, except the last couplet but one. . . . He added, 'These are all of which I can ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... his poetic gifts occurred also in his ninth year, but took its rise in a much humbler and less common source than the inspiration of the stage. His biographers have recorded this small event with a conscientious accuracy, second only to that of Boswell and Hawkins in regard to the Lichfield duck. 'The little tale,' says one of them, 'is worth relating; the rather that, after an interval of more than twenty years, Schiller himself, on meeting with his early comrade ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in the King's Bench for debt, wrote his Annotations on the Parian Chronicle, which were first published by Prideaux. He was the learned scholar alluded to by Johnson; an allusion not known to Boswell and others. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... matter of fact we are, by our very nature, a collection of miscellaneous scandals——We must be. Bacon, Shakespear, Byron, Shelley—all the stars.... No, Johnson wasn't a star, he was a character by Boswell.... Oh! great things come out of us, no doubt, our arts are the vehicles of wonder and hope, the world is dead without these things we produce, but that's no reason why—why the mushroom-bed should follow the mushrooms into the soup, is it? Perfectly fair image. (No, ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... jangling, quibbling, dissatisfied pensioners in his household; and so far as we know he never learned the truth that all pensioners are dissatisfied. "If I can stand things at home, I can stand things anywhere," he once said to Boswell, as much as to say, "If I can stand things at home, I can stand even you." Goldsmith referred to Boswell as a cur; Garrick said he thought he was a bur. Socrates had a similar satellite by the name of Cheropho, a dark, dirty, weazened, and awfully serious little man of the tribe ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... give an account of his descendants, or their prosperous or adverse fortunes: they are noticed at length by Burigni. In Mr. Boswell's Life of Johnson, mention is made of one who was then in a state of want. Dr. Johnson, in ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... by his own works. No author enjoyed so much the bliss of excessive fondness. I heard from the late Charlotte Lenox the anecdote which so severely reprimanded his innocent vanity, which Boswell has recorded. This lady was a regular visitor at Richardson's house, and she could scarcely recollect one visit which was not taxed by our author reading one of his voluminous letters, or two or three, if his auditor ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Mr. Pitt, and was unceremoniously turned out by him. As Lord High-Chancellor, he was guardian-in-chief of all the wards in Chancery; and I suppose, for instance, without looking up the quotation in Boswell, that he was the particular Lord Chancellor to whom Dr. Johnson said he should like to intrust the making of all the matches in England. Louis Napoleon has just now undertaken to make all the friction-matches in France,—but Dr. Johnson's proposal referred ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... Boswell made Sam Johnson. Just as we only know of the existence of Matter through our senses, so we only know of Sam's existence through Bozzy. I am conscious that I am becoming prosy. Let's get ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... communicates with them by a tunnel, suggested by Johnson. It was not a very novel suggestion, but the excavation deserves notice as probably the one engineering achievement of old Ursus major. We may fancy the Titan of the pen and the tea-table, in his snuffy habit as he lived and as photographed by Boswell, Mrs. Thrale, Fanny Burney, and their epitomizer Macaulay, diving under the turnpike and emerging among the osiers and water-rats to offer his orisons at the shrine of Shakespeare. For, in the fashion of the day, Garrick erected a little brick "temple," and placed therein a statue ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... thought as a child might play with a forbidden toy. Then he decided to test the matter. He would have to buy clothes and provisions for the winter—he always made a pilgrimage about this time. There would be a letter from Boswell, too. There always was one in September. So on a certain morning Farwell turned the key in his lock and quite naturally set forth with a sense of exaltation and freedom he had imagined he would never ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... choicest phraseology. He informs us, that "Sarmiento's History of the Peruvian Incas altogether surpasses that of Dr. Johnson's Rasselas and the Happy Valley." The history of Dr. Johnson's "Rasselas" is related, we believe, by Boswell. The great moralist composed his beautiful and philosophical, but somewhat gloomy romance, in the evenings of a single week, in order to obtain the means of defraying the expenses of his mother's funeral. