Page:Studies of a Biographer 1.djvu/152

all the wisdom to be extracted from manifold experience of life, guided by profound penetration into character. Johnson's conversation is delightful because it is full of the pithy aphorisms which concentrate the results of the experience. Johnson is the half-inspired prophet who can tell him what fruit to grow in his garden, what profession he should adopt, and how he should behave to his wife or his father. If there were such a thing as a scientific knowledge of the human heart, and if Johnson had possessed it, there would be much sense in this; and so far as strong common sense could be a substitute for science, Boswell was perhaps not so far wrong in his choice of an oracle. It helps to explain—not Boswell's skill, for that is as inexplicable as all genius—but the special distinction between Boswell and his rivals. Boswell, that is, had not only sat at the feet of the prophet, but had really imbibed his method. The others, from Hawkins up to Mrs. Piozzi, simply take the point of view of the ordinary biographer. They assume that their readers have studied The Rambler or Rasselas or the Dictionary, and want to know something about the author. They collect as many good sayings and characteristic anecdotes