LITERARY CHAMS, GREAT AND SMALL

"Did Boswell make Johnson?" In an editorial under this heading the New York Times tells of a debate upon this question recently held at the London School of Economics. As might be supposed, the consequences of the debate were not momentous. Johnson has not been deposed and his biographer invested with his crown and sceptre.

It is one of the ironies of history that Johnson, who never hesitated to venture the last word upon his literary predecessors and contemporaries, has had to submit to many attempts to weigh, catalogue, and pigeon-hole him by successors, many of whom have been eminently less qualified than he was to apply the formulae of judgment. One of the London debaters, for example, contended that since nobody nowadays reads Johnson's original works, and everybody who makes claim to learning reads Boswell, it follows that Boswell made Johnson. Q. E. D.

Without attempting authoritative assertions either for or against the question, it seems certain that in so far as Johnson's place in literature rests upon posthumous popularity, Boswell may rightly be given a large part of the credit. But before saying finally that Johnson's biographer "made" him, one will do well to recall Garlyle's assertion that few men's lives are worth writing. Can it be, then, that Johnson's life was intrinsically worthless? Surely no one who has read Boswell will say that. Johnson was a great character, and the most profound literary force in England in his day. He was fortunate to have had Boswell for a biographer. But Boswell's position was that of a press agent. He called the public's attention to the show, and the show is quite capable to stand upon its own merits.