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... was so much of a public character and so popular with his fellow journalists that stories of all kinds abound: concerning him there is a kind of evidence, and very valuable it is, that may be called a Boswell Collective. It is fitting that it should be so. We cannot picture G.K. like the great lexicographer accompanied constantly by one ardent and observant witness, pencil in hand, ready to take notes over the teacups. (And by the way, in spite of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... ordinary chatterer held the company's attention for an hour. Many good talkers are unhappy unless they have the privilege of exercising their gifts. Not so he. Sometimes he had almost to be compelled to begin. On such occasions one of his intimates was wont to quote from Boswell: 'Leave him to me, sir; I'll make ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... Philadelphia edition of his 'Prince of Abyssinia.' He expressed a wish to see it. I promised to send him a copy on my return to Philadelphia, and did so. He returned a polite answer, which I printed in Mr. Boswell's second edition of his 'Life of the Doctor.'" Richard Rush relates in the Port Folio that when his father, Dr. Benjamin Rush, attended a meeting of "The Club" in London, Goldsmith asked him a question about the North ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... was mimicking his way to immortality; Gainsborough was working the apotheosis of a hat; Reynolds, Lawrence, Romney, and West, the American, were forming an English School of Art; George Washington and George the Third were linking their names preparatory to sending them down the ages; Boswell was penning undying gossip; Blackstone was writing his "Commentaries" for legal lights unborn; Thomas Paine was getting his name on the blacklist of orthodoxy; Burke, the Irishman, was polishing his brogue ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Boswell relates how, in one of his numerous communicative moods, he informed Dr. Johnson of the existence of a club at "the Boar's Head in Eastcheap, the very tavern where Falstaff and his joyous companions ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... to argue against the conclusion naturally to be deduced from this will, Boswell, with a strange ignorance of human nature, remarks:—"If he had taken offence at any part of his wife's conduct, I cannot believe that he would have taken this petty mode of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... neighbouring commons there were always some gypsy tribes in encampment, the two largest of them being known by the names of 'Boswell's crew,' and 'Smith's crew.' While out on his solitary rambles, John Clare made the accidental acquaintance of 'King Boswell,' which acquaintance, after being kept up by the interchange of many little courtesies and acts of kindness, gradually ripened into a sort of friendship. ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... verses translated by the Marchioness of Northampton from "Ha tighinn fodham," in "Albyn's Anthology," or Croker's "Boswell." ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... Hanks broke the world's trotting record at Independence, Iowa, some years ago, her former owner, Mr. Hart Boswell, of Lexington, who raised and trained her, was asked if Nancy would ever lower that record. He replied: "Well, if the time comes that the track is just right, the atmosphere just right, the driver just right and Nancy just right, ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... it gives little pleasure". [Footnote: Johnson's Works, xi. 270.]The poems of Gray—an exception must be made, to Johnson's honour, in favour of the Elegy [Footnote: In the bosom of "the Club" the exception dwindled to two stanzas (Boswell's Life, ii. 300).] are slaughtered in detail; [Footnote: Johnson's Works, xi. 372-378. Johnson is peculiarly sarcastic on the Bard and the Progress of Poetry.] the man himself is given dog's burial with the compendious epitaph: "A dull ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... of a recluse whom one finds after much groping about dim halls at Cambridge. A highly individual personality! It is this personality, though, that makes the fascination of Poets and Pilgrims—a volume of studies in which the subjects are Spenser, Milton, Evelyn, Bunyan, Boswell, Crabbe, Wordsworth and Carlyle. Mr. Glover notes at the foot of the table of contents: "An acute young critic, who saw some of the proofs, has asked me, with a hint of irony, whether Evelyn and Boswell were Puritans or Poets. Any reader who has a conscience ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... said that General Boswell was a rich man and had a good and growing business; and that Washington's work world be light and he would get forty dollars a month and be boarded and lodged in the General's family—which was as good as ten dollars more; and even better, for he could ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... authenticity of the allusion of a great poet and writer in general, of whom Dr. Johnson has said, in those familiar words in his epitaph, that he touched nothing which he did not adorn, and whose character has been very much misunderstood, chiefly by reason of the misrepresentations of Boswell. This parasite of Johnson, who has given us one of the most entertaining books of biography ever written, was jealous not only of Goldsmith's literary reputation, so far as it might rival that of his special idol, but also of the real hold which Goldsmith, because of his simplicity as well ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... with gross inaccuracy, states that the Champion "owed its chief support to his [Fielding's] abilities," but that "his essays in that collection cannot now be so ascertained as to perpetuate them in this edition of his works." Boswell refers to Fielding as possessing a "share" in the paper. A manuscript copy of some of the Minutes of meetings of the Champion partners, written out in an eighteenth-century handwriting, and now in the possession of the ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... was filled with gratitude. They