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JAMES
BOSWELL
FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES
_The following Volumes are now ready:_--
THOMAS CARLYLE. By Hector C. Macpherson.
ALLAN RAMSAY. By Oliphant Smeaton.
HUGH MILLER. By W. Keith Leask.
JOHN KNOX. By A. Taylor Innes.
ROBERT BURNS. By Gabriel Setoun.
THE BALLADISTS. By John Geddie.
RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor Herkless.
SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By Eve Blantyre Simpson.
THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. Garden Blaikie.
JAMES BOSWELL. By W. Keith Leask.
[Illustration:
JAMES
BOSWELL
BY
W KEITH
LEASK
FAMOUS
.SCOTS.
.SERIES.
PUBLISHED BY
OLIPHANT ANDERSON
& FERRIER. EDINBURGH
AND LONDON
]
* * * * *
The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr Joseph Brown, and the
printing from the press of Messrs Turnbull & Spears, Edinburgh.
* * * * *
~To~
GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL,
D.C.L.;
M.A. Pembroke (Johnson's) College, Oxford;
CHIEF OF JOHNSON SCHOLARS AND EDITORS;
AND HIMSELF MOST "CLUBABLE" OF MEN.
* * * * *
PREFACE
The literature of the Johnsonian period has assumed, in spite of the
lexicographer's own dislike of that adjective, prodigious dimensions.
After the critical labours of Malone, Murphy, Croker, J. B. Nichols,
Macaulay, Carlyle, Rogers, Fitzgerald, Dr Hill and others, it may appear
hazardous to venture upon such a well-ploughed field where the pitfalls
are so numerous and the materials so scattered. I cannot, however,
refrain from the expression of the belief that in this biography of
Boswell will be found something that is new to professed students of the
period, and much to the class of general readers that may lead them to
reconsider the verdict at which they may have arrived from the brilliant
but totally misleading essay by Lord Macaulay. At least, the writer
cherishes the hope that it will materially add to the correct
understanding and the enjoyment of Boswell's great work, _the Life of
Johnson_.
My best thanks are due to J. Pearson & Co., 5 Pall Mall Place, London,
for the use of unpublished letters by Boswell and of his boyish
common-place book. And if "our Boswell" could indulge an honest pride in
availing himself of a dedication to Sir Joshua Reynolds, as to a person
of the first eminence in his department, so may I entertain the same
feeling in inscribing this sketch to Dr Hill who, amid the pressure of
other Johnson labours, has yet found time to revise the proof sheets of
my book.
W. K. L.
_ABERDEEN, December 1896._
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS--MEETS JOHNSON--1740-63 9
CHAPTER II
THE CONTINENT--CORSICA--1763-66 35
CHAPTER III
EDINBURGH BAR--STRATFORD JUBILEE--1766-69 54
CHAPTER IV
LOVE AFFAIRS--LITERARY CLUB--1766-73 76
CHAPTER V
TOUR TO THE HEBRIDES--1773 88
CHAPTER VI
EDINBURGH LIFE--DEATH OF JOHNSON--1773-84 113
CHAPTER VII
THE ENGLISH BAR--DEATH--1784-95 122
CHAPTER VIII
IN LITERATURE 143
JAMES BOSWELL
CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS--MEETS JOHNSON. 1740-1763
'Behind yon hills, where Lugar flows.'--BURNS.
'Every Scotchman,' says Sir Walter Scott, 'has a pedigree. It is a
national prerogative, as inalienable as his pride and his poverty. My
birth was neither distinguished nor sordid.' What, however, was but a
foible with Scott was a passion in James Boswell, who has on numerous
occasions obtruded his genealogical tree in such a manner as to render
necessary some acquaintance with his family and lineage. The family of
Boswell, or Bosville, dates from the Normans who came with William the
Conqueror to Hastings. Entering Scotland in the days of the sore saint,
David I., they had spread over Berwickshire and established themselves,
at least in one branch, at Balmuto in Fife. A descendant of the family,
Thomas Boswell, occupies in the genealogy of the biographer the position
of prominence which Wat of Harden holds in the line of the novelist. He
obtained a grant of the lands in Ayrshire belonging to the ancient house
of Affleck of that ilk, when they had passed by forfeiture into the
hands of the king. Pitcairn, in his _Collection of Criminal Trials_ is
inclined to regard this ancestor as the chief minstrel in the royal
train of James IV.; but, as he fell at Flodden, this may be taken as
being at least not proven, nor would the position of this first literary
man in the family have been quite pleasing to the pride of race so often
shewn by his descendant. A Yorkshire branch of the family, with the
spelling of their name as Bosville, was settled at Gunthwait in the West
Riding, and its head was hailed as 'his chief' by Bozzy, whose
gregarious instincts led him to trace and claim relationship in a way
even more than is national. By marriage and other ties the family in
Scotland was connected with the most ancient and distinguished houses in
the land.
