"Boswell" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... which Sir William Davenant was manager. Lastly, here was the house and printing-office of Richardson. In Bolt-court, not far distant, lived Dr. Johnson, who resided also for some time in the Temple. A list of his numerous other residences is to be found in Boswell[2]. Congreve died in Surrey-street, in the Strand, at his own house. At the corner of Beaufort-buildings, was Lilly's, the perfumer, at whose house the Tatler was published. In Maiden-lane, Covent-garden, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... and ready wit who, thirteen years before the day of Burns, had met the rude manners of Dr. Johnson with a well-known repartee. When the Doctor visited the Parliament House, Erskine was presented to him by Boswell, and was somewhat gruffly received. After having made his bow, Erskine (p. 046) slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it was for ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... the late good humoured and gossiping James Boswell, the humble follower and biographer of Dr. Johnson, is well known; and it is probable that the pleasures of the table, in which no man more joyously engaged, shortened his life. To write the life of a great man is no easy task, and to write that of a big one may be no less arduous. ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... 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 assures us, This ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... harmonises with the places and dates that bring him to Horncastle in August, 1825—362. Abedariums, read abecedariums.—363. Flaming Tinman: He is also called by Borrow, Blazing Tinman, Flying Tinker, Blazing Bosville or Boswell, and finally Anselo Herne, his true clan-name.—367. Ten years ago, i.e., thirteen, when he was at Tamworth in April or May, 1812.—377. The Romany chi, etc.: See p. 387 for the translation.—379. Answer to the gillie: The Rommany churl and the Rommany girl love thieving and spaeing and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... 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 was ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... morning long it went on, for the State-house was large—oh, very large. There should have been a Boswell there to get the good things, for the novelty of the situation inspired wit even in minds where wit had never glowed before. Choice bits which at other times would fairly have gone on official record were now passed almost unnoticed, so great was the surfeit. Instead of men going ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... are Somebodies, and respectable enough to be shaken hands with by George and Mary, when as a 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 ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... George Catcott, a pair of pewterers, the former vulgar and uneducated but very ambitious to be thought a man of good birth and education, the latter a credulous, selfish and none too scrupulous fellow, a would-be antiquary, of whom there is the most delightfully absurd description in Boswell's Johnson. The biographer relates that in the year 1776 Johnson and he were on a visit to Bristol and were induced by Catcott to climb the steep flight of stairs which led to the muniment room in order to see the famous 'Rowley's Cofre'. Whereupon, when the ascent had been accomplished, ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... society in London so agreeable that Macaulay would have preferred it at breakfast or at dinner "to the company of Sterne or Fielding, Horace Walpole or Boswell." The love of reading which Gibbon declared he would not exchange for all the treasures of India was, in fact, with Macaulay "a main element of happiness in one of the happiest lives that it has ever fallen to the lot of ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... authoritative expounder. Diderot was, as he always knew 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, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... copies 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) penes ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 28. Saturday, May 11, 1850 • Various
... "continually the same," though he could not refrain from having a fling at him for not being a "good listener"—a deadly sin in the estimation of one who seldom wished to hear any other voice but his own. Burke, sir, he exclaimed to the obsequious Boswell—Burke is such a man, that if you met him for the first time in the street, and conversed with him for not five minutes, he'd talk to you in such a manner, that, when you parted, you would say ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... stern obligation of extemporizing his lucid views, leading ideas, and nutshell truths for the breakfast table. The very nature of periodical literature, broken into small wholes, and demanded punctually to an hour, involves the habit of this extempore philosophy. "Almost all the Ramblers," says Boswell of Johnson, "were written just as they were wanted for the press; he sent a certain portion of the copy of an essay, and wrote the remainder while the former part of it was printing." Few men have the gifts of Johnson, who to great vigour and resource ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... perhaps unconsciously, paid to this great man by his biographers; every house in which he resided is historically mentioned, as if it were an injury to neglect naming any place that he honored by his presence." Emboldened by this expression of opinion, Boswell one evening, in the year 1779, ventured to ask Johnson the names of some of his residences, and he obtained the following list, which