Note 5: — Chapter II

But Boswell's attitude was much more complicated than one of mere affection. The friendship was of that complementary order where each person contributes something which the other lacks, so that they have a natural need each of the other. Johnson liked Boswell for his youth and freshness; Boswell worshipped Johnson for his strength.5 Worship! it was no less than that; he admitted it, he was proud of it. His own mind was of the indecisive kind which sees many things and finds it difficult to choose among them; he turned very readily to the strong, definite view of life, the expression of an intelligence not smaller, as convinced people are often fundamentally smaller, but clearly larger than his own; Johnson's overwhelming personality was able to support their common prejudices, usually by argument, but, if not so, by sheer force of conviction. It was not so much that Boswell approved of everything in Johnson's mind as that he could depend upon finding there a certain attitude expressive, as he thought, of his own better self, or of what he would like to have become had he been able to forgo a part of his own nature.