The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1757–1763: Research Edition: Correspondence, Volume 9 9781474441995

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THE YALE EDITIONS OF

The Private Papers of James Boswell

RESEARCH EDITION Catalogue CATALOGUE OF THE PAPERS OF JAMES BOSWELL AT YALE UNIVERSITY, by Marion S. Pottle, Claude Colleer Abbott, and Frederick A. Pottle, 3 Vols., 1993

Correspondence Volume 1

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL AND JOHN JOHNSTON OF GRANGE, edited by Ralph S. Walker, 1966

Volume 2

THE CORRESPONDENCE AND OTHER PAPERS OF JAMES BOSWELL RELATING TO THE MAKING OF THE LIFE OF JOHNSON, edited by Marshall Waingrow, 1969; 2nd edition, corrected and enlarged, 2001

Volume 3

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL WITH CERTAIN MEMBERS THE CLUB, edited by Charles N. Fifer, 1976

OF

Volume 4

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL WITH DAVID GARRICK, EDMUND BURKE, AND EDMOND MALONE, edited by Peter S. Baker, Thomas W. Copeland, George M. Kahrl, Rachel McClellan, and James Osborn, with the assistance of Robert Mankin and Mark Wollaeger, 1986

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Volume 5

THE GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL, 1766–1769, Vol. 1: 1766–1767, edited by Richard C. Cole, with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and with the assistance of James J. Caudle, 1993

Volume 6

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL AND WILLIAM JOHNSON TEMPLE, 1756–1795, Vol. 1: 1756–1777, edited by Thomas Crawford, 1997

Volume 7

THE GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL, 1766–1769, Vol. 2: 1768–1769, edited by Richard C. Cole, with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and with the assistance of James J. Caudle, 1997

Volume 8

THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL WITH JAMES BRUCE AND ANDREW GIBB, OVERSEERS OF THE AUCHINLECK ESTATE, edited by Nellie Pottle Hankins and John Strawhorn, 1998

Volume 9

THE GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL, 1757–1763, edited by David Hankins and James J. Caudle

Life of Johnson Volume 1

JAMES BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON: AN EDITION OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT, IN FOUR VOLUMES, Vol. 1: 1709–1765, edited by Marshall Waingrow, 1994

Volume 2

JAMES BOSWELL’S LIFE OF JOHNSON: AN EDITION OF THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT, IN FOUR VOLUMES, Vol. 2: 1766–1776, edited by Bruce Redford, with Elizabeth Goldring, 1998

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THE GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE OF

James Boswell 1757–1763

edited by DAVID HANKINS and JAMES J. CAUDLE

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY PRESS Edinburgh

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS New Haven and London iii

© Yale University, 2006 Edinburgh University Press, 2006 22 George Square, Edinburgh Yale University Press New Haven and London Set in Goudy by the Yale Boswell Editions, New Haven, and printed in Great Britain by the Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library Edinburgh University Press ISBN–10 0 7486 1805 8 ISBN–13 978 0 7486 1805 7 Yale University Press ISBN–10 0–300–08306–8 ISBN–13 978–0–300–08306–4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2005921613 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photo-copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on the Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Published by Yale University Press with the assistance of the Annie Burr Lewis Fund.

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Boswell’s Correspondence, Volume 9 General Editor: Gordon Turnbull Associate Editor: James J. Caudle

THE GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL 1757–1763

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The preparation of The General Correspondence of James Boswell 1757–1763 was generously supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the James J. Colt Foundation, the L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation

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Editorial Committee JOHN DONATICH, Director, Yale University Press. JOHN LANGBEIN, LL.B., PH.D., Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale University, Chair pro tem. HUGH MACGILL, Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law. AMY MEYERS, PH.D., Director, Yale Center for British Art. LOREN R. ROTHSCHILD, President, Sycamore Hill Capital Group. PAUL T. RUXIN, LL.B., Attorney, Jones Day. ROBERT H. SMITH, JR., LL.B., Attorney, Robinson and Cole. GORDON TURNBULL, PH.D., General Editor, Yale Boswell Editions. FRANK TURNER, Director, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. KEITH WRIGHTSON, PH.D., Randolph W. Townsend Jr. Professor of History, Yale University. WILLIAM ZACHS, PH.D.

Advisory Committee IAIN G. BROWN, M.A., PH.D., F.S.A., F.R.S.A., Principal Curator, National Library of Scotland. LINDA J. COLLEY, M.A., PH.D., F.R.HIST.S., Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History, Princeton University. THE EARL OF ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, K.T., Broomhall, Dunfermline, Fife. BERNHARD FABIAN, DR. PHIL., Professor of English, University of Münster. RONALD D. IRELAND, Q.C., Sheriff of Grampian Highland and Islands. MAURICE LÉVY, M. L. Richards Professor of English Emeritus, University of Toulouse. ROGER LONSDALE, M.A., D.PHIL., Fellow Emeritus, Professor of English Literature, Oxford University. GIUSEPPE MAZZOTTA, PH.D., Sterling Professor of Italian Language and Literature, Yale University. PIERRE MORÈRE, Professor of English and Scottish Literature, Université Stendhal. DAVID F. MUSTO, M.A., M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and the History of Medicine, Yale University. RONALD H. PAULSON, PH.D., William D. and Robin Mayer Professor Emeritus in the School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. NICHOLAS T. PHILLIPSON, M.A., PH.D., F.R.HIST.S., Honorary Fellow, College of Humanities and Social Science, University of Edinburgh. RALPH W. RADER, PH.D., Professor of English Emeritus, The University of California at Berkeley. FRED C. ROBINSON, PH.D., D.LITT., Douglas Tracy Smith Professor Emeritus of English, Yale University. H. MAIRI J. ROBINSON, M.A., Member, Scottish Dictionaries Council. CHARLES RYSKAMP, PH.D., LITT.D., L.H.D. ix

Editorial Committee JOHN DONATICH, Director, Yale University Press. JOHN LANGBEIN, LL.B., PH.D., Sterling Professor of Law and Legal History, Yale University, Chair pro tem. HUGH MACGILL, Professor of Law, University of Connecticut School of Law. AMY MEYERS, PH.D., Director, Yale Center for British Art. LOREN R. ROTHSCHILD, President, Sycamore Hill Capital Group. PAUL T. RUXIN, LL.B., Attorney, Jones Day. ROBERT H. SMITH, JR., LL.B., Attorney, Robinson and Cole. GORDON TURNBULL, PH.D., General Editor, Yale Boswell Editions. FRANK TURNER, Director, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. KEITH WRIGHTSON, PH.D., Randolph W. Townsend Jr. Professor of History, Yale University. WILLIAM ZACHS, PH.D.

Advisory Committee IAIN G. BROWN, M.A., PH.D., F.S.A., F.R.S.A., Principal Curator, National Library of Scotland. LINDA J. COLLEY, M.A., PH.D., F.R.HIST.S., Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History, Princeton University. THE EARL OF ELGIN AND KINCARDINE, K.T., Broomhall, Dunfermline, Fife. BERNHARD FABIAN, DR. PHIL., Professor of English, University of Münster. RONALD D. IRELAND, Q.C., Sheriff of Grampian Highland and Islands. MAURICE LÉVY, M. L. Richards Professor of English Emeritus, University of Toulouse. ROGER LONSDALE, M.A., D.PHIL., Fellow Emeritus, Professor of English Literature, Oxford University. GIUSEPPE MAZZOTTA, PH.D., Sterling Professor of Italian Language and Literature, Yale University. PIERRE MORÈRE, Professor of English and Scottish Literature, Université Stendhal. DAVID F. MUSTO, M.A., M.D., Professor of Psychiatry and the History of Medicine, Yale University. RONALD H. PAULSON, PH.D., William D. and Robin Mayer Professor Emeritus in the School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University. NICHOLAS T. PHILLIPSON, M.A., PH.D., F.R.HIST.S., Honorary Fellow, College of Humanities and Social Science, University of Edinburgh. RALPH W. RADER, PH.D., Professor of English Emeritus, The University of California at Berkeley. FRED C. ROBINSON, PH.D., D.LITT., Douglas Tracy Smith Professor Emeritus of English, Yale University. H. MAIRI J. ROBINSON, M.A., Member, Scottish Dictionaries Council. CHARLES RYSKAMP, PH.D., LITT.D., L.H.D. ix

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

RICHARD B. SHER, PH.D., Distinguished Professor of History, New Jersey Institute of Technology. STUART SHERMAN, PH.D., Associate Professor of English, Fordham University. WILLIAM BURTON TODD, PH.D., L.H.D., Professor of English Emeritus, University of Texas at Austin. GORDON WILLIAMS, M.A., Thomas A. Thacher Professor Emeritus of Latin, Yale University.

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General Editorial Note THE research edition of the Private Papers of James Boswell consists of three coordinated series: Boswell’s journals in all their varieties, his correspondence, and the Life of Johnson. The undertaking is a co-operative one involving many scholars, and publication is proceeding in the order in which the volumes are completed for the press. The correspondence is appearing in three kinds of volumes: single-correspondent volumes; subject volumes of letters related to a topic or theme; and miscellaneouscorrespondence volumes of the remaining letters in chronological sequence, as here. Boswell’s Life of Johnson: An Edition of the Original Manuscript is presented in an arrangement which shows the method and progress of the composition. The parallel ‘reading’ or trade edition, based for the most part on Boswell’s journal, began publication in 1950, and was completed in 1989. While the annotation of that edition primarily turned inwards towards the text, the annotation of the research edition turns outwards from the text as well so as to relate the documents to the various areas of scholarship which they are capable of illuminating: history (literary, linguistic, legal, medical, political, social, local), biography, bibliography, and genealogy, among others. The comprehensiveness and coherence of the papers that Boswell chose to preserve make them highly useful for such exploitation.

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Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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JAMES BOSWELL—CURRICULUM VITAE TO NOVEMBER 1762

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EDITORIAL PROCEDURES CUE TITLES AND ABBREVIATIONS

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LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS

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INTRODUCTION

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A PREFATORY NOTE ON THE ANNOTATION

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THE CORRESPONDENCE

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APPENDIX: INCOMPLETE OR UNDATABLE ITEMS

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INDEX

449

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Acknowledgements CHARLES H. Bennett and David Hankins have preceded me in their work to establish the texts of many of the letters in this volume and annotate them, and I am pleased to have been able to build upon their foundation, adding new texts and annotation and bringing the volume into print. Any researcher associated with the Yale Boswell Editions is aware of a long chain of scholars reaching back to Chauncey Brewster Tinker and Geoffrey Scott, forward through Frederick Pottle, Bennett, Robert Warnock, Frank Brady, and their contemporaries and heirs. The current generation of editors inherits a wealth of research files, manuscript commentary, research and ‘trade’ editions already printed, and other accumulated wisdom, as well as the aid of the young and dynamic postgraduate scholars who are holders of the Warnock Internships established by Frank Brady with the funds provided by the estate of Robert Warnock. My own association with the Boswell Editions began as a graduate student Warnock Fellow in the years 1987–92 working with editors such as Peter Baker, Thomas Crawford, and Rufus Reiberg, as well as the project staff, Rachel McClellan, Irene Adams and Susan Bianconi, to all of whom I am grateful for advice and mentoring in my first years of editorial work. After my return as Associate Editor in late 2000, I benefited from discussion of various queries with Gordon Turnbull and with fellow volume editors Marlies K. Danziger, Nigel Aston, Richard B. Sher, and Thomas F. Bonnell. Pamela Edwards read multiple drafts of the manuscript and especially the Introduction, and offered crucial moral support during the long years of composition and revision of this text. Among other specialists in the period and librarians who have either read text and introduction or provided advice on difficult notes are Johnny Wink, Thomas Auffenberg, Hugh Milne, Jeremy Gregory, John Eglin, Lori Ferrell, Brian Cowan, Keith Wrightson, as well as Maija Jansson (of the Yale Center for Parliamentary History), Ellen Cohn and Jonathan Dull (of the Yale Papers of Benjamin Franklin), Margaret K. Powell and Susan Walker (of the Lewis Walpole Library), and Kevin Pacelli (of Yale Microfilms). Warnock Interns who provided assistance in the compilation of this volume in 2001–05 include Elisa Milkes, Jessica Leiman, Nicholas Wrightson, Hiba Hafiz, and Eric Lindstrom. Previous assistance was also rendered before my arrival by Bennett Graff, and by former Warnock Interns Hannibal Hamlin, Carrie Roider, and Michele Martinez. To Pedro Soto, Jose Paredes, and Robert Rocke, I extend thanks for their technical skill and computer support. Nadine Honigberg provided administrative assistance. Nancy Johnson compiled the index, which benefitted from the careful vetting of Eric Lindstrom. For preparation of the text in publication-ready form, I thank Mark Spicer, who set the text in Goudy, meticulously putting the care where it counts, and provided valuable background on the ‘Musical Earl’ of Kellie. Gordon Turnbull has carefully read the text, annotation, and introduction from their second genesis in 2001, and beyond the General Editor’s work of harmonizing the text, notes, and introduction, added his own expertise on Boswell’s wider, disparate œuvre and various other matters. Any remaining errors in the texts or annotation are not the fault of the abovementioned. xv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is a pleasure again to acknowledge the funding organizations who have made the essential work on the volume possible. Early stages of research and annotation were undertaken during periods of National Endowment for the Humanities funding. The Yale Boswell Editions thanks both the Endowment and the several foundational and individual donors who provided matching funds, in particular the James J. Colt Foundation and the L. J. Skaggs and Mary C. Skaggs Foundation. Work on completion of the volume was sustained by a generous grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, and by Yale University. In his 2002 Freshman Address, Yale’s President Richard C. Levin remarked that ‘Yale is … a place with the scale and resources to undertake ambitious multi-year, indeed multi-generational, scholarly projects.’ These projects—the Boswell Editions among them—he aptly described as ‘monumental’ (see Levin, The Work of the University, 2003, p. 70). The Editions remain grateful for the support extended by Yale’s Deputy Provost, Charles H. Long. Thanks are also due to Nicola Ramsey and Ian Davidson of Edinburgh University Press, and to John Kulka of Yale University Press, not least for their patience and tolerance for our sometimes difficult relationship with deadlines. As for the constant fellowship and support of the people who make up the Boswell Editions itself, I can only say that the office’s old and clichéd reputation as a ‘Boswell factory’ is quite misleading. The office is far more a family than a factory, and the work on this edition has been a joy rather than a labour. J.J.C. SHORTLY before his untimely death in a tragic accident in March 2005, David Hankins wished particularly to extend his thanks to four who themselves are no longer here to see the fruits of their generous assistance: Philip Daghlian of Indiana University for his help and encouragement in the early stages of this project, and Frederick and Marion Pottle and Frank Brady, who were always willing to take time out from their own work to assist with his questions. He thanked as well all the past staff of the Yale Boswell Editions, in particular Rachel McClellan and Irene Adams. To his wife Jean Hankins, he gave his loving gratitude for her support over many years of writing and rewriting. He acknowledged most especially Charles Bennett, whose meticulous work on the Andrew Erskine correspondence had set, he said, a level of scholarship hard to match. G.T.

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James Boswell— curriculum vitae to November 1762 1740 Born 29 October in Edinburgh, son of Alexander Boswell, advocate, and Euphemia Erskine. The family home was on the fourth storey of Blair’s Land in Parliament Close. Baptized later the same day. JB’s early life was spent in Edinburgh, and he visited Auchinleck only rarely before his ninth year. 1741 January: Survived a serious illness from which his older sister Euphemia (1739–41) died. 1743 24 September: JB’s brother John born. ‘At an early age’ beaten by his father for lying. 1745 Wore a white cockade and prayed for ‘James III’ until his uncle General Cochrane gave him a shilling to pray for George II. Saw the Hessian soldiers in Edinburgh. Spent the summer in West Mayfield House. Enrolled in James Mundell’s school in the West Bow. 1746 Entered Mundell’s School, where he spent three unhappy years. 1748 Alexander Boswell appointed Sheriff Depute of Wigtonshire. JB left Mundell’s School. Tutored at home for four years by John Dun, who assigned him the Spectator essays and Latin poetry. 19 September: JB’s brother David born. 1749 JB’s father succeeded to the estate of Auchinleck upon the death of his grandfather James. JB now spent much of each year in Auchinleck. 1750 Presumed date of earliest known writing by JB: a Commonplace Book. Alexander Boswell resigned his office as Sheriff Depute of Wigtownshire. 1751 1 July (presumably O.S.), JB’s sister Elizabeth (b. 1746 or 1747) died. 1752 Contracted a severe cold; feared return to studies, deliberately malingered. 9 November: John Dun ordained minister of Auchinleck, Joseph Fergusson succeeded as JB’s domestic tutor. Sent to Moffat Spa to recover from a nervous illness. 1753 Autumn: Entered the University of Edinburgh, where he was to form lasting friendships with John Johnston of Grange and William Johnson Temple. 1754 15 February: Alexander Boswell elevated to the bench of the Court of Session as Lord Auchinleck. 17 July: Earliest known letter in JB’s hand, a letter of condolence to his mother on bearing a son who was still-born or died immediately. At the University of Edinburgh, completed George Stuart’s class in Latin and enrolled for a second year. 1755 At the University of Edinburgh, completed George Stuart’s class in Latin, entered Robert Hunter’s class in Greek. Temple introduced JB to the Church of England or ‘Episcopalianism’. 1756 At the University of Edinburgh, completed Robert Hunter’s class in Greek, entered John Stevenson’s class in Logic and Metaphysics. xvii

CURRICULUM VITAE

1757 April: Offered a theatrical prologue to West Digges. At the University of Edinburgh, completed John Stevenson’s class in Logic, began the class in Natural Philosophy under John Stewart or a substitute. ‘Shaken’ by the teachings of the methodists, suffered a terrible hypochondriac depression and was sent again to Moffat Spa; converted to vegetarianism by an ‘old Pythagorean’ (John Williamson). Travelled to Carlisle, his first experience of an English city. 1758 At the University of Edinburgh, completed the class in Natural Philosophy, began Robert Dick’s class in Civil Law. Presumed to have lived apart from the family in lodgings in Edinburgh. Began to associate more frequently with actors and actresses, and began to study law. By this year at the latest, introduced to Lord Somerville, who encouraged his literary pursuits. Introduced to David Hume; made David Dalrymple his ‘Mæcenas’. In love with Martha Whyte. August: JB’s first published poem appears in the Scots Magazine. September: Accompanied his father on the Northern Circuit. Kept an ‘exact journal’ of the North Circuit at the desire of James Love, and sent it to him every post. 1759 At the University of Edinburgh, completed Robert Dick’s class in Civil Law. February: Helped to bring Lady Houston’s play The Coquettes; or The Gallant in the Closet to the stage, featuring a prologue which he himself wrote. May have authored or co-authored newspaper critiques of the performances of the Edinburgh theatre, 23 June–7 July 1759. August: Initiated as a freemason. Sent by his father to the University of Glasgow, where he studied Civil Law under Hercules Lindsay, and Moral Philosophy and Belles Lettres under Adam Smith. 1760 At the University of Glasgow, continued classes with Lindsay and Smith. Published his first book in London, pseudonymously: A View of the Edinburgh Theatre during the Summer Season, 1759. Francis Gentleman, actor, dedicated an edition of Oroonoko to him. March: Escaped to London with the intention of becoming a monk or priest. Heard Mass celebrated, made his submission to the Roman Catholic Church. After initially lodging in Mayfair, he was hosted by Eglinton in Queen Street, who freed him from ‘the gloom of superstition’ through deism, libertinism, encouraging his Army scheme, and introducing him ‘into the circles of the great, the gay, and the ingenious’. Samuel Derrick showed him London ‘in all its variety of departments, both literary and sportive’. He met the Duke of York, and perhaps (briefly) Laurence Sterne, and decided that he wants to be an officer in the Foot Guards. Lost his virginity to a prostitute, suffered his first venereal infection. May: Lord Auchinleck came to London and took him home. He remained resolute in his scheme to become an officer in the Foot Guards. Lord xviii

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Auchinleck offered to to procure him a commission in Lord Loudoun’s marching regiment but refused to further the Guards scheme. He proposed that JB study law under his personal supervision. Joined (or perhaps founded or co-founded) the Soaping Club in Edinburgh. November: Published Observations … on ‘The Minor’ in Edinburgh (reprinted in London). 1761 Continued to live ‘in his father’s strict family’ and to study Civil Law under his father’s direction, although he had no inclination for the law. ?18 May: On Dempster’s suggestion, travelled to Fort George to meet Andrew Erskine, who quickly became a close friend and ‘brother Soaper’. 19–24 May: Set out on return to Edinburgh. At Edinburgh till 12 August. 30 June–24 July: Attended Thomas Sheridan’s lectures on elocution in Edinburgh; made Sheridan his ‘mentor’. As an alternative scheme for securing JB residence in London, Sheridan proposed that JB obtain admission to the Inner Temple and study to be an English barrister. JB preferred the Guards scheme. 10 August: Published a pamphlet containing two short poems, An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady and An Epistle from Lycidas to Menalcas, with ‘recommendatory letters’ by Erskine and Dempster. 12 August: Court of Session rose. JB set out for Auchinleck, arriving the next day. 13 August: JB arrived at Auchinleck. September: Published an open letter to the Earl of Eglinton in the Scots Magazine. December: Invited to join the Select Society of Edinburgh; published An Ode to Tragedy. 1762 February: Contributed thirty poems to Alexander Donaldson’s A Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen, which he also helped to prepare for the press. AE and GD were also contributors. March: Published The Cub at Newmarket, a fictionalized account of part of his 1760 visit to England. 7 March: Signed a deed drawn by his father consenting to vest the estate of Auchinleck in trustees at his succession in return for a yearly allowance of £100, increased to £200 in November, and £300 when he married in 1769. 30 July: Passed private law examinations in Civil Law. 14 September: Set out from Auchinleck on a short tour through the southern counties of Scotland and kept a journal of this ‘Harvest Jaunt’. 15 November: Set out from Edinburgh for London, for a stay that would last nine months, recorded in ‘Journal from the time of my leaving Scotland 15 Novr. 1762’.

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Editorial Procedures The Texts Choice and Arrangement of Letters THE copy-text has been the MSS of letters sent, whenever such MSS are available; failing letters sent, we have used MS drafts and copies, or, in several instances, the texts as they appeared in printed sources. In the case of the Erskine–Boswell letters, we have reproduced for purposes of comparison the original MS version followed immediately by the version as it ultimately appeared in the published Letters Between the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq., 1763 (hereafter ‘E–B’). ‘Not reported’ in the head-notes means that, though there is evidence that the letter in question was sent, we have no evidence that any kind of MS of it survived the sender and the recipient. ‘Missing’ bears the ordinary narrow sense ‘not in the place where one would expect it to be’, as ‘the lower half of the second leaf is missing’.

Transcription In conformity with the plan of the Research Edition, the manuscript documents in this edition have been printed to correspond to the originals as closely as is feasible in the medium of type. Changes have been kept within the limits of stated conventions. No change that could affect sense has been made silently. The writers’ paragraphing and capitalization are retained, as is their spelling, except for certain inadvertencies which are corrected in the text and recorded in the notes. Capitals are as in the original, though where doubtful a logical and consistent choice has been made. Spellings are modernized when otherwise indiscernible, with the manuscript original noted. Items underlined in the manuscript are printed in italics. Currency notation has been standardized, as in the following: £15 16s 6d. Editorial intervention has been more active in the formulary and mechanical elements of the correspondence than in the main text. The following conventions are imposed in the volume as a whole without notice: Addresses. Elements appearing on separate lines in the MS are run together and punctuated according to modern practice. Heading. Headings are in the hand of the writer or, in the case of copies, that of the copier unless otherwise specified. Datelines. Places and dates are joined at the head of the letter regardless of their position in the MS; punctuation is regularized. Salutations. Abbreviations are expanded. Commas and colons after salutations are retained; when manuscripts show other punctuation, colons are substituted. The first word following the salutation is capitalized. Complimentary closes and signatures. Abbreviations are expanded and punctuation is regularized. Elements appearing on separate lines are run together and the xx

EDITORIAL PROCEDURES

close itself printed as a continuation of the last line of text. Postscripts. Punctuation of the symbol P. S. is regularized and postscripts treated as separate paragraphs of the text. Endorsements. Unless otherwise specified, handwriting in the case of originals is that of the recipient, in the case of drafts or copies that of the writer. Punctuation. Periods are supplied at the end of sentences, unless sentences end with an obvious dash. Following a period or dash, a sentence always begins with a capital. Nonsensical periods are treated as commas, and vice versa. Where the end of a line stands in place of punctuation in the MS, commas or other punctuation are occasionally supplied to clarify meaning. Periods following cardinal numbers are removed, as are periods following ordinals except in datelines, where they serve as punctuation separating elements. Punctuation in lists is regularized. Interlineations and marginalia. Such insertions are explicitly indicated only in unusual cases. Changes. Substantive additions and deletions are recorded in the notes. They are recorded in drafts or copies only if significant. Lacunae. Words and letters missing through a tear or obscured by a blot are supplied within angular brackets. Inadvertent omissions by the writer are supplied within square brackets. Abbreviations, contractions, and symbols. The following abbreviations, contractions, and symbols, and their variant forms, are expanded: abt (about), acct (account), agst (against), Bp (Bishop), compts (compliments), cd (could), Dr (Dear), Fayr (Father), Ld (Lord), Lop (Lordship), recd (received), shd (should), Sr (Sir), wd (would), wt (with), & (and), &c (etc.), y (th). Periods are supplied for all abbreviations and contractions except those for ordinals. Colons following abbreviations are replaced by periods. Obscure or unfamiliar abbreviations and contractions are expanded within square brackets. Quotations. Primary quotation is indicated by single quotation marks, secondary by double. Quotation marks repeated at the beginning of each line of a paragraph are deleted, as are quotation marks around wholly italicized passages. An omitted quotation mark is supplied where one is indicated and the other missing at the beginning or end of a passage. Brackets. Parentheses replace square brackets in the text, brackets being reserved for editorial use. Overlooked terminal parentheses are supplied. Devices of emphasis. Underlinings for purpose of emphasis are printed in italics. Words written in particularly large letters or those doubly underlined are printed in small capitals. Underlinings which seem to be meaningless flourishes are ignored. For texts that have been transcribed from printed sources (e.g., the E–B letters), we have attempted to reproduce as closely as possible the format of the original printed version.

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EDITORIAL PROCEDURES

The Annotation Headnotes. Where more than one text is cited, the first mentioned is the one reproduced. Former printings are mentioned only if the original remains untraced. Where an address is not given, usually the letter was sent ‘under cover’. Footnotes. These are intended to elucidate the text. Persons mentioned are identified on first appearance and afterwards as necessary, with the index supplying other references. When an abbreviated source is given, the full citation either appears in a preceding note or in the following list of Cue Titles and Abbreviations.

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Cue Titles and Abbreviations THIS list omits the more familiar abbreviations of standard works of reference and periodicals, such as DSH, OCD, OED, and N & Q. Note: All manuscripts referred to in the footnotes without mention of a repository are in the Yale collection. Catalogue numbers are supplied in some instances in order to facilitate identification. AE: Andrew Erskine. Alum. Cant. I: John and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part I (to 1751), 4 vols., 1922–27. Alum. Oxon.: Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1715–1866, 4 vols., 1887–88. Anecdotes and Egotisms: Anecdotes and Egotisms of Henry Mackenzie, 1745–1831, ed. Harold Thompson, 1927. Ann. Reg.: The Annual Register, 1758–1862. Army List: A List of the Officers of the Army, etc. 1756–. Arnot: Hugo Arnot, The History of Edinburgh from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Time, 1788. Ayr and Wigton: James Paterson, History of the Counties of Ayr and Wigton, 3 vols. in 5 parts, 1863–66. Ayrshire: Ayrshire at the Time of Burns, ed. A. I. Dunlop and others, 1959. Bailey: James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, ed. Margery Bailey, 2 vols., 1928. Bell: Robert Bell, A Dictionary of the Law of Scotland, 2 vols., 1807–08. Bellamy: G. A. Bellamy, An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy, Late of Covent-Garden Theatre, 3rd ed., 6 vols., 1785. Bennett: ‘Letters Between the Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell Esq. 1761–1762’, ed. C. H. Bennett, Ph.D. diss., Yale, 1933. Bertie: David M. Bertie, Scottish Episcopal Clergy 1689–2000, 2000. Biog. Dict.: A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London 1660–1800, ed. P. H. Highfill, Jr., K. A. Burnim, and E. A. Langhans, 1973–93. Book of Company: James Boswell’s Book of Company at Auchinleck 1782–1795, ed. The Viscountess Eccles and Gordon Turnbull, 1995. Boswelliana: Boswelliana. The Commonplace Book of James Boswell, ed. Rev. Charles Rogers, 1874. The greater part of the manuscripts Boswell himself labelled ‘Boswelliana’ was published in Rogers’s book and is now in the Hyde Collection at Harvard University. The Yale collection also contains some ‘Boswelliana’ papers (M 24–69). ‘Bozzy and Yorick’: F. A. Pottle, ‘Bozzy and Yorick’, Blackwood’s Magazine, ccxvii (Mar. 1925): 297–313. BP: The Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle in the Collection of Lt.Colonel Ralph Heyward Isham, ed. Geoffrey Scott and F. A. Pottle, 18 vols., 1928–34; index, 1937. Brewer’s Dict.: Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable, compiled by Adrian Room, 2000. Brit. Mag.: The British Magazine, 1760–67. xxiii

CUE TITLES AND ABBREVIATIONS

BU: Biographie universelle, ancienne et moderne, with supplement, 85 vols., 1811– 62. Burke’s Landed Gentry: Sir Bernard Burke, Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, various years. Burke’s Peerage: Sir Bernard Burke, Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, various years. Butt ed.: The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt, 1963. Cal. Merc.: The Caledonian Mercury, 1720–1867. Cash: Arthur H. Cash, Laurence Sterne, The Early and Middle Years, 1975, repr. 1992 (‘vol. i’), and Laurence Sterne, The Later Years, 1986, repr. 1992 (‘vol. ii’). Cary’s New Map: Cary’s New Map of England and Wales, with part of Scotland …, 1794. Cassell’s Edinburgh: James Grant, Cassell’s Old and New Edinburgh, 3 vols., 1881– 83. Catalogue: Marion S. Pottle, Claude Colleer Abbott and Frederick A. Pottle, Catalogue of the Private Papers of James Boswell at Yale University, 3 vols., 1993. Clap: William B. Ober, M.D., Boswell’s Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men’s Afflictions, 1979. College of Justice: George Brunton and David Haig, An Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice, 1832. Collins’s Peerage: Collins’s Peerage of England; Genealogical, Biographical, and Historical, ed. Sir Egerton Brydges, 9 vols., 1812. Comp. Bar.: Complete Baronetage, ed. G. E. C[okayne], 5 vols., 1900–06; index, 1909. Comp. Peer.: Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, ed. G. E. C[okayne], rev. Vicary Gibbs, H. A. Doubleday, and others, 13 vols., 1910–59. Corr. 1: The Correspondence of James Boswell and John Johnston of Grange, ed. by Ralph S. Walker, 1966 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 1). Corr. 2: The Correspondence and Other Papers of James Boswell Relating to the Making of the Life of Johnson, ed. Marshall Waingrow, 2nd edition corrected and enlarged, 2001 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 2). Corr. 3: The Correspondence of James Boswell with Certain Members of the Club, ed. Charles N. Fifer, 1976 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 3). Corr. 4: The Correspondence of James Boswell with David Garrick, Edmund Burke, and Edmond Malone, ed. Peter S. Baker, Thomas W. Copeland, George M. Kahrl, Rachel McClellan, and James M. Osborn, 1987 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 4). Corr. 5: The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766–1769, Vol. 1: 1766– 1767, ed. Richard C. Cole, with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and with the assistance of James J. Caudle, 1993 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 5). Corr. 6: The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, 1756– 1795, Vol. 1: 1756–1777, ed. Thomas Crawford, 1997 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 6). Corr. 7: The General Correspondence of James Boswell, 1766–1769, Vol. 2: 1768– 1769, ed. Richard C. Cole, with Peter S. Baker and Rachel McClellan, and xxiv

CUE TITLES AND ABBREVIATIONS

with the assistance of James J. Caudle, 1997 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 7). Corr. 8: The Correspondence of James Boswell with James Bruce and Andrew Gibb, Overseers of the Auchinleck Estate, ed. Nellie Pottle Hankins and John Strawhorn, 1998 (Yale Research Edition, Correspondence: Volume 8). Corres. Garrick: The Private Correspondence of David Garrick with the Most Celebrated Persons of His Time, [ed. James Boaden], 2 vols., 1831–32. Corres. Walpole: The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, ed. W. S. Lewis and others, 48 vols., 1937–83. Crit. Rev.: Critical Review, 1756–1817. Cross: Wilbur Cross, The Life and Times of Laurence Sterne, 2 vols., 1929. CSD: The Concise Scots Dictionary, ed. Mairi Robinson and others, 1985. Cub: The Cub at New-market, 1762. Cunnington: C. Willett Cunnington and Phillis Cunnington, Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century, 1972. Curtis: Lewis Perry Curtis, Letters of Laurence Sterne, 1935. Defence: Boswell for the Defence, 1769–1774, ed. W. K. Wimsatt and F. A. Pottle, 1959. Dempster Letters: Letters of George Dempster to Sir Adam Fergusson, 1756 to 1813, ed. James Fergusson, 1934. Diar. Duch.: The Diaries of a Duchess: Extracts from the Diaries of the First Duchess of Northumberland (1716–1776), ed. James Greig, 1926. Dict. of Printers: H. R. Plomer, G. H. Bushnell, E. R. McC. Dix, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers Who Were at Work in England, Scotland, and Ireland from 1726–1775, 1932. Dict. SJ: A Dictionary of the English Language, 1755, 2 vols. Donaldson’s Collection: A Collection of Original Poems by the Rev. Mr. Blacklock and other Scotch Gentlemen, 1760 (‘vol. I’); A Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen, 1762 (‘vol. II’). Douglas’s Baronage: The Baronage of Scotland, ed. Sir Robert Douglas, 1798. Douglas’s Peerage: The Peerage of Scotland …, 2nd ed., ed. Sir Robert Douglas, rev. John Philip Wood, 2 vols., 1813. Earlier Years: Frederick A. Pottle, James Boswell: The Earlier Years 1740–1769, 1966, repr. 1985. E–B: Letters Between the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq., 1763. ‘Ébauche de ma vie’: ‘Une ébauche de ma vie’, JB’s ‘A Sketch of My Life’, written for Rousseau, 5 Dec. 1764, Yale MS. L 1107; trans. as Earlier Years, ch. 1. Edin. Eve. Cour.: The Edinburgh Evening Courant, 1718–1859. Edin. Stage: J. C. Dibdin, The Annals of the Edinburgh Stage, 1888. English Stage: John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, 10 vols., 1832. ESTC: English Short Title Catalogue (online database). Eur. Mag.: The European Magazine, 1782–1826. Experiment: Boswell: The English Experiment, 1785–1789, ed. I. S. Lustig and F. A. Pottle, 1986. Fac. Adv.: The Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, 1532–1943, ed. Sir Francis J. Grant, 1944. Fasti Scot.: Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, ed. Hew Scott, 2nd ed. 7 vols., 1915–28. xxv

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GD: George Dempster. Gent. Mag.: The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1731–1907. Gilhooley: A Directory of Edinburgh in 1752, compiled by J. Gilhooley, 1988. Gulliver’s Travels, Blackwell ed.: Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, introduction by Harold Williams, text ed. Herbert Davis, 1941. Hankins: David Hankins, ‘Early Correspondence of James Boswell: 1757–1766’, Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1964. Hebrides: Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson LL.D., 1773, ed. from the original MS by F. A. Pottle and C. H. Bennett, 2nd. ed. 1961. Holland: Boswell in Holland 1763–1764, ed. F. A. Pottle, McGraw-Hill edition, 1952. Houlding: J. A. Houlding, Fit for Service: The Training of the British Army 1715– 1795, 1981. Hyde Collection: The Hyde Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University. IGI: International Genealogical Index, compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (www.familysearch.org). Summary lists of births, baptisms, and marriages. JB: James Boswell. JJ: John Johnston of Grange. Journ.: JB’s fully written journal. Transcribed conservatively from the MS. Journey: Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (vol. 9 of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson), ed. Mary Lascelles, 1971. Kay: John Kay, A Series of Original Portraits, 2nd ed., 2 vols., 1877. Lefanu: Alicia Lefanu, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Frances Sheridan …, 1824. Letters JB: Letters of James Boswell, ed. Chauncey Brewster Tinker, 2 vols., 1924. Life: Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Together with Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides and Johnson’s Diary of a Journey into North Wales, ed. G. B. Hill, rev. L. F. Powell, 6 vols., 1934–50; vols. v and vi, 2nd ed. 1964. Lincoln: Eleanor Terry Lincoln, ‘James Boswell: Reader and Critic’, Ph.D. diss., Yale, 1938. Lit. Anec.: John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 9 vols., 1812–16. Lit. Car.: Frederick A. Pottle, The Literary Career of James Boswell, Esq., 1929. Lond. Chron.: The London Chronicle, 1757–1823. Lond. Coffee Houses: Bryant Lillywhite, London Coffee Houses, 1963. Lond. Encyclopedia: The London Encyclopedia, ed. Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert, 1983. Lond. Journ.: Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763, ed. F. A. Pottle, 1950. Lond. Mag.: The London Magazine, 1732–85. Lond. Signs: Bryant Lillywhite, London Signs, 1972. Lond. Stage: The London Stage, 1600–1800, ed. C. B. Hogan and others, 5 pts. in 11 vols., 1965–68, index 1979. Maxted: Ian Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775–1800, 1977. Mem.: JB’s memoranda, Yale. Transcribed conservatively from the MS. Memoirs JB: Memoirs of James Boswell, Esq., reprinted from Eur. Mag. May–June 1791, in Lit. Car., pp. xxix–xliv. xxvi

CUE TITLES AND ABBREVIATIONS

Memories of Ayrshire: The Rev. Dr. John Mitchell, Memories of Ayrshire about 1780, ed. William Kirk Dickson, Miscellanies of the Scottish History Society (Third Series 33, Miscellany VI), 1939. M’Kerlie: P. H. M’Kerlie, History of the Lands and Their Owners in Galloway, 5 vols., 1870–79. Monthly Rev.: Monthly Review, 1749–1845. Musgrave: Obituary prior to 1800 (as far as Relates to England, Scotland, and Ireland), comp. Sir William Musgrave, ed. Sir George Armytage, 6 vols., 1899–1901. Namier and Brooke: The House of Commons 1754–1790, ed. Sir Lewis Namier and John Brooke, 3 vols., 1964. NBG: Nouvelle biographie générale depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours, ed. J. C. F. Hoefer, 46 vols., 1853–66. NCBEL: The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, 5 vols., 1969–77. New Grove 2: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell, 2001. Notes: JB’s condensed journal. Transcribed conservatively from the MS. OGS: Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland, ed. F. H. Groome, 2nd ed. 1901. Ominous Years: Boswell: The Ominous Years, 1774–1776, ed. Charles Ryskamp and F. A. Pottle, 1963. Oxford DNB: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Brian Harrison, founding ed. Colin Matthew, 2004. Parl. Hist.: The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, 36 vols., 1806–20. Pennant: Thomas Pennant, A Tour in Scotland; MDCCLXIX, 3rd ed., 1774. Phillips: Hugh Phillips, Mid-Georgian London, 1964. Plant: Marjorie Plant, The Domestic Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 1952. Pol. Car.: Frank Brady, Boswell’s Political Career, 1965. Pub. Adv.: The Oracle and Public Advertiser, 1752–94. Reg. Let.: JB’s register of letters sent and received (Yale MS. 251–55). Robertson: George Robertson, A Genealogical Account of the Principal Families in Ayrshire …, 3 vols., 1823–25. Ross: Ian Simpson Ross, Lord Kames and the Scotland of his Day, 1972. SAS: The Statistical Account of Scotland 1791–1799, ed. Sir John Sinclair, reissued in 20 vols. with a new introduction and index in each volume, 1975–83. SBTI: Scottish Book Trade Index. Scotland and Scotsmen: John Ramsay, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Alexander Allardyce, 2 vols., 1888. Scots Mag.: The Scots Magazine, 1739–1817. Scots Peer.: Sir James Balfour Paul, The Scots Peerage, 9 vols., 1904–14. Sea Officers: D. B. Smith, Commissioned Sea Officers of the Royal Navy, 1660–1815, 3 vols, 1954. Sedgwick: The House of Commons 1715–1754, ed. Romney Sedgwick, 2 vols., 1970. Sheldon: Esther K. Sheldon, Thomas Sheridan of Smock-Alley, 1967. SHS: Publications of the Scottish History Society, multiple vols., 1887–. SJ: Samuel Johnson. Skinner: Robert T. Skinner, A Notable Family of Scots Printers, 1927. SRS: Publications of the Scottish Records Society, multiple vols., 1897–. xxvii

CUE TITLES AND ABBREVIATIONS

Taylor & Skinner: Taylor & Skinner’s survey and maps of the roads of North Britain, or Scotland, 1776. Timperley: Loretta Timperley, A Directory of Landownership in Scotland c. 1770, SRS, 1976. Tom Jones, Wesleyan ed.: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, introduction and commentary by Martin C. Battestin, text ed. Fredson Bowers, 2 vols., The Wesleyan Edition of the Works Henry Fielding, 1975. Tristram Shandy, Florida ed.: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, ed. Melvyn New and Joan New, 2 vols., The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, 1978. TS: Thomas Sheridan. Werner: Boswell’s Book of Bad Verse: Love Poems and Other Verses, ed. Jack Werner, 1974. A View of the Edinburgh Theatre: [James Boswell], A View of the Edinburgh Theatre During the Summer Season, 1759 (1760), introduction by David W. Tarbet, Augustan Reprint Society Publication No. 179, 1976. WD: West Digges. Wheatley and Cunningham: Henry B. Wheatley, London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, based on Peter Cunningham, The Handbook of London, 3 vols., 1891. WJT: William Johns[t]on Temple. Whyte: Samuel Whyte, Miscellanea Nova …, 1801. Williamson’s Dir.: Williamson’s Directory for the City of Edinburgh, Canongate, Leith, and Suburbs, 1753 and annually.

xxviii

List of Correspondents ?‘A———’ (?Mrs. James Brooke) †To, 8 May 1761 ANONYMOUS (William Cochrane) From, 21 Feb. 1763 †To, 21 Feb. 1763 BOSWELL, Alexander, Lord Auchinleck †From, to the Duke of Queensberry, 12 May 1762 BUCHAN, Earl of To, 12 Aug. 1761 BUTE, Earl of To, 15 Mar. 1763 From, to the Earl of Eglinton, 26 Mar. 1763 ‘C———’ (?John Cairnie) †From, after 17 Aug. and before 13 Sept. 1762 †From, c. 7 Dec. 1762 CAIRNIE, John †To, before 17 Aug. 1762 †To, 29 Jan. 1763 †From, late Feb. 1763 CAMPBELL, Bruce †From, before 11 May 1763 COCHRANE, Basil †To, Dec. 1762 From, 20 Dec. 1762 †To, 25 and/or 26 July 1763 COLQUHOUN, Katharine †From, c. 10 Dec. 1761 To, 11 Dec. 1761 To, late 1761/early 1762 (MS version) To, revision published Jan. 1762 (Donaldson’s Collection II version) COLQUITT, Edward From, ?24 June 1760 DAVIES, Thomas †To, c. 14 Apr. 1762 DEMPSTER, George †From, to Andrew Erskine, c. 9 May 1761 From, to Andrew Erskine, 2 Aug. 1761 To, 27 Aug. 1761 †From, c. 6–13 Nov. 1761 To, 19 Nov. 1761 †From, to Andrew Erskine, c. 10–20 Jan. 1762

DERRICK, Samuel From, 5 Oct. 1760 †From, ?May 1762 DIGGES, West †To, ?first half of Apr. 1757 From, between 9 and 19 Apr. 1757 To, summer 1759 (after 20 June) To, after 20 Aug. 1759 and before 16 Feb. 1760 †To, 4 Dec. 1762 From, 9 Dec. 1762 †To, 11 Dec. 1762 †To, 18 Dec. 1762 †To, 25 Dec. 1762 From, 29 Dec. 1762 †To, ?on or before 22 Jan. 1763 From, 31 Jan. 1763 †To, ?12 Feb. 1763 From, 18 Feb. 1763 To, undated DONALDSON, Alexander To, 28 July 1761 DRUMMOND, Agatha Home, Lady Kames †To, Dec. 1762 From, 28 Dec. 1762 DUNDAS, Robert (Lord President) †To, 25 and/or 26 July 1763 EGLINTON, Earl of To, c. 7–11 Apr. or 29 Apr.–3 May 1760 (expanded 1761) From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ (JB) to, 25 Sept. 1761 †To, after 24 Mar.–May 1762 †From, ?early Apr.–?early June 1762 †To, ?early Apr.–?early June 1762 †From, ?mid. Apr.–?mid June 1762 †To, ?mid. Apr.–?mid June 1762 From, 25 Nov. 1762 From, 21 Dec. 1762 To, 21 Dec. 1762 From, 22 Dec. 1762 To, ?5 Jan. 1763 From, 5 Jan. 1763 To, before 18 Jan. 1763 From, ?before 18 Jan. 1763

(Letters marked with a dagger [†] are known from various sources to have existed, but the manuscripts are not reported and no printed texts of them have been found.) xxix

LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS

From, 24 Jan. 1763 To, 24 Jan. 1763 To, 7 Feb. 1763 ERSKINE, Andrew To, after mid-May 1761 From, 23 May 1761 From, to George Dempster, ?2 Aug. 1761 To, ?after 2 and before 8 Aug. 1761 To, 25 Aug. 1761 (MS) To, 25 Aug. 1761 (E–B) From, 11 Sept. 1761 To, 14 Sept. 1761 To, 10 Oct. 1761 From, 1 Nov. 1761 To, 17 Nov. 1761 (MS) To, 17 Nov. 1761 (E–B) From, 23 Nov. 1761 To, 2 Dec. 1761 (MS) From, 2 Dec. 1761 (E–B) From, 3 Dec. 1761 To, 8 Dec. 1761 (MS) To, 8 Dec. 1761 (E–B) To, 12 Dec. 1761 From, 13 Dec. 1761 From, 16 Dec. 1761 To, 17 Dec. 1761 (MS) To, 17 Dec. 1761 (E–B) To, 9 Jan. 1762 (MS) To, 9 Jan. 1762 (E–B) From, 10 Jan. 1762 From, 20 Jan. 1762 To, 22 Jan. 1762 (MS) To, 22 Jan. 1762 (E–B) From, 7 Feb. 1762 From, 8 Feb. 1762 To, 10 Feb. 1762 To, 11 Feb. 1762 To, 16 Feb. 1762 (MS) To, 16 Feb. 1762 (E–B) From, 2 Mar. 1762 To, 9 Mar. 1762 (MS) To, 9 Mar. 1762 (E–B) To, 14 Apr. 1762 From, 15 Apr. 1762 To, ?22 Apr. 1762 (MS) To, ?22 Apr. 1762 (E–B) From, 1 May 1762 To, 4 May 1762 †?To, c. 6–8 May 1762 To, 8–9 May 1762 (MS) To, 8–9 May 1762 (E–B) From, 13 May 1762 From, 25 May 1762 To, 27 May 1762

To, 29 May 1762 (MS) To, 29 May 1762 (E–B) To, 1 June 1762 (MS) To, 1 June 1762 (E–B) From, 5 June 1762 To, 8 June 1762 From, ?c. 10–14 June 1762 To, 15 June 1762 To, 18 June 1762 To, 19 June 1762 †?To, c. late June 1762 From, 5 July 1762 From, 6 July 1762 From, 7 July 1762 To, 12 July 1762 To, 23 July 1762 To, 3 Sept. 1762 To, 19 Oct. 1762 From, 28 Oct. 1762 To, 10 Nov. 1762 To, 20 Nov. 1762 To, 26 July 1763 To, undated ?ERSKINE, Janet †From, Aug.–Sept. 1762 FERGUSON, James, of Pitfour †To, 25 and/or 26 July 1763 GALLOWAY, Countess of To, after 21 Aug. 1758 GENTLEMAN, Francis From, Feb. 1760 GORDON, John (styled Viscount Kenmure) To, c. 16–20 Sept. 1762 GRANT, [?Rev. James] †To, c. 14 Dec. 1762 ‘HOME, Miss’ (Jean Home) To, before Nov. 1761 ‘HUME, David’ (i.e., George Demspter and Andrew Erskine) †From, 15 Feb. 1763 HUNTER, Robert From, 23 July 1763 ?LIGONIER, General the Viscount †To, c. 14 Dec. 1762 ‘LOUISA’ (?Mrs. Lewis; ?Anne [Lewis] Standen) To, 3 Feb. 1763 LOVE, James (James Dance) †To, c. 1–c. 19 Sept. 1758 MACDONALD, Sir James, of Sleat From, 14 Apr. 1763 MACFARLANE, Lady Elizabeth †From, ?first half of Apr. 1762 †To, 22 Apr. 1762

xxx

LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS

MACKINTOSH, Anne To, between 12 and 25 Aug. 1761 From, 22 Sept. 1761 To, 5 Oct. 1761 MCQUHAE, William †To, 29 Sept. 1762 From, 7 Dec. 1762 †To, c. 9 Dec. 1762 To, 16 Dec. 1762 From, 27–30 Dec. 1762 †From, c. mid-Feb. 1763 †To, from Alexander Macdonald, after 24 Feb. and before ?21 Mar. 1763 †To, 26 Feb. 1763 †To, after 2 and before 26 Apr. 1763 †From, between 17 and 23 Apr. 1763 From, 26 Apr. 1763 To, c. 14 June 1763 From, 30 June 1763 To, 26 July 1763 MILLER, Thomas (Lord Justice Clerk) †To, 25 and/or 26 July 1763 NORTHUMBERLAND, Countess of To, 1 Apr. 1761 From, 26 June 1761 †From, c. 16 Dec. 1761 †From, to an unidentified correspondent, c. 16 Dec. 1761 †From, between 24 Dec. 1761 and 9 Jan. 1762 To, 6 Jan. 1762 †To ‘Madam’ and ‘your L[adyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland), ?after 22 Mar. and before 14 Apr. 1762 †From ‘Madam’ and ‘your L[adyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland), c. 1–7 Apr. 1762 To ‘Madam’ and ‘your L[adyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland), 14 Apr. 1762 †From (with the Earl of Northumberland), 3 Dec. 1762 To, 27 Dec. 1762 †To, before 30 December 1762 To, between 15 and 19 Feb. 1763 †From, 20 Feb. 1763 †To, 8 Mar. 1763 To, after 11 and before 18 Apr. 1763 From, 22 Apr. 1763 OGILVIE, John †To, ?Sept.–Oct. 1762 From, 16 Nov. 1762 †To, between 16 Nov. 1762 and 23 June 1763

From, 23 June 1763 PRINGLE, Sir John To, ?between 22 and 29 June 1763 To, ?between 22 and 29 June 1763 (second draft) PUBLIC ADVERTISER †To, after 15 and before 18 Apr. 1763 QUEENSBERRY, Duke of From, to Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, 24 May 1762 †To, after 25 Nov. and before 6 Dec. 1762 †To, ?16 Dec. 1762 From, 22 Dec. 1762 REID, George †To, 16 Dec. 1762 ?RICHARDSON, Joseph To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’, 10 Feb. 1762 SALT, Samuel (Certificate for JB’s Entry to the Inner Temple) From, 19 Nov. 1761 ‘SCOTLAND, A Gentleman of’ (JB) From, c. Nov. 1761 ‘SCOTT, Mr.’ (?George Lewis Scott) To, ?autumn 1760 SEVENTY-FIRST REGIMENT OF FOOT, The †From, to Andrew Erskine, after 19 June and before 12 July 1762 SHEPHERD, Richard To, 25 Apr. 1763 From, 25 Apr. 1763 SHERIDAN, Thomas To, 27 Sept. 1761 From, 21 Nov. 1761 †To, 24 Nov. 1761 To, 25 or 26 Nov. 1761 †From, c. 2 Dec. 1761 To, 9 Dec. 1761 To, 9 Jan. 1762 †From, ?Jan.–Feb. 1762 To, 27 Feb. 1762 SMOLLETT, Tobias †From, between 24 Dec. 1761 and 9 Jan. 1762 SOAPING CLUB, The From, between ?June 1760 and early 1762 STERNE, Laurence To, after 7 Apr. 1760 and ?before Oct. 1761 †To, after 25 Sept. 1761 THORNTON, Bonnell †From, c. 23 May 1763

xxxi

LIST OF CORRESPONDENTS

†To, 24 May 1763 †To, ?c. 5 or 6 June 1763 From, ?c. 6 or 7 June 1763 UNIDENTIFIED To ‘a friend’, before Jan. 1762 †To ‘Madame’, 12 July 1762 †To, late Jan. 1763

To ‘Sir ———’, undated (?after 1768) WHITE, Jean †To, before 24 Feb. 1763 YORK, Edward, Duke of To, c. 1 Nov. 1761 (and before Mar. 1762)

xxxii

Introduction CURIOUSITY is the most prevalent of all our passions; and the curiousity for reading letters, is the most prevalent of all kinds of curiousity. Had any man in the three kingdoms found the following letters, directed, sealed, and adorned with postmarks,—provided he could have done it honestly—he would have read every one of them; or, had they been ushered into the world, from Mr. Flexney’s shop, in that manner, they would have been bought up with the greatest avidity. As they really once had all the advantages of concealment, we hope their present more conspicuous form will not tend to diminish their merit. They have made ourselves laugh; we hope they will have the same effect upon other people. (Introductory ‘Advertisement’ by Boswell to E–B, 1763)

THIS volume, although ninth in the Yale Research Edition of Boswell’s correspondence, is essentially the first chronologically in its coverage of his life and times.1 It offers the most comprehensive collection of the letters of Boswell and his circle of friends and acquaintances during this crucial formative phase—a period which left permanent marks on his writing style and his discursive techniques as well as on his personality.2 Boswell wrote the first letter included in this volume in April 1757, when he was a timid seventeen-year-old virgin in Edinburgh, knowing few friends, still struggling through courses at university, uncertain of which career he wished to pursue or might be forced to pursue, and not yet a published writer. The last letter in the volume—composed on 26 July 1763—reveals a vastly more experienced and polished (and somewhat more mature) Boswell, on the brink of embarking from Britain for postgraduate legal education in Utrecht (1763–64), and looking forward to his Grand Tour of Europe

1 Three items from 1754–56, which antedate this volume’s period, will be published in the research edition of JB’s family correspondence, forthcoming in this series. 2 Additional material from JB’s earliest years appears in the following: The Correspondence of James Boswell and John Johnston of Grange (‘Corr. 1’, ed. Ralph S. Walker, 1966), The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple 1756–1795, Volume I: 1756–1777 (‘Corr. 6’, ed. Thomas Crawford, 1997), and The Correspondence of James Boswell With James Bruce and Andrew Gibb, Overseers of the Auchinleck Estate (‘Corr. 8’, ed. Nellie Pottle Hankins and John Strawhorn, 1998), all of which cover the years most relevant to this volume in varying depth. The volume of JB’s family correspondence will contain letters relating to the brief but significant and poignant battle of wills between JB and his father, Lord Auchinleck, over his behaviour and future career. It will also include the letters to and from Euphemia Erskine, Lady Auchinleck. The research edition of JB’s correspondence with the Scots literati will contain for the period 1757–63 the correspondence of JB with Sir David Dalrymple, later Lord Hailes. Nevertheless, even after those volumes are edited and published, this volume will remain the largest printed collection of letters from this period of JB’s life.

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(1764–66). In the intervening years, Boswell explored possible careers (the army, the law, the life by the pen), considered possible wives, and collected a series of mentors and role models whom he might emulate and whom he counselled himself to ‘be like’. Advancing from his reputation as a ‘cub’ among the celebrated wits of Edinburgh and London, he published apprentice-work of poems, letters, and critical pamphlets, and composed even more pages of drafts for plays and a collection of his own verse. He also gained most of the friends and acquaintances with whom he corresponds in this volume, several of whom remained friends through many or all of the subsequent decades from 1763 until his death in 1795. Readers of the Yale trade edition volume, Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763,3 will already know the latter part of this period fairly well, for it is certainly among, and since its publication in 1950 perhaps first among, those segments of Boswell’s journal most frequently presented to the general public and to university undergraduates.4 Boswell’s youth has not, however, always been so well-known. The Victorians and Edwardians knew almost nothing of young Boswell, except what they learned from the few precious letters to and from William Johnson Temple found in France by accident in 1837, augmented by further finds from 1837 to 1839, and first published in 1856.5 Chauncey Brewster Tinker based his Young Boswell on the meagre selection of the early letters which were available in 1922.6 Skimming fairly quickly over these years, Tinker devoted most of his book to the period from 1764 to 1769. After Tinker came the deluge of documents recovered from Malahide and Fettercairn. Frederick A. Pottle’s James Boswell: The Earlier Years 1740–1769 (1966), blessed (or cursed) as it was with this flood of documents, was more generous to the years 1757–63 (granting them ninety pages, over a fifth of the book). Yet it was still needful for Pottle to survey this period with some speed to reach his biographer’s goal of Boswell’s marriage in 1769, an event which he set as the end of the ‘Earlier Years’. By necessity, five of the earlier years (summer 1757–summer 1762) were left as something of a ‘dark age’ of Boswell’s life, or at best a ‘twilight of speculation’, with the 1762 Harvest Jaunt journal finally offering more secure footholds.7 The present volume therefore provides an essential sourcebook for the study of the largely unknown young Boswell, the Boswell who existed before his first fully-

3 A portion of the diary which JB himself entitled the ‘Journal from the time of my leaving Scotland 15 November, 1762’. 4 The popularity of the London Journal 1762–1763 has resulted in a fairly widespread familiarity with the text among students and the general public, but created an impression among less careful readers that it presented the complete story of JB’s life during these years, which was not its editor’s intention. The perception itself presumably emanates from the misapprehension that the Yale ‘trade edition’ of the journals was the ‘complete Boswell Edition’ and that the project had ‘finished’ editing the papers when the trade series concluded in 1989. 5 For the remarkable story of the fortuitous recovery of many of the Boswell–Temple letters and their subsequent publication, see Corr. 6, pp. xxxi–xxxiii. 6 Tinker’s Letters of James Boswell (2 vols., 1924) recorded only twenty-one letters for this period, although admittedly he resolved to publish only letters by JB rather than to him. 7 Pottle wrote that ‘With the Journal of the Harvest Jaunt [Sept.–Nov. 1762] we emerge from the twilight of speculation into the full sunlight of Boswellian self-revelation’ (Earlier Years, p. 92).

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written journals, which he wrote from autumn 1762 to autumn 1763. The period from summer 1757 to summer 1762 holds the distinction of being the least well known of the major phases of his adult life, since no fully-written journals recording the period before autumn 1762 have survived, with the possible exception of some published theatrical diarizing of June–August 1759.8 The childhood period from 1740 to 1756 is even more obscure, but unlike the years 1757–62 during which Boswell first amassed and exercised his arsenal of literary techniques, the surviving juvenilia from 1740 to 1756 give only a few helpful clues to his future literary career.9 The present volume will also serve as a mirror to be held up to the forthcoming volume of Boswell’s earliest journals. Like the earliest correspondence with Temple and John Johnston of Grange, the letters in this volume supply accounts of Boswell’s behaviour that vary, at times dramatically, from his journal’s records. Admittedly, the letters often present material synoptic with the journals. Letters frequently confirm or even duplicate his accounts of events in the 1762 Harvest Jaunt journal, which he wrote for his friends William McQuhae and Grange, or the 1762–63 London journal, which he sent in packets to Johnston.10 Furthermore, as noted in the headnotes, certain of the letters only survive in the transcriptions which Boswell made into his London journal, and in those cases letters and journal could be argued to have fused into one entity. As the originals of these letters are not known to have survived, we cannot know if Boswell ‘improved’ the letters when he transcribed them into the London journal so that Johnston might read them. Yet at other times, this volume’s letters, with its wider variety of authors and audiences, make for accounts of events from a variety of perspectives other than Boswell’s, and enrich the understanding of the analogous journals. The period 1757–63 is crucial for the understanding of Boswell as an author, because it is one in which he developed several of his most characteristic techniques. First, he revived his efforts at the dramatic dialogue or ‘writing in scenes’,11 an outgrowth of his early attempts at play-writing,12 and a technique which he would ultimately use more skilfully in the Life of Johnson (1791). Second, 8 See To James Love, c.1–c.19 Sept. 1758, which explains JB’s first known series of journal-letters, not reported. The theatrical diary originally published in 1760 has been reprinted (see A View of the Edinburgh Theatre During the Summer Season, 1759, introduction by David W. Tarbet, Augustan Reprint Society Publication No. 179, 1976). Its attribution has not been fully established. 9 His boyhood ‘Commonplace Book’ (c. 1750), now at the Folger Library, was perhaps the most predictive of the juvenilia. In that commonplace book, he kept notes on his reading and also pasted crests of notable families. 10 Frederick A. Pottle, ed., London Journal, 1762–1763, Together With Journal Of My Jaunt, Harvest, 1762, deluxe edition, 1951. 11 See, for example, the ‘Dialogue at Child’s’ series in the 1762–1763 London journal. The dialogues at Child’s were, however, only a handful of the several conversations JB included in that London journal, in which he also adapted dialogues, conversations, and scenes involving Eglinton, Lady Northumberland, Johnson, ‘Louisa’, and ‘Lady Mirabel’. His earlier 1762 Harvest Jaunt journal also made use of the dialogue form. 12 To ‘Mr. Scott’ (?George Lewis Scott), ?autumn 1760, and nn. 2, 5, 9 describe JB’s unfinished ballad opera Give Your Son His Will, 1760. Another and perhaps earlier fragment of a play, tentatively dated to 1755 (Yale MS. M 215), has four pages of dialogue.