came to the Pool of London, and who can describe its majesty? The imagination thrills, and Heaven knows what figures people still its broad stream, Doctor Johnson with Boswell by his side, an old Pepys going on board a man-o'-war: the pageant of English history, and romance, and high adventure. Philip turned to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... in his easy-chair, talked for twenty years, the oracle of the literary world, and Boswell, soon after his death, gave to the world the clever record of these conversations, which has aided to secure the place in literature he had obtained by his writings. Goldsmith (1728-1774), had he never written poems, would stand among ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... book was really written by Dr. Hill the physician. That gentleman's claim to the authorship has not, of course, been established, but at a dinner at Dilly's the publisher's in 1778, when Johnson, Miss Seward, and others were present, a curious little discussion arose on the subject. Boswell thus relates the incident and the conversation:—"The subject of cookery having been very naturally introduced at a table, where Johnson, who boasted of the niceness of his palate, avowed that 'he always found a good dinner,' he said, 'I could write a better book about cookery than ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... first by Mr. John Pitts, late Rector of Great Brickhill, Bucks[1], to Mr. Richard How of Aspley, Beds, and is taken for granted successively by Boswell, Malone, and Croker. But no such Greek is, in fact, to be found in Euripides; the words ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... Goldsmith," pictures the poet "keeping the card-table in an uproar." Mrs. Bunbury invited Goldsmith down to Barton to pass the Christmas holidays. Irving regrets "that we have no record of this Christmas visit to Barton; that the poet had no Boswell to follow at his heels, and take notes of all his sayings and doings. We can only picture him in our minds, casting off all care; enacting the Lord of Misrule; presiding at the Christmas revels; providing all kinds of merriment; keeping the card-table in an uproar, and finally opening the ball ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... well say so," answered the cattle-drover. "Why, that's the famous Doctor Samuel Johnson, who they say is the greatest and learnedest man in England. I saw him in London streets, walking with one Mr. Boswell." ...
— Biographical Stories - (From: "True Stories of History and Biography") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... literary club met at the Turk's Head from 1763 to 1783. Among the most notable members were Johnson, the arbiter of English prose; Oliver Goldsmith; Boswell, the biographer; Burke, the orator; Garrick, the actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. Among the later members were Gibbon, the historian; and ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... had built up his small library—Defoe, Hakluyt, Hazlitt and the essayists, Boswell, some indifferent romances, and a shelf of spirited poetry. His tastes became known, and he acquired a reputation for a scholarly habit. He was president of the Literary Society of the Guthrie Memorial Kirk, and read to its members a ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... with a groan. Mr. Boswell-Jones was rather a pompous young gentleman, who expended most of his energies trying to live up to his double surname, and in consequence was not very popular with his schoolfellows. He rather fancied himself as an elocutionist; and though ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... of view, the writing of memoirs, excepting those of the trivial French School or gossiping letters and diaries of the Pepys-Walpole variety, would seem an unprofitable task for a great man's undertaking. Boswell certainly did for Johnson what the thunderous old doctor could not have done for himself. Nevertheless, from the days of Caesar to the days of Sherman and Lee, the captains of military and senatorial and literary industry have ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... are known to exist, one in the Ashbridge Library at Cleveland House, the other, not so fine as the present, bought by Malone at Brand's, since James Boswell's, and now (1825) ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... hospitality was freely extended. Yet, where he was familiar, Tennyson was a gay companion, not shunning jest or even paradox. "As Dr Johnson says, every man may be judged of by his laughter": but no Boswell has chronicled the laughters of Tennyson. "He never, or hardly ever, made puns or witticisms" (though one pun, at least, endures in tradition), "but always lived in an attitude of humour." Mr Jowett writes (and no description of the poet is better ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... the Boswell of my infantile exploits. "Well, these Andersons were so poor they didn't have any skates, but some of the boys had let them take a sled, and two of these little Anderson kids were slidin' around ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... was by no means gratified by the ponderous prancings of his imitator. We learn from Boswell that when the great man met Captain Cook at a dinner given by the President of the Royal Society, he said that he "was much pleased with the conscientious accuracy of that celebrated circumnavigator, who set me right as to many of the exaggerated accounts given by ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... Antoine Arnaudon Arnold Artus Ballade Ballande Barnes Bart