DUGALD STEWART ON BOSWELL'S ANECDOTES.
[From Dugald Stewart's Works, ed. 1854, iv. 230.]
- I have often experienced/ Mr. Boswell gravely remarks in
his Tour with Dr. Johnson, 'that scenes through which a man has passed, improve by lying in the memory ; they grow mellow 1 .' To account for this curious mental phenomenon, which he plainly considered as somewhat analogous to the effect of time in im proving the quality of wine, he has offered various theories, without however once touching upon the real cause the im perceptible influence of imagination in supplying the decaying impressions of memory. The fact, as he has stated it, was certainly exemplified in his own case ; for his stories, which I have often listened to with delight, seldom failed to improve wonderfully in such keeping as his memory afforded. They were much more amusing than even his printed anecdotes ; not only from the picturesque style of his conversational, or rather his convivial diction, but perhaps still more from the humorous and somewhat whimsical seriousness of his face and manner. As for those anecdotes which he destined for the public, they were deprived of any chance of this sort of improvement ', by the scrupulous fidelity with which (probably from a secret distrust of the accuracy of his recollection) he was accustomed to record every conversation which he thought interesting, a few hours after it took place.
��BY GILBERT STUART.
[The following anecdote I owe to the kindness of Mr. John Douglass Brown, jun., of the University Club, Philadelphia, who copied it from Stuart's History of the Rise of the Arts of Design
' Life, v. 333.
in
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