Chapter 8

A new charter went into effect in 1910. It provided for municipal elections in January; for the election of a mayor for four years; for his recall at the end of two years if a majority of the registered voters so vote in the state election in November in the second year of his term; for the summary removal for cause by the mayor of any department head or other of his appointees, for a city council of one chamber of nine members, elected at large each for three years; for nomination by petition; for a permanent finance commission appointed by the governor; for the confirmation of the mayor’s appointments by the state civil service commission; for the mayor’s preparation of the annual budget (in which items may be reduced but not increased by the council), and for his absolute veto of appropriations except for school use. The school committee (who serve gratuitously) appoint the superintendent and supervisors of schools. The number of members of the school-board was in 1905 reduced from twenty-four to five, elected by the city at large, and serving for one, two or three years; at the same time power was centralized in the hands of the superintendent of schools. Civil service reform principles cover the entire municipal administration. The city’s work is done under an eight-hour law.

An analysis of city election returns for the decade 1890-1899 showed that the interest of the citizens was greatest in the choice of a president; then, successively, in the choice of a mayor, a governor, the determination of liquor-license questions by referendum, and the settlement of other referenda. On 21 referenda, 10 being questions of license, the ratio of actual to registered voters ranged on the latter from 57.00 to 75.38% (mean 61.15), and on other referenda from 75.63 to 33.40 (mean 61.39),—the mean for all, 64.18. But the average of two presidential votes was 85.37%; and the maxima, minima and means for mayors and governors were respectively 83.86, 74.99, 78.36 and 84.73, 61.78, 75.72. Of those who might, only some 50 to 65% actually register. Women vote for school committee-men (categories as above, 95.18, 59.62, 76.49%). On a referendum in 1895 on the expediency of granting municipal suffrage to women only 59.08% of the women who were registered voted, and probably less than 10% of those entitled to be registered.

Hospitals, asylums, refuges and homes, pauper, reformatory and penal institutions, flower missions, relief associations, and other charitable or philanthropic organizations, private and public, number several hundreds. The Associated Charities is an incorporated organization for systematizing the various charities of the city. The Massachusetts general hospital (1811-1821)— with a branch for mental and nervous diseases, McLean hospital (1816), in the township of Belmont (post-office, Waverley) about 6 m. W.N.W. of Boston; the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts school for the blind (1832), famous for its conduct by Samuel G. Howe, and for association with Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller; the Massachusetts school for idiotic and feebleminded children (1839); and the Massachusetts charitable eye and ear infirmary (1824), all receive financial aid from the commonwealth, which has representation in their management. The city hospital dates from 1864. A floating hospital for women and children in the summer months, with permanent and transient wards, has been maintained since 1894 (incorporated 1901). Boston was one of the first municipalities of the country to make provision for the separate treatment of juvenile offenders; in 1906 a juvenile court was established. A People’s Palace dedicated to the work of the Salvation Army, and containing baths, gymnasium, a public hall, a library, sleeping-rooms, an employment bureau, free medical and legal bureaus, &c., was opened in 1906. Simmons College and Harvard University maintain the Boston school for social workers (1904). Beneficent social work out of the more usual type is directed by the music and bath departments of the city government. In the provision of public gymnasiums and baths (1866) Boston was the pioneer city of the country, and remains the most advanced. The beach reservations of the metropolitan park system at Revere and Nantasket, and several smaller city beaches are a special feature of this service. Benjamin Franklin, who was born and spent his boyhood in Boston, left £1000 to the city in his will; it amounted in 1905 to $403,000, and constituted a fund to be used for the good of the labouring class of the city.

Largely owing to activity in public works Boston has long been the most expensively governed of American cities. The average yearly expenditure for ten years preceding 1904 was $27,354,416, exclusive of payments on funded and floating debts. The running expensesper-capitain 1900 were $35.23; more than twice the average of 86 leading cities of the country (New York, $23.92; Chicago, $11.62). Schools, police, charities, water, streets and parks are the items of heaviest cost. The cost of the public schools for the five years from 1901-1902 to 1906-1907 was $27,883,937, of which $7,057,895.42 was for new buildings; the cost of the police department was $11,387,314.66 for the six years 1902-1907; and of the water department $4,941,343.37 for the six years 1902-1907; of charities and social work a much larger sum. The remaking of the city was enormously expensive, especially the alteration of the streets after 1866, when the city received power to make such alterations and assess a part of the improvements upon abutting estates. The creation of the city water-system has also been excessively costly, and the total cost up to the 31st of January 1908 of the works remaining to the city after the creation of the metropolitan board in 1898 was about $17,000,000. The metropolitan water board—of whose expenditures Boston bears only a share—expended from 1895 to 1900 $20,693,870; and the system was planned to consume finally probably 40 millions at least. The city parksystem proper had cost $16,627,033 up to 1899 inclusive; and the metropolitan parks $13,679,456 up to 1907 inclusive. There are no municipal lighting-plants; but the companies upon which the city depends for its service are (with all others) subject to the control of a state commission. In 1885 a state law placed a limit on the contractable debt and upon the taxation rate of the city. Revenues were not realized adequate to its lavish undertakings, and loans were used to meet current expenses. The limits were altered subsequently, but the net debt has continued to rise. In 1822 it was $100,000; in 1850, $6,195,144; in 1886, $24,712,820; in 1904, $58,216,725; in 1907, $70,781,969 (gross debt, $104,206,706)—this included the debt of Suffolk county which in 1907 was $3,517,000. The chief objects for which the city debt was created were in 1907, in millions of dollars: highways, 24.07, parks, 16.29, drainage and sewers, 15.05, rapid transit, 13.57 and water-works, 4.53. Boston paid in 1907 36% of all state taxes, and about 33, 62, 47 and 79% respectively of the assessments for the metropolitan sewer, parks, boulevards and water services. About a third of its revenue goes for such uses or for Suffolk county expenditures over which it has but limited control. The improvement of the Back Bay and of the South Boston flats was in considerable measure forced upon the city by the commonwealth. The debt per capita is as high as the cost of current administration relatively to other cities. The average interest rate on the city obligations in 1907 was about 3.7%. The city’s tax valuation in 1907 was $1,313,471,556 (in 1822, $42,140,200; in 1850, $180,000,500), of which only $242,606,856 represented personalty; although in the judgment of the city board of trade such property cannot by any possibility be inferior in value to realty.

