University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, British Isles English Language and Literature 1995 Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters Irma S. Lustig University of Pennsylvania Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Lustig, Irma S., "Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters" (1995). Literature in English, British Isles. 15. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_british_isles/15 BOSWELL BOSWELL Citizen of the World, Man of Letters IRMA S. LUSTIG Editor THE UNIVERSITYPRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1995 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2009 The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Frontispiece: From the manuscript of the Life of Johnson, page 433, Boswell’s proclamation of himself as “a Citizen of the World.” The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Front matter map: A portion of the estate of Auchinleck, the Ayrshire home of “the Citizen of the World.” Though the map is reproduced from the Ordinance Survey of 1857, the estate as shown is little changed from Boswell’s years as laird. Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8131-9276-5 (pbk: acid-free paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses In memory of Frederick and Marion Pottle This page intentionally left blank Contents Contributors ix Acknowledgments X Ill Cue Titles and Abbreviations XV Introduction IRMA S. LusTIG 1 PART I. Boswell and the Enlightenment Boswell's Travels through the German, Swiss, and French Enlightenment MARLIES K. DANZIGER 13 Boswell's Response to the European Landscape PETER. F. PERRETEN 37 "Something that Put Me in Mind of My Father": Boswell and Lord Kames RICHARD B. SHER 64 James Boswell, Henry Dundas, and Enlightened Politics MICHAEL FRY 87 Politics in the Boswell-Temple Correspondence THOMAS CRAWFORD 101 Master of Ulubrae: Boswell as Enlightened Laird jOHN STRAWHORN 117 viii Contents PART II. The Life ofjohnson Rhetoric and Runts: Boswell's Artistry CAREY MciNTOSH 137 "Casts a Kind of Glory Round It": Metaphor and the Life ofjohnson WILLIAM P. YARROW 158 "Over Him We Hang Vibrating": Uncertainty in the Life ofjohnson !SOBEL GRUNDY 184 Pilgrimage and Autonomy: The Visit to Ashbourne JoHN B. RADNER 203 "My Dear Enemy": Margaret Montgomerie Boswell in the Life ofjohnson IRMA S. LuSTIG 228 Appendix: Boswell's Meetings with johnson, A New Count HITOSHI SuwABE 246 Index 259 Illustrations follow page 142 Contributors THOMAS CRAWFORD is Honorary Reader in English at the University of Aberdeen and the author of Burns: A Study of the Poems and Songs (1960); Scott (1965); Society and the Lyric (1979); and Boswel~ Burns, and the French Revolution (1990). He is editor, with David Hewitt and Alexander Law, of Longer Scottish Poems, Thlume 2, 1650-1830 (1987) and of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's trilogy of novels, A Scots Quair (1988-90). Crawford, a member of the Editorial Committee of the Yale Boswell Editions, is edit­ ing Boswell's correspondence with his lifelong friend, William johnson Temple, for its research series. MARLIES K. DANZIGER is professor of English at Hunter College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is editor, with Frank Brady, of Boswell: The Great Biographer (1989), the last volume of the Yale trade edition of Boswell's journals, and has written articles and books on Boswell, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Sheridan. She is cur­ rently at work on the Yale research edition of Boswell's journals in Ger­ many and Switzerland. MICHAEL FRY is an independent scholar and the author of Patronage and Principle: A Political History of Modern Scotland (1987); Adam Smith's Legacy (1992); The Dundas Despotism (1992); and Scotland in the Age of the Disruption (1993). He is a political columnist for the Sunday Times (London) and a regular contributor to Scottish newspapers and journals. !SOBEL GRUNDY is Henry Marshall Tory Professor in the Department of English at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. Her recent works include Samuel johnson and the Scale of Greatness (1986); The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present (1990), with Virginia Blain and Patricia Clements; and Women, Writing, History 1640-1740 (1992), edited with Susan Wiseman. Professor Grundy is presently writing a biography of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. IRMA S. LusTIG, research associate in English at the University of Pennsylvania, is a member of the Editorial Committee