But the essential Boswell, the skilful and devoted artist, is
almost unrecognized. As the creator of the Life of Johnson he is almost
as much effaced as is Homer in the Odyssey. He is indeed so closely
concealed that the reader suspects no art at all. Boswell's performance
looks easy enough--merely the more or less coherent stringing together
of a mass of memoranda. Nevertheless it was rare and difficult, as is
the highest achievement in art. Boswell is primarily the artist, and
he has created one of the great masterpieces of the world.* He created
nothing else, though his head was continually filling itself with
literary schemes that came to nought. But into his Life of Johnson he
poured all his artistic energies, as Milton poured his into Paradise
Lost, and Vergil his into the Aneid.
* Here I include his Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides as
essentially a part of the Life. The Journal of a Tour in
Corsica is but a propaedeutic study.
First, Boswell had the industry and the devotion to his task of an
artist.
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