The great grandfather of the biographer was the Earl of Kincardine who
is mentioned by Gilbert Burnet in his _History of His Own Time_. He had
married a Dutch lady, of the noble house of Sommelsdyck who had once
held princely rank in Surinam. With that branch also of the name did
Boswell, in later years, establish a relationship at the time of his
continental tour, when at the Hague he found the head holding 'an
important charge in the Republick, and is as worthy a man as lives, and
has honoured me with his correspondence these twenty years.' From the
Earl Boswell boasted 'the blood of Bruce in my veins,' a descent which
he seizes every opportunity of making known to his readers, and to which
we find him alluding in a letter of 10th May, 1786, now before us, to
Mickle, the translator of the _Lusiad_, with a promise to 'tell you what
I know about our common ancestor, Robert the Bruce.' When Johnson, in
the autumn of 1773, visited the ancestral seat of his friend, Boswell,
'in the glow of what, I am sensible, will in a commercial age be
considered as a genealogical enthusiasm,' did not forget to remind his
illustrious Mentor of his relationship to the Royal Personage, George
the Third, 'whose pension had given Johnson comfort and independence.'
It would have required a much greater antiquarian than Johnson, who
could scarcely tell the name of his own grandfather, to have traced the
well-nigh twenty generations of connecting links between Bruce and the
third of the Guelph dynasty on the throne.
From Veronica Sommelsdyck, the wife of this royal ancestor (whose title
is now merged in the earldom of Elgin), was 'introduced into our family
the saint's name,' born by Boswell's own eldest daughter, and other
consequences of a much graver nature were destined to ensue. 'For this
marriage,' says Ramsay of Ochtertyre, 'their posterity paid dear,' for
to it was due, increased no doubt as it was through the inter-marriages
in close degrees between various scions of the house, the insanity which
is now recognised by all students of his writings in Boswell himself,
and which made its appearance in the clearest way in the case of his
second daughter. His grandfather James adopted the profession of law in
which he obtained some distinction, and left three children--Alexander,
the father of the subject of this sketch, John, who followed the
practice of medicine, and a daughter Veronica, married to Montgomerie of
Lainshaw, whose daughter became the wife of her cousin Bozzy.
Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, married his cousin Euphemia Erskine.
In the writings of the son the father makes a considerable figure, while
his mother, 'of the family of Buchan, a woman of almost unexampled piety
and goodness,' as he styles her, is but a dim name in the background, as
with John Stuart Mill who has written a copious autobiography, and left
it to the logical instincts of his readers to infer that he had a
mother. The profession of law was adopted by the father, who, after a
residence abroad at Leyden where he graduated, passed as advocate at the
Scottish bar in 1729, from which, after a distinguished career, he was
appointed to the sheriffdom of Wigton, and ultimately raised to the
bench in 1754, with the title of Lord Auchinleck. He possessed, says his
son, 'all the dignified courtesy of an old baron,' of the school of
Cosmo Bradwardine as we may say, and not only was he an excellent
scholar, but, from the intimacy he had cultivated with the Gronovii and
other _literati_ of Leyden, he was a collector of classical manuscripts
and a collator of the texts and editions of Anacreon. His library was
rich in curious editions of the classics, and was in some respects not
excelled by any private collection in Great Britain, and the reputation
of the Auchinleck library was greatly increased by the black-letter
tastes and publications of his grandson. A strong Whig and active
Presbyterian, he was much esteemed in public and in private life. The
son had on his northern tour the pleasure to note, both at Aberdeen and
at Inverness, the high regard in which the old judge was held, and to
find his name and connection a very serviceable means of introduction to
the travellers in their 'transit over the Caledonian hemisphere.' Like
the father of Scott, who kept the whole bead-roll of cousins and
relations and loved a funeral, Lord Auchinleck bequeathed to his eldest
son at least one characteristic, the attention to relatives in the
remotest degree of kin. On the bench, like the judges in _Redgauntlet_,
Hume, Kames, and others, he affected the racy Doric; and his 'Scots
strength of sarcasm, which is peculiar to a North Briton,' was on many
an occasion lamented by his son who felt it, and acknowledged by Johnson
on at least one famous occasion. In the _Boswelliana_ are preserved many
of old Auchinleck's stories which Lord Monboddo says he could tell well
with wit and gravity--stories of the circuit and bar type of Braxfield
and Eskgrove, such as Scott used to tell to the wits round the fire of
the Parliament House. In his younger days he had been a beau, and his
affectation of red heels to his shoes and of red stockings, when brought
under the notice of his son by a friend, so affected Bozzy that he could
hardly sit on his chair for laughing. A great gardener and planter like
others of the race of old Scottish judges he had extended, in the
classic style of architecture then in fashion, the family mansion, and
had, as Johnson found, 'advanced the value of his lands with great
tenderness to his tenants.' Past the older residence flowed the river
Lugar, here of considerable depth, and then bordered with rocks and
shaded with wood--the old castle whose 'sullen dignity' was the nurse of
Boswell's devotion to the feudal principles and 'the grand scheme of
subordination,' of which he lets us hear so much when he touches on 'the
romantick groves of my ancestors.'
James Boswell, the immortal biographer of Johnson, was born in Edinburgh
on October 29, 1740. The earliest fact which is known about him is one
which he himself would have described as 'a whimsical or
characteristical' anecdote, and which he had told to Johnson:--'Boswell
in the year 1745 was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for
King James, till one of his uncles, General Cochrane, gave him a
shilling on condition that he would pray for King George, which he
accordingly did. So you see that Whigs of all ages are made the same
way.' It may have been these early signs of perversity that led his
father to be strict in dealing with him, for we cannot doubt that
Boswell in the _London Magazine_ for 1781, is giving us a picture of
domestic life when he writes as follows:--'I knew a father who was a
violent Whig, and used to upbraid his son with being deficient in "noble
sentiments of liberty," while at the same time he made this son live
under his roof in such bondage, that he was not only afraid to stir from
home without leave, but durst scarcely open his mouth in his father's
presence.' For some time he was privately educated under the tuition of
the Rev. John Dun, who was presented in 1752 to the living of Auchinleck
by the judge, and finally at the High School and the University of
Edinburgh. There he met with two friends with whom, to the close of his
life, he was destined to have varied and close relations. One was Henry
Dundas, first Lord Melville, and by "Harry the Ninth" Bozzy, in his
ceaseless attempts to secure place and promotion, constantly attempted
to steer, while that Pharos of Scotland, as Lord Cockburn calls him, was
as constantly inclined to be diffident of the abilities, or at least the
vagaries, of his suitor.
