Let him try to
report the best conversation of a lively evening, following its
course, preserving its point, differentiating sharply the traits of the
participants, keeping the style, idiom, and exact words of each. Let him
reject all parts of it, however diverting, of which the charm and force
will evaporate with the occasion, and retain only that which will be as
amusing, significant, and lively as ever at the end of one hundred,
or, for all that we can see, one thousand years. He will then, in some
measure, realize the difficulty of Boswell's performance. When his work
appeared Boswell himself said: 'The stretch of mind and prompt assiduity
by which so many conversations are preserved, I myself, at some distance
of time, contemplate with wonder.'
He was indefatigable in hunting up and consulting all who had known
parts or aspects of Johnson's life which to him were inaccessible.
He mentions all told more than fifty names of men and women whom he
consulted for information, to which number many others should be added
of those who gave him nothing that he could use.
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