Part 10

Boswell proceeded to Mamhead, and there, though his host was an abstainer, got very drunk. Mr. Temple entreated him, when he became sober, to abandon his intemperate habits. As they talked together under an aged yew, Boswell vowed that he should henceforth avoid excess and cherish moderation. In a letter to Mr. Temple, dated the 10th May, he remarked that Dr. Johnson was now discouraging his proposal to add a supplement to his “Journey.” This proceeding he attributes to Dr. Johnson’s unwillingness that any one should share his laurels. “But don’t you think,” he adds, “I may write out my remarks on Scotland, and send them to be revised by you? and then they may be published freely. Give me your opinion of this.”

Good Friday, which fell upon the 14th of April, Boswell spent with Dr. Johnson. They were present at three religious services, and in the evening they sat “a long while together in a serene, undisturbed frame of mind.” On Easter Sunday Boswell “attended the solemn service at St. Paul’s.” Writing next day to Mr. Temple, he informs him that he had “received the holy sacrament, and was exalted in piety.” In the same letter he reports that he is enjoying “the metropolis to the full,” and that he has had “too much dissipation.” He asks his friend not to fear “his Asiatic multiplicity,” except when he happens to “take too much claret.”

Boswell remained in London about two months, and though chiefly engaged in driving out, contrived to pocket forty guineas of professional fees. From Grantham, _en route_ for Scotland, he wrote to Mr. Temple that, much to his disgust, “Henry Dundas,[55] a coarse, unlettered, unfanciful dog,” was to be made Lord Advocate “at thirty-three,” and that he had personally resolved to join the English Bar on obtaining his father’s consent. He proceeds,—

“I passed a delightful day yesterday. After breakfasting with Paoli and worshipping at St. Paul’s, I dined _tête-à-tête_ with my charming Mrs. Stuart, of whom you have read in my Journal. She refused to be of a party at Richmond, that she and I might enjoy a farewell interview. We dined in all the elegance of two courses and a dessert, with dumb waiters, except when the second course and the dessert were served. We talked with unreserved freedom, as we had nothing to fear; we were _philosophical_, upon honour—not deep, but feeling we were pious; we drank tea, and bid each other adieu as purely as romance paints. She is my wife’s dearest friend, so you see how beautiful our intimacy is.”

Boswell adds that “the handsome chambermaid had gone from the inn,” and that he had promised Dr. Johnson to accept a chest of books of the moralist’s own selection, and to “read more and drink less.” He sums up, “Tell Mrs. Temple that I am a favourite with her, because she knows me better, and that she may be assured that the more she knows me the more allowance will she make for my faults.” A postscript is added. “There is,” he writes, “a Miss Silverton in the fly with me, an amiable creature, who has been in France. I can unite little fondnesses with perfect conjugal love. Remember to put my letters in a book neatly,—see which of us does it first.”

From Edinburgh, on the 3rd June, Boswell wrote to Mr. Temple as follows:—

“On my arrival here I had the pleasure to find my wife and two little daughters as well as I could wish; but indeed, my worthy friend, it required some philosophy to bear the change from England to Scotland. The unpleasing tone, the rude familiarity, the barren conversation, of those whom I found here, in comparison with what I had left, really hurt my feelings.... The General Assembly is sitting, and I practise at its bar. There is _de facto_ something low and coarse in such employment, though on paper it is a Court of _Supreme Judicature_; but guineas must be had.”

“Low and coarse” as Boswell regarded the practice of his profession in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, he acknowledges that he did not perform his part without some misgiving. “Do you know,” he proceeds, “it requires more than ordinary spirit to do what I am to do this very morning; I am to go to the General Assembly and arraign a judgment pronounced last year by Dr. Robertson, John Home, and a good many more of them, and they are to appear on the other side. To speak well, when I despise both the cause and the judges, is difficult; but I believe I shall do so wonderfully. I look forward with aversion to the little dull labours of the Court of Session.”

Besides being disgusted with the Scottish Lord Advocate, Scottish manners, and Scottish courts, ecclesiastical and civil, Boswell was

## particularly dissatisfied with his father. He had sent him, he writes,

“a conciliatory letter, but he fears he is callous.” In dread of the paternal allowance being discontinued, he writes,—

“If Lord Mountstuart would but give me an independency from the King while my father lives, I should be a fine fellow.” He adds, “My promise under the venerable yew has kept me sober.”