The other friend was William Johnson Temple, son of a Northumberland
gentleman of good family, and grandfather of the present Archbishop of
Canterbury. Temple was a little older than Boswell, who for upwards of
thirty-seven years maintained an uninterrupted correspondence with him.
As he is the Atticus of Boswell, we insert here a detailed account of
him in order to avoid isolated references and allusions in the course of
the narrative. On leaving Edinburgh he entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge;
after taking the usual degrees, he was presented by Lord Lisburne to the
living of Mamhead in Devon, which was followed by that of St Gluvias in
Cornwall. Strangely enough for one who was an intimate friend of
Boswell, he was no admirer of Johnson (whose name, by a curious
coincidence, was a part of his own), and a strong Whig and
water-drinker, 'a bill which,' says Bozzy humorously, 'was ever one
which meets with a determined resistance and opposition in my lower
house.' As the friend of Gray and of Mason, he must have been possessed
of some share of ability, yet over his moral character the admirers and
critics of Boswell are divided. To some he appears as the true and
faithful Atticus to the Cicero of his friend, the Mentor and honest
adviser in all times of danger and trial. To others he seems but to have
possessed, in a minor degree, all the failings of Boswell himself, and
it would appear the most natural inference to believe that, had Temple
been endowed with greater force of mental or moral character, the
results would have been seen in many ways upon the actions of his
friend. In his wife he was unfortunate, and, at one time at least, he
attempted to secure a colonial chaplaincy in order to effect a
separation. He was the writer of an _Essay on the Clergy; their Studies
and Recreations_, 1774; _Historical and Political Memoirs_, 1777; _Abuse
of Unrestrained Power_, 1778; all of which have completely passed from
the memory of man. But he lives with a fair claim to fame, as the
correspondent of Boswell, who calls him 'best of friends' to 'a weak
distemper'd soul that swells in sudden gusts, and sinks again in calms.'
A chance memorandum by Temple, on the death of Gray, displaying
considerable felicity of phrase and insight, was sent by Boswell to the
_London Magazine_ of March 1772, from which it was copied by Mason in
his _Life of Gray_, and in an adapted form it was used by Johnson
himself in his sketch of the poet's work, in his _Lives of the Poets_.
The discovery of the _Letters to Temple_ is one of the happiest
accidents in literature, and without them the true life of Boswell could
not be written. To neither Macaulay nor Carlyle were they known for use
in their famous reviews. On the death of Temple in 1796, one year after
the decease of his friend, his papers passed into the possession of his
son-in-law, who retired to France, where he died. Some fifty years ago,
a gentleman making purchases in a shop at Boulogne, observed that the
wrapper was a scrap of a letter, which formed part of a bundle bought
shortly before from a travelling hawker. On investigation, the letters
were found to be the correspondence of Boswell with Temple, and all
doubts as to their genuineness were conclusively set at rest by their
bearing the London and Devon post marks, and the franks of well known
names. But the internal evidence alone, as we shall see, would be
sufficient to establish their authenticity. Published in 1857 by
Bentley, under the careful editorship of Mr Francis, they constitute,
along with the no less happy discovery in 1854, behind an old press in
Sydney, of Campbell's _Diary of a Visit to England_--though Professor
Jowett was inclined to doubt the authenticity of the latter--the most
valuable accession of evidence to the Johnsonian circle of interest, and
they shed on Boswell and his method a light which otherwise would leave
much in darkness, or, at least, but ensure a general acceptance of the
harsher features in the criticism by Macaulay. From the remark by
Boswell to Temple--'remember and put my letters into a book neatly; see
which of us does it first,' it has been inferred that he meditated, in
some sort of altered appearance, their republication. That Temple
entertained the same idea on his part we know from his own words, and
from the title under which Boswell suggested their issue--_Remarks on
Various Authors, in a Series of Letters to James Boswell, Esq._ But that
Boswell himself ever did intend the publication of his own must be
pronounced, by all that know what lies behind their printed form, a
moral impossibility.
