James Boswell

omed his father'

a, when he shoul

My father said to me, "I am much pleased with your conduct in every respect." After all my anxiety while abroad, here is the most perfect approbation and calm of mind. I never felt such sollid (sic) happiness.' But the philosopher, who with Paoli had compared his mind to a camera obscura, reappears unfortunately in the next entry. 'But I find I am not so happy with this approbation and this calm as I expected to be. But why do I say alas! when I rea

nt he had four years before set his heart. A copy of the thesis was sent to Johnson, who by this time had rather cooled over the proposed publication by his friend of a book on Corsica. 'You have no materials,' he said, 'which others have not or may not have. You have warmed your imagination. I wish there were some cure like the lover's leap for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession. Mind your own affairs and leave the Corsicans to theirs.' Touching on the faulty Latinity of the essay, 'Ruddiman,' added the old man, 'is dead.' On entering his new career Bozzy began by vows for his good conduct. These, a remnant of his old Catholic days, we shall find him renewing again and again, ludicrously and pathetically enough, however, as we draw to the close. Sometimes they appear

miable and respectable light. Don't be moved by declamations against ecclesiastical history, as if that could blacken the sacred order.' He admits that ecclesiastical history is not the best field for the display of the virtues in that profession, but we are to judge of the thousands of worthy divines who have been a blessing to their parishes. He exhorts his friend to labour cheerfully in the vineyard and to leave not a tare

s it, he was not likely, with but moderate attention, to have stood like Scott, 'an hour by the Tron, wi' deil ane to speir his price,'-Sir Walter's fee book shews for the first year a return of ￡24, 3s., and ￡57, 15s. for the second. As he had years before vowed to Lord Hailes that he would transcribe Erskine's Institutes several times over till he had imprinted it on his memory, so now he was hopeful by binding up the session papers of securing a treasure of law reasoning and a collection of extraordinary facts. By March he had cleare

oming forward, and I hope to be useful to my country. Could your Lordship find time to honour me now and then with a letter? I have been told how favourably your Lordship has spoken of me. To correspond with a Paoli and a Chatham is enough to keep a young man ever ardent in the pursuit of a virtuous fame.' In June he expected to be busier than ever, during the week when his father sat as Judge of the Outer House, 'for you must know that the absurdity of mankind makes nineteen out of twenty employ the son of the judge before whom their case is heard,' an admissio

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s applying to their parched lips 'thirst quenching porter,' and the notoriously irregular lives of the players, all these were ties and associations ill calculated to appease the just indignation of his father or to add to forensic reputation in Edinburgh. The Scottish Themis, says Scott, speaking from his own early experience of much higher literary pursuits, is peculiarly jealous of any flirtation wit

! To add to the confusion of Lord Auchinleck his son had flung himself with all his enthusiasm into the famous Douglas Trial, the cause that figures so much to the confusion, it is to be feared, of the general reader. Of this some full account is necessary in order to explain that extraordinary trial,-perhaps the most protracted and famous that ever came before a court,-which, dragging its slow length along through a longer course than the Peloponnesian War, fills the shelves of legal libraries with eighteen portly volumes of papers and reports. In the case Boswell really held no actual brief, though were we to follow the impression he gives of his services we should infer he had been leading c

teuart or Douglas. Lady Jane died in 1753, and Sir John in 1764, both on their death-beds testifying to the legitimacy of their surviving child. The Duke of Douglas, long prejudiced against this son's claim by the machinations of the Hamiltons, had revoked the deed in their favour for a settlement executed in behalf of his sister's son Archibald. But stories had become rife of that son being the child of a Nicholas Mignon and Marie Guerin from whom he had been purchased, and an action to reduce service on a plea of partus suppositio was instituted by the tutors of the Duke of Hamilton who was then a minor. In France negociations were conducted, investigations made, and witnesses examined by Burnet of Monbo

age and other connections, extended so widely. In earlier days the strife would have ended by an appeal to the sword on the causeway. All the court influence of the Hamiltons had been bent, and bent in vain, to secure the exclusion from the bench of Lord Monboddo, counsel for Douglas, and a duel had been fought between their agent Andrew Stuart and Thurlow the opposing advocate. The excitement over the verdict of the Lords on Monday, February 27, 1769, was unprecedented. In the Autobiography of Jupiter Carlyle is fortunately preserved the account of the scene, witnessed by the doctor himself, who had been successful in gaining admission to the c

s son to the Tolbooth! Not only had Bozzy taken the field in the November of 1767 with his Essence of the Douglas Cause, 'which I regretted that Dr Johnson never took the trouble to study,' even though 'the question interested nations,' and the pamphlet had produced, as its writer flattered himself, considerable effect in deciding the case, but he had ventured on a breach of professional etiquette in publishing Dorando, a Spanish Tale. This brochure was ordered by the Court of Session to be suppressed as contempt of court, after it had run through three editions. No copy of this forlorn hope of the book hunter has ever been found, though doubtless it lurks in some library where its want of the writer's name upon the title page may have kept it from making its reappearance. Though it bore no name, yet Boswell, when writing to Temple over it, speaks of 'My publisher Wilkie,' and he seems to have been afraid that the copy sent by hi