of the Yale Boswell Editions and editor, in association with the late Frederick A. Pottle, of two volumes in the trade series of the journal: Boswell: The Applause of the X Contributors Jury, 1782-1785 (1981) and Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785-1789 (1986). Her essays have been published in scholarly journals and collec­ tions in the United States and Great Britain. She has twice directed Na­ tional Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminars for School Teachers (1988 and 1992) on the subject of Boswell's journal and the Life ofJohnson. CAREY MciNTOSH, professor of English at Hofstra University, is the author of The Choice of Life: Samuel Johnson and the World ofFiction (1973) and Common and Courtly Language: The Stylistics of Social Class in Eighteenth­ Century British Literature (1986). A book is now in progress on "Literaty, Politeness, and Style: The Evolution of English P~ose, 1700-1800," a sub­ ject on which he has written and lectured extensively. PETER F. PERRETEN, professor of English at Ursinus College, special­ izes in biography, autobiography, and eighteenth-century gardens. His essay, "Paradox in Paradise: Nature and Art in the Eighteenth-Century Landscape Garden," was published in Man, God, and Nature in the Enlight­ enment, edited by Donald C. MellJr., Theodore E.D. Braun, and Lucia M. Palmer (1988). JoHN B. RADNER, associate professor of English at George Mason University, is the author of articles on Johnson, Boswell, and Swift pub­ lished in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Studies in English Literature, Eighteenth-Century Life, and The Age ofJohnson. A book-length study of the relationship ofjohnson and Boswell is in progress. RicHARD B. SHER, professor of history at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University-Newark, is the author of Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh ( 1985) and co-editor of two collections of essays, Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment ( 1990) and Sociability and Society in Eighteenth­ Century Scotland (1993). Sher is also co-editor of Boswell's correspon­ dence with the Scots literati, a forthcoming volume in the research series of the Yale Boswell Editions. He is the founder and executive secretary of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society. JoHN STRAWHORN, historian, has written extensively on his native Ayr­ shire since Glasgow University commissioned him to prepare the Ayrshire volume of the Third Statistical Account ( 1951). Among his many local histo­ ries are Cumnock (1966), Irvine (1985), and Ayr (1989). Dr. Strawhorn is editor of Ayrshire at the Time of Burns (1959); the Colkctions of Ayrshire Archeological and Natural History Society; and, with the late Nellie Pottle Hankins, editor of a fouthcoming volume in the research series of the Yale Boswell Editions, 'The Correspondence of James Boswell with James Bruce and Andrew Gibb, Overseers of the Auchinleck Estate." Contributors XI HITOSHI SuwABE, professor of English at Chuo University, Tokyo, and the author of Eighteenth-Century Britain (1988), has translated the Life oJSamgeintoJapanese (1975) and written numerous articles onjohnson and Boswell in English and japanese. Like johnson, Suwabe is also a lexi­ cographer. He edited the Kenkyusha-Longman English-japanese Phrasal Verb Dictionary ( 1993) and the translation of the Kenkyusha-Longman English­ japanese Idiom Dictionary (1989). WILLIAM P. YARROW, instructor of English at joliet junior College, also teaches classes on Boswell and the Life of johnson in the Lyceum program of the Newberry Library, Chicago, where he is Scholar-in­ Residence. The recipient of several awards from the National Endow­ ment for the Humanities, in 1991-92 he was the NEH/Reader's Digest Teacher-Scholar for Illinois. Yarrow is the author of varied papers and ar­ ticles on Boswell, Johnson, and their styles and of a forthcoming volume on Boswell in the English Author Series of Twayne Publishers. This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments The authors of this collection of essays are grateful to Yale Univer­ sity and the Edinburgh University Press for permission to quote so extensively from the manuscripts and publications of the Yale Edi­ tions of the Private Papers ofJames Boswell. We are conscious of an unusual debt. We are also pleased to acknowledge the unfailing kindness of the office staff of the Yale Boswell Editions, Tulin Faulkner, man­ aging editor, and Irene Adams, in particular, in furnishing materi­ als as we needed them.