The first preserved letter is dated from Edinburgh, July 29, 1758. It
reveals at once the historic Boswell, such as he remained to the close,
the cheerful self-confidence, the gregarious instincts, the pleasing air
of moralizing, and the easy flow of style. 'Some days ago I was
introduced to your friend Mr Hume; he is a most discreet affable man as
ever I met with, and has really a great deal of learning, a choice
collection of books ... we talk a good deal of genius, fine learning,
improving our style, etc., but I am afraid solid learning is much worn
out. Mr Hume is, I think, a very proper person for a young man to
cultivate an acquaintance with.' Then he digresses to 'my passion for
Miss W----t,' of whom, he assures his friend, he is 'excessively fond,
so don't be surprised if your grave, sedate, philosophic friend who used
to carry it so high, and talk with such a composed indifference of the
beauteous sex, should all at once commence Don Quixote for his adorable
Dulcinea.' We catch sight of him, at eighteen, going on the northern
circuit with his father and Lord Hailes. There, by the advice of an
Edinburgh acquaintance, Love, an old actor at Drury Lane, but then a
teacher of elocution in the town, he began 'an exact journal,' and on
that journey it was that Hailes made Boswell aware of the fact that was
to henceforward colour the entire tide of his life, the existence of Dr
Johnson as a great writer in London, 'which grew up in my fancy into a
kind of mysterious veneration, by figuring to myself a state of solemn
elevated abstraction, in which I supposed him to live in the immense
metropolis of London.' Such were the links, the advice of this obscure
player to keep a journal, and the report given to the youth by the
judge in their postchaise. As early as December 1758 we hear of his
having 'published now and then the production of a leisure hour in the
magazines,' and of his life in Edinburgh he writes, 'from nine to ten I
attend the law class; from ten to eleven study at home, and from one to
two attend a class on Roman Antiquities; the afternoon and evening I
always spend in study. I never walk except on Saturdays.' A full
allowance, surely, all this for one who regrets his sad impotence in
study, and writes the letters to Lord Hailes which we shall quote later.
Even at this period he betrays the fatal defect which remains with him
through life, the indulgence in 'the luxury of noble sentiments,' and
the easy and irritating Micawber-like genteel roll with which he turns
off a moral platitude or finely vague sentiment, in the belief that good
principles constitute good character. 'As our minds improve in
knowledge,' he writes, 'may the sacred flame still increase until at
last we reach the glorious world above when we shall never be separated,
but enjoy an everlasting society of bliss.... I hope by Divine
assistance, you shall still preserve your amiable character amidst all
the deceitful blandishments of vice and folly.' While still at Edinburgh
he produced _The Coquettes, or the Gallant in the Closet_, by Lady
Houston, but it was ruined on the third night, and found to be merely a
translation of one of the feeblest plays of Thomas Corneille. This play
was long believed to be by Boswell, but his part was merely the
providing the translator with a prologue, nor was the fact revealed till
long after by the lady herself.
In November 1759 he entered the class of moral philosophy under Adam
Smith at Glasgow. Perhaps his father had thought that in the more sedate
capital of the West, and in close propinquity to Auchinleck, there
would be less scope for the long career of eccentricities upon which he
was now to enter. If such, however, had been the intention, it was
destined to a rude awakening. All his life Bozzy affected the company of
players, among whom he professed to find 'an animation and a relish of
existence,' and at this period he tells us he was flattered by being
held forth as a patron of literature. In the course of his assiduous
visits to the local theatre he met with an old stage-struck army officer
from Ireland, Francis Gentleman, who had sold his commission to risk his
chances on the boards. By this worthy an edition of Southern's
_Oroonoko_ was dedicated to Boswell, and in the epistle are found some
of his qualities:--
'But when with honest pleasure she can find
Sense, taste, religion, and good nature join'd,
There gladly will she raise her feeble Voice
Nor fear to tell that Boswell is her Choice.'
Thus early had the youthful patron of the drama blossomed into
notoriety, and having also commenced attendance at the Roman Catholic
Chapel he had now resolved to become a priest, though curiously enough
he began this career by eloping, as we are assured by Ramsay of
Ochtertyre, with a Roman Catholic actress. His father followed the pair
to London, and there, it would seem, prevailed on the erratic neophyte
to abandon his fair partner, whose existence would certainly have been a
fatal barrier to the proposed priesthood. At least, like his friend
Gibbon of later days, if he sighed as a lover, he obeyed as a son, and a
compromise by which he was to enter on the profession of arms was
effected. His father called on Archibald, Duke of Argyll, an old
campaigner with Marlborough. 'My Lord,' said the Duke, 'I like your son;
this boy must not be shot at for three shillings and sixpence a day.'
This scene reads like a pre-arranged affair calculated to flatter the
erratic Bozzy out of his warlike schemes, for which it is clear he was
never fitted. Indeed, the true aim was really, as he confesses to
Temple, a wish to be 'about court, enjoying the happiness of the _beau
monde_ and the company of men of genius.' Temple had come forward with
an offer of a thousand pounds to obtain a commission for him in the
Guards, and Boswell assures us repeatedly, 'I had from earliest years a
love for the military life.' Yet we can with equal difficulty figure
'our Bozzy' as priest or soldier. Like Hogg who hankered after the post
of militia ensign with 'nerves not,' as Lockhart says, 'heroically
strung,' Boswell in his own _Letter to the People of Scotland_ confesses
himself 'not blest with high heroic blood, but rather I think troubled
with a natural timidity of personal danger, which it costs me some
philosophy to overcome.' Nor was his devotion to charmer or chapel
likely to weather the dissipated life he led in London. In later life he
may have had thoughts of his own feelings when he proposed to publish,
from the manuscript in his possession, the life of Sir Robert Sibbald.