he printed in his "Life of Johnson:" (1) Exeter Street, off Catherine Street, Strand, (2) Greenwich; (3) Woodstock Street, near Hanover Square; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... of Lichfield, being drawn thither partly to see its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I believe, because it was the birthplace of Dr. Johnson, with whose sturdy English character I became acquainted, at a very early period of my life, through the good offices of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he seems as familiar to my recollection, and almost as vivid in his personal aspect to my mind's eye, as the kindly figure of my own grandfather. It is only a solitary child,—left much to such wild modes of culture as he chooses ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the time of Shakespeare, for Stevens discovered an entry of the date of 1558 in the books of the Stationers' Company, of a ballad entitled, "The Robbery at Gad's Hill." And the late Sir Henry Ellis, of the British Museum, communicated to Mr. Boswell, Editor of Malone's Shakespeare, a narrative in the handwriting of Sir Roger Manwood, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, dated 5th July, 1590, which shows that Gad's Hill was at that period the resort of a band of well-mounted robbers of more than usual daring, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... remark, that Mr. Knight dismisses Dr. Farmer's theory as worthless, without sufficient consideration. It by no means follows that 1607 is the date of the first edition of Caleb Shillocke, merely because Boswell saw a copy bearing ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 14. Saturday, February 2, 1850 • Various
... 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 an acquaintance who regretted in this connection that ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... Christian to those whom she calls heretics. No one is bound in this matter by Acts of Parliament. In many cases, no doubt, names which have offensive association are used merely by habit, sometimes by hereditary transmission. Boswell records of Johnson that he always used the words "dissenting teacher," refusing minister and clergyman to all but the recipients ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... 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 not live as well even at ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Boswell,' said the old schoolmaster. 'I had no right to brag of my Greek to the gentleman, and he has ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... little before this a young Scotsman named James Boswell got to know the great man. He worshiped Johnson and spent as much time with him as he could. It was a strange friendship which grew up between these two. The great man bullied and insulted yet loved the little man, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... 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
... between great men is rarely intimate or permanent. It is a Boswell that most appreciates a Johnson. Genius has no brother, no co-mate; the love it inspires is that of a pupil or ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... morsel of Johnsonese prose belongs to a more recent date. It became current about the time when the scheme of Dr. Murray's Dictionary of the English Language was first made public. It took the form of a dialogue between Dr. Johnson and Boswell:— ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... part of the dialogue was spoken; and in front of it curtains likewise were hung, so as occasionally to conceal the persons in it from the view of the audience."—Malone's "History of the Stage." See his edition of "Shakespeare" by Boswell, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... him there being a 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 Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... not thought of offering any free-gifts, but on learning that BOSWELL had written a Life of JOHNSON seemed inclined to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... to 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 a ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... journey; and, as D'Avalos happened then to be absent from Milan on a visit to his country villa at Vigevano, he stayed for three days in Cardan's house. As a recorder of conversations Tartaglia seems to have had something of Boswell's gift. He gives an abstract of an eventful dialogue with his host on March 25, 1539, which Cardan begins by a gentle reproach anent his guest's reticence in the matter of the rule of the cosa and the cubus equal to the numerus. Tartaglia's reply to this ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... 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 ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... left, as the general supposed, in the care of two men who met him at his landing, and by whom he expected she would be brought down under the guns of the fort. In a few minutes, however, she fell into the hands of the Indians. The attempt which he had made to cross the river, induced colonel Boswell, with the rear boats, to land on the opposite side; but as soon as captain Hamilton discovered the error under which he was acting, he instructed him to cross over and fight his way into camp. When he arrived at the south side, he was annoyed on landing by the Indians; and as soon ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... Society of which Shakspeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, and which gave us the Spectator? Or to that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admiring among all admirers, met together? Was there any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable cabal in the literary union of Verplanck ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... in Boswell's "Life of Johnson" a correspondence which is well worth reading by both advocates and opponents of woman suffrage. Boswell, who was of an old Scotch family, had a difference of opinion with his father about an entailed estate which had descended ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Oats occurs as spring and winter varieties, but only one winter variety has as yet found place in the list of dry-farm crops. The leading; spring varieties of oats are the Sixty-Day, Kherson, Burt, and Swedish Select. The one winter variety, which is grown chiefly in Utah, is the Boswell, a black variety originally brought from ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe
... Boswell has recorded several conversations of Oliver Goldsmith with Dr. Johnson, in which the warm-hearted poet expressed a wish, "to make fishes, animals, birds, etc., talk, or appear so to do, for the amusement and instruction of children." In the National Collection ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... 'Why, General Boswell!' he cried. 'This is indeed an unexpected honour. I'm proud to see you, sir, beneath my 'umble roof. Jack Jervase wasn't a very distinguished servant of Her Majesty. He never held the Queen's commission, sir; but he fowt beneath his country's flag, ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... tongue. He spoke nearly for two hours with unhesitating and uninterrupted fluency. As I returned homewards, to Kensington, I thought a second Johnson had visited the earth, to make wise the sons of men; and regretted that I could not exercise the powers of a second Boswell to record the wisdom and the eloquence that fell from ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... arrived in London, where he remained for a considerable time. He 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 resulted in Baretti's acquittal. He died in May ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... the son, then Colonel Goring, commanding a regiment in the Low Countries, was, at the siege of Breda, September, 1637, severely wounded in the leg, and had a narrow escape of losing it. Sir William Boswell, the English ambassador at the Hague, writes to Bramhall, then Bishop of Derry, and afterwards ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 35, June 29, 1850 • Various
... for Memphis which city he reached at four o'clock. Above Memphis he was met by a fleet of excursion steamers and the sight of his flashing paddle as he approached them was the signal for the firing of a salute from a ten pound parrot gun on the deck of the General Pierson. Miss Jeanette Boswell, one of the reigning belles of Memphis, handed him a banner and made a pleasant ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... psychology; but he was cracky and vagarious. He had been a fashionable jeweler in St. James's Street, no doubt the son or grandson of Wirgman at "the well-known toy-shop in {259} St. James's Street," where Sam Johnson smartened himself with silver buckles. (Boswell, aet. 69). He would not have the ridiculous large ones in fashion; and he would give no more than a guinea a pair; such, says Boswell, in Italics, were the principles of the business: and I think this may be the first place in which the philosophical word was brought down from heaven ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Robespierre, who could not have been more than twenty at the time, for Rousseau died in the summer of 1778, is said to have gone on a reverential pilgrimage in search of an oracle from the lonely sage, as Boswell and as Gibbon and a hundred others had gone before him. Rousseau was wont to use his real adorers as ill as he used his imaginary enemies. Robespierre may well have shared the discouragement of the enthusiastic father who informed ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... no personal Acquaintances 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 on the ice and havin' all the fun they could, even if they didn't have skates. I suppose ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... destroyed in the fire were the Roll of Battle Abbey and many paintings. Dr. Johnson visited Cowdray a few years before its demolition; "Sir," he said to Boswell, "I should like to stay here four-and-twenty hours. We see here how our ancestors lived." According to the Tour of Great Britain, attributed to Daniel Defoe, but probably by another hand, Cowdray's ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... though Froude was incapable of merging himself in another man, as Spedding merged himself in Bacon, he did more for the author of Sartor Resartus than Spedding did for the author of the Novum Organum. Spedding's Bacon is an impossible hero of unhistorical perfection. Froude's Carlyle, like Boswell's Johnson, is a great man painted as he was. When the original head master of Uppingham described his school as Eton without its faults, there were those who felt for the first time that there was something to be said for the faults of Eton. Carlyle without ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... anecdote, of those golden days in the history of the Violin be received by the lovers of the instrument! The bare idea that these men were living in daily close converse is sufficient to awaken interest of a lively nature in the mind of a lover of Fiddles. Unhappily, however, no Boswell was at hand to dot down events, of small value when passing, but of great consequence to after-time. The want of that direct biographical information which is handed down to us from