Boswell’s habits were not more pleasing to his father than were his professional diligence and domestic economy. In the belief that his son was an incorrigible idler, Lord Auchinleck seriously meditated a withdrawal of his pension. But for his two children, disinheritance might have followed. To Mr. Temple on the 19th of June he wrote thus:—

“My father is most unhappily dissatisfied with me. My wife and I dined with him on Saturday; he did not salute her, though he had not seen her for three months; nor did he so much as ask her how she did, though she is advanced in pregnancy. I understand he fancies that if I had married another woman, I might not only have had a better portion with her, but might have been kept from what he thinks idle and extravagant conduct. He harps on my going over Scotland with a brute[56] (think how shockingly erroneous!), and wandering, or some such phrase, to London. In vain do I defend myself; even the circumstance that my last jaunt to London did not cost me £20—as I got forty-two guineas in London—does not affect him. How hard it is that I am totally excluded from parental comfort! I have a mind to go to Auchinleck next autumn, and try what living in a mixed stupidity of attention to common objects, and restraint from expressing any of my own feelings, can do with him. I always dread his making some bad settlement.”

Lord Auchinleck had solid grounds for indignation. He allowed his son £300 per annum, besides having provided him with a very expensive education. In the Scottish courts Boswell had abundant employment when he evinced the slightest inclination to attend to it. He had run himself aground; he owed a thousand pounds, which he could not pay, and his creditors were clamorous. Fretting under the unexpected burden which he was expected to sustain, Lord Auchinleck felt disposed to blame his daughter-in-law for encouraging his son’s extravagance, and it is not certain that Boswell took the blame solely upon himself. The worthy judge was at length got over, and Boswell recovered his elasticity. To Mr. Temple on the 12th August he writes as follows:—

“Tell me, my dear Temple, if a man who receives so many marks of more than ordinary consideration can be satisfied to drudge in an obscure corner, where the manners of the people are disagreeable to him? You see how soon I revive again. Could I but persuade my father to give me £400 a year, and let me go to the English Bar, I think I should be much better. That, however, seems to be impossible. As he is bound for £1,000 which I owe, he has resolved to lessen his allowance to me of £300 to £200. I must not dispute with him, but he is really a strange man. He is gone to Auchinleck. I intend to pass a little while with him there soon, and sound him; or there see just what attention can produce.”

In allusion to the request that his letters might be preserved, Boswell was assured by Mr. Temple that he too contemplated a publication. Boswell pronounces it “a charming thought.”[57] He refers exultingly to the attention he had lately received from Paoli. “For the last fortnight that I was in London,” he writes, “I lay at his house, and had the command of his coach.... I felt more dignity when I had several servants at my devotion, a large apartment, and the convenience and state of a coach; I recollected that this dignity in London was honourably acquired by my travels abroad, and my pen after I came home, so I could enjoy it with my own approbation; and in the extent and multiplicity of the metropolis other people had not even the materials for finding fault, as my situation was not particularly known.”

Referring to his resolution to read more constantly, Boswell informs Mr. Temple, on the 19th June, that he has not yet “begun to read,” but that “his resolution is lively.” Lord Kames had asked him to become his biographer, a piece of intelligence which does not again crop up. In a conversation about Dr. Johnson he had disputed with Mr. Hume. The quarrel is thus described:—

“Mr. Hume said he would give me half a crown for every page of his dictionary in which he would not find an absurdity, if I would give him half a crown for every page in which he did find one; he talked so insolently, really, that I calmly determined to be at him; so I repeated, by way of telling that Dr. Johnson could be touched, the admirable passage in your letter, how the Ministry had set him to write in a way that they ‘could not ask even their infidel pensioner Hume to write.’ Upon honour, I did not give the least hint from whom I had the letter. When Hume asked if it was from an American, I said ‘No; it was from an English gentleman.’ ‘Would a gentleman write so?’ said he. In short, Davy was finely punished for his treatment of my revered friend; and he deserved it richly, both for his petulance to so great a character, and for his talking so before me.”

In a letter dated 12th August he informed his reverend correspondent that he had been suffering from his “atrabilious temperament.” In his melancholy he had been strongly impressed by the phrase in Scripture, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.” From sleep at night he had awakened “dreading annihilation or being thrown into some horrible state of being.” He proceeds:—

“My promise under the solemn yew I have observed wonderfully, having never infringed it till the other day a very jovial company of us dined at a tavern, and I unwarily exceeded my bottle of old hock; and having once broke over the pale I run wild. But I did not get drunk; I was, however, intoxicated, and very ill next day. I ask your forgiveness, and I shall be more strictly cautious for the future. The drunken manners of this country are very bad.”