Population.—Up to the War of Independence the population was not only American, but it was in its ideas and standards essentially Puritan; modern liberalism, however, has introduced new standards of social life. In 1900 35.1% of the inhabitants were foreign-born, and 72.2% wholly or in part of foreign parentage. Irish, English-Canadian, Russian, Italian, English and German are the leading races. Of the foreign-born population these elements constituted respectively 35.6, 24.0, 7.6, 7.0, 6.7 and 5.3%. Large foreign colonies, like adjoining but unmixing nations, divide among themselves a large part of the city, and give to its life a cosmopolitan colour of varied speech, opinion, habits, traditions, social relations and religions. Most remarkable of all, the Roman Catholic churches, in this stronghold of exiled Puritanism where Catholics were so long under the heavy ban of law, outnumber those of any single Protestant denomination; Irish Catholics dominate the politics of the city, and Protestants and Catholics have been aligned against each other on the question of the control of the public schools. Despite, however, its heavy foreign admixture the old Americanism of the city remains strikingly predominant. The population of Boston at the end of each decennial period since 1790 was as follows:—(1790), 18,320; (1800), 24,937; (1810), 33,787; (1820), 43,298; (1830), 61,392; (1840), 93,383; (1850), 136,881; (1860), 177,840; (1870), 250,526; (1880), 362,839; (1890), 448,477; (1900), 560,892.

History.—John Smith visited Boston Harbour in 1614, and it was explored in 1621 by a party from Plymouth. There were various attempts to settle about its borders in the following years before John Endecott in 1628 landed at Salem as governor of the colony of Massachusetts bay, within which Boston was included. In June 1630 John Winthrop’s company reached Charlestown. At that time a “bookish recluse,” William Blaxton (Blackstone), one of the several “old planters” scattered about the bay, had for several years been living on Boston peninsula. The location seemed one suitable for commerce and defence, and the Winthrop party chose it for their settlement. The triple summit of Beacon Hill, of which no trace remains to-day (or possibly a reference to the three hills of the then peninsula, Beacon, Copp’s and Fort) led to the adoption of the name Trimountaine for the peninsula,—a name perpetuated variously in present municipal nomenclature as in Tremont; but on the 17th of September 1630, the date adopted for anniversary celebrations, it was ordered that “Trimountaine shall be called Boston,” after the borough of that name in Lincolnshire, England, of which several of the leading settlers had formerly been prominent citizens.4

For several years it was uncertain whether Cambridge, Charlestown or Boston should be the capital of the colony, but in 1632 the General Court agreed “by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay.” It rapidly became the wealthiest and most populous. Throughout the 17th century its history is so largely that of Massachusetts generally that they are inseparable. Theological systems were largely concerned. The chief features of this epoch —the Antinomian dissensions, the Quaker and Baptist persecutions, the witchcraft delusion (four witches were executed in Boston, in 1648, 1651, 1656, 1688) &c.—are referred to in the articleMassachusetts(q.v.). In 1692 the first permanent and successful printing press was established; in 1704 the first newspaper in America, theBoston News-Letter, which was published weekly until 1776. Puritanism steadily mellowed under many influences. By the turn of the first century bigotry was distinctly weakened. Among the marks of the second half of the 17th century was growing material prosperity, and there were those who thought their fellows unduly willing to relax church tests of fellowship when good trade was in question. There was an unpleasant Englishman who declared in 1699 that he found “Money Their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they Covet.” Prices were low, foreign commerce was already large, business thriving; wealth gave social status; the official British class lent a lustre to society; and Boston “town” was drawing society from the “country.” Of the two-score or so of families most prominent in the first century hardly one retained place in the similar list for the early years of the second. Boston was a prosperous, thrifty, English country town, one traveller thought. Another, Daniel Neal, in 1720, found Boston conversation “as polite as in most of the cities and towns in England, many of their merchants having the advantage of a free conversation with travellers; so that a gentleman from London would almost think himself at home at Boston, when he observes the number of people, their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and showy as that of the most considerable tradesmen in London.”

The population, which was almost stationary through much of the century, was about 20,000 in the years immediately before the War of Independence. At this time Boston was the most flourishing town of North America. It built ships as cheaply as any place in the world, it carried goods for other colonies, it traded—often evading British laws—with Europe, Guinea, Madagascar and above all with the West Indies. The merchant princes and social leaders of the time are painted with elaborate show of luxury in the canvases of Copley. The great English writers of Queen Anne’s reign seem to have been but little known in the colony, and the local literature, though changed somewhat in character, showed but scant improvement. About the middle of the century restrictions upon the press began to disappear. At the same time questions of trade, of local politics, finally of colonial autonomy, of imperial policy, had gradually, but already long since, replaced theology in leading interest. In the years 1760-1776 Boston was the most frequently recurring and most important name in British colonial history. Sentiments of limited independence of the British government had been developing since the very beginning of the settlement (seeMassachusetts), and their strength in 1689 had been strikingly exhibited in the local revolution of that year, when the royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros, and other high officials, were frightened into surrender and were imprisoned. This movement, it should be noted, was a popular rising, and not the work of a few leaders.

The incidents that marked the approach of the War of Independence need barely be adverted to. Opposition to the measures of the British government for taxing and oppressing the colonies began in Boston. The argument of Otis on the writs of assistancewas in 1760-1761. The Stamp Act, passed in 1765, was repealed in 1766; it was opposed in Boston by a surprising show of determined and unified public sentiment. Troops were first quartered in the town in 1768. In 1770, on the 5th of March, in a street brawl, a number of citizens were killed or wounded by the soldiers, who fired into a crowd that were baiting a sentry. This incident is known as the “Boston Massacre.” The Tea Act of 1773 was defied by the emptying into the harbour of three cargoes of tea on the 16th of December 1773, by a party of citizens disguised as Indians, after the people in town-meeting had exhausted every effort, through a period of weeks, to procure the return of the tea-ships to England. To this act Great Britain replied by various penal regulations and reconstructive acts of government. She quartered troops in Boston; she made the juries, sheriffs and judges of the colony dependent on the royal officers; she ordered capital offenders to be tried in Nova Scotia or England; she endeavoured completely to control or to abolish town-meetings; and finally, by the so-called “Boston Port Bill,” she closed the port of Boston on the 1st of June 1774. Not even a ferry, a scow or other boat could move in the harbour. Marblehead and Salem were made ports of entry, and Salem was made the capital. But they would not profit by Boston’s misfortune. The people covenanted not to use British goods and to suspend trade with Great Britain. From near neighbours and from distant colonies came provisions and encouragement. In October 1774, when General Gage refused recognition to the Massachusetts general court at Salem, the members adjourned to Concord as the first provincial congress. Finally came war, with Lexington and Bunker Hill, and beleaguerment by the colonial army; until on the 17th of March 1776 the British were compelled by Washington to evacuate the city. With them went about 1100 Tory refugees, many of them of the finest families of the city and province. The evacuation closed the heroic period of Boston’s history. War did not again approach the city.

The years from 1776 to the end of “town” government in 1822 were marked by slow growth and prosperity. Commerce and manufactures alike took great impetus. Direct trade with the East Indies began about 1785, with Russia in 1787. A Boston vessel, the “Columbia” (Captain Robert Gray), opened trade with the north-west coast of America, and was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe (1787-1790). In 1805 Boston began the export of ice to Jamaica, a trade which was gradually extended to Cuba, to ports of the southern states, and finally to Rio de Janeiro and Calcutta (1833), declining only after the Civil War; it enabled Boston to control the American trade of Calcutta against New York throughout the entire period. But of course it was far less important than various other articles of trade in the aggregate values of commerce. It was Boston commerce that was most sorely hurt by the embargo and non-importation policy of President Jefferson. In manufactures the foundation was laid of the city’s wealth. In politics the period is characterized by Boston’s connexion with the fortunes of the Federalist party. The city was warmly in favour of the adoption of the federal constitution of 1787; even Samuel Adams was rejected for Congress because he was backward in its support. It was the losses entailed upon her commerce by the commercial policy of Jefferson’s administration that embittered Boston against the Democratic-Republican party and put her public men in the forefront of the opposition to its policies that culminated in lukewarmness toward the War of 1812, and in the Hartford Convention of 1814.

Some mention must be made of the Unitarian movement. Unitarian tendencies away from the Calvinism of the old Congregational churches were plainly evident about 1750, and it is said by Andrew P. Peabody (1811-1893) that by 1780 nearly all the Congregational pulpits around Boston were filled by Unitarians. Organized Unitarianism in Boston dates from 1785. In 1782 King’s chapel (Episcopal) became Unitarian, and in 1805 one of that faith was made professor of divinity in Harvard. But the Unitarianism of those times, even the Unitarianism of Channing, was very different from that of to-day. Theodore Parker and Channing have been the greatest leaders. The American Unitarian Association, organized in 1825, has always retained its headquarters in Boston. The theological and philosophical developments of the second quarter of the 19th century were characterized by the transcendental movement (seeMassachusetts).