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seeking a self-deprecating method by which he could shield his poetry and even his prose from the arrows of censure in the salons and reviews, he experimented with the Shandeian burlesque presentation of a serious endeavour. He struck such a Shandeian pose in his Observations, Good or Bad, Stupid or Clever, Serious or Jocular, on Squire Foote’s … The Minor. By a Genius (1761), and brought Erskine and Dempster into the game in Elegy on the Death of An Amiable Young Lady (1761).13 He continued to spoof his own ‘genius’ in many of his later letters. Such pre-emptive self-deprecation would also characterize his later comic poems such as the Ode by Dr. Samuel Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, Upon Their Supposed Approaching Nuptials (1784), and the fatuously-framed No Abolition of Slavery (1791), in which the anti-abolitionist is cast as the pleading lover. The spirit of apparently selfdeprecatory jests also suffused political prose with serious import such as his A Letter to the People of Scotland on the Alarming Attempt to Infringe the Articles of Union (1785). His various collections of anecdotes known as ‘Boswelliana’ featured several jests at his own expense.14 Third, he also cultivated his habit of journalistic intervention in much-discussed public matters, which led him to write poems on affairs of state such as ‘Gilbert Long-nose: A Scotch Character’ and ‘Lord B.’s riding’ and pamphlets such as Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira (1763).15 That strategy of selecting high-profile people and events of the day for his themes would lead him to The Essence of the Douglas Cause (1767), inspired his first major book, the Account of Corsica (1768), and motivated the two ‘Letters’ to the ‘People of Scotland’ (1783, 1785). Fourth, he cloaked his name under pseudonyms, a ruse of disguised authorship which he continued in his later journalism.16 This led to a more ethically dubious fifth technique, the malign art of ‘invention’ or hoax, which novelistically interwove counterfeit incidents into authentic news.17 By the end of the 1760s, he had hoaxed the readers of the London

13 See the two burlesque letters prefatory toJB’s Elegy on the Death of An Amiable Young Lady (1761): From GD to AE, 2 Aug. 1761, From AE to GD, ?2 Aug. 1761, cf. To Donaldson, 28 July 1761. The poems in the pamphlet are not in any manner burlesques, yet the letters prefatory from AE and GD are almost entirely in jest. Such a strategy disarmed critics, to some extent, by suggesting that if the verses were judged deficient, then JB could claim that he had intended them to be humorously flawed. 14 JB’s 1785 letter to the Edinburgh Advertiser (xliv. 413) repented of the extravagance of the humour in his ‘Letter to the People of Scotland’ from earlier that year (see Lit. Car. pp. 105–112). 15 For the poems mentioned, see To AE, 26 July 1763, nn. 12–13. See also To an unidentified correspondent in Edinburgh, late Jan. 1763, which discusses Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, 1763. 16 JB’s pseudonyms in this period included ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’, the ‘Cub’, ‘B——— of Soapers the King’, ‘Mr. Genius’, and ‘Lycidas’. Later pseudonyms included ‘A Country Gentleman’, ‘a Banker’, ‘Humilis’, ‘Antiquarius’, ‘Probus’, ‘Tribunus’, ‘An Honest Yorkshireman’, ‘Velox’, ‘Jacob Giles’, ‘Scotus’, ‘Humanus’, ‘Consultor’, ‘Philocorsus’, ‘Lælius’, ‘Borealis’, ‘A North Briton’, ‘Newark’, ‘A Royalist’, ‘Classicus’, ‘A Southern Soul’, and ‘J.B.’ (Lit. Car. pp. 236–48). 17 ‘So it seems You too have heard that I am going to be married and must forsooth display a pretty vein of Jocularity upon the occasion. Did you realy beleive it?’ (To AE, 17 Nov. 1761 [MS]). See also one of Boswell’s most outrageous hoaxes, From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ (James Boswell), c. Nov. 1761, which prefaced his Ode to Tragedy. From ‘David Hume’, 15 Feb. 1763 (the fake ‘Hume’ letter ) demonstrates that Boswell’s friends also practised this form.

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Chronicle with fabricated apocrypha to authentic events such as the Rousseau-Hume quarrel, the revolution in Corsica, and the Douglas Cause, being always careful in his own files of the newspaper to distinguish ‘fact’ from ‘invention’.18 Sixth, he avidly blurred the divide between public and private letters. Such a line was commonly crossed in dedicatory epistles, but more often seen as inviolate in more personal letters or verses originally presented only in manuscript.19 As a rule, Georgian polite culture felt a strong animosity against publication of the letters of the living, especially the young and impertinent living. Therefore, when Boswell recorded in a brief ‘History of Erskine & Boswell’s Letters Published Tuesday 12 April 1763’ the reactions to the indiscretion of publishing his youthful correspondence, the individuals quoted were mainly shocked or disapproving (less frequently, they were bemused or indulgent).20 He also began the incorporation of letter into journal in these years, a seventh method which would become one of the defining techniques of the Life of Johnson. Eighth, in his reshaping of his correspondence with Erskine into E–B, in which he novelistically rearranged events in time to create a more seamless epistolary narrative, he pioneered his strategy of a literary reshaping of reality better to suit his narrative. He would exercise this technique in a much more disciplined way in his revisions of his original private diaries for publication as Journal of a Tour to Corsica, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and the Life of Johnson. During this period, Boswell, like Rasselas, faced the ‘choice of life’. By turns he imagined himself soldier, courtier, critic, man of the theatre, genteel wit, author, idle urban buck, Roman Catholic priest or monk, Member of Parliament, English lawyer, and Scottish lawyer, the last of these careers being accepted eventually (in 1766) and only unwillingly.21 The letters and footnotes give a full account of the Guards scheme, intended to gain Boswell a purchase-free ensign’s commission in the Foot Guards, as well as of the English law scheme, designed to allow Boswell to study at one of the Inns of Court. The volume follows these schemes from their hopeful origins to their depressing collapses. Although he was still able to dream of careers other than that of an Edinburgh lawyer and laird of Auchinleck, the decades after he joined the Faculty of Advocates were far more constricted, preserving only the options of M.P., lawyer in England, diplomat, and part-time author as open possibilities. Boswell, or his father, had closed the other doors. But the existence of an income from the estate of Auchinleck, however small, would, he imagined, allow him to pursue an avocational authorship in which he retained the social position of a modestly wealthy gentleman.

18

Lit. Car. pp. 236–45. Examples in this volume include the Scots Mag. publication of From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ (JB), 25 Sept. 1761; the publication of a letter of dedication To the Duke of York, c. 1 Nov. 1761 (and before Mar. 1762) in Cub; and the entire project of E–B. 20 ‘History of Erskine & Boswell’s Letters Published Tuesday 12 April 1763’ (Yale MS. M 142.) 21 ‘Boswell had a great aversion at the law but forced himself to enter upon that laborious Profession, in compliance with the anxious desire of his Father for whom He had the greatest regard. After putting on the gown He said with great good-humour to his brother Advocates. Gentlemen I am prest into the service here. But I have observed that a Prest Man either by sea or Land after a little time does just as well as a Volunteer’ (‘Boswelliana’, Hyde Collection, p. 90). 19

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More than just a collection of documents about Boswell’s youthful life and authorial development, this volume provides a remarkable literary and historical record of other people and events in the Anglo-Scottish milieu of mid-Georgian Britain. As with previous volumes in the series, it contains both letters sent by Boswell and received by him. Including letters to Boswell as well as letters from him creates a concordant discord, a medley of differing voices and topics. Such a collection stands in contrast to the unified vision of a journal, or an edition of a series of letters by one woman or man in which the subject’s letters are printed without the replies, or even an edition which presents a long continuous series of correspondence between two close friends. Sometimes, others’ visions of Boswell contradict or clash with Boswell’s carefully crafted façades, rendering more complex and conflicted the picture that Boswell’s autobiographical 1762–63 London journal—which was itself generated as an epistolary serial of letterpackets to John Johnston of Grange—has bequeathed its modern readers (Section II, below, offers specific illustrations). Instead of the one authorial voice of the journals, the letters in this volume represent the voices of thirty-five distinctive and diverse individuals, seven of whom are heavily represented in the volume by multiple letters. The letters were mostly written quickly, without substantial revision, and are therefore more spontaneous and less measured than the polished journals. Only those letters to and from Erskine which were revised for publication—different from letters to other correspondents because Boswell carefully and somewhat deviously refashioned them into a book—approach the high level of deliberate revision to which Boswell aspired in his fully-written-out 1762–63 journal.22 The correspondence in the present volume contains one-hundred-and-fiftyfive surviving letters to and from the thirty-five diverse individuals. Of the surviving letters, one dates from 1757, one from 1758, two are from 1759, seven from 1760, forty–three from 1761, sixty-nine from 1762, and twenty-seven from 1763. There are a total of two-hundred-and-thirty-five letters either printed or described in ‘not reported’ minutes in this volume. Indeed, the editorial reconstructions of items of ‘not reported’ correspondence in this volume reveal an even wider world.23 The editors’ descriptions of seventy-eight ‘not reported’ letters draw on evidence of a minimum of twenty-one additional correspondents whom Boswell cultivated in these years. The major correspondents in the volume are Andrew Erskine (seventy-one surviving letters, several of these revised versions for publication, two more not reported); the Earl of Eglinton (thirteen surviving letters, five more not reported), West Digges (eight surviving letters, seven more not reported), the Countess of Northumberland (seven letters, nine more not reported), William McQuhae (seven surviving letters, seven more not reported), Thomas Sheridan (six surviving letters, three more not reported); George Dempster (three surviving

22 Among the many exceptions to this rule are the poems and magazine pieces such as the Scots Mag. letter to Eglinton (see From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ [JB] to the Earl of *** [the Earl of Eglinton], 25 Sept. 1761). 23 ‘Not reported’ letters are those for which strong evidence that they existed survives, but for which no text has been located in either MS or print.

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letters, three more not reported), Katharine Colquhoun (three surviving letters, one more not reported), and Lady Anne Mackintosh (three surviving letters). Erskine far outnumbers the other correspondents; even if one subtracts the thirteen of his letters which appear a second time in their text as revised by Boswell, fifty-eight remain. Countering the image of a ‘London’ Boswell—one of the consequences of the popularity of the trade edition of the 1762–63 London journal—of forty-nine letters by Boswell in this volume which explicitly name the place of writing, around eighty-eight per cent were written in Scotland rather than England.24 Boswell wrote approximately twenty-five from the family town house in Parliament Close in Edinburgh, fifteen from the family estate at Auchinleck, one each from the country houses of Cassillis House, Ayrshire, and Kames House, Berwickshire where he was staying as a guest, and (although this last is in question) one from Strathaven, Lanarkshire. Boswell did already in 1760–62 correspond assiduously with correspondents dwelling in London, such as Lady Northumberland, the Earl of Eglinton, and Thomas Sheridan. He also received much of his post from the metropolis of Edinburgh and its outliers (e.g., from Edward Colquitt at Fountainbridge or West Digges at Bonnington), and he did, despite his love of London, recognize the allure of Edinburgh as a place which offered all the ‘variety and hurry of a Town’.25 Furthermore, he received most of his post in 1760–62 from provincial locales ranging from Glasgow (Gentleman); to Kames, Berwickshire (Home); to Kellie Castle, Fifeshire (Erskine); to New Tarbet, Dumbartonshire (Erskine); to Moy Hall, Inverness-shire (Mackintosh); and to Killarney in Ireland (Derrick). Boswell himself posted letters to most of those places, as well as, presumably, to locations such as Fort George (Erskine) and Kenmure Castle, Kirkcudbright (Gordon). Cultivating his ‘provincial’ Scots and Irish friends and allies through letters continued even after Boswell’s departure for London. The period from November 1762 to 1763 contained letters to and from Boswell from Edinburgh (Digges, Cochrane, Lady Kames, Hunter, Cairnie, Dundas, Miller, Pitfour), as well as from Scottish towns and villages such as Midmar in South Abderdeenshire (Ogilvie), and Treesbank and Barquharrie in Ayrshire (Reid, McQuhae). Furthermore, he corresponded with ‘provincials’ in distant parts of England such as Oxford (Macdonald, Shepherd), Amesbury, Wiltshire (Queensberry), and Morpeth, Northumberland (Erskine). Even a location seemingly as close to London and Westminster as Syon House, Middlesex (Lady Northumberland), given the nature of distance and the smallness of even the greatest metropolitan conurbations in the eighteenth century, was still considered a country residence in the 1760s. The

24 The figure given is provisional. It would be subject to modification by addition of letters for which a place of writing could be definitively inferred. Yet the general conclusion—that the bulk of the surviving letters written by JB during this period were written from Scotland—would almost certainly be unmodified. 25 ‘I have been in Town about a Week—which I am happy at. For I do not like the Country.’ (To AE, 17 Nov. 1761 [MS]); ‘I realy have a very uncommon Distaste of a rural life.… I have acquired so strong a relish for the variety and hurry of a Town’ (To AE, ?22 Apr. 1762 [MS]).

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predominance in this period of Scottish over English letters does not arise because of a greater need to write to the distant than to the nearby. After all, in London, Boswell showed himself fully capable of writing letters to his walking-distance neighbours within metropolitan London, such as Eglinton, Northumberland, Bute, and Pringle, and receiving local post from Cochrane and Thornton. It was because even at an early age, Boswell saw Britain with a double vision. Even while feverish with enthusiasm for London, and focused on the road leading to the megalopolis, he always remained committed to his countrymen back home, and arguably lived his London life at least in part to impress a Scottish audience. The road leading home to Scotland was also a welcome sight for him, even if he gave pride of place in his dreams to the road leading towards London. He refuted Samuel Johnson thus. The category of ‘letter’ in this volume includes a wide range of texts, some of which fit traditional taxonomies, but some of which expand the boundaries outwards to recognize the diversity of eighteenth-century epistolary practices. The high number of ‘public-private’ letters which Boswell composed in this period muddies the common theoretical distinction of a public-versus-private divide, a schema which would differentiate private manuscript letters and other personal documents from works intended for publication. Most famous letter-writers composed their letters as private manuscript communications and only afterwards published them, usually with the consent or collaboration of the other party to the correspondence. The letters between Erskine and Boswell published in E–B originated in that manner, and presumably the Irish travel letters of Samuel Derrick did as well. Nonetheless, in other cases, correspondents sent private letters to the press without the knowledge of the recipient. Examples in this volume include Boswell’s letter to Eglinton in the Scots Magazine, and his letter dedicatory to the Duke of York, George III’s brother. The duke’s angry reaction revealed the dangers of taking such liberties with others’ privacy, particularly the privacy of men of high birth. The dedicatory letter represents an unusual form of letter, but as Gentleman’s dedication to Oroonoko (see From Gentleman, February 1760) and Boswell’s to the Cub (see To Edward, Duke of York, c. 1 November 1761) demonstrate, the epistle dedicatory in verse or prose continued to provide a method either of seeking or rewarding favour, or inviting or honouring friendship. The editors have included all of the verse epistles as well, as they were both poems and letters, albeit a form of letter which has become nearly extinct. Customarily, writers shared their epistolary social verse—of which many examples occur in this volume—publicly in readings in houses or salons, and only later perhaps considered printing them: Boswell had read his verses on Eglinton to Eglinton at Newmarket. Other verse epistles would have first been seen by their recipient when printed in an anthology such as Donaldson’s Collection. Inclusion of verse epistles by Boswell, Erskine, Lady Mackintosh, and Gentleman reveals the interest in the social contexts and uses of poetry in eighteenth-century Britain. As Boswell and Erskine both aspired in their youth to be poets, the edition also offers a glimpse into the styles and manners of poetry pursued by ambitious young ‘geniuses’ in the Age of Sentiment. Nested within this edition of manuscript letters is the first full critical edition of the unabridged text of Letters Between The Honourable Andrew Erskine, and xl

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James Boswell, Esq. (1763), Boswell’s first book-length publication, and the first of his publications overtly to proclaim his authorship.26 Although all of the E–B letters appear in their entirety, the editors have altered the sequence in which Boswell published them. As he re-ordered certain of the letters to improve their narrative sequence, the strictly chronological flow of the edition could only be preserved by moving them to the order in which Boswell and Erskine originally wrote them. (As the editors preserve the roman numerals which Boswell gave the letters in the printed text, readers who wish to read E–B in its published sequence of Letters I–XLII will be able to do so with relative ease.) This edition therefore aspires, as one of its central purposes, to make E–B—a book essential to understanding Boswell’s authorial development—available to readers and researchers. The text of E–B in this volume stands as the culmination of several previous attempts to edit this work. George Birkbeck Hill published Boswell’s Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine and His Journal of a Tour To Corsica in 1879, with several excisions and few footnotes beyond Boswell’s own.27 Tinker prepared his 1924 edition of Boswell’s Letters still ignorant of the survival of the manuscripts of many of the letters in E–B, manuscripts which proved that the letters were indeed originally sent through the post. Lacking the manuscript evidence, he pronounced that ‘After long hesitation, I have excluded the rather foolish letters to Andrew Erskine … because they were written with an eye single to the printing-press, and are not, in any true sense, messages’.28 The later discoveries of the letters showed his assumption to have been unfounded. Charles H. Bennett’s attempt to mend Hill’s ‘considerably abridged’ edition and to remedy the defects of its ‘very scanty’ annotation resulted in his 1933 Yale dissertation. Bennett formed the text of his dissertation using quite literally a cutand-paste of negative photostats of the rare original, interleaved with his own notes. David Hankins’s 1964 Indiana University dissertation (upon which this edition is in part based) drew freely on Bennett’s work, and collected large portions of Boswell’s early correspondence for the years 1757–66, but omitted those published Erskine–Boswell letters for which manuscript alternatives survived.29 The existence of a modern critical edition of E–B will aid research on the epistolary form (in fiction as well as reality), and will encourage comparison with

26 He had previously published anonymous pamphlets (containing insufficient pages to be regarded as books) and contributed to an anthology. 27 Hill praised the text as often ‘Lively and amusing’ (p. viii). However, his text contains several lengthy excisions, especially of those verses which he deemed ‘not worth reprinting’ (see editorial footnotes to pp. 9, 25, 62, 77, 78). Bennett traced ten separate abridgements, including deletions Hill made but did not explain to readers (see Bennett, p. xxxv). 28 Letters JB, p. i. JB’s was hardly the only famous correspondence conducted with a view to posterity: Cicero, Pliny the Younger, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Lord Chesterfield, and Horace Walpole were among those who had done likewise. JB presumably thought himself to be working within that tradition. 29 ‘My greatest debt in this edition is certainly to the late Charles H. Bennett whose work on the Andrew Erskine correspondence was virtually completed before his death. My task in the Erskine–Boswell correspondence has been chiefly putting his notes in order. The accuracy of his annotation and his insight into both Boswell and Erskine have set a standard I have found it hard to maintain throughout the rest of the edition’ (Hankins, i. iv–v; see also the Acknowledgements, p. xvi above).

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Boswell’s later experiments in restructuring time and narrative in Corsica (1768), Hebrides (1785), and the Life of Johnson (1791). I. The Correspondence in Context This edition annotates its material with an eye to placing the personal events of Boswell and his circle of friends, relations, and acquaintances in the wider historical context of the events of the period. Because of their sheer number and catholic expanse of topics, the letters provide a wide-ranging account of their era. They appeared during a tumultuous and formative epoch for Britain nationally and for Boswell personally. As so much of Boswell’s conversation and correspondence was topical, his personal experiences often dovetailed with issues current in the wider society, and with the experiences of his correspondents. The footnotes in this volume would be less numerous and less extensive had the letters been less heavily filled with allusion, or less densely packed with references to contemporary people, books, and events. Militarily, the Seven Years’ War appeared almost lost in the years of ‘defeat’ (1754–55) and ‘failure’ (1756–57), but began to turn the corner in 1758. Seemingly overwhelmingly won in the Annus Mirabilis of 1759 (a stunning set of gains further consolidated in 1760), but then stagnating 1761–62 into a ‘vexed victory’, the conflict finally ended with a whimper in the unloved Treaty of Paris of February 1763.30 The war is a fairly constant theme, with the poeticallylamented death of the Countess of Galloway’s son at Ticonderoga, Dempster’s agitation for a Scottish militia, Lt. Erskine’s life of leisure as a gentleman-poet in uniform at Fort George, and Boswell’s own quest to gain a commission as an ensign in the Guards with the help of his correspondents Eglinton, Bute, Lady Northumberland, and Queensberry. Boswell’s own cycle of combat against his father, a brief period of glory among the Edinburgh and London theatre folk, critics, clubmen, and literati, and its end in an embarrassing peace (in which he traded a life of legal drudgery for two years of tourism) can be seen to comprise a personal adventure which paralleled these international events. Politically, the decades of long-enduring and ‘stable’ administrations for prime ministers, begun in 1721 by Walpole and continued (mostly uninterrupted) by Pelham and Newcastle, collapsed from 1756 onwards. The age of the ‘Great Man’ was supplanted by a decade of dubious contests of jarring proto-parties and aristocratic family factions, witnessing three successive wartime ministerial coalitions of contrary and egotistical men (Pitt the Elder the most contrary and egotistical of them all), climaxing in the brief and embattled ministry of Bute. Political crisis surrounding the restructuring of politics at the accession of George III impinges on these letters in the form of the letters of M.P.’s (Dempster) and dispensers of political patronage (Queensberry, Eglinton, and Bute himself as Prime Minister). Boswell’s own father was a ‘Great Man’ within the Scottish judiciary and Ayrshire county community, and young Boswell desired to benefit

30 This summary of the war’s phases is adapted from Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766, 2001.

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from his influence and ‘pull’ to gain a place in the Guards or the Inns of Court, but at the same time hoped to escape his commands and dominance. Scotland had in 1707 lost its old identity as an independent kingdom, yet had not by 1763 entirely integrated into Britain. Young Boswell’s Scotland constituted a stateless nation with distinctive regional forms of language, church, law, education, and publication—all of which made its inhabitants recognizable by, as well as often resented by, their English neighbours. Those themes appear in this edition in the form of Donaldson’s nationalist collections of poetry (a response to Dodsley’s collection of English poets),31 the discussions of the Church of Scotland’s unique politics, the letters to the great patrons and managers of Scottish society (Queensberry, Bute, Dundas), and the references—many subtle—to Jacobitism. Dynastically, the death of George II after a reign of thirty-three years gave way in 1760 to the reign of his grandson, the youthful but controversial George III, a king freighted with the weight of excessive expectations and hobbled by a rising tide of popular political ferment and paranoia embodied by John Wilkes and the North Briton. One finds within these letters an unusual mixture of Boswell’s correspondence with courtiers representing the ‘King’s Friends’ (Lady Northumberland, Lord Eglinton, the Duke of Queensberry, and even an attempt to befriend the Duke of York, a member of the Royal Family), alongside letters exchanged with ‘patriots’ who agreed with the attacks of Churchill and Wilkes on the Crown’s policies (Dempster, Digges), and in other epistles, some glancing mentions to a defeated Jacobitism in its waning years (Lady Mackintosh). Religiously, the country, despite the contemporary jeremiads against religious indifference and clerical torpor, was awash in sectarian fervour and conflicts between sceptics and believers, including schisms in the Church of Scotland and the rise of evangelical fervour among the methodists in England. Boswell’s own religious life in these years witnessed various forms of revolt against his Church of Scotland upbringing, including forays into Methodism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, Roman Catholicism, Epicureanism (which he learned from Eglinton), Pyrrhonism (which he learned from Hume), and the Qualified Chapel (Juring) Episcopalian worship in Scotland (to which he was introduced by Temple or Grange and in which he was supported by Colquitt).32 Despite his doubts and wanderings, Boswell remained within the national Church of Scotland for the remainder of his life. Although he preferred the rituals of the Church of England when he attended services in England, and although his faith was badly shaken by 31 ‘Donaldson has yet about thirty Six Pages of his second Volume to print.… The different Pieces of which it is composed, are in truth and verity, not all of equal merit. But is not that the case in every Miscelaneous Collection? even in that excellent one published by Mr. Dodsley?’ (To AE, 22 Jan. 1762 [MS]). JB is referring here to Robert Dodsley’s Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748 et seq.). JB would later counsel Donaldson in the landmark 1774 Court of Session cause of Donaldson v. Becket, which determined that literary property and copyright were not perpetual as English publishers asserted, but instead strictly limited in years by the statute of 1709 (Lit. Car. pp. 4–16, 86–101; Mark Rose, Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright, 1995). 32 AE was of the nonjuring Episcopalian sect of dissenters. His denomination had been of the national Church of Scotland before 1688, but after 1689 had been ousted by the new ‘Revolution Kirk’, a Church of Scotland using presbyterian forms of polity and worship.

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Enlightenment freethinkers’ and libertines’ challenges to contemporary orthodoxy, he performed his duty to the Kirk as a son of Auchinleck, and as a lay patron and laird.33 Culturally, the country was awash in an increasing number of forms of entertainment: an avalanche of books and pamphlets, a flood of new shops and consumer goods, a large crop of theatrical productions in Edinburgh and London, a surfeit of clubs, taverns and coffeehouses, and various forms of illegal but nonetheless pervasive prostitution. The general correspondence for 1757–63 is full of references to these and other entertainments. The letters document Boswell attending his Soaping Club, perhaps co-founding a Society of Gentlemen to critique the Edinburgh theatre, and following the accomplished libertine Eglinton to Newmarket, the Catch Club, and the Beefsteak Society. The letters also witness his admiring Sterne at the height of Shandy-mania, receiving descriptions of a tour in Ireland from Derrick, sending issues of the North Briton to Digges in Edinburgh, and arranging a meeting with that arbiter of urbanity, Bonnell Thornton of The Connoisseur. It was in Edinburgh in this period that he began his lifelong romance with the theatre and theatre people, a fascination exemplified in the correspondence with Digges above all, but also with Love, Derrick, Gentleman, ‘Louisa’, and even the elder Sheridan. He also aspired to join the ranks of the ‘wits’ and ‘geniuses’, and found them both in Scotland (see his correspondence with Erskine, Dempster, Hume) and in England (Sheridan, Eglinton, Wilkes, Thornton, Macdonald of Sleat, and Shepherd). To his credit, he was not regarded by these people as a mere celebrity-hunter, but was welcomed by them as a legitimate aspiring writer. Despite his juvenility, his aspiration to become an author was not an empty one. Boswell wrote six pamphlets and a book and contributed several poems to an anthology of verse during these years, and also published several magazine and presumably also newspaper pieces.34 Sexually, the era presented a more muted and more heavily clothed parallel to another, later ‘sixties’ of sexual revolution, and an echo of an earlier era of license in the Restoration. The revolution in sensibility, the post-Richardsonian cult of virtuous womanhood, the strict etiquette of Scottish balls and teas and visits to young ladies, and the refined but often flirtatious world of the salons of the Countess of Northumberland and other fashionable ladies were one part of the picture, and predominate in these letters. Yet they were counterbalanced by the world of Sterne’s snickering doubles-entendres (which inspired much of Boswell’s and Erskine’s naughty-schoolboy punning), the Eglintonian style of libertinage, the frequency of recourse to prostitutes even at risk of the clap, and affairs such as Boswell’s romance with ‘Louisa’. In these years, Boswell began his amorous life in earnest with stormy involvements which often ended in rejection or rancour, affairs of the heart documented in his love letters and poems to young ladies, including Jean Home and Katherine Colquhoun. He also lost his virginity in this period, and began a lifetime of episodically and usually guiltily experiencing illicit sex and infections with gonorrhaea. Indeed, the curing of his 1763 case of the ‘clap’ forms an interesting theme in the letters (including a suggestion from West 33 34

See Corr. 8. Lit. Car. pp. 215–16. xliv

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Digges for a presumably hellishly painful urethral irrigant; see From Digges, 18 February 1763 and n. 6). Yet Boswell, unlike his libertine bad influences Derrick, Digges, and Eglinton, possessed a character which was fundamentally too serious, too rooted in the Church of Scotland’s teachings against fornication, whoring, and even masturbation, to become a complete 1760s buck or rake-hell. In this swirl of social change and ferment, the adolescent James Boswell aged— not without some difficulty—into young adulthood. For Boswell, the period from August 1756 to August 1763 offered a tumultuous conflict, his own personal seven years’ struggle. These years saw the young man trying to establish a place for himself as a ‘North Briton’ or Anglo-Scot, a ‘genius’ among the wits, a published author, a whimsical but not overly debauched rake, lawyer, soldier, politician, courtier, critic, rhetorician, laird’s son and heir, master of the social graces, and a clubbable gentleman. Increasingly restless under the yoke of a father who wanted only that his son become a respectable Edinburgh lawyer and Ayrshire laird married to a local woman of good family, Boswell prematurely rebelled against his father’s plan by escaping to London in 1760. After his humiliating return, the arguments continued until at last his father allowed him an experimental London residence. By the final days at the end of this volume, his father had traded him a Grand Tour in return for a promise to pursue the law as a career. Between those moments lay the metamorphosis recorded in these letters. II. Triumvirs: Andrew Erskine, George Dempster, and Boswell My worthy Father used now & then to upbraid me that I had no freinds. I must take the liberty to think otherwise upon the evidence of facts.… The difference is that my Father formed his freindships very slowly. Whereas I have formed mine quickly. Can I help it, if I find Mankind take an affection for me at once? (Journ. 7 Oct. 1764) The correspondence in this volume, unlike JB’s family correspondence, or his exchanges with Temple, Johnston, or James Bruce, was as often a performative correspondence of self-fashioning and self-promotion as it was an offering of intimate Rousseauistic ‘confessions’. Many of these letters are to ‘Friends’ in the eighteenth-century sense of connections, mentors, role models, providers of social access, procurers, and career allies, rather than the more modern sense of friends as emotional confessors and confederates. Certainly, because of Boswell’s own difficulties in delimiting his circle of friends, any attempt to make invidious comparisons between Boswell’s ‘real’ or ‘sincere’ friends and his mere companions would be difficult and probably anachronistic, particularly for this period of his life. The concept, rhetoric, vocabulary, and definition of male friendship evolved considerably from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, likewise the practice of it, and Boswell’s friendships exemplified those changes which occurred in the latter half of the eighteenth century.35 35 Studies specifically analyzing Boswell’s friendships with men include W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., ‘Foote and a Friend of Boswell’s: a Note on the “Nabob”’, Modern Language Notes, 1942,

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Of the fifty-nine correspondents represented in this volume, Boswell’s 1762–63 London journal described only ‘Honest’ William McQuhae as among his ‘true friends’. In late winter 1763 Boswell attempted to define his truest friends: ‘To these I can unbosom my anxious mind; from these I am sure of sympathy and kindness’. Among the friends in this list McQuhae fell into a select trio with Johnston (‘most strictly’ a ‘true friend’) and Temple (‘also’ a ‘true friend’).36 He varied his definition slightly twenty months later, in autumn 1764, when he contrasted his father’s ‘rational connections’ with his own ‘enthusiasm of affection’. In that journal entry quoted above, he noted that the ‘enthusiasm of affection’ was something which ‘I feel for Temple or for Johnston’.36 Nevertheless, to employ those standards would create excessively narrow boundaries in the definition of friendship, and Boswell himself did not always apply his rule consistently. If Boswell’s inviting a friend to read or be the intended audience of his journal or journal-letters were to be employed as a litmus test, then the number of friends doubles, since six men at this time were in this category. This group of journal recipients or readers is known to have included Love, Dalrymple, McQuhae, Johnston, Erskine, and probably Temple, three of these being correspondents whose exchanges with Boswell appear in this volume.38 This alternative measure of Boswell’s ‘true’ friends might be considered a fairly serviceable indication of those whom he felt he could trust with perilous and occasionally coded secrets.39 lvii. 325–35 and Thomas Crawford, ‘Boswell and the Rhetoric of Friendship’, in Greg Clingham, ed., New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of The Life of Johnson, 1991/93, pp. 19–27 (on Temple), pp. 15–19 (on Johnston), and pp. 11–15 (on Erskine). In that essay, Crawford analyzed JB’s relationships with JJ and WJT, and expanded that group to include AE. 36 Journ. 16 Feb. 1763. The correspondences with JJ and WJT for this period have been printed as Corr. 1 and Corr. 6. 37 Journ. 7 Oct. 1764. 38 Love was the recipient of JB’s 1758 journal-letters, now lost—see To Love (James Dance), c. 1–c. 19 Sept. 1758. To Dalrymple, 22 Mar. 1760 is the only surviving journalletter from JB’s 1760 London visit. McQuhae was one of the two intended readers of Boswell’s 1762 Harvest Jaunt journal, JJ being the other (‘Journal of My Jaunt Harvest 1762’, ‘Introduction’). Johnston, besides being one of the readers of the Harvest Jaunt journal, was also the chief intended recipient and reader of Boswell’s 1762–63 London journal (‘Journal from the time of my leaving Scotland’, ‘Introduction’; see also Corr. 1, pp. 23–107). AE had at least three major links to the 1762–63 London journal. First, AE discussed the dangers of journalizing with JB before he began (‘Journal from the time of my leaving Scotland’, ‘Introduction’). Second, AE read and critiqued part of the 1762–63 journal on 6 Feb. 1763 (Journ. 6 Feb. 1763). Third, JB wrote AE a journal-letter in July 1763, ‘A MINCED PYE of Savoury Ingredients For The Honourable Andrew Erskine’, dated 5–22 July 1763, which will be published in the research edition of JB’s earliest journals, forthcoming in this series. WJT condemned the journal as causing JB to hunt about for eccentric adventures to adorn his journal, distracting him from behaving calmly, studiously, and regularly in his habits and conduct (Journ. 25 May 1763). 39 JB surrounded many of the journals with a great deal of secrecy during these years. Some of the 1761–62 journals were in cipher, not for speed of transcription, but to conceal potentially compromising mentions of names and activities, particularly but not exclusively sexual. A currently undecrypted section of ‘Journal of North Circuit’ May 1761 (J 1), and much of ‘Harvest 1761’ (J 1.1) and the ‘Journal in Edinburgh’ Nov. 1761–Apr. 1762 (J 1.2), are in such ciphers. Even in the non-tachygraphical journals of June–July 1762 (J 1.3), ‘Journal of my jaunt harvest 1762’ (J 2), and the 1762–63 London journal (‘Journal xlvi

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William McQuhae, the only correspondent in this volume who fell into both of these categories, had first met Boswell when McQuhae was a tutor to his brothers. He served Boswell as a counsellor despite his being only three years older. McQuhae resembled the much older Auchinleck estate overseer James Bruce in the role he played: that of a sympathetic guide who offered the alternative of a simple, solid life in opposition to the London dream. On the other hand, the discrepancy between their stations in life—Boswell the future laird and lay patron of Auchinleck, McQuhae the son of a Wigtown magistrate—meant that McQuhae chose to solicit help from the young Boswell in obtaining a parish ministry in the Church of Scotland. McQuhae’s choice of life diametrically opposed Eglinton’s metropolitan libertinism. He represented the case for a life in a rural world vastly duller and greyer than London, but more easy to find one’s place within—and, more importantly, keep one’s place within. Nonetheless, despite McQuhae’s remaining bound by the network of southwestern Lowlands culture, Boswell believed that McQuhae felt ‘in some measure’ the same ‘rich imagination of London’ as he did. McQuhae had less of the glowing blood and agitated felicity at London ‘ideas’ than Temple or Johnston did, but enough to sympathize with rather than ridicule JB’s London scheme.40 McQuhae’s correspondence with Boswell was hamelt and filled with the genuine mundane texture of everyday life in Ayrshire, especially in its discussion of the Reid family (with whom he resided) and his own struggle to earn a parish ministry. However, the intensity of ‘regard’ for McQuhae of which Boswell wrote in the journal entries for 11 Dec. 1762 and 16 Feb. 1763 did not endure in the manner of the life-long friendships with Johnston and Temple.41 Their surviving correspondence is, excepting a businesslike exchange in July 1766, restricted to the years 1762–63. Yet McQuhae approved of Boswell’s journalizing, and offered an important preJohnsonian encouragement for Boswell to continue recording his life in diaries. Precious few of Boswell’s friendships existed in a stable state of ‘close’ versus ‘distant’ friends, or of ‘true’ versus ‘superficial’ friends; most relationships changed from the time of my leaving Scotland’, J 2.1), JB often used code names and even ciphers to denote individuals. See Catalogue, i. 2–3. JB’s use of code sigils and code names, particularly for his lovers, has proven one of the more vexing challenges facing editors of his journals to 1763. The level of access to JB’s genuine thoughts which JJ, WJT, and Bruce obtained from his letters may be evaluated by consulting Corr. 1, Corr. 6, and Corr. 8. 40 In his Journ. of 8 Jan. 1763, he wrote, ‘as we drove along and spoke good english, I was full of rich imagination of London, ideas suggested by the Spectator and such as I could not explain to most People; but which I strongly feel and am ravished with. My blood glows and my mind is agitated with felicity. My freind Temple feels this greatly so does Johnston in some measure also so does Mcquhae’. 41 ‘Mr. Mcquhae also did me much service. He is a Man of good parts, great & accurate knowledge, easiness of manners & goodness of heart. I regard him much’ (Journ. 11 Dec.). ‘I regard [him] much. He has excellent parts, & has had a most accurate Education. He has a good heart fine dispositions, and an agreable vivacity of manners. He had a high relish for the Scenes of active life and a great natural share of spirited Ambition: But considering the uncertaintys & the hazards of a Soldier of fortune he cooly checked his aspiring ideas, determined to embrace a sure competency and live contented as a Country Clergyman … passing his time pretty much to his mind, with the dutys of his station, the pursuit of elegant literature, and the enlivening pleasures of Society which, tho’ not in profusion, are yet to be enjoyed in the country. I regret my want of power to serve such Men as him according to his Merit; however I hope to make him tollerably happy’ (Journ. 26 Feb. 1763). xlvii

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dynamically through the years. In these letters and the parallel journals, he left much evidence of his own processes of thinking and rethinking his friendships from 1757–63, assessing and reassessing. Even the constant friendship with Temple fluctuated perceptibly during these years, as Thomas Crawford has demonstrated.42 Significantly, the half-decade from spring 1758 to spring 1763 which spans most of this volume was a lacuna in Boswell and Temple’s friendship. One excellent case of Boswell’s fluctuating definition of his best friends was the rise and fall of the stock of the actor James Love (a.k.a. James Dance). The first journal Boswell wrote, a series of letters written in September 1758 but now lost, was sent in segments to Love, who was also the first man with whom he shared his journals.43 Boswell wrote in July 1758 that Love was ‘my second best friend [after Temple]; he has not only taste, Genius and learning, but a good heart’.44 Boswell and Love ‘differed’ in a quarrel around late 1759 whose reasons are now unclear.45 Even in May 1761 when Boswell seemingly dismissed Love, declaring him ‘no more my good friend’, the quarrel provided evidence that Love was once his ‘good friend’.46 However, the journal for 1762–63 reported a deepening clash with Love, and by May 1763 Boswell was ‘realy angry with that fellow’.47 Johnston advised Boswell to ‘keep Clear of [Love], and such persons for the future’.48 But by 1769, Love was again ‘My old friend’, and one of Boswell’s publicly-acknowledged ‘acquaintances’.49 Another decline from friendship can be witnessed in the fall from grace of Samuel Derrick, the grub-street poet, drama critic, translator, and travel writer. Derrick’s travel-letter from Killarney to Boswell (see From Derrick, 5 October 1760) was later published in a collection of Irish travelogue letters in 1767, presumably in order to secure the patronage of Boswell and other recipients of the Irish tour letters. Boswell ‘got acquainted’ with Derrick in London in the spring of 1760. Willing to serve as ‘his introductor into “many colour’d life,” or, as he [Boswell] has pleasantly expressed it, his governor’, Derrick aided him in ‘obtain[ing] the acquaintance of many of the wits of the metropolis’.50 Derrick essentially served as ‘[Boswell’s] first tutor in the ways of London, [who] shewed [him] the town in all its variety of departments, both literary and sportive’. Thus Boswell publicly acknowledged ‘my friend’ ‘Poor Derrick’ in the Life: ‘I remember him with kindness’.51 However, in mid-1763 he began to distance himself from Derrick and pursue a more serious way of life, perhaps encouraged by Johnson’s vicious loathing of Derrick.52 Characteristic references in Boswell’s journal derided Derrick as a ‘wretched … writer’, ‘this creature’, and ‘a little blackguard pimping dog’. As of March 1763, Boswell wished to ‘rid’ himself of his first tutor 42

See Corr. 6, xxxvi–lix, esp. p. lii. For further information on the missing material, see the entry for To James Love (James Dance), c. 1 Sept–c. 19 Sept. 1758. 44 To WJT, 29 July 1758, Corr. 6, p. 15. 45 From WJT, ?Sept. 1759, printed in Corr. 6, pp. 21–23. 46 Journ. [?9 May] 1761. 47 Journ. 28 May 1763. 48 From JJ, 18 Apr. 1763, Corr. 1, p. 71. 49 Journ. 6 Sept., 18 Sept. 1769. 50 Eur. Mag. May 1791, xix. 324, reprinted in Lit. Car. p. xxxi. 51 Life i. 455–57. 52 See, e.g., Journ. 28 July 1763. 43

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and governor in London ways. ‘I now took care to let him see that I did not choose to renew my acquaintance with him. I shifted all his proposals of meeting with me. Yet I asked him to breakfast this day, in order to show him to Erskine. However, he did not come’.53 His repudiation of many friends of his youth 1757–62 can be seen in his Netherlands memorandum of 15 Dec. 1763 when he felt himself becoming a ‘great man’ corresponding with the worthy Dalrymple, Lord Auchinleck, and Johnson: ‘Look back only three years when you was first in London with Derrick’. The discarding of Love and Derrick reveals Boswell’s capacity for a calculated rejection of old friends whom he felt he had outgrown; however, his return to a public acknowledgement of the two as ‘friend[s]’ demonstrates his capacity for forgiveness and revaluation in the opposite direction. Unfortunately, his use of the adjective ‘poor’ to categorize Derrick and also West Digges implied a sentimental condescension rather than high esteem.54 Knowledge of the fluctuating nature of Boswell’s friendships illuminates Boswell’s fellowship with Andrew Erskine (‘Dash’) and George Dempster in the formative years 1761–63. The letters in this volume put Erskine and Dempster in their proper place for this period, as serious—if only temporary—rivals to Grange and Temple. The zenith of the friendships with Dempster and Erskine coincided with Boswell’s increasing ambition from 1758, and especially from 1761, to be a published author. Erskine and Dempster proved strong influences on young Boswell’s writing style, drawing him away from the sententiousness of Thomas Sheridan, Lord Kames, and Samuel Johnson towards a lighter and more humourous style. Their shared pursuit of allusive macaronic wit, burlesque, and bagatelle engraved itself more deeply into Boswell’s prose style than did Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, widely acknowledged as an influence on young Boswell.55 Boswell had thought of ‘jointly composing some elegant Work’ with Erskine nine months before the scheme for E–B was hatched, and eventually chose to publish a book of his correspondence with Erskine, rather than his correspondence with Temple or Grange.56 Dempster was another man whose name Boswell wished to link publicly with his and Erskine’s; he did so by publication of some of their correspondence in 1761 (see From Dempster to Erskine, 2 August 1761; From Erskine to Dempster, ?2 August 1761; To Erskine, ?after 2 and before 8 August 1761).57 He presumably reached the decisions to publish the letters with Erskine and Dempster because their correspondences were more consciously literary than the Temple and Johnston correspondences.58 53

Journ. 28 Mar., 28 July 1763. Life i. 455–57; Journ. 11 Dec. 1762. 55 Earlier Years, pp. 50, 63–64, 72, 92. Pottle notes, ‘Sterne was the strongest literary influence on Boswell during 1760–1761; the strongest during the year that followed was the Hon. Andrew Erskine …’ (p. 64). 56 ‘I am indulging the most agreable reveries imaginable, I am thinking of our jointly composing some elegant Work which shall be much read, and much admired’ (To AE, 8– 9 May 1762 [MS]). 57 An Elegy on the Death of An Amiable Young Lady, 1761. The ‘literary triumvirate’ of JB, GD, and AE later appeared in print together in Collection II (1762) among other gentleman-poets, and Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira (1763). 58 Corr. 1, pp. x–xi (first known letter is dated 1759); Corr. 6, p. xxxvi (letters survive from 1756 onward). 54

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Certainly, letters from authors to correspondents who were not themselves authors had been published and well-received; Cicero’s letters to Atticus provided an ancient example, with Pope’s letters to various non-authors providing a modern warrant. However, the exchange between literati or wits was more desirable, so Erskine’s and Dempster’s letters were more plausible candidates for the press. In fairness, Temple was already an unpublished poet by 1761, and was to become a pamphleteer in the mid-1770s.59 Yet as of 1763, he was not yet part of the world of published gentleman-poets and pamphleteers which Dempster and Erskine inhabited.60 McQuhae chiefly wrote sermons which he never published, and Johnston never aspired to authorship. Therefore, before Boswell met the London wits and Johnson in mid-1763, his circle of literary friends chiefly consisted of Erskine and Dempster. Such was the case notwithstanding his having already met many of the Scots literati (Lord Somerville, Home, Hume, Dalrymple) and having met various other authors through evenings with Sheridan and Eglinton (Frances Sheridan, MacDonald, Macpherson). As mentioned above, Boswell attempted in February 1763 to define or redefine his relationships with George Dempster and Andrew Erskine in the wake of their hoax involving a letter allegedly from David Hume.61 Boswell protested in his journal that ‘connections with Erskine and Dempster’ were ‘not really those of friendship.’ He instead classified them as being ‘in the style of companions’, claiming that ‘it is only fancy that cements us’. He concluded that the three were ‘so much together’ for one reason alone: ‘only because we are entertaining to one another’. From 1757 to 1763, Boswell alternated between periods of bagatelle and gravitas; the reasons he gave for distancing himself from Erskine and Dempster exemplify his efforts to return to seriousness in early and mid-1763. Although he said of Dempster that ‘I do not know [him] thoroughly’, the evidence suggests they had met in the late or even middle 1750s, which made Dempster one of Boswell’s oldest friends. Erskine, whom Boswell had known for the two years since May 1761, ‘has too much selfishness and too bad a temper to be what I call a friend’. Neither Dempster nor Erskine appeared to predicate their lives upon belief in heaven or hell. Neither had strong ideas of ‘real life’ or ‘manners’, preferring instead to view those things ‘in fanciful and ludicrous lights’. Neither was ever ‘in earnest’ as far as Boswell could tell. Indeed, Boswell feared that if he expressed these concerns to them, ‘they would laugh most heartily’ and their ‘ridicule’ would not only ‘silence’ Boswell’s qualms, but ‘convince’ him that they were right. Boswell concluded that such distinctions between friends were ‘very nice and are 59 For two of WJT’s unpublished poems written before 1761, see From WJT, ?summer 1757 (Corr. 6, p. 2) and From WJT, 5 Dec. 1758 (Corr. 6, pp. 11–13), although he flatly denied authorship of the latter. WJT’s first of four works published in 1774–92 was An Essay on the Clergy; Their Studies, Recreations, Decline of Influence, &c. &c. (1774). 60 AE authored The Cloaciniad. A poem. To which are annexed, verses on an author’s first play (1761) and Two odes. To indolence, and to impudence (1762), as well as poems in both of Donaldson’s collections. GD published the pamphlet Reasons for extending the militia acts to the disarmed counties of Scotland in 1760, and had published his legal thesis (Disputatio juridica, ad Tit. 3. Lib. XX. Pand. quae ves pignori, vel hypothecae datae, obligari non possunt) in 1755, the year in which he also passed advocate. 61 Journ. 16–17 Feb. 1763. The Boswell–Hume correspondence will be published in the Scots literati volume, forthcoming in this series.

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better felt than explained’. In a conversation in July 1763 between Boswell and Erskine, Boswell stated ‘that I liked Dempster and [Erskine] much, but that I considered them more as literary partners and as companions than as friends’.62 Part of this distinction was owing to duration, that power of custom which Hume, in writing of loyalty to polities, called ‘long continuance’.63 To an older man the difference between those friends known for two or five years versus friends known for eight years would have been trivial; to a volatile youth of twenty-three, they were decisive: ‘I had known Temple and Johnston very long and very intimately, and therefore could have the greatest confidence in them’. Boswell’s fear of being ridiculed was at the heart of his refusal to place his friendship with Erskine and Dempster on a more elevated plane. The very talents for which Boswell valued Erskine and Dempster—their refusal to take anything seriously, their clever wit, their gift of hoaxing and pranks, and their ability to wield the claidheamh mór of Scots sarcasm with deadly force and accuracy—was precisely what made Boswell fear getting any closer to either of them. Such a fear of ridicule presumably reflected the harsh and often inhumane sense of humour of mid-Georgian Scotland, which generated the cruel practical jokers of Tobias Smollett’s novels and inspired Charles Macklin’s stereotypical Scot Sir Archy Macsarcasm in Love à la Mode (1759). Dempster himself would later discuss the constant danger of sarcasm with Boswell: ‘he and I talked of the sarcastical temper of the Scots; how it checked all endeavours at excellence, and made people very uneasy’.64 Boswell later made the following observation in his manuscript book of ‘Boswelliana’: The difference between satire in London and in Scotland is this. In London you are not intimately known; so, the satire is thrown at you from a distance, and however keen, does not tear & mangle you, as when you are hacked & hewn with a coarse weapon close to you. In London the attack on character is clean boxing. In Scotland it is grappling. They tear your hair, scratch your face, get you down in the mire, & not only hurt but disfigure & debase you.65 As Boswell’s brother Thomas David would note in 1767, ‘I wish not to settle in Edinburgh, as here a retired man, who does not mix much with Company, is talked of, and sarcastical Jokes thrown out against him, let him have a thousand good qualities’.66 Boswell stated his own version of his brother’s great dread when he 62

Journ. 7 July 1763. ‘Habit soon consolidates what other principles of human nature had imperfectly founded; and men, once accustomed to obedience, never think of departing from that path, in which they and their ancestors have constantly trod, and to which they are confined by so many urgent and visible motives’; ‘The long continuance of that state, an incident common among savage tribes, enured the people to submission’ (David Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, Part I, ‘Essay V: Of The Origin Of Government’, mp. 39 gp. 115). 64 Journ. 16 Sept. 1769. 65 ‘Boswelliana’, Hyde Collection, p. 147. 66 From T. D. Boswell, 25 Mar. 1767 (Yale MS. C 487). 63

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presumed that ‘if I were to fall into misfortune and become void of mirth and lively conversation, that Dempster and Erskine would probably have their jokes and say, “Poor brute, he is turned an arrant idiot now,” but that Temple and Johnston would then regard me as much as ever’. He then proceeded to explain to Erskine why Erskine did not rate as a friend, although he was ‘honest’ and a ‘companion’: ‘I showed the difference between a companion and a friend. A companion loves some agreeable qualities which a man may possess, but a friend loves the man himself. I was very happy to find that honest Erskine understood perfectly well what I meant, and yet was very well pleased’.67 These would all seem to be indications that Boswell did not have a ‘true’ friendship with Erskine and Dempster, inasmuch as we may use the term. Yet when Boswell tells Erskine that he would ‘henceforth consider him and Dempster not in the light of friends’ (emphasis added), he admits that he had previously regarded them in that light before the prank. It certainly seems peculiar that Boswell’s feelings were seriously hurt by a practical joke of the sort which, under other circumstances, Boswell himself might have designed and deployed against Erskine and Dempster, especially since the faked letter from Hume assumes the same spirit of hoax and spoof that the ‘triumvirate’ had themselves aimed against the outside world in their three letters published as prefaces to An Elegy on the Death of An Amiable Young Lady (1761). The Hume hoax punctured Boswell’s newfound sense of himself as a man of discernment, especially since after having met Temple’s friend Hume in July 1758, he was convinced that Hume was ‘a very proper person for a Young Man to cultivate an acquaintance with’.68 Young Boswell specifically aimed in these years to be taken seriously by eminent men known for their erudition and ratiocination—Lord Somerville, Hume, Home, Kames, Dalrymple, and eventually, Johnson—men who to him possessed gravitas rather than the swift, light, and airy wit of the London geniuses or Sterne. To have his desire for closer acquaintance of the literati so badly traduced by two friends struck to his heart. That this prank so deeply injured Boswell’s feelings for three days suggests that his sentiments for Dempster and Erskine were much more serious than he would have wished. Thus, he ‘almost determined to break off’ with the two, but ‘had a disagreeable struggle of mind about it’. He rationalized his stubborn emotional refusal to drop Dempster and Erskine by a legal fiction of claiming that his staying friends with them was a strategy for obtaining a social victory: ‘to have broke with them just now would have given them opportunity to make me ridiculous’. A final revelatory comment in July 1763 expressed the difference between the sorts of friendship Boswell felt for the dutiful and openhearted but somewhat dull Johnston and Temple, and the seemingly superficial and less frequently dependable but always amusing (at least in these years) Erskine and Dempster: ‘I joked and said that if I was going to be married, Temple and Johnston would be the men whom I would have in my room … [in] which we would sit in quiet attention consulting and examining the settlements. But … when the wedding was over and

67 68

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festivity was going on, then I would send for Dempster and Erskine, and we would be jolly and hearty and laugh and talk and make sport’.69 The letters in this edition disclose the high level of emotional candour and sentimentality in Erskine and Boswell’s relationship before—and even after— Boswell revised their letters into E–B. In a revealing letter of June 1762, Boswell had stated the reasons why he believed his friendship with Erskine transcended mere literary alliance and drinking companionship: Your Expression that ‘we are friends as well as Poets’ has dwelt upon my mind with much serene pleasure, ever since. Indeed, my dear Erskine we are more strongly connected than by the pleasant feelings of mutual Genius, a connection which is generaly very slight and very transient; We have a regard for each other as good men, which is a much more permanent one. I have heard of many Wits, who were so agreable that they were inseparable Companions, while at the same time each beleived his Neighbour a worthless or an insignificant fellow, and would not part with a Guinea or take an hour’s trouble to releive him from Misery. But you and I my good Captain Andrew proceed upon a different Plan.70 A later letter of the same year is full of the high language of sentimental friendship: ‘Pray write to me immediatly. For heaven’s sake let our friendship be firm My worthy Captain Andrew! I value you very highly.’71 The first and final published letters in E–B, dated 25 August 1761 and 20 November 1762, both closed with the words ‘Your affectionate friend’ (Boswell revised the closing of the printed 1761 letter to be even more personal and emotional: ‘Your most affectionate friend’). In his revisions of the Erskine–Boswell correspondence into E–B, even as he repolished the letters to reflect his projected metamorphosis from a provincial Scottish boy-poet and theatre critic into a cosmopolite and London wit, he did not delete the emotional and personal aspects of the letters. The phrase was a closing which Erskine had often employed in writing to Boswell, and which Boswell did not typically employ, except to Temple, Grange, and perhaps a few others. However, Boswell so habitually used the phrase ‘affectionate friend’ in his letters to Erskine that he came to call the closing ‘my usual Epithet of Your affectionate friend’.72

69

Journ. 7 July 1763. To AE, 15 June 1762. 71 To AE, 3 Sept. 1762. 72 To AE, 8–9 May 1762, MS and E–B versions. See also the closings of To AE, 10 Oct. 1761, 2 Dec. 1761 (MS only), 8 Dec. 1761 (‘Your very Affectionate friend’, revised for publication to ‘Your most affectionate friend’), 17 Dec. 1761, 9 Jan. 1762 (MS only), 10 Feb. 1762, 16 Feb. 1762 (MS only), 9 Mar. 1762, 14 Apr. 1762, ?22 Apr. 1762 (‘Your very affectionate friend’; MS only), 27 May 1762, 29 May 1762 (MS only), 1 June 1762 (‘as usual your affectionate Friend’, revised to ‘your affectionate friend’), 15 June 1762, 18 June 1762, 19 June 1762 (‘Your most affectionate friend’), 12 July 1762, 20 Nov. 1762, et. seq. 70

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The printing of his personal emotions, yet another case of Boswell’s transgression of the ostensible divide between public and private letters, was only one aspect of what made the publication of E–B so deeply ludicrous or offensive to Boswell’s father and other conventional readers. But making private sentiments public, and even composing private letters with an intention to publish them, was not a habit easily abandoned after 1763. The recrafting of the Erskine friendship into a book began the long pattern in which Boswell yoked his private and genuine acquaintances with people such as Paoli and Johnson into the service of his ambitions to be a great author. Furthermore, the conversation of Erskine and Boswell two days before Erskine left London in 1763 suggested that the deep but thwarted feelings were mutual. The conversation in which Boswell had attempted to explain his ranks of precedence in friendship had itself begun with a candid and vulnerable conversational gambit by Erskine as he took leave of Boswell. Erskine confessed to Boswell: ‘“I believe, Boswell … you don’t consider me as a friend. You don’t consider Dempster and me as you do Temple and Johnston. You would not tell us your deep secrets”’.73 Had Erskine truly been as shallow and unfeeling as Boswell feared, he would neither have wanted to know, nor cared, why Boswell did not reveal more secrets to him nor consider him as a friend. The ribald companionship, light banter, and Shandeian wit would have been enough. If Boswell felt ‘it is very easy to get out of acquaintance (or rather familiarity) with [Erskine and Dempster]’, he had a strange way of showing it. As it happened, his friendship with Dempster resulted in an exchange of 36 surviving letters (26 from Dempster, 10 to him) written 1761–91. The surviving exhanges with Dempster occurred mainly in the mid-to-late 1760s, but are also scattered among the years 1775–91.74 The Registers of Letters which Boswell kept intermittently in 1763–90 reveals additional letters between the members of the ‘triumvirate’ which have not survived, with unreported Dempster letters up to 1775 being particularly numerous.75 It was Dempster to whom Boswell wrote in anguish and invited to visit him when he was depressed in Holland in August 1763, and Dempster who responded with advice on how to ‘Dutchify’ his soul, or at least arrange to get to France or even back to London.76 Dempster, although born eight years before Boswell, outlived his friend, and died in 1818 aged eighty-six. His career as a politician, improving landlord, literary correspondent, and encourager of trade, industry, and new towns has generated subsequent historical interest from the Dictionary of National Biography onwards. Publications on Dempster beyond his relationship with Boswell include his correspondence with Sir Adam Fergusson (1934) and G. J. Thorkelin (1972), one political biography (1998) and another general biography (2005), as well as studies of his involvement in fisheries (1978) and agricultural improvement (1983).77 73

Journ. 7 July 1763. Catalogue, i. 212–14 (Yale MSS. L 414–23); ii. 591–95 (Yale MSS. C 929–54). 75 JB kept Registers of Letters in 1763–64, 1764–66, 1769–77, 1777–82, and 1783–90 (Yale MSS. M 251–55). 76 From GD, 22, 23 Aug., 29 Oct. 1763 (Yale MSS. C 930–32). 77 See Dempster Letters; E. H. Harvey Wood, ‘Letters to an Antiquary: the Literary Correspondence of G. J. Thorkelin (1752–1829)’, Ph.D. thesis, Univ. of Edinburgh, 1972; 74

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Likewise, his friendship with Erskine created a correspondence of more than thirty-four surviving manuscript letters (eight from Erskine, twenty-six to him) dated 1761–93. The items at Yale include ten letters between Johnston and Erskine, suggesting that the two men’s mutual acquaintance with Boswell led them to become friends in their own right, and even caused them to express jealousy over Boswell’s writing to one of them rather than the other. By contrast, Erskine and Temple met in 1767 without further cultivating their acquaintance. Most of the Boswell–Erskine–Johnston letters cluster in the years 1761–69 before Erskine left the Army (c. 1770), began gambling at whist and borrowing money from Boswell and others (from 1774). As he declined, Erskine ceased writing poetry in 1773 (when Caddell, Kincaid, and Creech printed his four Town Eclogues), a hiatus which lasted until 1793 (when he wrote ‘Mary’s Charms Subdued my Breast’ and ‘How Sweet This Lone Vale’ for George Thomson’s collection).78 In his final decades, Erskine declined into depressive gloom and torpor, and ‘His dress continued of the same fashion for nearly half a century’, with militarily flapped waistcoat, gaiters, and flat round hat. He faced serious illness in 1782 and 1793, and lived the remainder of his years with Sir John Whitefoord or his Erskine sisters as a debt-laden recluse.79 However, even after the decline of the correspondence, Boswell continued to visit ‘Captain Andrew’ (or ‘Mr. Andrew’, as Boswell came to call him in the 1770s) at his sister Lady Elizabeth Colville’s residence, Drumsheugh House, where Boswell felt himself ‘allways soothed comforted & cheered’.80 (Unfortunately, Boswell was not always soothed by Erskine’s kin: on Good Friday 1777 he recorded that ‘I was indeed a little hurt by the sarcastical turn of this Family; fearing for myself. But why be uneasy at a little of it’). In his journal, Boswell recorded that Andrew’s brother ‘Captain [Archibald] Erskine always revives notions of family and antiquity & Toryism in my mind’, and this notion was presumably revived by the entire family of Kellie.82 Nevertheless, beneath the pleasant surface of these reunions were occasionally the sensations of the mature Boswell’s loss or renunciation of the friends of his youth. During one melancholy visit in 1774, Boswell lamented to Erskine the brevity of phases of ‘agreable life’. Boswell told Erskine that just as friends who have been Andrew Munro Lang, A Life of George Dempster: Scottish Member of Parliament of Dunnichen [1732–1818], 1998; John Evans, The Gentleman Usher: The Life and Times of George Dempster 1732–1818, 2005; Jean Dunlop, The British Fisheries Society 1786–1893, 1978; and William T. Johnstone, ed., Dempster on Agriculture by George Dempster of Dunnichen (1732– 1818), microfilm, 1983. See also Rosalind Mitchison, Agricultural Sir John: The Life of Sir Johnson Sinclair of Ulbster 1754–1835, 1962; and William T. Johnstone, ed., Two New Towns for Scotland: Tobermory and Ullapool, microfilm, 1982. 78 See Bennett, pp. 205–12, 227–28. 79 Catalogue, i. 228–33 (Yale MSS. L 506–31), ii. 641–44 (Yale MSS. C 1197–214, minus the AE to JJ items and three other exchanges not involving JB). AE discussed his attempts to borrow money from JB in letters of 9 Feb. 1769 (Yale MS. C 1206) and 14 May 1777 (Yale MS. C 1211)—‘the old sum of fifty Pounds’. The Johnston–Erskine correspondence of 1766–70 was printed in Corr. 1 (cf. index, p. 351). See Kay, II. i. 59; Journ. 26 July 1782; and W. A. S. Hewins, ed., Charles Whitefoord, The Whitefoord Papers, 1898, p. 213, quoting AE to Caleb Whitefoord, 1793. 80 Journ. 25 June 1774. 81 Journ. 28 Mar. 1777. 82 Journ. 25 June 1774. lv

