were ready for any chance Scot who might pass that way!

John Hay has suggested that possibly the insight, piquancy and calm wisdom
of Omar Khayyam are two-thirds essence of FitzGerald. If so, the joke is
on Omar, not on FitzGerald.

A dozen of Johnson's contemporaries wrote about him, and all make him out
a profound scholar, a deep philosopher, a facile writer. Boswell by his
innocent quoting and recounting makes his conversation outstrip all of his
other accomplishments. He reveals the man by the most skilful indirection,
and by leaving his guard down, often allows the reader to score a point.
And of all devices of writing folk, none is finer than to please the
reader by allowing him to pat himself on the back.

If a writer is too clever he repels. Shakespeare avoids the difficulty,
and proves himself the master by keeping out of sight; Renan wins by a
great show of modesty and deferential fairness; Boswell assumes an
artlessness and ignorance that were really not parts of his nature. Every
man who reads Boswell considers himself the superior of Boswell, and
therefore is perfectly at home. It is not pleasant to be in the society of
those who are much your superiors. Any man who sits in the company of
Samuel Pepys for a half-hour feels a sort of half-patronizing pity for
him, and therefore is happy, for to patronize is bliss.

If Boswell has reinforced fact with fiction, and given us art for truth,
then his character of Samuel Johnson is the most vividly conceived and
deeply etched in all the realm of books. But if he gives merely the simple
facts, then Boswell is no less a genius, for he has omitted the irrelevant
and inconsequential, and by playing off the excellent against the absurd,
he has placed his subject among the few great wits who have ever lived--a