That antiquary had been pressed by the Duke of Perth to come over to the
Papists, and for some time embraced the ancient religion, until the
rigid fasting led him to reconsider the controversy and he returned to
Protestantism. Bozzy thought the remark of his friend, that as ladies
love to see themselves in a glass, so a man likes to see and review
himself in his journal, 'a very pretty allusion,' and we may be sure, in
spite of his reticence, that his own case was present at the time to his
mind. His distressed father enlisted the interest of Lord Hailes, who
requested Dr Jortin, Prebendary of St Paul's, to take in hand the
flighty youth, and to persuade him to renounce the errors of the Church
of Rome for those of the Church of England, for it was plain that
Boswell had broken loose from his old moorings, and some middle course
might, it was hoped, prove to be possible. 'Your young gentleman,'
writes Jortin to Hailes, 'called at my house. I was gone out for the
day; he then left your letter and a note with it for me, promising to be
with me on Saturday morning. But from that time to this I have heard
nothing of him. He began, I suppose, to suspect some design upon him,
and his new friends may have represented me to him as a heretic and an
infidel, whom he ought to avoid as he would the plague.' More likely the
Catholic fit had passed away. But what a light does this phase, erratic
even among his countless vagaries, shed on his relation to Johnson!
Never, we may rest assured, did he tell the sage of this hidden passage
in his life; yet how often do we find him putting leading questions to
his friend and Mentor on all points of Catholic doctrine and casuistry,
purgatory, and the invocation of the saints, confession, and the mass!
There can be no doubt that this wrench left a deep impress on the
confused religious views of Boswell, and this is the clue which explains
the opening conversation with Johnson at the beginning of their
intimacy. 'I acknowledged,' he writes, 'that though educated strictly in
the principles of religion, I had for some time been misled into a
certain degree of infidelity; but I was now come to a better way of
thinking, and was fully satisfied of the truth of the Christian
revelation, though I was not clear as to every point considered to be
orthodox.' Never in any way does he refer to this episode of his life,
but the _Life of Johnson_ is, as we shall have occasion to show, the
life in many ways also of its author, who says of himself that, 'from a
certain peculiarly frank, open, and ostentatious disposition which he
avows, his history, like that of the old Seigneur Michael de Montaigne,
is to be traced in his writings.'
Left to himself and the guidance of the writer Derrick, 'my first tutor
in the ways of London, who shewed me the town in all its variety of
departments, both literary and sportive,' he was now busily spelling
through the pages of the Gull's Hornbook. From this course of idle
dissipation he was saved by the interposition of an Ayrshire neighbour
of the family, the Earl of Eglintoun, though were we to credit the
account of the waif himself the Earl 'insisted that young Boswell should
have an apartment in his house.' Certain it is that by his lordship he
was taken to Newmarket and introduced to the members of the Jockey Club.
He would appear to have fancied himself a regularly elected member, for
here his eccentricity broke forth into a yet more violent form. Calling
for pen and paper, while the sporting fraternity gathered round, he
produced the _Cub at Newmarket_, which he printed and dedicated to the
Duke of York in a characteristically Boswellian strain. In doggerel
which defies rhyme or reason he tells how his patron
'By chance a curious cub has got
On Scotia's mountains newly caught;'
and then--the first of his many portraits drawn by himself, and
prophetic of the lover of hospitable boards and good cheer as we know
him in his works--he describes the writer as
'Not of the iron race
Which sometimes Caledonia grace;
Though he to combat should advance,
Plumpness shone in his countenance;
And belly prominent declared
That he for beef and pudding cared;
He had a large and ponderous head,
That seemed to be composed of lead;
From which hung down such stiff, lank hair,
As might the crows in autumn scare.'
At this time it is likely took place the escapade with which he must
have convulsed the gravity of the Edinburgh _literati_ invited to meet
Johnson on their return from the Hebrides. 'I told, when Dr Hugh Blair
was sitting with me in the pit of Drury Lane, in a wild freak of
youthful extravagance I entertained the audience _prodigiously_ by
imitating the lowing of a cow. I was so successful in this boyish frolic
that the universal cry of the galleries was "_encore the cow_." In the
pride of my heart I attempted imitations of other animals, but with very
inferior effect.' Blair's advice was, says Scott, 'Stick to the coo,
man,' in his peculiar burr, but we can imagine how this unforeseen
reminiscence must have confused the divine. After an ineffectual effort
to enter himself at the Inner Temple, the 'cub' had to return in April
1761 to Edinburgh.
Old Edinburgh was nothing if not convivial. Writing to Temple and
confessing that his London life had 'not been entirely as it ought to
be,' he appeals to him for pity in his present surroundings. Imagine 'a
young fellow,' he cries, 'whose happiness was always centred in London,
hauled away to the town of Edinburgh, obliged to conform to every
Scottish custom, or be laughed at--"Will ye hae some jeel? Oh fie, oh
fie!"--his flighty imagination quite cramped, and be obliged to study
_Corpus Juris Civilis_ and live in his father's strict family; is there
any wonder, sir, that the unlucky dog should be somewhat fretful? Yoke a
Newmarket courser to a dung cart, and I'll lay my life on't he'll either
caper or kick most confoundedly, or be as stupid and restive as an old
battered post-horse.' Among the many clubs of the time Boswell
instituted a jovial society called the _Soaping Club_ which met weekly
in a tavern. The motto of the members was 'Every man soap his own
beard,' a rather recondite witticism which their founder declares
equivalent to the reigning phrase of 'Every man in his humour.' It may
be suggested here that in this company of feeble Bacchanalians Boswell
had copied the Rabelaisian _fay ce que vous voudras_ of the Franciscans
of Medmenham Abbey with Sandwich, Wilkes, and others. At any rate, as
their self-constituted laureate, he produced the following extraordinary
song, which can be paralleled for inanity only by the stave he sang
before Pitt in the Guildhall of London, as a means of attracting the
notice of the Premier with a view to Parliament. The song is
characteristically Boswellian.