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‘very happy together’ must suffer the ‘pain of parting’, so every ‘enjoyment’ eventually ends in ‘weariness’ or ‘disgust’.83 When Erskine forayed into Edinburgh from Drumsheugh, it was often to enjoy some merriment with Boswell, as when at Nairne’s in 1775 they shared ‘a deal of profane licentious jocularity & Edinburgh illbred raillery … Captain Andrew was seised with the humour of the place’. Boswell, by this time mindful of his place in the community as an advocate and head of a household, complained that he ‘disliked the company much’.84 By contrast to the continuing scholarly interest in Dempster, Andrew Erskine has been largely ignored; although he has been included in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), he was not in the original DNB nor in the NCBEL, and there is as of this writing no standard edition of his various works. ‘[P]oor Erskine’—Boswell’s ‘old friend and correspondent and confidant in hypochrondria’—killed himself in 1793, after two decades of severe depression. Erskine’s suicide by drowning took place only recently after he and Boswell had resumed writing after ‘a cessation of correspondence’ which had begun in the late 1760s. The two had exchanged candid comments about their depressed states of mind, but also shared the familiar sallies of wit. The news of Erskine’s suicide left Boswell ‘with a kind of stupor, mixed with regret’. When Forbes informed Boswell that the death was not an accident but a suicide, he was unable to even write Erskine’s name, leaving only a dash in its place in his journal.85 Ironically, ‘Dash’ had been Boswell’s nickname for Erskine. III. Young Boswell and the Rhetoric of Male Friendship In this vein of evaluating Boswell’s various friendships, one must also consider with some seriousness the depth of Boswell’s relationships with the Earl of Eglinton, Edward Colquitt, Alexander Donaldson, and West Digges, among others. All four are correspondents in this volume, though Eglinton’s letters are far more numerous than the surviving scraps to or from ‘Ned … the priest’ and ‘Great Donaldson’. Boswell publicly acknowledged the importance of Alexander Montgomerie, Earl of Eglinton, to his life in 1760–63. He wrote in several places of Eglinton’s influence on his youth in several places, including the ‘Ébauche de ma vie’ written for Rousseau in 1764, and his 1791 autobiography in the European Magazine. That influence is also reflected in the letters in this volume, many of which survive because he copied them into the journal. Eglinton’s age, at the turn of his fourth decade—sixteen years younger than Boswell’s father, and seventeen years older than Boswell—bridged the generations of Boswell’s frivolous companions and wise mentors. After Boswell’s ‘wild expedition to London in the year 1760’, Eglinton emerged as an antihero of almost Miltonic proportions, advocating not only the higher epicurean delights of wine, poetry, song, and Court elegance, but 83

Journ. 25 June 1774. Journ. 2 Dec. 1775. 85 From Forbes, 5 Nov. 1793 (Yale MS. C 1303); Journ. 13, 24 Oct. 1793 (Boswell: The Great Biographer 1789–1795, ed. Marlies K. Danziger and Frank Brady, 1989, pp. 242 and n. 9, 243, 245). 84

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also irreligion, whoremongering, and heavy indulgence in strong drink. Boswell confessed to Johnston, ‘I got rid of the load of serious reflection which then burthened me, by being allways in Lord Eglintoune’s Company, very fond of him, & much caressed by him, I became dissipated & thoughtless’.86 He was too well aware of the strength of his emotional ties to Eglinton, and struggled against them: ‘finding myself too fond of him [Eglinton], I pulled the reins hard’.87 Yet as in other cases in which he attempted to drop a formerly close friend, he failed to damp his affections for Eglinton: ‘I could not help beginning upon my difference with him, as I felt my old love for him’.88 At times his attachment to the earl seemed to parallel or even mimic the progress of his attachment to ‘Louisa’: ‘BOSWELL.… I could not help now and then having returns of fondness for you as strong as ever. EGLINTON.… Like what one feels for a mistress, was it not? BOSWELL. Just so, my Lord.’89 Near the end of his London stay, Boswell was content to boast of the closeness of their affections even as he acknowledged Eglinton’s degeneracy: ‘I believe he is as fond of me as Dissipation will allow him to be of any man’.90 The Rev. Edward Colquitt was a Scot in his mid-forties who had taken orders in the Church of England and who served as Junior Incumbent of the New Chapel in Blackfriars Wynd (a.k.a. the Cowgate Qualified Chapel) from 1747 to 1762.91 He also seems to have been defined as Boswell’s ‘friend’, at least during the early Soaping Club years from 1760 to 1762 when Colquitt’s disease-ravaged body faced Boswell’s as they drank old hock at Thom’s Tavern. As Boswell’s song recounted it, ‘And he owns that Ned C[olquit]t, the priest,/ May to something of humour pretend,/ And he swears that he is not in jest,/ When he calls this same C[olquit]t his friend.’92 Although only one letter by ‘Ned’ Colquitt is known to have survived, his influence over young Boswell’s religious inclinations was strong enough to lead both Sir David Dalrymple and Lord Auchinleck to blame Colquitt for the youth’s religious vagaries. As Dalrymple later noted, ‘I suppose your father will have no objection to your [now] being of the Church of England, for “Ned C[olquitt], the priest” is not in this country’.93 As Colquitt would have sworn the oaths to George II and against ‘James III’ in order to become a minister in the Qualified chapel system, it is improbable that he was a Jacobite; men so inclined became priests of the Jacobite and nonjuring elements of the Episcopal Church in Scotland, whose ministers had refused to swear the oaths to King George reimposed after the ’Forty-Five, and who rejected the 1662 English Book of Common Prayer in favour of the 1637 liturgy. One assumes that a chief reason Colquitt was 86

Journ. 1 Dec. 1762. Journ. 27 Nov. 1762. 88 Journ. 25 Jan. 1763. 89 Journ. 25 Jan. 1763. 90 Journ. 14 May 1763. 91 See Bertie, p. 26. Colquitt, born in 1716, resigned in 1762, then went to England. 92 ‘B———. A SONG. To the Tune of Old Sir Symon, &c.’, in Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 90–92. The Soaping Club was a jovial association of young men which included Colquitt, ‘Barclay’, ‘Bainbridge’, Arthur Lee, and AE, and which met for cards, drinks, and song at Thom’s Tavern in Edinburgh on Tuesdays (see From the Soaping Club, between ?June 1760 and early 1762, n. 1). 93 From Dalrymple, 10 Oct. 1764 (Yale MS. C 1432). 87

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appealing to Boswell and annoying to Lord Auchinleck was his encouragement of the weekly catch-singing, ‘soaping’, ‘shaving’, mimickry, ridicule, and hockinduced revels of the Soaping Club at Thom’s Tavern. The other ‘Brother Soapers’, whose merry epigram to Boswell survives,94 were privy to much information on Boswell’s earliest years, secrets (revealed at the Club’s meetings on Tuesdays at Thom’s Tavern) which went to the graves of the brief-lived club and its ill-documented membership. At least one of the Brother Soapers, Arthur Lee, continued to correspond with Boswell. The Scottish publisher and bookseller Alexander Donaldson offers a more difficult type of friendship, and the one Donaldson letter printed in this volume is not representative of his importance as a character behind the scenes of so many episodes in this correspondence. Boswell’s enthusiasms for Donaldson feature in many of this volume’s letters, especially those between Boswell and Erskine. His importance in supporting Boswell’s early literary career to 1763 cannot be overestimated.95 Indeed, he performed the same service for many other young authors, and attempted in his two-volume collection of poems to create a Scottish national anthology to rival Dodsley’s English anthology—a series to which Erskine, Dempster, and Boswell all contributed. Most of Boswell’s verse epistles herein printed are only known from Donaldson’s publication of them. He certainly fell into that important (avuncular?) category of men who were younger and more tractable than Boswell’s father yet older and wiser than Boswell.96 His house in Edinburgh prefigured the adoptive household congenial to authors which the Dilly brothers later provided Boswell in London. Boswell was forever inventing new or propagating old nicknames for Donaldson: ‘Great Donaldson’, ‘renowned Donaldson’, ‘immense Donaldson’, ‘illustrious Donaldson’, ‘prodigious Vendor of Literature’, ‘Robin Hood’, ‘the Imperial Sovereign of Pope’s-Head, Caledonian Dodsley, Scottish Baskerville and Captain General of Collective Bards’.97 Boswell was a frequent guest at Donaldson’s dinners for his authors, and when he was ‘a Sharer of one of his copious Repasts’, he was prone to ‘feel my heart warm to the Landlord’.98 West Digges, gentleman-actor, likewise defies easy categorization in the Boswellian canon of friendship. Besides Lord Somerville, who had encouraged Boswell’s efforts to become a poet c. 1755–56, Digges was one of the first adults who took the young Boswell seriously, as his response to Boswell’s letter of 1757 demonstrates (see From Digges, between 9 and 19 April 1757). Digges fascinated him for several reasons, not least because he combined high birth (he was the

94

From the Soaping Club, between ?June 1760 and early 1762. Richard B. Sher discusses JB’s relationship with Donaldson in his ‘Boswell and the Booksellers’ (unpublished paper). 96 Donaldson was thirteen years older than JB and twenty years younger than Lord Auchinleck, according to the article on him in the Oxford DNB. 97 Journ. 13, 19 Apr., 3, 7, 12, 15 May, 20 July 1763; To AE, 2 Dec. 1761 (MS). 98 To AE, 2 Dec. 1761 (MS). Thomas Crawford has gone so far as to argue that Donaldson ‘broadened’ the JB–AE–GD ‘threesome’ into a ‘foursome’ of literary friends (Thomas Crawford, ‘Boswell and the Rhetoric of Friendship’, in Greg Clingham, ed., New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of The Life of Johnson, 1991, p. 12). 95

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nephew of an earl) with a rakish life and low profession (acting) which Garrick’s generation was only then helping to make more socially respectable. Digges not only was an actor, he was the actor of Boswell’s youth in Edinburgh: ‘the first actor that [Boswell] ever saw’, who made a ‘strong and permanent’ impression upon his ‘warm youthfull imagination’. To Digges, Boswell credited not only his lifelong fascination with the theatre, but a strengthening of his concept of ‘Pleasure’ itself. As he explained to Garrick, ‘It was [Digges] who threw open to me the portals of Theatrical Enchantment, and therefore He and Pleasure are inseparably associated in my mind’.99 Although he had served without distinction, Digges also had been an ensign in the Army, a rank to which Boswell aspired. He had also known Sheridan in the 1750s when Sheridan was still a theatrical actor and manager. With Eglinton, he shared the distinction of having defied the conventional institutional Calvinist Scottish morality of marriage and parsimony and almost got away with it. Digges, Eglinton, Derrick, and Hume, who had escaped the conventions of belief and behaviour, both inspired and frightened, and occasionally even repelled, Boswell. He began as a theatrical admirer and partisan of Digges in 1756 or 1757. By 1762 Boswell was a valued friend of the increasingly portly fading stage idol, as their exchanges of letters show. However, once in London, his great Edinburgh friends, including another actor already discussed (Love), seemed to have diminished in his respect, to the point where Boswell either pitied them as he pitied Digges or scorned them as he scorned Love. Of Digges, he wrote: ‘He is very gratefull to me … they drink a bumper to the health of Mr. Boswell. He calls himslf my poor corespondent as he cannot make me a return.… Poor Digges! I realy like him. He has been unlucky & has done many inexcusable things. But he is a pretty man; & has most amiable dispositions. Had he not been reduced, but had a plentifull fortune, he would have been a noble fellow greatly admired’.100 Nonetheless, Boswell still emulated Digges’s ‘easy dignity and black liveliness of behaviour’ in London, and faithfully sent out issues of the North Briton to him every week.101 Eglinton, Donaldson, Digges, Erskine, and Dempster provided models for emulation in Boswell’s aspirations to become a poet, a critic, a playwright, an Army officer, and a M.P. They also inspired him to hazard his London life as a literary gentleman of leisure rather than a man of business studying the law (a strategy of which Sheridan and Boswell’s parents disapproved). Eglinton, Dempster, and Donaldson had also proved that Scots were increasingly likely to find social and financial success in South Britain. The success came in the 1760s despite lingering English prejudices against even those heavily anglicized ‘Sawnys’ who had dutifully taken their elocution lessons, banished all Scotticisms from their writing (JB later kept a list of these errors to prevent further mistakes), attended the Church of England, and sent their sons to English public schools. Dempster, Eglinton, and Donaldson were all Scots who succeeded in London, and thus escaped what Boswell feared was mere provinciality. (Digges, by contrast, was a London actor farmed out to the provincial theatre of Edinburgh, although he 99

To Garrick, 3 Mar. 1778, Corr. 4, p. 77. Journ. 11 Dec. 1762. Mem. 31 Dec. 1762.

100 101

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took the exile with good grace.) This custom of acquiring somewhat older male friends continued into Boswell’s later life, when Andrew Crosbie and John Maclaurin, among others, fulfilled this important role.102 These older male friends possibly relieved Boswell’s weight of expectation in his role of eldest son and heir, given that his embrace of an elevated sense of feudal primogeniture, and his intention to guide his younger brothers David and John, made the role of eldest son even more burdensome. For good or ill, the sort of rakish guidance which Digges, Love, Derrick, and Eglinton proffered was quite unlike the morally upright advice Boswell gave to his brothers. His older mentors’ ages ranged from twelve years younger than Lord Auchinleck to eleven years older.103 A category of Boswell’s friends from his father’s generation included Sheridan, Kames, Cochrane, Pringle, Hunter, and Dick. Because of their closeness in age to Lord Auchinleck, and Auchinleck’s approval of them, they could mediate the generational conflict which the thirtythree-year gap between Boswell’s age and his father’s created. They were all important to Boswell’s emotional life, and formed a pre-established foundation for his most famous relationship with a man of his father’s generation, that with Samuel Johnson, who was a year younger than Lord Auchinleck. In this group one might perhaps include McQuhae as Boswell’s priestly father-confessor. Thomas Sheridan, in his early forties, was Boswell’s unofficial ‘God-father’ who could comfortably tell Boswell to ‘Be a good boy’.104 While Boswell often repined at paternal chastisment, he could take a certain amount of punishment from Sheridan with good grace: ‘I kiss the rod of your kind Reprehension’.105 When Boswell described Sheridan as his Socrates, Sheridan appears to have taken the compliment from his Alcibidean pupil and friend: ‘You are My Socrates—You have sayd so yourself. With unfeigned Joy do I thank Heaven for it’.106 Old Sheridan also played the role of ‘Mentor’ to Boswell’s Telemachus.107 Not only was Sheridan a man honoured by the Edinburgh establishment, he described Lord Auchinleck as ‘your excellent Father’.108 As revealed in the letters of this volume, Sheridan’s aid to the conciliatory scheme to have Boswell study the English law at the Middle or Inner Temple rather than stay in Edinburgh to continue learning the Scottish law offered one possible compromise in the father-son battle. Conspiratorily addressing Sheridan in September 1761, Boswell described their law scheme: ‘I have been studying Law very hard.… I hope he [Lord Auchinleck] 102 Richard B. Sher has written of Boswell’s later relationships with ‘fellow members of the Scottish-Presbyterian legal gentry such as Andrew Crosbie and John Maclaurin’. See Richard B. Sher, ‘“Something that Put Me in Mind of My Father”: Boswell and Lord Kames’, in Irma S. Lustig, ed., Boswell: Citizen of the World, Man of Letters, 1995, p. 65. 103 TS was twelve years younger than Lord Auchinleck (born 1707), while Pringle was the same age, Hunter was three years older, Sir Alexander Dick was four years older, Basil Cochrane was about five years older, and Lord Kames was eleven years older. 104 From TS, 21 Nov. 1761. 105 To TS, 9 Dec. 1761. 106 To TS, 27 Sept. 1761. 107 ‘My Dear Sir keep me in the right path. My Mentor! my Socrates! direct my heedless steps’ (To TS, 27 Feb. 1762). JB’s allusion to the story of Mentor and Telemachus would imply that Lord Auchinleck was the Odysseus who had given TS the task of protecting and instructing his son. 108 From TS, 21 Nov. 1761.

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will act quite properly with regard to me, and that all our Schemes shall go well. I presume that you have taken the trouble to have my name entered in the Middle Temple. Address me when you write under the appelation of a Student there it will please me’. Certainly Boswell treasured Sheridan’s artistry in rhetoric and theatre, but he also felt a ‘warmth of Passion’ for Sheridan: ‘your Behaviour to me has been noble and generous … your kindness has lay’d me under the greatest Obligations’.109 This was true although Sheridan was a ‘severe critic’, often capable of a savage candour of Johnsonian (or Auchinleckian) proportions, as when he dismissed Boswell’s ‘Prologue’ to The Discovery in particular and his poetry in general.110 Henry Home, Lord Kames, who had been born in the last years of the seventeenth century, impressed Lord Auchinleck as a colleague on the bench. He enchanted Boswell as an author of profound books of criticism and a polymathic multitude of other disciplines. Lord Kames’s hosting of Boswell during the Harvest Jaunt forms an important segment of the journal of that time.111 Likewise, the records of Boswell’s acceptance into Kames family life of that period—in the form of the maternal letters of Lady Kames and the poem to Lord Kames’s daughter (depicting Boswell being welcomed by the ‘Paternal Lord’ at ‘his Board’)— deepen our understanding of Boswell’s seeking of family warmth in a place other than Auchinleck House.112 His maternal great-uncle Basil ‘Commissioner’ Cochrane, around sixty years old, served as a loyal go-between: ‘I Faithfully deliver what letters and Pamphletes you Inclose to me’. Cochrane could offer advice like that which Boswell’s father would give (e.g., ‘Doe your utmost to please your Father’) without being opposed or rejected by the man he still thought of as ‘my Dear Jamie’.113 Dr. John Pringle, in his early fifties, was a royal physician who had the unusual distinction of being ‘[Boswell’s] own friend and [his] Father’s friend’; he had also been a spiritual father to Boswell as one of his baptismal sponsors.114 His differences from Boswell included an unshakeable pro-Hanoverianism and an untroubled rational Christianity. Another difference was that Pringle more frequently saw the wisdom of Lord Auchinleck’s plans for his son: ‘I found the Doctor in the way of discouraging me; which as from my Father’s friend I took patiently & intended to get the better of’.115 Boswell found him ‘sour … a good deal so; altho’ a sensible learned man: A good Philosopher & an excellent Physician’. Yet through ‘chearfull ease of my address’ Boswell could make Pringle ‘smile & be very kind to me’ and serve as a consultant and counsellor about the London schemes and ‘all my plans’.116 Although he treated Boswell with ‘his usual reserved kindness’, 109

To TS, 27 Sept. 1761. ‘Sh[eridan:] Indeed I think it is very bad’; Journ. 24 Mar. 1763. ‘I went to Sheridan’s.… “No No, said he, [AE] is no Poet. Neither you nor he are Poets”’ (Journ. 18 Jan. 1763). 111 Journ. 22 Sept.–26 Oct. 1762. 112 From Lady Kames, 28 Dec. [1762]; To ‘Miss Home’ (Jean Home), before Nov. 1761. 113 From Cochrane, 20 Dec. 1762. 114 See Life iii. 65; for the sponsorship, see To Pringle, 28 Nov. 1780 (Yale MS L 1087). Pringle wrote of Lord Auchinleck as his ‘oldest and best friend’ (From Pringle, 4 Mar. 1773 [Yale MS. C 2304]). 115 Journ. 21 Nov. 1762. 116 Journ. 24 Nov. 1762. 110

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leading to Boswell’s ‘standing much in awe of him’, Pringle ‘witnessed’ many of Boswell’s ‘weaknesses and follies’, and had ‘been allways like a Parent’ to him.117 Pringle was important in explaining away Boswell’s impetuous youth, since he knew of the weaknesses and follies of Lord Auchinleck’s own student days at Leyden. The degree of respect in which Boswell held Pringle revealed itself in Boswell’s plan for a Plutarchan life of him.118 The fragments in this volume contain only a taste of the Pringle correspondence, with about forty known items dated 1766–80 having been preserved.119 He continued to serve to reconcile the differences between Lord Auchinleck and Boswell throughout the 1760s and 1770s, and was trusted with several of Boswell’s darker secrets of those decades.120 Prof. Robert Hunter, a man in his late fifties who had been Boswell’s Professor of Greek at Edinburgh University, while not as close to Boswell as the other mentors, offered a letter of congratulation in July 1763 to his old pupil. He announced, ‘I always find my Self interested in your wellfare’, and reflected that ‘When the graver part of the World were perhaps too apt to censure your conduct’, he had defended Boswell’s errors as merely a natural consequence of ‘the Spirit and vivacity of youth’, and advised him to model his new life in the Netherlands on the sensible and dispassionate aspects of Horace.121 Sir Alexander (Cunningham) Dick of Prestonfield, also in his late fifties, an M.D., ceased practice when he succeeded to the baronetcy and its estates in 1746, but remained active both in promoting civic and medical improvements in Edinburgh, and in fathering children (begetting seven more by his second marriage in 1762). As one of the literati, and the President of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh, he possessed the gravitas to approach Lord Auchinleck, while at the same time he approved far more enthusiastically than Pringle of Boswell’s schemes in love and art.122 Just as Boswell had offered Sheridan the tribute of referring to him both as a Mentor and as a Socrates, and wished to write of Pringle in Plutarchan terms, he described Dick as his ‘Corycius senex’, the elderly Cilician genius of gardening whom Virgil had known. A third category of male friendship for Boswell was that of the literary acquaintance. The literary acquaintances in this volume include Thornton, Shepherd, Macdonald of Sleat, and Francis Gentleman. Gaining the correspondence of Bonnell Thornton, one of the ‘London geniuses’ in his midthirties, was a coup, since Thornton was a mid-Georgian Addison, one of the writers who as ‘Mr. Town, critic, and censor-general’ had authored the 117 ‘As Sir John has witnessed many of my weaknesses and follies, and been allways like a Parent to me, I cannot help standing much in awe of him’ (Journ. 2 Sept. 1769). 118 To Pringle, 2 Feb. 1777 (Yale MS. L 1081). 119 Eight additional letters by JB to Pringle from 1776–80 survive, and thirty letters by Pringle dated 1766–80 have also been preserved (see Yale MSS. L 1078–87; Yale MSS. C 2293–326). 120 From Pringle, 24, 28 Jan. 1766, Yale MS. C 2293–94 and From Pringle, 10 June 1766, Corr. 5, pp. 34–35; cf. Corr. 5, pp. xli–xlii. 121 From Hunter, 23 July 1763. 122 Many Dick letters have been published in Corr. 5 and Corr. 7, and the Introduction to Corr. 5 (pp. xliv–xlv) details the friendship with Dick (‘Corycius senex’). In Virgil’s Georgics (iv. 125), the poet’s Corycius senex, ‘old man of Corycus’, was a skilled and diligent gardener from Corycus, Cilicia.

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Connoisseur papers of 1754–56, and was also a member of the famous ‘Nonsense Club’. Boswell described him as ‘a well-bred agreable man, lively & odd’. By way of Thornton, he met Charles Churchill, Robert Lloyd, and John Wilkes; Wilkes would become a frequent correspondent of Boswell’s, despite their political and religious differences.123 Richard Shepherd of Corpus Christi College was another literary acquaintance, but represented a different choice of life, being an Oxford don and poet rather than a London genius living from the proceeds of his pen or a family income.124 Although Shepherd was eight years Boswell’s senior, he shared Boswell’s pursuit of poetical fame, his obsession with the army, and his frustration at the meagreness of his annual income. Boswell observed that Shepherd was ‘a quiet modest diffident Man … a fellow of a College, but it was but a poor pittance which that yielded him & besides that it kept him from active life, which was the sphere he loved most; in particular the Army … Poor Shepherd would like to have been born to an Estate’. Although the correspondences with Thornton and Shepherd were not lengthy, they did figure as part of Boswell’s plan for transformation into a London literary man rather than an Edinburgh literary man. To be recognized by the London geniuses and a poet of Oxford University both meant that Boswell had indeed become that which he described himself in his note to Shepherd: ‘A Gentleman from London’. Sir James Macdonald of Sleat, although two years Boswell’s junior, by dint of his great success as a Scot at Eton from 1756 and at Christ Church College, Oxford, from 1759 had already earned the honorific of ‘The Marcellus of the North’. Boswell praised him as ‘a remarkable young man of good parts and great application’, and they were both part of the Earl of Eglinton’s literary gatherings. Boswell had praised Macdonald in a verse epistle of 1760–61 to Macdonald’s uncle, the Earl of Eglinton: ‘This by Macdonald might be heard/ Whom Sky’s wild coasts their master claim/ Eton and Oxford sound his fame’. It was an honour for Boswell to be invited to Oxford by Macdonald, who sought ‘the pleasure of Mr. Boswell’s company’.125 At the other end of the spectrum was Francis Gentleman, who shared with Derrick the need to write public letters and epistles dedicatory in order to court financial patronage of their literary endeavours. Gentleman’s Oroonoko (1760) included an epistle dedicatory to Boswell which described him as having ‘Sense, taste, politeness with good-nature join’d’ (see From Gentleman, February 1760). Their surviving correspondence of about eight letters from 1764 to 1774 (two letters from Boswell [1764, 1774], six from Gentleman [1764–74]) continued Gentleman’s respect for ‘that perfect esteem I have Sir for your many amiable Qualifications’, and Boswell’s concern for ‘poor Gentleman, who had allways paid me much attention’.126 Boswell’s annual income (granted by his father) freed him from the Grub Street author’s need to dedicate for bread, a tactic Garrick accused Gentleman of using; Gentleman denied the charge. Boswell’s own epistle dedicatory to the Cub at Newmarket, in which he addressed the Duke of York, was 123

See From Thornton, c. 23 May 1763. To Shepherd, 25 Apr. 1763, From Shepherd, 25 Apr. 1763, and nn. 125 From Macdonald of Sleat, 14 Apr. 1763. 126 From Gentleman, Feb. 1760 and nn.; From Gentleman, c. late July 1766 (Corr. 5, p. 49); Journ. 25, 30 July 1774, Mem. 8 May 1772. 124

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different from Gentleman’s or Derrick’s dedicating enterprises, since the dedication to Cub sought to establish a public affiliation with a member of the royal family rather than solicit monetary patronage.127 Political friendship, seemingly an oxymoronic term, was crucial to greasing the wheels of the patronage-driven eighteenth century society. After all, Boswell went south not simply to pursue gentlemanly leisure in London and acquaintance with literary people, but to seek a commission as an ensign in the Foot Guards. The list of correspondents in this volume attests to the access which Boswell, as son of a Lord of Session and Justiciary, had to Courtiers and Members of Parliament upon his arrival. Despite his understanding the usefulness of ‘friends’ such as Queensberry and Lady Northumberland, Boswell saw a stark difference between the instrumental friendship of obligation and officia and the emotional friendship of ‘enthusiasm of affection’ which he sought. It was a distinction Lord Auchinleck apparently did not make. In autumn 1764, Boswell reflected that ‘my father’s freinds are only rational connections’. Lord Auchinleck, if we are to believe his son, pursued these ‘rational connections’ to gain and exchange social and political favours, to oblige others and to be obliged by them: ‘My Father’s freinds have been ever ready to oblige him’. However, Boswell refused to admit that he was deficient in comparison with his father, even in this instrumental category of friendship: he boasted on his Grand Tour that ‘I have surely more People who would be ready to oblige me’.128 Many of Boswell’s old connections ‘ready to oblige’ him were well-integrated into Court and Westminster politics. Charles Douglas, third Duke of Queensberry, was Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland and had long served George III’s grandfather and father. Eglinton was a Lord of the Bedchamber and a Scots Representative Peer. The Countess of Northumberland served as a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen Consort. Sir John Pringle acted as personal physician to the queen, and George Lewis Scott had been preceptor to George II’s grandsons. Dempster sat as an M.P., although being a Scottish independent he owed few favours and was owed even fewer; despite this impediment he was helpful in obtaining his friend free (‘franked’) postage. Eventually, Boswell’s ladder of requests stretched upward towards the Army’s military head, Lord Ligonier, and even to the prime minister, the Earl of Bute, who assured him of his ensign’s pair of colours, albeit in an ordinary ‘marching’ regiment rather than in the Guards. Inexplicably, given these connections, Boswell did not develop during this part of his life an adult understanding of the ways of the Court: his correspondence is weak in its command of the political factions of these heavily factional years. He achieved no awareness of the large gap between friendly encouragement to a client and contractual obligation to make that client’s interest a high priority—odd, given his penchant for John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, which suggested that courtiers were born dissemblers who were false in love and friendship, venal, and untrustworthy. As Captain Macheath sang in the fourth scene of the third act of The Beggar’s Opera:

127 128

To Edward, Duke of York, c. 1 Nov. 1761 (and before Mar. 1762). Journ. 7 Oct. 1764. lxiv

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The Modes of the Court so common are grown, That a true Friend can hardly be met; Friendship for Interest is but a Loan, Which they let out for what they can get, ’Tis true, you find Some Friends so kind, Who will give you good Counsel themselves to defend. In sorrowful Ditty, They promise, they pity, But shift you for Money, from Friend to Friend. ‘Friends’ like the Duchess of Northumberland, and the Duke of Queensberry did indeed cosset and promote Boswell to the best of their ability, but Boswell regularly and mistakenly assumed that he loomed as large in their plans for power and advancement as they did in his. Whether or not kinship should be discussed in an introduction on Boswell’s friendships is a worthy question. It touches on the distinctiveness of eighteenthcentury British society as a culture of patrons and clients and of patricians and plebeians, a world in which the use of cognate concepts of friendship and kinship often continues vocabulary and practices from the seventeenth century rather than ushering in modern ones. Furthermore, quite distant kinships could be important to eighteenth-century Scots, as Boswell’s references to Erskine as his cousin attest: Boswell and Erskine were fifth cousins once removed, with their common ancestor being a man of the sixteenth century. Whether the various Campbell and Cochrane and Erskine kin should be in the General Correspondence or the Family Correspondence series remains a taxonomical difficulty: Boswell certainly considered them as relations. As well as being a friend of Boswell’s father and an intermediary, Basil Cochrane was Boswell’s great-uncle. The unreported letter from Bruce Campbell of Mayfield and Milrig, Boswell’s second cousin who was at this time in his late twenties, told Boswell that he had once while in London drunk a bottle of sherry in his honour, and recommended a prostitute named ‘Miss Watts’.129 Boswell described him as ‘a rough blunt resolute young fellow with much common sense … very obliging to his friends’, and four letters between the pair in 1782–93 survive.130 ‘[M]y Cousin Willy Cochrane’, a ‘tall Gentleman in black’, played another prank on Boswell by leaving him a letter in London written partly in a ludicrous Stage Irish dialect. In the letter Cochrane invited himself to breakfast and warned Boswell not to ‘shut the door against your acquaintances and deprive yourself of the comforts of friendly confabulation’ while he was convalescing from gonorrhoea. The prank thoroughly soaped and shaved Boswell: ‘I did not think he had humour enough to write such a letter & I told him so’. Cochrane was yet another Scot who had travelled south to seek his fortune; he was pursuing the scheme which Sheridan had recommended to Boswell, that of studying the English law in order to 129

From Campbell, before 11 May 1763. Journ. 18 Oct. 1762. Two letters from JB to Campbell survive, dated 1782 and 1790 (Yale MSS. L 351–52), and two letters from Campbell to JB survive, dated 1792 and 1793 (Yale MSS. C 739.6, 740); see Catalogue, i. 200–01; ii. 552–53; iii. 1185. 130

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practise in London. Unfortunately, Cochrane’s was another fluctuating friendship. Initially, ‘Cousin Willy’ was a welcome companion: ‘I was put into good humour with him. His company was a fine variety to me’. Yet a scant week later, Boswell complained, ‘I tired of him. He was affected vulgar & snappish’. Two years later, visiting Cochrane as he lay dying in Marseilles, Boswell observed that ‘I used rather to dislike his manner. Sickness had softened and bettered it. I liked him.’ The lack of stronger feeling for his death was unusual given the ‘distress of a relation’.131 IV. Young Boswell and the Rhetoric of Female Friendship and Love With Boswell in particular it is a short step from the rhetoric of friendship (whether filial, paternal, based on political connection, or within the kinship network), to the rhetoric of love (whether maternal, courtly, marital, or libidinous). Of the fifty-nine correspondents documented in this volume, eleven (around eighteen per cent of the total) are women. (If one only counts correspondents with ‘reported’ letters, women constitute seven of thirty-eight individuals, again around eighteen per cent.)132 While he sometimes phrased the correspondence with his older counsellors and friends in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, describing them in terms borrowed from Homer, Virgil, and Horace, his relationships with women, especially those to whom he had romantic attachments, sometimes took on the style of the romantic and gothic past of Medieval and Early Modern Scotland. Boswell’s earliest years can seem somewhat laddish, and devoid of much serious engagement with women. Boswell’s dealings with Johnston, Temple, Erskine, Dempster, Eglinton, Digges, Derrick, Love, and McQuhae, The Soaping Club, and tavern life form a predominant pattern. The chief virtues here are ‘clubability’ and virility, typically exhibited in competitions for which one might excel in wit, drinking, raking, and swiving. Even the moralistic attempts by Johnston, Temple, and McQuhae to reform Boswell’s behaviour take place within an arena of men and male friendships: Boswell insists on sharing the details of his sex life with these three men, even when (especially when?) he imagines they will disapprove and ask him to mend his ways. Their role as ‘spectators’ and voyeurs of Boswell’s private life (a role shared in varying measures by Digges, Dempster, Eglinton, and Erskine) is one of the most striking elements in the papers. The all-male volumes of correspondence with Boswell’s later clubfellows—the ‘Certain Members of the Club’ (Corr. 3), and Garrick, Burke, and Malone (Corr. 4)—operate on a more mature, restrained, and respectable level, yet nonetheless present those same masculine values of clubability and conviviality. 131 Journ. 21, 27 Feb. 1763; 23 Dec. 1765; From Anonymous (William Cochrane), 21 Feb. 1763. 132 Indeed, it is one of the particular strengths of the ‘General Correspondence’ series that it contains more letters to and from women than the ‘themed volumes’ of letters from specific groups such as members of the Club, literati, politicians, and contributors to the Life. The letters involving Club members (Corr. 3 and Corr. 4) and the literati are entirely to and from men, as obviously are the volumes on WJT (Corr. 6) and JJ (Corr. 1). The political correspondents are mostly men, as are the correspondents relating to the making of the Life of Johnson (Corr. 2).

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Discussion of Boswell’s early relationships with women has often been limited to discussions of his overtly physical sexual liasons—his ‘female sport’,133 ‘concubinage’134 and ‘lewd … low, street debauchery’135—with various ‘Girls’, ‘Whores’, and ‘Ladies of the Town’, to use Boswell’s own terms. Admittedly, from the time of his first full ‘rites of love’ in London and his first case of gonorrhoea which happened in that eventful spring of 1760, Boswell continued his London habits of devoting a good deal of time to romantic and sexual intriguing. Recovering from the diseases, exhaustion, and guilt related to these encounters also occupied more of his hours than he would have wished.136 In London in spring 1760 he had begun consorting with prostitutes. In Edinburgh 1760–62 he continued his pursuit of liaisons in low life and high life alike, and presumably his recourse to paying for sex as well; the 1762–63 London journal contains many accounts of Boswell’s sex with prostitutes. Attention has also been devoted to his courtships undertaken with a goal of sexual encounters without payment or disease, the most famous being the seduction of the ‘Actress of Covent-Garden Theatre’ whom he code-named ‘Louisa’ and the pursuit of the ‘Lady Of Quality’ whom he code-named ‘Lady Mirabel’.137 It is often difficult, except in those rare cases where Boswell recorded explicit descriptions of sexual activities, to discern the nature of Boswell’s relationship with several of the women mentioned in the journals. Records of visits to women are often distressingly vague: was the goal tea and a chat or sex, or (rarely) both? The so-called Louisa episode is often-discussed, but quite unrepresentative, since, in his relationship with ‘Louisa’, Boswell attempted to mix verbal romance with physical pleasure. His serious courtships with well-born young women from good families who were intent on marriage precluded premarital sex. Boswell was also prevented by conventional Scottish morality from seeking sexual intercourse with married women of a high station, although the London customs of the ‘widow of middle age’ whom Boswell encoded in his journal as ‘Lady Mirabel’ seemed to suggest that a widowed ‘Lady of Quality’ might credibly ask a youth to ‘stray into [her] stable’.138 The one exception to these rules was the ‘femme charmante’ who ‘m’accordoit tout’, and whom Boswell described as ‘la fille d’un Homme de la premiêre distinction en Ecosse’. She remains the one known case of a well-born married British woman who had sexual intercourse with young Boswell.139 The fact that the ‘femme charmante’ was married at the time to a ‘Gentilhomme tres riche’ (‘Son Mari etoit un homme le plus honorable’) might have helped to conceal the affair.140 A major reason it is difficult to categorize and analyse Boswell’s relationships with women is his frequent use of code names both for serious marriage prospects 133

Journ. 25 Nov. 1762. Journ. 9 Apr. 1763. 135 Journ. 13 Apr. 1763. 136 The London encounters are reported in Journ. 21 Nov. 1762, 22 Jan. ,13 Mar., 9 Apr., 10 June 1763. See also Clap, pp. 2–3, 6–7, and 40. 137 Journ. 14 Dec. 1762; Journ. 14 Jan. 1763. 138 Journ. 14 Jan. 1763. 139 ‘Moma’ (Girolama Nini Piccolomini), a married mother of four children, had a sexual relationship with Boswell in Sept. 1765 (Corr. 5, pp. 3–5 and n. 1). However, she was part of a more permissive Sienese elite culture. 140 F. A. Pottle argued that this ‘femme charmante’ was Jean Home Heron, which if true would render Boswell’s relationship with the family of Kames even more complex (see Earlier Years, pp. 1–6 and 78–79). 134

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and for casual sexual partners. The secret names for his amours of 1760–63 are many: ‘Louisa’, ‘A———’, ‘Lady Mirabel’, ‘femme charmante’, ‘actrice’, ‘Angel’, ‘φ’, ‘p’, ‘Gr’, ‘my girl’, ‘Mrs. L——’, and ‘Nanny’ are a fairly complete list. He used such nicknames and codes to conceal identities even when the reputations of the women in question could not be injured, as when writing to Rousseau in 1764. Yet Boswell’s life from 1757 to 1763 already revolved around relationships with women of a nuanced and not merely sexual sort. A few were sexual, more were romantic courtship which never progressed into sex, many more were innocent courtly flirtation, and others were simply amicable without any traces of erotic elements. Indeed, only seven or so of his epistolary friendships with men involved comparing sexual scorecards in the Hellfire Club style, at least on the evidence of these surviving letters. Boswell made less mention of his various sexual contacts and relationships in this correspondence, even in epistolarly exchanges with notorious fellow-rakes such as Eglinton, than he did in his memoranda and journals. There are some traces of the theme in the letters of Digges and McQuhae mentioning his illness, Digges providing an especially welcome (though painful) prescription of a urethral irrigant to help cure the disease.141 He had been candid with Digges and McQuhae about his gonorrhoea, and the promiscuity which his having contracted it implied, despite the risk that McQuhae might leak the news to the county community of Ayrshire. More oddly, distant acquaintances not particularly well-liked by Boswell, such as ‘Cousin Willy’ Cochrane, seem to have found out about Boswell’s ‘Claps’, ‘the offspring of fun & merriment’, which had given Boswell ‘such scars’ in his ‘manly part … in front’, even though Boswell had ‘shut the door against [his] acquaintances’ during his medical quarantine.142 This corrective view—that young Boswell was not constantly afflicted either by satyriasis or sexually-transmitted disease —is particularly important given the distorted image promoted in the 1950s and 1960s of Boswell as chiefly a libertine and rake. The focus on Boswell’s sexual escapades, driven by analysis of the socalled ‘Louisa Episode’ and obsession with Boswell’s various copulations and nearcopulations in the 1762–63 London journal, has neglected or undervalued the degree to which the young Boswell pursued courtly or even platonic relationships with many of the women in his life, including older and more socially powerful women. To be sure, Boswell had romantic or sexual attachments (or both) with at least four of the major female characters represented in this volume by letters or verse epistles from Boswell. Jean Home, later (1761) Mrs. Heron but formerly ‘Miss Home’ in her mid-teens, may, as noted above, have been the ‘femme charmante’ mentioned in the ‘Ébauche de ma vie’ written for Rousseau (1764), in which case we are faced with the irony of her having initiated the affair after she had married and Boswell had ceased courting her. Making her the subject of one of his manuscript verse epistles, he portrayed ‘my Jeany’ as a ‘gen’rous Maid from Envy clear’. ‘Miss Home’ certainly might have been a suitable marital prospect for Boswell had her ‘sweet pretty self’ not married young in 1761.143 Katharine Colquhoun (‘Kitty’, ‘Angelic Princess’), a teenaged Highlander with ‘the finest 141

From WD, 18 Feb. 1763; From McQuhae, 26 Apr. 1763. From Anonymous (William Cochrane), 21 Feb. 1763. 143 To ‘Miss Home’ (Jean Home), before Nov. 1761. 142

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eyes, and most amiable heart in the World’, ‘fine complexion’ and ‘form … almost divine’ whom Boswell described as ‘so mild, so good’, was another important marital prospect and recipient of epistolary courtship, endearments, and even verse letters.144 It is unknown whether Boswell helped or harmed his chances with Katharine Colquhoun by printing his Marvellesque rebuke to his mistress’s coyness in Donaldson’s Collection II (1762), thus making a private gift to her an opportunity for publication. ‘Kitty’ and ‘Miss Home’, were—at least for a time in the early 1760s—socially prominent and single, and thus appropriate objects for Boswell’s matrimonial ambition. They both fell into a higher category above and beyond the affairs with ‘Louisa’ and other women, those having been liaisons which Boswell never assumed would lead to marriage and a respectable public life. Colquhoun represents one of the earliest manifestations of Boswell’s search for a wife which would occupy the greater part of the 1760s.145 Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane, ‘that Glorious Luminary Lady Betty’ so frequently mentioned in the Erskine-Boswell letters,146 was at some time before 1760, or more likely 1767–68, the object of Boswell’s ‘serious thoughts of proposing marriage’.147 By contrast, his affair with ‘Louisa’ was primarily a sexual liaison complicated by money, despite elements of romance in their relationship.148 Boswell sought the thrill of flirting, intrigue, and verbal love-making as much as physical lovemaking. More than that, he was in love with love. As he wrote in a song in the early 1760s, ‘B——— 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’.149 In one letter he might pay court to several women, as in his tribute to the four Erskine women (‘the noble Countess … Lady Anne … Lady Jenny … Lady Betty’), each of whom he praised in turn.150 By late 1763, in accordance with his plan to become more philosophical and serious, he had developed a vision of married love as ‘rational esteem’ which he wished to govern his choice of a wife. As he wrote in his journal for Johnston, ‘rational esteem founded on just motives, must in all probability, endure; especialy when the opinion of the world and many other considerations contribute to strengthen & preserve it’.151

144 To Katherine Colquhoun (MS version), late 1761/early 1762; To Katherine Colquhoun (Donaldson’s Collection II version), revision published Jan. 1762; To Katharine Colquhoun, 11 Dec. 1761. 145 The novelistic title of Boswell in Search of a Wife: 1766–1769 (ed. Frank Brady and Frederick A. Pottle, 1956) gives a distorted impression that the years from Mar. 1766 to Nov. 1769 were the only years when JB was actively seeking a marriage-partner. Yet as these letters show, marriage was very much on Boswell’s mind in 1758–63. As Pottle noted, ‘Boswell enjoyed playing with ideas of marriage: from [1758] onwards he was always fancying himself head-over-heels in love with some more-or-less eligible young lady and was always writing fervent notes and making gallant addresses that stopped just short of being proposals’ (Earlier Years, p. 67). 146 To AE, 25 Aug. 1761 (MS). 147 Journ. 23 Nov. 1776. 148 See the mercenary tone of To ‘Louisa’, 3 Feb. 1763. 149 ‘B———. A Song’, c. 1761–62 (Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 90–92, reprinted in Werner, pp. 161–62). 150 To AE, 25 Aug. 1761 (MS). 151 Journ. 16 Jan. 1763.

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Even where Boswell expressed romantic intrigue, it was often demure and sentimental rather than along the lines of the overtly sexual relations with ‘Louisa’, ‘femme charmante’, ‘φ’, and others. He is thought to have remained a virgin until his encounter with a London prostitute in 1760. His first great love was a schoolboy crush at the age of thirteen, on ‘Miss Mackay’, whom he met at Moffat Spa. Even at thirteen, Boswell had assumed the language of romantic ‘passion’: he was ‘deeply in love’, even ‘desperately in love’, and ‘certainly at that time felt all the pleasing anguish of a genuine flame’. However, his ‘affair’ with Miss Mackay, far from being pursued physically, was never even begun, since Boswell admitted ‘I never declared my hopeless passion’.152 Boswell continued this demure and chaste style of romance in Edinburgh and on his ‘jaunts’ 1757–62, even though after 1760 he alternated his flights of falling in love with ‘rogering’ and ‘touching’ and ‘fuck[ing]’.153 As typical of the young Boswell’s amatory escapades in London as his whoremongering are incidents such as his ‘tea’ with the actress ‘Miss Mowat … a lovely Girl’. Although he declared himself ‘quite flashy with Love’, Boswell’s wooing of Mowat was limited to ‘[m]any an amorous glance’ exchanged with her, and ‘discourse’ ‘often addrest … to each other’, and the wish ‘to see her again’.154 ‘Miss Home’, Boswell’s ‘ my Jeany’, was courted in Boswell’s verses—in lines which he boasted aspired to go beyond the courtly lover’s rhymed clichés of ‘Love and Dove’ —with praise of ‘your sweet pretty self’, ‘your fingers fair’, and her character as the ‘gen’rous Maid from Envy clear’.155 The thanks for a lock of ‘Kitty’ Colquhoun’s hair on a pink ribbon was garlanded with the flowery phrases of courtly prose: ‘Angelic Princess’, ‘romantic Genius’, ‘beautifull Emblem of delicate Friendship’, ‘Peerless Maid’, ‘divine, Golden lock’, ‘gracious Queen’, and ‘enchanted Palace’.156 The poem to Colquhoun, while saucier in its Cavalier threats that ‘Love and Beauty have their day’, is still laden with high-flown romantic expressions such as ‘Lilies blending with the Rose’, ‘unrelenting heart’, and ‘cruel, killing airs’, and portrays Boswell as ‘your Slave’ uttering ‘lovers prayers’.157 Admittedly, such fustian sentiments were the conventional stuff of numberless love poems from the reign of Queen Elizabeth onwards. Nonetheless, Boswell truly was assiduous in his pursuit of her from November 1761 to February 1762 when he was ‘oft’ with ‘Miss Colquhoun’; in November 1762 he pondered what life would have been like ‘if I had been married last year to Miss Colquhoun or Miss Bruce’.158 If his sentiments were fairly conventional, Boswell’s choosing to

152

Journ. 3 Jan. 1763. ‘[D]id Penance by beating with Wood, Stone iron & resolved from this time never more to do so unless when [?touching women]’ (Journ. ?30 June 1762); ‘[I]n rather too fine a flow [rogered] φ forenoon & [p] afternoon’ (Journ. 1 July 1762); ‘In the Strand, I picked up a little profligate wretch … “Brother Soldiers (said I) should not a halfpay Officer r–g–r for sixpence?’” (Journ. 4 June 1763); ‘Keep Bob right & roger Miss T’ (Mem. 21 June 1763); ‘Fuck once in cundum to recover manhood as you must not trust any Girls’ (Mem. 11 July 1763). 154 Journ. 12 Jan. 1763. 155 To ‘Miss Home’ (Jean Home), before Nov. 1761. 156 To Katharine Colquhoun, 11 Dec. 1761. 157 To Katherine Colquhoun (MS version), late 1761/early 1762. 158 Journ. 12, 14, 25, Nov.; Notes, Jan.–Feb. 1762; Journ. 30 Nov. 1762. Miss Bruce has not been conclusively identified. 153

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have his romantic pursuits printed, published, and sold at the bookstalls of Edinburgh in 1762 was a more unusual choice, paralleling his exposure of the letter to Eglinton in the Scots Magazine (1761) and his compilation of letters to a close friend in E–B (1763). Unattainable women—unattainable either because a friend’s sister or a respected friend’s wife—received enthusiastic Boswellian encomia. Anne Erskine (‘elegant, gentle Lady Anne’), Janet Erskine (‘lovely, sighing Lady Jenny’), and Elizabeth Erskine Macfarlane (‘Glorious Luminary Lady Betty’) were sisters of Boswell’s friend Erskine, and thus relatively safe from Boswell’s untoward advances, despite Boswell’s clumsily erotic feelings for ‘Lady Betty’ and her ‘Bubbies … all swelling to the sight’.159 Lady Betty Macfarlane was the chief object of his affections among the Erskine sisters, ‘a Woman of noble figure and majestic deportment, uncommon good sense and cleverness’.160 He usually kept his expressions of love or lust towards ‘Lady Betty’ chivalric and polite, couching them in language emulating the courtly lovers of the golden ages of James V or Mary, Queen of Scots: ‘Tell Lady Betty that I am melancholy & that I would fain say that it is owing to my passion for her, But my delicacy of conscience will not suffer me to impute it to so noble a cause.’161 She was yet another Dulcinea to Boswell’s Amatory Quixote: ‘I am infinitely obliged to her Ladyship.… I am a good deal of a Don Quixote’.162 He played the adoring lover with her as well, instructing Erskine to ‘in the character of Me, kneel, supplicate Worship Lady Betty’.163 His brief ‘Passion for Lady Betty … at Kelly’164 was thwarted by the presence of her husband, Macfarlane: ‘O could he but embrace her person! or as a friend desire me to do it!’165 In 1776 Boswell finally admitted that beyond his sexual passion, he ‘had once serious thoughts of proposing marriage to her’.166 The friendship outlasted the lust and the romance both. Four of her social notes to Boswell dated 1767–88 survive, one of them (from ?13 February 1767) referring to Boswell as a ‘towering Oak’. She remained a constant friend to Boswell in Edinburgh. In the final known letter of their correspondence, (dated 6 February 1788) she professed her ‘unalterable friendship’ for him.167 Boswell also imagined his love for Lady Anne Mackintosh, a woman in her mid-thirties, in terms of neofeudal courtly Jacobite-tinged romance expressed in poetry: ‘The comely Partner of their [Clan Chattan’s] throne’ with ‘sparkling eyes’. His vision of

159 To AE, 25 Aug. 1761 (MS). To JJ, JB described the Lomond Hills as ‘these sublime representatives of Lady Betty Macfarlan’s Bubbies which he used to gaze with strong desire at when painted by Lindo all swelling to the sight’ (To JJ, 11 Jan. 1763, Corr. 1, pp. 40–42). 160 Journ. 30 Oct. 1762. 161 To AE, 3 Sept. 1762. 162 To AE, 8 Dec. 1761 (MS). 163 To AE, 17 Dec. 1761 (MS). 164 Journ. 6 Nov. 1762. 165 Journ. 14 Mar. 1763. 166 Journ. 23 Nov. 1776. 167 Yale MSS. C 812–15 (see Catalogue, ii. 568–69). Two of her notes were printed in Corr. 5 (pp. xix, 44, 120). The editors of Corr. 5 and Corr. 7 provide evidence of five more missing elements from their correspondence. For her friendship with JB, see also Journ. 19 July 1769 and 25 June 1774.

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courtly love in feudal Moy Hall included tributes to her intellect and character— ‘Your Judgment Wit Polite Address’— and even encomia on her husband.168 However, Boswell sustained several female friendships which could not be characterized in terms of either sex or the marriage market.169 Boswell cultivated the friendship of fiftyish Lady Kames not because she ‘was very handsom and still has very a good presence’, but rather as a female equivalent of the eminently civilised Lord Kames, and ‘a woman of good understanding and very well bred … a remarkable degree of elegance … a great fund of humour … strong and brilliant propriety of expression’.170 His conversations with her were serious rather than flirtatious: ‘Lady Kames and I had a long walk in the Garden and much serious Conversation about Family Affairs. The Confidence which she reposed in me flattered me much’.171 Neither was the Countess of Northumberland, in her midforties, an object of erotic love: she was rather a political patroness, a representative of the aristocratic principle which Boswell so admired, and a mentor in the ways of the bon ton much as Eglinton was. His effusive letters to his ‘friend’ bore extravangantly cavalier expressions: mentions of the ‘infinite happiness you have conferred upon me’, of her ‘benevolent Disposition’, and diffident warnings that ‘your kindness will render me so excessively proud that I shall begin to think nothing too great for me’. Although he hoped for a concrete and hardheaded patronage from the countess, he did not think this incompatible with an effusive emotionality to his ‘Lady’ of the famous Percies of Northumberland whose glories he recalled as he departed Edinburgh to thoughts of the ballad of ‘Chevy Chase’. ‘I long for September next when I … shall have the honour to kiss Lady Northumberland’s hand’.172 The Countess of Galloway, to whom Boswell wrote a grandiloquent verse epistle in late 1758,173 was in her fifties, and portrayed in Boswell’s poem as a mater dolorosa, although Boswell knew that she was ‘a tall stately Woman and in the last age was reckoned a Beauty’.174 V. Conclusion More than twice as many letters written to Boswell than by Boswell survive, although the balance of letters sent and received would have been far closer to a one-to-one ratio in Boswell’s lifetime. Of the more than 4,517 letters which the Catalogue recorded as held in the Boswell collection at the Beinecke Library at Yale in 1993, approximately 1,329 letters written by Boswell survive, whereas about 3,188 letters written to Boswell are held at Yale. More letters have been added to the collection since the Catalogue reached print, so the preceding 168 To Anne Mackintosh, between 12 and 25 Aug. 1761. In Earlier Years (p. 77 n.), Pottle described JB as ‘flirting with her, apparently harmlessly’. 169 See John Riely, ‘Bozzy and Piozzi: The History of a Literary Friendship and Rivalry’, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1971; and Mary Hyde, The Impossible Friendship: Boswell and Mrs Thrale, 1973. 170 Journ. 16 Oct. 1762. 171 Journ. 22 Sept. 1762. 172 To the Countess of Northumberland, 6 Jan. 1762. 173 To the Countess of Galloway, after 21 Aug. 1758. 174 Journ. 25–27 Sept. 1762.

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numbers are an under-count (nor do they include the many items of Boswell correspondence held in other libraries or owned by private collectors). Between the ages of seventeen to twenty-two Boswell was still developing his epistolary style. Yet despite their ‘juvenility’, these early letters display many of the techniques he later polished in the three decades from 1765 to 1795. Moreover, Boswell, like Horace Walpole, assiduously collected the correspondence of his contemporaries, so even those who doubt any claims made for his epistolary artistry may benefit from his careful hoarding of letters sent to him by people of various ages, ranks, professions, fames, and nations. Boswell’s letters stand as documents of the age alongside the Life of Johnson and the Tour to the Hebrides, and more recently his manuscript journals. Recent studies have begun to acknowledge Boswell’s central importance for the cultural history of the epistolary form.175 Recognition of the massive cultural, literary, and historical wealth inherent in Boswell’s correspondence came relatively late, but only partially as a result of the late discovery and late publication of his letters. After all, the nineteenth century had gained partial glimpses of the wealth of Boswellian epistolary treasures from those letters already printed in Boswell’s lifetime such as those between Erskine and Boswell (reprinted 1879) or those included in Boswell’s longer works which remained in print, such as Hebrides and the Life, and from the fortuitous discovery and first printings of the previously unknown texts of the Boswell–Temple correspondence (1856/57, 1908). The discovery of the Malahide and Fettercairn hoards from 1928 onwards promised far more.176 Tinker’s two volumes of selected Letters of James Boswell (1924) printed the 389 letters written by Boswell which had been located to that time. Soon after, the eighteen-volume privately-printed Isham edition Private Papers of James Boswell edited by Scott and Pottle (1928–34) wove letters among the surviving journals to mend gaps in Boswell’s diarized account of his life. Yet even after those efforts, the bulk of the letters remained unknown to the public. The publication of the ‘trade’ edition of the journals 1950–89 presented a few of the letters which directly illuminated issues in the diaries, as Pottle and his eight credited collaborators employed letters to fill lacunae in the journals just as Scott had. Therefore, whereas the bulk of the fully-written journals of Boswell will already be familiar (in modernized form) to readers from the ‘trade’ edition, the majority of the letters will be terra incognita until the completion of the research edition of the correspondence. The question remains whether Boswell’s letter-writing style in this period was characteristic of his later epistolary form, or whether the period 1757–63 is distinctive in ways other than mere chronological precedence. Just as the 1762–63

175 About JB specifically, see Bruce Redford, ‘Boswell as Correspondent; Boswell as Letter-Writer’, Yale University Library Gazette, 1982, lvi. 40–52; Bruce Redford, The Converse Of The Pen: Acts Of Intimacy In The Eighteenth-Century Familiar Letter, 1986; Rufus Reiberg, ‘James Boswell’s Personal Correspondence: The Dramatized Quest for Identity’, in The Familiar Letter in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Howard Anderson, Philip B. Daghlian, and Irvin Ehrenpreis, 1966, pp. 244–68; William H. Irving, The Providence of Wit in the English Letter Writers, 1955, pp. 300–06; and Bennett, passim. 176 See David Buchanan, The Treasure of Auchinleck: The Story of the Boswell Papers, 1974; and Frederick A. Pottle, Pride and Negligence: The History of the Boswell Papers, 1982.

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London journal is one of his least characteristic (but most interesting and complete) journals, the letters of E–B and many of the other letters of this period project an atypically light manner, even for Boswell. Yet those abundant letters in which Boswell assumed an extravagant style are counterbalanced by others in which he abandoned the pursuit of the bagatelle and his conscious emulation of Swift, Gay, and Sterne. In those letters, he assumed the character of a sober-sided respectable and retenue gentleman similar to those advocates and judges to whom he wrote in 1763 at the end of his London stay. As he informed Johnston, ‘I was now upon a plan of studying polite reserved behaviour which is the only way to keep up dignity of character’. Indeed, part of his rationale for being in London in 1762–63 was to become more serious and leave off his fanciful pranks of soaping, shaving, mimicry, and garrulousness, habits which he feared had led others to take him for a ‘heedless dissipated rattling fellow who might say or do every ridiculous thing’. During that stay, he also aspired to shed what he thought of as his more provincial Scottish traits in exchange for a more socially acceptable North British identity; his distancing of himself from hamely Scottish speech and manners motivated his backing away from Erskine and Dempster in 1762–63.177 He never fully accomplished either of those goals. Admittedly, the project for high seriousness drove him into depression in the Netherlands 1763–64, and in an equal and opposite reaction he indulged in sporadic but energetic frivolity on the Grand Tour of 1764–66. After his return to Scotland in early 1766, he was back to grave maturity, practising the law, labouring again under his father’s shadow, and attempting to conform to Lowlands mores of religion and behaviour. In February 1766, he would also revisit the Letters Between The Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq., expressing displeasure at his former frivolity: ‘Read Ersk & Bos letts. Could not bear your own except one or two. In general mere forc’d extravagance, & no real humour[.] Ersk’s will please still tho’ not so greatly as once’.178 Temple seemed to share Boswell’s opinion of the transformations in April 1766, when he argued the following: [A]s to yourself, your notions of things are very much changed, that you now despise (The Honble. A.E. and J.B. Esqr. meaning the Letters of) what you once were silly enough to think a model of fine writing and of the epistolary style, & that for the future I must not be surprised to see you write nothing but good, substantial sense, without one ray of wit or humour, and that now (for you lawyers never know where to end a sentence—nor indeed do I know well how to end this) you are fully resolved to be a man of business, of consequence, & really a great man, and to be of some use, some account in your day; that you sincerely regret the time you have lost, that Life is […]179

177

Journ. 1 Dec. 1762. Journ. 17 Feb. 1766 (Yale MS. J 11). 179 From WJT, 14 Apr. 1766, Corr. 6, pp. 144–45. 178

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Temple presumably meant most or all of this criticism of Boswell ironically, evidenced by the narratorial mid-sentence interpolations (‘nor indeed do I know well how to end this’) and the Shandeian trailing off of phrases (‘Life is [...]’). He certainly could not have genuinely anticipated a Boswell completely shorn of even ‘one ray of wit or humour’, nor have prophesied that his friend would be entirely reduced to writing the sort of ‘good, substantial sense’ which the Edinburgh clergy and literati produced when in their more sententious moods. Whether Temple wrote seriously or not, Boswell certainly did not—or indeed could not—follow his advice. He might admire Samuel Johnson, whom Erskine and Dempster both disliked, but he could never fully be like him. The contrast in his letters, and his writing as a whole, between the serious and the frivolous—between the ponderous Johnsonian style and the sparkling Shandeian extravagances which he had practised with Erskine and Dempster—remained a trait of his writing (and indeed of his life) until his last decade of life 1786–95. Not coincidentally, 1786–95 was the decade in which he wrote the Life of Johnson, and Boswell used the occasion of its publication in 1791 to renew his correspondence with Dempster and Erskine. In those final years, he wrote of his book to both Dempster and Erskine, providing Dempster with a souvenir which Dempster elected to tip into his copy of the first edition, and promising Erskine a second edition of 1793, since ‘St. Andrew’ had praised the first edition, which he had borrowed from the Earl of Kelly.180 By so doing, Boswell acknowledged the germinative influence of his first books and his first friends of the years 1757–63 on his final and greatest work. J.J.C.

