The Life of Samuel Johnson

By James Boswell

THE election of Boswell's century-and-a-half-old classic to a place in The Modern Library awards an accolade of modernity to a book which has easily held that distinction in the minds of thousands of readers. Like the Bible—like Don Quixote—like Pepys—like many Other classics which continue to be best sellers, Boswell's book is more modern, to the reader of today, than many a modernistic novel of last year or a modish magazine of last season. Countless bon mots and sallies of Boswell's hero are current today as coin of the realm in conversation and in print. The wit and wisdom of old Doctor Johnson is constantly being drawn upon to point a moral or adorn a tale in such up-to-the-minute places as a newspaper editorial, an after-dinner speech, a billboard advertisement, or a radio broadcast. In many of the polemics occasioned by the great war, Johnson's definition of patriotism was a favorite text. It was much more sur- prising, even to a Johnson fan, to find a quotation from Johnson emblazoned across the lobby of the Broadway headquarters of a national billposting trust, as an argument for big-scale advertising in the modern manner. The modernity of Bo.

The Modern Library, 1931, 1,217p.