Bartram Beaur Behrens Belmondi Berzelius Bizanger Blackwood Blair Bolley Bonney Bossin Boswell Bottger Boutenguy Braconnot Brande Bufeu Bufton Bure Carter Caw Cellier Champion Chaptal Chevallier Clarke Close Cochrane Collin Cooke Coupier and Collins Coxe Crock Cross Darcet Davids Davis Delunel Delarve Delang Derheims Dize Draper Druck Duhalde Dumas Dumovlen Dunand Dunlap Ellis Eisner ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... be made among one's belongings: which are to be stored, and which to accompany? Take the subject of books for instance. Horrid hesitation: can we subsist for four or five months on nothing but the "Oxford Book of English Verse" and Boswell's Johnson? Suppose we want to look up a quotation, in those late hours of the night when all really worthwhile reading is done? Our memory is knitted with a wide mesh. Suppose we want to be sure just what ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... was no mere artist, but an artist-philosopher, and that the artist-philosophers are the only sort of artists I take quite seriously, will be no news to you. Even Plato and Boswell, as the dramatists who invented Socrates and Dr Johnson, impress me more deeply than the romantic playwrights. Ever since, as a boy, I first breathed the air of the transcendental regions at a performance of Mozart's Zauberflote, I have been proof against the garish splendors and alcoholic ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... incident in Borrow's career, and we would not quarrel with him nor his publisher for calling his life a 'definitive biography' if one did not know that there is not and cannot be anything 'definitive' about a biography except in the case of a Master. Boswell, Lockhart, Mrs. Gaskell are authors who had the advantage of knowing personally the subjects of their biographies. Any biographer who has not met his hero face to face and is dependent solely on documents is crippled in his undertaking. Moreover, such a ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... moralities, whether major or minor, whether affecting the foundation of conduct or the surface of manners, remain fixed. On the contrary, one of the most interesting things in literature is to mark the shifts and changes in men's standards. For instance, Boswell tells a curious story of the first occasion on which Johnson met Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two ladies of the company were regretting the death of a friend to whom they owed great obligations. Reynolds observed that they had at any rate the comfort of being relieved from a debt of gratitude. The ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... again—how can foreknowledge be reconciled with freewill? The difficulty is not to be got rid of by discrediting the reality of freewill, and treating it as a thing for which there is no evidence. When Johnson silenced Boswell's chatter with the words, 'Sir, we know our will is free and there's an end on't,' he expressed a great truth in language not the less philosophically accurate on account of its colloquial curtness. The consciousness possessed by an agent about to perform ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... during the voyage, he sailed to Table Bay. On his arrival there Admiral Sir Roger Curtis, who was in command of the station, gave orders for two new keels to be built immediately, and it is recorded that so well did Mr. Boswell, the builder's assistant (the builder himself being absent) perform his task that the new keels reflected the greatest ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... hysterical Belinda in the "Cave of Spleen," the melancholic "I" of Samuel Richardson's correspondence, Gray's leucocholy, the psychosomatically ailing characters of The Vicar of Wakefield and Tristram Shandy, Boswell's Hypochondriack Papers (1777-1783) contributed to the London Magazine, and such "sensible" and "sensitive" women as Mrs. Bennett and Miss Bates in the novels of Jane Austen. So great in bulk is ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... preliminary contact starts their knowledge. And therefore a favorite volume, even if unopened in the pocket, does nevertheless by its proximity color and enhance the enjoyment of the day. I have carried Howell, who wrote the "Familiar Letters," unread along the countryside. A small volume of Boswell has grown dingy in my pocket. I have gone about with a copy of Addison with long S's, but I read it chiefly at home when my feet are ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... and eager about a work never intended to be serious. Do you suppose that I could have any intention but to giggle and make giggle?—a playful satire, with as little poetry as could be helped, was what I meant. And as to the indecency, do, pray, read in Boswell what Johnson, the sullen moralist, says of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... having been graduated from college and having read the poems of Villon, the confessions of Rousseau, and Boswell's life of Johnson, I was convinced that I had comprehended the sum of human wisdom and knew all there was worth knowing. If at the present time—for I am seventy-two—I knew as much as I thought I knew at twenty-three I should undoubtedly be a ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... not wonder at this," Dr. Johnson said of the epitaph to Boswell. "It would have been strange if born in London he ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... sparkling of genius in the effusions of this young man (Blacket). It was upon this that Lord Byron and a young friend of his were sometimes playful in conversation, and in writing to me. 