Though Tristram Shandy seems a completely whimsical book, it is actually one of the few great novйis written in accord with a psychological theory. Sterne was much influenced by John Locke's [49] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding with its doctrine of reason and knowledge as derived from sen- sory experience. Tristram Shandy dramatizes this theory, and in the course of the dramatization creates half a dozen living characters: My Uncle Toby, Mr. and Mrs. Shandy, Parson Yorick, Dr. Stop, the Widow Wadman.
Tristram Shandy, unlike most novйis, is not about things that happen. As its full title, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, suggests, it is about thought, about the inner lives of its characters. It is a true psychological novel, perhaps the first. Hence its rejection of straight-line chronology, as well as its odd punctuation, which mirrors the wayward, associative, crisscross- ing paths of our minds and memories. Thus it anticipates Joyce [110], Proust [105], Mann [107], and the modern psychological novel in general, with its flashbacks, abrupt transitions, zigzags, and serious attempts to reflect the pressures of the unconscious.
Sterne is more than a genius of the odd. He is the most modern, technically creative novelist produced by his century. If Tristram Shandy seems strange, it is not merely because Sterne is an eccentric, though he is and glories in so being. It is because the book is actually nearer to the realities of mental life than a conventional novel is. And that is something that takes getting used to, because we so rarely stop to look at our- selves in the acts of thinking, feeling, and remembering. Some awareness of ali this may help you to enjoy Sterne^ strange masterpiece.
C.F.
59
JAMES BOSWELL
1740-1795
The Life of Samuel Johnson
If Rousseau^ was the first modern autobiography [57], BoswelPs may claim to be the first modern biography. His Life is the best in the language, perhaps the best in any language. It was published seven years after the death of its subject, in 1791. Ever since, Samuel Johnson has been the most inti- mately known figure in English literature. But he is more than a literary character. Many who have never read a line of his essays or his Lives of the Poets or his grave, rather impressive poetry nevertheless claim him as a familiar friend. He will never cease to be quoted, often by people innocent of the source of the quotation.
This is ali the consequence of a meeting in Davies's London bookshop on May 16, 1763, between the literary dicta- tor of England, then fifty-three, and an eager, hero-worship- ping Scot, then twenty-two. Sensing his own vocation, Boswell at once began to take notes of the great man's talk and habits and opinions. He continued this activity, with intermissions, up to Johnson's death in 1784. The result is a full-length portrait, complete with warts, of a stunning character; plus an equally lively picture of the swarming, noisy, brilliant literary and social life of the latter part of the eighteenth century, which boasted, in addition to Johnson, such colorful men as Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, and Sir Joshua Reynolds; plus an uncon- scious revelation of Boswell himself, who has turned out to be perhaps the most interesting of them ali.
Boswell was of good Scottish family. Trained in the law, he preferred other modes of experience: good conversation, liquor, wenching, travei, some abortive meddling in politics, and the company of any great man he could contrive to meet, including Voltaire [53] and Rousseau [57]. He was the proto- typical groupie. Above ali, however, he was a natural writer. He possessed most of the attributes of a supreme repуrter. He wrote easily. He had a phenomenal memory. He knew how to take notes, written or mental. He wrote things down when he heard them. He had a nose for the striking, concrete detail. He loved gossip and scandal. And he generally happened to be around when something new was being done or being said.
But beyond this, he knew how to create news. Had Boswell never existed, Johnson would still have been a great personal- ity. But we might never have known it. Boswell made Johnson talk. Not that he encountered any innate reluctance, but he forced Johnson into full flower, with the aid of naive or cun- ning questions, by irritating or flattering him, by caressing or exacerbating his prejudices, even by demeaning himself so as to permit Johnson to enjoy a recordable triumph over him. Johnson is a creation. And that is why Boswell is more than a superb repуrter. He is an artist, just as surely as Rembrandt or Hals or any other first-rate portrait painter is one.
In the last fifty years or so our view of Boswell has changed radically. Back of this shift lies what Christopher Morley called "the most exciting adventure in English letters." In 1927 Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Isham, a rich and persuasive con- noisseur, bought from the owners of Malahide Castle in Ireland some of BoswelPs papers that had been lying there
untouched for generations. This discovery had been preceded by others of a similar nature and was at once followed by more. Finally there was amassed an enormous collection of eigh- teenth-century material, by or about Boswell and other con- temporaries, which has given us radically new insights into the period. Of this material numerous volumes have been published. The first, BosweWs London Journal 1762-1763, is the most interesting to the general reader.
What we now see is a Boswell who is no longer merely the faithful recorder of Johnson's thunder. We have a fantastic fel- low, an odd genius, with a little of Hamlet in him, a damaged soul, a divided mind, a shrewd fool, a libertine—and a far finer writer than we had ever thought him. The fact is, that though Johnson was a great man and Boswell was not, the disciple is beginning to overshadow the master. In his subtleties, his despairs, his divisions of mind, his violent alternations of emo- tion, he seems to make a special appeal to our time. Consequently his masterpiece gains a dimension.
C.F.
60
THOMAS JEFFERSON and others
Basic Documents in American History edited by Richard B. Morris
This entry needs little commentary. Much as they have been modified, our basic political ideas are still to be found, classi- cally expressed, in a very few documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, the Gettysburg Address, and a few others. The Declaration and the Constitution, in particular, deserve to be read slowly, carefully, and with deliberate attention to every word and phrase; that is how they were written, and that is how their meanings will disclose themselves to you.
Many handy collections of our important state papers exist; Morris's is quite serviceable. He prints about fifty documents, from the Mayflower Compact to almost our own time. Most are of interest mainly to students of history. As examples of the use of the language they get progressively worse after Lincoln (whose speeches also richly repay careful reading), a fact from which you may draw any conclusion you prefer.
C.F.
61
HAMILTON, MADISON, and JAY
The Federalist Papers
1787
edited by Clinton Rossiter
The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, represents American political thought and expression at a peak of elegance and power it has never since attained. Conceived originally as journalistic letters intended to mobilize New York State public opinion in support of the proposed Federal Constitution of 1787, they are not merely historical documents but in many cases masterpieces of reasoning. In 1788 Jefferson wrote to Madison praising them as "the best commentary on the principies of government which was ever written." It is illuminating to study them in connection with your reading of Aristotle^ Politics [13], Hobbes [43], Locke [49], Marx and Engels [82], Machiavelli [34], and Tocqueville [71]. Not ali the Papers need to be read. A fairly thorough knowledge of this classic may be gained by a reading of numbers 1-51, 84, and 85.