180

To GD, 30 Apr. 1791 (Yale MS. *L 423); To AE, 6 Mar. 1793 (Yale MS. L 531). lxxv

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A Prefatory Note on the Annotation THE goal of the annotation in the Yale research editions has been to present as much explanatory information as practical within the spatial limits of a printed volume. Scholarly editors from at least the time of George Birkbeck Hill have, of course, been criticized for their extended notes.1 Writers since the time of Sterne have mocked those who described annotation as ‘un-scholar-like’.2 However, such notes are one of the chief purposes of a research edition, as opposed to the lightly annotated ‘trade edition’ style (which itself became heavier and more comprehensive in the final volumes of the Yale Reading Series) or the almost entirely unannotated ‘Boswell papers’ style of Geoffrey Scott. The level of annotation set by previous volumes of correspondence in this edition, particularly the most recent ones, has served as a model. In keeping with previous editorial policy, Greek, Latin, German, and Italian texts have been translated, while those in French have not. There is, nonetheless, something particularly ironic about a scholarly edition of Boswell’s correspondence with Erskine and other friends of his youth. The letters to Erskine in particular are filled with mock-learning and faux-pedantry, with the apparatus of explanatory footnotes and arcane references to books and authors and events, some of them genuine, many of them utterly fatuous. Time after time, after lulling the editors with a set of serious allusions, Boswell and his correspondents toss their would-be scholiasts a mass of chaff, which modern editorial practice demands be as duly explicated—even if only to discount them—as their more factual allusions. The paradox is not lost upon us that we herein create a scholarly edition of a set of letters which often mocks scholarly editions. Here we follow in the footsteps of the editors of Sterne, Fielding, Swift, the Dunciad Variorum, and ‘Martinus Scriblerus’, who must likewise feel that their painstaking labours are constantly being spoofed by the subjects whose writings they hope to explicate. Boswell and some in his youthful circle had particular fun at the expense of the very idea of learned commentary. On 11 January 1765, Boswell ridiculed Louis Dutens, ‘who was about publishing a compleat Edition of the Works of Leibnitz with notes and I know not what more. Opus magnum et ponderosum.’ Boswell expressed his distaste: ‘Will men still be plodding in this manner? Let them alone. It is as good as playing at cards’. When he was embarrassed in front of Dutens, he had no doubts that ‘the rogue Du Tems [sic] enjoyed my perplexity and probably studied from it something to insert among his notes on Leibnitz on determining motives’.3 What might Boswell have said if he had known that in the early twentyfirst century scholars were still finding in his perplexities something to insert among their notes—not notes on Leibnitz, but on Boswell himself? 1 Percy Fitzgerald, More Editing à la Mode: Being a Further Examination of Dr. Birkbeck Hill’s Edition of Boswell’s LIFE OF JOHNSON, 1892. 2 ‘And pray who was Tickletoby’s mare? — ’tis just as discreditable and un-scholar-like a question, Sir, as to have asked what year (ab urb. con.) the second Punic war broke out. — Who was Tickletoby’s mare! — Read, read, read, read, my unlearned reader! read, — or by the knowledge of the great saint Paraleipomenon — I tell you before-hand, you had better throw down the book at once’ (Tristram Shandy). 3 Journ. 11 Jan. 1765.

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Indeed, Boswell had in his manuscript letters to Erskine prophesied, albeit farcically, the work within this volume. Speaking of his prose style, he wrote: ‘[I] shall adopt the easy desultory Stile of One whom at present I shall not venture to name’. Instead of supplying that name for Erskine or the audience of the printed letters, Boswell jokingly professed to ‘leave that to some future ingenious Commentator on the Epistolary Corespondence of The Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell Esquire.’4 The young Boswell might have been even more bemused at the location in which the editors have collated and annotated these letters. Although by the mid1770s he became a mild ‘pro-American’, in 1757–63 America seemed an Ultima Thule to him. New Haven was, for Boswell, a town on the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, or the name of an Irish peer whom he briefly met in 1779 (i.e., Lord Newhaven5), not the location of the American university that would one day make his private papers available to a scholarly audience. J.J.C.

4 To AE, 9 Jan. 1762 (MS). Bennett in his dissertation indignantly ‘accept[ed] the challenge’, identifying JB’s style as ‘an execrable imitation of that of Laurence Sterne’. 5 Journ. 12 Oct. 1779.

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THE GENERAL CORRESPONDENCE OF JAMES BOSWELL 1757–1763

1

2

To West Digges,1 ?first half of April 1757 Not reported. JB sent WD a prologue for his consideration. The reply from WD (see next letter) does not name the play for which the prologue had been composed, but shows that at some point JB volunteered the information that he had written the prologue in a ‘short time’. 1 West Dudley Digges (?1725 or 1726– 86), gentleman-actor. Son of Col. Thomas Digges, Esq., of Chilham Castle, Kent, and the Hon. Elizabeth West, sister of Lord De La Warr (Comp. Peer. iv. 162; William Berry, County Genealogies, 1830, p. 143). Oxford DNB discounts the rumour that he may have been the illegitimate son of the Earl De La Warr. During WD’s own lifetime, his genteel parentage was kept obscure (Biog. Dict. iv. 401). His date of birth is uncertain. George Colman the Younger suggested 1720 (Random Records, 1830, i. 255–56 n.); Biog. Dict. (iv. 401) concurred. His parents were married in 1724 (Hadlow Parish Register, IGI), so that if 1720 is correct, WD was an illegitimate child. A more likely birthdate is 1725 or 1726: Westminster listed him as admitted in 1737, ‘aged 11’ (G. F. R. Barker and A. H. Stenning, The Record of Old Westminsters, 1928, i. 269). After leaving Westminster School in 1740, WD embarked on a career as a soldier during the War of the Austrian Succession. He entered Col. James Long’s new (later 44th) Regt. of Foot on 26 Jan. 1741 as an ensign and transferred to Col. Richard O’Farrell’s (later 22nd) Regt. of Foot on 25 June 1744 (ibid.; N. B. Leslie, The Succession of Colonels of the British Army from 1660 to the Present Day, 1974, pp. 64, 81; David Ascoli, A Companion to the British Army, 1660–1983, 1983, pp. 117, 127). He resigned his commission in the army in 1749, deeply in debt, and began his acting career when he played from 1749 to 1753 in Dublin at the Theatre Royal in Smock Alley. He fled briefly to England in 1753 to escape his debts, but returned to Dublin 1753–54. He was associated with TS (for whom see From GD to AE, 2 Aug. 1761, n. 9) through their work on the Irish stage, where he was Antony to TS’s Brutus. WD ‘played a very prominent part’ in ‘the memorable disturbance that compelled TS to leave Ireland for some years’, i.e., the ‘Mahomet Riot’ of Mar. 1754 (Edin. Stage, p. 82 and n. †; see next letter, n. 6). He lived as an impecunious gentleman in London 1754–55 under at least two aliases, then acted in Dublin again 1755–56.

He arrived in Edinburgh on 2 Mar. 1756, and soon became actor-manager of the Canongate Concert Hall, also referred to as the Edinburgh Theatre, but was ousted from management in early 1758 and then dismissed from the company in summer 1758. After a season in Ireland 1758–59 and a paper war in Edinburgh by his supporters to force his readmission, he was rehired in 1759, but he was back in Ireland 1760–61. Despite rejoining at Edinburgh 1761–64, creditors drove him to another residence in England 1764–71. During that time, a bequest from his mother’s will required him to quit the stage and change his surname to West. He did leave off acting for a time, but in 1767 returned to the stage in Limerick, and was likely on stage in Dublin during 1767–71 (Edin. Stage, pp. 79–129, 157–79; Biog. Dict. iv. 402–08). WD’s range as an actor was impressive, his roles varying from villains to antiheroes to romantic heroes (even in his sixties) to character heroes to comic roles. His ‘sometimes harsh and grating’ delivery and oratorical ‘beauties … lost in … ranting’ were counterbalanced by his ‘majestic’, graceful formality in stage presence. In the late 1770s, towards the end of his career, critics complained his acting style was ‘old school’ and pompous and that he had grown portly. Still, he remained a crowd-pleaser and ‘The Magnus Apollo of … Edinburgh’ as late as 1771–76, where his 1771 comeback performance at the Canongate after seven years’ absence was greeted by applause ‘the most universal that ever was heard … thundering claps … loud and repeated huzzas’ (Edin. Stage, pp. 79–129, 157–79, 157 [quoting Edin. Eve. Cour.], 496; Biog. Dict. iv. 410). He performed brief runs in provincial theatres: in Cork and Limerick in 1774 and in 1775, 1776, and 1777 in York and Liverpool. From 1777 to 1780 he mostly acted in London, returned to Edinburgh one last time in 1781, returned briefly to London in 1781, and was at Cork in some performances 1781–83, but mainly in Dublin 1782–84. In the summer of 1784 (while rehearsing Venice Preserved, the first play in which he had ever appeared, in Dublin, the first city in which he had ever performed) he

3

?FIRST HALF OF APRIL 1757

had a paralytic stroke. He died in Cork on 10 or 11 Nov. 1786 (Biog. Dict. iv. 402–08). WD had an even more nomadic existence than most actors, since he spent much of his life evading creditors. All things considered, he showed remarkable capacities for running up new debts and evading duns, though he often had to sell off his valuables, and was even for a time imprisoned for debt in London and Edinburgh, the second time escaping Canongate Prison only through bankruptcy. WD was reputedly handsome, dignified and charming as well as a compelling actor. A portrait of him in costume as the comic

character Sir John Brute appears in Edin. Stage, facing p. 92, and another as Cato appears in Biog. Dict. iv. 408. He married Mary Wakeling in 1746 (Allhallows London Wall Parish Reg., IGI). WD’s amatory affairs included two common-law arrangements with actresses: with Sarah Achurch Ward from c. 1752–58, and with George Anne Bellamy from c. 1761 (he even acted in 1763 under the name Mr. Bellamy). His common-law union would have made him a bigamist. He fathered up to six children (Bellamy, iv. 69; Edin. Stage, pp. 101, 128; Biog. Dict. iv. 403–07).

From West Digges, between 9 and 19 April1 1757 MS. Yale (C 1038).

April 9th 1757, Teusday: 7 oClock SIR: I am much oblig’d to Your kind intentions in favor of the Stage2 and myself,3 and I would with pleasure make use of your prologue,4 did I not fear giving offence to a Body of Persons,5 Who may if they please be angry with me, But who never shall have (as far as I can help it) cause to justify their anger.6 Considering Your Age, and the short time you wrote the lines in, I think the Poetry very pleasing, and deserving of Commendation. And I shall be glad of any opportunity of personally thanking You—I am, Sir, Your most obedient Servant, W. DIGGES 1 The day of the week, given at the letter’s conclusion as ‘Teusday’, is perplexing, since 9 Apr. fell on a Saturday. The dateline should perhaps be read as WD’s slip of the pen for ‘April 19th 1757, Tuesday’. F. A. Pottle has suggested that WD began the letter on Saturday 9 Apr. (the MS dateline is a spare ‘April 9th 1757’) and concluded it on Tuesday 12 Apr., which would mean that both the date and the day were correct in their context. 2 For JB’s youthful enthusiasm for the theatre in Edinburgh, see Introduction and Earlier Years, pp. 37–42. It is tempting to link JB’s prologue to a performance of Home’s Douglas, since Douglas was the most significant work in WD’s season and became one of the most prominent episodes in Scots theatre history. WD’s Nov. 1756–Aug. 1757 season at the Canongate had already included the controversial first run of Douglas 14–22 Dec. 1756. The ‘new tragedy of Douglas’ was revived on 9 Feb. 1757 with ‘material alterations by the Author’, 14 Feb. 1757 with ‘select Peices of old Scot’s Music’ as entr’actes, and per-

formed on 15 Mar. 1757 ‘by desire of several Ladies of quality’ and ‘with a prologue, intended to be spoke at its Representation in England, as it is now in Rehearsal at the Theatre Royal in Convent Garden’; it also played 21 Feb. (Edin. Eve. Cour., 8, 12, 19 Feb., 15 Mar.; Edin. Stage, pp. 83–94, Biog. Dict. iv. 404). Douglas was to be presented on 13 Apr. ‘with alterations as represented on the English stage … with new dresses and decorations’ and the ‘select pieces of old Scots music’ as entr’actes; the 27 Apr. performance also included the Scots music (Edin. Eve. Cour. 12, 26 Apr. 1757). Yet the busy Apr. 1757 Canongate schedule also included performances of Tancred and Sigismunda (2 Apr., WD as Tancred), The Provok’d Wife (6 Apr., WD as Sir John Brute), The Albion Queens; Or, the Death of Mary Queen of Scots (20 Apr., WD as Norfolk), The Orphan (23 Apr., WD as Castalio), and The Stratagem (30 Apr., WD as Archer). See Edin. Eve. Cour., 31 Mar., 2, 5, 21, 28 Apr. 1757; and Edin. Stage, pp. 83–95. Given JB’s known fascination with Mary,

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BETWEEN 9 AND 19 APRIL 1757

Queen of Scots (see Earlier Years, pp. 219– 20, and To JJ, 13 Sept. 1762, Corr. 1, p. 15 and n. 3), the proposed prologue may have dealt with her. She remained a controversial character in the 1750s and 1760s, much hated by the Whigs. See To Hamilton, 15 Dec. 1765 (L 621), Hamilton to JB, 5 Aug. 1768, Corr. 7, pp. 93–96 and n. 8, p. 77, n. 7. 3 WD was ‘the first actor that [JB] ever saw’, and his Macheath in particular made a ‘strong and permanent’ impression upon JB’s ‘warm youthfull imagination’: ‘It was [WD] who threw open to me the portals of Theatrical Enchantment, and therefore He and Pleasure are inseparably associated in my mind’ (To Garrick, 3 Mar. 1778, Corr. 4, p. 77). In 1760, JB anonymously published A View of the Edinburgh Theatre, which he dedicated to WD (see p. 7), and in which he praised WD extravagantly. JB was to become not only a theatrical admirer and partisan but also a valued friend of WD, as the correspondence in this volume reveals. JB’s journal and memoranda during his second visit to London, written more than five years after this letter, show him still holding up WD’s ‘easy dignity and black liveliness of behaviour’ as a model for his own social deportment (Mem. 31 Dec. 1762). JB’s weekly shipments of the North Briton from London to WD (see later WD–JB letters in this volume) show his continuing interest in the friendship. Yet they are also evidence of JB’s growing patronization of WD, a reversal of the relationship as it stood in 1757 where JB was the humble supplicant and WD the pitying Great Man. JB’s record of the revaluation of the friendship would begin as early as Feb. 1762: ‘Digges arrived Saw him at John’s [for which see From AE, 13 Dec. 1761 and n. 15]—how views alter—not so great a Man’ (Journ. 15 Feb. 1762). This lowering of JB’s initial estimate of WD was confirmed by late 1762: ‘He is very grateful to me … they drink a bumper to the health of Mr. Boswell. He calls himself my poor corespondent, as he cannot make me a return … Poor Digges! I realy like him. He has been unlucky & has done many inexcusable things. But he is a pretty man; & has most amiable dispositions. Had he not been reduced, but had a plentiful fortune, he would have been a noble fellow, greatly admired’ (Journ. 11 Dec. 1762). The journals record JB’s socializing with WD as late as Christmas Eve 1776 (Journ. 24 Dec.). 4 JB would write various prologues at later times. Four ‘prologues’ appear in MS. Douce 193 (notebook, now in the Bodleian,

of JB’s plan of a volume of poems and the manuscript versions of many of his poems), all of which are transcribed and edited in Werner. Werner remarked in his introduction that most of the poems can be dated ‘mainly between … 1758–62’. JB’s ‘Plan of a Volume of Poems to be published for me by Becket & Dehondt’ (dated by Werner c. 1761–62) included the ‘Prologue Macbeth’ and ‘Prologue Love makes a man’. Both prologues were presumably written before 1763, though it would be difficult to know exactly how much earlier (Werner, pp. 14–20). Two prologues are variant versions of JB’s prologue to Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery, 1763 (see Journ. 31 Dec. 1762) and therefore cannot be the prologue discussed in this letter (Werner, pp. 149–52, 207–10; see also Robert Hogan and Jerry C. Beasley, eds., The Plays of Frances Sheridan, 1984, Appendix, pp. 202–04). The untitled poem beginning ‘Ladies and Gentleman, your most devoted!’ might have been written as a prologue, given its references to the speaker as wearing a beard and being a ‘profound apothecary’, and various theatrical phrases. Yet Werner speculated that it was actually an address to the Soaping Club (for which see From the Soaping Club, between ?June 1760 and early 1762, and n. 1) written in about 1760, ‘apothecary’ being a slang reference to grave pedantry (Werner, pp. 41–42, 161–63). The remaining two in Douce 193 are a ‘Prologue’ to Macbeth and ‘An Occasional Prologue’ to Colley Cibber’s Love Makes a Man; or, The Fop’s Fortune, 1701 (Werner, pp. 152–54, 210–11). JB was not unrealistic in his hope that he might have a prologue recited on the Edinburgh stage, though he was only sixteen. His prologue to Lady Houston’s The Coquettes, or the Gallant in the Closet survives as ‘Prologue to The Coquettes. Spoken by Mr. Parsons’ (Yale MS. M 266), and was recited as part of that play’s brief life—it was ‘damned the third night’—in ?Feb. 1759 (Memoirs JB, p. xxx; Earlier Years, pp. 40, 44, 465; Cal. Merc. 10 Feb. 1759). JB would contribute a prologue, for David ‘Royal’ Ross, for the opening of the new Theatre Royal on 9 Dec. 1767. He ‘consequently had the satisfaction of hearing the first legal dramatic performance in Scotland introduced with rhymes of his own’ (Earlier Years, p. 346). 5 This ‘Body of Persons’ remains unidentified. Perhaps WD meant the Edinburgh magistrates (because the Canongate Theatre was unlicensed) or the Clergy (because of the Calvinist animus against theatre) or

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BETWEEN 9 AND 19 APRIL 1757

the University faculty or the Scots Whig Ascendancy (because of the political content of the prologue). None of the surviving verse prologues seems on the surface to be likely to give offence, certainly not the prologue to Cibber’s comedy nor the bearded ‘apothecary’ speech. Perhaps the following passage from JB’s ‘Macbeth’ prologue might have been interpreted as pro-Jacobite, but that is merely one plausible conjecture:

the Douglas fracas of winter 1756 and WD’s next major crisis, a labour dispute over the band musicians’ wages in spring 1758. Yet from his own experience, WD was well aware that even a few incendiary lines could incite a riot. The Douglas fracas referred to above was relatively sedate and mostly conducted in the Presbytery and the press (without rioting). Far worse was the ‘Mahomet Riot’ of Mar. 1754 in the Smock Alley Theatre of Dublin. A political faction demanded that WD repeat a controversial passage which had received a partisan applause break. TS, realizing the provocative nature of the lines, had cut them from the script. When TS refused to apologize for the excision and went home and even refused an additional demand for apology from an audience deputation sent to him from the theatre, the crowd became incensed. From 8 P.M. until 2 A.M., rioters destroyed the interior of the playhouse (Biog. Dict. iv. 403–04).

And brave Macduff shall by his valiant sword, Loyal, restore it to its rightful lord. Let dire rebellion here behold her fate: Prosp’rous awhile she rolls in guilty state; But heav’n, who righteous rules this world below, Will crush the impious monster at a blow. (Werner, p. 153) 6

This letter was written in a lull between

To the Countess of Galloway,1 after 21 August 1758 TEXT:

Donaldson’s Collection II, p. 71 (1762).

To the COUNTESS of GALLOWAY, on the Death of her Son the Honourable GEORGE STEWART, Esq;2 killed at Ticonderoga.3 Whilst hapless Caledonia, bath’d in tears, Mourns o’er her gen’rous sons, who bravely fought,4 And at Ticonderoga breath’d their last; Amid the gen’ral sorrow might the Muse, Might she presume to court the tender ear Of GALLOWAY, who on that fatal day, By war’s dread jav’lin, lost her blooming son; Might she attempt, with melancholy strains, To sooth the anguish of her troubled breast, And echoing soft the universal voice, Say that he glorious died in honour’s bed: Enough; — for see! meek Patience, dove ey’d maid, Divinely radiant! pours the lenient balm Of consolation o’er her bleeding heart, And heav’n-born Piety supports her soul. O may the bright example lead the great To tread her golden footsteps, when they see That a good heart, by Bless’d Religion warm’d,5 Ev’n in adversity can smile serene. 6

C. 1 SEPTEMBER–C. 19 SEPTEMBER 1758 1 Catherine Cochrane Stewart (c. 1709/ 10–86), Countess of Galloway, second wife of the 6th Earl of Galloway (for whom see To AE, 8 June 1762, n. 17). She was related to JB through the Cochrane connection, as she was a daughter of the 4th Earl of Dundonald (Douglas’s Peerage, i. 622; Comp. Peer., v. 606; Scots Peer. iii. 355–56, iv. 165–66). She was an old acquaintance of Boswell’s father, Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, and a letter from her to him dated 1 Nov. 1749 survives among the Boswell papers at Yale (C 1330.9). During a visit to Galloway House in late 1762, JB noted: ‘Lady Galloway is a tall stately Woman and in the last age was reckoned a Beauty. Mr. Hamilton of Bangour celebrates her in his poems as a Grace. She is a highchurchwoman in religion, a Jacobite in Politicks, and has a forbidding stiffness of manners that is very disagreable. She is remarkably saving, altho’ it is believed that My Lord is as much so as her Ladyship altho’ he takes frequent opportunities to censure her for it. She is very charitable and manages her family with much discretion’ (Journ. 25–27 Sept. 1762). JB maintained a distant but cordial relation with his kinswoman, and saw her in 1776 ‘in coloured clothes, and more easy and cheerful than ever I saw her’ (Journ. 4 Jan., 25 Nov. 1775, 2 Mar. 1776). 2 Lt. George Stewart (b. post 1736, d. 1758; Scots Peer. iv., 165–66). He was a lt. in the 55th Foot from 3 Jan. 1756, and one of the several officers killed in the disastrous attack on the Heights of Carillon. Stewart died 8 July (Army List, 1758, 1759; Comp. Peer. vi. 597). Later, in Paris, JB met ‘Joseph’, a former servant of Stewart’s (Notes, 13 Jan. 1766). 3 JB would have obtained his knowledge of the events from summaries of contemporary press coverage from 21 Aug. onward of the 6–8 July campaign. Lt. Stewart was killed on the day of the final frontal storming of a French strongpoint. The ‘Heights of Carillon’ abattis of earth and logs composed the breastworks which were a key element in Montcalm’s layered defence of Fort

Carillon. The attack on these outer defences protecting Fort Carillon—‘a very important post, and as strongly secured’— was made by 6,367 British regulars and 9,024 American provincials who outnumbered the French defenders by about four to one. Stewart was one of the 464 regulars killed in the approximately nine hours of assaults on the fortifications (‘Near 2000 of our men were killed, wounded, and taken prisoners’). The news of the defeat arrived on 21 Aug., ironically after the later capture of the French fortress at Louisbourg 26 July 1758 (reported in London 18 Aug.) was already being celebrated in Britain (Ann. Reg. 1758, i. 72–74; Gent. Mag. Aug. 1758, xxviii. 389–93). Fort Carillon was later conquered by Amherst in 1759 and subsequently reconstructed and renamed ‘Fort Ticonderoga’, and remained the key to the Lake George–Lake Champlain corridor into the American War. 4 Lord John Murray’s Highlanders of the 42nd Highland Regt. (1st Battalion) suffered greatly in the battle, losing more than half of the regiment’s men. In recognition of their service in that battle, they were granted the distinction of being designated a ‘Royal’ regiment ‘as a testimony of his Majesty’s satisfaction and approbation of the extraordinary courage, loyalty, and exemplary conduct of the Highland regiment’ (quoted in Maj.-Gen. David Stewart, Sketches Of The Character, Manners And Present State Of The Highlanders Of Scotland; With Details Of The Military Service Of The Highland Regiments, 3rd ed. 1825, i. 317– 18). 5 On a Sunday during JB’s 1762 harvest jaunt, Lady Galloway made JB ‘a Present of Doctor Mckenzie’s Essays and Meditations’. JB remarked that the book’s contents ‘are very pleasing reading at certain periods; they speak forth the pious and benevolent soul of their Author’ (Journ. 26 Sept. 1762). Essays and Meditations on Various Subjects. By a Physician, by James Mackenzie (?1680– 1761), had been published that year (2nd ed. 1765, 3rd ed. 1780).

To James Love (James Dance),1 c. 1 September–c. 19 September2 1758 A series of several letters on post-days, none reported. ‘During the vacancy in harvest, I went along with my father to the Northern Circuit … I kept an exact journal at the particular desire of My friend Mr Love and sent it to him, in sheets, every post’ (To WJT, 16 Dec., Corr. 6, pp. 15–16 and n. 7). This series of letters (JB’s earliest journal) has not been recovered .

7

C. 1 SEPTEMBER–C. 19 SEPTEMBER 1758 1 James Dance (1721–74), actor, manager, and author, known by his stage name of ‘James Love’. He succeeded as an actor despite his stoutness and what some thought an inharmonious voice. Briefly an Oxford student in 1738, he perhaps began acting before his first attributed performances in London as Bayes in The Rehearsal in 1745. He had acted in Scotland as early as 1751 (Dumfries) and 1752 (Glasgow), and he first acted in Edinburgh in 1753–54 (Canongate Concert Hall), but also appeared in Dublin (1754–55), Belfast (1751– 52), Limerick (1754), and Newcastle (1758). Love’s longest stay in Edinburgh was 1756–62. There, he acted the roles of Bayes, Glenalvon (in Douglas), Peachum (in The Beggar’s Opera), and many other comic and tragic roles. He was drawn into the labour dispute in 1758 between WD (then manager) and the band, and after the coup which ousted WD from management in 1758 served as the Canongate’s stage manager 1759–62. In 1762, invited by Garrick, he moved from Edinburgh back to the London stage and Drury Lane Theatre, where he acted for twelve consecutive seasons until his death and was most frequently celebrated for his performances as Falstaff, among his many roles. During that period, he also returned to Scotland (1764–?68) in his capacity as manager of the Argyle Street Theatre in Grahamstown, Glasgow. By 1765 he had become manager of the New Theatre on the [Richmond] Green, a summer playhouse licensed in 1766 (Biog. Dict. ix. 355–63; Corr. 1, pp. 8 n. 6, 52, 53 n. 2). His wife was the actress ‘Mrs. Love’ whose identity remains shadowy (Biog. Dict. ix. 363–65); for F. A. Pottle’s theory that JB had a sexual affair with her in 1761–62, see Earlier Years, pp. 77, 93, 98, and 477. A View of the Edinburgh Theatre contained a partial record of JB’s theatrical attendance in summer 1759, as well as many of JB’s journalistic reviews of Love’s acting. The View complimented Love as having ‘perhaps, as great Power in forcible comic Action, as any Performer we have seen … a rough, broken, fat Voice, a remarkable Command of Features, and above all, a sly, roguish, leering Eye … [and] judicious Method of varying his Expression’, although he also employed ‘uncouth Gesticulations’. During the time of JB’s stay in London Nov. 1762–July 1763, Love acted many parts, including Don Alvarez in the premiere of Mallet’s Elvira, 19 Jan. 1763, a play which JB, AE and GD concerted, without success, to damn (Biog. Dict. ix. 358; see

also A View of the Edinburgh Theatre, passim, and Journ. 19 Jan. 1763). The relationship between Love and JB was more complicated than that of actor and gentleman-critic; JB described Love as ‘realy a man, who I must say is my second best friend; he has not only taste, Genius and learning, but a good heart’ (To WJT, 16 Dec. 1758, Corr. 6, pp. 14–16). Yet by late 1759 JB and Love had ‘differed’ (From WJT, ?Sept. 1759, Corr. 6, pp. 21–23). At the end of 1762, after a dinner with the Loves in which both Loves had spoken ill of WD, JB was ‘disgusted’ at their ‘vulgarity & stupid malevolence’, and ‘determined scarcely to keep up an acquaintance with them, & in general to keep clear of the Players’ (Journ. 14 Dec. 1762). Problems arose over a loan JB had made to Love. By mid-1763, JB wrote ‘I am realy angry with that fellow Love, who has put me off so long, & never makes any apology or seems to be concerned about the Matter’ (Journ. 28 May 1763). In July–Aug. 1763, JB was still trying to get Love to repay the remainder of the money he owed him (To WJT, 16 Dec. 1758, 26 July 1763; From WJT, ?Sept. 1759; From WJT, 25 Dec. 1759–14 Jan. 1760; Corr. 6, pp. 15, 21, 23 n. 9, 29, 53–54; cf. To JJ, 4 Aug. 1763, Corr. 1, p. 106). In Apr. 1763, JJ advised JB that once Love had paid off the debt, he should ‘keep Clear of [Love], and such persons for the future’ (From JJ, 18 Apr. 1763, Corr. 1, p. 71). JB (as so often when he resolved to ‘break off’ a friendship) did, however, remain amicably acquainted with Love. JB requested a letter of introduction from Love in Apr. 1768. They met as ‘acquaintances’ at the Stratford Jubilee, and JB visited ‘My old friend’ Love in Richmond where they drank ‘old hock’ (Journ. 6 Sept., 18 Sept. 1769). Four letters from Love to JB during the years 1764–72 survive among the Boswell papers at Yale (Catalogue ii. 765; Corr. 4, pp. 40–41; Corr. 7, p. 54). 2 An estimate based on the Northern Circuit’s meeting days. Presumably JB would have begun his journal-letters to Love on the trip from Auchinleck to Perth. The journey to Perth would likely have begun at some point after mid-Aug., according to JB’s information in his letter of 29 July to WJT: ‘we go to Auchinleck week after next [i.e., c. 12 Aug.], & set out for the North soon after’. In 1758 the North Circuit ‘sat down’ at Perth 1 Sept., at Inverness 9 Sept., and Aberdeen 19 Sept. (Scots Mag. 1758, xx. 608). Presumably JB would also have finished his journal letters at the

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SUMMER 1759 (AFTER 20 JUNE)

end of the journey home from Aberdeen after 19 Sept. JB’s enthusiasm for the trip, which would impel him to record it, was clear. He alerted WJT that Lord Auchinleck ‘has been so kind as to promise to take me the north circuit with him’. He also noted: ‘You must know I am vastly happy with the thoughts of the north circuit; My Worthy Mecaenas Sir David Dalrymple goes as Advocate Depute; there, I will enjoy the happiness of his agreable and improving conversation, & see the country with a double relish, in such

refined company’ (To WJT, 29 July 1758, Corr. 6, pp. 6–7 and n. 1). For Dalrymple, see To Katherine Colquhoun, 11 Dec. 1761, n. 3. A general record of what JB would likely have seen on the North Circuit and reported to Love can be reconstructed from at least three sources: the Scots Mag. accounts of the 1758 North Circuit; JB’s later, partially-surviving North Circuit journal of 5– 16 May 1761 (Yale MS. J 1); and memoirs of the age which mention the circuits (such as Henry Cockburn’s memoir of 1838–54, Circuit Journeys, 1888).

To West Digges, summer 1759 (after 20 June)1 TEXT:

Donaldson’s Collection II (1762), pp. 77–79.

An EPISTLE to Mr DIGGES. Apollo’s self might well inspire The fav’rite bard, whose tuneful lyre, In numbers equal to the theme, Would try to celebrate thy name; And he of Helicon’s pure spring Should deeply drink, who means to sing Of one, who with such splendor shines, That, otherwise admired lines, Are (like productions of a Bayes)2 But slightly read with little praise. Such, Sir, we’ve seen*, — yet, O forgive A muse that scarcely3 hopes to live, Whose infant steps can hardly creep Up high Parnassus’ dang’rous steep; Forgive, if she with ardour warm’d, Though by just diffidence alarm’d, Presume to raise her trembling song, And, joyful, say, with gladsome tongue, What my affection greatly loves, And what Truth with a smile approves. I would not in these artless lays Again rehearse my Digges’s praise; An abler pen by far than mine4 Has happy touch’d the rich design, Whose verses elegantly flow, And with poetic beauties glow; While each description paints a scene That Scotia will confess has been. 9

SUMMER 1759 (AFTER 20 JUNE)

My humbler unambitious task, Which will not reputation ask, Is only to approach thine ear, And in mild accents make thee hear, That all with zeal to aid thee burn, And wish incessant thy return. Chiefly dear Caledonia’s fair, Who, with a soft inchanting care, Shall o’er our theatre preside, And kind applaud thy noble pride. Come then, delight our wond’ring eyes, Come, and illume our northern skies, Come, please an ever-grateful age, And yet restore our sinking stage.5 *[JB’s note:] This alludes to some verses which appeared in the Caledonian Mercury, celebrating Mr Digges in a variety of characters.6 1 The poem was written during WD’s humiliating theatrical exile from Edinburgh. The period from summer 1758 until summer 1759 was a divisive theatrical year in which there was a groundswell of agitation by JB and others in the press and among the theatrical audiences to bring the ejected WD back to Edinburgh. If A View of the Edinburgh Theatre (see next letter), covering summer 1759, was indeed by JB—as has been argued by F. A. Pottle and David W. Tarbet—then this poem comports well with the pamphlet’s Diggesite agenda. 2 ‘Mr. Bayes’, fictional author of a heroic tragedy in The Rehearsal (premiered 1671, attrib. Buckingham et al.), named after the ‘Bayes’ in the poet laureate’s laurel wreath. A parody of Dryden and other Restoration authors of heroic tragedy. The popularity of the play led to homages by Garrick (A Peep Behind the Curtain, or The New Rehearsal, 1767) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan (The Critic, or a Tragedy Rehearsed, premiered 1779). The 1760 View describing the season 20 June–20 Aug. 1759 offered its analysis of James Love in the role of Bayes on 15 July 1759: ‘he is a stiff, self-conceited, pragmatical Fellow: One of your Buckram Gentlemen, who, being fully persuaded that he is the most wise and ingenious Man alive, would not yield the smallest Point to any Person whatever. Instead of this, we see Mr. Love looking through a heavy, clownish Fellow most fantastically dressed, speaking and

acting with all the Grimace and Buffoonery of a Jack Pudding; and, with a foolish Face of Satisfaction, raising a hoarse Laugh at his own Jests’ (A View of the Edinburgh Theatre, pp. 33–35). JB’s acquaintance with the play would presumably have stemmed from his attendance at the Edinburgh theatre, where the play was produced: The Rehearsal played 24 Feb., 14 July 1757, 3 Apr., 25 July 1759, 14 Feb., 26 Dec. 1761 (Foote as Bayes); see Edin. Eve. Cour., 22 Feb., 12 July 1757, 31 Mar. 1759, 11 Feb., 23 Dec. 1761; A View of the Edinburgh Theatre, pp. 33–35. 3 Donaldson’s Collection II, ‘scracely’ 4 This poet has not been identified. It may well be that the asterisk in the version printed in Collection II actually belongs here or within this stanza. It certainly seems that the phrase ‘This alludes to some verses …’ (see n. 6 below) fits better as a footnote to this stanza than to the one preceding it. 5 The crypto-jacobitical call for WD to ‘restore our sinking stage’ suggests that WD, like James II, had been ousted unfairly and warranted a Restoration. 6 The verses by ‘Clio’, celebrating WD’s various characters, appeared in Cal. Merc. on 20 June 1759, as ‘Occasional Verses, addressed to Mr. Digges’. The poem mentions WD in the roles of Hamlet, Zanga (in Edward Young’s The Revenge; see To AE, 19 Oct. 1762, n. 3), Jaffier (Otway’s Venice Preserved), Castalio (Otway’s The Orphan),

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AFTER 20 AUGUST 1759 AND BEFORE 16 FEBRUARY 1760

Romeo, Macheath, Sir John Brute (Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife), Patie (Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd), and Young Norval/ Douglas (Home’s Douglas). JB’s ‘On Hearing that Mr Digges and Mrs Ward were lost in the Irish seas. A Fantastical Essay’, probably written c. 1758–59, had mentioned WD in

the parts of Hamlet, Castalio, Douglas, and Zanga, as well as Osmyn (in Congreve’s The Mourning Bride), and Othello, and referred to Rowe’s The Tragedy of Jane Shore, in which Sarah Ward played the heroine and WD played Lord Hastings (Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 75–76).

To West Digges, after 20 August 1759 and before 16 February 17601 Anonymously printed in A View of the Edinburgh Theatre, pp. i–ii. In Lit. Car. (pp. 284–91), Pottle listed it as ‘doubtfully attributed’, but in Earlier Years (pp. 44 and 467) he revised this opinion: ‘it appears pretty certain that this is Boswell’s’, adding that the ‘ascription is confirmed … and probably put beyond question’. It is also possible that JB was a co-author of the View, and either wrote this dedicatory letter by himself or with his fellow ‘criticks’. Biog. Dict. assumed that the ‘Preface’ to the View was written by ‘the putative single author’, and that the pamphlet’s journal was ‘almost certainly by James Boswell and Francis Gentleman’ (Biog. Dict. s.v. ‘Digges’, iv. 405–06). The pamphlet’s otherwise puzzling condemnation of Love can likely be explained by a statement made by WJT in his letter to JB, referred to in n. 1 of the preceding letter: ‘You are continually in the Playhouse, I am told, and I hear you and Mr Love have differed’ (From WJT, ?Sept. 1759, printed Corr. 6, pp. 21–23).

TO WEST DIGGES, Esq; DEAR SIR, AS I had the principal Hand in the following Performance, the Other Gentlemen2 have been so kind, as to favor me with the Liberty of inscribing it to whom I thought proper. Believe me, Sir, it is with the greatest Satisfaction, that I embrace this Opportunity of offering you a small Testimony of my Regard, which, I hope, you will be pleased to accept with your usual Candor and good-natured Indulgence. Should I endeavor, by striking Images finely turned, harmonious Periods, and all the flowery Ornaments of Diction, to celebrate your distinguished Merit in a public Capacity, it would be an Affront upon the Town to suppose, that they are not sufficiently sensible of it, already; and I am convinced, that the Attempt would prove as ridiculous, as if some ignorant Person, with a Design to enrich, should foolishly take it into his Head to gild a Diamond, which, instead of increasing, would only serve to obscure its Radiance. As to your private Character, into whatever Scenes of Folly and Imprudence the World may imagine you have been hurried, through a too great Gaiety and Easiness of Disposition;3 yet, Sir, allow me to say, without Flattery, that if they knew your many amiable Qualifications as well as I do, they would look upon your Imperfections with the most favorable Eye; they would pardon, excuse and forget them. I should gladly have put my Name to this Epistle, were it not customary as well as prudent for theatrical Critics4 to lie concealed. 11

AFTER 20 AUGUST 1759 AND BEFORE 16 FEBRUARY 1760

It is enough, that it is from him who is, with the greatest Sincerity, DEAR SIR, Your very affectionate Friend, etc. 1 This dating derives from the final date given in the pamphlet’s diary of theatrical performances, ‘MONDAY, Aug. 20’ (A View of the Edinburgh Theatre, p. 49), and the advertisement of the pamphlet in Lond. Chron. 16 Feb. 1760, vii. 164. 2 Pottle (Lit. Car. pp. 285–86) speculated that the ‘Other Gentlemen’ of the pseudonym might be a punning reference to the actor Francis Gentleman, whose edition of Oroonoko of 1760 was prefaced by a dedication to JB; see From Gentleman, Feb. 1760. David W. Tarbet in his introduction to A View of the Edinburgh Theatre (pp. i–ii) also examined and dismissed the claim for Gentleman as author. Tarbet discussed the possibility that James Somerville, 12th Lord Somerville, while probably not the author of View, served as a model and an inspiration for JB’s theatrical journalism, through his articles for Scots Mag. (Dec. 1753–Mar. 1754). Somerville may also be one of the pseudonymous ‘Society of Gentlemen’. However, that term as likely refers to JB’s young theatregoing friends, or may indeed be one of JB’s earliest known journalistic ‘inventions’. The reality of the Society of Gentlemen is certainly assumed in the ‘Preface’ to View. There, its genesis is traced to the June Edin-

burgh Chronicle’s criticism on Oroonoko. ‘As We received much Pleasure from the Perusal of these Pieces, we thought it Pity the Scheme should be dropt; and therefore formed ourselves into a Society for its Continuation’. The initial scheme was a weekly paper, The Theatre. ‘[A]nother Gentleman’ suggested, however, that they instead ‘from Time to Time, carefully … collect our Materials, digest and throw them together, with Accuracy, in the Harvest Vacation [i.e., c. 12 Aug.–c. 11 Nov.], and delay publishing till the Winter Sessions [i.e., c. 12 Nov.–c. 11 Mar.], when the Town begins to fill’ (View, pp. ii–iii). 3 See To WD, ?first half of Apr. 1757, n. 1. 4 The ‘Preface’ to the pamphlet complained of the efforts of Edinburgh’s amateur theatre critics as ‘scanty, indigested Gleanings, from the vague, jejune, and trifling namby pamby Declamations, of these puerile Gentlemen-Wits, who affectedly brandish the specious, glittering Weapons of false Criticism, while sauntering at the Cross, or fluttering with heedless, desultory Steps from Pit to Box, during a Performance at the Theatre … the ill-begotten, spurious Brood of personal Malice and private Resentment’ (View, p. iii).

From Francis Gentleman,1 February 1760 SOURCE:

Dedication to Oroonoko: or the Royal Slave. A Tragedy. Altered from Southerne, by Francis Gentleman … Glasgow, Printed by Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1760. Previously printed in Lit. Car., where Pottle explored and rejected the possibility that the poem might instead be by Boswell (pp. 292–93).

GLASGOW, February 1760. TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ. HOW can the muse with burthen’d pinions soar? No flow’rs appear among the winter’s store. Remov’d from FORTUNE’S vivifying heat, Almost within the Frigid Zone of fate. Can shiv’ring fancy fondly hope to rise, Through the rough regions of tempestuous skies? ’Tis madness to attempt—yet REASON, proud, With God-like energy thus cries aloud: ‘Let fools the deity of FORTUNE own; ‘I view alike a cottage or a throne. ‘Intrinsic worth, alone, has charms for me; 12

FEBRUARY 1760

‘The worth of virtue, and of liberty. ‘Rouze, then, nor let an apathy of soul, ‘Thy active free-born faculties controul: ‘Behold aright the attributes of state; ‘They are not always happy, who are great. ‘Invoke CONTENT to soothe thy troubled mind, ‘CONTENT, the opulence of human kind, ‘That like the tuneful herald of the morn, ‘When rosy-tinctur’d beams the East adorn, ‘From his grass pallat mounts on cow’ring wings, ‘And from his height serene—looks down on kings: ‘Then, pleas’d, returns into his humble bed, ‘And rests, while sleep from grandeur’s couch is fled: ‘Such is CONTENT—her sacred aid invoke.— Sweet, as Orphean lyre, the voice that spoke; As that could lull the savage herds to rest, So this can calm the troubles of my breast: ’Tis done—care’s furrow’d brow is render’d even, The call of REASON is the call of Heav’n; And, now, to justly dedicate those lays, Which, through the parent-stock, must hope for praise; From SOUTHERNE’S2 muse existence must derive, Must live through him, if they should chance to live. Shall I for some exalted title seek, And cringe to fortune, not to merit speak? No—she disdains a task so meanly low, In ev’ry shape to flattery a foe; But where with honest pleasure she can find, Sense, taste, politeness with good-nature join’d; There, gladly, will she raise her humble voice, Nor fears to tell that BOSWELL is her choice.3 FRANCIS GENTLEMAN 1 Francis Gentleman (1728–84), of an Anglo-Irish military family, was initially an army officer (2nd. lt.) from about 1743 to 1748, and thereafter on half-pay from Otway’s regiment. He became an actor in Dublin in TS’s company in 1749–50. He was also a poet, playwright, novelist, essayist (The Dramatic Censor; Or, Critical Companion …, 1770), and theatre historian/ critic (The Modish Wife, A Comedy … To Which Is Prefixed A Summary View Of The Stage, As It Has Been, Is, And Ought To Be, [1775]). Gentleman’s theatrical career is described in Biog. Dict. vi. 138–53. His early authorial career contained some rewritings of older plays, such as Sejanus, A Tragedy. As It Was Intended For The Stage. With A Preface, Wherein The

Manager’s Reasons For Refusing It Are Set Forth. By Mr. Gentleman, 1752 (ESTC T52943), as well as original projects such as his tragedy ‘Osman’ (Proposals For Printing By Subscription, A New Tragedy, Called Osman.… Likewise A Dissertation Concerning The Theatres, Particularly With Respect To New Pieces. By Mr. Gentleman, ?1754, ESTC N39848). Gentleman may have become acquainted with JB as early as the 1758–59 Edinburgh season, during which JB enthusiastically attended the theatre in spring 1759. Gentleman appears to have joined the Canongate company in late summer or early autumn 1758, when he became ‘acting manager’, but by Sept. 1759 had resorted to reading public lectures after complaining of

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the perfidy of the theatre’s management (Biog. Dict. vi. 141–43). That difficult season was described by Gentleman in his fourpage apologia, To The Public. He Who Attacks Private Characters …, ?1759 (ESTC T227739), which rehearsed his various grievances against the terms of employment given him by the Canongate Concert Hall in the 1758–59 winter season. It is more commonly thought that the two met in Glasgow where JB was at University from autumn 1759 and where Gentleman was temporarily resident (Earlier Years, pp. 38–40, 44–45, 467; Corr. 5, p. 23 n. 1). Gentleman lived in Glasgow from about autumn 1759, where he had been invited to ‘assist some persons of respectable families in the proper pronunciation of English’ while he sought to gain ‘a professorship of English oratory’ (Biog. Dict. vi. 142). A memorable aspect of Gentleman’s connection with JB was that Gentleman in or before spring 1760 encouraged JB to meet SJ: ‘Mr. Gentleman, a native of Ireland, who passed some years in Scotland as a player, and as an instructor in the English language, a man whose talents and worth were depressed by misfortunes, had given me a representation of the figure and manner of DICTIONARY JOHNSON! as he was then generally called’ (Life i. 384–85). This encouragement inspired JB to use Gentleman’s connection with Samuel Derrick (for whom see From Derrick, 5 Oct. 1760, n. 1) to seek out SJ in London in 1760; the meeting did not take place. The surviving correspondence of Gentleman with JB contains two letters from JB to Gentleman (19 Sept. 1764, 30 July 1774) and six from Gentleman to JB dated 1764–74, of which three have been published in Corr. 5. Gentleman wrote in a letter c. late July 1766 to JB of ‘that perfect esteem I have Sir for your many amiable Qualifications’ (Corr. 5, p. 49). JB referred to him in 1774 as ‘poor Gentleman, who had allways paid me much attention’ (Journ. 30 July 1774). Notoriously impecunious, Gentleman several times approached JB for loans (Mem. 8 May 1772; Journ. 25, 30 July 1774), and also solicited a loan from Garrick (Life i. 384– 85, n. 2, citing Corres. Garrick, ii. 83). 2 Thomas Southerne (1660–1746), playwright. His Oroonoko: A Tragedy …, 1696 (ESTC R12217) retained its popularity long after its first appearance, and was printed several times each decade from the 1730s onward, including Glasgow editions from 1753 and Edinburgh editions from 1759. Southerne’s play was based on Aphra

Behn’s novel—‘Written by the command of King Charles the Second’—Oroonoko: Or, The Royal Slave. A True History, published 1688 (ESTC R4474; Aphra Behn, ed. Paul Salzman, ‘Oroonoko’ and Other Works, 1994). Gentleman’s personal association with the play was a long one. His first theatrical role was as Aboan in a production of Oroonoko at TS’s Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin in 1749 (Biog. Dict. vi. 139). His Oroonoko: or the Royal Slave. A Tragedy. Altered from Southerne, by Francis Gentleman, published in Glasgow in 1760 (ESTC T43462), was only one in a long tradition of stage re-imaginings of Behn’s novel. Gentleman’s revision competed with an adaptation attributed to John Hawkesworth: Oroonoko, A Tragedy … By Thomas Southern. With Alterations, 1759 (ESTC T129328), presumably the same text credited as ‘With alterations by John Hawkesworth, LL.D’ in 1775 (ESTC T2470), which removed the comic scenes Southerne had added to lighten the tragedy. Gentleman’s text also competed with the anonymous play (which had been attributed wrongly to Hawkesworth): Oroonoko. A Tragedy. Altered From The Original Play Of That Name, Written By The Late Thomas Southern, Esq; To Which The Editor Has Added Near Six Hundred Lines, In Place Of The Comic Scenes.Together With An Addition Of Two New Characters. Intended For One Of The Theatres, 1760 (ESTC T56248). Theatrical adaptations of Behn’s novel, not all of them based on Southerne’s dramatization, continued to be popular throughout JB’s lifetime. See Robert Jordan and Harold Love, eds., The Works of Thomas Southerne, 1988, ii. 89–96, and Maximilian Novak and David Rodes, eds., Oroonoko, 1976, xvi–xx. 3 JB long remembered this compliment. In 1791, he recalled: ‘At this early period he was flattered by being held forth as a Patron of Literature; for Mr. Francis Gentleman published at the elegant press of the Foulis’s the tragedy of Oroonoko, altered from Southerne, and inscribed it to him in a poetical epistle, concluding thus in the person of his Muse’. JB then quoted the final four lines, altering Gentleman’s ‘politeness’ to ‘religion’ and ‘fears’ to ‘fear’, as well as altering punctuation in various ways (Memoirs JB, pp. xxx–xxxi). JB declined Gentleman’s offer of another dedication in 1764 (From Gentleman, 16 Mar. 1764, Yale MS. *C 1364). JB noted in his Journal: ‘I received … [a letter] from

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C. 7–11 APRIL OR 29 APRIL–3 MAY 1760 (EXPANDED 1761)

Mr. Francis Gentleman proposing to dedicate to me a second volume of A Trip to the Moon. I answered him immediatly, and politely refused his offer’ (19 Sept. 1764). Gentleman’s A Trip to the Moon. Containing

an Account of the Island of Noibla. Its Inhabitants, Religious and Political Customs &c. By Humphrey Lunatic, Bart., in two volumes, was printed in York in 1764 (vol. 1) and London in 1765 (vol. 2).

To the Earl of Eglinton,1 c. 7–11 April or 29 April–3 May 1760 (expanded 1761)2 MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). A draft of a verse epistle. At least six lines were shown to Eglinton in Apr.–May 1760; yet Eglinton is referred to as a favourite of the king, and he was only promoted to royal office under George III (who acceded 25 Oct. 1760). A reference to the Duke of York means that that section must be dated to post 1 Apr. 1760. The lines reminding Eglinton of his capering in approval of JB’s Cub must have been written after JB’s visit to Newmarket (either 7–11 Apr. or 29 Apr––3 May 1760; see Earlier Years, p. 468). Furthermore, JB’s closer knowledge of Eglinton’s nephew Sir James Macdonald dated from Nov. 1762, although the reputation of the young scholar was generally known. In the previous work on Douce 193 by Pottle and Werner, these verses were conflated with the verse epistle to Sterne, despite Pottle’s early recognition of the possibility of a second verse letter,3 and Werner’s establishment of a ‘poem 56’ using some of the debated materials.4 In Pottle’s case, the conflation occurred because from 1925 he was seeking to establish links between JB and Sterne.5 Since Douce 193 was cobbled together in the late 1760s from fugitive note-paper leaves dating back to 1758–62, the order in which the pages ought to be read is not always evident. Therefore, as with the verse epistles to Miss Home and Laurence Sterne (also in this volume), the text below includes page breaks within Douce. The text has been established on the basis of JB’s ‘Outline’ of the poem in Douce 193 f. 13v. The pages of outline are included preceding the text.

[f. 13 v. An Outline of the Poem(s)] Design.— A few Compliments— Stay stay—not so fast— What title have You—Are you a Poet? —Yes—an infant Son of Apollo— You have told me so— I have the marks—a happy levity of head etc.— I too can boast— Montgomeries Lord—etc.— then a degagé conclusion. —————————————————————— —Montgomerie’s Earl can spy6 A Lord whose swift discerning eye ******************7 I will with fr

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C. 7–11 APRIL OR 29 APRIL–3 MAY 1760 (EXPANDED 1761)

[f. 14 r. An Outline of the Poem(s)] The greatest plague we endure is to hear a fellow talking who has nothing to say— Wherefore when that is the case they ought to be silent—That is my case so I cut short [f. 87 r. first half] O thou! whose quick-discerning eye8 The nicest strokes of wit can spy,9 Whose sterling jests a sportive strain Flow warmly-genuine from the brain; And with bright poignancy appear Original to ev’ry ear!10 Whose heart is all Benevolence; Whose constant leader is good sense, Who seldom makes a real slip,11 —————————————————————— Tho now and then he takes a trip12 —————————————————————— To frolic’s lightsom regions where Mirth dissipates the dregs of care. [f. 79 v. second half] But Brother stop a little here13 Methinks you cry with wicked leer. Bards may commend14 their friends tis true But pray, Sir what pretence have You?15 Are you a Poet?—yes I am. [f. 79 r. second half] —————————————————————— Is that enough? tis but a sham A meer pretence to take me in And so indeed16 indulgence win A Poet! truly very fine! Do you know any of the nine17 Yes take your word you’re us’d to hop In country dance on Pindus18 top —————————————————————— [f. 79 r. first half] And with reverse of back to back19 Have givn em each a heearty smack. 16

C. 7–11 APRIL OR 29 APRIL–3 MAY 1760 (EXPANDED 1761)

Have you had ever leave to follow To private Audiences bright Apollo?20 Have you had strength Parnass21 to mount And have you tasted sacred fount? Classic all over! On my word. This by Macdonald22 might be heard: Whom Sky’s wild coasts their master claim Eton23 and Oxford24 sound his fame: [f. 80 v.] My verses be they good or ill25 Have been dear26 foes. do laugh your fill27 By Sterne approv’d—when in the Mall28 I’ve even kept him back from *Hall.29 [JB’s note:] vice versa For this bid Memry30 For this bid Mem’ry backwards post The day she’ll show if not quite lost For Fame I wou’d not tell a lie So don’t endeavour to deny.31 Have you not caper’d at my Cub32 Like puritanic Priest33 in tub.34 And did you not my shoulder pat And call me child of Dorset’s Mat?35 —————————————————————— *[JB’s note:] Author of two Lyric Epistles an old acquaintance— Indeed a quondam Chum at College and particular friend of Trist Shand [f. 80 r.] If plain affirmative won’t do He gives you Sir37 a proof or two. Yes yes—a proof or two You say— Well well!—o dear! then, come away. Know38 then my friend from Heav’n I’ve got That gives to ev’ry man his lot39 A heart and head for musing fit40 With levity sure sign of Wit A little spark of fancy’s fire Whose wings excursive seldom tire A decent faculty to chime And put my foolish thoughts in Rhime. [f. 77 r. second half] 17

C. 7–11 APRIL OR 29 APRIL–3 MAY 1760 (EXPANDED 1761)

To crown my solemn evidence Supporting no jejune41 pretence And make the grand conclusion clear I for my Patron boast a Peer.42 You who have at his table sat And heard43 his gay improving chat Can I am confident agree With much oblig’d and gratefull me That Eglintoun almost ador’d Should be as a distinguish’d Lord That he shou’d almost be ador’d Pray need I name Montgom’rie’s Lord.44 [f. 77 v.]45 Truth with a look of Approbation Calls him tencrease our Admiration His Sov’reign’s fav’rite46 Edwards friend47 Could Sycophants him more commend Sweet Sentiment the certain test Of Goodness commendation48 best [f. 87 r. second half]49 To hear a fellow talk away Who has not got a Word to say Is of all things the most provoking Don’t you think so too50 without joking Such now am I who can [no] more51 Having exhausted all my Store Therefore to shun your smarting Scoff I without more ado52 break off. 1 Alexander Montgomerie (1723–69), 10th Earl of Eglinton, Scots peer, literary patron of JB, and his close friend at this time. He succeeded to the title in 1729 and became Governor of the Castle of Dumbarton 1759–61, a Lord of the Bedchamber 1760– 67, and Scots Representative Peer 1761–69. He died unmarried, shot in a dispute with a poacher on his Ayrshire estate (Comp. Peer. v. 23–24; Scots Peer. iii. 458–59; Memorials of the Montgomeries, 1859, i. 104–05, 114– 27; From Margaret Boswell, 24 Oct. 1769, Yale typescript C 428). Eglinton’s dilettantish public image was expressed in a quip recorded by JB in London on 29 Nov. 1762: ‘Lord Eglintoune said

that he knew nothing but Men Women and Horses’ (Journ.). Certainly that impression of a buckish rake was conveyed by his membership of various clubs: the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks (Journ. 27 Nov. 1762); the Jockey Club at Newmarket (Cub, passim; Robert Black, The Jockey Club and its Founders, 1891, pp. 105–06); and the Catch Club (Viscount Gladstone, The Story of the Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club, 1930; Viscount Gladstone, G. Boas and H. Christopherson, Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club: Three Essays Towards its History, 1996). Yet as his use of Bute’s electoral influence to aid his brother—Archibald Montgomerie (1726–96), later 11th Earl—

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C. 7–11 APRIL OR 29 APRIL–3 MAY 1760 (EXPANDED 1761)

demonstrated, his pose of rakish idler was something of a façade (Namier and Brooke, iii. 157–58). The friendship between JB and Eglinton forms one of the major themes of this volume. Eglinton had introduced JB to the life of a London rake during the spring of 1760. In a letter from near this time, JB described Eglinton as ‘one of the best men in the world’ and praised ‘my Lord’s elegant and polite conversation’ (To Dalrymple, 22 Mar. 1760 [MS not at Yale]). In his third-person memoir written in 1791, JB wrote that ‘his views of the world were chiefly opened by the … Earl of Eglintoune, one of the most amiable and accomplished noblemen of his time, who being of the same county, and from his earliest years acquainted with the family of Auchinleck, insisted that young Boswell should have an apartment of his house, and introduced him into the circles of the great, the gay, and the ingenious’ (Memoirs JB, p. xxxi; for a more detailed reconstruction of Eglinton’s role in JB’s first London sojourn, see Earlier Years, pp. 45–52). The young JB remained influenced by Eglinton even after he had been brought back to Scotland by his father: ‘After my wild expedition to London in the year 1760 after I got rid of the load of serious reflection which then burthened me, by being allways in Lord Eglintoune’s Company, very fond of him, & much caressed by him, I became dissipated & thoughtless’ (Journ. 1 Dec. 1762). A character sketch of Eglinton written in 1762 by JB for JJ suggests much about JB’s view of him:

1760 Newmarket Races were held on 7–11 Apr. and 29 Apr.–3 May (Lond. Chron. 8– 10, 10–12, 12–15 Apr., 1–3, 3–6 May 1760). 3 Pottle himself noted in a footnote that ‘[i]t is not impossible that in these confused sheets there are really fragments of two epistles, one to Sterne and the other to Eglinton, and that this is the design for the latter. However, since there are references to Sterne throughout, it makes little difference’ (‘Bozzy and Yorick’, p. 306 n. 1). Werner paraphrased Pottle’s conclusion, and also echoed his opinion that ‘[i]t is impossible to be certain, but, as Sterne looms large in the picture, it is not of great consequence’ (Werner, pp. 124, 194–95, 201 n. 1). 4 Werner, unlike Pottle, hedged his bets by establishing a partial text of the putative verse letter to Eglinton. Werner published ‘O thou! whose quick-discerning eye’ as ‘Poem 56’ in his edition, basing his fragment on f. 87 r. (Werner, pp. 124, 194–95, 201 n. 1). Werner used as text only f. 87 r. of Douce 193, but believed that f. 14 r. was ‘evidently the original prose draft of the second half of the fragment’. 5 ‘If there is any great author of the latter half of the eighteenth century about whom we should like to have anecdotes from the pen of Boswell, that author is Sterne …. [I]t is rather hard to see how they could have missed each other …. Boswell, if we have any knowledge about his character, would have met Sterne, were such a thing humanly possible …. Besides Horace Walpole [for whom see, To AE, 18 June 1762, n. 11], with whom hardly anyone was intimate, there are really only Sterne, Smollett, and Gray [among the ‘great men’ whom JB did not meet] … the [absence of references in the] Life of Johnson cannot tell us certainly whether or not its author ever met Sterne … [T]o think of Boswell seeing Sterne … Of talking with him, and perhaps making notes of his conversation!… Thackeray might have put such a scene into a novel, but it is almost too good really to have happened’ (‘Bozzy and Yorick’, pp. 300–01, 304, 310– 11; Earlier Years, pp. 48–50, 468–69). 6 MS. unclear; reading of ‘spy’ supplied from the epistle itself. 7 MS. ‘HAMMOND’, written in large letters so as to take up an entire line, then deleted. The ‘Hammond’ referred to remains a mystery. 8 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘A Lord whose swift discerning eye’ 9 Variant presented in JB’s outline:

My Lord’s character is very particular. He is a Man of uncommon Genius for every thing, strong good sense great quickness of Apprehension & liveliness of fancy with a great deal of humour. He was neglected in his Education, so that his knowledge from books, is superficial. Yet he has picked up an infinite variety of knowledge from conversation. He has at the same time a flightiness a reverie & absence of mind with a disposition to downright trifling …. He is very selfish & deceitfull: Yet he has much good nature and affection. (Journ. 27 Nov. 1762) 2 The evidence for the date supplied is in To Eglinton, 7 Feb. 1763: ‘I beg leave to remind your Lordship of a little sketch which I drew of you, at Newmarket, in the year 1760. I appealed to you as an honest man if it was like[.] You owned it was.’ The

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C. 7–11 APRIL OR 29 APRIL–3 MAY 1760 (EXPANDED 1761)

‘Montgomerie’s Earl can spy’ 10 On 7 Feb. 1763, JB included these six lines into a letter to Eglinton and stated that he had written them at Newmarket in 1760 (see To Eglinton, 7 Feb. 1763 and Journ. 7 Feb. 1763). See that letter for his emendations to the Douce text. 11 MS. ‘very’ added by caret, altering ‘Who seldom makes a real slip’ to ‘Who very seldom makes a slip’. Given the absence of a deletion, this reconstruction does not incorporate the word ‘very’. 12 JB added ‘Altho at times he take a trip’ inside the dashed lines below ‘Tho now and then he takes a trip’. 13 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘Stay stay—not so fast’ 14 MS. ‘Bards may commend’ written above deleted ‘Poets may praise’ 15 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘What title have You’ 16 MS. ‘forsooth’ written above line. 17 The nine Muses. JB oddly places the muses for the dance atop the Pindus range—rather than the more likely Helicon or Olympus—presumably to fit the metre. 18 ‘Pindus top’ refers to the Pindus mountain range which runs nearly north and south from 41o to 39o longitude, defining the western frontier of Thessaly. Herodotus placed it as southwest of Olympus, home of the gods, and west of Pelion and Ossa, the mountains which were mythically piled atop each other in an attempt to reach the heavens (The New Century Handbook of Classical Geography, ed. Catherine B. Avery, 1972, p. 268; Reginald Walter Macan, Herodotus: The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books with Introduction and Commentary, 1908, repr. 1973, 7.129). 19 That is, the reverse of the country dance formation, dos-a-dos, or, as it came later to be known, do-se-do, in which dancers pass each other back to back (OED). 20 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘Yes—an infant Son of Apollo’ 21 Parnassus, mountain near Delphi (and its oracle). One summit was consecrated to Apollo and the Muses, the other to Bacchus. ‘To climb Parnassus’ was to write poetry. 22 Sir James Macdonald (c. 1742–66), Bt. of Sleat (on the Isle of Skye) from 1746, nephew of Lord Eglinton. In 1766, during a Grand Tour of Italy with the Duke of Buccleuch and Adam Smith, he died in Rome aged twenty-four (Comp. Bar. ii. 292; Alexander Mackenzie, History of the Macdonalds, 1881, pp. 239 ff.). In 1762, JB described Sir James as ‘a remarkable young man of good parts and great application’

(Journ. 26 Nov. 1762). One of his letters appears in this volume (From Macdonald, 14 Apr. 1763). 23 Sir James was at Eton from 1755, and was ‘celebrated at Eton for his scholarship’ (R. A. Austen-Leigh, The Eton College Register, 1753–1790, p. 350). 24 Sir James matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1759; he was such a brilliant scholar and mathematician that he became known as ‘The Marcellus of the North’ (Comp. Bar. ii. 292; Alum. Oxon.; Alexander Mackenzie, History of the Macdonalds, 1881, pp. 239 ff.). Sir James eventually invited JB to Oxford: ‘He invited me very kindly to come to Oxford, and promised to show me everything to the best advantage’ (Journ. 25 Mar. 1763). 25 MS. ‘bad’ written above ‘ill’ 26 MS. ‘dear’ written above deleted ‘good’ 27 MS. ‘—do Critics call ’em sad’ written above ‘foes do laugh your fill’ 28 ‘Direct for me in the Pell Mell at ye 2d house from St Albans street’ (Sterne to Fourmantel, ?8 Mar. 1760, in Curtis, p. 97). Sterne’s lodgings in Pall Mall were not far from Dodsley’s shop. The reference to Sterne’s approving JB’s verses in the Mall could mean either that JB visited Sterne’s lodgings among the other constant tides of visitors Sterne received at this time, or that he merely met him in the open air in the promenade of the Mall itself. 29 John Hall (1718–85), author, who changed his name after marriage to John Hall-Stevenson. He was owner of Skelton Castle, famous as ‘Crazy Castle’, home of the Demoniacs’ Club of which Sterne was a member, and scene of Sterne’s holidays 1741–61. Hall entered Jesus College, Cambridge, a year behind Sterne and formed with this literary ‘cousin’ a ‘most lasting’ friendship (Cash, i. 53–54, 181–95). After Sterne had been in London a few weeks, Dodsley had published HallStevenson’s Two Lyric Epistles, one addressed ‘to my Cousin Shandy on his Coming to Town’, and the other in honour of ‘the Grown Gentlewomen, the Misses of ****’ (i.e., the Misses of York). The poems were published under the name of ‘Anthony Shandy’ (Cross, i. 207–08). 30 This note’s suggestion for emendation by reversing the couplets is followed in this edition, but not in Werner’s. 31 The four lines from ‘For Fame …’ through ‘not quite lost’ are crossed out, but the note above suggests a reversal of the couplets’ sequence.

