Bozzy at His Best

BOSWELL FOR THE DEFENCE: 1769-1774 (396 pp.)--Edited by William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Frederick A. Pottle--McGraw-Hill ($6.95).

"I have a constant plan to write the life of Mr. Johnson," noted the young man. "I have not told him of it yet, nor do I know if I should tell him."

The remark calls up many an obligatory movie scene about the crucial creative moment in the lives of great artists (Wench: "What's troubling you, Will?" Shakespeare: "Oh, nothing, I'm just a little sicklied o'er ... I think I shall go home and write Hamlet"). But in this instance, the offhand remark is real; it was set down by James Boswell in his journal on March 31, 1772.

The latest volume of the delightful Yale University series, The Private Papers of James Boswell (seven published, eight or ten to come) opens in 1769, when Boswell is a fast-rising, 29-year-old Edinburgh lawyer. Thanks to his bestselling book, The Account of Corsica, he is also a writer perhaps better known on the Continent than Sam Johnson himself. Bozzy's vagarious search for a wife, described in the previous volume, has succeeded, and for the moment at least he is well-behaved. When he visits London in 1772 without his wife, he is tempted by "a variety of fine girls, genteelly dressed, all wearing Venus's girdle, all inviting me to amorous intercourse." But with a heroic mustering of conscience, he resists the flourish of strumpets and confines himself to conversation and claret.

Wine-Smeared Likeness. During various other jaunts to London and his famous ramble through the Hebrides with Johnson, Boswell is at his best. The pictures he draws are wine smeared and flecked with spittle, but they catch a brilliant likeness: Oliver Goldsmith fuming because he cannot break into a conversation dominated by Johnson; Johnson himself, with his "robust and rather dreadful figure, lumbering in attendance to a beautiful dinner-partner"; Mrs. Boswell trying hard to be polite to Johnson despite his "irregular hours and uncouth habits."

Bozzy's law practice prospered. Most of his cases were civil matters, but generosity and a liking for publicity prompted him to defend a succession of penniless thieves and murderers. His most notable case gives the volume a somber ending. With great eloquence, Boswell defends John Reid, who is accused of sheep stealing. The man is condemned to the gallows, apparently more because of poor reputation than any commanding weight of evidence. Boswell fights hard for a commutation but gets only a short stay of execution.

Half-Hangit Maggie. Lawyer Boswell gets roisteringly drunk when the sentence is passed and brags about "the admirable appearance which I had made in court." The humanitarian lawyer, the reader sees, dwells in the same skin as a grimy little boy gleefully obsessed with a hanging. Boswell plagues the condemned man with questions about how it feels to be condemned, chats with him of a woman who is called "half-hangit Maggie" because she survived the gibbet, and happily plans an experiment to revive Reid's corpse.

Boswell for the Defence is, inevitably, drawn in darker shades than the earlier volumes, but is no less fascinating. The author, as usual, shows himself stark naked, and fully justifies his boast: "I have really a genius for particular history, for biography."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.