With only
these Boswell might have been merely a tireless transcriber. But he
had besides a keen sense of artistic values. This appears partly in the
unity of his vast work. Though it was years in the making, though the
details that demanded his attention were countless, yet they all centre
consistently in one figure, and are so focused upon it, that one can
hardly open the book at random to a line which has not its direct
bearing upon the one subject of the work. Nor is the unity of the book
that of an undeviating narrative in chronological order of one man's
life; it grows rather out of a single dominating personality exhibited
in all the vicissitudes of a manifold career. Boswell often speaks of
his work as a painting, a portrait, and of single incidents as pictures
or scenes in a drama. His eye is keen for contrasts, for picturesque
moments, for dramatic action. While it is always the same Johnson whom
he makes the central figure, he studies to shift the background, the
interlocutors, the light and shade, in search of new revelations and
effects.
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