'I see,' says the latter, 'that Blacket the Son of Crispin and Apollo is dead.' Looking into Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' the other day, I saw, 'We were talking about the famous Mr. Wordsworth, the poetical Shoemaker.' Now, I never before heard that there had been a Mr. Wordsworth a Poet, a Shoemaker, or a famous man; and I dare say you have never heard of him. Thus ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... hate the Scotch, but he lives for us only because he was well Boswellized by a Scotchman. And now nobody knows just how much of Boswell is Doctor Johnson ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... I like old Sam so well, I think I'll try the second volume," returned Jo, hoping to propitiate him by accepting a second dose of Boswell's Johnson, as he had recommended ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... for THE DRAWING ROOM, it was amusing to behold the vivacity of Lisardo; who, leaping about Lysander, and expressing his high gratification at the discourse he had already heard, and his pleasure at what he hoped yet to hear, reminded us of what Boswell has said of Garrick, who used to flutter about Dr. Johnson, and try to soften his severity ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... probable that this was true. But in the free encounter of wit and argument, the same want of readiness that made him silent in parliament would most likely restrict his conversational power. It may be doubted if there is a striking remark or saying of his on record. His name occurs in Boswell, but nearly always as a persona muta. Certainly the arena where Johnson and Burke encountered each other was not fitted to bring out a shy and not very quick man. Against Johnson he manifestly harboured a sort of grudge, and if ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison
... know of these years of private life is mainly due to Mr. William Herndon, the young lawyer already quoted, whom he took into partnership in 1845, and who kept on the business of the firm in Springfield till Lincoln's death. This gentleman was, like Boswell, of opinion that a great man is not best portrayed as a figure in a stained-glass window. He had lived with Lincoln, groaned under his odd ways, and loved them, for sixteen years before his Presidency, and after his death he devoted much research, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Ramblers deeply stirred some readers and bored others. Young Boswell, not unduly saturnine in temperament, was profoundly impressed by them and determined on their account to seek out the author. Taine, a century later, discovered that he already knew by heart all they had ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... posturing from the turkey- gobbler or editor of the Houston Post. Had Carlyle been born a long-eared ass, he might have been fully approved— if not altogether appreciated—by Gosse, Froude and other "critic flies." When Doctor Samuel Johnson was told that Boswell proposed to write his life, he threatened to prevent it by taking that of his would-be biographer. It were curious to consider what "crabbed old Carlyle" would have done had he suspected the danger of falling into the hands of a literary backstairs Mrs. Grundy like Edmund ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Capillaire; which is given as a favourite medicine in pulmonary catarrh. It is flavoured with orange flowers, and acts as a demulcent with slightly stimulating effects. One part of the plant is gently boiled with ten parts of water, and with nineteen parts of white sugar. Dr. Johnson says Boswell used to put Capillaire into his port wine. Sir John Hill instructed us that (as we cannot get the true Maidenhair fresh in England) the fine syrup made in France from their Fern in perfection, concocted with pure Narbonne honey, is not by any means to be thought a trifle, because ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... verse and prose from 100 authors, including: James R. Lowell, Burroughs, Herrick, Thackeray, Scott, Vaughn, Milton, Cowley, Browning, Stevenson, Henley, Longfellow, Keats, Swift, Meredith, Lamb, Lang, Dobson, Fitzgerald, Pepys, Addison, Kemble, Boswell, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... without a break almost from the time of his advent in Vienna. Czerny, in his autobiography, gives an interesting picture of the devotion of Krumpholz, who attached himself to Beethoven much the same as did Boswell to Dr. Johnson. He was somewhat older than Beethoven, and his position as first violinist at the Court Theatre enabled him to be of much practical service to Beethoven, as he was widely known among the professional musicians, as well as the rich amateurs. He sounded Beethoven's praises ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... arrived; eight o'clock came, and eight members of the committee were punctual in their attendance. Mr. Loggins, the solicitor, of Boswell-court, sent an excuse, and Mr. Samuel Briggs, the ditto of Furnival's Inn, sent his brother: much to his (the brother's) satisfaction, and greatly to the discomfiture of Mr. Percy Noakes. Between the Briggses and the Tauntons ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Blake Mathilde Blind Friedrich M. von Bodenstedt Johann Jakob Bodmer Boetius Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux Gaston Boissier George H. Boker George Borrow Jacques Benigne Bossuet James Boswell Paul Bourget Sir John Bowring Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen Georg ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various |