In the period from 1822 to the Civil War anti-slavery is the most striking feature of Boston’s annals. Garrison established the Liberator in 1831; W.E. Channing became active in the cause of abolition in 1835, and Wendell Phillips a little later. In 1835 a mob, composed in part of wealthy and high-standing citizens, attacked a city-building, and dragged Garrison through the streets until the mayor secured his safety by putting him in gaol. But times changed. In 1850 a reception was given in Faneuil Hall in honour of the English anti-slavery leader, George Thompson, whose reported intention to address Bostonians in 1835 precipitated the riot of that year. In 1851 the Court House was surrounded with chains to prevent the “rescue” of a slave (Sims) held for rendition under the Fugitive Slave Law; another slave (Shadrach) was released this same year, and in 1854 there was a riot and intense excitement over the rendition of Anthony Burns. Boston had long since taken her place in the very front of anti-slavery ranks, and with the rest of Massachusetts was playing somewhat the same part as in the years before the War of Independence.

Later events of importance have already been indicated in essentials. On the 9th-10th of November 1872 a terrible fire swept the business part of the city, destroying hundreds of buildings of brick and granite, and inflicting a loss of some $75,000,000. Within two years the whole area, solidly rebuilt and with widened and straightened streets, showed no traces of the ruin except an appearance superior in all respects to that presented before the fire. The expense of this re-creation probably duplicated, at least, the loss from the conflagration. Since this time there has been no set-back to the prosperity of the city. But it is not upon material prosperity that Boston rests its claims for consideration. It prides itself on its schools, its libraries, its literary traditions, its splendid public works and its reputation as the chief centre of American culture.

Authorities.—See the annualCity Documents; also Justin Winsor (ed.)The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County ... 1630-1880(4 vols., Boston, 1880-1881), a work that covers every phase of the city’s growth, history and life; S.A. Drake,The History and Antiquities of ... Boston(2 vols., Boston, 1854; and later editions), andOld Landmarks and Historic Personages of Boston(Boston, 1873, and later editions); Josiah Quincy,A Municipal History of ... Boston ... to ... 1830(Boston, 1852); C.W. Ernst,Constitutional History of Boston(Boston, 1894); H.H. Sprague,City Government in Boston—its Rise and Development(Boston, 1890); E.E. Hale,Historic Boston and its Neighbourhood(New York, 1898), and L. Swift,Literary Landmarks of Boston(Boston, 1903). A great mass of original historical documents have been published by the registry department of the city government since 1876 (34 v. to 1905). Boston has been described in many works of fiction, and the reader may be referred to the novels of E.L. Bynner, to L. Maria Childs’The Rebels, to J.F. Cooper’sLionel Lincoln, to the early novels of W.D. Howells (also those of Arlo Bates), to O.W. Holmes’PoetandAutocrat, and Hawthorne’sScarlet Letter, as pictures of Boston life at various periods since early colonial days.

1On the alteration of streets alone $26,691,496 were expended from 1822 to 1880.2Faneuil Hall is the headquarters of the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company of Boston, the oldest military organization of the country, organized in 1638.3The dam is 1250 ft. long, with a maximum height of 129 ft., only 750 ft. having a depth of more than 40 ft. from high water to rock. The entire surface of the basin was scraped to bed rock, sand or mineral earth, this alone costing $3,000,000. Connected with the reservoir is an aqueduct, of which 2 m. are tunnel and 7 m. covered masonry. The metropolitan system as planned in 1905 for the near future contemplated storage for 80,000,000,000 gallons, reservoirs holding 2,200,000,000 gallons for immediate use, aqueducts capable of carrying 420,000,000 gallons daily, and a minimum daily supply of 173,000,000 gallons.4In 1851 the mayor of the English Boston sent over a copy of that city’s seals, framed in oak from St Botolph’s church, of which John Cotton, the famous Boston divine (he came over in 1633) had been vicar. The seals now hang in the city hall. In 1855 a number of Americans, including Charles Francis Adams and Edward Everett, and also various descendants of Cotton, united to restore the south-west chapel of St Botolph’s church, and to erect in it a memorial tablet to Cotton’s memory. The total amount raised by subscription for this purpose was £673.

1On the alteration of streets alone $26,691,496 were expended from 1822 to 1880.

2Faneuil Hall is the headquarters of the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company of Boston, the oldest military organization of the country, organized in 1638.

3The dam is 1250 ft. long, with a maximum height of 129 ft., only 750 ft. having a depth of more than 40 ft. from high water to rock. The entire surface of the basin was scraped to bed rock, sand or mineral earth, this alone costing $3,000,000. Connected with the reservoir is an aqueduct, of which 2 m. are tunnel and 7 m. covered masonry. The metropolitan system as planned in 1905 for the near future contemplated storage for 80,000,000,000 gallons, reservoirs holding 2,200,000,000 gallons for immediate use, aqueducts capable of carrying 420,000,000 gallons daily, and a minimum daily supply of 173,000,000 gallons.

4In 1851 the mayor of the English Boston sent over a copy of that city’s seals, framed in oak from St Botolph’s church, of which John Cotton, the famous Boston divine (he came over in 1633) had been vicar. The seals now hang in the city hall. In 1855 a number of Americans, including Charles Francis Adams and Edward Everett, and also various descendants of Cotton, united to restore the south-west chapel of St Botolph’s church, and to erect in it a memorial tablet to Cotton’s memory. The total amount raised by subscription for this purpose was £673.

BOSTON,a game of cards invented during the last quarter of the 18th century. It is said to have originated in Boston, Massachusetts, during the siege by the British. It seems to have been invented by the officers of the French fleet which lay for a time off the town of Marblehead, and the name of the two small islands in Marblehead harbour which have, from the period of the American Revolution, been called Great and Little Misery, correspond with expressions used in the game. William Tudor, in hisLetters on the Eastern States, published in 1821, states somewhat differently that “A game of cards was invented in Versailles and called in honour of the town, Boston; the points of the game are allusive, ‘great independence,’ ‘little independence,’ ’great misery,’ ‘little misery,’ &c. It is composed partly of whist and partly of quadrille, though partaking mostly of the former.” The game enjoyed an extraordinary vogue in high French society, where it was the fashion at that time to admireall things American. “The ladies... filled my pockets with bon-bons, and ... called me ‘le pétit Bostonien.’ It was indeed by the name of Bostonian that all Americans were known in France then. The war having broken out in Boston and the first great battle fought in its neighbourhood, gave to that name universal celebrity. A game invented at that time, played with cards, was called ‘Boston,’ and is to this day (1830) exceedingly fashionable at Paris by that appellation” (Recollections of Samuel Breck, Philadelphia, 1877). There was a tradition that Dr Franklin was fond of the game and even that he had a hand in its invention. At the middle of the 19th century it was still popular in Europe, and to a less degree in America, but its favour has steadily declined since then.

The rules of Boston recognized in English-speaking countries differ somewhat from those in vogue in France. According to the former, two packs of 52 cards are used, which rank as in whist, both for cutting and dealing. Four players take part, and there are usually no partners. Counters are used, generally of three colours and values, and each hand is settled for as soon as finished. The entire first pack is dealt out by fours and fives, and the second pack is cut for the trump, the suit of the card turned being “first preference,” the other suit of the same colour “second preference” or “colour,” while the two remaining suits are “plain suits.” The eldest hand then announces that he will make a certain number of tricks provided he may name the trump, or lose a certain number without trumps. The different bids are called by various names, but the usual ones are as follows:—To win five tricks, “Boston.” (To win) “six tricks.” (To win) “seven tricks.” To lose twelve tricks, after discarding one card that is not shown, “littlemisère.” (To win) “eight tricks.” (To win) “nine tricks.” To lose every trick, “grandmisère.” (To win) “ten tricks.” (To win) “eleven tricks.” To lose twelve tricks, after discarding one card that is not shown, the remaining twelve cards being exposed on the table but not liable to be called, “little spread.” (To win) “twelve tricks.” To lose every trick with exposed cards, “grand spread.” To win thirteen tricks, “grand slam.” If a player does not care to bid he may pass, and the next player bids. Succeeding players may “overcall,”i.e. overbid, previous bidders. Players passing may thereafter bid only “misères.” If a player bids seven but makes ten he is paid for the three extra tricks, but on a lower scale than if he had bid ten. If no bid should be made, a “misère partout” (general poverty) is often played, the trump being turned down and each player striving to take as few tricks as possible. Payments are made by each loser according to the value of the winner’s bid and the overtricks he has scored. There are regular tables of payments. In America overtricks are not usually paid for. In French Boston the knave of diamonds arbitrarily wins over all other cards, even trumps. The names of the different bids remind one of the period of the American Revolution, including “Independence,” “Philadelphia,” “Souveraine,” “Concordia,” &c. Other variations of the game areBoston de Fontainebleauand Russian Boston.

BOSTONITE,in petrology, a fine-grained, pale-coloured, grey or pinkish rock, which consists essentially of alkali-felspar (orthoclase, microperthite, &c.). Some of them contain a small amount of interstitial quartz (quartz bostonites); others have a small percentage of lime, which occasions the presence of a plagioclase felspar (maenite, gauteite, lime-bostonite). Other minerals, except apatite, zircon and magnetite, are typically absent. They have very much the same composition as the trachytes; and many rocks of this series have been grouped with these or with the orthophyres. Typically they occur as dikes or as thin sills, often in association with nepheline-syenite; and they seem to bear a complementary relationship to certain types of lamprophyre, such as camptonite and monchiquite. Though nowhere very common they have a wide distribution, being known from Scotland, Wales, Massachusetts, Montreal, Portugal, Bohemia, &c. The lindoites and quartz-lindoites of Norway are closely allied to the bostonites.

BOSTRÖM, CHRISTOFFER JACOB(1797-1866), Swedish philosopher, was born at Piteå and studied at Upsala, where from 1840 to 1863 he was professor of practical philosophy. His philosophy, as he himself described it, is a thoroughgoing rational idealism founded on the principle that the only true reality is spiritual. God is Infinite Spirit in whom all existence is contained, and is outside the limitations of time and space. Thus Boström protests not only against empiricism but also against those doctrines of Christian theology which seemed to him to picture God as something less than Pure Spirit. In ethics the highest aim is the direction of actions by reason in harmony with the Divine; so the state, like the individual, exists solely in God, and in its most perfect form consists in the harmonious obedience of all its members to a constitutional monarch; the perfection of mankind as a whole is to be sought in a rational orderly system of such states in obedience to Universal Reason. This system differs from Platonism in that the “ideas” of God are not archetypal abstractions but concrete personalities.

Boström’s writings were edited by H. Edfeldt (2 vols., Upsala, 1883). For his school seeSweden:Literature; also H. Höffding,Filosofien i Sverig(German trans. inPhilos. Monatsheften, 1879), andHistory of Mod. Philos.(Eng. trans., 1900), p. 284; R. Falckenberg,Hist. of Phil.(Eng. trans., 1895); A. Nyblaeus,Om den Boströmske filosofien(Lund, 1883), andKarakteristik af den Boströmska filosofien(Lund, 1892).

BOSWELL, JAMES(1740-1795), Scottish man of letters, the biographer of Samuel Johnson, was born at Edinburgh on the 29th of October 1740. His grandfather was in good practice at the Scottish bar, and his father, Alexander Boswell of Auchinleck, was also a noted advocate, who, on his elevation to the supreme court in 1754, took the name of his Ayrshire property as Lord Auchinleck. A Thomas Boswell (said upon doubtful evidence to have been a minstrel in the household of James IV.) was killed at Flodden, and since 1513 the family had greatly improved its position in the world by intermarriage with the first Scots nobility. In contradiction to his father, a rigid Presbyterian Whig, James was “a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James until his uncle Cochrane gave him a shilling to pray for King George, which he accordingly did” (“Whigs of all ages are made in the same way” was Johnson’s comment). He met one or two English boys, and acquired a “tincture of polite letters” at the high school in Edinburgh. Like R.L. Stevenson, he early frequented society such as that of the actors at the Edinburgh theatre, sternly disapproved of by his father. At the university, where he was constrained for a season to study civil law, he met William Johnson Temple, his future friend and correspondent. The letters of Boswell to his “Atticus” were first published by Bentley in 1857. One winter he spent at Glasgow, where he sat under Adam Smith, who was then lecturing on moral philosophy and rhetoric.

In 1760 he was first brought into contact with “the elegance, the refinement and the liberality” of London society, for which he had long sighed. The young earl of Eglintoun took him to Newmarket and introduced him into the society of “the great, the gay and the ingenious.” He wrote a poem called “The Cub at Newmarket,” published by Dodsley in 1762, and had visions of entering the Guards. Reclaimed with some difficulty by his father from his rakish companions in the metropolis, he contrived to alleviate the irksomeness of law study in Edinburgh by forcing his acquaintance upon the celebrities then assembled in the northern capital, among them Kames, Blair, Robertson, Hume and Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes), of whose sayings on the Northern Circuit he kept a brief journal. Boswell had already realized his vocation, the exercise of which was to give a new word to the language. He had begun to Boswellize. He was already on the track of bigger game—the biggest available in the Britain of that day. In the spring of 1763 Boswell came to a composition with his father. He consented to give up his pursuit of a guidon in the Guards and three and sixpence a day on condition that his father would allow him to study civil law on the continent. He set out in April 1763 by “the best road in Scotland” with a servant, on horseback like himself, in “a cocked hat, a brown wig, brown coat made in the court fashion, red vest, corduroy small clothes and long military boots.” On Monday, the 16th of May 1763, in the back shop of Tom Davies the bookseller, No. 8 Russell Street, Covent Garden, James Boswell first met “Dictionary Johnson,” the great man of his dreams, and was severely buffeted by him. Eight days later, on Tuesday, the 24th of May, Boswell boldly called on Mr Johnson at his chambers on the first floor of No. 1 Inner Temple Lane. On this occasion Johnson pressed him to stay; on the 13th of June he said, “Come to me as often as you can”; on the 25th of June Boswell gave the great man a little sketch of his own life, and Johnson exclaimed with warmth, “Give me your hand; I havetaken a liking to you.” Boswell experienced a variety of sensations, among which exultation was predominant. Some one asked, “Who is this Scotch cur at Johnson’s heels?” “He is not a cur,” replied Goldsmith, “he is only a bur. Tom Davies flung him at Johnson in sport, and he has the faculty of sticking.” Johnson was fifty-four at this time and Boswell twenty-three. After June 1763 they met on something like 270 subsequent days. These meetings formed the memorable part of Boswell’s life, and they are told inimitably in his famous biography of his friend.