recorded personal knowledge leads to the opening of many a mouldy, worm-eaten, and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... (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 ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... degeneracy of us poor moderns, when compared with the men of pagan antiquity; which craze itself might possibly not have been generally known, except in connection with the little skirmish between him and Dr. Johnson, noticed in Boswell's account of the doctor's Scottish tour. "Ah, doctor," said Lord M., upon some casual suggestion of that topic, "poor creatures are we of this eighteenth century; our fathers were better men than we!" "O, no, my lord," was ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... ), b. Boston, Mass., son of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Novelist, essayist. Deserves to be called his father's Boswell for the excellent and sympathetic two volumes, entitled ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... met Mr. T. Boswell, his brother, and another miner, who had spent most of the summer on the river prospecting, and from them I ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... he 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 wait to have ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... falsehoods that are not lies because they deceive no one, the statement of 'an advocate asserting the justice or his belief of the justice of his client's cause.' Dr. Johnson, in reply to some objections of Boswell, argues at length, but, I think, with some sophistry, in favour of the profession. 'You are not,' he says, 'to deceive your client with false representations of your opinion. You are not to tell lies to the judge, ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... but the minister of the parish." He, good man, could make but little of his solitary friend, and must many a time have been startled out of his canonicals by the strange, alien speeches which he heard. It is a pity that this minister had not had some of the Boswell faculty in him, that he might have reported what we should all be so glad to hear. Over that period of his life, however, the curtain falls at present, to be lifted only, if ever, by Carlyle himself. Through the want of companionship, he fell back naturally upon books and his own thoughts. Here ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... remarkable man; the Gitano Condre, whom Martin del Rio met at Toledo a hundred years afterwards, who seemed to speak all languages, and to be perfectly acquainted with the politics of all the Courts of Europe, must certainly have been a remarkable man; so, no doubt, here at home was Boswell; so undoubtedly was Cooper, called by the gentlemen of the Fives Court—poor fellows! they are all gone now—the "wonderful little Gypsy";—but upon the whole the poetry, the sorcery, the devilry, if you please ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... reckoned the treatment of words in the explanation of which Johnson showed political or personal animus or whimsical humour, as in the well-known cases of whig, tory, excise, pension, pensioner, oats, Grub-street, lexicographer (see Boswell's Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, i. 294); although it must be admitted that these have come to be among the famous spots of the Dictionary, and have given gentle amusement to thousands, to whom it has been a delight to see 'human nature' too strong ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... JAMES M'INTOSH in Reply to some Observations made in the House of Commons on the Duel between Sir Alexander Boswell and James Stuart, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... father, "wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican, and had pinned himself to a dominie—an auld dominie who keeped a schule and cau'd it an acaadamy." Nevertheless it was to Corsica and its heroic chief that he owed the position that he undoubtedly held among men of letters. He was Corsica Boswell and Paoli Boswell long before he became ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... she's got these men to come here to-day to meet her—Warren Smith and Landis and Homer, and Boswell and young Keating of Amo, and Tom Martin and those two fellows from ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... lingers over the bitter flavour of strychnine. "Let me see," he reflects, as he sips another bottle, "there's nux vomica in that." Half the interesting books of the world were written by men who had just this sipping kind of curiosity. Curiosity was the chief pleasure of Montaigne and of Boswell. We cannot read an early book of science without finding signs of the pleasure of curiosity in its pages. Theophrastus, we may be sure, was a ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Canadian Pacific Agent, and so left her in good hands. You should hear me at table with the Ulster purser and a little punning microscopist called Davis. Belle does some kind of abstruse Boswellising; after the first meal, having gauged the kind of jests that would pay here, I observed, 'Boswell is Barred during ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was in London in his official capacity. Andrew Erskine, aged twenty-two, younger son of an impoverished Scots earl, was waiting in London till the regiment in which he held a lieutenant's commission should be "broke," following the Peace. James Boswell, heir to the considerable estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire, also aged twenty-two, had come to London in the previous November in an attempt to secure a commission in the Foot Guards. Dempster, Erskine, and Boswell had constituted themselves ...
— Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (1763) • James Boswell, Andrew Erskine and George Dempster
... 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 ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... more likely to have engaged the attention of a Fleet-Street author, living in an atmosphere of books, than to have occupied the mind of a tramp anxious about his supper and his night's lodging. Boswell says he "disputed" his way through Europe. It is much more probable that he begged his way through Europe. The romantic version, which has been made the subject of many a charming picture, is that he ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... man was eminently qualified, both by his acquirements, by his disposition, and by the exceptional facilities which he enjoyed, to become the biographer of the other, and Dr. Eadie has approached his task with such a spirit of love, and with so genuine and well-founded an esteem of the man whose Boswell he aspired to be, that the biography will rank in some respects almost equal with that of Dr. Johnson. Some years later, Dr. Eadie published through the Messrs. Oliphant, of Edinburgh, a series of lectures ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... Boswell, "that the proprietor of all this (Keddlestone, the seat of Lord Scarsfield) must be happy." "Nay, sir," said Johnson, "all this excludes but one ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... Boswell's incomparable "Life of Johnson" presents a series of vivid pictures of the life of the period, and contains many anecdotes of the friendship between Reynolds and the ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... and in 1786 visited England, where he raised funds with which was erected the first Episcopal Church in Upper Canada. Brant sat for his picture several times in England, once in 1776, at the request of Boswell (the author of the "Life of Johnson"), and during the same visit for the Romney portrait, at Warwick's request. In 1786 he was painted for the Duke of Northumberland and for a miniature to present to ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... 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: ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... philosopher who studies human nature, and the literary man whose curiosity is interested in the history of his republic. Such, works are rare, and rank in merit next to autobiographies. Such biographical sketches, like Boswell's of Johnson, contain what we often regret is wanting in the more regular life of a professed biographer. These desultory memoirs interest by their warmth, their more personal acquaintance with the hero, and abound with those minuter strokes which give ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... which in the two types already named there was not scope for. I would like therefore to take another instance, and name the editions of Pope's Works, edited by Courthope and Elwin, of Walpole's Letters, edited by Peter Cunningham, and Boswell's Johnson, edited by Birkbeck Hill. These editions contain excellent and workmanlike features, such as good arrangement and good indexing, with notes and elucidations sufficiently ample. The size too of each volume ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... Erskine was fourth son of the fifth Earl of Kelley. Mr. Boswell told me the 30th of May, 1794, that A.E., having spent all his property, in a fit of despair threw himself from a rock into the sea last winter, and was drowned. His body was found five days after, when it appeared it was a deliberate ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... placed judgment and friendship above admiration and love. "Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship like being enlivened." See Boswell's Life of ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... lest you rouse a sleeping bear: Religious, moral, generous, and humane He was, but self-sufficient, rude, and vain; Ill-bred and overbearing in dispute, A scholar and a Christian—yet a brute. Would you know all his wisdom and his folly, His actions, sayings, mirth, and melancholy? Boswell and Thrale, retailers of his wit, Will tell you how he wrote, and talked, ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... From Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Wilkes was the famous publicist and political agitator who was expelled from Parliament, imprisoned and outlawed, but afterward elected Lord Mayor of London and allowed to sit ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... 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 there existed a degree of implacable hatred, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... he first met his countryman Goldsmith, also Garrick, Boswell and Johnson. It was then that Johnson received that lasting impression of Burke, of whom he said, "Sir, if you met Edmund Burke under a gateway, where you had taken shelter for five minutes to escape a shower, you would be ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... author of Everyman 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 excitements ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... give another instance. One of the most instructive, interesting, and delightful books in our language is Boswell's Life of Johnson. Now it is well known that Boswell's eldest son considered this book, considered the whole relation of Boswell to Johnson, as a blot in the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... Mr Scrope "travels rapidly, so that those which leave the sea, and go up the Tweed on the Saturday night at twelve o'clock, after which time no nets are worked till the Sabbath is past, are found and taken on the following Monday near St Boswell's—a distance, as the river winds, of about forty miles. This I have frequently ascertained by experience. When the strength of the current in a spate is considered, and also the sinuous course a salmon must take in order to avoid the strong rapids, their power of swimming must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... provincial states of Holland, however, sympathizing wholly with the parliament, remonstrated with the stadtholder; and the Dutch colonists encouraged the hostile efforts of their brethren, the Puritans of Scotland, by all the absurd exhortations of fanatic zeal. Boswell, the English resident in the name of the king, and Strickland, the ambassador from the parliament, kept up a constant succession of complaints and remonstrances on occasion of every incident which seemed to ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... are small. The muleteers slept with their beasts outside, though the night was fearfully cold, for Chuquipoyo lies on the frigid side of Chimborazo, at an elevation of over twelve thousand feet above the sea. As Johnson said to Boswell, "This ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... sensitive expressions of grief—they were the noblest savages of them all. For some readers the rumors of imposture served to dampen their initial enthusiasm, and such was the case with Hume, Walpole, and Boswell, but many of the admirers of the poems found them rapturous, ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which dominates his earlier work. Comparatively this is perhaps especially evident in his rendering of pretty women. "Mrs Scott Moncrieff," "Miss de Vismes," "Miss Janet Suttie," and "Mrs Irvine Boswell," to name no more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. Still his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... no ill-will 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