20

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761 32 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘You have told me so’ 33 MS. ‘puritanic Priest’ above deleted ‘brainsic puritan’ 34 ‘Tub’ was a jocular term for a pulpit, especially of a Dissenting preacher. It was often used in Augustan satirical writing, most notably in Swift’s Tale of a Tub (1704). 35 That is, Matthew Prior (1664–1721), poet and diplomatist. He was ‘Dorset’s Mat’ in two respects. The first was that in the bulk of biographical tradition, he was described as having been born in Dorset. The second was that ‘Dorset’, the 6th Earl of Dorset, had been Prior’s patron from the poet’s boyhood onwards. By the second allusion, JB implied that Eglinton should continue the noble tradition of aristocratic patronage of young poets. 36 JB’s footnote, identifying one of Sterne’s closest friends, strongly suggests that this section was not intended for Sterne, as Pottle had assumed in ‘Bozzy and Yorick’ and Earlier Years, but rather for Eglinton. Alternatively, JB may have had his eye on an eventual public readership. 37 MS. ‘Will you accept’ written above ‘He gives you Sir’ 38 MS. ‘Know’ written above deleted ‘First’ 39 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘I have the marks’ 40 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘a happy levity of head—etc.’; note that ‘levity’ is moved to the second line of the couplet. 41 MS. ‘petite’ written above ‘jejune’ 42 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘I too can boast’. JB’s patron-peer is, of course, Eglinton. 43 MS. ‘Charm’ written above line. 44 ‘Montgom’rie’s Lord’ is Eglinton, whose surname was Montgomerie. JB wrote this couplet vertically in the right margin and may have intended it to replace the couplet preceding it. 45 These lines seem clearly to refer to Eglinton. Whether they are rejected copy or whether JB meant to include them in the poem is uncertain. 46 Eglinton seems not to have obtained royal preferment under George II, who reigned during JB’s first stay in London. He was not a true favourite at the Court of George III either (certainly not to the de-

gree that the Earl of Bute was), but as a client of Bute he was made a Lord of the Bedchamber (1760–67) by George III. Henry Fox (Lord Holland from 1763) in his Memoirs complained that ‘Everybody was ashamed and vexed to see so worthless and silly a wretch so placed’. Fox sneeringly claimed that Eglinton’s avocation as a procurer of prostitutes or low women for the Duke of York had aided his rise at Court as much as the favours Bute owed him from his interventions on behalf of the Bute interest in Scotland (Comp. Peer. v. 24; Henry Fox, ‘Memoir on the Events Attending the Death of George II and the Accession of George III by Henry Fox, First Lord Holland’, in Countess of Ilchester and Lord Stavordale, eds., The Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, 1745–1826 … Also a Short Political Sketch of the Years 1760 to 1763 by Henry Fox …, 1902, i. 16–17). The reference to Eglinton as the ‘Sov’reign’s fav’rite’ strongly suggests that this line was inserted after the accession of George III. 47 Edward Augustus (1739–67), Duke of York from 1 Apr. 1760, brother of the future George III. During spring 1760, he was second in the line of succession to George II (Comp. Peer. XII. ii. 920). JB had been introduced to him by their mutual friend Lord Eglinton (see From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ [JB] to the Earl of *** [Eglinton], 25 Sept. 1761, and n. 37). Sterne praised him in the second pair of volumes of Tristram Shandy (vols. 3–4, 1761; see Cross, i. 246). JB later dedicated his Cub (written 1760, published 1762) to the duke (see To Edward, Duke of York, c. 1 Nov. 1761, and To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’ (?Joseph Richardson), 10 Feb. 1762). 48 MS. ‘a good heart companion’ written above ‘Goodness commendation’ 49 Likely the ‘degagé conclusion’ planned in the outline, although redrafted lines for the poem’s beginning follow below the lines. 50 MS. ‘too’ written above deleted ‘now’; both over-lengthen the line. 51 MS. ‘Such now am I’ written above deleted ‘This is my case’ 52 MS. ‘I without more ado’ written above a deleted illegible phrase, perhaps ending with ‘short’

To Laurence Sterne,1 after 7 April 17602 and ?before October 17613 MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193).

21

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761

A draft epistle. The problems of reconstructing the poems from the scraps in Douce 193 have been addressed in the headnote to the previous letter. The reconstruction below notes page breaks within Douce. The text presented has been established from internal evidence, foremost being JB’s ‘counts’ of lines at the bottoms of pages (i.e., ‘160’, ‘182’, ‘196’). Two of JB’s outlines included in Douce 193, ff. 17 r. and 13 v., are printed below as ‘An Outline of Poem(s)’. JB’s own ‘Plan of a Volume of Poems to be published for me by Becket & Dehondt’ suggests that when JB had reached the 196 lines which he himself numbered, he thought the verse epistle to Sterne was somewhere between 82% and 98% complete. JB’s first ‘Plan’ noted his ‘Epistle to Shandy’ was or would be 200 lines, while his revised ‘Plan’ noted ‘Shand’ was or would be 240 lines. His MS contained 196 lines in a clear and indisputable sequence (Werner, pp. 19–22). The version here follows JB’s main-line text, not incorporating superlineations, unless the line text was clearly deleted. Superlineations are noted in the footnotes. Werner offered a variant reconstruction of the epistle (Werner, pp. 131–40; 200–06).4

[f. 17 r.: An Outline of Poem(s)] The Epistle to Sterne must be thus: Dear Sir etc.—: As prologue to my slight Epistle.—: I beg etc. In favour of whatever’s in it. When they superior etc.: And only dumb admirers be. A certain Genius etc. A mortal Enemy to strife— In different periods etc. Of York whom Nature and whom Art— Have form’d to shine in many a Part. or some such lines the rest about him to stand as it is. —Simple Ned. Now Sir from partial motives free Which while I live I hope to be That you have merit I declare And this I to my Grave shall bear —(or some such verses) Altho the Public voice etc. O self conceit etc. Praise great enough for half the town (or some such line). [f. 13 v. Another Outline of Poem(s)] Mynheer the5 Prebendary lo! To your high Worships makes a bow.6 —————————————————————— [f. 7 r. Title Page] 22

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761

A Poetical Epistle To Doctor7 Sterne Parson Yorick8 And Tristram Shandy9 In nova fert animus mutatas dicere10 formas Corpora: Di cœptis nam vos mut11 astis and illas Favete12 — OVID [f. 7 v. False start on title or half-title] A Poetical Epistle To Parson Yo [f. 8 r.] An Epistle to Tristram Shandy Gentleman. DEAR SIR: If you’re in mood to whistle13 As Prologue to my poor Epistle—14 I beg your audience for a minute, In favour of the stuff that’s in it.15 What does the Dog by whistle mean Methinks you say—good future Dean16 My meaning Sir is very plain I mean if you’ve a vacant brain.17 For without question it wou’d be Just downright sacriledge in me To interrupt one single thought Of you’r’s with—we shall call it nought. Flattery is now become so stale That none can bear the fulsom tale Courtiers themselves will criticise The Parasite’s disgusting Vice. Poets must then let down their strings And clip18 the Muses flutt’ring wings When they superior merit see And inward—hum like droning Bee.19 23

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761

[f. 8 v.] No—Hume20 for Douglas much21 renown’d Has a most charming salvo found Inspir’d by an ingenious Muse He makes this delicate Excuse That tho’ to men with Passions cool The Bards may seem to play the fool Tho’ of their favourites they may Rather too many fine things say Yet they are not for this to blame For they the fawning art disclaim And what we laugh at when we read They hold as firmly as their creed.22 Beg pardon Sir for this intrusion Before you I’m in some confusion Before me bless my Soul my dear Am I an object of your fear? Go on I prithee—do not stare— I have enough of time to share. Permitt me Doctor then to show A certain Genius whom you know Not old enough to have a Wife23 In diffrent periods of his life. To Country Curacy confin’d24 Ah! how unlike his soaring mind. [f. 9 r.] Poor YORICK stuck for many a day Like David in the miry clay.25 There for his constant occupation He had the duties of his Station26 Sundays and Holidays to Him Were times on which he was in trim27 When with Eclesiastic Gown Of colour dubious, black or brown And Wig28 centauric form’d with care From human and equestrian hair Thro’ shades of which appeard the caul Nay some affirm29 his30 pate and all.31 And band Well starchd by faithfull John32 For to be sure Maids he had none33 24

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761

He solemn walk’d in grand Procession Like Justice to a Contry Session To Church—You’ll step in there I hope No Sir—that’s sacred34 there I stop. In his retirement time was spent So calm he knew not how it went To murm’ring envy quite a Stranger Nor of the spleen in the least danger. For ease he would35 his head enwrap In party-colour’d woolen Cap [f. 9 v.] A threadbare Coat with sleeves full wide A formal Nightgown’s place supply’d. He wore his new ones not t’abuse A pair of ancient, downheel’d shoes: He rolled his stockings ’bove his knees, And was as degagé ’s you please. He had of Books a chosen few36 He read as Humour bid him do If Metaphisics seem’d too dark37 Shifted to Gay38 from Dr. Clark.39 If in the least it hurt his eyes, He without more ado,40 wou’d rise Take up his violin and play—41 His Pencil next then sketch away42 Here goes a flow’r!—extreamly neat Let me attempt Sue’s43 countnance sweet The little Gipsey drest in blue Who to the Pulpit sits next Pew44 Whose tender smiling starlike eyes Half draw mine wandring45 from the skies. Sometimes our Priest with limbs so taper Before his glass would cut a caper Indulging each suggestion airy Each Whim and innocent Vagary. [f. 10 r.] The heliconian46 stream47 he’d quaff And to48 himself transported laugh In short without the help of Sherry He ever Hearty was and merry. 25

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761

But Sir tho’ he was but a Vicar, Had he a Bottle of no liquor? O yes—fine amber49 creamtopt ale ;50 The Parson’s suitable regale For which when a good-humour’d friend Came in, he’d to the cellar send Or go himself—if John was out, Each had a key you need not doubt. His Flock he pleas’d who long had prov’d him For from their very souls they lov’d him.51 But as they knew him to a title The Wags wou’d puzle him a litle.52 When Yorick talked of the tithe Pig53 They’d fall adancing of a Jig; Most Rev’rend Sir Gain cannot be By such a Genius lik’d as54 Thee. Excuse me friends I’m not in jest I’m once a quarter grave55 at least. Now, God of love or God of wine Or Muse whichever of the nine56 [f. 10 v.] That erst blithe Ovid’s tunefull tongue Touch’d till he fancifully sung, Of Transformation’s wondrous Power Such as Jove turn’d to Golden Shower57 O! to my Supplication list! I will describe if you asist, As strange a Metamorphosis58 I’m sure as any one of his. Who has not Tristram Shandy read?59 Is any mortal so ill bred? If so, don’t dare your birth to boast Nor give fam’d Ch dl h60 for your toast. This much about the time of lent ,61 His Harbinger62 to Town he sent Procur’d Bob Dodsley63 for his friend, Dodsley who lives at the Court end.64 A Circumstance which Sir I say’t— Must be allowed to have some weight. So soon as it’s reception kind Was known on swiftest wings of Wind 26

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761

To reap his sheaves65 of fame and Pelf Up comes th’original himself .66 [f. 11 r.] By Fashion’s hand compleatly drest He is everywhere a wellcome Guest:67 He runs about from place to place Now with my Lord,68 then with his Grace69 And mixing with the brilliant throng He straight commences Beau Garcon In Ranelagh’s70 delightfull round71 Squire Tristram oft is flaunting found A buzzing whisper flys about, Where’er he comes they point him out; Each Waiter with an eger eye Observes him as he passes by ‘That there is he—do, Thomas! look Who’s wrote such a damnd clever Book.’ Th’enchanting Paradise Vauxhall72 Enough to sooth a furious Saul73 His presence gladdens; chearfull he Gives a fresh verdure to each tree. The little Birds from ev’ry spray Pour forth a more delightfull lay; He makes the voice of Vincent74 Low75 And Brent76 still more melodious grow. 16077 [f. 11 v.] But—what deserves heroic strains The Patronage of York78 he gains,79 Of York whose truly Princely80 Breast81 By ev’ry virtue is posest.82 Whether t’adorn Brittania’s Court To which bold freedom’s Sons83 resort Whether her naval force to Guide84 Exulting on85 the swelling86 tide Or with quick ardour to explore The richest87 mines of classic88 lore89 Fair Science’s rich mines of ore Or in his mirthfull hours to be An affable Companion free. 27

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761

O when my Eglintoun90 too good Has call’d me down in chearfull mood, And told me in a gentle tone The Prince91 is here do you make one The Royal Youth has asked me gay Come Boswell what have you to say While Gladness lighten’d in my eye Has made my Backwardness to fly That I without the least restraint Have heard them Men and Manners paint 18292 [f. 12 r.] Talk less of books than of Mankind And Women fickle as the wind. When sparkling93 wit and humour drole Flashd instant pleasure on my soul My spirits loosd94 from Dullness chain And dancing nimbly thro each vein How strange to think on pompous state And is He realy then so great? *******************95 *******************96 *******************97 Why is it so—Why Shoud this be At such a distance plac’d from me ********************98 So very selfish was my mind That I have inwardly repind At the high honours on his head And almost wishd him Simple Ned. 19699 [f. 79 v. first half] Yes, Sir, from partial motives free,100 Which while I live I hope to be— ************************101 Your various merit sollid light102 Judgment Imagination bright103 Great102 erudition polish’d taste Pure language tho you write in haste104 ************************106 ************************107 ************************108 I will admire and will pretend To taste While I your works commend109 28

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761

Altho the public110 voice should fail And envious Grublings111 half prevail Who swear like Shuttlecock112 they’ll bandy This upstart Witling113 Tristram Shandy. [f. 77 r.] O self-conceit! how dost thou blind The Intellects114 of vain mankind. This crop enough115 for Mr. Town116 By all that’s whimsical went down *********************** [f. 13 r.] Next from the press there issues forth A sage divine fresh from117 the north On Sterne’s discourses118 we grew mad Sermons117 where are they to be had? ***********************120 ***********************121 A strange enthusiastic rage For sacred text now seis’d the age Arround St. Jamess122 every table Was partly gay and partly sable123 The manners by old Noll124 defended With modern125 chitle chat were blended. ‘Give me some Maccaroni126 pray ‘Be wise while it is call’d to day127 Heavns! how Mingotti128 sung last Monday Alas how we profane the Sunday129 My Lady Betty! hob or nob!—130 Great was the patience of old Job Sir Smart131 breaks out and one and all Adore St. Peter and St. Paul. Now Sir! when I am in the cue I wou’d not worship, but praise you. I wou’d not have you132 shake your head Or with Hawks eye strike me with dread For as your uncle Toby stout What I incline I will have out.133 [f. 13 v. (first half)] Mynheer the134 Prebendary135 lo! To your high Worships makes a bow.136 29

AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761 1 Laurence Sterne (1713–68), clergyman (from 1736) and author (of sermons from 1747, of novels from 1759). He accumulated many livings, though he was a nonresident for most of his career: Vicar of Sutton-in-the-Forest, Yorkshire, 1738–68; Vicar of Stillington, 1743–68; Perpetual Curate of Coxwold, Mar. 1760–68; Prebendary in York Cathedral, 1741–68 (two stalls in succession). Despite his great literary success in the 1760s, he was plagued by chronic ill health, debt, and marital troubles. Sterne, like JB, based much of his life on literary and social visits to London. His first stay in London coincided closely with JB’s: Sterne was there from the first week of Mar. until the middle of May 1760. Like JB, he returned to London often, generally to promote his books and negotiate with publishers: late autumn 1760–June 1761, summer 1764, winter 1764–65, Jan.–May 1767, and Dec. 1767–Mar. 1768. Garrick complained that Sterne ‘degenerated in London like an ill-transplanted shrub; the incense of the great spoiled his head as their ragouts had done his stomach’ (Oxford DNB [DNB Archive]). These London stays were punctuated by returns to Yorkshire, but were broken up mainly by extended trips to the continent from Jan. 1762 to May 1764 and Oct. 1765 to Jan. 1767. (See Cash, which augments Cross and Curtis.) In ‘Bozzy and Yorick’ (pp. 311–12), Pottle (after arranging the lives of JB and Sterne in ‘parallel columns’) remarked on the irony that after their serendipitous conjunction in London in Mar.–May 1760, the two men were never again in the same city at the same time. This lack of any further coincidences is truly striking, given their similar patterns of returning to London, and their similarly-focused Grand Tours in the mid-1760s. ‘On [Sterne’s] way down to Rome he almost crossed trails with Boswell coming up from Corsica, but even here the two managed to miss each other’. Apart from To Eglinton, c. 7–11 Apr. or 29 Apr.–3 May 1760 (expanded 1761), this verse epistle is one of two sources for the inference that JB met Sterne when they were in London Mar.–June 1760. The other is the anonymous letter From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ to the Earl of *** (Eglinton), 25 Sept. 1761 (attributed to JB on stylistic and internal evidence). Oddly, no other reference to such a meeting appears in JB’s surviving writings. Pottle has argued that the absence of any mention in the Life of his meeting Sterne came from JB’s deference to SJ’s low opinion of Sterne,

and the irrelevance of Sterne to SJ’s life story (‘Bozzy and Yorick’, pp. 300–01). Yet no mention of a meeting with Sterne is made in his extant correspondence with Garrick (a friend of Sterne), Burke and Malone (see Corr. 4), the ‘Certain Members of the Club’ (see Corr. 3), JJ (see Corr. 1), WJT (see Corr. 6), James Bruce (see Corr. 8), or in his general correspondence from 1766 to 1769 (see Corr. 5 and Corr. 7) and his journals, despite various discussions of and allusions to Tristram Shandy. It is open to question whether this epistle to Sterne was ever sent—or, for that matter, ever finished. JB only numbered 196 lines in a coherent order. 2 Terminus a quo: at earliest, the letter was written in the latter half of (or after) JB’s stay in London, Mar.–June 1760. The poem mentions Sterne’s presence at Ranelagh, an event which would have occurred on or after the opening of the Ranelagh season on 7 Apr. 1760. It also mentions Sterne’s relation to the Duke of York, to whom Sterne was presented after his visit to Ranelagh (Curtis, pp. 105–06). A section which may or may not belong to this poem mentions the controversy aroused by Sterne’s Sermons, published 22 May 1760 just before Sterne left London (see n. 8 below). 3 Terminus ad quem: the verse epistle resembles somewhat in tone and subject matter JB’s published letter to Eglinton of 25 Sept. 1761. In that letter to Eglinton, printed in Scots Mag. and reprinted in this volume, JB mentioned Sterne at length. ‘What is Tristram Shandy doing? skipping about alamode de bon vivant? I wish you great folks would give him as broad a hint to rise in the church, as the Irishman once received to go down stairs. He is the best companion I ever knew, and the most taking composer of sermons that I ever read. I shall write to him soon’ (To Eglinton, 25 Sept. 1761). 4 Werner reconstructed the Douce 193 leaves as 7 r., 8–11 (first recto, then verso), 12 r., 13 r., 13 v. (in part), 77 r., 77 v., 79 v., 80 r., 80 v. Werner’s text tended to accept superlineations as the final authorial intention even where deletions were absent. 5 MS. ‘Van’ written above line. 6 MS. ‘a bow’, the conclusion of the line, written above it. Here JB echoes the kinds of mock-solemn forms of address to the reader in Tristram Shandy. 7 Sterne entered Jesus College, Cambridge in 1733, received his B.A. in 1737, and his M.A. in 1740 (Cross, i. 31, 33 and n. ‘*’). He was ordained a deacon in 1736, and

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AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761 12 Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 1–2: ‘Of Bodies chang’d to various Forms, I sing:/ Ye Gods, from whom these Miracles did spring,/ Inspire my numbers …’ (trans. John Dryden, The Poems of John Dryden, ed. James Kinsley, 1958, ii. 799). The original reads ‘Adspirite’ instead of ‘Favete’ (Loeb ed.). JB appears to be quoting from memory. 13 The first two volumes of Tristram Shandy abound with references to whistling, from the interjectional whistles and variously-spelled ‘whuus’ of various characters to the famous whistling of ‘Lilliburlero’ by Toby Shandy. JB may here mean instead the sort of whistling before and during plays which ‘criticks’ intended to damn. Such whistling, and heckling and catcalls, were common forms of audience disapproval in the London and Edinburgh theatres which JB frequented. 14 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘As prologue to my slight Epistle.’ 15 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘In favour of whatever’s in it’ 16 Curtis noted in his edition of Sterne’s letters, in discussing materials from 1761, that ‘Whatever Sterne’s literary successes, his ecclesiastical obscurity was a matter he had spent vain years in escaping …. [F]or Sterne there seems to have remained a longing for honour among his fellow priests.’ His last great good fortune was Lord Fauconberg’s gift of the Curacy of Coxwold in Mar. 1760 (Curtis, pp. 148–49 and n. 7). As Warburton noted, Sterne damaged his hopes for further promotion in the church by writing controversial novels accused by many of lewdness. 17 The many references to brains in Tristram Shandy are supplemented by the references to the Lockeian association of ideas and the recurrence of hobby horses. Werner thought JB may have alluded to lines from Dryden’s Cymon and Iphigenia: ‘He trudg’d along unknowing what he sought,/ And whistled as he went, for want of Thought’ (The Poems of John Dryden, iv. 1743). Beyond that, there was a Scots idiomatic expression, such as the one used by the Duchess of Hamilton in her criticism of the Earl of Eglinton: ‘the same as ever, whistling to himself for want of thought’ (Comp. Peer. v. 24). 18 MS. ‘Must cut’ written above line. 19 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘And only dumb admirers be.’ 20 JB first met the author of Douglas, John Home, during his visit to London in 1760, and wrote at that time that he was planning to ‘cultivate his Acquaintance’.

a priest in 1738. Thus he was correctly styled, as in the title page of his Sermons, as ‘Laurence Sterne, A.M. Prebendary of York, and Vicar of Sutton on the Forest, and of Stillington near York’, not doctor. Sterne was never granted a doctorate. JB employs the same sort of affectionate, spoofing inflation of dignity upon Sterne as that conferred upon William McQuhae (see From Bruce, 10 Jan. 1763, Corr. 8, p. 1 and n. 11; McQuhae—for whom see To McQuhae, 29 Sept. 1762, n. 1—was not awarded a D.D. until 1794). 8 Yorick, appearing in Tristram Shandy vols. 1 and 2, proved so popular that Sterne noted in the preface to his Sermons that in a comparison of saleability of his name and Yorick’s, ‘Yorick’s name is possibly of the two the more known’. Sterne was aware that using the facetious name ‘Yorick’ for a volume of religious discourse might offend some readers, and indeed the Monthly Rev. of May 1760 had condemned the ‘outrage’ of a ‘preacher’ who ‘mount[ed] the pulpit in a Harlequin’s coat’ (Curtis, p. 112 n. 2; Cross, i. 217–28). 9 The mania for Tristram Shandy from Dec. 1759 onwards into 1761 was focused on the first two volumes (of the eventual nine). The craze was fuelled by the author’s unplanned stay in London Mar.–May 1760, which enhanced his status as a literary celebrity, and was fed also by the praise of a wide variety of eminent readers, from Garrick to William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester (for whom see From AE, 25 May 1762 [E–B], n. 2). Sterne discovered that the first edition was sold out, and that Dodsley would pay richly for the copyright to the first two volumes and the purchase of the third and fourth volumes, as well as the sermons (Sterne by May had agreed upon a price of £830 for the lot). A second edition of the first two volumes was on sale by 3 Apr. 1760, and by the end of the year, Dodsley reprinted it twice more, a flood which did not include the many ‘Shandy’ commentaries, piracies, imitations and parodies (Cross, i. 188–199, 202–06; NCBEL, ii. 952, ‘Supposititious Works’, 953–54, ‘Other Sterneana to 1800’). Vols. 3–4 appeared in 1761, vols. 5–6 in 1762, vols. 7–8 in 1765, and vol. 9 in 1767. Sterne’s sequels, while admired by many, never replicated the frenzy generated by the first two volumes. 10 MS. ‘formas’, the conclusion of the line, written above it. 11 MS. ‘astis & illas’, the conclusion of the line, written above it.

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Home’s play, The Siege of Aquileia, was performed in London in spring 1760. Both JB and Sterne saw it (To Dalrymple, 22 Mar. 1760 [MS not at Yale]; From Sterne to Garrick, 6 Mar. 1760 [Curtis, p. 93]; Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 775–78). 21 MS. ‘Douglas much’ above deleted ‘Tragedy’. For Douglas, see From WD, between 9 and 19 Apr. 1757, n. 2. 22 The Epilogue to Douglas ‘as spoken by Mr. Barry’ contains a praise of Home’s unyielding seriousness in his tragedies:

persuasive reading is that JB presents his verse biography in chronological order of ‘different periods of [Sterne’s] life’. JB’s portrayal moved forward from the country curacy of 1738, obtained when Sterne was still twenty-five and ‘Not old enough to have a Wife’, forward into the era of his marriage at twenty-eight. Sterne and Elizabeth Lumley had two daughters, born in 1745 and 1747. By 1743 the marriage was in a decline, from which it never recovered, according to Croft because of Sterne’s ‘infidelity to the Marriage Bed’ from the mid-1740s. From 1759, Elizabeth Sterne suffered from mental illness. The couple became estranged, and she was committed to an asylum in York. Elizabeth Sterne outlived her husband by five years, dying in 1773 (Cash, i. 135, 285–87, ii. 2). 24 Sterne began his ecclesiastical career at what he called the bottom of the ‘hill of preferment’, as assistant curate of St. Ives, Huntingdonshire, in 1737. By 1738 he was assistant curate for the parish of Catton, Yorkshire. Many young clergy remained ‘assistants’ for as long as twenty years, ‘sometimes without the dignity of priests’ orders. Often they lived in abject poverty’. Yet from 1738 Sterne was not only a vicar, but after 1743 a pluralist, who held three livings and a prebendary in 1760 (Cash, i. 62–65, 139). Sterne was mainly confined by his country life in the years 1737–59. The lenient policies of the Church of England on nonresidency, pluralism, and extended leaves of absence all benefited Sterne greatly from 1759 to 1768. 25 Psalms 40:2 (‘A Psalm of David’): ‘He brought me up also … out of the miry clay’. In the first two volumes of Tristram Shandy the Yorkshire clay and the perilous muddy dirt roads hewn from it serve as a recurring difficulty: ‘dismal roads, the country thereabouts being nothing but a deep clay, [a journey of seven miles] was almost equal to fourteen’ (I. vii; Tristram Shandy, Florida ed., i. 11). The idea of Sterne’s waging war against the clay is truer than JB probably knew, given Sterne’s failed attempt at farming in the late 1740s and 1750s: Sterne warned one friend, ‘You are much to blame if you dig for marle [clay and lime] … Curse on farming … I will try if the pen will not succeed better than the spade’ (quoted in Cash, i. 146–50). 26 Presumably here JB refers to Sterne’s life as Vicar of Sutton from 1738 onwards and as Vicar of Stillington from 1744 onwards. Sterne’s answers to the 1743 Visitation Returns set him down as performing at

An Epilogue I ask’d; but not one word Our bard will write. He vows ’tis most absurd With comick wit to contradict the strain Of tragedy, and make your sorrows vain. Sadly he says, that pity is the best, And noblest passion of the human breast … These were his words; void of delusive art I felt them; for he spoke them from his heart. Nor will I now attempt, with witty folly, To chace away celestial melancholy.

In the ‘Epilogue Spoken by Mrs. Cibber’ to The Siege of Aquileia, Home, when asked about his adherence to classical discipline, replies: … Poetry is not an art; ’Tis nature only frames the poet’s heart: Still as he thinks the scene, he feels along, And from his bosom bursts the raptur’d song. This is the sacred oracle, the shrine, The bard consults, and here, the tuneful Nine. With the same fire, the hearer’s soul must glow, Else vain to him, the tale of tragick woe …. The temper of the soul is sweet and wild; It sobs, or smiles, as sudden as a child; To woes imagin’d tears unfeigned gives, And in the poet’s world of fancy lives. 23 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘A mortal Enemy to strife’. The fact that he underlined this alternative can be taken as evidence it was his final choice, as Werner thought (p. 202). This passage has created difficulties for critics, since Sterne was married to Elizabeth Lumley from 1741 until his death. Pottle speculated that JB must have wrongly concluded from Sterne’s open love-affairs and his living alone in London that ‘Yorick’ was unmarried (‘Bozzy and Yorick’, p. 306). Yet it seems highly improbable that JB would have considered the forty-seven-year-old Sterne of 1760 as too young to be married, even if he (mistakenly) considered him a confirmed bachelor like Eglinton. A more

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or above Church of England standards: two services every Sunday, offering communion five times a year, and offering Lenten catechism classes. Yet Cash noted that his ‘parish duties were not very demanding’. From 1739 to 1741, he even hired an assistant curate and lived in York, and had returned to York and nonresidency in 1759. Even during his country residency as Vicar of Sutton 1741–44, his servant from 1742 remembered that ‘He would frequently be absent many days together on these occasions, & should Sunday intervene did not return to perform the duties of the day — He did not attend well to the duties of his situation’ (Cash, i. 66–69, 124–35, 139, 282–83). 27 When he became Vicar of Stillington as well as Vicar of Sutton, Sterne opted to offer the morning service at Sutton, then travel the two miles to conduct evensong at Stillington, reversing the order on the first Sunday of each month. Cash notes, ‘Probably he pursued his new duties diligently at first—they were not very heavy—slacking off in later years’, and on at least one day is said to have abandoned his congregation at Stillington in order to hunt a covey of partridges his dog had spotted (Cash, i. 137– 40). 28 While composing his sermons, Sterne would ‘pull down his wig over one eye, & remove it from side to side’ (Cash, i. 217) 29 MS. ‘Critics write’ written above line. 30 MS. ‘his’ superimposed upon illegible word, perhaps ‘the’ 31 Sterne himself had made fun of his own appearance and dress in his characters of Yorick and ‘Lorry Slim’ (A Political Romance, 1759, rev. 1769). In an anecdote which recorded his days in York, ‘so slovenly was his dress, and strange his gait, the little boys used to flock around him, and walk by his side’ (Cash, i. 54–55, 259). 32 Perhaps a reference to John Wood, one of Sterne’s servants in his years as Vicar of Sutton. Jonathan the coachman makes his appearance in Tristram Shandy in vol. 5, printed by Becket and Dehondt in 1762. If JB is borrowing that character, it would move the date of the poem forward to 1762. Even in his pre-Shandy years, Sterne was able to afford two or three servants, whom Sterne transfigured in Tristram Shandy into Susannah, Obadiah, Jonathan the coachman, and ‘the foolish fat scullion’ (V. viii; Tristram Shandy, Florida ed., i. 431). Among Sterne’s servants from 1742 to 1745 was young Richard Greenwood, who was privy to many of Sterne’s secrets (Cash, i. xxi, 123–25, 134–36, 145–46, 157). For

the text of Greenwood’s memoirs, see James Kuist, ‘New Light on Sterne: An Old Man’s Recollections of the Young Vicar’, PMLA 80 (1965): 549–53. 33 Sterne’s household in Sutton did include maids such as Anne (Slater) Wood, who appear to have been under Elizabeth Sterne’s supervision, and who were the objects of their master’s sexual interest in the 1740s: ‘Sterne … was continually after his female servants’ (Cash, i. 123–24, 135). 34 MS. ‘excuse me’ written above line, inserted via caret. 35 MS. ‘he’d oft’ written above line. 36 Sterne’s early reading has been reconstructed by Cash, who notes that he ‘probably could not have afforded more than a small library’ until the financial bonanza of Tristram Shandy. In a letter of 1761, Sterne boasted of having bought 700 books ‘dog cheap’ (Cash, i. 197–206). 37 JB in his own youth had been driven into depression by the study of metaphysics (see Earlier Years, pp. 24–25). 38 John Gay (1685–1732), poet and dramatist. As JB’s obsession with ‘Macheath’ and his many quotations from The Beggar’s Opera show, JB was a great admirer of Gay. He retained in later life much of Gay’s opera by heart. Indeed, JB continued to be ‘remarkably fond of the Beggars Opera’ (Journ. 29 Nov. 1776, where he notes also that he was thinking of ‘publishing an edition of it with notes’), and happy that the music and dialogue ‘had not lost their power of animating me’ (Journ. 19 Oct. 1793). In the Life—differing from SJ’s opinion in his ‘Life’ of Gay— he described Gay as an efficient corrupter of society (‘the gaiety and heroism of a highwayman very captivating to a youthful imagination … the arguments for adventurous depredation are so plausible … that it requires a cool and strong judgement to resist so imposing an aggregate’). JB also praised The Beggar’s Opera as a great portrayer of London: ‘there is in it so much of real London life, so much brilliant wit, and such a variety of airs, which, from early association of ideas … no performance … delights me more’ (Life ii. 367–68). 39 Samuel Clarke, D.D. (1675–1729), rationalist and Latitudinarian theologian, whose Enlightenment proofs of Christian doctrine led enemies to accuse him of semiArianism. Author of Sermons and Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God; The Obligations of Natural Religion; and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Religion (2 vols., 1705).

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Sterne admired Clarke, and used him and Tillotson as chief models for his own preaching (Cash, i. 206, 218–19). SJ, despite his Athanasian orthodoxy, advised JB to read Clarke’s proofs of the being and attributes of God (Journ. 24 May 1763). Clarke’s theological treatises and sermons would form a large portion of JB’s reading in Holland in 1763–64 (see Holland, pp. 50, 90, 183, 240, 369). 40 MS. ‘instantaneously’ written above the line. 41 Sterne’s memoirs stated that he enjoyed ‘fiddling’, and a York neighbour described Sterne as a violinist for a chamber music society. When he died, he left among his effects a bass viol, rather than a violin. He read music, and borrowed Italian sonatas from the York chapter library. Tristram’s tuning of his ‘fiddle’ was not described in Tristram Shandy until vol. 5, although he mentioned the ‘fiddle-stick’ in various passages of vols. 1–2, and described himself in vol. 1, ch. 8 as ‘happening, at certain intervals and changes of the Moon, to be both fiddler and painter, according as the fly stings’ (Cash, i. 197, 208). 42 Sterne had drawn since childhood, and his Memoirs recorded his interest in ‘painting’, as did the passage from Tristram Shandy on being ‘both fiddler and painter’ (I. viii; Tristram Shandy, Florida ed., i. 12). Croft noted that Sterne ‘was not steady at his Pastimes, or Recreations … he wou’d take up the Pencil and paint Pictures. He chiefly copied Portraits. He had a good Idea of Drawing, but not the least of mixing his colours’. In 1759 he planned a portrait of his lover, Catherine Fourmantel. His only surviving painting, which was transmitted only in the form of an engraving, is the picture of Thomas Bridges as a quack doctor (Cash, i. 197, 209–12). 43 JB is perhaps again borrowing a character from the Shandy household: Susannah makes the first of many appearances in Tristram Shandy in vol. 3, printed in 1761. But as with the supposition about Jonathan, the use of the novel’s characters other than those in the first two volumes from 1760 would push the date of composition forward into 1761–62. 44 The incorporation of ‘Sue’ into the idyll of rural clerical life suggests that JB imagined her as a Yorkshire rather than a London character. 45 MS. ‘make mine half wander’ written above line, ‘half downward’ written below line. 46 Helicon, ‘The Muses’ Mount’, part of

the Parnassos mountain range in Greece. 47 ‘Helicon’s harmonious stream’ flowed from Mount Helicon into the fountains of the Muses, called Aganippe and Hippocrene [Pegasus’s fountain]. ‘When the Muses contended with the daughters of Pieros, Helicon rose heavenward with delight; but Pegasos gave it a kick, stopped its ascent, and brought out of the mountain the soul-inspiring waters of Hippocrene’. These waters were thought magically to infuse the drinker with poetic inspiration. Thus the Nine Muses were occasionally referred to as Aganippedes or Aganippides (Brewer’s Dict.). 48 MS. ‘by’ written above line. 49 MS. ‘amber’ written above apparently deleted ‘frothy’ 50 Greenwood, his servant in Sterne’s early country years, noted that Sterne ‘never drank to excess … he usually after dinner took one glass of wine, of which he drank half, & filled his glass with water for the rest’ (Cash, i. 73). 51 Sterne’s dispensation for pluralism required him to ‘exercise hospitality’ at Stillington for two months a year, but he seems to have skirted the requirement (Cash, i. 139). 52 Croft noted that Sterne’s parishioners ‘generally considered him as crazy, or crackbrained’. JB’s image was probably influenced by Sterne’s portrayal of Yorick in Tristram Shandy as one who ‘never could enter a village, but he caught the attention of both old and young. —Labour stood still as he pass’d … stood gaping till he had got out of sight’. As Yorick rode past, he could ‘hear the groans of the serious, —and the laughter of the light-hearted; —all which he bore with excellent tranquility’ (Tristram Shandy, I. x; Florida ed., i. 19; Cash, i. 150). 53 As Vicar of Sutton, Sterne received tithe income based on pennies per cows, calves, foals, and swarms of bees. As Vicar of Stillington, ‘Again Sterne was trapped by customs which forced him to collect the rest of his income in trifling tithes for cows, calves, bees, gardens, apples, and pigs’ (Cash, i. 116–18, 139). No specific reference to a ‘tithe Pig’ has been located in Sterne’s published writings. 54 MS. ‘Sought by a Son of mirth like’ written above line. 55 MS. ‘serious once a year’ written above line. 56 The nine Muses: Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Erato (elegy and lyric poetry), Euterpe (music), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (sacred song), Terpsi-

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chore (dancing), Thalia (comedy), Urania (astronomy). The Muses dwelt in Aonia, Boetia, near Mount Helicon and the Muses’ Fountain. 57 Jove, in the form of a shower of gold, impregnated Danae (Ovid, Metamorphoses, vi. 113). 58 Ovid’s Metamorphoses. For JB’s uses of the book in his writings of the mid-1760s and onward, see Lincoln, p. 247. 59 The public reaction to Tristram Shandy had been nearly inescapable, and began in Jan. 1760 with good reviews and speculation about who the real ‘Parson Yorick’ was. Shandy-mania rose to a flood tide during Sterne’s visit to London in Mar. 1760. By vols. 3 and 4, a backlash had set in, with Walpole claiming the second pair of books ‘met the contempt they deserved’. Crit. Rev. claimed that the first installment of vols. 1–2 ‘had merit … but was extolled above its value’ whereas the second installment of vols. 3–4 ‘has defects, but is too severely decried’ (Cross, i. 188–206, 245–49; Alan B. Howes, ed., Sterne, the Critical Heritage, 1974). Thomas Gray wrote to Thomas Wharton on 22 Apr. 1760: ‘Tristram Shandy is still a greater object of admiration, the Man as well as the Book’ (Curtis, p. 106, n. 2). 60 Elizabeth Chudleigh (1720–88), Countess of Bristol, socialite, maid of honour to the (Dowager) Princess Augusta from 1743. On 4 June 1760, she hosted a ball in honour of the Prince of Wales’ birthday. From 1759 she was mistress of the 2nd Duke of Kingston, despite the fact that she was secretly married to the Earl of Bristol until (at least) 1769; her trial for bigamy by the Lords in 1776 was a major scandal (Comp. Peer. vii. 308–09). Beyond the contemporary comments about her in the letters of Walpole and Elizabeth Montagu, there were several lives of her published: Les avantures trop amoureuses ou Elisabeth Chudleigh ex-Duchesse Douairiere de Kingston, aujourd’hui Comtesse de Bristol et la Marquise de la Touche sur la scene du monde …, 1776; The life and memoirs of Elizabeth Chudleigh, afterwards Mrs. Hervey and Countess of Bristol, commonly called Duchess of Kingston. Written from authentic information and original documents, ?1788; Thomas Whitehead, Original anecdotes of the late Duke of Kingston and Miss Chudleigh …, 1792. Sterne visited the Dowager Princess of Wales’s court, where the Countess of Bristol served as a Maid of Honour, during his stay in London (Cross, i. 195). 61 Lent occurred from Feb. 28 to Apr. 14

in 1759, and Feb. 19 to Apr. 5 in 1760. 62 ‘His Harbinger’ is not identified, unless it means a letter; Sterne negotiated with Dodsley through the post from May to Oct. 1759. John Hinxman, a former apprentice of Dodsley’s, recommended that Sterne write to Dodsley. Garrick seems to have received promotional copies of the York printing in Jan. 1760, before Sterne arrived in London, and Garrick ‘actually spoke well’ of the novel (Cash, i. 293–96; Curtis, pp. 74–81, 85–88). 63 Robert Dodsley (1704–64), former footman, author (from 1732), and bookseller (from 1735). He was in partnership with his brother James (for whom see To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’ [?Joseph Richardson], 10 Feb. 1762, n. 1) from 1750, with James gradually assuming more importance in the shop’s daily operations 1759–64. Despite this change, ‘Doddy’ (as SJ called him) or ‘Bob’ was still the soul of the firm (Ralph Straus, Robert Dodsley, 1910; Dict. of Printers, pp. 76–77; Oxford DNB). Dodsley acted as Sterne’s agent in London for the first printing of Tristram Shandy, vols. 2 and 3 of which were published 1 Jan. 1760 in York. Vols. 3–4 appeared, through Dodsley, on 29 Jan. 1761, and sold out by the end of February. Immediately after arriving in London, Sterne closed with Dodsley for a second edition of the first four volumes which appeared on 3 Apr. 1760 (Cross, pp. 188–95, 207–08, 216; Cash, i. 88–89). JB, during his first stay in London, became acquainted with Dodsley on the strength of an introduction from Sir David Dalrymple (To Dalrymple, 22 Mar. 1760 [MS not at Yale]). JB’s correspondence with AE and GD for 1761 contains several references to Dodsley’s role in publishing Donaldson’s Collection. 64 The Dodsleys’ shop was at the sign of Tully’s Head in Pall Mall from 1735/38 to 1764, in an enviable location halfway between the Smyrna Coffee House and the Star and Garter Tavern (Dict. of Printers, pp. 76–77; Hugh Phillips, Mid-Georgian London, 1964, p. 269). The West End was the ‘Court End’ of London and Westminster. 65 MS. ‘a crop’ written above line. JB is considering two alternatives here: ‘reap his sheaves’ and ‘reap a crop’. 66 Curtis surmised that Sterne’s trip to London with Stephen Croft was made 2–4 Mar. 1760 (Curtis, p. 94). 67 In letters of Mar. 1760, Sterne wrote: ‘My Lodgings is every hour full of your great People of the first Rank who strive who

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shall most honour me’; ‘from morning to night my Lodgings, which by the by, are the genteelest in Town, are full of the greatest Company’. In Apr. he wrote, ‘I have 14 Engagements to Dine now in my Books, with the first Nobility’. Sterne eventually chose to flee London in 1760 because of exhaustion from his incessant round of guests (Curtis, pp. 101–02, 104). 68 Sterne met ‘all the Bishops’, including Warburton (the Bishop of Gloucester). Among the temporal lords whom he met were the Earl of Chesterfield, Lord Lyttleton, the Marquess of Rockingham, Lord Edgecumbe, and the Earl of Winchelsea (Curtis, pp. 101–12). 69 Sterne presumably encountered various dukes and archbishops (‘his Grace’) in his court visits, though he mentioned none by name (Curtis, pp. 101–12). 70 Ranelagh Gardens, Chelsea, were so named because they had been built around the house of Richard Jones, 1st Earl of Ranelagh. The entertainment complex consisted of a large rotunda, booths selling tea and wine, an orchestra stand, a Chinese pavilion, an ornamental lake, and a maze of dark garden walks. After its opening in 1742, Ranelagh quickly became a destination for all levels of London society (Lond. Encyclopedia, p. 637). Sterne wrote c. Apr. 1760 that he had perambulated ‘with some pain, abt Ranalagh’, and he was again at Ranelagh around 1 May 1760 (Curtis, pp. 105–06 and n. 1). The letter in this volume of 25 Sept. 1761, to ‘Lord E***’—presuming it was written by JB to Eglinton—implies that Lord Eglinton took JB to Ranelagh at some point in Mar.–June 1760. 71 The large rococo rotunda or round at Ranelagh, opened in 1742, was built by William Jones. It was 150 feet in diameter, and contained a large circular fireplace in its centre. Admission to the rotunda was 12d (Lond. Encyclopedia, p. 637). 72 Vauxhall, or the New Spring garden, was a pleasure garden on the south bank of the Thames. It contained walks, numerous statues, ruins, and arches, supper boxes, a music-room, and Gothic orchestra. Vauxhall was the premier fashionable resort for London society in the later 18th century (Lond. Encylopedia, pp. 910–11). The three performers JB is about to mention were Vauxhall celebrities. It is not known if JB went to Vauxhall in spring 1760. Eglinton and others among JB’s more buckish acquaintances were habitual attendees. JB’s first recorded visit was on 13 June 1763, in

the company of Eglinton and WJT’s brother Bob Temple. He visited again with WJT, Bob Temple, and John Claxton on 27 June 1763, but opted out of a chance to go with Lords Eglinton and March on 9 July 1763. Later mentions of JB’s visits to Vauxhall include 25 June 1785, when his accounts reveal that he spent 9s, and 1 June 1790 (Journ., Notes, Accounts). 73 A reference to David’s use of music to palliate the insanity of King Saul: ‘when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul … David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him’ (1 Samuel 16:14–23). 74 A performer JB presumably saw at Vauxhall. The context makes it clear that the reference must be to a singer (the two nominees of Werner, p. 203, Thomas and James Vincent, were both instrumentalists). The soprano Isabella (Burchall) Vincent (c. 1735–1802) made her debut at Vauxhall Gardens in 1751, performed as ‘Mrs. Vincent’ after her marriage in 1755, and sang at Drury Lane (Sept. 1760–67), Marylebone Gardens (1764–67) and the Haymarket Little Theatre (1764). Another ‘Mrs. Vincent’, mother-in-law of the singer, was an actress at Covent Garden (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 818; New Grove 2). 75 Another performer JB presumably saw at Vauxhall. Thomas Lowe (fl. 1740, d. 1783), tenor and singing actor from 1740, specialized in ballad operas and other light theatre pieces, and was a popular singer between acts in the theatres and in pleasure gardens such as Vauxhall. Lowe had left Drury Lane for Covent Garden in 1748, but returned to Drury Lane 1760. He was known for his Macheath in The Beggar’s Opera (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 743, 748; Thespian Dictionary, 1802; New Grove 2). 76 Another performer JB presumably saw at Vauxhall and Covent Garden. Charlotte Brent (1734–1802), later (1766) ‘Mrs. Pinto’, soprano, protégée of Thomas Arne, stage performer from 1755 to 1786. During the 1759–60 season at Covent Garden, she acted Polly in the production of The Beggar’s Opera performed while JB was in London. W. T. Parke praised her voice’s ‘power, flexibility, and sweetness’. Garrick complained of her unprepossessing appearance, but Dibdin claimed: ‘Her power was resistless, her neatness was truly interesting and her variety was incessant’. At Covent Garden she created the role of Rosetta in the pasticcio Love in a Village, by Arne and Isaac Bickerstaffe, which JB attended on its

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AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761 95 MS. ‘O if he were but such as me’ deleted. 96 MS. ‘Why is he not a youth like me’ deleted. 97 MS. ‘Whom’ deleted. 98 Deleted; illegible. 99 JB marked off ‘196’ at the bottom of this page (MS. f. 12 r.). Up to this point in the poem Douce 193 is fairly clear copy. From this point on the text becomes much more fragmentary, with the order of the fragments uncertain. 100 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘Now Sir from partial motives free’ 101 MS. Illegible word (?‘Candor’) deleted. 102 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘That you have merit I declare’ 103 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘And this I to my Grave shall bear’ 104 MS. ‘True’ written above line. 105 Sterne had written the first draft of Tristram Shandy’s vols. 1–2 as fast as he possibly could from late Jan. to June 1759, and felt that he could produce another two volumes per year as long as he lived. He did, however, trim the draft carefully from its nearly four volumes’ worth of text down to the two ‘small’ volumes of the ‘lean edition’ issued on 1 Jan. 1760. He also ‘feared’ in Dec. 1759 that his work would go into the world ‘with a hundred faults’ (Cross, i. 173–78). 106 MS. ‘sweet sentiments of Human life’ deleted. 107 MS. ‘This I am sure tis not for gain’ deleted. 108 MS. ‘I firmly promise to maintain’ deleted. 109 This couplet was written vertically in the right margin. 110 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘Public’ 111 MS. ‘Grubs should’, ‘[grub]lets’ written above ‘Grublings half’. Neither ‘grubling’ nor ‘grublet’ are in OED. These coinages were presumably JB’s own modifications of the noun ‘grub’ used to describe Grub Street hacks and dunces. 112 A small piece of cork fitted with a circle of feathers, used in the games of ‘battledore and shuttlecock’ and badminton (OED). 113 A person who fancies himself a wit, or uses weak and feeble witticisms (OED). 114 MS. ‘Intellects’ underlined and written above ‘judgment weak’ 115 MS. ‘crop great’ written above ‘This crop’ 116 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘Praise great enough for half the town’

opening night (Journ. 8 Dec. 1762). She sang in summer seasons at Vauxhall Gardens from 1760 and appeared at Ranelagh 1762–64. 77 JB kept a running tally at the bottom of each page of the number of lines, marking off ‘160’ at the bottom of this page (MS. f. 11 r.). 78 Edward Augustus, Duke of York (for whom see To Eglinton, c. 7–11 Apr. or 29 Apr.–3 May 1760 [expanded 1761], n. 47). 79 Sterne gained relatively speedy access to the Court, from Mar. onward. He wrote c. 12–17 May 1760 that he had just come from a concert where the ‘D of Y’ performed (presumably on the violin): ‘I have received great notice from him, and last week had the honour of supping with him’ (Curtis, pp. 101–12, and 112 n. 10; cf. Cross, i. 204, 246). 80 MS. ‘Royal’ written above ‘Princely’ 81 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘Of York whom Nature & whom Art’ 82 Variant presented in JB’s outline: ‘Have form’d to shine in many a Part.’ 83 JB oddly juxtaposes the ‘Patriot’ faction’s idea of ‘bold freedom’s Sons’ with the Court, which had been criticized in the eighteenth century for being the enemy or corrupter of patriotism. This demonstrates that JB’s admiration for the Court predated the reign of George III, whom in later life JB came to revere. 84 The Duke of York joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1758, and he served in the Cherbourg Expedition 1758 and in the Channel defence 1759. By June 1759 he was captain of H.M.S. Phoenix. His naval service continued in 1761–62 in the Iberian Campaign and the Channel; his highest rank was Admiral of the Blue, 1766 (Comp. Peer. XII. ii. 920). 85 MS. ‘oer’ written above ‘on’ 86 MS. ‘patient’ written above ‘swelling’ 87 MS. ‘precious’ written above ‘richest’ 88 MS. ‘usefull’ and ‘Ancient’ written above ‘classic’ 89 The Duke of York was not known as a scholar (Comp. Peer. XII. ii. 920). JB presumably refers to his membership in Eglinton’s circle of the ingeniously witty. 90 The Earl of Eglinton. 91 That is, the Duke of York. 92 As part of his running tally, JB marked off ‘182’ at the bottom of this page (MS. f. 11 v.). 93 MS. ‘sprightly’ deleted, ‘Brilliant’ written above line and ‘sparkling’ written below line. 94 MS. ‘freed’ deleted, ‘loosd’ written above line.

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AFTER 7 APRIL 1760 AND ?BEFORE OCTOBER 1761 117 MS. ‘fresh from’ written above deleted ‘bred in’ 118 ‘Discourses’ was a commonly-used synonym for sermons. Vols. 1–2 of The Sermons of Mr. Yorick, containing fifteen sermons, were published by Dodsley on 22 May 1760, one week before Sterne left to make his journey back to York (Cross, i. 216–28). 119 MS. ‘Sermons’ written above deleted ‘Bless me’ 120 MS. ‘Then with the fashionable Guards’ deleted. 121 MS. ‘The Psalms supply the place of bards’ deleted. 122 JB is not known to have visited the Court until his second London stay. Like JB’s description of Sterne as a Yorkshire pastor, the material is mostly generic, and could have as easily been drawn from plays and books as from an actual visit. 123 The ‘sable’ in this line presumably refers to the black gowns of clergymen who were in favour at Court, with an added allusion to the sombre dress of the seventeenth-century Puritans. To appear in sables or to be sabled could also mean being in mourning garments, of the sort worn in conformity to a period of official mourning after a royal death. This would not have been applicable unless JB wrote this section of the poem in the wake of George II’s death on 25 Oct. 1760. 124 Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), Lord Protector 1653–58. In the popular imagination, his Protectorate was associated with the suppression of music, theatre, and the visual arts, repression of drinking, and intense prudery. Modern research on Cromwell’s person, his Court, and his patronage of the arts has challenged the view of ‘Old Noll’ as a Philistine kill-joy, just as it has drawn attention to the often austere social control over manners and morals exercised by ‘Cavaliers’ and the Church of England after 1660 (Roy Sherwood, The Court of Oliver Cromwell, 1977; J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology, and Politics During the Ancien Regime, 2000). 125 MS. ‘Were with our’ written above ‘With modern’ 126 The late-eighteenth-century use of the word ‘macaroni’ to mean an Italianate or Frenchified fop or dandy, made thus by the Grand Tour, was a neologism. The second edition of OED quotes its earliest entries from 1764 (both Walpole). The ‘Maccaroni Club’ was described by Walpole as ‘composed of all the travelled young men who wear long curls and spying-glasses’ (Walpole to the Earl of Hertford, 6 Feb.

1764, Corres. Walpole, xxxviii. 306). A satire in 1770 noted: ‘There is indeed a kind of animal, neither male nor female, a thing of the neuter gender, lately started up amongst us. It is called a Macaroni. It talks without meaning, it smiles without pleasantry, it eats without appetite, it rides without exercise, it wenches without passion’ (Oxford Magazine, ccxxviii no. 2 [June 1770], cited in OED). The reference here may be to macaroni as a food. Macaroni (employed as a generic term for Italian pasta) was newly popular as a dish in mid-Georgian Britain, presumably under the influence of Grand Tourists. A recipe for dressing macaroni with parmesan cheese appeared in Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English Housekeeper, 1769 (repr., with an introduction by Roy Shipperbottom, 1997, p. 144). 127 ‘Be wise’ is a frequent Biblical admonition, e.g., ‘I said, I will be wise; but it was far from me’ (Ecclesiastes 7:23). 128 Regina (or Caterina) Mingotti, née Valentini, (1722–1808), German-Italian singer who began her operatic career c. 1743, began performing in London 1755; in the 1756–57 and 1763–64 London seasons she took over the management of the King’s Theatre together with the leader of the orchestra, Felice Giardini, ‘and incurred much obloquy’. Charles Burney, who interviewed her in 1772, described her as ‘“perfect mistress of her art”, “always grand” in her style though lacking in grace and softness; her practical musical intelligence … equal to that of any composer he had known’ (Daniel Nalbach, The King’s Theatre 1704–1867, 1972, pp. 44–46; New Grove 2). 129 The court of George III committed itself in an early proclamation to the suppression of vice and the restoration of morals. Therefore, the discussion of the degree to which the Crown would defend Sunday as a day of rest and exemplify such sabbatarianism in the schedule of Court activities was re-energized in 1760–61 (see Reginald Charles Churchill, The English Sunday, 1954, which offers a history of Sabbatarianism in England). 130 ‘Hob Nob’, or ‘hob a nob’, ‘hob and nob’, ‘hob or nob’. A corruption of an old phrase for ‘have or not have,’ hit or miss, at random. It could also mean ‘give or take’. By the mid-eighteenth-century, it was commonly used in the sense of ‘to drink hob or nob’, ‘hob a nob’, ‘meaning to drink to each other alternately’, or ‘to take wine with each other with clinking of glasses’. Foote in 1756 provided an instance of the toast as

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BETWEEN ?JUNE 1760 AND EARLY 1762

‘hob or nob’, and set it equal to ‘Here’s to you friends’, or ‘Your love and mine’. Goldsmith in 1762 phrased it ‘hob and nob’ in conjunction with a choice presented between white or red wine (OED; Citizen of the World, no. 57, i. 254). 131 Werner (p. 203) thought it might possibly be the poet Christopher Smart (1722–71). Yet the structure of the couplets demands that ‘Sir Smart’ be a worldly character and a knight: thus, a generic stage comedy name, similar to ‘Mr. Town’. 132 MS. ‘you need not try to’ written above line. 133 Uncertain. Presumably a reference to Toby’s hobby-horses, or the character sketch

of him and his battle of wills with his brother in Tristam Shandy I. xxi. The most frequent references to Toby ‘inclin[ing]’ to do something occur in the vol. 9 (1767) in the context of his courtship of the Widow Wadman. 134 MS. ‘Van’ written above line. The idea of ‘Mynheer Van Prebendary’ fits better with the mock-Dutch of the line. 135 Sterne became Canon and Prebendary of Givendale in York in 1741, and exchanged it for the Prebendary of North Newbald in York in 1742 (Cash, i. 75–78, 108, 114–15, 118). 136 MS. ‘a bow’, the conclusion of the line, written above it.

