out of Grub Street.

But _The Life_! What in all the world of books is there like it? I have
been reading it off and on for more than thirty years, and still find it
inexhaustible. It ripens with the years. It is so intimate that it seems to
be a record of my own experiences. I have dined so often with Johnson at
the Mitre and Sir Joshua's and Langton's and the rest that I know him far
better than the shadows I meet in daily life. I seem to have been present
when he was talking to the King, and when Goldsmith sulked because he had
not shared the honour; when he met Wilkes, and when he insulted Sir Joshua
and for once got silenced; when he "downed" Robertson, and when, for want
of a lodging, he and Savage walked all night round St. James's Square, full
of high spirits and patriotism, inveighing against the Minister and
resolving that "they would _stand by their country_."

And at the end of it all I feel very much like Mr. Birrell, who, when asked
what he would do when the Government went out of office, replied, "I shall
retire to the country, and really read Boswell." Not "finish Boswell," you
observe. No one could ever finish Boswell. No one would ever want to finish
Boswell. Like a sensible man he will just go on reading him and reading
him, and reading him until the light fails and there is no more reading to
be done.

What an achievement for this uncouth Scotch lawyer to have accomplished! He
knew he had done a great thing; but even he did not know how great a thing.
Had he known he might have answered as proudly as Dryden answered when some
one said to him that his _Ode to St. Cecilia_ was the finest that had ever
been written. "Or ever will be," said the poet. Dryden's ode has been
eclipsed more than once since it was written; but Boswell's book has never
been approached. It is not only the best thing of its sort in literature: