James Boswell [ Art and Literature ]
… put it in his scathing review of John Wilson Croker’s edition of the Life of Johnson in 1831: ‘He was always laying himself at the feet of some eminent man, and begging to be spit upon and trampled upon’. 1 Successive eminent men included … But this was part of Boswell’s talent, not only relishing the sociable but actively contriving it. He could be immensely self-promoting, often in a highly embarrassing way, as at the annual dinner of the Company of Grocers in London in … the London Magazine , Boswell devoted four to ‘Drinking’, which is more than any other topic apart from ‘Hypochondria’ itself, which also has four. ‘I do fairly acknowledge that I love Drinking’, he declares at the beginning of the first, for …
Alcohol | Depression | Charm | Manners | Sex
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