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
