In the 'Advertisement to the Second Edition,' Boswell seems to go further:
His strong, clear, and animated enforcement of religion, morality, loyalty, and subordination, while it delights and improves the wise and the good, will, I trust, prove an effectual antidote to that detestable sophistry which has been lately imported from France, under the false name of _Philosophy_, and with a malignant industry has been employed against the peace, good order, and happiness of society, in our free and prosperous country; but thanks be to God, without producing the pernicious effects which were hoped for by its propagators.
This history of the deeds and words and thoughts of his hero is compared by Boswell to the Odyssey. He seems almost to think that the merit of Homer's epic lies in the good behaviour of Ulysses, just as he conceives that the value of his own work is in the excellence of Johnson:--
----Quid virtus et quid sapientia possit, Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssen.
It is not perhaps remarkable in itself that Boswell should have had this attitude towards his work; it is the attitude in some degree of most biographers, the attitude especially of the age in which he lived, and the attitude of Johnson himself. Boswell's principles as a biographer are indeed the same as Johnson's. We cannot suppose, when he has revealed so clearly his supreme faculty for biography, that there was anything of this which was not entirely his own. But he took the trouble to find out on several occasions the opinions of his great friend, to ask him about particular doubts which troubled him from time to time, and obtain his approval. He had a profound respect for Johnson's manner of estimating character. Mr. Pennant, 'a traveller in Scotland,' is censured in the 'Life' for a book of travel which is compared to Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands' and then quoted on the subject of Johnson; the quotation speaks of 'the numerous weaknesses and prejudices which his friends have kindly taken care to draw from their dread abode.' Boswell's note is:
This is the common cant against faithful biography. Does the worthy gentleman mean that I, who was taught discrimination of character by Johnson, should have omitted his frailties, and in short, have _bedaubed_ him, as the worthy gentleman has bedaubed Scotland?