James, Esq. of Auchinleck, in the county of Ayr, was the eldest son of Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, one of the judges of the supreme courts of session and justiciary in Scotland. He was born in 1740, and successively prosecuted his studies at the universities of Edinburgh and of Glasgow. He was destined by his father for the bar; and, as the study of civil law at one of the foreign universities was then included in the most liberal plan of education for a Scottish advocate, it was determined that he should repair for that purpose to Utrecht, with a permission, before his return, to make the tour of Europe.

He was very early ambitious of being admitted into the society and friendship of men distinguished by talent and public estimation, more especially those of eminence in the literary world; and his natural urbanity, as well as gaiety of disposition, rendered it no difficult matter to gratify this propensity. While at the university of Glasgow, he had formed a particular intimacy with Mr Temple, the friend of Gray, afterwards vicar of St Gluvias in Cornwall; and he was known to many of the conspicuous characters at that time in Scotland, among others, to Lord Kames, Lord Hailes, Dr Robertson, and Dr Beattie. But the most remarkable acquisition which he made of this kind was his acquaintance with Dr Johnson, which commenced in 1763, and proved at once the principal era in his own life, and the means of adding not a little to the fame of that great man.

Boswell had visited London for the first time in 1760, when he accidentally became acquainted with Derrick, afterwards King Derrick, as the master of ceremonies at Bath was then fantastically titled, and by him was initiated into the arcana of London life. In 1763 he proceeded to Utrecht. Having passed a year at that university, he travelled into Germany and Switzerland, was entertained by Voltaire at his castle of Ferney, and conversed with Rousseau in the solitudes of Neuchatel. He continued his route to Italy; but, led by his natural enthusiasm, forsook the common lines of travel, and passed over to Corsica, which, after a contest of more than thirty years, was still struggling for independence with the republic of Genoa. Of his visit to this island he published a narrative on his return to Scotland, entitled An Account of Corsica, with Memoirs of General Pasquale de Paoli, Glasgow, 1768. It was translated into Dutch, German, French, and Italian. He likewise printed, in the following year, a collection of British Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans; and made such attempts as he could to interest the British government in favour of that people, before they were finally crushed by the pressure of the French arms. His friendship with General Paoli was afterwards renewed in London, when that chief, having escaped with difficulty from his native isle, found an asylum in the British dominions. From Corsica he repaired to Paris; and, returning to Scotland in 1766, he was admitted to the bar. Soon after, he published a pamphlet on the Douglas Cause; written while that great suit was depending in the Court of Session, with a view to excite the public interest in favour of Mr Douglas. In 1769 he was married to the daughter of David Montgomery, Esq.; an accomplished lady, in whose society he enjoyed every domestic happiness. By her he had two sons and three daughters.

In 1773 Boswell was admitted into the Literary Club, which then met at the Turk's Head in Gerard Street, Soho, and of which Dr Johnson had been an original member. Here he had the pleasure of associating with Burke, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Garrick, and other eminent persons. Dr Johnson had long projected a tour to the Hebrides; and Boswell at last prevailed upon him, in the course of this year, 1773, to put the plan in execution, and became the companion of his journey from Edinburgh. During this excursion they saw whatever was most remarkable in the Western Highlands and Isles; and Boswell, alive to the advantages which he enjoyed, improved every opportunity of knowledge and remark, and has preserved a faithful record of all. Both travellers gave to the world an account of this tour. Boswell's Journal was published in 1785.

In 1786 Boswell removed with his family to London, towards which, as a great centre of literature and life, his inclinations had always tended. He had recently been called to the English bar. He did not, however, prosecute the profession, but gave himself up to his natural bent for society and letters. After Dr Johnson's death, in 1784, he was occupied for several years in collecting and arranging, with indefatigable diligence, the materials for a narrative, which he had long projected, of that eminent man's life. This most unique and valuable work was published in two vols. 4to, London, 1791.

Besides the works already mentioned, he was the author of two political Letters addressed to the People of Scotland.

Mr Boswell died on the 19th June 1795. In his private character he was loved by his friends, and was a favourite in the circles of social life. His talents would probably have been rated higher if they had not been obscured by certain eccentricities of character; yet his writings bear sufficient testimony to his natural abilities, and to the delicacy as well as aptness of his intellectual touch. To be distinguished was his ruling passion, and he indulged it freely. He sought those whom the world, on whatever account, held in honour; and he was desirous of being known as one who possessed their friendship. He was fond of his pedigree and family connections, and he aspired after literary fame. While some of these propensities have been common to the great and good in every age, others, it must be confessed, are more frequently harboured than avowed. Boswell adopted the latter and more unusual course. He fairly owned his passion, and, if not thus secured from attack, had all those advantages, at least, which are gained by complete ingenuousness. Nor was evidence of a substantial sort wanting to show the independence of his mind. For, however ambitious of exalted patronage, he was neither an instrument of party nor a server of the time. Of Dr Johnson's sincere attachment to him there are many and unequivocal proofs in their correspondence.

But it is not on account of his private character, or of a certain domestic celebrity which he enjoyed during his life, that he is here commemorated, but as an author, and particularly as a writer of biography. Here he is almost an inventor; he has at least carried this species of composition to a degree of accuracy and detail formerly unattempted. "Homer," says Mr Macaulay (Essays, vol. i.), "is not more decidedly the first of poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second. He has distanced all competitors so decidedly that it is not worth while to place them. Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere." Boswell paints the whole man, presents the incidents of his life in their actual order of succession, and preserves him as it were entire; fulfilling in the history of the moral, what Bacon has assigned to philosophy as her genuine work in that of the natural world, faithfully to return its accents and reflect its images, not to add anything of her own, but to iterate only and repeat. For the task of writing Johnson's life he was peculiarly qualified. He had lived in intimacy with the sage for a period of twenty years, had early conceived the plan of such a work, and received from Johnson himself, to whom his intention was known, many particulars of his early life and personal history. Johnson's conversation is the matter of the book; and, as the philosopher did not, in the midst of his studies, give up the advantages of society, there was in his discourse a range and diversity of subject not often found in combination with classical knowledge and habits of profound thinking. Nor does this work exhibit a series merely of witty and sententious sayings: it is interspersed alike with miscellaneous narrative and criticism; and, what constitutes its principal feature, it contains a mass of opinions on subjects of a more common nature, where the powers of reasoning and illustration are applied to familiar topics, and the ordinary occurrences of life. Valuable as a deposit of literary anecdote, it is still more so as a collection of ethical discourses, to which its popular form gives a singular currency and effect; so that there are few books extant where the religious and social duties, as well the love of science, in its largest acceptation, are impressed more agreeably, or with greater force, upon the mind.