Boswell was the complete "young man about town" during his year in London. The journal seems honest enough (although the editor's wonderful notes refer to episodes which have been glossed over).
Boswell presents himself as a determined individual who won't give up in pursuing his dream of joining a Guard's Regiment based in London. He is fearless in his repeated requests to those with influence in government that they persist in his petition to join up - and, of course it must be a London based outfit that won't be posted overseas.
He's honest too about his need for sex - the Louisa (aka Mrs. Lewis) episode reveals him as a cad after he is unwontedly visited by "Signor Gonorrhoea".
"What! thought I , can this beautiful, this sensible and this agreeable woman be so sadly defiled? Can corruption lodge beneath so fair a form?.... No, it is impossible. I have just got a gleet by irritating the parts too much with excessive venery."
Wonderful Eighteenth Century!!
Go the Boss.

now first published from the original manuscript

" now [1950] first published from the original manuscript"

Glorious stuff if you're into the 18th century, probably quite impenetrable if not, though Boswell is surely one of the greatest characters in literary history. Here we have him in all his youthful folly, living through what Sheridan quotes Fielding calling "a trifling age," (50), and doing a good deal of trifling himself. He flits between deep piety and evenings with prostitutes. He records: "I see too far into the system of things, to be much in earnest. I consider Mankind in general & therefore cannot take a part in their quarrels when divided into particular states and nations. I can see that after a war is over and a great quantity of cold & hunger & want of Sleep and torment endured by mortals, things are upon the whole, just as they were." He inquires into his own personality and realizes that "altho' the judgment may know that all is vanity, yet Passion may ardently pursue." "The pleasure of gratifying whim is very great. It is known only by whose who are whimsical."

He suggests to a friend that the world would be much better is "venereal delight" were permitted only to the virtuous, because priests could then "incite the Audience to Goodness by warmly and lusciously setting before their imaginations the transports of amorous Joy." That is right. Boswell thinks all would be well if only priests were also pornographers.

He fails to go out when his barber is sick, apparently being incapable of shaving himself. He sees another prostitute and describes her. He eats out. His friends are witty. And then he meets Jonson--which gives birth to a great book, of course. But after reading just the first volume of his journal, I'm pretty convinced that Boswell was both a more enjoyable man than Jonson, and, dare I say it, a vastly superior writer. ( )

Replaces otherwise identical copy in poor condition. ( )