d the creator of that constellation of excellence, Mr Barlow, whose connection in any degree with Boswell is almost provocative of a smile. The peculiar orthography of the writer is defended in the preface, for he allows himself not only such divergencies as 'tremenduous,' 'authour,' 'ambassadour,' but also 'authentick' and 'panegyrick.' The dedication of the first edition to Paoli was dated on his own birthday, and the book ran to a third edition before the October of the same year. As purchased by the Dillys for a hundred guineas it would appear to have been a profitable speculation, and the wide circulation to which it attained we shall see was not merely due to accident but to more solid qualities. 'Pray read,' says Horace Walpole to his friend Gray, 'the new account of Corsica. The author is a strange being, and has a rage of knowing everybody that ever was talked of. He

here is much Boswell 'copy' buried in the pages of the papers of the time. From the Public Advertizer of February 28th we learn 'James Boswell, Esq., is expected in town,' and, on March 24th, 'yesterday James Boswell, Esq., arrived from Scotland at his lodgings in Half Moon Street, Piccadilly.' He had received no letter from Johnson since the one in which the Latinity of his thesis had been criticised

e same day. I give admirable dinners and good claret, and the moment I go abroad again, which will be in a day or two, I set up my chariot. This is enjoying the fruit of my labours, and appearing like the friend of Paoli.' Alas for that friend!-he confesses to his correspondent that he has been 'wild.' The form of this outbreak may be sufficiently seen by the general reader in the leading questions which at this time Boswell is found putting to Johnson; for the Life of Johnson, as we shall indicate in its proper place, is no less the life of the biographer, wh

n said of Milton, the undramatic nature of the essayist's mind was rather prone, careless as it was or incapable of the finer shades of character. Yet, as we know, he was not the solitary masker or mummer in this extraordinary carnival, which seems not creditable to the taste of its promoters, and resembles rather the entry of a travelling circus into a provincial town than a serious commemoration of a great m

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ffecting, like an exhibition in Athens or Rome.' Lord Grosvenor, at the close, went up to Garrick, 'and told him that he had affected his whole frame, showing him his nerves and veins still quivering with agitation.' The masquerade our traveller, as the 'travelled thane,' affects to regard complacently as an 'entertainment not suited to the genius of the British nation, but to a warmer country, where the people have a great flow of spirits, and a readiness at repartee.' Bozzy no doubt had seen the carnival abroad, and his memories of sunnier skies would not find congenial atmosphere in the unpropitious weath

him. It is no better or worse than the stap

banks of Golo

ly tinged with

jected, injur'

gnant o'er all

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endid honours

ster island

ardour make

Corsica a no

e. The only trace of Davy's old master was found in a Coventry ribbon put out by 'a whimsical haberdasher,' with t

On the breast of his coat was sewed a Moor's head, the crest of Corsica, surrounded with branches of laurel. He had also a cartridge-pouch, into which was stuck a stiletto, and on his left side a pistol was hung upon the belt of his cartridge-pouch. He had a fusee slung across his shoulder, wore no powder in his hair, but had it plaited at full length with a knot of blue ribbons at the end of it. He had, by way of a staff, a very curious vine all of one piece, emblematical of the sweet bard of Avon. He wore no mask, saying it was not proper for a gallant Corsican. So soon as he came into the room he drew universal attention. The novelty of the Corsican dress, its becoming appearance, and the character of the brav

vies, and others, where 'Goldsmith,' says the biographer, 'strutted about, bragging of his dress, and I believe was seriously vain of it, for his mind was wonderfully prone to such impressions!' Bozzy could criticise, as on all occasions, the bloom coloured coa

he press a little duodecimo, 'British Essays in favour of the Brave Corsicans: collected and published by James Boswell, Esq.' The papers are twenty in number, some by himself, others by 'a gentleman whose name would do honour to any cause (whom we think to have been Trecothick, the successor of Beckford, as Lord Mayor of London), and the greatest part furnished by persons unknown to me.' They deal with the dangers to trade from France and the Bourbon Compact, and point at the value of Corsica as a station superior to Gibraltar or Minorca. One paper signed 'P. J.' has the undoubted Boswellian touch in dea

e in concealment, he embarked on an English vessel bound for Leghorn. On September 20th he reached London, and the Public Advertizer of October 4th, through its faithful correspondent, informed its readers how 'On Sunday last General Paoli, accompanied by James Bo

gned before November 1768, was the advocate of similar views, telling our ambassador at Versailles to remonstrate with the French court, while Junius, in his letter to the Duke of Grafton, told the country that Corsica would never have been invaded by the French, but for the sight of a weak and distracted ministry. When

e conversation on the conduct of the married state. But the oracles were dumb. On his return to the north he was married, on the

, of Auchinleck, advocate, to Miss Peggy Montgomery, d

the Lords of Session and Justiciary, to Miss Betty Boswell,

e his son on the present occasion. That they were married on the same day and at different p