'He Was Dull in a New Way'

“A dull country magistrate gave Johnson a long tedious account of his exercising his criminal jurisdiction, the result of which was his having sentenced four convicts to transportation. Johnson, in an agony of impatience to get rid of such a companion, exclaimed, ‘I heartily wish, Sir, that I were a fifth.’” Recently I endured the company of a descendant of Dr. Johnson’s tiresome judge, a person for whom storytelling was an excuse for holding his listeners hostage and torturing them. He reminded me of my father who, whenever we visited someone, would promptly recite details of the route we had taken, including street names, landmarks and weather conditions. This abuse, endured throughout childhood, left me with a burning intolerance for bores, especially conversational bores. I wanted desperately to be a grownup so I wouldn’t have to be polite to such dullards. Elsewhere in Boswell, Johnson says of Thomas Sheridan: “Why, Sir, Sherry is dull, naturally dull; but it must have taken him…