The distinction between being _intoxicated_ and _drunk_ is not very obvious, and the allusion by way of defence to the intemperate habits of the country is _Boswellian_. Amidst his general gloom Boswell experienced comfort in the assurance by Mr. Temple that he was preparing for the press a portion of their correspondence. A specimen was transmitted, and Boswell tendered his advice. He insisted that anonymous authorship would not suit, and suggested that his own name as “James Boswell, Esq.,” should be displayed upon the title-page. Mr. Temple subsequently published selections from his own letters under the title of “Selection of Historical and Political Memoirs.”

About the middle of August Boswell begged Dr. Johnson for a prescription against melancholy. The moralist replied:—

“For the black fumes which rise in your mind I can prescribe nothing but that you disperse them by honest business or innocent pleasure, and by reading, sometimes easy and sometimes serious. Change of place is useful, and I hope your residence at Auchinleck will have many good effects.... Never, my dear sir,” added Dr. Johnson, “do you take it in your head to think that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and esteem. I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety. I hold you, as Hamlet has it, ‘in my heart of hearts,’ and therefore it is little to say that I am, sir, your affectionate, humble servant,

“SAM. JOHNSON.”

To check his “atrabilious” complaint Boswell did not have recourse to reading. He informed Mr. Temple that since his return from England his reading had been confined to some small treatises on midwifery. On the 2nd September he communicated with Mr. Temple from Auchinleck. He had been there a week, and had experienced an unsupportable distress. Next day being Sunday, he proposed to worship in the parish church, and on Monday to join at Edinburgh his “valuable spouse and dear little children.” To his dissension with his father he refers in characteristic fashion:—

“My father, whom I really both respect and affectionate (if that is a word, for it is a different feeling from that which is expressed by _love_, which I can say of you from my soul), is so different from me. We _divaricate_ so much, as Dr. Johnson said, that I am often hurt when I dare say he means no harm; and he has a method of treating me which makes me feel myself like a _timid boy_, which to _Boswell_ (comprehending all that my character does in my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) is intolerable. His wife, too, whom in my conscience I cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I don’t know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet. I, however, have done so all this week to admiration; nay, I have appeared good-humoured, but it has cost me drinking a considerable quantity of strong beer to dull my faculties....

“I have sauntered about with my father, and he has seen that I am pleased with his works. But what a discouraging reflection it is that he has in his possession a renunciation of my birthright which I madly granted him, and which he has not the generosity to restore now that I am doing beyond his utmost hopes, and that he may incommode and disgrace me by some strange settlement, while all this time not a shilling is secured to my wife and children in case of my death.... My father is visibly failing. Perhaps I may get him yet to do as I wish. In the meantime I have written plainly to my brother David, to see if he will settle on my wife and daughters, in case of his succeeding. I shall now know whether trade has destroyed his liberal spirit.”

Amidst his many aberrations, and in spite of Dr. Johnson’s discouragement, Boswell put into shape his travels in the Hebrides. He forwarded the MS. to Johnson, who remarked on it to Mrs. Thrale, “One would think the man had been hired to be a spy upon me.” To Boswell he conveyed Mrs. Thrale’s favourable judgment, but reserved his own. On this subject Boswell thus communicated with Mr. Temple:—

“Dr. Johnson has said nothing to me of my remarks during my journey with him which I wish to write. Shall I task myself to write so much of them a week, and send you for revisal? If I do not publish them now they will be good materials for my ‘Life of Dr. Johnson.’”

On the 9th October Boswell was enabled to rejoice in an important event,—Mrs. Boswell presented him with a son. To Mr. Temple he wrote on the 6th November:—

“My wife is recovered remarkably well. This son has been quite a cordial to her. He has been a little unlucky; the nurse had not milk enough, and as he is a big-boned fellow he cannot subsist without plentiful sustenance. We have got another nurse, a strong, healthy woman, with an abundant breast. His mother is quite unfit for nursing, she is of a temper so exceedingly anxious.”

