It used to annoy us to hear Karl Rosner referred to as “the Kaiser’s Boswell.”  For to boswellize (which is a verb that has gone into our dictionaries) means not merely to transcribe faithfully the acts and moods and import of a man’s life; it implies also that the man so delineated be a good man and a great.  Horace Traubel was perhaps a Boswell; but Rosner never.

It is pleasant to know that Boswell was not merely a kind of animated note-book.  He was a droll, vain, erring, bibulous, warm-hearted creature, a good deal of a Pepys, in fact, with all the Pepysian vices and virtues.  Mr. A. Edward Newton’s “Amenities of Book Collecting” makes Boswell very human to us.  How jolly it is to learn that Jamie (like many lesser fry since) wrote press notices about himself.  Here is one of his own blurbs, which we quote from Mr. Newton’s book: 

Boswell, the author, is a most excellent man:  he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a little.  At his nativity there appeared omens of his future greatness.  His parts are bright, and his education has been good.  He has traveled in post chaises miles without number.  He is fond of seeing much of the world.  He eats of every good dish, especially apple pie.  He drinks Old Hock.  He has a very fine temper.  He is somewhat of a humorist and a little tinctured with pride.  He has a good manly countenance, and he owns himself to be amorous.  He has infinite vivacity, yet is observed at times to have a melancholy cast.  He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old.  His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles.

This brings the excellent Boswell very close to us indeed:  he might almost be a member of the Authors’ League.  “Especially apple pie, bless his heart!”

When we said that Boswell was a kind of Pepys, we fell by chance into a happy comparison.  Not only by his volatile errors was he of the tribe of Samuel, but in his outstanding character by which he becomes of importance to posterity—­that of one of the great diarists.  Now there is no human failing upon which we look with more affectionate lenience than that of keeping a diary.  All of us, in our pilgrimage through the difficult thickets of this world, have moods and moments when we have to fall back on ourselves for the only complete understanding and absolution we will ever find.  In such times, how pleasant it is to record our emotions and misgivings in the sure and secret pages of some privy notebook; and how entertaining to read them again in later years!  Dr. Johnson himself advised Bozzy to keep a journal, though he little suspected to what use it would be put.  The cynical will say that he did so in order that Bozzy would have less time to pester him, but we believe his advice was sincere.  It must have been, for the Doctor kept one himself, of which more in a moment.

“He recommended to me,” Boswell says, “to keep a journal of my life, full and unreserved.  He said it would be a very good exercise and would yield me great satisfaction when the particulars were faded from my remembrance.  He counselled me to keep it private, and said I might surely have a friend who would burn it in case of my death.”