The friendship, consecrated by the most delightful of biographies, and one of the most gorgeous feasts in the whole banquet of letters, was not so ill-assorted as has been inconsiderately maintained. Boswell’s freshness at the table of conversation gave a new zest to every maxim that Johnson enunciated, while Boswell developed a perfect genius for interpreting the kind of worldly philosophy at which Johnson was so unapproachable. Both men welcomed an excuse for avoiding the task-work of life. Johnson’s favourite 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. He prepared meetings for Johnson, he prepared topics for him, he drew him out on questions of the day, he secured a copy of his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, he obtained an almost verbatim report of Johnson’s interview with the king, he frequented the tea-table of Miss Williams, he attended the testy old scholar on lengthy peregrinations in the Highlands and in the midlands. “Sir,” said Johnson to his follower, “you appear to have only two subjects, yourself and me, and I am sick of both.” Yet thorough as the scheme was from the outset, and admirable as was the devotedness of the biographer, Boswell was far too volatile a man to confine himself to any one ambition in life that was not consistent with a large amount of present fame and notoriety. He would have liked to Boswellize the popular idol Wilkes, or Chatham, or Voltaire, or even the great Frederick himself. As it was, during his continental tour he managed in the autumn of 1765 to get on terms with Pasquale di Paoli, the leader of the Corsican insurgents in their unwise struggle against Genoa. After a few weeks in Corsica he returned to London in February 1766, and was received by Johnson with the utmost cordiality. In accordance with the family compact referred to, he was now admitted advocate at Edinburgh, and signalized his return to the law by an enthusiastic pamphlet entitledThe Essence of the Douglas Cause(November 1767), in which he vigorously repelled the charge of imposture from the youthful claimant. In the same year he issued a little book calledDorando, containing a history of the Douglas cause in the guise of a Spanish tale, and bringing the story to a conclusion by the triumph of Archibald Douglas in the law courts. Editors who published extracts while the case was stillsub judicewere censured severely by the court of session; but though his identity was notorious the author himself escaped censure. In the spring of 1768 Boswell published through the Foulis brothers of Glasgow hisAccount of Corsica, Journal of a Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli. The liveliness of personal impression which he managed to communicate to all his books gained for this one a deserved success, and theTourwas promptly translated into French, German, Italian and Dutch. Walpole and others, jeered, but Boswell was talked about everywhere, as Paoli Boswell or Paoli’s Englishman, and to aid the mob in the task of identifying him at the Shakespeare jubilee of 1769 he took the trouble to insert a placard in his hat bearing the legend “Corsica Boswell.” The amazing costume of “a Corsican chief” which he wore on this occasion was described at length in the magazines.

On the 25th of November 1769, after a short tour in Ireland undertaken to empty his head of Corsica (Johnson’s emphatic direction), Boswell married his cousin Margaret Montgomery at Lainshaw in Ayrshire. For some years henceforth his visits to London were brief, but on the 30th of April 1773 he was present at his admission to the Literary Club, for which honour he had been proposed by Johnson himself, and in the autumn of this year in the course of his tour to the Hebrides Johnson visited the Boswells in Ayrshire. Neither Boswell’s father nor his wife shared his enthusiasm for the lexicographer. Lord Auchinleck remarked that Jamie was “gane clean gyte ... And whose tail do ye think he has pinned himself to now, man? A dominie, an auld dominie, that keepit a schule and ca’d it an academy!” Housewives less prim than Mrs Boswell might have objected to Johnson’s habit of turning lighted candles upside down when in the parlour to make them burn better. She called the great man a bear. Boswell’sJournal of a Tour in the Hebrideswas written for the most part during the journey, but was not published until the spring of 1786. The diary of Pepys was not then known to the public, and Boswell’s indiscretions as to the emotions aroused in him by the neat ladies’ maids at Inveraray, and the extremity of drunkenness which he exhibited at Corrichatachin, created a literary sensation and sent theTourthrough three editions in one year. In the meantime his pecuniary and other difficulties at home were great; he made hardly more than £100 a year by his profession, and his relations with his father were chronically strained. In 1775 he began to keep terms at the Inner Temple and managed to see a good deal of Johnson, between whom and John Wilkes he succeeded in bringing about a meeting at the famous dinner at Dilly’s on the 15th of May 1776. On the 30th of August 1782 his father died, leaving him an estate worth £1600 a year. On the 30th of June 1784, Boswell met Johnson for the last time at a dinner at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s. He accompanied him back in the coach from Leicester Square to Bolt Court. “We bade adieu to each other affectionately in the carriage. When he had got down upon the foot pavement he called out ‘Fare you well’; and without looking back, sprung away with a kind of pathetic briskness, if I may use that expression, which seemed to indicate a struggle to conceal uneasiness, and impressed me with a foreboding of our long, long separation.” Johnson died that year, and two years later the Boswells moved to London. In 1789 Mrs Boswell died, leaving five children. She had been an excellent mother and a good wife, despite the infidelities and drunkenness of her husband, and from her death Boswell relapsed into worse excesses, grievously aggravated by hypochondria. He died of a complication of disorders at his house in Great Poland Street on the 19th of May 1795, and was buried a fortnight later at Auchinleck.

