requires the seeing eye and the skilful pen or brush. A common
artist sees only the features of a face, and copies them; but the
great artist sees the living soul shining through the features,
and places it on the canvas. Johnson was once asked to assist the
chaplain of a deceased bishop in writing a memoir of his lordship;
but when he proceeded to inquire for information, the chaplain
could scarcely tell him anything. Hence Johnson was led to
observe that "few people who have lived with a man know what to
remark about him."

In the case of Johnson's own life, it was the seeing eye of
Boswell that enabled him to note and treasure up those minute
details of habit and conversation in which so much of the interest
of biography consists. Boswell, because of his simple love and
admiration of his hero, succeeded where probably greater men would
have failed. He descended to apparently insignificant, but yet
most characteristic, particulars. Thus he apologizes for
informing the reader that Johnson, when journeying, "carried in
his hand a large English oak-stick:" adding, "I remember Dr. Adam
Smith, in his rhetorical lectures at Glasgow, told us he was glad
to know that Milton wore latchets in his shoes instead of
buckles." Boswell lets us know how Johnson looked, what dress he
wore, what was his talk, what were his prejudices. He painted him
with all his scars, and a wonderful portrait it is--perhaps the
most complete picture of a great man ever limned in words.

But for the accident of the Scotch advocate's intimacy with
Johnson, and his devoted admiration of him, the latter would not
probably have stood nearly so high in literature as he now does.
It is in the pages of Boswell that Johnson really lives; and but