... landlord of the Globe puts in an appearance, ostensibly to do his guests honor by serving them himself. But he is fearful of how the rioting may end, and, if he dared, he would turn Nash into the street. Tom is the only man there whom the landlord—if that man had only been a Boswell—personally dislikes; indeed, Nash is no great favorite even with his comrades. He has a bitter tongue, and his heart is not to be mellowed by wine. The table roars over his sallies, of which the landlord himself is dimly conscious ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... confined 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
... 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, not because the reader has unwashed hands, but because the dust which settles ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... 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 eat; for my part, I mind my belly very studiously ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... likely to have such a subject as Samuel Johnson than such a one as George Frederick Cooke; while both Boswell and Dunlap, had they written in our day, would probably have been much more reticent and much less amusing. We cannot therefore agree with Mr. Fitzgerald in thinking that the colorless character of the few theatrical biographies ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... 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
... point 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 regaled themselves, if they have not edified the public, by the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... [2] Johnson told Boswell, his biographer, that he remembered the incident, and that "he had a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... all houses public houses, I cannot imagine. But if anyone wishes to see the real rowdy egalitarianism which is necessary (to males, at least) he can find it as well as anywhere in the great old tavern disputes which come down to us in such books as Boswell's Johnson. It is worth while to mention that one name especially because the modern world in its morbidity has done it a strange injustice. The demeanor of Johnson, it is said, was "harsh and despotic." It ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... been taken to this biography as likely to disappoint its readers in not making them "talk to Dickens as Boswell makes them talk to Johnson." But where will the blame lie if a man takes up Pickwick and is disappointed to find that he is not reading Rasselas? A book must be judged for what it aims to be, and not for what it cannot by possibility be. I suppose so remarkable an author ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... established here by Edward I. Numerous small courts opened off in the north side. Among these were Hemlock, Swan, Chair, Crown and Star Courts. The Row and its vicinity had for many years a notoriously bad reputation. One of the courts off Little Shear Alley was Boswell Court, not, as some have imagined, called after Johnson's biographer. This court was at one time a very fashionable place of residence; Lady Raleigh, the widow of Sir Walter, lived here ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... photographing in words the talk of the statesmen whom he encountered, not, remember, as a mere recorder but on terms of mutual benefit. Though he liked to draw their opinions, in both senses, they sought his wisdom and advice with equal assiduity. He was quite as much Johnson as he was Boswell, or rather, almost as much Socrates as he was Plato, for that is the ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... modern sportsmen. Selwyn was ever trying to get as much amusement out of life as possible, and he would have been acting contrary to all the ideas of the fashionable society of his age if he had sat at home when a criminal was to die. It was said of Boswell, just as it was of Selwyn, that he was passionately fond of attending executions. We need not therefore be surprised that Selwyn did as others of his time. Gilly Williams was a kind and good-natured man, yet we find him writing ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... objects of love and reverence, even as we have. We feel we must hand on our own great and beloved ones; we must preserve the evanescent personal fragrance, press the flower. And hence, again, portraits and memoirs, Boswell's "Johnson," or Renan's "Ma Soeur Henriette"; grotesque or lovely things, as the case may be, and always pathetic, which tell us that men have always admired and always loved; leaving us to explain, by substituting ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... writing miss to deal with its particular subject, so closely that theme and treatment can scarcely be separated, by so much will it be faulty as literature. Milton is fairly possessed with the story of Man's fall, Boswell possessed with Johnson, Shelley with hatred of tyranny in all its manifestations, Mill again with the idea of Liberty: and it is only because we had knowledge presented to us at an age when we thought more attentively of apples, that we still fail to recognise ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... William 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... one I saw oftenest up town, who attained to great local and to considerable national eminence afterwards, and who talked often and thrillingly about the theatres, I retain as many bright fragments of as if I had been another little Boswell. It was as if he had dropped into my mind the germ of certain interests that were long afterwards to flower—as for instance on his announcing the receipt from Paris of news of the appearance at the Theatre Francais ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... Holland and have set down the record of their experiences, from Thomas Coryate downwards. But the country has not been inspiring, and Dutch travels are poor reading. Had Dr. Johnson lived to accompany Boswell on a projected journey we should be the richer, but I doubt if any very interesting narrative would have resulted. One of Johnson's contemporaries, Samuel Ireland, the engraver, and the father of the fraudulent author of Vortigern, wrote A Picturesque Tour through Holland, Brabant, ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... the arms of the city, supported by a kangaroo and an emu. Under this same roof is the Public Library, containing about 10,000 volumes. The chief English periodicals are taken here. I remember reading here Froude's "Carlyle in London," which is a biography worthy to stand beside Boswell. It is a real biography, not a mere jumble of undigested letters and diary thrown before the public, which is too much the modern notion of writing Somebody's Life. Hobart has none of the cosmopolitanism of Melbourne. Its habits are ...
