Take even the great Cham of literature, the good Johnson.
His fame is undying, but his works would not have saved his reputation
in vigour during so many generations. To all intents and purposes his
books are dead; the laboured writings which he turned out during his
years of starvation are not looked into, and our most eminent modern
novelist declares that, if he were snowed up in a remote inn with
"Bradshaw's Railway Guide" and the "Rambler" as the only books within
reach, he would assuredly not read the "Rambler." Perhaps hardly one
hundred students know how admirably good Johnson's preface to
Shakspere really is, and the "Lives of the Poets" are read only in
fragmentary fashion. Strange, is it not, that the man who made his
reputation by literature, the man who dominated the literary world of
his time with absolute sovereignty, should be saved from sinking out
of human memory only by means of the record of his lighter talk which
was kept by his faithful henchman? But for the wise pertinacity of
poor Boswell, the giant would have been forgotten even by the
generation which immediately followed him. His gallant and strenuous
efforts to gain fame really failed; his chance gossip and the amusing
tale of his eccentricities kept his name alive.
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