Quote 16
"I think that I had better go, Holmes."
"Not a bit, doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell" (Scandal.1.36-7).
(James Boswell was the famous biographer and friend of eighteenth-century English writer Samuel Johnson.) Holmes is always razzing Watson for romanticizing him and his work. Holmes wants to see his adventures logged like police reports or something, listing his deductive achievements without any of the emotion or color Watson brings to these tales. But at the same time, Holmes needs Watson to make his name known at all. Holmes would literally be lost without Watson, without his particular special friend/narrator.
Quote 17
"You will remember that I remarked the other day, just before we went into the very simple problem presented by Miss Mary Sutherland, that for strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination."
"A proposition which I took the liberty of doubting."
"You did, Doctor, but none the less you must come round to my view, for otherwise I shall keep on piling fact upon fact on you until your reason breaks down under them and acknowledges me to be right" (League.8-12).
Honestly, this exchange is kind of weird to us: so, Holmes is saying that life is always stranger than fiction. But this is a fictional story. So why is Holmes busy talking smack about fiction? The thing is, given what we know of Holmes's character – his fascination with science and the rational, and his love of puzzles – it makes total sense that he would prefer life to fiction. But we the readers, who may admire Holmes from afar but who do not possess his degree of logic or precision – we want the color and glamour of fiction, Conan Doyle's fiction, to be exact. So there's a kind of meta-commentary (in other words, a commentary about commentary) going on here. Holmes may be the kind of logical guy who prefers fact to fiction, but it's his logic (strangely) that makes him a great fictional hero for us to enjoy.
Quote 18
We had reached Baker Street and had topped at the door. He was searching his pockets for the key when someone passing said: "Good-night, Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
There were several people on the pavement at the time, but the greeting appeared to come from a slim youth in an ulster who had hurried by.
"I've heard that voice before," said Holmes, staring down the dimly lit street. "Now I wonder who the deuce that could have been" (Scandal.2.92-4).
Here's Holmes's most careless mistake in all the twelve Adventures: Irene Adler passes him in men's clothing, greets him by name, and he doesn't figure out it's her until she tells him so directly. Adler is the only character who shares Holmes's real freedom with disguises (after all, Neville St. Clair isn't looking for liberty, he's looking for cash as that beggar). Why does Adler, like Holmes, get to go around pretending to be something she's not? What do these two have in common that make their appearances deceptive?