Note 4: — Chapter XII

This, like the other scene, is extremely dramatic. Neither would have been so had not the writer himself realised the full humour of the situation. Perhaps the most remarkable quality of the descriptions is the amount left out.4 The few details which Boswell gives us are sufficient to reveal the secret of everybody's feelings, and then Johnson strikes in with the characteristic remark. It is difficult to appreciate to the full the merit of these scenes without comparing them with those supplied by less talented pens; when we read the accounts of Mrs. Piozzi and Sir John Hawkins, and even of Miss Burney, we realise the immeasurable superiority of Boswell's. They have the elusive quality of all impressionist5 art; they might be ranked with the nocturnes of Whistler: if they were produced, as it almost seems they were, with as little apparent care, they were produced, however, only by the experience of a lifetime. By continually thinking 'Johnson,' Boswell was able to give the few necessary touches which expressed the inward vision.