From the Soaping Club,1 a Tuesday evening, between ?June 1760 and early 17622 MS. Yale (C 2500). ADDRESS: James Boswell Esqr.

Thom’s,3 Just before supper.4 The Soapers5 are met The Lather is rais’d What! Boswell6 forget! Oh! how we’re amaz’d!7 1 The Soaping Club was an Edinburgh ‘jovial society’ which JB ‘instituted’ (see n. 5 below). The group is thought to have formed after his return from London to Edinburgh in June 1760, but its origins are shadowy, obscured by JB’s own humorous hoaxing when writing of the club (Donaldson’s Collection II, p. 90 n.; Werner, pp. 161–63; JB’s note ‘*’ in E–B, p. 4). The members were at least six in number: JB; the Anglican clergyman Edward Colquitt (an ‘old member’); Virginian-born Arthur Lee, a medical student at Edinburgh; a shadowy ‘Barclay’ or ‘Berkeley’; an even more shadowy ‘Bainbridge’; and a late addition, AE, ‘introduc’d’ to the club by JB at some point after their meeting in May 1761 (From Colquitt, ?24 June 1760; see From AE, 11 Sept. 1761, nn. 8–9, for more on ‘Barclay’ and ‘Bainbridge’). Pottle pointed out the affinities of the Soapers with the literary ‘Nonsense Club’ (Earlier Years, p. 116; see also Lance Bertelsen, The Nonsense Club: Literature and Popular Culture, 1749–1764, 1986). Beyond that, JB’s club had broader affinities with the legion of homosocial clubs of the

eighteenth century, many of which were based on the slightest excuses to socialize, such as drinking heavily, eating beefsteaks, or even farting (Marie Mulvey Roberts, ‘Pleasures Engendered by Gender: Homosociality and the Club’, in Roy Porter and Marie Mulvey Roberts, eds., Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century, 1996, pp. 48–76; see also Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800: The Origins of an Associational World, 2000). Edinburgh clubs of the eighteenth century included The Lawn-Market or Whey Club, the Cape Club, the Antemanum Club, the Pious (or PyeHouse) Club, the Spend-Thrift Club, the Boar Club, the Hell-Fire Club, the Sweating Club, the New Club, the Industrious Company, the Caledonian Club, the Wig Club, the Faculty Club, the Union Club, the Club of Creehallions, the Bannet Lairds, the Skull Club, the Dirty Club, the Auld Herioters and Auld Watsoners, the Odd Fellows, the Black Wigs, and the Horn Order. Most of these clubs had some sort of trademark potation, motto, and eccentric clothing or totem (Robert Chambers, Tra-

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ditions of Edinburgh, 1825, ii. 237–64). Arthur Lee claimed in 1768 that a ‘true Soaper’ was ‘a true friend to Freedom’, but the Soaping Club does not seem ever to have ascended above the facetious, at least not intentionally (From Lee, 10 June 1768, Corr. 7, pp. 67–69). JB described one of his former clubmates (‘Dr. Berkeley’) whom he encountered in 1769 as ‘my old Brother Soaper’ (Journ. 6 Sept. 1769). Lee’s letter of 1768 confirms that the members referred to each other as ‘Brother soaper’ and ‘a true Soaper’ (From Lee, 10 June 1768; Corr. 7, pp. 67–69 and n. 2). 2 This scrap verse-epistle/epigram chastizing JB for failing to appear at a meeting of the Soaping Club is undated and unsigned. The assigned date is based on the years during which there is evidence that JB was most active in the Soaping Club, although it could have been composed as early as 1760 (From Colquitt, ?24 June 1760, which mentions a meeting). The handwriting resembles AE’s. If the poem was by AE, it would indicate a date of composition later than May 1761, after JB had met AE and introduced him to the club. 3 In the version of ‘Ode to Gluttony’ printed in E–B, JB referred to Thom as ‘Vintner Thom’ (To AE, 8 Dec. 1761). ‘Thom’s’ was Thomas Nicolson’s Tavern in the West Bow. Thomas Nicolson (fl. 1748– 74) is listed in Gilhooley (p. 39) as a ‘Stabler’, with an address at Johnstone’s in the West Bow Foot, and who had been made a burgess in 1750 (Charles B. Boog Watson, Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses and Guild Brethren, 1701–1760, 1930, SRS 62). Although Nicolson was chiefly a stabler of horses, carriers’ inns also served wines and spirits (Marie W. Stuart, Old Edinburgh Taverns, 1952, pp. 67–71). The tavern was probably still in business in 1768, for JB wrote in 1774 that ‘six years ago’ he had agreed to give ‘a supper at Thom’s, in whose house I had paid two former bets’. But by the time of paying off the bet in 1774, with ‘Thom having now given up his tavern’, JB was obliged to dine elsewhere (Journ. 9 July 1774; see also To AE, 15 June 1762, n. 7). Edinburgh abounded in an ‘infinitude’ of small taverns, ‘vintners’, and dram-houses that were not necessarily included in directories such as Williamson’s, as Chambers explained a halfcentury later (William Chambers, The Book of Scotland, 1830, pp. 250–52). 4 In ‘B———. A Song’, printed in 1762, JB noted that the group met ‘On Tuesdays at Thom’s’, and that his particular beverage of choice was ‘hock’, a generic term for German

white wine (Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 90–92, reprinted in Werner, pp. 161–62). For hock, see From AE to GD, ?2 Aug. 1761, n. 25. The Soaping Club met for ‘supper’, but was not a mere eating and drinking club. JB recalled a decade and a half later: ‘I was directly in such a fit as often seized me in the days of the Soaping Club, and supped and drank and roared and played with vast keenness’ (Journ. 31 Oct. 1775). The members composed and recited rhymes (Werner [pp. 41–42] hypothesized that a poem of JB’s from Douce 193—‘Ladies and Gentlemen, your most devoted!’—was one such. However, the reference to ‘ladies’ would suggest otherwise, since the known club membership was all male; but the ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ may merely be a generic form of introduction). They sang comic songs (e.g., ‘the Soaping Song’ referred to in From Colquitt, ?24 June 1760). They boasted of their sexual conquests (e.g., ‘B–– –—. A Song’: ‘B——— does women adore … He’s in love with at least half a score’), mimicked and ridiculed themselves and others, and wagered on simple card games: ‘Their game was that facetious one, Snip, Snap, Snorum’ (JB’s note ‘*’ in E–B, p. 4). Like another of JB’s favourite card games of his youth, faro-bank, snip-snap-snorum had simple rules, was highly social, noisy (players called out aloud each of the matches), involved gambling, and could be won even when the players were highly inebriated (OED). The rules of the game and its wagers appear in detail in Robert Hardie, Hoyle Made Familiar: Being a Companion to the Card Table, 9th ed., 1848, pp. 80–81. 5 In the 1762 printed version of ‘B——. A Song’ (op. cit.), JB added this note to the first line: ‘Who has not heard of “Every man soap his own beard” — the reigning phrase for “Every man in his humour?” Upon this foundation B——— instituted a jovial society called the Soaping Club’. He retailored this definition in E–B, 1763: ‘The SoapingClub— a Club in Edinburgh, the motto of which was, “Every Man soap his own Beard; or, Every Man indulge his own Humour”’ (JB’s note ‘*’ in E–B, p. 4). Beyond JB’s own definition of the term ‘soaper’, there are additional reasons for the name. A soaper could mean someone who either manufactured or sold soap. Certainly by the nineteenth century, the cant term to ‘soap’ someone meant to ‘address with smooth or flattering words; to flatter’, with connotations of duping, this sense surviving in the usage of the phrase to ‘soft-soap’

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someone. The images of soaping beards in preparation for shaving them echoes the eighteenth-century phrase to ‘shave’ someone, meaning to dupe or cheat them. ‘The lather is rais’d’ also puns on the angry brother soapers being ‘in a lather’ at JB’s absence (OED, s.v. ‘soap’, ‘soaper’, ‘shave’, ‘lather’). 6 In ‘B———. A Song’, JB described himself as the ‘King’ of the Soapers, claiming to be the best talker (‘with such ease and such grace’) and drollest singer (‘he sings with so comic a face’) of the group, unworried if the Soapers laughed ‘with him or at him’. 7 The author appears to be parodying a song from The Beggar’s Opera (III. xi):

The charge is prepar’d; the Lawyers are met, The Judges all rang’d (a terrible Show!) I go, undismay’d.— For Death is a Debt, A Debt on Demand.— So take what I owe …

The Soapers’ rebuke might therefore be presumed to be set to the same tune Gay specified, that of ‘Bonny Dundee’. The choice by the Soapers of ‘Air LVII’ for parody has a double significance: (a) the young JB’s selfassociation with the character of Macheath, and (b) the Scots subject-matter of ‘Bonny Dundee’. The Air had a long duration as a source for JB’s own verse epistles. See JB’s extended parody of the same air at the end of the 1760s: ‘The fire was prepar’d/ Your letter is burnt/ Your sighs all consum’d/ A delicate show’ (To GD, 23 Feb. 1769, Corr. 7, p. 140).

Air LVII.— Bonny Dundee MACHEATH.

From the Rev. Edward Colquitt,1 ?Tuesday 24 June 17602 MS. Yale (C 811).

Fountain Bridge3 Teusday Mr. Colquitts Compliments (means) best wishes attend His Friend Boswell. Is so greatly distress’d with this inveterate malady the St. Anthonys Fire, that he dares not be out at nights. It has seiz’d on another Limb and His face.4 Is oblid: to make a Christian of Lord Elgin’s5 little Female this afternoon;6 but must (by order of His Doctr) be happed7 up in a Chair.8 My heart will be with ye this Evening.9 May ye enjoy an Infinity of Mirth—and not only Soap your beards to your own satisfaction there, but as long as ye have the Power and abilities to Soap—God bless you, good Soul.10 Write out the Soaping Song11 for me. I am sorry to be so very troublesome— but thinks I have almost a right to it—as an old member.12 1 Rev. Edward ‘Ned’ Colquitt (bap. 1716 in Edinburgh; fl. 1761–64), a minister of the ‘qualified’ Church of England denomination in Edinburgh, and (as he points out) an ‘old member’ of the Soaping Club. He served as Junior Incumbent of the New Chapel, Blackfriars Wynd (the Cowgate Qualified Chapel) from 1747 to 1762, when he resigned (Bertie, p. 26). A near-identical birthplace and natal year make it highly plausible that he was the same Edward Colquitt (1716–?76) who was born in Leith, studied at Cambridge, and served as rector of Husbands Bosworth, Leics., 1754–76; if so, he would have been a cross-border pluralist during his Edinburgh years (Alum. Cant. I, i. 376). Sir David Dalrymple, writing to JB in 1764, noted Colquitt’s departure from Scotland with pleasure: ‘I suppose your father will have no objection to your being of the

Church of England, for “Ned C——— the Priest” is not in this country’ (From Dalrymple, 10 Oct. 1764, Yale MS. C 1432). In his anonymous ‘Memoirs of James Boswell, Esq.’, 1791, JB mentioned ‘the Reverend Edward Colquet’ (sic): ‘It appears that [JB] was very intimate with … Colquet’. He described ‘Colquet’ as ‘one of the ministers of the Church of England Chapel at Edinburgh, a man who had lived much in the world, and, with other qualities, was eminent for gay sociality’ (Memoirs JB, p. xxxii). This later assertion of Colquitt’s amicability and joviality is confirmed by the more contemporary lines in JB’s ‘B———. A Song’, published 1762, in which JB proclaimed ‘Ned C———t, the priest’ had ‘something of humour’, and that JB was ‘not in jest’ when he called ‘this same C———t his friend’ (Donaldson’s Collection II, p. 91).

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A brief clarification on Colquitt’s ministry in the ‘qualified’ Church of England: after 1689, the Church of England’s episcopal liturgy and hierarchy, which had been re-established in Scotland during the Restoration, had been overturned. The post-1689 re-establishment of a Kirk of Scotland based on presbyterian doctrine and discipline technically made anyone who was not a Kirkman a dissenter. The Scots episcopalian meeting houses were particularly suspect, and placed under restrictive laws owing to the large numbers of their nonjuring clergy who refused to take the oaths of loyalty to the post-1689 monarchs of the Protestant Succession. The ‘qualified’ chapels were not under such restrictions, since their clergy, trained in England and Ireland where Anglicanism was established by law, had taken the oaths to the Georges and abjured the Jacobite line. These ‘qualified’ chapel clergy were not parish ministers within diocesan government: they were ‘peculiars’ or ‘independents’ (Arnot, pp. 283–87; Earlier Years, pp. 460–61; see also Bertie, pp. xv– xvi). 2 Colquitt’s only dateline for this letter was ‘Teusday’. The rationale for the dating of 24 June 1760 proposed in the letterhead depends on which of ‘Lord Elgin’s little Female[s]’ (see the note below) Colquitt was baptizing. The only daughter christened on a Tuesday was Martha/Matilda (see n. 6 below). The only way this date could be in error is if the daughter was twice-christened, i.e., tacitly as an Anglican by Colquitt and then publicly in a Church of Scotland service at Dunfermline. (If the date hypothesized proved incorrect, the letter would be far more difficult to date, as it could have been written anywhere among the Tuesdays on or following 3 June 1760 or the Tuesdays on or following 7 July 1761.) Presuming that Matilda was not twicechristened, the date supplied above will significantly alter the received wisdom about the rise of the Soaping Club. It has been supposed by Pottle that JB founded the Soaping Club after returning to Edinburgh from London on 4 June 1760, which would mean no-one could have been an ‘old member’ on 10 June 1760 (From Lord Auchinleck to the Earl of Loudoun, 6 June 1760, quoted in Earlier Years, p. 469). 3 Fountainbridge, described by Chambers as late as 1825 as ‘a remote part of the suburbs … resorted to by many English residents, who had official situations in Scotland’. Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 218 notes that it was a ‘long and

straggling suburb, once among fields and gardens’ and characterized by ‘old-fashioned villas’. It was presumably where Colquitt resided, since it was not the location of one of the ‘qualified’ chapels (Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 1825, i. 48). 4 St. Anthony’s Fire was the archaic term for the unrelated diseases erysipelas and ergotism. In Colquitt’s case, the symptoms of his ‘Fire’ were clearly those of erysipelas. Erysipelas is a type of cellulitis caused by streptococci. It is an acute, spreading superficial infection which appears in warm, sharply demarcated ‘orange peel’ lesions with raised margins, commonly found on the face and lower extremities, precisely where Colquitt noted his malady had ‘seiz’d’ on him. The disease is also quite painful; thus he was ‘greatly distress’d’. 5 Charles Bruce (1732–71), 5th Earl of Elgin and 9th Earl of Kincardine; he spent most of his time improving his estate by setting up lime-works and a harbour (Scots Peer. iii. 481, 491–92; Comp. Peer. v. 43). 6 Lord Elgin married in 1759 and fathered eight children, of whom two were daughters born in the early 1760s. Both of these daughters died in 1767 (Scots Peer. iii. 481, 491–92; Douglas’s Peerage, i. 522). Martha (or Matilda) Bruce was born Tue. 3 June 1760; she was christened three weeks later on a Tue., 24 Jun 1760, in Dunfermline (IGI). She is therefore most probably the daughter mentioned in this letter. It is not likely that the daughter mentioned was Janet Bruce, unless she was twice-christened (see previous notes). Janet was born Thu. 2 July 1761; she was christened nearly three weeks later on Mon. 20 July 1761 in Dunfermline (IGI). 7 That is, ‘tucked up’ (CSD). The modern treatment for St. Anthony’s Fire still includes being ‘happed up’: rest, immobilization, elevation, and moist heat are prescribed. 8 Martha/Matilda was christened Tue. 24 Jun 1760 in Dunfermline, sixteen miles from Edinburgh. The stage from Edinburgh to Dunfermline went via the Queen’s Ferry, and passed near Broomhall, the seat of the Earl of Elgin (Taylor & Skinner, pl. 35). 9 The Soaping Club met Tuesday evenings at Thom’s Tavern in Edinburgh (see From the Soaping Club, between ?June 1760 and early 1762). 10 The letter of Sir David Dalrymple from Oct. 1764 (quoted in n. 1 above) seems to imply that Lord Auchinleck and Dalrymple believed JB’s ‘intimate’ connection to Colquitt was a strong basis of his

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persistent fascination with Church of England worship. Dalrymple wrote: ‘I suppose your father will have no objection to your being of the Church of England, for “Ned C——— the Priest” is not in this country. You will pardon me for thinking that your Soaping Club is at the bottom of this unphilosophical esteem for the English ceremonys’ (From Dalrymple, 10 Oct. 1764, Yale MS. C 1432). 11 Unclear. In addition to this allusion to a ‘Soaping Song’, there were plans for a Club Medal as well. Within JB’s extant songs and verses, the most likely candidate for the role of ‘Soaping Song’ is the song JB later published in Donaldson’s Collection II, 1762, under the title ‘B———. A Song’, in

which JB presented himself as the ‘King’ of the ‘Soapers’. Four lines allude to Colquitt, the only club member besides JB referred to by name in the song: And he owns that Ned C———t, the priest, May to something of humour pretend, And he swears that he is not in jest, When he calls this same C———t his friend. (Donaldson’s Collection II, p. 91) 12 This phrasing ‘old member’, taken along with the stanza in JB’s 1762 song praising ‘Ned C———t’, imply that Colquitt was either a founding or a senior member of the club, with AE being the most junior upon his admission.

To ‘Mr. Scott’ (?George Lewis Scott),1 ?autumn 17602 MS. Yale (L 1139). Extracts and fragments, including rough drafts or revised excerpts of Give Your Son His Will (Yale MS. M 116), reflections on youth, frustration, and Providence, and a fragment headlined ‘After a long letter to Mr. Scott’.3 It is possible that these four leaves were separated from a catch-all collection of notes (similar in nature and vintage to MS. Douce 193) in which JB was composing draft paragraphs intended for insertion into various writings, or copied from other sources. Only the final paragraph seems with any likelihood to be a fragment from a letter to ‘Mr. Scott’.

[Leaf One,4 Side One5] The chusing of an Employment I take to be pretty much similar to the chusing of a Wife. In both cases we ought to employ our reason in judging of the propriety of this or that particular scheme, from an impartial consideration of Circumstances. But there is a strange Something called Inclination, which we strongly feel, and cannot explain, that must be allowed to have great weight. We may observe that when a man is by compulsion, put into a way of life which he is averse to, he becomes indifferent as to his succeeding in it and often, from the6 perversity of human7 nature, rather wishes the Contrary in order that he may have an Opportunity of venting his spleen against those who forced him to it.8 [Leaf One, Side Two9] A Young fellow of an impetuosity of temper must be allowed some head lest he should be driven to disagreable shifts. When a big-swoln River comes rapidly tumbling from the Mountains we must not expect that it’s courses will be entirely according to what we could wish. We ought to be content if we can make it run in a tollerable Channel. I don’t know what to say of a particular Providence.10 I would fain beleive it. And yet to think that the Divinity should concern himself about such a puny, insignificant Animal as myself, seems a little odd too. 43

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[Sides Three and Four are a blank interval between the preceding extract and that following] [Leaf Three, Side Five] After a long letter to Mr. Scott. I dare say you are now heartily wearied with this tedious Apologetic Oration.11 As an attempt to divert You after it, I have inclosed a few Juvenile Verses.12 I wish that my giving you the trouble to peruse them, may not prove, like the most part of Apologys, to be worse than the Offence. Or to give You a more complicated simile,—I wish that I may not be in the same situation with an ill-judging Landlord who in order to make up for a bad dinner, presents his Guests with an insipid, or disgusting Desert, which Complaisance obliges them to partake of.— My Comfort is that if I resemble the mistaken Host in one particular, I likewise do it in another; which is, that I certainly mean well. [Sides Six, Seven, and Eight are blank] 1 George Lewis Scott (1708–80) is presumed to be the ‘Mr. Scott’ to whom JB wrote this letter, of which only a fragment survives in this copy. Scott, suspected of Jacobitism although born in Hanover and named after George I, trained as a lawyer in England and in 1750 was made sub-preceptor to the grandsons of George II. From 1758 until his death he held a post as Commissioner of Excise. Besides being a lawyer and educator, Scott was an accomplished mathematician and an excellent musician. Scott was a friend of JB’s father. In 1755 he had helped to secure Lord Auchinleck’s appointment as Lord of Justiciary (From Scott to Lord Auchinleck, 28 June and 1 July 1755, Yale MSS. C 2434, C 2435). JB visited Scott in London when he arrived in 1762 (Journ. 21 Nov. 1762). Later in life Scott visited JB several times (Notes, 9 May 1768; Journ. 17 Sept. 1769, 5 Apr. 1772). 2 The hypothetical dating of this document is based on the fact that the first two paragraphs of these extracts and fragments are closely parallel to JB’s first act of his never-completed ballad opera, Give Your Son His Will (all references to the draft of the opera in the notes to this letter are from MS. Yale M 116). JB’s handwriting in both the draft of the opera and these fragments is very similar to JB’s hand in other dated papers of about 1760. On 22 Sept. 1760, JB wrote to JJ that he was ‘carrying on’ the ‘Juvenility’ necessary for composing Give Your Son His Will, though delayed by taking his cure for gonorrhoea and by autumnal

feelings of ‘Sixty’—the young JB’s code for feelings of depression (Corr. 1, p. 11 and nn. 2–4). 3 The entry on L 1139 in Catalogue (i. 348) notes that this fragment has four leaves, of which only three sides contain writing; the rest JB has left blank (Catalogue i. 348). The reconstruction here adds references to the leaf and side numbers, which would ordinarily be omitted from a transcription, because of the unusual nature of this fragment and the difficulties of its identification and dating. 4 Leaf One does not have any clear connection to the later section labelled ‘After a long letter to Mr. Scott’. As Marion Pottle noted, ‘The extracts on sides 1 and 2 [i.e., leaf 1] are not certainly from the same letter as that excerpted on JB’s page ‘5’, and may not be addressed to the same correspondent, but they are of the same approximate date and could well be described as part of an “Apologetic Oration”’ (Catalogue i. 348). 5 Side One of Leaf One is an extremely close textual parallel to Give Your Son His Will: [p. 20] Sagely Look ye Knight! I take the chusing of an Employment to be pretty much similar to the chusing of a Wife. In both cases, we ought to use our Reason in judging of the propriety of this, or that particular Scheme. But there is a strange something called Inclination which we strongly feel [interlineation in text reads

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which he is averse to’ probably represented university study, the law, and life as lawyer and laird in Scotland. The ‘wishes [to] the Contrary’ and ‘venting his spleen’ seem to refer to his rebellious religious experiments in 1756–57, his connection with the stage and actors from c. 1756 and especially from 1758, his clandestine love-affairs and visits to prostitutes, his escape to London and brief conversion to Roman Catholicism in spring 1760, and his desire to join the army which went back as far as 1755 but was resurgent from 1760 to 1763 (Earlier Years, pp. 32–110). 9 Side Two of Leaf One may be some sort of unrelated memorandum or draft, perhaps speeches drafted for Give Your Son His Will. The first paragraph parallels a theme of pp. 22–23 in the draft of the opera:

‘vice versa’, that is ‘feel strongly’] & cannot explain that must be allowed to have great weight. [pp. 21–22] [presumably Sagely] Why Sir! [interlineation in text reads ‘You may observe’] When a Lad is by compulsion put into a way of life that he is averse to, he for the most part becomes indifferent as to his succeeding in it; and frequently from the perversity of human nature, rather wished the contrary in order that he may have an Opportunity of venting his spleen against those who forced him to it.

The presence of the ‘vice versa’ interlineation correcting ‘strongly feel’ to ‘feel strongly’ and the words which occur in the draft of the opera but not in the fragment (e.g., ‘for most part’) suggest that the fragment was a draft of the speech rather than a copy of it. Yet the presence of phrases which exist in the fragment but not in the draft of the opera (e.g., ‘from an impartial consideration of Circumstances’), and also the ‘You may observe’ interlineation which is in the main text of the fragment, suggests the fragment was a revised copy of the draft of the opera rather than the draft. The plot concerns an Oxford undergraduate, Charles Positive, who wishes to join the army, while his father, the retired nouveau riche tradesman Sir Solomon Positive, of Leicestershire peasant stock, is determined his ‘only Son’ will follow the family profession. Charles’s desire is supported by Sir Solomon’s friend, Mr. Sagely, although Sagely also suggests ‘one of the learned professions’. It has been speculated that Sir Solomon Positive was modelled on Lord Auchinleck and Charles Positive on JB himself, with Mr. Sagely representing the Earl of Eglinton (Corr. 1, p. 11 n. 4; Earlier Years p. 68), or perhaps, though less probably, Lord Kames (for whom see To ‘Miss Home’ [Jean Home], before Nov. 1761, n. 18). At any rate, the characters of the opera draft were altered substantially from their true-life original inspirations. 6 MS. ‘a’ written above ‘the’ 7 MS. ‘Disposition’ written above ‘perversity of’ 8 JB struggled with his father during most of the years covered in this volume over JB’s various choices of life in authorship, career, religious affiliation, dress, manners, and residence. Given that the ballad opera was adapted from JB’s own life, the ‘way of life

Sagely … Besides Sir You ought to consider that Your Son has got an uncommon share of Spirit, which must have its course, one way, or another. Sir Sol … It will evaporate, Mr. Sagely; It will evaporate. Sagely I am affraid You’ll find it otherwise. If you dont allow it to run in the channel of Glory, ten to one, but it will take a lower & much worse one. To give you a simile from the beautifull Jet d’eau in your own Parterre. If you should press your hand upon one of those pipes and hinder the Water to [‘get out at top’ crossed out] spring from the [top], it will soon force it’s way and get out at the bottom. Song 12 [Sagely] If Young Men inherit/ A good share of Spirit/Ye Parents don’t try to enslave it Fix what will not mother/ For one way or ’tother/ Its freedom it wants & will have it. Dont ’em check when you know/ Their Vivacity flow/ In a limpid stream o’er a smooth channel [‘Let it cunningly’ written above line] Else at bottom it will force/ Its way, & take a course/ Just as muddy as CharingCross Canal. 10 The second paragraph may not be related to the Opera draft at all; it is quite different in tone and content from the surviving first act. It shifts to the theme of Providence and the will of God which had troubled JB since about the age of fifteen, and which led to his weighing in the years 1757–60 the merits of alternatives to the family adherence to the Church of Scotland, options such as methodism, neopythagoreanism, Roman Catholicism, lib-

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ertinism, scepticism, epicureanism, and the Church of England (Earlier Years, pp. 4, 32– 35, 45–54). Among JB’s poems in Douce 193 is a poem on the futility of attempting to ‘Rebell against eternal Providence’ (f. 39 r., Werner, pp. 102–03, 187). 11 Presumably a humorous reference to the pamphlet An apologetical oration on an extraordinary occasion. By John Asgill, Esq, 1760, a defence of the conduct of Lt.-Gen. Lord George Sackville at Minden. It went through two editions (ESTC T84983*). This conclusion seems likely given JB’s strong interest in the army in 1760. If it is a topical reference, it helps to confirm tenta-

tive dating of the excerpt related to ‘Mr. Scott’ to June or later. The court-martial of Sackville began 7 Mar. and concluded with the sentence 25 Apr., and the pamphlet was reviewed in Gent. Mag. among ‘Books published in June and July’ (Mar., Apr., July 1760, xxx. 150, 200, 338–39). 12 A number of JB’s verses from this period have survived. He may have sent a copy of one of the poems now preserved in Douce 193, or he may have sent ‘Mr. Scott’ one of the thirteen songs in the Opera draft. It is, however, equally possible that he sent a poem which did not survive in either text.

From Samuel Derrick,1 Sunday 5 October 1760 This letter, printed in 1767, is the only record of any correspondence between JB and Derrick at this time. Like JB’s letter to Eglinton printed in Scots Mag., and like E–B, it represents an example of the public-private letter, written with an eye to imminent (rather than posthumous) publication. It also evokes the genre of topographical journalism which JB himself would use in his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. MS. Not located. Printed in Derrick, Letters i. 92–98.2

Killarney,3 Oct. 5 1760. DEAR SIR: It is said, you have no where so extensive a view of this lake4 as from the heights of Aghadoe.5 In my opinion, there is one that excels, or at least equals it: this is a little above a sorry house, called Prospect Hall,6 belonging to Mr. James Supple, who, I am told, intends to build a more decent structure, upon an eminence, which stands incomparably well, close to his park: which is small, but stocked with fine deer. We had scarcely been half an hour in Killarney, before a card was brought, directed to the two strangers7 who were just come in, with the compliments of lord viscount Kenmare,8 intreating us to dine with him.9 This invitation we accepted, and were received with politeness and hospitality.10 In the evening, we saw here some very genteel company, among whom was the lord Baron of Brandon,11 and his son:12 he had been created a peer in August, 1758,13 and was formerly Sir Maurice Crosbie, baronet. This lake, with a large extent of mountain, and a great quantity of land on the opposite shore,14 belonging to Sir Thomas Brown, lord viscount Kenmare,15 who holds under a grant from queen Elizabeth, being one of the English settlers, among whom she divided this wild uncultivated country.16 Lord Kenmare is only a titular peer, of which, in Ireland, we have four classes; those who forfeited in the troubles of 1641;17 those who forfeited by Oliver’s18 act of settlement in 1652,19 for their steadiness to the king,20 and never were restored;21 those who forfeited in consequence of their attachment to the last misguided Stuart who sat on the British throne;22 and those to whom he gave title after his abdication,23 but which never were admitted.24 Of this last class is our honourable host,25 so that he derives no advantages or immunities from his title,26 though few 46

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people would better become a seat in the upper house: he is easy, mild, affable and polite, and received part of his education in Oxford, under the care of a very learned and worthy friend of mine, who is now a canon of Windsor.27 His tuition was indeed private; for being a Roman Catholic, he could not be entered of the university.28 The people round him speak loudly of his goodness to the poor; and of his hospitality to strangers, his behaviour to us was a convincing proof. He has a good taste for improvement and the polite arts, as may be seen in the disposition of his gardens, and the furniture of his house; where he has the noblest chimney piece, of Irish marble, I ever saw: part of it was carved in London by Scheemaker:29 the workmanship bespeaks the hand of a master. One of the rooms is hung with tapestry, made in Ireland, which would not disgrace the manufactory at the Gobelins.30 The fancy and disposition of the figures, the liveliness of the colouring, the management of light and shade, and the softness preserved through the whole, are admirable. To complete my description, his table was elegantly spread, his venison excellent, his wines genuine; and he gives them, to use a common expression, ‘like the son of an Irish king.’ There are many situations in the neighbourhood, far superior to that, on which this nobleman’s house stands. It was built by the late lord Kenmare,31 being a plain, unadorned oblong, of dark hewn stone, three stories high, with eleven front windows in each of the two upper stories. It is moated round by the Flesk,32 which, at the distance of near a mile, loses itself in the lake. Upon a hill, about a mile from the house, the present noble proprietor has taken in a park of six or seven hundred acres, where there is plenty of timber, and great variety of ground, under excellent cover for the deer, which frolic round in numerous herds, particularly the red deer,33 for which the hills of this part of Ireland were once famous, and which are here amazingly large and fat.34 There are many situations in this fine park, that present the eye with the most pleasing landscapes. Before you rolls a large body of water, the extent of which outstretches sight: this, with the least wind, is worked up into high foaming waves,35 which, on one hand, wash the foot of a huge chain of mountains that seem to have no boundaries:36 some of them are richly covered with oak, ash, elm, and other wood,37 hanging from such stupendous steeps as fill the mind with horror and surprise; while others exhibit only a bosom of craggy, bare, inhospitable rocks.38 On the other hand is seen a country, which steals imperceptibly into rising hills, covered with verdure, and beautifully contrasted to the opposite aspiring scene.39 Lord Kenmare’s improvements here are amazing: he raised the town from nothing,40 introduced the linen and woolen manufactures, fertilised bogs, and cultivated barren sands.41 Some time since, here were horse-races once a year; but, as they made the country people drunken and idle, his lordship suppressed them, making an allowance to the publicans for the loss they might thereby sustain, in an abatement of their rents. I am, Dear Sir, etc. 1 Samuel Derrick (1724–69), Irish playwright and poet. His literary career as a grub-street poet, drama critic, translator, and travel writer began in 1752 after earlier work as a linendraper and actor. By 1760 he had published seven works, and his writings

during the 1760s included the volume of letters from which this text is taken, and which went through two editions (ESTC). In 1761 he was appointed Master of Ceremonies at Bath, was referred to by JB, SJ, and others as ‘King of Bath’, and also be-

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came Master of Ceremonies at Tunbridge Wells. A posthumous collection of his quips is Derrick’s Jests, or the Wit’s Chronicle (1769). He described himself as of ancient Danish-Irish lineage, of a family which converted to ‘zealous’ Protestantism ‘in the beginning of queen Elizabeth’s reign’. He also claimed that his family had until the Civil Wars owned extensive properties, including the mansion ‘Old Derrick’ in Co. Carlow (see Derrick, Letters i. 53–54). JB and Derrick ‘got acquainted’ in London in 1760. He continued to profess his indebtedness to Derrick for the rest of his life. In 1791, he referred to ‘the late Mr. Derrick’ as ‘his introductor into “many colour’d life,” or, as he has pleasantly expressed it, his governor.’ JB credited Derrick with helping him ‘obtain the acquaintance of many of the wits of the metropolis’ (Memoirs JB, p. xxxi). In Life, he referred to Derrick as ‘my friend’, ‘Poor Derrick’, and said that ‘I remember him with kindness’. He described Derrick, further, as ‘my first tutor in the ways of London, [who] shewed me the town in all its variety of departments, both literary and sportive’ (Life i. 455–57). Yet JB was conflicted about his debt, and by mid-1763 was attempting to cut Derrick from his life in favour of more elevated friends such as SJ and Dalrymple. As he wrote in the Netherlands as a proof of his now-improved character, ‘Look back only three years when you was first in London with Derrick’ (15 Dec. 1763). In the Life, JB quoted a conversation with SJ in which JB rated Derrick ‘but a poor writer’ (in Journ. ‘wretched’), and offered readers John Home’s epigram on Derrick (1760), which treated Derrick as being one born for the noose (Life i. 455–57). The references in Journ. are often scathing, referring to Derrick as ‘this creature’, ‘a little blackguard pimping dog’, and ‘how wretched a writer’. By Mar. 1763, JB wished to ‘rid’ himself of Derrick: ‘I now took care to let him see that I did not choose to renew my acquaintance with him. I shifted all his proposals of meeting with me. Yet I asked him to breakfast this day, in order to show him to Erskine. However, he did not come’ (Journ. 28 Mar., 28 July 1763). 2 SJ said of Derrick’s letters (at some point in or after 1767, despite the anecdote’s being included in the Life under 1763) that if they had been been written by one of a ‘more established name’ than Derrick ‘they would have been thought very pretty letters’ (Life i. 456). 3 Killarney became a destination for

tourism in the late eighteenth century, thanks to books such as Derrick’s and Charles Smith’s which promoted the region as picturesque (Charles Smith, The antient and present state of the county of Kerry …, 1756, ESTC T97658*). Smith, writing in 1756, noted that tourism had already begun with great numbers of travellers. Yet the area was not well-equipped for tourists. The new street with an inn was designed only in 1756, and even in 1806 there were three inns but no coach-house (Jeremiah King, History of Kerry, 1908–11, p. 93). Derrick wrote six other letters from Killarney: two To the Earl of Pomfret, 1 Oct. and 5 Oct.; to ———, Esq. 2 Oct.; To Lord Southwell, 6 Oct.; and two To the Rev. Mr. Enoch Markham, 7 Oct. and 9 Oct. (Derrick, Letters i. 46–76). For Derrick’s presence in Killarney at this time, see n. 7 below. 4 Lough Leane, also known as Killarney Lake. The Killarney lakes are three in number. Derrick’s later letters make it clear he is writing here of ‘Lough-lane’ rather than Muckross/Middle or Upper (M. F. Cusack, A History of the Kingdom of Kerry, 1871, repr. 1995, pp. 415–16; Derrick, Letters i. 62–64). 5 Aghadoe Parish (M. F. Cusack, A History of the Kingdom of Kerry, 1871, repr. 1995, pp. 371–72). 6 Prospect Hall, Aghadoe Parish was the home of James Supple c. 1756–60, and had previously in the 1740s been a residence of the Denny family (Jeremiah King, History of Kerry, 1908–11, p. 214). 7 Derrick’s travelling companion was Mr. Francis Willoughby, Liverpool merchant, a nephew of the late Lord Middleton ennobled by Queen Anne. Willoughby ‘was kind enough to offer to bear me company to Dublin, provided I would go with him to Corke and thence to Killarney’ (Derrick, Letters i. 24, 27). 8 Sir Thomas Browne, Bt. (1726–95), styled 4th Viscount Kenmare from 1736. A Roman Catholic improving landlord in Kerry. He died in Killarney (Comp. Peer. vii. 114, Comp. Bar. i. 236–38; Derrick, Letters i. 69). 9 Derrick noted in a letter to the Earl of Pomfret that he dined with Kenmare on 4 Oct. (Derrick, Letters i. 61). 10 ‘[Kenmare] invited us because we were strangers, and entertained us with ease and affability, that gave us a double relish to the elegance of his provision …. The politeness and hospitality of lord Kenmare introduced me to his acquaintance here’ (Derrick, Letters i. 62, 69).

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5 OCTOBER 1760 11 Maurice Crosbie (c. 1689–1762), knighted 1712, served as M.P. for County Kerry 1713–58. On 16 Sept. 1758 he had been created Baron of Branden, County Kerry. The Crosbies’ electoral influence was considerable; for almost twenty years Crosbie controlled several seats in the Irish Commons and stage-managed local elections by an ‘indenture tripartite’ (M. F. Cusack, A History of the Kingdom of Kerry, 1871, reprinted 1995, Appendix IV, xxxii– xxxviii; Comp. Peer. ii. 279–80). His seat was at Ardfert Abbey, where it had been ‘modernized’ in 1720 (Jeremiah King, History of Kerry, 1908–11, p. 214). 12 Lord Branden’s son, Hon. William Crosbie (1716–81) had served as M.P. for Ardfert in the family interest, 1735–62; he eventually (1776) became Earl of Glandore (Comp. Peer. ii. 279–80, v. 659). 13 Comp. Peer. gives evidence for the peerage creation being officially dated 16 Sept. 1758 (Comp. Peer. ii. 279–80). M. F. Cusack notes that in 1758 Alice Agar of Kilkenny had become ‘Countess of Brandon’ (A History of the Kingdom of Kerry, 1871, repr. 1995, Appendix IV xxxii– xxxiii). The two near-simultaneous claims on the name explain the choice of ‘Branden’ as the name of Crosbie’s titular barony, in place of the more usual spelling of ‘Brandon’. 14 ‘He owns the village where I now write, and large tracks of land about this celebrated lake, of which he is also lord’. Kenmare allowed no boats upon the lake ‘without his permission’, and he had also prohibited the use of sails on the lake-boats (Derrick, Letters i. 61) 15 That is, Sir Thomas Browne (see n. 8 above). Derrick simultaneously refers to Browne as ‘Sir Thomas’ (the Jacobean baronetcy ‘of Molahiffe, Co. Kerry’ was granted in 1622) and ‘lord viscount’ (the Jacobite peerage dated from 1689). 16 The ‘vast family estates’ owned by the Brownes in ‘the countries of Desmond, Kerry, and Cork’ were acquired for an Elizabethan ‘plantation’ of ‘adventurers’. The family were ‘English settlers’ since they were from Lincoln and Middlesex. In 1588, Sir Valentine Browne bought the rights of reversion for the estates of the Earl of Clancare, who died in 1597. The estates Browne bought included the lakes of Killarney (Comp. Bar. i. 236–37 and 237 n. ‘a’; M. F. Cusack, A History of the Kingdom of Kerry, 1871, repr. 1995, pp. 202–05). For Queen Elizabeth’s project of settling English gentry in southern Ireland and the

Brownes’ role in it, see R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 1600–1972, 1988, pp. 66–72; and Nicholas P. Canny, Making Ireland British, 1580–1650, 2001, pp. 59–164, esp. pp. 82– 83, 138–44 and Map 3.3. Though the estates were sizeable, they were in a part of Ireland which the English settlers, well into the late seventeenth century, maligned as primitive and savage. Travel writers in the eighteenth century such as Derrick and Arthur Young (writing in 1776) continued that tradition by stressing its ‘uncultivated’ poverty and underdevelopment, especially by contrasting it with the few ‘improving’ farms and landlords (Jeremiah King, History of Kerry, 1908–11, pp. 407–08). Yet by the late eighteenth century, tourism to Killarney in search of the picturesque would modify that earlier scorn. One Browne complained to James I that his estates were ‘set out in the most remote and barren part of the county of Kerry’ and unless he was relieved of crown-rent, ‘he should not be able to inhabit them, and perform the articles of plantation’. A report of 1673 concluded that the county was too far from Dublin, poor, underemployed, lawless, predominantly ‘papist’ and without many established church clergy to serve the ‘English’ and ‘Protestants’, ‘thinly peopled’ at 66 acres of land per person, difficult to reach by substandard roads, and overcharged for quit-rents. Derrick’s own account of his travel from Cork to Killarney from 29 Sept.–1 Oct. remarked on the many mouldering ruins, and the wretched ‘beggary’ of the tanned ‘peasants’ living with their livestock in ‘hovel[s]’ and subsisting on potatoes and buttermilk (‘Report on the State of Kerry, A.D. 1673’, in M. F. Cusack, A History of the Kingdom of Kerry, 1871, repr. 1995, pp. 202–03, 281–87; Derrick, Letters i. 47–51). 17 The revolt of 1641. The Irish Protestant Ascendancy of the eighteenth century still observed ‘Massacre Day’ on 23 Oct., a fast commemorating those Protestants killed by the rebels in 1641. Cromwell’s policy of revenge (see next note) was largely conceived of as retribution for the revolutionary excesses of the leaders of 1641. 18 Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), Lord Protector 1653–58, had been given the posts of lord lieutenant and commander-inchief with the mandate from Parliament to reconquer Ireland, a task which he completed rapidly and with great violence 1649–50. His policy as Protector was to create a juridical union of England, Scot-

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land, and Ireland and encourage settlements of English ‘adventurers’ on confiscated Irish estates. Derrick was anti-Cromwellian, since ‘several of his kindred’ had been ‘massacred in cold blood’ in fighting for the Royalists, although Church of Ireland Protestants rather than Roman Catholics. He wrote, ‘Cromwell’s soldiers … had a high aversion to any remains of antiquity. There is no part of this unhappy kingdom without visible marks of their violence and devastation’. Yet he admitted that his maternal grandfather was a Devonshire man named Lt.-Col. Drake who served in Cromwell’s army (Derrick, Letters i. 53–54). 19 For the 1652 Act of Settlement which aimed at confiscating lands of those who had fought against the Commonwealth in Ireland, and which ‘came to be directed almost exclusively against catholics, and was so framed that no person of any property could hope to escape’, see Patrick J. Corish, ‘The Cromwellian Regime, 1650– 60’, in A New History of Ireland Volume III: Early Modern Ireland, 1534–1691, 1991, pp. 357–61 and Map 9; and R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 1600–1972, 1988, pp. 107–14 and esp. Map 5, p. 109. Approximately fiftynine percent of County Kerry was eventually confiscated, and was assigned as additional security for adventurers or soldiers; sixty-five percent of County Cork was confiscated for use as government reservation. 20 That is, Charles II (1630–85). Upon the news of the execution of Charles I in 1649, Ormonde had proclaimed Charles II king in those parts of Ireland where his armies maintained control, and the Ulster Scots had also proclaimed Charles II king. Thus, Charles’s regnal years were counted by Royalists from 1649, although he was only officially ‘restored’ to the throne in England in his twelfth regnal year de jure, 1660 (C. R. Cheney, Handbook of Dates, 1970, p. 26). Derrick wrote favourably of the Irish Royalists of the 1640s and 1650s: ‘the Irish nobility and gentry made many noble stands against the arms of the Protector, and … their fidelity to the crown was inviolable. For this gallant behaviour, they were hunted like wild beasts, slaughtered without compassion, their houses burned, their lands destroyed, whole counties laid waste, and rendered melancholy scenes of barbarity and desolation’ (Derrick, Letters i. 53). 21 Royalist lands had been confiscated by the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Derrick wrote: ‘Those that escaped the swords

of the republicans were outlawed, their estates confiscated, divided among the invaders, set up to public auction, and sold for trifles’. These lands were not returned to the Irish Royalists at the ‘Restoration’ of Charles II in 1660. For the failure to rectify this situation in 1660 Derrick blamed Charles II: ‘The conduct of Charles the Second, on his restoration, is notorious: he confirmed the grants made to Oliver’s soldiers, while his most loyal subjects were betrayed, and abandoned to misery’ (Derrick, Letters i. 53, 55). 22 James II (1633–1701) was king of the three kingdoms 1685–88. The Glorious Revolution altered the succession, and divided all the kingdoms into factions of ‘Williamites’ and ‘Jacobites’, a fissure which persisted 1689–1701 and long beyond. James II was, of course, hardly the last Stuart to sit on the throne, since in the period 1689–1714 his daughters Mary (jointly with William of Orange) and Anne ruled. The House of Hanover which took power in the ‘Protestant Succession’ was eager to prove its descent from the Stuarts as a component of its claim. 23 This choice of words of ‘abdication’, taken along with the description of James II as ‘the last misguided Stuart’, suggests that Derrick approved of the 1688 settlement, and that he thought the later Stuart monarchs of 1689–1714 had not been misguided. The Convention, wishing to avoid use of terms such as deposed or dethroned, stated through a legal fiction that as of 11 Dec. 1688, when James had fled Whitehall Palace, he had ‘abdicated’ and thereby left the throne vacant. William and Mary’s acceptance of the terms offered in early 1689 made them monarchs in Britain. James’s rule in Ireland 1689–90 through an independent Irish Parliament, and a lengthy civil war contesting that rule, delayed such a ‘Revolution Settlement’ in that kingdom. The creation of Irish peers such as Kenmare was one of the many ways James hoped to bolster his followers in Ireland during that period. To his irredentist Jacobite adherents, James had not been ‘misguided’, and remained king de jure over Ireland, Scotland, and England until his death in 1701. His son retained the line’s pretension to all three thrones as ‘James III’ throughout his life until his death in 1766, six years after this letter was written. Derrick himself was a strong anti-Jacobite. He condemned the ‘baseness and ingratitude of the Stuarts’ and wanted to ‘imprecate’ that dynasty’s name.

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He praised the ‘exchange to the House of Hanover’ with its ‘justice, moderation and affection’, and excoriated the ‘infatuated friends’ of the Stuarts (Derrick, Letters i. 56). 24 James II created seven Irish peerages, of which the Viscountcy of Kenmare was one, after he had discarded the English Great Seal and been excluded from the throne of England by its Convention. Yet he was not ousted as King of Ireland until after these new creations, and the Irish Parliament still backed him when he made these grants. Thus, their constitutional validity was a thorny question (Comp. Peer. vii. 113–14). 25 Kenmare was of the ‘last class’ because James II had created his viscountcy on 20 Apr. 1689, after he had lost power in England but while he still retained power in Ireland. While the Interregnum between the reigns of James II and William and Mary lasted only from 11 Dec. 1688 to 13 Feb. 1688/89 in England, and from 25 Dec. 1688 to 11 Apr. 1689 in Scotland, in Ireland the government of James II maintained its capacity to rule until the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690 (Bibliotheca Lindesiana v [A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations … 1485– 1714 …, vols. 1–2]). When the House of Hanover created the ‘new’ Baronage of Castlerosse and Viscountcy of Kenmare in 1798, it ignored the fact that the ‘first’ Viscount Kenmare in the 1798 creation of George III was also the ‘fifth’ Viscount Kenmare in the 1689 creation of James II (Comp. Peer. vii. 113–14). Yet the grant of the new peerage with precisely the same formulation of the titles implies some Crown sympathy for the continuance of the aristocratic standing of the Brownes from 1690 to 1798. 26 The first viscount appears to have been attainted for Jacobitism, and his forfeited estates sold. Yet the viscountcy was never erased from the Irish Patent Rolls; one descendant received Government annuities from the forfeited estates in the 1690s, and the ‘third viscount’ recovered portions of the ‘vast family estates’ by the ‘late Trustees for sale of the forfeited estates in Ireland’. Thus Lord Kenmare in 1760, although his claim of a peerage was not honoured by the Crown, was not greatly disadvantaged thereby. His baronetcy was not in dispute, and he was the heir of family lands from ‘the remainders in tail, and estates of inheritance of and in the several estates’ of the ‘second’ viscount (Comp. Peer. vii. 113–14; Historical Manuscripts

Commission, The Manuscripts of the House of Lords, 1704–1706, 1912, [new series] vi. 319). 27 The Court and City Register for the Year 1760 listed twelve canons of Windsor: Dr. John Ewer, Dr. Richard Wilmot, Theophilus Lowe, M.A., John Fulham, M.A., Walter Harte, M.A., Dr. John Sumner, Hon. Fred. Keppel, A.M., Richard Blacow, A.M., Lord Francis Seymour, Hon. James Yorke, A.M., John Bostocke, A.M., and John Lockman, A.M. It is not known which of these men is referred to. 28 Oxford did not grant degrees to Roman Catholics, nor to non-Church-of-England communicants, until the universities’ religious tests were abolished. As Oxford administered its religious tests at matriculation, it was less open to heterodox students than Cambridge, which administered its religious test at graduation. The Oxford University Act (1854) abolished the religious test for the B.A.; the Universities Tests Act (1871) abolished nearly all remaining tests for the M.A. and fellowships, although religious tests for degrees in divinity and other clerical stations were still restricted to Churchmen. However, the Roman Catholic hierarchy itself forbade attendance of Catholics at Oxford until 1896 (M. G. Brock and M. C. Curthoys, eds., The History of the University of Oxford: Nineteenth-Century Oxford, 1997, vi. chs. 10, 23; vii. 22, n. 111, 104 n. 37; Vincent Alan McClelland, English Roman Catholics and Higher Education 1830–1903, 1973; V. H. H. Green, A History of Oxford University, ch. 9, 1974). 29 Presumably Peter Scheemakers (1691–1770), the Antwerp-born son of Peter Schaemakers. He worked in London c. 1721–28, and then again from 1730 to 1771. His brother Henry (fl. 1726–d. 1748) was also a sculptor, and also worked in London briefly, c. 1726–33. Ingrid Roscoe noted that ‘[Peter Scheemakers] produced a large quantity of statues, busts, chimneypieces and monuments, and although many of them were repetitive and uninspired, his popularity, particularly with the squirearchy and city merchants, remained constant until his retirement’. His son Thomas Scheemakers (1740–1808) was also a sculptor who exhibited from 1765, and who worked for his father until 1771. See Roscoe’s biographies of the family in Grove Dictionary of Art, and her ‘Peter Scheemakers and Classical Sculpture in Early Georgian England’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Leeds, 1990; and for his chimneypieces in particular, see M. I.

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Webb, ‘Chimneypieces by Scheemakers’, Country Life, cxxi (1957): 491–93. 30 The famous state factory of tapestry in Paris, named after the original fifteenthcentury family who founded the firm. 31 Presumably Sir Valentine Browne, Bt. (1695–1736), styled 3rd Viscount Kenmare (Comp. Peer. vii. 114, Comp. Bar. i. 238). 32 That is, the River Flesk. 33 ‘These mountains formerly abounded with the large red stag, which is esteemed the choicest kind of venison; but they are now rarely to be found, except in parks, the breed being hunted down’. Derrick also described the method of hunting the deer by hounds, by ‘staves and shouts’ and hornblowing from ‘peasants’ working as beaters, and even by boat if the deer attempted to swim to safety (Derrick, Letters i. 68–69). M. F. Cusack noted that in the late nineteenth century ‘The Red Deer’ or Cervus elaphus, though once abundant throughout Ireland, survived only ‘near the Lakes of Killarney’ (A History of the Kingdom of Kerry, 1871, reprinted 1995, p. 429). 34 At Mucrus House, Derrick ate ‘some of the wild red deer, which was finely flavoured, but wanted fat’ (Samuel Derrick, Letters Written from Leverpoole, Chester, Corke, The Lake of Killarney, Dublin, Tunbridge-Wells, and Bath, 1767, i. 75). 35 Describing his tour of the lake, Derrick remarked that ‘sudden squalls of wind … broke upon us … the driving mists beat so strongly in our faces’, and on a later trip that he was almost driven upon the rocks when his oarsman became angry and stopped rowing (Derrick, Letters i. 61–62, 74–75). 36 ‘On the opposite side, there rise from the edge of the water huge inaccessible mountains, which wind very intricately round to the Upper lake, at the top of which

they meet with others that slope away on the contrary side; so that the Upper lake is entirely surrounded by stupendous hills …. Mangertogh, and other mountains … lift their tops to the skies, and, giant-like, seem to threaten the scaling of heaven, rise awful from the verge of the lake’ (Derrick, Letters i. 62, 67). Here and in the next sentences of the letter, Derrick moves from the picturesque to familiar eighteenth-century conceptions of the sublime in nature. 37 ‘The sides of the mountains, and many of the islands, are clothed not only with oak, ash, yew, and holly, but with the most delightful oderiferous shrubs, such as myrtles … together with the arbutus, and sorbus or service-tree’ (Derrick, Letters i. 67–68). 38 Derrick reversed the order of this description in his letter to Lord Southwell of 6 Oct.: ‘[I]n some places bald, white and naked, as if old age had stripped them of their ornaments; in others, crowned with flourishing trees and enlivening verdure’ (Derrick, Letters i. 67). 39 ‘The ground on the Killarney side rises gently from the shore into small pleasant hills crowned with verdure, and stored with good herds of cattle, with here and there a cabin’ (Derrick, Letters i. 62). 40 Derrick described the town as about a mile long, with one main street lined with houses ‘some slated, some thatched, most of them white-washed, and none higher than two stories’ (Derrick, Letters i. 52). 41 ‘The county of Kerry is greatly indebted to his patriotic spirit of improvement … he [has], for these fourteen years, bestowed incessant pains on the cultivation of this spot. Ireland would be a flourishing kingdom, did but one third of her nobility copy his example’ (Derrick, Letters i. 69).

To the Countess of Northumberland,1 Wednesday 1 April 1761 MS. Yale (L 987). A copy. HEADING: To the Countess of Northumberland.

Parliament Close,2 Edinburgh, 1 April 1761 MADAM: The inclosed Verses3 were written when your Ladyship honoured Scotland with your Presence.4 By an unaccountable indolence5 they have layn dormant in my Study, ever since: And perhaps they had as good have taken an æternal nap. However partly from a little Vanity, partly from a desire of showing my respect for the family of Northumberland,6 I now venture to present them to your Ladyship: I beg to be remembered to my Lord7 and am Your Ladyship’s Most Obedient, Humble Servant. 52

1 APRIL 1761 1 Elizabeth Seymour (1716–76), Countess of Northumberland from 1750, Duchess of Northumberland from 1766, referred to conversationally by the sobriquet ‘Lady Betty’. She was heiress of her father, the 7th Duke of Somerset (created 1st Earl of Northumberland of the third creation, 1749). Her grandfather ‘the proud Duke’ tried in vain to disinherit her after her marriage in 1740 to Sir Hugh Smithson, Bt. (see n. 7 below). The family settlements allowed her father’s lands (primarily the extensive Percy estates) to descend to her, and the title of Earl of Northumberland to descend to her husband and the children of their union. She was a fixture at Court, serving from 1761 to 1770 as a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Queen Consort. She was also notable in London society, and divided her time between her town house, Northumberland House in the Strand, and her ‘country’ retreat at Syon Park, Isleworth, on the Thames about twelve miles southwest of London. Her patronage of musicians and authors was considerable, and she herself wrote verses (Comp. Peer. ix. 742–44, xii. pt. 1, 77–84). Horace Walpole thought her ‘junketaceous’ (i.e., a gadabout), disparaged her literary aspirations, and criticized her patrician displays when she accompanied the queen to the theatre with a grander retinue than the queen’s. He claimed she was ‘a jovial heap of contradictions … familiar with the mob, while stifled with diamonds; and yet was attentive to the most minute privileges of her rank, while almost shaking hands with a cobbler’ (Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, i. 419). But Louis Dutens praised her generosity to her friends (Oxford DNB). Diar. Duch. remains a standard printed source for her life and correspondence for 1752–76. JB’s connection with her forms a major theme in this volume. On his second London visit (1762–63) he hoped to win her support in his pursuit of an army commission. He attended a ‘rout’ at Northumberland House 7 Dec. 1762, less than a month after his arrival, where she greeted him ‘with the greatest complacency and kindness’ (Journ.). In his journal entry for 30 Dec. 1762, he spoke of the ‘good footing’ he was on with ‘this noble countess and excellent woman, for whom I have the highest regard and gratitude’ (Journ.). By mid-1763, these feelings had turned to a sense of betrayal and bitterness at what he felt was her dilatoriness and lack of enthusiasm in helping procure him his ensigncy. In Life, he nonetheless boasted of his acquaintance

with the ‘Heiress of that illustrious House; a lady not only of high dignity of spirit, such as became her noble blood, but of excellent understanding and lively talents. With a fair pride I can boast of the honour of her Grace’s correspondence, specimens of which adorn my archives’ (Life iii. 271 n. 5). 2 Lord Auchinleck’s town residence at this time was on the fourth storey of Blair’s Land on the east side of Parliament Close (Earlier Years, p. 12). It had been Lord Auchinleck’s father’s house before that. In 1780, Boswell remembered that in his childhood he had lived in ‘our house, fourth story of Blair’s Land, Parliament Close’ (Journ. 8 Jan. 1780). It seems that Lord Auchinleck moved in c. 1762, though merely to a different house in Blair’s Land, where he remained until 1777. In that year, JB wrote that his father had ‘sold his [second] house in Blair’s land, parliament close, for 900 guineas; a great price, as he had paid only £800 and laid out £200 in repairing it; so that he got but £55 less than he paid 15 years ago [1762], though oldfashioned houses were now much fallen in their value. I was a little sorry that our family had now No longer a property in that Land, which it had for more than half a century. But a town property is not the subject of family attachment. I thought that if I pleased, I could afterwards buy back the house, or our still older house on the fourth story’ (Journ. 13 Jan. 1777). Gilhooley listed the house of ‘Alexander Boswall’, Advocate, ‘Custom House Stairs’, Parliament Close as a town house of ‘a property owner who lives elsewhere’ sizeable enough to be taxed for thirteen windows (pp. ix, 7, 75). 3 MS. ‘Copy of’ deleted before ‘Verses’. JB did not copy the ‘inclosed Verses’ into his transcription of this letter, so we do not know the title, although on the evidence of this letter the date of composition would be post 16 Aug. 1760. JB’s verses may have been ‘Verses on Lord Warkworth’s Going a Volunteer to Germany, 1760’. That poem, which begins ‘While Britain, to subdue the pride of France’, would be published in 1762 in Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 85–86 (Lit. Car. p. 14). In JB’s ‘Plan of a Volume of Poems to be published for me by Becket & Dehondt’ (c. 1761–62), which appears to have preceded JB’s involvement with Collection II, he listed ‘Warkworth’, noting that it then had thirty-two lines (Werner, pp. 18–22). The ‘Lord Warkworth’ of JB’s title was Lady Northumberland’s eldest son, Capt. Hugh (Smithson) Percy (1742– 1817), styled Lord Warkworth 1750–66,

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later an M.P. (1763–76), a Lt.-Gen., and (from 1786) Duke of Northumberland. He entered the army in 1759 as an ensign in the 24th Foot, and quickly received promotion to Capt. of the 85th Foot in July of the same year. Capt. the Lord Warkworth served in the campaigns of the Seven Years’ War 1759–60, and was at Bergen, Minden, and Warburg (31 July 1760). He would later serve in the American War, 1775–77. Some of Warkworth’s correspondence was published in Charles Knowles, ed., Letters of Hugh, Earl Percy, from Boston and New York, 1774–1776, 1902. His current regiment was the 85th Foot or ‘Royal Volunteers’, although on 16 Apr. 1762 he would be made Lt.-Col. Commandant of the 111th Foot (Comp. Peer. ix. 744–45; Namier and Brooke, iii. 269–70; Army List, 1760 p. 142, 1761 p. 146, 1763 p. 178, 1765). Lord Warkworth’s service in the Seven Years’ War would have been a ready topic of conversation during a visit Lady Northumberland made to Auchinleck in Aug. 1760 (see next note). On 12 Aug., four days before her visit to Auchinleck, she received at Foulis’s Shop in Glasgow ‘an Express from L[or]d. Warkworth, informing us of the Battle of Warbourg and his safety’ (Diar. Duch., p. 23). 4 Lady Northumberland toured Scotland in Aug. 1760, visiting Edinburgh, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, and Ayr, and visiting several country houses, including Eglinton, where she met Susanna, Dowager Countess of Eglinton (the mother of the 10th Earl of Eglinton who plays such a major role in this volume). Her diary for 16 Aug. recorded this description of Auchinleck House, the new mansion which Lord Auchinleck had just had built, and its environs:

She still remembered Auchinleck in 1763, asked JB if his ‘house in the country’ was finally ‘finished’, and remarked that it was ‘a very good house’ and that the ‘Old Castle’ was ‘very fine’ (Journ. 10 Jan. 1763). 5 JB wrote to JJ in Sept. 1760, the month after the missing poem would have been composed, that ‘I am now taking a regular course of Medecines, and keeping within doors, with spare diet, in order to get effectualy rid of my Indisposition, that troublesom Companion and bar to my innocent Pleasures’ (To JJ, 22 Sept. 1760, Corr. 1, pp. 10–11 and n. 3). JB spent six and a half months in spring and summer 1760 suffering from gonorrhoea (Corr. 1, pp. 10–11, n. 3; To WJT, 1 May 1761, Corr. 6, pp. 33–34 and n. 7; Clap, pp. 2–3, 40). Despite the ailment, JB was active between the autumn of 1760 and the spring of 1761. He managed to produce his first pamphlet, advertised for sale in Edinburgh in Nov. 1760, writing under the pseudonym ‘A Genius’: Observations, Good or Bad, Stupid or Clever, Serious or Jocular, on Squire Foote’s Dramatic Entertainment, Intitled, The Minor (ESTC T176870 is the 1760 imprint; ESTC T2743 is the 1761 London edition, a variant of the first edition, printed for J. Wilkie; Scots Mag. Nov. 1760, xxii. 614; see also Lit. Car. p. 4). 6 JB’s fascination with the antiquity of the Percy ‘family of Northumberland’, and of the ancientness and respect due to aristocratic families in general, was a major component of his writings, and reinforced by his mental images of the ‘ancient’ Percies gleaned from ballads such as ‘Chevy Chase’ (Journ. 15 Nov. 1762, 10 Jan. 1763). As he informed the Countess on 10 Jan. 1763, ‘I have the old notions about families’ despite the fact that ‘these notions are much out now’ (Journ.). He described the Earl and Countess of Northumberland in late 1762 as ‘a noble family in every respect. They live in a most princely manner, perfectly suitable to their high rank. Yet they are easy and affable. They keep up the true figure of old English nobility’ (Journ. 7 Dec. 1762). 7 Hugh (Smithson) Percy (c. 1714–86), surnamed Percy from 1750, 2nd Earl of Northumberland from 1750, Duke of Northumberland from 1766. He had served as an M.P. for Middlesex 1740–50 (Comp. Peer. ix. 742–44; Sedgwick, ii. 428–29). He had significant access to the Court of the sort JB desired, since he had served as Lord of the Bedchamber from 1753, and was renominated for the same post under George III, later being appointed Lord

Went to Auchinlech the Seat of Mr. Boswell, Lord Auchinlech, who has just built a new House the Pediment is terribly loaded with Ornaments of Trumpets and Maces and the Deuce knows what. It is but a middling House, but justly it is a romantick spot. The River Lugar runs between immense Rocks with the tallest finest Firrs imaginable, a Walk by the Side wch terminates in a vast perpendicular Rock with a narrow steep path winding round it, & on the top hid in Trees is an old Castle. This is so retired a spot that I should imagine people might abide there forever without being discover’d & the narrowness & steepness of the Path makes it almost inaccessible. (Diar. Duch., pp. 18–26)

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Chamberlain to Queen Charlotte (May 1762). He was politically allied with Bute and the ‘King’s friends’ during this decade, and was connected with Bute through a marriage of their children, although he never completely or permanently allied himself with any partisan interests. Of course, although the Countess was heiress to the Percy lands, she was a Percy through the maternal line rather than the paternal succession which JB so prized. (She was, however, ‘descended’—as her grandfather ‘the proud duke’ had pointed out in opposing her marriage—of ‘ancient blood’ of ‘many generations’ of the ‘most ancient families in England’, such as the Seymours

in her paternal ancestry [Sedgwick, ii. 429].) The Earl was a novus homo, born of solid gentry stock (Smithson of Stanwick, Yorkshire). He had converted from the Roman Catholicism of his upbringing to become eligible to inherit from his grandfather, had changed from Tory to Whig in his politics, and had assumed the last name Percy only in 1750 by Act of Parliament (Comp. Peer. ix. 742–44, xii. pt. 1. 77–84; Sedgwick, ii. 428–29). JB described him as ‘very glad to see me and very civil to me’ (Journ. 7 Dec. 1762), but his place in JB’s early life as a patron was by no means as important or as personal as Lady Northumberland’s.

