Moreover
he was himself the most perfect foil and contrast to Johnson that
could be imagined, while he possessed in a unique degree the power
of both stimulating and provoking his hero to animation and to
wrath. Boswell may not have known what an artist he was, but he is
probably one of the best literary artists who has ever lived.
But the supreme quality of his great book is this--that his
interest in every trait of his hero, large and small, is so strong
that he had none of that stiff propriety or chilly reserve which
mars almost all English biographies. He did not care a straw
whether this characteristic or that would redound to Johnson's
credit. He saw that Johnson was a large-minded, large-hearted man,
with an astonishing power of conversational expression, and an
extremely picturesque figure as well. He perceived that he was big
enough to be described in full, and that the shadows of his
temperament only brought out the finer features into prominence.
Since the days of Johnson there are but two Englishmen whose lives
we know in anything like the same detail--Ruskin and Carlyle.
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