THAT WAS THE MILLENIUM THAT WAS by John Scalzi Read Free Book Online Page B

Superfriends, mixed and matched. But these, of course, are fictional folks. It's much harder to match up these qualities with real people (real people being more complicated than fictional people for some unexplainable reason). Yet Johnson and Boswell had it all. They were a true 18th century dynamic duo. Just look at what they were like, when first they met in 1763:
    Johnson: The grizzled veteran of the 18th century intellectual wars, famous thoughout London for both his rapid fire wit and his hulking physical presence. He could take you to town intellectually and then throw you the hell out of the saloon! Sure, he was a loose cannon in his younger days, but when you were a Tory during a Hanoveran monarchy, you had to back up your politics with your fists! Now Johnson has received a 300-pounds yearly stipend from the King, "not given you for anything you are to do, but for what you have done," notes Prime Minister Lord Bute. A symbol of gratitude from a nation...or hush money from the higher ups? Johnson will take the money. Hey! He's got drinking to do! But he'll never quell his wild intellect -- not even for the King!
    Boswell: The new kid in town with something to prove! He's ditched dusty old Edinburgh for the glitzy lights of London -- but not before cutting a swath through the ladies! In London, he hung out with some pretty radical dudes, like Oliver Goldsmith and John Wilkes. They were young, they were wild, they didn't want to just wait around for the old guard to die! When you're 22, smart, and have a way with the ladies... who's gonna stand in your way?
    The two have their first meeting at in the parlor of actor Thomas Davies. Did they get along? As if!
    Boswell (knowing Johnson has poor opinions of Scots): Mr. Johnson,   I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.
    Johnson: That, Sir, I find, is what a very great many of your countrymen cannot help.
    Zing! They spend the rest of the evening quarreling about actor David Garrick and other issues, and then Johnson, easily stomping Boswell's young and silly head, takes his leave. Notes Thomas to Boswell, with perfect ironic timing (he is an actor): "I can see he likes you."
    But Boswell is not dissuaded. He calls on Johnson a few days later, and from there a friendship begins, one full of bickering, zany adventures in bars, and even an extended trip together to the Hebrides, a frosty island chain in the north of Scotland. Any screenwriter worth his salt would have concocted a mystery for them to solve while they were there ("Johnson and Boswell came for relaxation. They got framed for murder. Now they're fighting back...and this time, it's personal ."). But mostly they just ate and drank themselves silly, and kept the blazing gunfights to a minimum.
    But it was more than just friendship (and no, not in that way), since Boswell, unbeknownst to everyone at the time, was an inveterate diarist. For the next 21 years, until Johnson dies in 1784, Boswell commits every bon mot that passes from Johnson lips to memory, goes home and scribbles it down. Boswell's not merely a sycophant with a detailed memory: His diaries project a sense of documentary immediacy. You are there when Johnson whacks at Boswell when they first meet. You are there while Johnson deconstructs the literary lights of his day, from Alexander Pope to Colley Cibber (who between them had their own little literary tiff, of which we shan't concern ourselves with, except to say -- mrrrow , girlfriends. Just get yourselves a room, already). You are there when Johnson does just about anything, and Johnson comes through bigger than life and twice as natural.
    Boswell's diaries are so good that Boswell himself ends up looking bad. When Boswell published his diary entires, first in 1785 with The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. and then in 1791 with his magnum opus The Life of Samuel Johnson , Boswell makes Johnson look good in part by exposing his own weaknesses of personality