ABSTRACT
Izaak Walton’s predilection for writing about people with whose virtues he was personally acquainted set a pattern which was to be repeated in many of the great biographies of our literature. In his preface to The Life of Sanderson he indicates his use of a technique that Boswell, the greatest of biographers, was to refine to the point where it became the hallmark of his biographic method. In The Life of Johnson, Boswell applies his journalistic technique with consistent seriousness. At various times he gives us unashamed insights into his method, above all when he refers to his habit of recording Johnson’s conversation immediately post facto with a view to using it as source-material for the work which he had always intended to write. The Life of Savage is a variation on the favourite Johnsonian theme of the vanity of human wishes.