To ‘A———’1 (?Mrs. James Brooke),2 Friday 8 May 1761 Not reported. Mentioned in JB’s North Circuit journal entry of 8 May: ‘Afternoon wrote to friends & to A———’ (Journ.).3 1 This unreported letter was written to the ‘A———’ of JB’s journal, a woman with whom he conducted an affair, lasting at least thirteen months during 1761–62. She may be the woman JB refers to as ‘Angel’ (Journ. 3 Dec.). The relationship had begun before 8 May 1761. In his letter to WJT of 1 May, JB took umbrage at WJT’s claim that JB had been ‘indelicate in the choice of [his] female friends’. He protested that ‘This season, I never have been, nor do I intend Again to be a Guest in the mansions of gross Sensuality’ (Corr. 6, p. 33)—meaning that ‘A———’ and ‘Angel’ were not prostitutes. ‘A———’ ended the affair with JB in Mar. 1762 because his ‘inconstant disposition’ made her ‘unhappy’ (Journ. 30 Mar. 1762). Because JB is cryptic and reticent about her identity, very little is deducible about her from the early journals, and she makes no appearance in JB’s surviving correspondence. They had their assignations in Edinburgh, she called JB ‘Rover’, she spoke ‘sensibly’, and she received letters from JB, which she had saved and which she returned to him when their affair ended. 2 While ‘A———’ remains unidentified, Pottle guessed through what he termed a ‘process of deduction’ that she might have

been Hester Brooke, an actress on the Edinburgh stage during these years (see Earlier Years, pp. 76–78, 478). Hester Brooke (d. 1782) was some 10 years older than JB. She has been described as ‘a very beautiful young woman’ (John Taylor, Records of My Life, 1832, i. 31–32). Mrs. Brooke left her husband, a London engraver, because of his outbursts of temper, leaving their three children with him. She began a career on the stage, and performed at Edinburgh during 1761 and 1762. Later, she acted in Norwich until, ill with cancer, she returned to London and spent her remaining days in the care of her son-in-law (ibid., pp. 31–36). JB mentioned a Mrs. Brooke in his Mem. 20 June 1763 and Journ. 7 Sept. 1773, and referred to ‘Mrs. Brookes’ in To Malone, 27 Oct. 1785 (Corr. 4, p. 251 and n. 40). 3 ‘A———’ appears several times in the 1761 journals (8 May, 21, 23 Dec.). The entry for 8 May contains the only mention of a letter’s date of composition. Yet there were certainly other ‘letters’ to ‘A———’, none of which have been reported. In his entry for 30 Mar. 1762, JB wrote: ‘at 9 waited on A talked of the whole affair. She … broke off—prettily conducted friendly— & letters returned’ (Journ.).

From George Dempster1 to Andrew Erskine,2 c. Saturday 9 May 1761 Not reported. Mentioned in JB’s Journ. 10 May: ‘George Dempster & I walkd—showd me letter in verse from Capt. Erskine[.] Gave me letter of introduction to him—We talkd

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quite in ye Genius stile’. JB first met AE at Fort George at some point between 14–19 May. The Boswell-Demspter-Erskine friendship, and their literary association, play a major role in this volume (see Introduction). On 8 Aug., JB, GD, and AE would publish their collaborative edition of JB’s An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady … (Lit. Car. pp. 5–6). 1 George Dempster (1732–1818), M.P., of Dunnichen, Forfar, an independentminded Whig in politics and a sceptic in religion, was JB’s lifelong friend and early literary collaborator. Son of a Dundee grain merchant, GD, on his father’s death in 1754, inherited 6,000 acres in Forfarshire worth £769 p.a., which (until he fell into debt 1761–71) gave him a financial independence of the kind JB, still dependent on his father, lacked. He had begun but not finished university courses at St. Andrews (1748), studied law at Edinburgh and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1755. He made the Grand Tour of the Low Countries c. Apr.–Nov. 1756, but had to cancel the rest of his planned travels in order to return home for family business. In 1760, he was appointed Provost of St. Andrews. On 20 Apr., less than a month before this letter, he had been elected M.P. for the Perth Burghs, after an eight month contest for that ‘very open, venal, and expensive’ seat which cost him about £10,000. He held his seat until 1790, despite a break in 1768–69 when, after a controversy over East India Company affairs, he was arrested on bribery charges. Upon his retirement from Parliament, he turned his attention increasingly to his life as an improving laird, and to promotion of Scottish agriculture and fisheries (Fac. Adv. p. 53; Namier and Brooke, i. 508–09, ii. 313–17; Dempster Letters, pp. 1– 8, 56). Much of his correspondence with his lifelong friend and fellow Grand Tourist Adam Fergusson (for whom see From Agatha Home Drummond, Lady Kames, 28 Dec. 1762, n. 16) has been printed in Dempster Letters, which contains portraits of GD in later life (frontispiece; facing p. 180, 324). See also Andrew Munro Lang, A Life of George Dempster: Scottish Member of Parliament of Dunnichen [1732–1818], 1998. It most likely was during the middle to late 1750s that JB and GD became friends. The Journ. and Mem. are full of references to his friendship with JB. Later letters to and from GD have been printed in Corr. 5 and Corr. 7. A handful of GD’s many jokes and quips appear in ‘Boswelliana’. 2 Lt. the Hon. Andrew Erskine (1740– 93), third son of the Jacobite 5th Earl of Kellie, grew up in a ‘blackguard state’ in Kellie Castle among an impoverished but

artistic family. He does not appear to have attended university. AE’s maternal grandfather was a poet, and his older brother was a composer of music (for the 6th Earl of Kellie, ‘the musical Earl’, see To AE, 14 Sept., n. 43). He had already published as a poet in Donaldson’s Collection I, 1760. As for his career, JB recorded AE’s mentioning that he had gone to sea before entering the army. AE was in the army at least as early as 1759, was a lt. with the 71st Foot 1759–63, on half-pay 1763–65, and again a lt. in the 24th Foot 1765–70. As AE later informed JB, his military career consisted of avoiding active duty: ‘he had not the least ambition to rise in the Army … all his plan was to make 24 hours pass agreably’. Writing in the 1830s, Hugh Paton noted in his commentary to Kay’s portraits that ‘Erskine had little genius or inclination for a military life; his habits and taste were decidedly of a literary character’. Paton also noted that in reading AE’s letters in E–B, it would be difficult to discover ‘any marks of the dull, reserved disposition which was natural to him. His manner was unobtrusive and bashful in the extreme.’ Some of AE’s songs later appeared in G. Thomson, ed., A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs … (3 vols., 1801–02), including ‘Mary’s Charms Subdu’d My Breast’ (vol. 1) and ‘How Sweet this Lone Vale’ (vol. 3). He also wrote works for the Edinburgh stage, including the 1764 farce She’s Not Him, and He’s Not Her (Journ. 1 Nov., 25 Dec. 1762; Army List, 1759, p. 123; Earlier Years, p. 64; Hankins Appendix A; Kay’s caricature and Paton’s character of AE in his years of decline and poverty 1770–90 are in John Kay’s A Series of Original Portraits, 2nd ed. [1877], II. i. 56–59). JB first met AE c. 14–19 May, when he went to Fort George carrying this letter of introduction from GD (see the Journ. entry quoted above in headnote). As AE was shy by nature, at least among strangers, JB had introduced him to the Soaping Club (see From the Soaping Club, between ?June 1760 and early 1762, n. 1). Later letters to and from AE have been printed in Corr. 5 and Corr. 7. Pottle noted in Earlier Years (pp. 472–73) that ‘Erskine is not in DNB, though he deserved a niche there’—an absence redressed in the Oxford DNB. The two standard studies of AE’s life and works

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are Bennett, Appendix A, and Hankins, Appendix A. Hankins’s appendix is, by its author’s own admission, chiefly a pastiche of Bennett’s account, without the literary analysis of AE’s œuvre. Yet it does incorpo-

rate factual corrections and emendations made by Bennett and Hankins between 1933 and 1964. No collected edition of AE’s works has been published to date.

To Andrew Erskine, after mid-May 1761 MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). Transcribed from a photostat. Previously printed in Werner, pp. 124–25 (notes, pp. 195–96). JB’s own ‘Plan of a Volume of Poems to be published for me by Becket & Dehondt’ (Douce 193, ff. 1–2) mentioned two verse letters to AE: ‘1 To Erskine ——— 130 [lines]’ and ‘2 To Erskine ——— 80 [lines]’ (Werner, pp. 19–22). Although the twenty-two lines below are indeed an epistle to AE, it is not certain that they belong to either of the planned poems. They are equally likely to have been part of ‘Dear Captain Andrew! Poet of renown!’ (To AE, 14 Sept., 130 lines) and ‘O Captain! wherefore art thou captain?’ (To AE, 4 May 1762, 114 lines). The first (‘Dear Captain’) matches exactly the number of lines mentioned in the ‘Plan’. The additional thirty-four lines in ‘O Captain!’ are harder to explain, but JB’s ‘Plan’ was often based on drafts of poems which he later expanded. The letter may be tentatively dated to this period, since JB first met AE at Fort George c. 14–19 May.

[f. 18 r.] To thee o Erskine erst thy friend has sung In strains heroic, like the tunefull Bard Who liv’d and reign’d in Twitnam’s blest Retreat1 And on the banks of Thames the Muses woo[’]d, Nor did his Genius bountifull refuse The easy couplets of the easy Gay2 Which upon eights trip merrily along Like handsom nag of that renowned [Breed?] Whose great great Grandsires snuff’d the breez[y] Air Beneath Iberian Skies and oer the main Wafted on oaken Skiffs, by Wind and tide Were landed on the Gallovidian Shore3 And mixing with the hardy coursing race Of Caledonia bred to climb the brow Of rocky mountains and steep heathy4 hills5 Produced that usefull6 species of the Horse Which is by one consent call’d Galloway7 Now to my Captain Andrew would I write In numbers lofty pompous and Sublime In the great manner of the mighty Milton8 [f. 18 v.] Who stretch’d his soaring plumes beyond the ken Of human eyes, and reach’d the highest heavns9 57

AFTER MID-MAY 1761 1 Alexander Pope (1688–1744), the poet, resided in a villa at Twickenham about ten miles from London (Lond. Encyclopedia). The seven volume edition of his poems 1951–61 was termed the ‘Twickenham’ edition in homage to the estate. In a letter to Sir Horace Mann of 20 June 1760, Walpole offered a near-contemporary account of ‘Pope’s house and garden’, which had recently become the property of Sir William Stanhope. Stanhope had ‘hacked and hewed’ Pope’s bordering ‘groves’ of ‘thick impenetrable woods’ and replaced them with shrubs and a wall (Corres. Walpole, xxi. 417). JB refers also to ‘the Bard … of … Twittenham’ in To AE, 8–9 May 1762 (MS). ‘Twitnam’ reflects common contemporary pronunciation. 2 John Gay. 3 A poetic Latinism; Gallovidian Shore means ‘the shore of Galloway’. Galloway comprised the shires of Wigton and Kircudbright. JB alludes to the belief that Andalusian horses had survived the wreckage of some of the sixty-one ships of the Spanish Armada that were lost in 1588 in the waters off the Western Isles of Scotland. ‘Even one stallion of Andalusian breeding would have been sufficient, if given an opportunity, to have had a profound effect on the genetic properties of the Highland Pony of the day. There remains the possibility that other horses also succeeded in getting ashore from other ships in the Western Isles, although

this matter will remain a contentious issue’ (A. F. Fraser, The Days of the Garron: The Story of the Highland Pony, 1980, p. 36). 4 Werner argued, incorrectly, for ‘healthy’ (p. 125). 5 Presumably either the Highland pony associated most usually with Shetland, or something similar. OED (s.v. ‘Sheltie’) quotes an example from 1895 which conflates the Sheltie and the Galloway: ‘My Galloway sheltie’. ‘Garron’ was another Scots term for a small sturdy horse used ‘esp for rough hill work’ (CSD). 6 MS. ‘usefull’ inserted by caret. 7 The Galloway horse, a small but strong breed of horses peculiar to Galloway; often used loosely as a synonym for a small-sized horse, esp. for riding. Races run by the breed were termed ‘Galloway-races’ and victors might win a ‘Galloway-plate’. The ‘pure galloway’ was nearly fourteen hands high, sometimes more; ‘of a bright bay, or brown, with black legs, small head and neck, and peculiarly deep and clean legs’ (OED; see also CSD). ‘Galloway Nagges’ are mentioned in 2 Henry IV, II. iv. 8 These lines mark an attempt by JB at Miltonic blank verse. JB had mentioned Milton in at least two letters to AE: To AE, 11 Feb., 18 June 1762. See also AE’s humourously-made contention that ‘Ossian … exceeds … Milton’ (From AE, 10 Jan. 1762). 9 MS. ‘throne of God’ deleted.

From Andrew Erskine, Saturday 23 May 17611 Printed E–B, pp. 126–30 (portion of LETTER XXXII).

AN EPISTLE2 TO JAMES BOSWELL, Esq; Fort-George,3 May 23, 1761. AH! what a dreary spot of earth is this! How slowly sad each ling’ring moment flies; Here fancy never forms a scene of bliss, But sunk in sudden night each prospect dies!4 I’ve seen a pun just bursting from the mouth, Abash’d return within the head again; And oft I’ve seen5 give place to heavy truth, The warm lie starting from the fertile brain. 58

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Oft as we sullen walk the long parade,6 We’re all immers’d in silence most profound; All seem involv’d in dulness gloomy shade,7 Save where th’indecent tale goes laughing round.8 Are these the youths that in Edina’s9 town, From tavern still to tavern restless rov’d, All day employ’d in gulping claret down, Or toying with the harlot that they lov’d? ‘For them no more the tavern-bells shall ring, ‘Or busy waiters ply their evening care; ‘For them no courtezans shall sweetly sing, ‘Or climb their knees the raptur’d kiss to share!10 ‘Perhaps within this useless fort11 resides ‘Some hero blazing wild with martial fire: ‘Perhaps each day around these ramparts rides, ‘He who might make the fear-struck Gaul12 retire. ‘Some glorious Fred’rick13 that with glowing breast ‘Would have Germania’s14 mighty force withstood! ‘Some gallant Wolfe15 may here supinely rest,16 ‘Some Murray17 guiltless still of Indian18 blood.19 ‘Th’applause of shouting armies to command, ‘The threats of pain and famine to despise, ‘To scatter ruin o’er a smiling land ‘Their lot forbids, in peace20 our warriors rise.21 ‘Haply of me some martinet22 may say, ‘Oft have I seen him at the peep of morn, ‘Brushing from soldiers coats the dust away, ‘And smiling on the raw recruits in scorn.23 ‘Then near the edge of yonder thund’ring beach,24 ‘Whence darts the wild fantastic spray so high, ‘His mighty voice at noon-tide would he stretch, ‘You’re worse than the militia would he cry.25 His piercing eye each modern fault explor’d, Much of the ancient phalanx would he speak, Of heroes nobly falling by the sword, Long tales he told, all borrow’d from the Greek.26 ’Tis May, the poet’s month, yet all around The savage climate wears a face of woe; 59

23 MAY 1761

No verdure runs along the stubborn ground, The distant hills still glitt’ring all with snow. Ah! where is fled the genial balmy breeze That tepid warms th’enchanting summer scenes! For lo! no wanton leaves have green’d the trees; Still swells the winter flood along the glens. Yet oft the west wind wakes the purple morn With breathing softness;—soon the skies o’ercast; While thro’ the air all darken’d and forlorn, Howls the damn’d fiend that rides the eastern blast. Dæmon accurst, that never knows to blow The flow’rs which blush along the vales of spring,27 That never knows th’enliv’ning solar glow, Which lures the nations forth, that float on waving wing. Away! thy influence damps each rising thought, And heavy head-achs on thy steps attend; To seek relief from thee these lines I’ve wrote; Tell me when thy oppressive power will end! How am I chang’d! of late the wanton chuse,28 Was wont to riot in poetic mirth; While now I yawning sleep upon the news, Or give to sullen elegies a birth.29 But hark! methinks the drum for Dinner30 beats,31 To stomach keenly-edg’d a welcome sign; For none on earth our well-bred table32 waits, Brief let me be, or else I do not dine. ‘Now fades the mighty roast upon the sight, ‘Thro’ all the room a humdrum stillness reigns; ‘Yet some lament the pudding’s speedy flight, ‘And one that all the soup is done complains.33 Farewel, my friend, for lo! I swiftly run Where Highland beef invites, and sauces steam. Ah! much I fear that ev’ry dish is done! Yet still methinks I’ll get some tart and cream. ANDREW ERSKINE

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23 MAY 1761 1 Although AE wrote and dated this verse epistle 23 May 1761, he did not post it to JB until June 1762, when he noted: ‘I wrote you the following letter at Fort George, where you may remember our acquaintance commenced … I stood too much in awe of you, to send it when it was written, and I am too much at my ease now, to be with-held any longer from presenting you with it’ (see From AE, 5 June 1762). 2 ‘You’ll observe that some of the stanzas are parodies on Gray’s Elegy in a Church-yard, I use the liberty to mark them’ (From AE, 5 June 1762). (The notes below on AE’s burlesque show that AE alluded to and parodied various themes and wordings of Gray’s ‘Elegy’ even in stanzas which he did not specifically ‘mark’ for JB.) In the printed text of E–B, the typesetter(s) preserved AE’s manuscript ‘mark[s]’. Confusingly, the type used to signal these marks was a single inverted comma set at the beginning of a line on the left margin. This set of accidentals has been preserved here, to indicate AE’s intentions, despite the infelicitous use of the inverted comma. Thomas Gray (1716–71) published his initially anonymous An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard after years of revision in 1751 (ESTC T71256). The poem went through nine editions in the first years of its publication (1751–54), and between editions two and three the word ‘wrote’ in the title was emended to ‘written’. By 1762 it was in its eleventh edition, which had appeared in 1759, and was still being reprinted (1762, ESTC T84073). It had been translated into Latin (Elegia Scripta in Coemeterio Rustico Latinè Reddita, 1762, ESTC T32489). 3 There had been two Fort Georges, both designed to pacify the Highlands, supply arms to the troops loyal to the House of Hanover, and prevent, or at least delay, Jacobite insurrection. The first Fort George was south of Inverness ‘on an eminence’; it was ‘taken’ and ‘blown up’ by the Jacobites in the ’Forty-Five. The second Fort George was built after the defeat of the Jacobites in 1746 on a different site, on the peninsula of Ardersier opposite Chanonry Point. ‘At the end of this point is Fort George, a small but strong and regular fortress … a place d’armes: it is kept in excellent order; but, by reason of the happy change of the times, seemed almost deserted: the barracks are very handsome, and form several regular and good streets’ (Pennant, pp. 158–60). A Mr. Fern, master of stores, whom JB and SJ met at the fort on their visit in 1773, told JB

that the fort would be better described more modestly as ‘a square, with a row of buildings before it’ (Journ. 28 Aug. 1773). The new fort had been built to house some 3,000 troops, and was one of the strongest points of defence of what was (by continental European standards) a poorly-fortified kingdom (Taylor & Skinner, where pl. 27 shows a rough ‘aerial’ image of the polygonal site plan and six-bastioned outline of the fort). JB had first met AE at Fort George c. 14– 19 May. JB would return to the fort in the company of SJ in 1773, on their tour of the Highlands and Western Islands, when Mr. Fern said he had served at the fort ‘for twenty years’, despite intervals of absence. Mr. Fern may well have been there at the time of AE’s posting (Journ. 28 Aug. 1773; see Hebrides, pp. 90–94, 461). 4 Parodying Gray’s ‘And leaves the World to Darkness, and to me’. 5 A parody of Gray’s ‘“Oft have we seen …”’. 6 That is, the military parade-ground of Fort George, the ‘square, with a row of buildings before it’ spoken of by Mr. Fern (Journ. 28 Aug. 1773). 7 Parodying Gray’s ‘Now fades the glimmering Landscape on the Sight,/ And all the Air a solemn Stillness holds’ 8 Parodying Gray’s ‘Save where the Beetle wheels his droning Flight’, and ‘Save that from yonder Ivy-mantled Tow’r’. 9 ‘Edina’ or some variant of ‘Edina’s town’, a common poetical expression for ‘Edinburgh’. 10 Parodying Gray’s ‘For them no more the blazing Hearth shall burn,/ Or busy Housewife ply her Evening Care:/ No Children run to lisp their Sire’s Return, / Or climb his Knees the envied Kiss to share’. 11 Despite the French invasion scare of the late 1750s, the new Fort George might be derided as ‘useless’ since the Jacobite threat had been for the most part crushed in 1746 at nearby Culloden. It did, however, still provide some protection to Inverness from 1756 to 1763 against the threat of French privateers and raiding parties attacking through Moray Firth. 12 The ancient Gauls had been fierce enemies to the Roman republic, sacking Rome in 390 B.C. Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, which described the conquest of the Gauls by the fort-building Romans, was a common British schoolboy’s text. Here the allusion is double, since Fort George was part of a Georgian defence system designed to ward off French invasions of the years 1740–60. The French command planned

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landings in Scotland either in support of Jacobite rebels or as a diversionary attack to distract the British army. Anti-French propagandists in eighteenth-century Britain were known as ‘Antigallicans’, i.e., opponents of the modern ‘Gauls’ (see Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707– 1837, 1992, pp. 88–90, 393 nn. 87–92). 13 Frederick II (1712–86), King of Prussia 1740–86; see Robert B. Asprey, Frederick the Great, 1986. Frederick’s Prussian army had been enemies of Britain 1740–48, but were important allies of Britain 1756–63. In May 1761 when AE wrote this poem, Frederick was attempting to recover from defeats in 1759–60, including a setback at Kunersdorf and his enemies’ occupation of Berlin. Ann. Reg. described him as campaigning in 1761 with uncharacteristic ‘inactivity and languor … caution and slowness’. Not until the accession in 1762 of a Russian Czar favourable to Prussia was Frederick’s position significantly improved (Ann. Reg. 1761 [4th ed.], pp. 31–37). 14 ‘Germania’ is here presumably not a reference to Frederick’s germanic Prussians, nor to his Brunswicker, Hessian, and Hanoverian allies. ‘Germania’ in this context rather refers to his Austrian and Saxon enemies, who, in alliance with the Russians, attacked Frederick in the east. The French were threats to Prussia’s western interests. 15 Maj.-Gen. James Wolfe (1727–59) entered the army in 1741, fought in the War of the Austrian Succession, the ’Forty-Five, and the Seven Years’ War (Rochefort Expedition 1757, Louisbourg 1758, and Quebec 1759, where he died in battle). He had served at Fort Augustus, a Highlands garrison similar in design and function to Fort George, in 1752. 16 The ‘Death of Wolfe’ became a popular theme for art in the wake of the battle for Quebec; Wolfe was portrayed as a ‘gallant’ martyr. 17 Col. the Hon. James Murray (?1719– 94), a Colonel of the Royal Americans (60th) 1759–67 who also commanded in the field as a brigadier-general, had joined the army c. 1740. He fought in the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years’ War, and (later) the European theatre of the American War. His earlier career paralleled Wolfe’s in some ways, since he, too, was in the Rochefort Expedition of 1757, at Louisbourg in 1758, and was a brigadiergeneral under Wolfe at Quebec 1759. He narrowly avoided losing Quebec to the French in the siege of 1760, but then took

Montreal in 1760, thus ending French/ French-Canadian rule. He was made governor of Quebec in 1760, and served as governor of Canada 1763–66. His enemies were various, accusing him of too much severity in ruling Quebec, but too much leniency in ruling Canada. 18 The 1756–63 war for North America had been a ‘French and Indian War’, with many of the Native American nations allied with the French and their colonists against the British and their colonists. 19 Parodying Gray’s ‘Some VillageHampden that with dauntless Breast/ The little Tyrant of his Fields withstood;/ Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,/ Some Cromwell guiltless of his Country’s Blood’. 20 Peace talks had resumed in early 1761. France and her allies sent a declaration to London on 31 Mar. Counter-declarations by Britain and Prussia appeared 3 Apr., and the French and British worked towards a separate settlement to aid in the accords of their allies. Yet the war was far from over in late May 1761, and British troops fought on the Westphalian Front throughout the year (Ann. Reg. 1761, pp. 3–30). 21 Parodying Gray’s ‘Th’Applause of list’ning Senates to command,/ The Threats of Pain and Ruin to despise,/ To scatter Plenty o’er a smiling Land,/ And read their Hist’ry in a Nation’s Eyes’. 22 The 71st Regt. of Foot, in which AE was a lt., was commanded by proprietary Col. William Petitot. Proprietary colonels rarely commanded their regiments personally. The lt.-col. would often have command of the regiment. In daily duty at Fort George a more likely ‘martinet’ would have been Lt.-Col. William Taylor or Maj. Robert Murray (Court and City Register, 1760, pp. 171–72, 1761, pp. 171–72). 23 Parodying Gray’s ‘Haply some hoaryheaded Swain may say,/ “Oft have we seen him at the Peep of Dawn/ Brushing with hasty Steps the Dews away/ To meet the Sun upon the upland Lawn”’. 24 Fort George was on a spit of land which in 1773 JB would describe as a ‘barren sandy point’ and with ‘barren sands’ (Journ. 28 Aug. 1773). JB found the civilized buildings and company a sharp contrast to the stark shoreline. 25 Parodying Gray’s ‘“There at the Foot of yonder nodding Beech/ That wreathes its old fantastic Roots so high,/ His listless Length at Noontide wou’d he stretch,/ And pore upon the Brook that babbles by”’. Neoclassical political theory held that

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the militia was politically virtuous (since tied to the locality and the landowning elite), whereas a paid professional army or ‘standing army’ was corrupt and eased the way to tyranny (Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘No Standing Armies!’: The Antiarmy Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England, 1974). Since many politicians at Westminster feared that a Scottish militia would be a possible seedbed for Jacobite subversion, they long denied Scots’ pleas for a national militia (Queen Anne’s last veto, in 1708, was over a Scottish Militia Bill). Parliament remained wary, even into the 1780s when Jacobitism was perceptibly dying, but when radicalism was growing. The Scots Militia was only approved in 1797. Nonetheless, under the pressures of national defence and invasion scares in the 1740s and 1750s the desire for a militia to aid in home defence was again an important issue (see Eliga Gould, ‘To Strengthen the King’s Hands: Militia Reform, Dynastic Legitimacy and Ideas of National Unity in England, 1745–60’, Historical Journal, xxxiv/3 [1991]: 329–48). The English Militia Act of 1757 was due for renewal in 1761–62, and the Scots hoped to have it extended to include them. The militia issue was much-discussed by GD, Fergusson, the Poker Club of 1762 and onwards, and other literati as a manner of national pride. For Scots perspectives, see John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue, 1985; Richard B. Sher, ‘Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and the Problem of National Defense’, Journal of Modern History, lxi [1989]: 240–68; and David Raynor, ed., Sister Peg: A Pamphlet Hitherto Unknown by David Hume, 1760, ed. 1982 (authorship debated). GD’s views in favour of a Scots militia appear in Andrew Mungo Lang, A Life of George Dempster, Scottish M.P. of Dunnichen [1732–1818], 1998, pp. 12–13,

29, 31–34, 103–04, 113, 123. Whatever their boost to national dignity, militia in the 1760s were not highly regarded by professional military men; the martinet’s view that the militia in the 1760s were incompetent oafs was a widely held view. They were often seen as amateurish, too infrequently drilled, poorly disciplined, and unlikely to stay for long in a major battle. 26 There is no biographical evidence that AE had any university Greek study, yet he was at least conversant with ancient Greek literature in translation (see, for example, From AE to GD, ?2 Aug.). 27 Parodying Gray’s ‘Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen,/ And waste its Sweetness on the desert Air’. 28 E–B, ‘chuse’. The context suggests that ‘chuse’ was a printer’s corruption of AE’s unreported manuscript’s ‘Muse’. 29 Parodying Gray’s ‘“His listless Length at Noontide wou’d he stretch,/ And pore upon the Brook that babbles by./ Hard by yon Wood, now smiling as in Scorn,/ Mutt’ring his wayward Fancies he wou’d rove,/ Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,/ Or craz’d with Care, or cross’d in hopeless Love”’. 30 ‘At three the drum beat for dinner’ (Journ. 28 Aug. 1773). 31 Parodying Gray’s ‘The Curfeu tolls the Knell of parting Day’. 32 When JB and SJ dined at Fort George 28 Aug. 1773, JB reported ‘a dinner of two compleat courses, variety of wines—and the regimental band of musick playing in the square before the windows after it’ (Journ. 28 Aug. 1773). 33 Parodying Gray’s ‘Now fades the glimmering Landscape on the Sight,/ And all the Air a solemn Stillness holds;/ Save where the Beetle wheels his droning Flight,/ And drowsy Tinklings lull the distant Folds’.

From the Countess of Northumberland, Friday 26 June 1761 MS. Yale (C 2103)

Syon,1 June the 26th SIR: I am quite ashamed to have so long deferr’d returning you my most gratefull Thanks for the Verses2 which you were so good as to send me with which I do assure you I was much charm’d and should long since have told you so had not the melancholy Situation I have been in by the long Illness and at last the Death of my Daughter3 of whom I was with the greatest Reason extreamly fond made me incapable of writing or indeed (almost) thinking. This I hope will plead my Excuse and attone for this seeming Neglect, and that your good nature will prompt you to 63

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forgive me and your Candour to do me the Justice to beleive me to be as I am with the greatest Truth Sir Your Most Obliged, Humble Servant, ELIZABETH NORTHUMBERLAND 4

My Lord desires me to assure you of his Compliments. 1 Syon House had been a home of the Percys of Northumberland from 1594, and had served as a rural residence which yet provided proximity to London for the Earl and Countess from at least 1752. The Earl of Northumberland was convinced that the old turreted quadrangle was ‘ruinous and inconvenient’, and hired Robert Adam to renovate the interior, and ‘Capability’ Brown to redesign the landscape. That work began in 1762. Walpole remarked in a letter of 27 Aug. 1764 that ‘Syon … is becoming another Mount Palatine. Adam has displayed Great taste, and the Earl matches it with magnificence’ (Lond. Encyclopedia, p.

853; Diar. Duch. p. 1 n. 1; Corres. Walpole, xxxviii. 429). 2 See To the Countess of Northumberland, 1 Apr. 3 Lady Elizabeth Anne Frances Percy (1744–61), the Countess of Northumberland’s only daughter, died on 27 May aged about 17 (Collins’s Peerage, ii. 364; Gent. Mag. June 1761, xxxi. 284). The family would have been in mourning for her for many months afterward, and certainly in the month following the shock of the unexpected death. 4 The Earl of Northumberland.

To Alexander Donaldson,1 Tuesday 28 July 1761 TEXT: An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady. With an Epistle from Menalcas to Lycidas. To which are prefixed. Three Critical Recommendatory Letters. Edinburgh: Printed by A. Donaldson and J. Reid. For Alex. Donaldson. MDCCLXI, p. 19. ADDRESS: To the Editor of the SCOTTISH POEMS.2

Strathaven,3 July 28 1761. SIR, IF the designed volumes of the Scotch Poems4 are not fully completed,5 you will please insert amongst them the two following pieces,6 should they deserve a place there. I had a few more7 which I was designing to have got ready for that purpose, but was prevented by some other more material concerns.8 If any further volumes are to be hereafter printed, you will signify it by a note in the present printing volume.9—I am, Sir, yours, &c. J*** B*** 1 Alexander Donaldson (bap. 1727, d. 1794), bookseller in Edinburgh from c. 1748, and certainly by 1751 (SBTI; IGI). Donaldson moved to London in 1763, not long after JB had arrived for his second visit, and lived there until ‘shortly before 1789’. Yet he remained influential in Scottish publishing through his control of the Edinburgh Advertiser 1764–73. He returned to Scotland and died in Edinburgh (Skinner, pp. 4–6 [with portrait]; Dict. of Printers, pp. 77–78, 299–300; Maxted, p. 68; Gent. Mag. Mar. 1794, lxiv. 285; SBTI). In London, he set up business at 195 Strand (from 1763 until 1773 or 1775) with his

brother John, ‘corner of Arundel Street’, two doors east from Norfolk Street, between Norfolk and Arundel Streets. He ran ‘a shop for cheap books’, specialized in reprints of books with putatively expired copyrights, and lived in London until ‘shortly before 1789’. From 1773 or 1776 until c. 1788 his shop was at No. 48 St. Paul’s Churchyard (Gilhooley, p. 15; Skinner, pp. 4–6; Maxted, p. 68; Journ. 13 May 1763; Dict. of Printers, pp. 77–78, 299–300). JB’s relationship with Donaldson was a lengthy one. Pottle guessed that both editions of JB’s first pamphlet, Observations … On … The Minor (1760, 2nd ed. 1761 [for

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1760]) were ‘possibly’ printed by Donaldson. JB’s second publication, An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady …, 1761, was a co-printing by A. Donaldson and J. Reid for A. Donaldson. Donaldson continued to publish JB’s early works, often with J. Reid (see An Ode to Tragedy, 1761) and the second volume of Donaldson’s Collection, 1762, which plays an important role in JB’s correspondence with AE. JB changed to other publishers from 1762’s Cub until nearly a decade had passed, although Donaldson acted as an informal Edinburgh distributor, for Cub and E–B (Journ. 27 Nov. 1762, 13 Apr. 1763). In the early 1770s, JB wrote the dedication to Garrick which preceded Donaldson’s The Works of Shakespear, 1771. He helped to defend Donaldson in the landmark 1774 Court of Session cause determining literary property (Donaldson v. Becket), and Donaldson published JB’s edition of The Decision of the Court of Session, 1774 (Lit. Car. pp. 4–16, 86–101). JB and Donaldson were on amicable terms as well as being business associates, and JB dined with Donaldson several times in London. JB wrote praising ‘Great Donaldson’, ‘renowned Donaldson’, ‘immense Donaldson’, ‘illustrious Donaldson’ and the ‘prodigious Vendor of Literature’, despite SJ’s censure of Donaldson, trading in barely legal cheap reprints, as a literary ‘Robin Hood’ (Journ. 13, 19 Apr., 3, 7, 12, 15 May, 20 July 1763). 2 This letter could have been delivered to at least two addresses for Donaldson. ‘Alexander Donaldson’s Edinburgh shop’, at the sign of the Pope’s Head, was ‘on the south side of the High Street (opposite the Mercat Cross)’ and was ‘the second building of the row’. His printing house was in the Castle Hill. The Edinburgh tax registers for 1752 listed an Alex. Donaldson ‘Stationer’ at ‘Crichton’s’ in the Luckenbooths, which corresponds to the location of his shop. The other address given was Gosford’s Close. Donaldson ‘embarked in the trade and business of a bookseller in the year 1750 at Edinburgh’. His banns identified his trade as ‘bookseller in S.S.W.p.’ (i.e., New Greyfriars parish). 3 Strathaven, Lanarkshire. Taylor & Skinner has Strathaven in its ‘List of Stages on the Great Road’ on the way from ‘Edinburgh to Ayr by another Road’; it was 453/4 miles from Edinburgh, and 301/4 miles from Ayr, about seven miles from the AyrshireLanarkshire border (plate 11). The dating and location of this letter have long been a

puzzle. Pottle asserted that it was ‘most unlikely’ that JB could have been at Strathaven on 28 July. After his return to Scotland in June 1760, JB had begun a twoyear course of study of law under his father’s direction. The Boswells normally left Edinburgh for Auchinleck after the rising of the Court of Session, which in 1761 occurred 12 Aug.—as JB put it in an undated note from before 14 Aug., ‘to Auch middle of Augt.’ (Earlier Years, pp. 473–74; Corr. 1, p. 12 and n. 1; Notes, undated entry preceding entry for 14 Aug.). The documentary evidence for JB’s whereabouts in most of 1761 is sparse. One can neither conclusively prove nor disprove JB’s claim of being at Strathaven on the date in question. 4 A Collection of Original Poems. By the Rev. Mr Blacklock, and other Scotch Gentlemen, had been ‘printed for A. Donaldson’ in Edinburgh, 1760 (ESTC T116769). It contained poems by JB’s friends AE and Robert Colvill of Dysart. Donaldson ‘designed’ (in the sense of projecting or planning) a second and third volume in the series at least, with the sales of each sequel to determine the grounds for publishing any further volumes in the series (ESTC; Lit. Car. p. 12). The planned second volume, printed by Donaldson for himself and J. Reid, did reach print in 1762 as A Collection of Original Poems. By Scotch Gentlemen. Volume II (ESTC T116768 and N14984). 5 The second volume of the Collection was not listed as completed and ready for publication until the Scots Mag. Jan. 1762 booklist (xxiv. 42), six months after this letter. Indeed, JB by the end of 1761 was playing two major roles in the completion of the second volume: as a poet who ‘mustered’ thirty-one of the poems, and as a corrector of the proof-sheets (To AE, 17 Nov.; Lit. Car. pp. 12–14). JB suggested that pp. 196–232 of the book were still being typeset in the week of 24–30 Jan.: ‘He will have it all done next week’ (To AE, 22 Jan. 1762). 6 ‘An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady’ and ‘An Epistle from Lycidas to Menalcas’. Neither poem was printed in the 1762 Collection. Pottle surmised—without any textual evidence from Donaldson, JB, or AE—that Donaldson ‘apparently submitted’ them to AE, that AE ‘probably thought the verses too bad for printing in the collection’, and that therefore ‘as [AE] did not wish to hurt Boswell’s feelings … he suggested that they be printed as burlesques’ (Lit. Car. p. 6). Yet few facts are known about the process leading up to the printing

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and publication of those poems by Donaldson himself in the pamphlet An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady. With an Epistle from Menalcas to Lycidas [sic]. To which are prefixed, Three Critical Recommendatory Letters, 1761 (ESTC T32518). In addition to this letter, surviving accounts of the origin of these poems are in From GD to AE, 2 Aug.; From AE to GD, ?2 Aug.; and to AE, ?after 2 and before 8 Aug. 7 Donaldson’s Collection II contained not merely ‘a few more’, but a full thirty-one of JB’s poems (itemized in Lit. Car. pp. 13–14).

For JB’s additional dealings with Donaldson, see To AE, 17 Nov. 1761 and 22 Jan. 1762. 8 Presumably a reference to JB’s course of legal studies under Lord Auchinleck’s tutelage. A letter to JJ of late Aug. stated, ‘I am reading law hard’ (To JJ, 21 Aug., Corr. 1, p. 12). 9 Although Donaldson had originally planned for another sequel in the Collection, ‘The reception was so lacking in cordiality that he never issued the third volume’ (Lit. Car. p. 12).

From George Dempster to Andrew Erskine, Sunday 2 August 1761 TEXT: An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady. With an Epistle from Menalcas to Lycidas. To which are prefixed, Three Critical Recommendatory Letters. Edinburgh: Printed by A Donaldson and J. Reid. For Alex. Donaldson. MDCCLXI, pp. 5–9. ADDRESS: To the Honourable A*** E***.

Edinb. Aug. 2. 1761. MY DEAR SIR, I AM just now favoured with your obliging letter, including some copies of verses. I return you thanks for the favourable opinion you entertain of my taste: but permit me to say, that C———n E———1 has no occasion to call in the aid of any other judgment, to enable him to determine the merit of works of taste and genius, especially of the poetic kind. A good author must necessarily be a sound critic; and one who discovers so much fire, and, at the same time, correctness, in his own productions, is well qualified to judge of the beauties and defects of others. But as extreme modesty is often the attendant of consummate merit, I suppose you don’t care to rely solely on your own judgment in a matter of this consequence. You are anxious that Mr Donaldson’s collection should be uniform, and that the second volume should contain nothing unworthy of the first;2 for which reason, perhaps, you wish to have your own opinion of these two poems confirmed by mine; on which, I am afraid, you rely more than it deserves. Probably the laws of Parnassus, like those of our own country, require two witnesses to ascertain any fact of importance.3 BUT to proceed: I am astonished how, during this long preamble, I have been able to suppress those exclamations of applause, which I utter insensibly every time I read or think of these poems. By heavens! I never saw any thing that pleased me more. Nor do I know to which the preference is due. In the elegy however, I am apt to think, the author’s genius appears most conspicuously; and, if I am not mistaken, his turn rather leads him to the plaintive strains of Terence,4 than to the gay and animated compositions of Tibullus.5 The subject too is happily chosen. The bard seems to be young; and what subject suits the warm imagination and delicate sensibility of a juvenile poet, better than the early, premature, and unexpected death of a lady,6 for whom he probably entertained the most refined affection! It is upon occasions of this kind that a poet can give way to those emotions of grief and anguish, which never fail to affect every reader of taste with sadness and melancholy.7 When the mind is truly agitated, it despises trivial 66

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ornaments; it overlooks small inaccuracies. To this is to be imputed your meeting with nothing very ornamented or figurative in the diction, and now and then with a hard word, ill spelled, and worse chosen. Does not the native simplicity of the poet, in a thousand instances, atone for these defects? Thou number’d lies among the numerous dead.8 HOW pretty is that recurrence of numbers in the same line! yet happily it is varied: and, if you will try, as Mr Sheridan9 directs you, to pronounce these words frequently, you will observe how trippingly they go off the tongue,10 numerous number, numerous number; and there is a cadence on the last syllable, ber, that I defy you not to pronounce.11 You may observe also the propriety of the epithet numerous, when applied to the dead. THE conclusion also is most tender and affecting, and contains that abruptness, and those repetitions which constitute the language of grief. Adieu,—adieu,—a long—a last farewell.12 I HAVE only to add, that instead of advising Mr Donaldson to reserve these poems for his collection, or even indeed, in compliance with the author’s request, to bury them in a Magazine,13 I should think he would do both himself and the author more justice to publish them on a small detached quarto of two or three pages.14 By this means they would be universally known and admired, and would certainly add lustre and eclat to the collection in which they should afterward appear. It is by this obvious and ingenious method that my good friend Mr Dodsley15 at London has established his reputation as a man of taste, enriched himself, and become the only bookseller in that city, really known to, and esteemed by people of fashion and rank.16 In great haste, I submit these observations to you; but I wish you would also consult Mr B———,17 who really has a very sound judgment in matters of this kind. I have the honour to be, DEAR SIR, your most obedient servant, G*** D***.18 1 That is, ‘Captain Erskine’. Although AE never attained the rank of captain, he was styled ‘Captain’ by many of his friends. The term ‘Captain’ is used generally by JB and his friends for junior officers, in the same fashion that Captain William Bosville’s friends referred to him as ‘Colonel’. 2 The first volume of the collection, 1760, featured poems by literati such as Thomas Blacklock, James Beattie, and James Macpherson, along with contributions by the more obscure Gilbert Gordon, Robert Colvill of Dysart, Robert Scott, AE, and others (Lit. Car. p. 12). 3 Based on the old Roman Civil Law standard incorporated into Scots law that ‘one witness is no witness’.

4

Publius Terentius Afer (b. c. 185/c. 195 d. c. 159 B.C.), Roman writer of comedies, of which six survive. He was known for his broad humour. GD’s humour in this letter arises from his ironic misattribution of qualities, as here, referring to Terence as ‘plaintive’ rather than comic. 5 Albius Tibullus, c. ?55 B.C.–19 B.C. His love elegies and other elegiac poems appeared in three books, two certainly attributable to him. As elegies, they were unlikely to be read as ‘gay’ or ‘animated’ except in GD’s Scriblerian inversions of expectation. 6 The ‘Amiable Young Lady’ of JB’s Elegy remains unidentified. Pottle thought that the mention of ‘Strathaven’ in the volume might have been an intentional clue left by B.C.,

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JB that the deceased was Katherine Young (d. 1761) who had resided at her father’s estate of Netherfield near Strathaven (Earlier Years, pp. 473–74). 7 GD has in mind the ‘graveyard school’ of poetry which had been so popular since the 1740s and 1750s vogue for Blair’s ‘The Grave’ and Gray’s ‘Elegy’. See A. L. Reed, The Background of Gray’s Elegy: A Study in The Taste for Melancholy Poetry 1700–51, 1924; J. W. Draper, The Funeral Elegy and the Rise of English Romanticism, 1929, repr. 1967. 8 ‘An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady’, seventh stanza:

Street, Covent Garden, became a major social centre, and it was as such that JB would use it in 1762–63. During the summer of 1761, TS delivered in Edinburgh a series of lectures on elocution and the English tongue (and JB, GD and AE were among those who attended). These lectures were presumably the ones collected into A Course Of Lectures On Elocution: Together With Two Dissertations On Language; And Some Other Tracts Relative To Those Subjects, 1762 (ESTC T90536). His Edinburgh pupils were most often Scots who wished to shed their accents and Scotticisms, or at least temper them. Alexander Wedderburne, according to JB, was one of his more successful products (Life i. 386). The lecture series proved so successful, with over 300 gentlemen attending, that TS followed it with a course for ladies (Scots Mag. July 1761, xxiii. 389– 90). AE thought the lectures dull (From AE, 16 Dec.). JB became acquainted with TS during the summer of 1761 and soon adopted him as his mentor, a role which TS accepted. A significant portion of this volume, like the journals from this period, deals with JB’s relationship with TS. A material mark of TS’s friendship was five guineas he had lent JB to pay a gambling debt on the condition that JB not play cards for five years (Journ. 7 Jan. 1763). TS’s laudatory accounts of SJ became an important source of JB’s earnest wish to meet him, although by 1762, TS and SJ were at loggerheads (Life i. 385–87). 10 Hamlet, III. ii:

Snatch’d from this low, inhospitable clime, While fortune smil’d upon thy chearful head, Ev’n in the pride and flow’r of youthful prime Thou number’d lies, among the numerous dead. (An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady …, 1761, p. 21) 9 Thomas Sheridan (1719–88), born in Ireland, actor (from 1743), theatre manager, and playwright (adaptation of Coriolanus, 1755; The Brave Irishman: or Captain O’Blunder. A Farce, [from Molière], c. 1746). He had become an elocutionist and educationalist from c. 1756, and was awarded honorary M.A.’s by Oxford (1758) and later (1769) Cambridge. He had recently (July 1761) been made an honorary freeman of Edinburgh. He was husband of the author Frances (Chamberlaine) Sheridan, whose Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph appeared anonymously in 1761, and father of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, at this time a boy of ten years old (see To TS, 27 Sept., n. 2). His change of career from man of the theatre to elocutionist had been a success, with lectures in London, Bristol, Bath, Oxford, and Cambridge. He no longer had to worry about the theatre riots which had troubled his management in Dublin (see From WD, between 9 and 19 Apr. 1757, n. 6). In the year of this letter he published A Dissertation On The Causes Of The Difficulties, Which Occur, In Learning The English Tongue. With A Scheme For Publishing An English Grammar And Dictionary, Upon A Plan Entirely New (ESTC N29013). That dissertation dealt with themes from his A Discourse Delivered In The Theatre At Oxford, In The Senate-House At Cambridge, And At Spring-Garden In London … Being Introductory To His Course Of Lectures On Elocution And The English Language, 1759 (ESTC T60076). His house in Henrietta

HAMLET: Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the towncrier spoke my lines. 11 GD perhaps refers to the Scottish pronunciation of ‘r’, his ‘ber’ punning on the concept of burr. 12 ‘An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady’, twelfth stanza:

Farewell, my charmer, peace attend thy rest, Thou, who in virtue did so much excel; For this I hail thee blest,—supremely blest. Adieu,—adieu,—a long—a last farewell. (An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady …, 1761, p. 22) 13 The copy-hungry monthly magazines were far more willing to publish verses than the publishers of books, who hesitated to

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devote an entire pamphlet to an unknown writer like JB. JB had published four poems in Scots Mag., the earliest being his ‘An evening-Walk in the Abbey-church of Holyrood-house’, Scots Mag. Aug. 1758, xx. 420. His most recent magazine poem had appeared four months before this letter: his ‘Epitaph on the Rev. Mr. John Campbell, Minister at Kickarton’, Scots Mag. Apr. 1761, xxiii. 204. JB recycled all four of his Scots Mag. poems for publication in Donaldson’s Collection II (Lit. Car. pp. 215– 16). 14 In the end, the text of JB’s elegy occupied roughly the number of pages suggested—pp. 19–22 of a 24-page volume— though the poem was padded out by the letters of GD, AE, and JB and included an additional verse letter by JB. 15 Robert Dodsley, the London publisher whose successful Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748) had been an inspiration to Donaldson in designing his Collection (Lit. Car. p. 12). The Dodsleys (see To Sterne, after 7 Apr. 1760 and ?before Oct.

1761, n. 63) were connected to AE and to Scottish publishing by virtue of being Donaldson’s London distributors for Collection I (1760) and II (1762). The Dempster Letters do not mention Dodsley. Dodsley’s Collection continued to expand 1748–58 (Antonia Forster, Index to Book Reviews in England 1749–74, 1990, Items 659–60), moving from three volumes (1748) up to four volumes (1755) and reaching six volumes in the editions of 1758–82 (ESTC). 16 GD’s humour in this section arises in part from the fact that Dodsley, who had previously worked as a footman, had risen to be an arbiter of ‘fashion and rank’. 17 JB, with humorous overtones of Richardson’s Mr. B. in the Pamela novels, and Fielding’s parody ‘Squire Booby’ in Shamela. 18 The concealment of the name in such a way as to resemble the printer’s euphemism for ‘God Damn’ (i.e., ‘G——— D———’) was perhaps another part of the burlesque.

From Andrew Erskine to George Dempster, ?Sunday 2 August 1761 TEXT: An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady. With an Epistle from Menalcas to Lycidas. To which are prefixed, Three Critical Recommendatory Letters. Edinburgh: Printed by A. Donaldson and J. Reid. For Alex. Donaldson. MDCCLXI, pp. 9–13. ADDRESS: To G*** D***, Esq;

Canongate,1 one o’clock. DEAR SIR, I HAVE just now received your epistle, which contains, I think, the most candid criticism I ever saw: I was only sorry to see it so short; every line of poetry, I am sure, deserves two of observations; but what I am remarkably pleased with, is the strange coincidence between your sentiments and mine. I may really and with truth say, that the first time I beheld you, I saw in your face a true feeling and just relish of the fine arts, particularly poetry, (poetry sent down by the gods, to chear us in this gloomy, forlorn, and dreary waste of life); I saw numbers (both blank verses and rhymes) imprinted upon your countenance; and if you had presented me with an epic poem superior to Homer’s, I should not have been surprised. Euripides, the famous Greek poet,2 has a line so agreeable to what I am saying, that I cannot forbear sending you a translation of it: Apollo light’ned in his cat-grey eyes.3 IN fact, the only way of judging the merit of a poet is by his eyes. It was in this manner Homer was found out, although he was blind. Your modesty has, I know, as yet only suffered you to publish in the Scots Magazine;4 but alas! one might as well 69

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pretend to exhibit a little cow as a show in the highlands of Scotland,5 a purse of gold as somewhat remarkable on the coast of Guinea,6 or a t——d7 as an extraordinary spectacle in the streets of Edinburgh, as endeavour to become conspicuous in that ill-fated collection. Would you believe it, Sir? A fable of mine,8 full of the naivette or simplicity absolutely necessary in that species of composition, after being inserted there, was never, (with astonishment I speak it, and with amazement you shall hear it), I say, I never heard of more;9 lost like a goodly city suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake,10 like a louse annihilated in a large fire, or a human excrement dropped in a full capacious chamberpot. Oh! my friend, let this deter you; and, for heaven’s sake, chuse some other methods of making your compositions public. In this case, what expedient so readily offers as making use of the humane and benevolent Mr D———,11 a gentleman, who, like a friendly star, helps every dark and benighted poet into the haven of general approbation. By his help, the rays of my genius have diverged with uncommon and rapid streams of luminary particles, into the remotest and most unenlightened corners of these kingdoms:12 by his assistance Mr B———13 is to fix the nave14 of that wheel, whose spokes will reach such a prodigious distance. Would to GOD we three could live to latest posterity, and be witnesses of our applause from ages yet to come, world without end. Praise is the food of poets; notwithstanding Mr D——— frequently gives them very good dinners.15 This of course brings me back to the subject of this letter, which I did not think so soon to have entered upon, as I had a few more points to discuss. But to proceed: The bard, of whose poems we have been all this time talking, seems to possess the true elegiac humanity of Glutheros,16 who flourished before or about the time of Homer. It is true, he is not so merry as Lucretius,17 nor so sad as Horace;18 neither is he altogether so soft and tender as Juvenal19 in his satires; he is not quite so simplex in his munditiis as Lucan,20 neither has his work the modern air of the old poet Ennius;21 but these are slight faults. I cannot pretend to say whether he writes elegies like Terence,22 as I never saw that book in which they are contained, the only copy of which, they say, is lodged in the bend of the hanging tower at Pisa*.23 Here I cannot help regretting that I have as yet travelled very little; how happy are you, Sir, in that respect? I think it was at Rome24 you got your copy of the great Glutheros, which is an invaluable curiousity. For my part, I once drank a glass of old hock25 out of Buchanan’s26 head at Copenhagen,27 which was the only remarkable incident that happened me in a long voyage up the Mediterranean.28 I agree with you in thinking that the bard,29 of whom we have all this time been talking, discovers here and there a noble negligence of grammar and spelling; this is what Mr Pope calls (who by the by was a very bad poet)30 catching a grace beyond the reach of art;31 but these two arts, as Mr Sheridan32 says, I am afraid we know little about. I dare say he goes upon sure ground, and has good reason for what he does; not that I have any particular reason for saying so. The epistle after the elegy33 seems to be much in the style of Pliny;34 there is nothing like it in our language. Easy and pathetic, sublime and natural, it presents us with a picture of love and friendship not to be parallelled; it is really a capital piece. These two poems ought indeed to be printed separately.35 I must here conclude; but I first congratulate Mr D——— on this, I may say, the second revival of letters. I did not indeed think of being guilty of the fault which I accused you of in the beginning of my letter; but as I 70

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intend to dine with you to-day, I shall resume this subject when I take leave of you. I am, SIR, Your most obedient humble servant. A*** E*** 36

* See Father Montfaucon’s antiquities of Italy.

1 The Canongate, once a court appendage of Holyrood and the main road from the palace into the city, saw by the later decades of the eighteenth century many of its great houses suffering a ‘fate of ruin and degradation’ in the wake of the post-1707 departure of the Scots M.P.’s for London (Robert Chambers, Walks in Edinburgh, 1825, pp. 130–37). The rise of newer, more fashionable districts c. 1760–1820 accelerated the process of the Canongate’s abandonment. Despite its gradual evacuation by the ‘person[s] of condition’ from 1760 to 1817, the neighbourhood was in a relatively slow decline from gentility in the 1760s, when it was still ‘inhabited by persons of very great consideration’, and when some new residential developments rose in the Canongate. In 1770–71 JB and his wife lived in Chessel’s Land (or Buildings), ‘the newest and finest residential development in Edinburgh’. Chambers would conclude a half-century later that ‘Many of the houses … [were] fit for the residence of a first-rate family, in every respect but vicinage and access’ (Robert Chambers, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh, 1833, pp. 221–25; Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 17; Defence, pp. 7, 13). As for the precise building, AE may have been writing from ‘Lady Kellie’s house in the Cannongate’, which JB mentioned in late 1762 (Journ. 6 Nov. 1762). Others among AE’s relations owned property in the neighbourhood: AE’s brother-in-law Walter Macfarlane died in his town-house ‘in the Canongate of Edinburgh’ in 1767 (Sir Arthur Mitchell, ed., Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland Made by Walter Macfarlane, 1906, SHS 51, p. vi). 2 Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist of 485 (or 480)–406 B.C. 3 Almost certainly an invented passage. Searches through the Euripides canon have failed to uncover any passage resembling it. ‘[H]ousehold pets in ancient Greece were not cats but domesticated polecats, or house-ferrets (galé) [rather than the cat (ailouros)] …. Cats came to Greece from Egypt, but until the Hellenistic period after Alexander the Great, they were rare or absent from Greek households’ (Olivia and

Robert Temple, trans., Aesop: The Complete Fables, 1998, p. xix). 4 See n. 13 of the preceding letter. 5 ‘The beasts which formed the subject of this [Scottish cattle] trade were small and hardy and unlike the cattle of today. Until the second half of the century only a few heritors had attempted to breed particular strains. By modern standards they were light’ (Henry Hamilton, An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 1963, pp. 88–90). Even among the smaller, lighter Scots cattle varieties of the eighteenth century, the Highland cattle were noticeably smaller and tougher, and defended against the elements by thick skins and double coats. 6 ‘Guinea’ was not precisely defined in eighteenth-century geographical imagination. In the map ‘AFRICA Drawn from the best MAPS. By T. Jefferys, Geographer …’, Jefferys labelled ‘Guinea’ as including—from north to south—the land of the ‘Mundingos’, the ‘Grain Coast’, ‘Tooth [Ivory] Coast’, ‘Gold Coast’, ‘Slave Coast’, and ‘Kingdom of Benin’. On Jefferys’ map, the ‘Gold Coast’ section of ‘Guinea’ ran from Assini in the west on to the [Volta] river east of Accra [‘Acara’] in the east, a region corresponding to modern Ghana and Togo (map betw. xviii. 80–81 in Gent. Mag. [Feb.] 1748). According to Richard Gray, ‘What came to be called the Gold Coast was almost synonymous with Akan country, which was first linked to the European economy through the export of gold … and was rich in gold resources’ (Gray, ed., The Cambridge History of Africa, 1600–1790, 1975, ‘The Guinea Coast’, iv. 296–324), hence AE’s claim that a purse of gold there would be as common as coals in Newcastle. Yet while gold was common enough that less pure, alloyed gold was locally cast, cut, and used as cash for petty daily transactions, Akan society still employed purer gold as a sign of elite luxury and power. For early eighteenth-century impressions of the region, see John Ralph Willis, J. D. Fage, and R. E. Bradbury, eds., Willem Bosman, A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, 1704, trans. 1705, repr. 1967, pp. 1–322, esp. 79–87.

