Throughout his life, James Boswell struggled to fashion a clear
account of himself, but try as he might, he could not reconcile the
truths of his era with those of his religious upbringing. Boswell's
Enlightenment examines the conflicting credos of reason and faith,
progress and tradition that pulled Boswell, like so many
eighteenth-century Europeans, in opposing directions. In the end,
the life of the man best known for writing Samuel Johnson's
biography was something of a patchwork affair. As Johnson himself
understood: "That creature was its own tormentor, and I believe its
name was BOSWELL." Few periods in Boswell's life better crystallize
this internal turmoil than 1763-1765, the years of his Grand Tour
and the focus of Robert Zaretsky's thrilling intellectual
adventure. From the moment Boswell sailed for Holland from the port
of Harwich, leaving behind on the beach his newly made friend Dr.
Johnson, to his return to Dover from Calais a year and a half
later, the young Scot was intent on not just touring historic and
religious sites but also canvassing the views of the greatest
thinkers of the age. In his relentless quizzing of Voltaire and
Rousseau, Hume and Johnson, Paoli and Wilkes on topics concerning
faith, the soul, and death, he was not merely a celebrity-seeker
but-for want of a better term-a truth-seeker. Zaretsky reveals a
life more complex and compelling than suggested by the label
"Johnson's biographer," and one that 250 years later registers our
own variations of mind.
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