down on a bank, such as a writer of romance might have delighted to feign. I had, indeed, no trees to whisper over my head, but a clear rivulet streamed at my feet. The day was calm, the air was soft, and all was rudeness, silence, and solitude. Before me, and on either side, were high hills, which, by hindering the eye from ranging, forced the mind to find entertainment for itself. Whether I spent the hour well, I know not; for here I first conceived the thought of this narration."—Remark here, in passing, the notes of the eighteenth century; first, the reference of nature to a standard of art, when the bank is said to be worthy of a romance, and the writer feels that trees ought to be whispering over his head; secondly, the word "rudeness," used to describe wild scenery, implying the contrast with nature as improved by art—what Johnson would have called civility.
It was Edmund Burke who said, "Boswell's Life is a greater monument to Johnson's fame than all his writings put together." Johnson himself could not be expected to foresee this. "Sir," he once said, "the good I can do by my conversation bears the same proportion to the good I can do by my writings that the practice of a physician, retired to a small town, does to his practice in a great city." But we know that Burke was right; it is by his spoken wisdom, far more than by the written, that Johnson lives. Let us remember, however, that this result would not have been attained by a mere record of Johnson's talk, however faithful.
