James Boswell was born on this day in 1740. Were it not for Samuel Johnson, and Boswell's prodigious Life of the great man, the name of Boswell would be forgotten; but because he was a biographer of genius of a genius, his name will be remembered as long as there are books (another ten years?). He was, otherwise, a wealthy dilettante, a playboy of the Enlightenment, son of a rich landowner in the Scottish Lowlands. He could well afford to undertake long and leisurely European travels in the 1760s, which he entertainingly chronicled in the first of the eighteen volumes of his journals. In A Tour to Corsica and Boswell On The Grand Tour, we learn that he seduced Jean-Jacques Rousseau's mistress away from him, interviewed the Corsican patriot and guerrilla leader Pasquale Paoli in a mountain fastness in the wilds of Corsica, and dined with the Emperor of the Enlightenment, Voltaire, at Ferney (who persisted, in a very French way, in referring to his Scottish guest as "an Englishman").

In the meantime Boswell found time to introduce himself to Samuel Johnson, and the world of letters was never quite the same again. Their first encounter squirms with awkwardness.

[Boswell:] "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."

Johnson could never resist teasing Boswell, who soon understood this straight-man role vis-a-vis his idol and played it to the hilt. For this reason Johnson revealed more of himself to Boswell than he ever allowed himself to do to anyone else; although, in the end, it all became too much even for him. "Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both." 

We, on the other hand, must be heartily grateful that there ever was a Johnson, and that he had his Boswell.