'Boswell of Soapers the King
On Tuesdays at Tom's does appear,
And when he does talk or does sing,
To him ne'er a one can come near.
For he talks with such ease and such grace,
That all charm'd to attention we sit,
And he sings with so comic a face
That our sides are just ready to split.
Boswell is modest enough,
Himself not quite Phoebus he thinks,
He never does flourish with snuff,
And hock is the liquor he drinks.
And he owns that Ned Colquet the priest
May to something of honour pretend,
And he swears that he is not in jest,
When he calls this same Colquet his friend.
Boswell is pleasant and gay,
For frolic by nature design'd;
He heedlessly rattles away
When the company is to his mind.
"This maxim," he says, "you may see,
We never can have corn without chaff;"
So not a bent sixpence cares he,
Whether _with_ him or _at_ him you laugh.
Boswell does women adore,
And never once means to deceive,
He's in love with at least half a score;
If they're serious he smiles in his sleeve.
He has all the bright fancy of youth,
With the judgment of forty and five;
In short, to declare the plain truth,
There is no better fellow alive.'
This, it must be confessed, is sad stuff even for a laureate of twenty,
and is jesting with difficulty. Every man, says Johnson, has at one time
or other of his life an ambition to set up for a wag, but that a man who
had completed the _Life of Johnson_ should in after years complacently
refer to this character of himself and 'traits in it which time has not
yet altered, that egotism and self-applause which he is still
displaying, yet it would seem with a conscious smile,' is scarcely
credible were it not out-distanced by graver weaknesses.
For about this date he published _An Elegy upon the Death of an Amiable
Young Lady_, flanked by three puffing epistles from himself and his
friends, Erskine and Dempster. In the same year appeared his _Ode to
Tragedy_--by a Gentleman of Scotland, with a dedication to--James
Boswell, Esq.!--'for your particular kindness to me, and chiefly for the
profound respect with which you have always treated me.' We hear of his
'old hock' humour, a favourite phrase with him for his Bacchanalian
tastes, and we find the author limning himself as possessing
'A soul by nature formed to feel
Grief sharper than the tyrant's steel,
And bosom big with swelling thought
From ancient lore's remembrance brought.'
In 1760 had appeared a _Collection of Original Poems_, published by
Donaldson in Edinburgh on the model of Dodsley's _Miscellanies_. It
comprised poems by Blacklock, Beattie, and others, and a second volume
was issued by Erskine as editor in 1762. To it Boswell contributed
nearly thirty pieces along with Home, the author of _Douglas_,
Macpherson of _Ossian_ fame or notoriety, John Maclaurin and others. The
merits of the volume are beneath notice, and Boswell's contributions of
Odes, Epigrams, Letters, Epistles, are of the traditional character; but
_An Epistle from a London Buck to his Friend_ must have been read by his
father with regret, and by his mother of 'almost unexampled piety and
goodness' with shame. There is only one poem that calls for attention,
the _Evening Walk in the Abbey Church of Holyrood House_, the original,
perhaps, of Fergusson's lament on the state of neglect of the then
deserted mansion of royalty, where
'the thistle springs
In domicile of ancient Kings,
Without a patriot to regret
Our palace and our ancient state.'
A third volume was announced for publication 'about eighteen months
hence,' but the public had enough of this coagulated jargon as Carlyle
would have styled it, and critics and readers are spared the task of its
consideration.
Yet all this time he was in the enjoyment of the best company that
Edinburgh could afford; he was admitted a member of the Select Society,
and his circle embraced such men as Lord Somerville, Lord Hailes, Dr
Blair, Kames, Robertson, Hume, Home, Jupiter Carlyle and others. 'Lord
Auchinleck,' he quaintly adds, 'took the trouble himself to give him a
regular course of instruction in law, a circumstance of singular
benefit, and of which Mr Boswell has ever expressed a strong and
grateful sense.' But his sense was not such as to restrain him from a
mock-heroic correspondence with Andrew Erskine, brother of the Earl of
Kellie. Erskine must have been possessed of some parts, for he was the
correspondent of Burns and was intimate with George Thomson the
composer, yet we can fancy the consternation of the old judge when this
farrago of the new humour was published in London in 1763. Writing from
his father's house, he thus begins:--'Dear Erskine, no ceremony I
beseech you! Give me your hand. How is my honest Captain Andrew? How
goes it with the elegant Lady A----? the lovely, sighing Lady J----? and
how, oh how, does that glorious luminary Lady B---- do? you see I retain
my usual volatility. The Boswells, you know, came over from Normandy
with William the Conqueror; and some of us possess the spirit of our
ancestors, the French. I do, for one. A pleasant spirit it is. _Vive la
bagatelle_ is the maxim. A light heart may bid defiance to fortune.'
Again the old man would find 'Allow me a few more words. I live here in
a remote corner of an old ruinous house, where my ancestors have been
very jovial. What a solemn idea rushes on my mind! They are all gone: I
must follow. Well, and what then? Let me shift about to another subject.
The best I can think of is a sound sleep; so good-night.' In fact, like
Sir Fretful Plagiary in the _Critic_, Bozzy was so covetous of
popularity that he would rather be abused than be not mentioned at all.