Boswell named his infant son Alexander, after his father. The compliment was well received, and in a few months afterwards Boswell was relieved of all apprehensions respecting his inheritance. By his father he was consulted as to the provisions of a deed of entail. He solicited counsel from Dr. Johnson[58] and Lord Hailes on a point respecting which he and his father disagreed. Lord Auchinleck proposed that in the series of heirs to be established under the entail, all males descending from his grandfather should be preferred to females, but he would not extend that privilege to males deriving their descent from a higher source. Boswell, on the other hand, desired that heirs male, however remote, should be preferred. As both Dr. Johnson and Lord Hailes supported the view of Lord Auchinleck, and Boswell at length acquiesced in his father’s wishes, the entail, a document extending to thirty-seven folio pages, was executed at Edinburgh on the 7th August, 1776. The instrument proceeds thus:—[59]

“I ALEXANDER BOSWEL of Auchinleck Esquire one of the Senators of the College of Justice considering that having long intended to make a full settlement of my estate, but which I have put off a long time, not having fallen upon a plan which gave me satisfaction, notwithstanding I have seen a multiplicity of settlements, I am now come to the resolution to execute what follows, which though it appears to me better calculated to answer the ends of a family settlement, and to be more free from objections than others I have seen, I am conscious is not exempt from faults, for I see them. But when one is providing for futurity it is impossible to obviate all inconveniences. I have, however, chose this form as appearing to me subject to the fewest. The Settlement I am to make is a Taillie or Deed of Entail intended to be perpetual, which notwithstanding the prejudices of the ignorant and dissipated part of mankind to the contrary I have always approved of, if properly devised. My motive to it is not the preservation of my name and memory, for I know that after death our places here know us no more. But my motives are that the strength of the happy constitution with which this kingdom is blest, depends in a great measure upon there being kept up a proper number of Gentlemen’s families of independent fortunes. It was this which at first introduced the right of primogeniture amongst us, a right well adapted to the good of the younger, as well as the eldest, as it prevents estates crumbling down by division into morsels. It enables the several successive heirs to educate their whole children properly, and thereby fit them for different employments, so that these families are useful nurseries. On the other hand a danger arises from an accumulation of different estates into the hands of overgrown rich men. Again the estate which I have, though not great, is sufficient for answering all the reasonable expenses of a gentleman’s family and is situate in an agreeable country with the people of which I and my worthy predecessors have had the happiness to live in great friendship, which I hope shall always be the case with those that succeed me; and the place of residence has many uncommon beauties and conveniences, which several considerations would make any wise man careful to preserve such an estate. But as an heir may happen to get it who by weakness or extravagance would soon put an end to it, I cannot think any wise man will condemn me if while I allow the heirs of Taillie every power which a man of judgment would wish to exercise, I restrain them only from acting foolishly. If a person saw his next heir a weak foolish and extravagant person he would justly be censured if in place of giving his estate to his other children, or bestowing it upon some worthy friend who would make a proper use of it, he let it drop into the hands of a person who had nothing to recommend him but the legal character of an heir who directly on his succession would let it fly. I say he would justly be censured for this unless he laid that unhappy heir under proper restraints. And if this would be an advisable precaution to follow where the person is seen, it must be equally so whenever an heir happens to exist of that unhappy disposition at any period however remote, for no time can come when any reasonable man can think it would be beneficial to allow a person to act foolishly, do therefore hereby,—with the special advice and consent of James Boswell, Esquire, Advocate, younger of Auchinleck my eldest son, and under these impressions and in the hope and belief that I have fallen on a method of preventing children from being independent of their parents and of securing a proper provision for younger children, not only at first, which is all that is commonly done, but in all future times, the want of which appeared to me the most solid objection to Taillies—give, grant, and dispose heretably and Irredeemably to myself and the heirs male procreated and to be procreated of my body whom failing the lands of Auchinleck to Dr. John Boswell physician in Edinburgh my brother german and the heirs male lawfully procreated or to be procreated of his body, whom failing to Claude Boswell of Balmuto Esquire advocate, only son of the deceast John Boswell of Balmuto who was the only brother of the deceast Mr. James Boswell of Auchinleck advocate my father and the heirs male lawfully procreated or to be procreated of the body of the said Claude Boswell, whom failing to the heirs whatsoever lawfully procreated or to be procreated of my body, whom failing, to my own nearest heirs whatsoever descended of the body of Thomas Boswell of Auchinleck my predecessor, whom all failing to my own nearest heirs and assignies whatsoever—the eldest heir female and the descendants of her body always excluding heirs portioners and succeeding still without division, throughout the whole course of succession of heirs whatsoever as well as heirs of provision.”

After excluding from the succession all fatuous persons, and regulating annuities for females and younger children, Lord Auchinleck proceeds to guard against the extinction of the family name.