— Six Letters From the Colonies • Robert Seaton
... days, when praising this mode of locomotion. He first visited Flanders. Thence he passed to France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, supporting himself mainly by his flute, and by occasional disputations at convents or universities. 'Sir,' said Boswell to Johnson, 'he 'disputed' his passage through Europe.' When on the 1st February, 1756, he landed at Dover, it was with empty pockets. But he had sent home to his brother in Ireland his first rough sketch for the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... (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 ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Johnson's career. To his character, his rough exterior and his kind heart, his vast learning and his Tory prejudices, his piety, his melancholy, his virtues, his frailty, his "mass of genuine manhood," only a volume could do justice. Happily that volume is at hand. It is Boswell's Life of Johnson, a famous ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... her caprice. And his devotion to Miss Emma was the more noted for that his own considerable riches were proof that it was true and single. He himself warned her, in some verses written for him by Euphemia Boswell, against the crew of penniless ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... Market dwelt so intimately in Hawthorne's mind (he has treated it in the "True Stories," and touches very tenderly upon it in "Our Old Home," where he says that he "has always been profoundly impressed" by it), that I fancy a childish impression must have endeared it to him; and Boswell may have been one of his acquisitions at this time. Perhaps Dr. Worcester made the book known to him; and he would not be at a loss ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... reading that old disguster, Boswell. Bah! I have no patience with the toady! I suppose "my mind is not yet thoroughly impregnated with the Johnsonian ether," and that is the reason why I cannot appreciate him, or his work. I admire him for his patience and minuteness in compiling such trivial details. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... admiration of, and devotion to, Pope, is evident from the pains he took to preserve every little anecdote of him that he could elicit from conversation with him, or with those who knew him. Unfortunately, he had not Boswell's address and talent for recording gossip, or the Anecdotes would have been a much more racy book. Spence was certainly an amiable, but I think a very weak man; and it appears to me that his learning has been overrated. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... more amusingly than he wrote," explained Joan. "Get Boswell's Life of him. Or I'll lend you mine," she added, "if you'll be careful of it. You'll find all the passages marked that are best worth remembering. At least, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Friends,' 'Lady of the Lake,' several of the 'Bridgewater Treatises,' Paley's 'Natural Theology,' 'Trench on Miracles,' several dozens of the best story books I could find to make sandwiches with the others, somebody's 'Travels in Iceland,' and somebody's 'Winter in Russia,' and 'Rasselas,' and 'Boswell's Johnson,' and I cannot remember others at this moment. Morris says I do not think anything dry, but go right through everything. Because I have the master to help me, and I did give 'Paradise Lost' up in despair. Mother says I shall never make three quilts for you if I read so much, ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... shrewd remarks by which he had lately been proving that politics were not unlikely to demand more of his attention some day. But he was glad when he could get away to the drawing-room, to await Mrs. Baxendale's coming. He tried to read in a volume of Boswell which lay out; at other times the book was his delight, now it had the succulence of a piece of straw. He was in that state of mind when five minutes of waiting is intolerable. He had to wait some twenty before Mrs. Baxendale appeared. Only a ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... commenced practising as a physician, and 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 |
