When Boswell first met Samuel Johnson in 1763, the great man of his dreams was 54 years old; their friendship formed the memorable part of Boswell’s life, and is described inimitably in his famous biography.  Johnson’s favorite indulgence  was to talk; Boswell’s great idea of success to elicit memorable conversation.  Boswell is almost equally admirable as a reporter and as an interviewer, as a collector and as a researcher.   

“The Life of Johnson” was written on a scale unknown to biographers before Boswell.  Wherever English is spoken, it has become a veritable sacred book; the sober Encyclopedia Britannica says that it has pervaded English life and thought “in the same way that the Bible, Shakespeare, and Bunyan have done.”