He presents a succession of many scenes, exquisitely wrought,
of Johnson amid widely various settings of Eighteenth-Century England.
And subject and setting are so closely allied that each borrows charm
and emphasis from the other. Let the devoted reader of Boswell ask
himself what glamor would fade from the church of St. Clement Danes,
from the Mitre, from Fleet Street, the Oxford coach, and Lichfield,
if the burly figure were withdrawn from them; or what charm and
illumination, of the man himself would have been lost apart from these
settings. It is the unseen hand of the artist Boswell that has wrought
them inseparably into this reciprocal effect.
The single scenes and pictures which Boswell has given us will all of
them bear close scrutiny for their precision, their economy of means,
their lifelikeness, their artistic effect. None was wrought more
beautifully, nor more ardently, than that of Johnson's interview with
the King. First we see the plain massive figure of the scholar amid the
elegant comfort of Buckingham House.
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