Little augury, too, of success at the bar could his father find in the
following portrait of his son: 'the author of the _Ode to Tragedy_ is a
most excellent man; he is of an ancient family in the west of Scotland,
upon which he values himself not a little. At his nativity there
appeared omens of his future greatness; his parts are bright, and his
education has been good; he has travelled in post-chaises miles without
number; he is fond of seeing much of the world; he eats of every good
dish, especially apple pie; he drinks old hock; he has a very fine
temper; he is somewhat of a humourist, and a little tinctured with
pride; he has a good, manly countenance, and he owns himself to be
amorous; he has infinite vivacity; yet is at times observed to have a
melancholy cast.'
Nothing but the most obtuse vanity could ever have induced Bozzy to
publish all this. 'Curiosity,' he declares in the preface, 'is the most
prevalent of all our passions, and the curiosity for reading letters is
the most prevalent of all kinds of curiosity. Had any man in the three
kingdoms found the following letters directed, sealed, and addressed,
with post-marks--provided he could have done so honestly--he would have
read every one of them.' There is the true Boswell in this
characteristic confession, the Boswell that read in the private diaries
of Johnson, and, with an eye to biographical materials, had admitted an
impulse to carry them off, and never see him more. 'Why, sir,' said the
doctor, 'I do not think you could have helped it.'
After this it was no wonder that his father was induced to allow his
return to London, 'Where a man may soap his own beard, and enjoy
whatever is to be had in this transitory state of things, and every
agreeable whim may be indulged without censure.' The Duke of Queensbery,
the patron of Gay, was one of those to whom he was recommended now that
he inclined to 'persist in his fondness for the Guards, or rather, in
truth, for the metropolis,' but he suspected some arrangement between
his father and the Duke by which the commission was delayed. For some
months he spent a random life as the occupier of Temple's chambers in
the vicinity of Johnson. Little could be expected of the friend of
Churchill and Wilkes, yet Boswell now was at the turning point of his
career.
'This is to me,' he writes in his great work, 'a memorable year; for in
it I had the happiness to obtain the acquaintance of that extraordinary
man whose memoirs I am now writing; an acquaintance which I shall ever
esteem as one of the most fortunate circumstances of my life.' We have
seen how Lord Hailes, had on the 1758 circuit, mentioned to him the name
of Johnson; how in Glasgow Gentleman had given him a representation of
'dictionary Johnson;' how Derrick in 1760, during his first visit to
London, had promised to introduce this youth of twenty to the great
dictator of literature; and Sheridan, the father of the dramatist, when
in Edinburgh in 1761, giving public lectures on elocution, had made a
similar promise. But on his return to London at the end of 1762, Boswell
had found that Sheridan had quarrelled with Johnson, and Derrick had
retired to Bath as master of the ceremonies in succession to Beau Nash.
Luckily Derrick had before introduced his friend to Davies, the
bookseller in Covent Garden, who as 'one of the best imitators of
Johnson's voice and manner' only increased the ardour of Boswell for the
meeting. Now the hour was come and the man. Yet surely never could there
have been a more apparently unpropitious time chosen. Number 45 of the
_North Briton_ denouncing Bute and his Scotch favourites had appeared on
April 23rd. The minister had bowed to the storm and resigned, while the
writer of the libel had been arrested under a general warrant and
discharged on the 30th of the month under appeal, either to be hanged,
thought Adam Smith, or to get Bute impeached in six months. Alexander
Cruden, of _Concordance_ fame, was rambling over London in his lucid
interval like an inverted Old Mortality, busy with a sponge obliterating
every hated '45' scrawled over the walls and every conceivable spot in
the city against his country. Yet at such an hour it was that the famous
meeting of Johnson and his biographer took place.
'At last, on Monday the 16th of May, when I was sitting in Mr Davies'
back-parlour, after having drunk tea with him and Mrs Davies, Johnson
unexpectedly came into the shop; and Mr Davies having perceived him
through the glass door in the room in which we were sitting, advancing
towards us,--he announced his awful approach to me, somewhat in the
manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on
the appearance of his father's ghost, "Look, my lord, it comes." I found
that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure, from the portrait of
him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds.... Mr Davies mentioned my name, and
respectfully introduced me to him. I was much agitated; and recollecting
his prejudice against the Scotch, of which I had heard much, I said to
Davies, "Don't tell where I come from."--"From Scotland," cried Davies
roguishly. "Mr Johnson," said I, "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I
cannot help it." ... "That, sir, I find is what a very great many of
your countrymen cannot help." This stroke stunned me a good deal; and
when we had sat down, I felt myself not a little embarrassed, and
apprehensive of what might come next.... Eager to take any opening to
get into conversation with him, I ventured to say, "Oh, sir, I cannot
think Mr Garrick would grudge such a trifle to you." "Sir," said he,
with a stern look, "I have known David Garrick longer than you have
done, and I know no right you have to talk to me on the subject."
Perhaps I deserved this check,' etc., etc.
Next day Boswell called on Davies, who assured him that the doctor would
not take it amiss if he were to visit him; and so, a week later, 'after
being entertained by the witty sallies of Messieurs Thornton, Wilkes,
Churchill and Lloyd,' from whom he would hear plenty of vigorous abuse
of his country, and whose names we may take it as certain were not
mentioned to his new friend, Boswell boldly repaired to Johnson. Nothing
is more striking than the contrast between the hitherto reckless Bozzy
and the easy assurance and composure with which he faces Johnson, sits
up with the sage, sups at the Mitre, leads the conversation, and
apparently holds his own in the discussions. Doubtless, the 'facility of
manners' which Adam Smith has said was a feature of the man, was here of
service to him, and no less so would have been the flattering way in
which he managed to inform Johnson of his reputation over the Border.
