'Allurement and Delight'

My sons cringe when I start a conversation with some variation on the theme of “When I was twenty-five . . .”, so I’ll defer to my betters. On this date in 1763, Boswell recounts a recollection of Dr. Johnson’s:

 

“I remember very well when I was five and twenty an old gentleman at Oxford said to me, ‘Young man, ply your book diligently now and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task.’”

 

Fortunately, that hasn’t been my experience. If anything, when young I read too many new books, especially fiction. Not all were a waste of time (which was never a consideration at that age), and some I periodically read a second or third time, but I was an indiscriminate omnivore and for years put off reading some of what turned out to be my favorite books – Gibbon and Beerbohm, for instance, and Alexander Herzen. In his Life, Boswell comments on Johnson’s anecdote:

 

“This account of his reading, given by himself in plain words, sufficiently confirms what I have already advanced upon the disputed question as to his application. It reconciles any seeming inconsistency in his way of talking upon it at different times; and shews that idleness and reading hard were with him relative terms, the import of which, as used by him, must be gathered from a comparison with what scholars of different degrees of ardour and assiduity have been known to do.”

 

In other words, for Johnson, memory and imagination overlap – hardly a rare human quality. We are all, even the most rigorously honest among us, self-mythologizers. Boswell understands this:    

 

“And let it be remembered, that he was now talking spontaneously, and expressing his genuine sentiments; whereas at other times he might be induced, from his spirit of contradiction, or more properly from his love of argumentative contest, to speak lightly of his own application to study. It is pleasing to consider that the old gentleman's gloomy prophecy as to the irksomeness of books to men of an advanced age, which is too often fulfilled, was so far from being verified in Johnson, that his ardour for literature never failed, and his last writings had more ease and vivacity than any of his earlier productions.”

 

Boswell might be referring to Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779-81), including the “Life of Dryden,” in which Johnson writes:

 

“Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.” 

 

[Boswell recounts the July 22, 1763 conversation at the Turk’s Head Tavern in his London Journal 1762-1763 and, in a revised form, in his Life of Johnson.]