Boswell
His Destiny
It has been Boswell’s fate to be universally read and almost as universally despised. What he suffered at the hands of Croker and Macaulay is typical of his fortune. In character, in politics, in attainments, in capacity, the two were poles apart; but they were agreed in this: that Boswell must be castigated and contemned, and that they were the men to do it. Croker’s achievement, consider it how you will, remains the most preposterous in literary history. He could see nothing in the Life but a highly entertaining compilation greatly in need of annotation and correction. Accordingly he took up Boswell’s text and interlarded it with scraps of his own and other people’s; he pegged into it a sophisticated version of the Tour; and he overwhelmed his amazing compound with notes and commentaries in which he took occasion to snub, scold, ‘improve,’ and insult his author at every turn. What came of it one knows. Macaulay, in the combined interests of Whiggism and good literature, made Boswell’s quarrel his own, and the expiation was as bitter as the offence was wanton and scandalous.