James Boswell

James Boswell by W. Keith Leask is about a well-known Scottish biographer best known for his biography of his friend and older contemporary the English writer Samuel Johnson. The biography is commonly said to be the greatest biography written in the English language. Excerpt: "Every Scotchman,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'has a pedigree. It is a national prerogative, as inalienable as his pride and his poverty. My birth was neither distinguished nor sordid.' What, however, was but a foible with Scott was a passion in James Boswell, who has on numerous occasions obtruded his genealogical tree in such a manner as to render necessary some acquaintance with his family and lineage."