Up to the eve of his last illness Boswell had been busy upon his magnum opus,The Life of Samuel Johnson, which was in process of crystallization to the last. The first edition was published in two quarto volumes in an edition of 1700 copies on the 16th of May 1791. He was preparing a third edition when he died; this was completed by his friend Edmund Malone, who brought out a fifth edition in 1807. That of James Boswell junior (the editor of Malone’sVariorum Shakespeare, 1821) appeared in 1811.

TheLife of Johnsonwas written on a scale practically unknown to biographers before Boswell. It is a full-length with all the blotches and pimples revealed (“I will not make my tiger a cat to please anybody,” wrote “Bozzy”). It may be overmuch an exhibition of oddities, but it is also, be it remembered, a pioneer application of the experimental method to the determination of human character. Its size and lack of divisions (to divide it into chapters was an original device of Croker’s) are a drawback, and have prevented Boswell’sLifefrom that assured triumph abroad which has fallen to the lot of various English classics such asRobinson CrusoeorGulliver’s Travels. But wherever English is spoken, it has become a veritable sacred book and has pervaded English life and thought in the same way, that the Bible, Shakespeare and Bunyan have done. Boswell has successfully (to use his own phrase) “Johnsonized” Britain, but has not yet Johnsonized the planet. The model originally proposed to himself by Boswell was Mason’sLife of Gray, but he far surpassed that, or indeed any other, model. The fashion that Boswell adopted of giving the conversations not in the neutral tints oforatio obliquabut in fulloratio rectawas a stroke of genius. But he is far from being the mere mechanical transmitter of good things. He is a dramatic and descriptive artist of the first order. The extraordinary vitality of his figures postulatesa certain admixture of fiction, and it is certain that Boswell exaggerates the sympathy expressed in word or deed by Johnson for some of his own tenderer foibles. But, on the whole, the best judges are of opinion that Boswell’s accuracy is exceptional, as it is undoubtedly seconded by a power of observation of a singular retentiveness and intensity. The difficulty of dramatic description can only be realized, as Jowett well pointed out, by those who have attempted it, and it is not until we compare Boswell’s reports with those of less skilful hearers that we can appreciate the skill with which the essence of a conversation is extracted, and the whole scene indicated by a few telling touches. The result is that Johnson, not, it is true, in the early days of his poverty, total idleness and the pride of literature, but in the fulness of fame and competence of fortune from 1763 to 1784, is better known to us than any other man in history. The old theory to explain such a marvel (originally propounded by Gray when theTour in Corsicaappeared) that “any fool may write a valuable book by chance” is now regarded as untenable. If fool is a word to describe Boswell (and his folly was at times transcendent) he wrote his great book because and not in despite of the fact that he was one. There can be no doubt, in fact, that he was a biographical genius, and that he arranged his opportunities just as he prepared his transitions and introduced those inimitable glosses by which Johnson’s motives are explained, his state of mind upon particular occasions indicated, and the general feeling of his company conveyed. This remarkable literary faculty, however, was but a fraction of the total make-up requisite to produce such a masterpiece as theLife. There is a touch of genius, too, in the naïf and imperturbable good nature and persistency (“Sir, I will not be baited with ’what’ and ‘why.’ ‘Why is a cow’s tail long?’ ‘Why is a fox’s tail bushy?’”), and even in the abnegation of all personal dignity, with which Boswell pursued his hero. As he himself said of Goldsmith, “He had sagacity enough to cultivate assiduously the acquaintance of Johnson, and his faculties were gradually enlarged.” Character, the vital principle of the individual, is theignis fatuusof the mechanical biographer. Its attainment may be secured by a variety of means—witness Xenophon, Cellini, Aubrey, Lockhart and Froude—but it has never been attained with such complete intensity as by Boswell in hisLife of Johnson. The more we study Boswell, the more we compare him with other biographers, the greater his work appears.

The eleventh edition of Boswell’sJohnsonwas brought out by John Wilson Croker in 1831; in this the original text is expanded by numerous letters and variorum anecdotes and is already knee-deep in annotation. Its blunders provoked the celebrated and mutually corrective criticisms of Macaulay and Carlyle. Its value as an unrivalled granary of Johnsoniana, stored opportunely before the last links with a Johnsonian age had disappeared, has not been adequately recognized. A new edition of the original text was issued in 1874 by Percy Fitzgerald (who has also written a useful life of James Boswell in 2 vols., London, 1891); a six-volume edition, including theTourand Johnsoniana, was published by the Rev. Alexander Napier in 1884; the definitive edition is that by Dr Birkbeck Hill in 6 vols., 1887, with copious annotations and a model index. A generously illustrated edition was completed in 1907 in two large volumes by Roger Ingpen, and reprints of value have also been edited by R. Carruthers (with woodcuts), A. Birrell, Mowbray Morris (Globe edition) and Austin Dobson. A short biography of Boswell was written in 1896 by W. Keith Leask. Boswell’s commonplace-book was published in 1876, under the title ofBoswelliana, with a memoir by the Rev. C. Rogers.

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