Boswell was not slow to write to Lord Hailes, knowing full well how the
report of such an acquaintance and friendship would be welcome at
Auchinleck as the signs of an approaching reformation. Goldsmith, whom
he met shortly after, he entertained at the Mitre with a party of
friends, among whom was the Rev. Dr John Ogilvie, the author of some
portentous and completely forgotten epics, but who is not yet quite lost
to sight as the writer of the sixty-second paraphrase of Scripture, 'Lo!
in the last of days behold.' A subsequent 'evening by ourselves' he
describes to Lord Hailes in the wariest manner, so as to secure his
father's consent to a plan of travel. The old judge had wished his son
to follow the profession of law which had now in their family become
quite hereditary, and had coupled this with a scheme of study at
Utrecht, after the plan he had himself followed at Leyden. A compromise
had, in fact, been arranged by which this was to be pursued, and the
career of arms dropped. Nothing can be more adroit than the way in which
the young hopeful about to embark on the grand tour manages in his
despatch to his lordship, with an eye to the Home Office, to suggest the
furtherance of his own ideas under the supposed guise of Johnson's
approval. 'He advises me to combat idleness as a distemper, to read five
hours every day, but to let inclination direct me what to read. He is a
great enemy to a stated plan of study. He advises me when abroad to go
to places where there is most to be seen and learned. He is not very
fond of the notion of spending a whole winter in a Dutch town. He thinks
I may do much more by private study than by attending lectures. He would
have me to perambulate (a word in his own style) Spain, also to visit
the northern kingdoms, where more that is new is to be seen than in
France or Italy, but he is not against me seeing these warmer regions.'
Here, in fact, is the germ of the tour to the Baltic they had hoped when
at Dunvegan one day to carry out, for which Johnson, when in his
sixty-eighth year was still ready, and which Boswell thought would have
made them acquainted with the King of Sweden, and the Empress of Russia.
On a later day of the month he asked his friend to the Mitre to meet his
uncle Dr John, 'an elegant scholar and a physician bred in the School of
Boerhaave,' and George Dempster, M.P. for the Forfar Burghs. As the
latter was infected with the sceptical views of Hume, there would seem
to have been a scene, for in the _Life_ Johnson is made to say, 'I have
not met with any man for a long time who has given me such general
displeasure,' but Boswell, ever with an eye for copy, writes to Temple,
'it was a very fertile evening, and my journal is stored with its
fruits.' Then to Lord Hailes he writes: '_Entre nous_ of
Dempster,--Johnson had seen a pupil of Hume and Rousseau totally
unsettled as to principles. I had infinite satisfaction in hearing solid
truth confuting vain subtilty. I thank God that I have got acquainted
with Mr Johnson. He has done me infinite service. He has assisted me to
obtain peace of mind; he has assisted me to become a rational Christian;
I hope I shall ever remain so.' Pleasantly all this would sound at home.
There would be less now heard of his father's threat in May to
disinherit him, and of the son's appeal to Lord Hailes to intercede with
him--'to have patience with me for a year or two, and I may be what he
pleases.' On July 15th he has had a long letter from his father, full of
affection and good counsel. 'Honest man,' he writes to Temple, 'he is
now happy. He insists on having my solemn promise. The only question is,
how much I am to promise.' Then on the 25th he has his letters of credit
and his introductions to people in Holland. 'They have been sent open
for me to seal, so I have been amused to see the different modes of
treating that favourite subject _myself_.' He is to be allowed L240 a
year, but he is determined not to be straitened, nor to encourage the
least narrowness, but to draw on his father when necessary. Wilkes had
gone to France, but had let him have some franks 'to astonish a few
North Britons.' Parting for a time with Temple, whose family was now in
straitened circumstances, he assures him that their friendship should be
'an exalted comfort' to him in his distress, and concludes
characteristically enough with advice to Temple's younger brother in the
army for his establishment in 'solid notions of religion and morality.'
Before he bids his native land good-night, there is a final letter to
Hailes with his father, Jortin, and the actress all well in his mind's
eye. 'My scepticism,' he says, 'was not owing to thinking wrong, but to
not thinking at all. It is a matter of great moment to keep a sense of
religion constantly impressed upon our minds. If that divine guest does
not occupy part of the space, vain intruders will,'--the fine old roll
of Micawber to the close. Johnson on the 5th August started with him for
Harwich in the stage coach, half in hopes of visiting Holland in the
summer, and accompanying Bozzy in a tour through the Netherlands. 'I
must see thee out of England,' said the old man kindly. On the beach
they parted, and 'as the vessel put out to sea, I kept my eyes upon him
for a considerable time, while he remained rolling his majestic frame in
his usual manner; and at last I perceived him walk back into the town
and he disappeared.' Boswell's attendance upon his new friend had not
escaped the notice of the doctor's circle. 'Who,' asked one, 'is this
Scotch cur at Johnson's heels?' 'Not a cur, but a bur,' was Goldsmith's
reply, 'and he has the faculty of sticking.' With what effect the world
was to know.