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?2 AUGUST 1761 7 That is, ‘turd’; see To AE, 9 Mar. 1762 (MS), n. 1. 8 AE’s ‘The Hare and the Redbreast. A Fable’ first appeared in Scots Mag. 1759, xxi. 475. Undaunted, he republished his magazine fable of the hare and the redbreast in Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 25–27. ‘The Starling, the Crows, the Fox, and the Hawk. A Fable’ had appeared in Collection I, pp. 89–91 (see Bennett, pp. 180–82). 9 Ten months after this letter, Crit. Rev. gave a favourable notice to the two volumes of Donaldson’s Collection, singling out for praise AE’s ‘Ode to Memory’, ‘Ode to Pity’, and ‘Cloaciniad’, but not mentioning the ‘Fable(s)’ (Crit. Rev. May–June 1762, xiii. 443–44, 495–97). Monthly Rev. also noticed Collection II, but condemned AE as an Irishman who treated serious themes as burlesques (Monthly Rev. June 1762, xxvi. 473– 74; Bennett, pp. 213–15). 10 The amazingly destructive Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 was still a recent memory (Thomas Downing Kendrick, The Lisbon Earthquake, 1956; Harry Fielding Reid, The Lisbon Earthquake of November 1, 1755, 1914). 11 [Alexander] Donaldson. 12 AE had published fourteen poems in Donaldson’s Collection I: pp. 76–94, 95–96, 144–52, 174–79, and 180–83 (Bennett, pp. 180–82). For a bibliographical selection of reviews of Collection I and II, see Antonia Forster, Index to Book Reviews in England 1749–74, 1990, Items 194 and 444. Collection I was reviewed only in Monthly Rev. (xxv. 507–08), while the second volume received wider national attention in Monthly Rev. (xxvii. 226–27), Crit. Rev. (xiii. 495–99), and Brit. Mag. (iii. 269). Collection I, while it did not rate AE’s burlesque claim of reaching the farthest corners of the kingdoms, did benefit from having both Edinburgh and London booksellers. Donaldson was the Edinburgh vendor, but R. and J. Dodsley, and J. Richardson were the London distributors (ESTC T116769). Except for the addition of J. Reid’s name to Donaldson’s as the Edinburgh distributors, the 1762 volume was published with the same vendors as those used in 1760 (ESTC T116768; ESTC N14984). 13 Boswell. 14 ‘Nave’ here meaning ‘hub’. 15 JB benefited from Donaldson’s company and hospitality many times, with several instances recorded in London. See To Donaldson, 28 July and n. 1. 16 An invented character, like Kunastrokius or Phutatorius in Sterne, or Martinus

Scriblerus among the Scriblerians. Probably an instance of ‘Anglo-Ellenisms’, a form of literary wit which depended on punning on English and Greek simultaneously. The ‘Maccaronick’ world of whimsical (ab)uses of Greek and Latin plays a major role in the AE–JB–GD correspondence. SJ himself took pleasure in this kind of linguistic fun in a conversation of 15 Apr. 1778: ‘the Polemomiddinia of Drummond of Hawthornden, in which there is a jumble of many languages moulded, as if it were all in Latin, is well known. Mr. Langton made us laugh heartily at one in the Grecian mould, by Joshua Barnes, in which are to be found such comical Anglo-Ellenisms as Κλυββοισιν εβανχθεν: they were banged with clubs’ (Life iii. 283–84). Since ‘Glutheros’ could also be transcribed as ‘Glytheros’ (i.e., ‘gleet heroes’), there is a chance it was a pun on ‘gleet’, one of the effects of gonorrhoea. 17 Titus Lucretius Carus, c. 99 B.C.–c. 55 B.C., Roman poet-philosopher, author of the six books of De rerum natura [‘On the nature of things’]. His hexameter verse dealt with the philosophical ideas of Democritus and Epicurus on atomism and materialism, and did so in a dignified and aesthetic manner. As in GD’s letter, preceding this, the humour arises from the ironic attribution of characteristics opposite to the poets’ actual ones. 18 Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65 B.C.–8 B.C., Latin lyric poet, patronized by Maecenas, author of Satires, Epodes, Odes, Epistles, and Ars Poetica. His works tended to be associated with the ‘Augustan’ virtues of temperate contentment, good-humour, and gentler satire, the opposite of the sadness AE imputes. 19 Decimus Junius Juvenalis, fl. 1st–2nd cent. A.D., Roman satirical poet. His sixteen satires were associated by the Augustans with the scourging satire of outrage and indignation, and often contrasted to the gentler satires of Horace, thus making him one of the least tender of ancient poets. 20 Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, 39–65, Latin poet, author of the epic Bellum Civile, or ‘Pharsalia’. The epic was written in a grand, lavish manner which made it the opposite of simplicity. 21 Quintus Ennius, 239–?169 B.C., Latin poet and playwright whose works survived only in fragments, claimed as ‘father’ of Latin poetry and a would-be heir to Homer in his epic Annales. As predecessor of the major Latin poets, he would have been the hoariest rather than the most modern. 22 See previous letter and n. 4.

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?2 AUGUST 1761 23 That is, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, or the Campanile of the Duomo, referred to in Italian as ‘Torre Pendente Di Pisa’. Smollett’s Travels Through France and Italy refer to the tower in the words used by AE, by literal translation of the ‘torre pendente’ as the ‘hanging-tower’, but Smollett also describes it as one among many ‘leaning towers’ (‘Letter XXVII’, Nice, January 28, 1765, in Frank Felsenstein, ed., Tobias Smollett, Travels Through France and Italy, 1979, pp. 223–24). 24 For GD’s shortened Grand Tour, see From GD to AE, c. 9 May, n. 1. ‘Dempster never managed to resume his grand tour, but his thoughts accompanied his friend [Adam Fergusson] on the journey to Italy’ (Dempster Letters, pp. 5–8). 25 The German wine, Hochheimer, produced at Hochheim on the Main, commercially extended to refer to other white German wines. It was a particular favourite of young JB, and apparently (on the evidence of this letter) also of AE, and the Earl of Eglinton (see the letter of 25 Sept.). In his An Ode to Tragedy (1761), JB referred to ‘my Old-hock humour’ in which he was ‘fallen araving about princes and lords, knights and geniuses, ladies of quality and harpsichords’ (p. 3). In his poem ‘B——— of Soapers the King’, JB noted that ‘hock is the liquour he drinks’ (Werner, pp. 161–62). 26 George Buchanan (1506–82), Latinist, historian, scholar, a major figure in both the Scots Renaissance and Reformation. 27 Again, a fabrication. AE had never been to Copenhagen, nor had Buchanan, although Buchanan spent significant portions of his life abroad in England, France, and Portugal. Buchanan was buried in an unknown location in the Greyfriars churchyard in Edinburgh, but AE’s joke plays off a well-known tradition: a skull whose provenance dated back to soon after Buchanan’s death ended up in the Anatomy Museum of the University of Edinburgh, and is still thought to be the authentic ‘head’ of Buchanan (Oxford DNB). 28 In 1760 AE’s regiment had been stationed on the Mediterranean Front, at Gibraltar (see Bennett, p. 164). 29 That is, JB. 30 AE’s assessment (‘a very bad poet’) is of course a mock assessment. Pope’s poetics long dominated the field in mid- to late18th century Britain. 31 Pope’s An Essay on Criticism (1709) contained these lines:

Great Wits sometimes may gloriously offend, And rise to Faults true Critics dare not mend, From vulgar Bounds with brave Disorder part, And snatch a Grace beyond the Reach of Art, Which, without passing thro’ the Judgment, gains The Heart, and all its end at once attains (ll. 152–57, Butt ed.) 32 TS’s lectures and writings on pedagogy were devoted to refining grammar and spelling as well as pronunciation. 33 The ‘Epistle from Lycidas to Menalcas’, printed in An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady …, 1761, pp. 22–24. 34 Neither the Elder nor the Younger Pliny wrote verse epistles. Caius Plinius Secundus, c. 23–79, Roman naturalist, had one surviving work, a thirty-seven-book encyclopedia of natural science, Historia Naturalis. His nephew and ward, Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, ?62–c. 113, orator and statesman, was the author of prose epistles, which he may have written (as JB did) with an eye to publication. The Younger Pliny was a dabbler in verse, and his Epistolarum, seventh book, letter four (‘C. Plinius Pontio Suo S.’) has an instance of one of his amateur verses, beginning ‘Cum libros galli legerem, quibus ille parenti’. 35 It was unlikely that there was any serious plan for separate publication. The two poems were included in the same volume of 1761. 36 Bernard de Montfaucon (1655–1741) published Diarium Italicum: or, a journey through Italy, in the years 1698, and 1699. Containing an account of ancient monuments, libraries … By the R. F. F. Bernard de Montfaucon, Benedictine Monk of the congregation of St. Maur. Done from the Latin original printed at Paris. Adorn’d with cuts, 1711 (ESTC N65273). It was republished in 1712 as The travels of the learned Father Montfaucon from Paris thro’ Italy …. Made English from the Paris edition … (ESTC N21633), with a second edition appearing in 1725 as The antiquities of Italy. Being the travels of the learned and reverend Bernard de Montfaucon, from Paris through Italy, in the years 1698. and 1699.… Made English from the Paris edition, of the Latin original. Adorn’d with cuts. The second edition, revis’d throughout; with large improvements … communicated by the author to the editor John Henley, M.A. (ESTC T147630).

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To Andrew Erskine, ?after 2 and before 8 August 17611 TEXT: An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady. With an Epistle from Menalcas to Lycidas. To which are prefixed, Three Critical Recommendatory Letters. Edinburgh: Printed by A Donaldson and J. Reid. For Alex. Donaldson. MDCCLXI, pp. 14–18. ADDRESS: To the Honourable A*** E***.

DEAR SIR, ACCEPT the most sincere thanks of a mind full of gratitude, for the favour you have this day loaded me with. The exquisite entertainment which I have received from the perusal of the inclosed poems, is rather to be conceived than expressed. The critical letters upon these pieces by Mr D———2 and yourself, I admire beyond measure. The greatest compliment I can pay them, is to tell, without disguise, the simple, or to use a better word, naked truth; which is, that I could read them with some degree of satisfaction, even after an immediate perusal of the poems themselves. I CONGRATULATE with my country, that we now behold, with eyes full of intrepid wonder and premature astonishment, such a poet! and such critics! IT is doing me too much honour to be classed with Mr E——— and Mr D———, of both whose abilities the world has already had, and is likely to have so many glaring proofs; whilst I can only aspire to the appellation of, as it were, a hackneycoachman of Helicon.3 You see I am apt to run into the figurative style, which, I hope, you will impute to an imagination heated by a recent perusal of superlative poesy. DEAR SIR, why do you ask me to give my opinion? —Or, indeed, what other opinion can I give than what has already been so amply given?—But as you insist upon my saying something, I shall do so. THE elegy is perhaps the completest thing of the kind I have ever seen. Even you C———n E———,4 who plume yourself so much on your tender, sighing, breathing, and speaking lines, must not be offended, though I frankly own that you have not gone so great lengths as this gentleman. THE PRIDE OF PRIME5 is an expression which you have not as yet attained to. I question much if you ever will. THE ingenious author of an essay on the sublime and beautiful gives it as his opinion, “That a certain inflated and incohesive rotundity of diction, is one of the leading sources of what is grand and lofty.”6 Our author has certainly reached that dizzy summit in this memorable line, To such majestic, such exalting strains.7 THE epistle affords a striking example of the elevated style.— At first, indeed, I imagined our author had been a plagiary, and stolen whole stanzas from Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast.8 —But, upon comparing the two poems together, with all the attention and accuracy that I possibly could, I discovered that I lay under a very palpable mistake, and had done the author much injustice: for, so far has he been from stooping to filch from Jack Dryden, (as the present Bishop of Bangor used to say),9 that, upon my word, there was not the least atom of similarity either in thought or language. 74

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I HAD almost forgot to take notice of one peculiar circumstance, which has eluded the penetration of you, as well as that of Mr D———,10 although it is perhaps as material a perfection as any in the whole work: and that is the mention that is made of Wilkie, whose poem, called the Epigoniad, we have, with infinite regret, beheld but too too much neglected.11 DOES it not kindle a flame in every patriot breast, to think that now the modern epic poem of Scotland shall stand upon a firm basis, shall swim in a pellucid whirlpool, when it is at last hoisted upon the shoulders of a Brobdingnagian genius (according to Swift),12 or rather, (to use the words of Sir William Temple, in his history of the Netherlands),13 when it is held forth to the applause and admiration of posterity, by a giant of Parnassus? I ENTIRELY agree with my two good friends and fellow-rhymesters, that Mr Donaldson should make a distinct publication of them; as they will, by this means, be better known, and consequently more universally applied to use by every reader of any discernment. I CANNOT conclude without an eulogium upon the justness and propriety of that line, when, drawing to a close, he exclaims, with all the rapture and poetic fury of the Pythian priestess,14 I cease, I cease the empty lay.15 I am persuaded no human mortal can possibly read this without a conscious homefelt satisfaction. I HAVE now trespassed too long on your patience, so shall break off with assuring you that I am your most humble servant, J*** B***. 1 The dating of this letter is tentative, and based on several facts. First, it is a reply to AE’s and GD’s letters of 2 Aug. Second, the notice of sale of the pamphlet was in Scots Mag. Aug. 1761 (xxiii. 425). Third, GD to Sir Adam Fergusson, [Saturday] 8 Aug. 1761 noted that ‘tho’ Saturday be a bad publishing day, [Donaldson] has sent our little essay into the world’. GD himself had seen copies hawked on the streets (Dempster, pp. 57–58). Finally, this letter to AE was included in that printed volume. GD recorded for Fergusson his reaction to the publication, the publicity for which pranked the pranksters themselves (or at least humbled GD): ‘When I went to the street my acquaintance all crouded about me and set up a hideous laugh. I soon discover’d the cause of it—twenty cadies, as many chairmen and other wretches accosted me, held up the poems with which their hands were full and their pockets loaded, “Price sixpence, Sir, and Mr George Dempster is the author of them, Mr George the advocate, Sir. Be my soul, he writ them

with his own hand—Mr. Donnaldson told me so. Won’t you buy it? God bless you, buy it.” Overwhelmed with shame, confusion, and anguish, I retreated most precipitately to my own house; wrote a fulminating letter to Donaldson threatning to have him laid by the heels for taking such liberties with a man of my rank and dignity, and order’d him to go to the street and contradict that vile calumny instantly … I would have sent you the dedication, but it is still in Captain Erskine’s custody’ (Dempster, pp. 57–58). 2 That is, GD. 3 Helicon, the mountain and stream of the muses. 4 ‘Captain Erskine’. 5 ‘[I]n the pride and prime of his life’ is a phrase used to describe Yorick in Tristram Shandy, I. x. 6 Presumably Edmund Burke (1729–97), who was known in literary circles for his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757 (ESTC T42248). In 1759–60 he was serving as secretary to William Hamilton, and

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accompanied him to Ireland 1761–64 (Namier and Brooke, ii. 146). JB knew of Burke’s fame as a theorist of the sublime and the beautiful long before he had met Burke (1772) or read his book (1779). JB admitted that his ‘first views’ of Burke were in his capacity ‘as Authour of the Sublime & Beautiful’ (Journ. 22 Apr. 1788). This early enthusiasm can be dated to the years 1759– 60: ‘I recollected that the first time I had contemplated the character of Mr. Burke was at Glasgow, four and twenty years ago, when I was a Student of law there, and viewed him like a Planet in the heavens’ (Journ. 10 Apr. 1784). Yet it was not until 1779 that JB ‘read … in Burke’s Sublime & Beautiful, which it is strange to think I never read before’ (Journ. 18–19 July 1779). (For a lengthy essay on his relationship with JB, see Corr. 4, pp. 81–102.) A ‘second edition’ of Burke’s Enquiry followed in 1759, providing ‘an introductory discourse concerning taste, and several other additions’ (ESTC T42249). In 1761 a ‘third edition’ appeared (ESTC T42250). All three editions were published by the Dodsleys. Lincoln noted that although JB made frequent informed references to Burke’s Enquiry in later writings, this ‘earliest reference, in the Elegy, was probably based upon a review of Burke since he did not read the [Enquiry] until 1779’ (Lincoln, p. 209). 7 ‘An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady’, third stanza:

ruary, 1757 …, 1757, was occasioned by the solemn fast to beseech victory in the Seven Years’ War. A sermon preached before the … Lords … in the Abbey-Church, Westminster, on Friday, January 30, 1761 …, 1761, dealt with the fast commemorating the execution of Charles I. It is not known when or where JB encountered the remark attributed here to Egerton. 10 That is, GD. 11 William Wilkie (1721–72). Previously a farmer and a Church of Scotland minister, in 1759 he had been made Professor of Natural Philosophy at St. Andrews, where he devoted his non-teaching hours to experimental moorland farming. In 1766 he was given an honorary D.D. Wilkie was referred to as ‘The Scottish Homer’ for his attempt to revive the English poetic epic. He based his Epigoniad on the fourth book of the Iliad, writing in heroic couplets as Pope had in his translation of Homer. The first edition of Wilkie’s The epigoniad. A poem. In nine books had been printed in Edinburgh in 1757 by Hamilton, Balfour, & Neill (ESTC T140517). JB’s references to Wilkie in this letter and his verse epistle to Menalcas—‘What time in WILKIE’S flowing strains,/ WILKIE the HOMER of our plains/ We view’d the fair Aetolian maid,/ By love, by too fond love betray’d’ (p. 23) are the only evidences Lincoln found that he had read the poem (Lincoln, p. 269). Despite JB’s dismissive ridicule here, the Epigoniad did reasonably well among critics and in the literary market. It was reviewed harshly in Crit. Rev., but won praise from David Hume. The second edition appeared in 1759, simultaneously issued in London for A. Millar, and in Edinburgh for A. Kincaid and J. Bell, Edinburgh: The epigoniad. A poem. In nine books. By William Wilkie, V.D.M. The second edition, carefully corrected and improved. To which is added, a dream. In the manner of Spenser, 1759 (ESTC N9244). A second ‘second edition’ appeared in 1769. 12 From Brobdingnag, land of giants, in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels: ‘These Whales I have known so large that a Man could hardly carry one upon his Shoulders’ (II. ch. 4, Blackwell ed., p. 96). Gulliver says of the Brobdingnagians: ‘The Learning of this People is very defective; consisting only in Morality, History, Poetry, and Mathematicks; wherein they must be allowed to excel.… [A]s to Ideas, Entities, Abstractions and Transcendentals, I could never drive the least Conception into their heads’ (II. ch. 7, Blackwell ed., p. 120).

Let me, whose humbler muse hath ne’er aspir’d To such majestic, such exalting strains, By elegiac song be now inspir’d, And mourn a virgin snatched from these plains. (An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady …, 1761, p. 21) 8 Dryden’s ‘Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music; An Ode in Honour of St. Cecilia’s Day’ has nothing in common in themes or expressions with JB’s Elegy, unlike JB’s and AE’s intentional parodies of famous poems. 9 John Egerton (1721–87), later Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry (1768–71) and Bishop of Durham (1771–87), served as Bishop of Bangor (1756–68). He was at this time a relatively unknown, but serious and dutiful, clergyman. His only publications were three single sermons, of which two had been published in 1757 and 1761. A sermon preached before the Right Honourable the Lords spiritual and temporal … in the Abby-Church, Westminster, upon Friday the 11th day of Feb-

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12 AUGUST 1761 13 Sir William Temple (1628–99), author and statesman. Swift had been his secretary at various periods in the 1690s and helped prepare his letters and memoirs for publication. His Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands. By Sir William Temple of Shene, in the county of Surrey, Baronet, Ambassador at the Hague, and at Aix la Chappellè, in the year 1668, appeared 1673 (ESTC R19998). Temple’s book was in its eighth edition by 1747 (ESTC T136947). JB’s acquaintance with this work is not attested any earlier; he would refer to it in his Holland Notes of Sept. and Dec. 1763 and Apr. 1764. In a letter to JJ of 20 Jan. 1764, he

noted ‘I would have you read Sir William Temple’s Observations on the Netherlands. They are short and entertaining, and will give you some idea of the country’ (Lincoln, p. 262; Corr. 1, pp. 119–20). 14 Apollo’s medium, at Delphi (OCD, s.v. ‘Apollo’). 15 The all-but-penultimate line of ‘Lycidas to Menalcas’, p. 24: That flies on fancy’s wing away. I cease, —I cease the empty lay. Farewell, my friend.— Ye zephyrs bear My wishes to MENALCAS’ ear. FINIS.

To the Earl of Buchan, Wednesday 12 August 1761 MS. Known to have existed, but not traced.1 On his collection of ancient coins. He is also collecting ‘the natural curiosities of Scottish stones’,2 and thanks ‘Lord B.’3 for his ‘condescending in writing My Lady Buchan4 about the St. Andrew shells.5 I’m now truly asham’d at my forwardness in giving your Lordship this trouble and in also having laid the foundation for Lady Buchan being made a sharer of it. Signed: Boswell’6 1 This letter is known to have existed from the entry, quoted here, in a Swann Auction Gallery Catalog (8 Dec. 1943, p. 9). The gallery has no record of the purchaser of the letter; the price was listed at $27. It is not certain on the evidence of this quoted fragment that the letter is by JB, and it may possibly be by his uncle, Dr. John Boswell (1710–80); see n. 6 below, and To Pringle, ?between 22 and 29 June 1763, n. 4. 2 In JB’s ‘Journal of North Circuit’ he noted the ‘rocks’ and ‘caves’ at Wemyss (see n. 5 below), and observed the ‘rugged rocky channel’ at Dunkeld Hermitage. He noted the ‘Huge whinstones’ and was ‘taught to climb the Rocks’ (Journ. 5, 12 May). 3 If the letter’s date was catalogued correctly, the Earl to whom the letter was addressed would have been Henry David Erskine (1710–67), 10th Earl of Buchan from 1745. Buchan was a Fellow of the Royal Society and had been a Grand Master of the Scots Freemasons. The Swann Catalog identified the recipient as his son, David Steuart Erskine (1742–1829), 11th Earl of Buchan from 1767, a founder of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1780), and a literary patron. He received his LL.D. from Glasgow 1763 and 1766. The future eleventh earl was styled ‘Lord Cardross’ before he became Earl, did not marry until Oct. 1771, and therefore would have had no ‘Lady Buchan’ (except his mother). Like his

father, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and became Grand Master of the Freemasons in Scotland (1782–84). As he himself noted, ‘he withdrew from public life at a very early period after his succession to the title [in 1767], and dedicated himself to the duties of a private station, the advancement of science and literature, and the improvement of his native country by the arts of peace’. He was a distant cousin of JB, and was present at JB’s meeting with Pitt the Elder, 23 Feb. 1766 (Comp. Peer. ii. 382–83; Journ. 23 Feb. 1766; Douglas’s Peerage, i. 278–81). 4 Agnes Steuart (d. 1778), Countess of Buchan, married the 10th Earl in 1739. She had been instructed in ‘the elements of the mathematics’ by Maclaurin, and she taught her son that subject; he described her as ‘of elegant taste and genius … and brilliant imagination’ (Scots Peer. ii. 276–78; Douglas’s Peerage, i. 278–81). 5 JB’s ‘Journal of North Circuit’ noted his visit to Dunkeld. There, he met Lady Charlotte Murray, who among other hobbies created ‘shellwork’. JB noted ‘I made her a present of a few shells’. He had been at the shore on that trip at least once, at Wemyss (Journ. 5–6, 11 May). St. Andrews would have been an easy source of seashells but JB’s northbound route on the North Circuit went from Wemyss to Perth, bypassing St. Andrews. According to Scots Mag. June 1761, xxiii. 327, the circuit ran Perth (7

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May) Inverness (15 May) and Aberdeen (23 May). The end of the ‘Journal of North Circuit’ in medias res in Inverness leads to the question of whether JB picked up ‘St. Andrew’ shells on the trip homewards down the east coast. 6 If the Swann catalogue reported it accurately, this signature was a very unusual one for JB, who is not known to have signed himself by surname alone. JB’s father, Lord Auchinleck, was Lord Buchan’s contemporary and had an excellent collection of coins, but he habitually signed both names, and also tended to spell the family name ‘Boswel’, as in ‘Alexr Boswel’ (e.g., From Lord Auchinleck,

14 July 1763, Yale MS. C 217). JB’s uncle, Dr. John Boswell, was also a numismatist, and had a substantial collection of precious stones, shells, and other curiosities. JB wrote to JJ: ‘he is a great Virtuoso. His collection of Shells and Pebbles will amuse you greatly’ (20 July 1763, Corr. 1, p. 93); Dr. Boswell showed ‘his curious museum’ to SJ in Edinburgh in Nov. 1773 (Hebrides, p. 385). Like the Buchan earls, Dr. Boswell was an enthusiastic Scots freemason. Furthermore, he did at least once c. 1761 sign his name ‘Boswell’, although he also signed ‘Jon Boswell’ (From Dr. John Boswell, 11 Apr. 1763, Yale MS. C 383; 28 Mar. 1766, Yale MS. C 386.7).

To Anne Mackintosh,1 between 12 and 25 August 17612 MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193); transcribed from a photostat. A draft. JB’s ‘Plan of a Volume of Poems to be published for me by Becket & Dehondt’ demonstrates that in an early plan, ‘To Lady Macintosh’ was projected to be 100 lines, and in a later plan (a second list following the first and longer one), ‘Lady M’ remained at 100 lines (Werner, pp. 19–22). Where stanzas can be inferred through indentation, they seem to imply a hope for a poem of twenty-five four-line stanzas. Hankins reconstructs the poem as ff. 19 r., 20 r., 19 v., 78 r., 78 v., 20 v. Werner’s reconstruction follows the same order. However, he modified the text in several important ways. In 20 r. he omitted the first six and relocated the last two lines. In 19 v. he concluded with the ‘upside-down’ couplet from 20 r. In 78 v. he interpolated six couplets of material on poets and poetry from 79 r. in a different order from that in which they appeared in the MS, and moved the ‘rein’/‘again’ couplet to the end of the section. TITLE:

An Epistle to Lady3 Mcintosh.

[f. 19 r.] Your Ladyship is now at Moy4 The luckiest hit! a rhime to Joy For joy and mirth must certainly Wherever you are present be. To that good Place I send you this For which when next we meet a kiss I boldly5 claim—for Bards6 you know Of course7 confounded forward grow If you dont think it out of season For this8 I have a ready reason9 A groupe of Girls with10 Persons fine The Muses calld—no less than nine These Dogs the Poets still are courting And with them on Parnassus sporting For which sometimes the jocund blades With Phœbus11 go to Loggerheads For he must needs like Turkish Prince Whom I have read of sometime since12 78

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Monopolise the lovely13 frames Of all these dear14 enchanting Dames [f. 20 r.15] And thinks like Eunuchs to employ The sons of verse—as blind16 to joy Who17 decency should neer offend But his fair Damsels cooly tend As safe as Israel’s son’s woud bacon But his good18 Godship’s19 much mistaken. Madam I hope you have been well Since last I saw you—woud you tell This pleasing tale20 in pleasing way Write me a single sentence21 pray. When do you next intend to bless The chearfull Town of Inverness ********************22 In the Assembly hall where we Have had such store of festive glee23 We join the lightsom24 set and trip The Night25 away with sprightly step [f. 19 v.] Was26 it not fine to see us strut Each thought27 ‘I the best figure cut’ I’m sure at least that One28 thought so No matter whether right or no. Mr. Director if you please A Minuet—do let me seise Time swiftly posting nor delay One single moment to be gay— Nor lose a grain of running Sand While I—good heav’n!—hold in my hand Her whom the bold Clan Hatton29 own The comely Partner of their throne. Sir tis impossible I’m sure A Country dance is on the floor. Dear Mr. Grant!30 in earnest no— Up strike the fiddles brisk oho! I hear it now—that highland Reel Makes my heart jovial31 transports feel. [f. 78 r.] O how I long32 again to be 79

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A Sharer33 of your Jollity But must yet for a while remain To Labour34 bound in heavy35 chain. Law is a study very dry Ranger36 thought37 thus—and so do I.38 When I thro’ toil have39 wrought my way To A40 clear prospect of lifes day, Then I41 shall42 quit this side of Forth43 And hasten to the blythsom North Where44 in the45 Chieftains noble hall We gladsom souls assembl’d all,46 With hearty wellcom shall be found And Happiness diffus’d47 arround. ———————————————————————48 With Happiness diffus’d arround And [f. 78 v.] Had I been writing to the Laird49 I should not have a farthing car[’]d50 In stile of Poetry to rise And strive to paint your sparkling eyes With all the charms which you posess Your Judgment Wit Polite Address.51 But I must quickly draw the rein And talk this52 ——————————————————————— For to yoursellf to you fear53— Till54 so like Flattery appear. You55 Madam tho’ it may seem odd Will in discernment sometimes nodd ——————————————————————— But I must quickly draw the rein And pull my courser back again ——————————————————————— That sometimes is when you would fain Your own just56 Character obtain. This then I humour and unstrung My harp thro[w] by for a plain57 tongue [f. 20 v.] To Macintosh make my respects A Man who ne’er his friend neglects Firm honesty is his pursuit And when he cant speak truth he’s mute 80

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For hospitality renown’d58 Ador’d by all the countrey round At his sweet seat devoid of care He breathes in peace the purest air Improves59 his Ground surveys his trees60 Now hunts now sits at home at ease *********************61 In his small Pinnace skims62 the lake63 Or beats for game64 the furzy brake ——————————————————————— Thanks God65 for having been so kind Where can we one more happy find. Assure his worship of my love And say my prayers to heavn above Are that with66 all his favours past His warm regard to me may last 1 Anne (Farquharson) Mackintosh (1725–84). During the Rebellion of 1745– 46, Lady Mackintosh raised a regiment of Mackintoshes and Macgillivrays in support of the Jacobites, and was nicknamed ‘Colonel Anne’ (Burke’s Landed Gentry, 1937; Scots Mag. Mar. 1784, xlvi. 167). She was said to have been responsible for the skirmish known as the ‘Rout of Moy’ in 1746, when, in mid-Feb., during his march on Inverness, Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender, stayed at Moy Hall with a guard of about 500 men. A ‘Hanoverian’ force of 1500 under the Earl of Loudoun (whose estate, like Auchinleck, was in Ayrshire) was marching on Moy under cover of darkness. As they marched down the Inverness road, Loudoun’s advance guard encountered Lady Mackintosh’s advance guard of five men. In the stormy night’s confusion, the Government troops fled (The Hub of the Highlands: The Book of Inverness and District, 1975, pp. 205–06; Robert Forbes, Lyon in Mourning, ed. Henry Paton, 1895–96, ii. 245–47). JB recorded meeting Lady Mackintosh in his ‘Journal of North Circuit’ for 1761, the earliest of his journals known to survive (Journ. 14–16 May). JB met her on three days 14–16 May. One of Pottle’s earliest articles on JB spun out this poem and its reply from Lady Mackintosh into an expanded, whimsical, journalistic account of their meetings (‘Bozzy Was a Bold Young Blade’, New York Times Book Review, 23 Aug. 1925, p. 1). 2 On 25 Aug. in a letter to AE, JB writes, ‘Since I came to the Countrey I have wrote an Epistle to Lady Mcintosh.’ JB wrote to JJ from Auchinleck on 21 Aug. apologizing for

his failure ‘to take leave of you, in form, before I left Edinr.’; he invited JJ to Auchinleck for a visit (To JJ, 21 Aug., Corr. 1, p. 12). The tone of the letter seems to suggest that he wrote the poem soon after his arrival at Auchinleck. 3 ‘Ladyship’ here denotes a courtesy title rather than an indication of a peerage; wives of chiefs of clans were styled ‘Lady’. 4 Moy Hall (Moighe = ‘plain’), the seat of the chief of Clan Chattan, SE of Inverness (The Hub of the Highlands: The Book of Inverness and District, 1975, p. 372). The old castle, on an island in the loch, was replaced c. 1700 by a mansion, which burned down in 1800. Pennant noted that it was ten miles from Inverness, and that it was ‘called Starshnach-nan-gai’el, or the threshold of the Highlands’. A sword of James V was kept at the house owing to the privilege given the captain of Clan Chattan of ‘holding the king’s sword at all coronations’; a sword of ‘Viscount Dundee’ was also kept at Moy Hall (Pennant, pp. 187–88). 5 MS. ‘boldly’ written above deleted ‘humbly’ 6 JB’s description of himself as a ‘bard’, a term freely employed in his other poems in his volume, played into his fantasies of Highland culture. They appear here long before his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and also occur in Pennant: ‘Vocal musick was much in vogue amongst them, and their songs were chiefly in praise of their antient heroes. I was told that they still have fragments … which they carrol as they go along; these vocal traditions are the foundation of the works of Ossian’ (Pennant, p. 196).

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18 MS. ‘faith’ written above line, i.e., ‘But, faith, his Godship’s much mistaken.’ 19 Though JB implies a parallel between Apollo’s ‘Godship’ and the ‘Turkish Prince’, the Sultans of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, unlike the god-emperors of the Ancient World, were forbidden by the monotheistic Islam to claim ‘Godship’. ‘No matter how high his position, in the eyes of religion the sultan was a man like other men—a Muslim who had duties and responsibilities for which he would answer on the Day of Judgement’ (Justin McCarthy, The Ottoman Turks: An Introductory History to 1923, 1997, p. 107). Yet, like the kings of Great Britain, the Sultans made claims to rule by divine right. ‘According to old Turkish beliefs, the appointment of the sovereign was in the hands of God and, therefore, to establish a fixed law of succession or actively to challenge the enthroned sultan was to oppose the will of God’ (Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600, 1973, p. 59). The Turkish sultans were chiefly agents of secular power, by contrast to the weakening caliphs who were the official representatives of sacred law. Yet Ottoman sultans styled themselves ‘caliph’, thus claiming religious leadership. Their claim was disputed by the Muslim clerisy, who correctly insisted that the true caliphs could trace descent from Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh (M. A. Cook, ed., A History of the Ottoman Empire to 1730: Chapters from the Cambridge History of Islam and the New Cambridge Modern History, 1976, pp. 4–6). Sultans also styled themselves ‘Servant and Protector of the Holy Places’. 20 MS. ‘tale’ written above deleted ‘news’ 21 MS. ‘sentence’ written above deleted ‘word I’ 22 MS. ‘With your appearance’ deleted. 23 ‘At 6, went to Concert in the Town’s hall. Pretty well. Several young Ladies played. A good Company enough. After it a Dance. I opened with Lady Mcintosh, and Afterwards danc’d with Lady Suddie. Came home at 10. Supt by myself and went to bed serene’ (Journ. 15 May). 24 MS. ‘lightsom’ written above deleted ‘happy’ 25 MS. ‘time’ written above line. 26 MS. ‘Was’ written above deleted ‘Is’ 27 MS. ‘thought’ written above deleted ‘thinks’ 28 MS. ‘at least that One’ written above deleted ‘that sometimes I’ 29 A variant spelling of Clan Chattan, indicating the name’s pronunciation.

MS. ‘will most’ after ‘Of course’ deleted. MS. ‘that’ above ‘this’, with ‘for that/ this’ written later on in the line. 9 The options left by JB in the MS provide three possible readings: ‘For that I have a ready reason’, ‘I have for that a ready reason’, ‘I have for this a ready reason’. Werner (p. 128) chose ‘For that I have a ready reason’. 10 MS. ‘of’ written above line. 11 Phoebus Apollo, patron god of poets. 12 As JB noted sixteen years later, ‘I delight in Oriental ideas’ (Journ. 4 Mar. 1778). ‘A List of Books Belonging to James Boswell, Esq.’, apparently made c. 1770 and listing JB’s Edinburgh ‘town’ collection, contained two books in which JB could have ‘read of’ the Near East: Chronica Turcica et Vita Scanderbergi, 1670; Le P. Henricus à Porta’s De Linguarum Orient. ad omne doctrinae genus prastantia, 1758. It also contained a French translation of SJ’s Rasselas (Histoire de Rasselas) in the 1760 Amsterdam edition, the last-mentioned perhaps purchased when JB was learning French in the Netherlands in 1763–64 (Lincoln, Appendix III). The books which JB is known to have read or consulted on ‘Oriental’ topics from the 1760s into the 1780s included SJ’s Rasselas (ment. Journ. 10 July 1763); Richard Knolles’ 1603 General History of the Turks (ment. 1768); Alexander Drummond’s 1753 Travels Through Different Cities of Germany, Italy, Greece and Several Parts of Asia, etc. (ment. 1773); Montesquieu’s 1721 Lettres Persanes (ment. 1775); John Richardson’s 1750 A Dictionary, Persian, Arabick, and English, to which is prefixed a Dissertation on Languages, Literature, and Manners of Eastern Nations (ment. 1778); and Anthony Galland’s 1726 translation of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments (ment. 1781); see Lincoln, Appendices I and II. As usual, it is more difficult to reconstruct JB’s reading for his second and third decades of life than for subsequent decades. 13 MS. ‘lovely’ written above deleted ‘tender’ 14 MS. ‘all these dear’ written above deleted ‘many most’ 15 This leaf is mostly written upsidedown. The lines from ‘And thinks like Eunuchs’ to ‘Have had such store’ were written upside-down, and the couplet ‘We join the lightsom’ to ‘The time away with’ was written right-side up. 16 MS. ‘dead’ written above line. 17 MS. ‘Who’ followed by deleted ‘never’ above deleted ‘should’ 8

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BETWEEN 12 AND 25 AUGUST 1761 30 Unidentified. Probably the ‘Mr. Director’ mentioned above. 31 MS. ‘jovial’ written above deleted ‘lightsom’ 32 MS. ‘long’ written above deleted ‘wish’ 33 MS. ‘Sharer’ written above deleted ‘partner’ 34 MS. ‘Study’ written above line. 35 MS. ‘iron’, ‘clumsy’ written above line, ‘with prudent X’ written below line; Werner (p. 129) took the ‘X’ mark to indicate ‘with prudent’ was the final reading. 36 Ranger, a rakish and bibulous Temple student, averse to marriage and study, is a major comic character in Benjamin Hoadley’s The Suspicious Husband, 1747. Garrick played Ranger several times at Drury Lane during JB’s months in London in 1760 (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 778, 787, 799). One of Ranger’s lines condemned the law: ‘The law is a damnable dry Study, Mr. Bellamy, and without something now and then to amuse, and relax, it would be too much for my brain, I promise ye’ (The Suspicious Husband, 1747, I. i). 37 MS. ‘exclaims’ written above ‘thought so’ 38 JB was studying Civil Law in compliance with his father’s wishes. He complained in May that his ‘flighty imagination [was] quite cramp’d’ and he was ‘obliged to study Corpus Iuris Civilis’ (To WJT, 1 May, Corr. 6, pp. 33–34). Indeed, his visit to Moy was made in the context of a busman’s holiday, since he was ostensibly travelling to witness the North Circuit legal system in action. 39 MS. ‘But when thro toil I’ve’ written above ‘When I thro’ toil have’ 40 MS. ‘the’ written above ‘A’ with insertion caret. 41 MS. ‘I’ deleted. 42 MS. ‘II [for I’ll?] cleave the Waves’ written above ‘Then I shall quit’. JB amended this line by crossing ‘cleave’ out and replacing it with ‘cut’. The first line of Lady Mackintosh’s reply strongly suggests that JB’s wording in his letter differed from the wording of the text above, providing even more evidence of his revisions of his verses (From Anne Mackintosh, 22 Sept.). 43 On JB’s one-hour trip on the ferry which cleaved the waves of the Forth from Leith to Kinghorn he ‘kept the chaise and sat snug’ during the ‘brisk gale and a fine passage’ (Journ. 5 May). The 6 1/2 mile trip across the Forth could either be an easy journey of an hour given favourable winds, or if fighting a head-wind or dawdling in a

calm could take up to five or even six hours (Cassell’s Edinburgh, iii. 212). 44 MS. ‘Where’ above deleted ‘Then’ 45 MS. ‘worthy’ written above ‘the’, but presumably meant to replace ‘noble’ (see Werner, p. 129). 46 In 1672, after a long dispute between Mackintoshes and Macphersons, the title of ‘Chief of the Clan Chattan’ was granted to the ‘Chief of the Name of Mackintosh’, hence Mackintosh was at once the chief of the clans Mackintosh and Chattan. Clan Chattan was a confederated, polymorphous, hydra-headed clan of clans. The ‘Hail kin’ (though difficult to number precisely because of the rises and declines of various branches) was made up of about seventeen tribes—including the Clan Mackintosh itself as stem-family—to which were often added the ‘Nine tribes of Clan Mackintosh’. Chattan had in former times fielded 2,000 men (Frank Adam, revised by Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, The Clans, Septs, and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands, 4th ed., 1952, pp. 208–09, 249–51, 302–03, 327–29, 557–58). ‘[T]he Clan Chattan had its head and leader, to whom all the members gave obedience when it met as a whole; yet composed as it was of various tribes, with different surnames, it resulted that each tribe had its Chieftain, supreme over his own tribe, but subsidiary to the Captain’. Bonds of Union for 1609, 1664, and 1756 survived; ‘Aeneas Mackintosh’ was among the fifteen signatories of the 1756 ‘Consent, Approval, and Request’ (Charles Fraser-Mackintosh, An Account of the Confederation of Clan Chattan; its Kith and Kin, 1898, v–vi, unpaginated Appendix of the Bonds of Union). The links between the Chattan and the Mackintoshes were so close that Pennant, touring in 1769, misspoke of them as the same entity: ‘the Clan Chattan, or the M’Intoshes’. He noted that their power had declined in population in this era: they raised 1500 fighting men for the Jacobites in 1715, but in 1745 ‘scarce half that number’ (Pennant, p. 188). 47 MS. ‘diffused’ written above deleted ‘be spread’ 48 The one and a quarter lines following this mark in the MS were not deleted, but were almost certainly meant to be dropped. Probably the line serves as JB’s deletion mark for material below it. 49 Angus (or Aeneas) Mackintosh (d. 1770), 22nd Chief of Clan Chattan, who had married Anne (Farquharson) Mackintosh in 1741. Unlike his wife and many of the two clans of which he was chief, he had

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been a pro-Georgian Loyalist in the ’FortyFive. 50 Werner erroneously emended: ‘I should not care a farthing card’. 51 JB had difficulty with the next six lines. They are so corrected as to be at times nearly illegible, and the sense is not always clear. He may have wished to omit them altogether. 52 MS. ‘his’ and ‘at’ written above ‘this’. 53 MS. ‘glare’ written below ‘fear’; this line, despite the various options presented, is deficient in both metre and sense. 54 MS. ‘Till’ written above deleted ‘Twould’, presumably in error for ‘Twill’. 55 MS. ‘You’ written above illegible word ?‘Dear’ 56 MS. ‘own just’ written above deleted ‘real’ 57 MS. ‘and use my’ written above ‘for a plain’ 58 JB wrote of Mackintosh in his ‘Journal of North Circuit’: ‘The laird is a kindhearted friendly Man—posest of true simplicity of Manners, & full of Hospitality—A very amiable Character tho’ not a man of the greatest reach’ (Journ. 14 May).

MS. ‘Surveys’ written above ‘Improves’ MS. ‘Looks oer his Garden fields and Trees’ written above entire line. 61 MS. ‘Sails on the lake with a soft breeze’ deleted. 62 ‘Came to Dalmaquarie at 12. Here was the Laird of Mcintosh waiting for us. We walk’d a mile to the Loch and then got into his Boat. Had a sweet sail to Moy’ (Journ. 14 May). 63 Loch Moy. Pennant described Moy Hall as ‘pleasantly seated at the end of a small but beautifull lake of the same name, full of Trout, and Char … This water is about two miles and a half long, and half a mile broad, adorned with two or three isles prettily wooded. Each side is bounded by hills cloathed at the bottom with trees’ (Pennant, pp. 187–88). 64 The area around Moy Hall was known for its fine hunting which was conducted for livelihood as well as leisure: ‘At present there is a trade in the skins of Deer, Roes, and other beasts, which the Highlanders bring down to the fairs’ (Pennant, p. 189). 65 MS. ‘God’ written above ‘Heaven’ 66 MS. ‘with’ written above illegible. 60

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 25 August 1761 (MS)1 MS. Yale (*L 506).

Auchinleck, August 1761 DEAR SIR: No ceremony I beseech you—Give me your hand as usual—How is my worthy friend Captain Erskine? How goes it with the noble Countess?2 the elegant, gentle Lady Anne?3 the lovely, sighing Lady Jenny?4 And how O How does that Glorious Luminary Lady Betty5 do? My dear Cousins!6 I fancy myself amongst you, as happy as—not a Prince, because that is a commonplace simile—and I detest the beaten track that every Blockhead has trode before me—but as happy as I have been when we were together, and Mirth and Gladness and every thing that was good went round. Would you beleive it, notwithstanding of all this Volatility of mine—For you must know Sir that the Boswells came over from Normandy with William the Conqueror,7 and that some of us still retain a little of the same disposition with our Ancestors the French—I do for one—Would you beleive it that since parting with THE FAMILY,8 I have realy been a good deal pensive; disposed now to read Shenstone’s9 Pastoral on Absence,10 or some such pretty tender Composition, charmingly fitted to soothe a melancholy mind, and gently stir the languid Spirits. There is an inexpressible satisfaction in talking of these soft sensations of Grief. Beg pardon for a sudden thought—Pray when I mentioned ‘gently stirring the Spirits’ did the Song of ‘Gently stir the Spit arround’11 occur to you? I hope not; for in that case you must inevitably have been thrown into that comical Convulsion called Laughter, very very opposite to the serious intention of what in the sincerity of my heart I was saying. 84

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I hope You have past your time agreably amongst the wild rude scenes which now surround you.12 I am studying Law most inveterately13 and shall not be with my Father upon the Western Circuit.14 But (if you will invite Me) I purpose being with you some time in October.15 O! if the time were come!—This last Exclamation is a Stroke of the true Simple much to be admired. Since I came to the Countrey I have wrote an Epistle to Lady Mcintosh.16 Judge of it’s merit by a Specimen. A groupe of Girls with Persons fine,— The Muses call’d—no less than nine— These Dogs the Poets still are courting And with them on Parnassus sporting; For which full oft the jocund Blades With Phoebus go to Loggerheads: For he must needs—like Turkish Prince Whom I have read of sometime since— Monopolise the lovely frames Of all these bright enchanting Dames, And thinks like Eunuchs to employ The sons of verse as dead to Joy— Who Decency should ne’er offend But his fair Damsels cooly tend As safe as Israel’s sons would Bacon; But faith his Godship’s much mistaken. Remember me with all imaginable kindness to the Family, and beleive me Your Affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1

The date is supplied from E–B, p. 1. The Dowager Countess of Kellie, Janet (Pitcairn) Erskine (m. 1731, d. 1775), who was (from 1731) the second wife and (from 1756) widow of the 5th Earl of Kellie. AE was third of their six children. 3 Lady Anne Erskine (1735–1802), the second daughter (Scots Peer. v. 89; Comp. Bar. iv. 366; Douglas’s Peerage, ii. 19). Scots. Mag. May 1802 provided a notice of her. JB often dealt with the Erskine sisters as a group; in Journ. 30 Oct. 1762 he noted, ‘They are all very good humoured’. In Journ. 11 Dec. 1762, JB mentioned the Erskine ‘ladies’, newly-arrived in London, as ‘getting into fashion and looked like the best idea of the Ladies of Kellie, daughters of a Scotch earl, descendants of the family of Mar’. Yet he then complained that the Erskine women ‘grew hot and showed a strong example of the Edinburgh women’s roughness of manner …. They have all a

too-great violence in dispute, and are sometimes put quite out of humour by it’ (Journ. 11 Dec. 1762). JB described Lady Anne as having ‘an elegance of form, a sweetness of manners, and a good share of Wit’ (Journ. 30 Oct. 1762). To AE, 14 Sept. mentions her musical talents. Some twenty years later, he complained of the ‘scottish vulgarity of manners and censorious cast’ of AE, Lady Anne, and her elder sister (Journ. 19 June 1781). 4 Lady Janet ‘Jenny’ Erskine (1742–70), the youngest child. Later (1763) wife of Sir Robert Anstruther of Balcaskie, Bt. (Scots Peer. v. 89; Comp. Bar. iv. 366; Douglas’s Peerage, ii. 19). JB described Lady Janet as having ‘most lovely looks and great vivacity’ (Journ. 30 Oct. 1762). His journal for Jan.-Feb. mentioned that he was ‘in love wt. Lady Jenny’ (Journ. c. 2–15 Feb. 1762). 5 Lady Elizabeth ‘Betty’ (Erskine) Macfarlane or MacFarlan (c. 1734–94), the

2

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eldest daughter. Wife (1760–67) of Walter Macfarlane of Macfarlane, and subsequently wife (1768–70) of Rear-Admiral Alexander Colville, 7th Lord Colville of Culross (Scots Peer. ii. 562–63, v. 89; Douglas’s Peerage, i. 357–58, ii. 19). Lady Macfarlane’s dealings with JB form a small but significant section of the London journal of 1762–63, and she was more prominent in his life than her sisters. JB described her in 1762 as ‘a Woman of noble figure and majestic deportment, uncommon good sense and cleverness’ (Journ. 30 Oct. 1762). JB usually enjoyed her company, and approved of her sentimental Jacobitism, but occasionally professed himself shocked or even disgusted by her forthrightness and materialism. She visited London with her relations 1 Dec. 1762–14 Mar. 1763, where she complained that it was ‘very cutting to find so many people higher than one’s self and to see so many splendid equipages, none of which belong to one’, and it was said that ‘she aimed at a way of life that she could not afford’ (Journ. 5 Dec., 29 Dec. 1762; yet see 17 Jan. 1763). JB’s sexual attraction towards her was admitted in late 1762 even more explicitly than in this letter: ‘My Passion for Lady Betty which I should have remarked as posessing me at Kelly, was now gone’ (6 Nov. 1762). Yet as usual when declaring emotional relations over with and done, JB was still romantically inclined even after this 1762 journal entry. His feelings were summed up in his statement about Macfarlane and her: ‘O could he but embrace her person! or as a friend desire me to do it!’ (Journ. 14 Mar. 1763). It was not until 1776 that JB admitted that he ‘had once [before 1760, or more likely 1767–68] serious thoughts of proposing marriage to her’ (23 Nov. 1776). Four of her social notes to JB from the years 1767 to 1788 survive; two have appeared in Corr. 5 (p. 120), which provides evidence of five more missing elements from their correspondence (see List of Correspondents, p. xix). In a social note of ?13 Feb. 1767 (Corr. 5, p. 120), she referred to JB as a ‘towering Oak’. In the final known letter (6 Feb. 1788), she assured JB of her ‘unalterable friendship’ for him (Yale MSS. C 812–15, Catalogue ii. 568–69). 6 JB and AE were both descended from the sixteenth-century 5th Lord Erskine, making them fifth cousins once removed (Scots Peer. v. 81–89, 609–22). In Memoirs JB, he wrote of his mother as ‘descended in the line of Alva from the noble House of Mar’ (p. xxix). This admittedly distant relationship mattered to JB and AE, given their

shared fascination with tracing connections among various families back as far as the Middle Ages. On 23 Nov. 1776, AE read to JB a ‘note of genealogy which shewed clearly that he and I, as descended of the Mar Family, were descended of Edward III of England, the Captain in the 15th degree …. There is something generous in the consciousness of noble descent’ (Journ.). 7 ‘Sieur de Boseville, a man of rank and distinction, came from Normandy to England with William the Conqueror, [and] had a considerable command in his army at … Hastings’ (Douglas’s Baronage, p. 307). JB believed that the Boswells of Balmuto descended from the Norman Bosevilles, as did Rogers in his introduction to Boswelliana (pp. 1–5). The Boswells of Auchinleck were a cadet branch of the Balmuto family. This letter confirms that JB already believed that the Boswells descended from the Boisvilles (or Bosevilles) via the Yorkshire Bosvilles even before his meeting in 1763 with William Bosville who assured him of the kinship. JB would later meet Bosville’s father, Godfrey Bosville of Thorpe and Gunthwaite, and would come to regard him as his ‘chief’, although Pottle argued that there were at best ‘shaky genealogical grounds’ for a Boswell-Bosville link (Earlier Years, p. 284). 8 JB’s meeting with the Erskines—the Dowager Countess and Ladies Anne, Janet and Elizabeth—must have taken place in the latter half of May, or more likely June or July 1761, as JB had only obtained his letter of introduction to AE from GD on 10 May 1761 (Journ.). ‘THE FAMILY’ is perhaps crypto-Jacobite phrasing, given the Erskines of Kellie’s connections to militant Jacobitism as late as the ’Forty-Five and to sentimental Jacobitism into the later decades of the eighteenth century. JB noted that at one point in London in 1763, he and the Erskines ‘all agreed in our love of the Royal Family of Stuart and regret at their being driven from Britain … a bold and rash way of talking’ (Journ. 17 Jan. 1763). The phrase ‘THE FAMILY’ was used in one early version of ‘God Save the King’ to support Charles Edward Stuart’s claim to the throne: God Bliss the Prince of Wales The true-born Prince of Wales Sent us by thee Grant us one favour more The King for to restore As Thou has done before The Familie.

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See S. C. Roberts, The Family, 1963; and J. C. D. Clark, English Society: 1688–1832, 1985, pp. 157–58. 9 William Shenstone (1714–63), poet and landscape gardener (The Letters of William Shenstone, ed. Marjorie Williams, 1939). 10 Shenstone’s Pastoral ‘Absence’ was one of an eventually four-part sequence of pastorals (I. ‘Absence’; II. ‘Hope’; III. ‘Solicitude’; IV. ‘Disappointment’). The lines below (ll. 5–8, 9–12, 45–48) offer a sense of the poem:

Swiftly make the jack go round, Let me have it nicely brown’d. III. On the table spread the cloth, Let the knives be sharp and clean; Pickles get of every sort, And a sallad crisp and green: Then with a small beer and sparkling wine, O ye Gods! how shall I dine.

The song was a parody of the serious pastoral ‘Gently touch the warbling lyre’ in the same volume, printed just before its parody (Allan Ramsay, The Tea Table Miscellany: Or, A Collection of Choice Songs, Scots and English, 11th ed., London 1750, pp. 347–48). 12 AE was stationed at Fort George, where he had met JB, and whose wild, rude scenes were described in his (as yet unsent) first letter to JB. AE had been in Edinburgh in early Aug., according to the AE–GD–JB letters of that month. At some point between early Aug. and early Sept. (when he returned to the family home of Kellie) AE visited his sister Lady Macfarlane’s seat at New Tarbet, at the head of Loch Long in Arrochar Parish, another relatively wild and rude locale, at least by Edinburgh standards. Pococke described ‘the Laird of McFarlin’s house’ as ‘a very pretty place at the head of Lough Long’ (Richard Pococke, Tours in Scotland: 1747, 1750, 1760, 1887, SHS 1, p. 64). AE described New Tarbet as a place with ‘fine ingredients for poetical description’. ‘[T]he rest of us are come to Kelly. It was most unaccountable in me to leave New-Tarbat; for no where will you meet with such. However, we are all going back again … some time in October’ (From AE, 11 Sept.). For Kellie Castle, in Fife, see From AE, 11 Sept., n. 1. 13 See previous letter, n. 38. 14 Lord Auchinleck and Lord Strichen had been appointed to travel the Western Circuit Sept.–Oct. 1761. The Western Circuit scheduled to sit in Stirling (2 Sept.), Inveraray (9 Sept.), and Glasgow (16 Sept.); see Scots Mag. 1761, xxiii. 554. Lord Auchinleck and JB had only recently (May–Aug.) travelled on the Northern Circuit together. 15 JB’s actual visit to New Tarbet, as subsequent correspondence with AE demonstrates, was postponed until the Christmas holidays. 16 See To Anne Mackintosh, between 12 and 25 Aug.

Allow me to muse and to sigh, Nor talk of the change that ye find; None once was so watchful as I; —I have left my dear Phyllis behind. Now I know what it is, to have strove With the torture of doubt and desire; What it is, to admire and to love, And to leave her we love and admire. Thus widely remov’d from the fair, Where my vows, my devotion, I owe, Soft hope is the relique I bear, And my solace wherever I go.

Given JB’s imperfectly repressed feelings for Lady Elizabeth, his choice of poem may have been a sly hint to her. 11 Although no song entitled ‘Gently stir the Spit arround’ has yet been located, there is a fairly good candidate in Ramsay’s TeaTable Miscellany. The song, an imitation in three stanzas, bears strong resemblances to the ‘Ode to Gluttony’ in its transposition of carnal images of food and eating to a style and theme of pastoral love or other high emotion, with punning sexual implications of stirring the spit or making the jack go round. The song has close affinities with JB’s and AE’s vision of urban burlesque pastoral: I. Gently stir and blow the fire Lay the mutton down to roast: Get me quick, ’tis my desire, In the dreeping-pan a toast, That my hunger may remove: Mutton is the meat I love. II. On the dresser see it lyes: On the charming white and red! Finer meat ne’er met my eyes, On the sweetest grass it fed:

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To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 25 August 1761 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 1–2 [LETTER I].

Auchinleck, Aug. 25, 1761 Dear ERSKINE, NO ceremony I beseech you. Give me your hand. How is my honest Captain Andrew? How goes it with the elegant gentle Lady A———? the lovely sighing Lady J———? and how, O 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,1 is the maxim. A light heart may bid defiance to fortune. And yet, Erskine, I must tell you, that I have been a little pensive of late, amorously pensive, and disposed to read Shenstone’s Pastoral on Absence, the tenderness and simplicity of which I greatly admire. A man who is in love is like a man who has got the tooth-ach, he feels most acute pain while nobody pitys him. In that situation I am at present: but well do I know that I will not be long so. So much for inconstancy. As this is my first epistle to you, it cannot in decency be a long one. Pray write to me soon. Your letters, I prophecy, will entertain me not a little; and will besides be extremely serviceable in many important respects. They will supply me with oil to my lamps, grease to my wheels, and blacking to my shoes. They will furnish me with strings to my fiddle, lashes to my whip, lining to my breeches, and buttons to my coat. They will make charming spurs, excellent knee buckles, and inimitable watchkeys. In short, while they last I shall neither want breakfast, dinner, nor supper. I shall keep a couple of horses, and I shall sleep upon a bed of down. I shall be in France this year, and in Spain the next;2 with many other particulars too tedious to mention. You may take me in a metaphorical sense; but I would rather chuse to be understood literally. I am your most affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. 1

This concept appears in JB’s Cub, drafted in 1760 though not published until 1762: ‘… Folly is at least/ Harmless, I think should be confest;/ And that in life it may be well,/ Sometimes to hunt the Bagatelle’ (Cub, p. 23). The word bagatelle had been used in English since c. 1645 (OED), but into the nineteenth century, it was still associated with its French-language roots. ‘Vive la bagatelle’ is a phrase which JB would have encountered in Tristram Shandy:

other day. (I. xix; Tristram Shandy, Florida ed., i. 60) 2 JB’s actual French tour (rather than the projected one referred to here) took place 15 Dec. 1765–c. 12 Feb. 1766. JB never visited Spain, although at least two of his circle during the late 1760s had close connections with it. JB’s brother David eventually moved there, settling as a merchant, in 1768. JB’s friend from 1764, George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal, had resided in Spain 1720–46 during his Jacobite exile. Lord Marischal jestingly encouraged JB to move to Spain, and encouraged him to develop Spanish notions (Corr. 5, p. 24 nn. 1–2; Corr. 7, pp. 11–14 and nn. 2, 5; Edith Cuthell, The Scottish Friend of Frederic the Great: The Last Earl Marischall, 1915, i. 134–225 passim).

… for he had a thousand little sceptical notions of the comick kind to defend, — most of which notions, I verily believe, at first enter’d upon the footing of mere whims, and of a vive la Bagatelle; and as such he would make merry with them for half an hour or so, and having sharpen’d his wit upon ’em, dismiss them till an-

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To George Dempster, Thursday 27 August 1761 MS. Yale (L 414). A copy. HEADING: To George Dempster Esq.

Auchinleck, 27 Aug. 1761 DEAR SIR: I got with all manner of safety, to this Place, some time ago. Fain would I entertain you by a humourous and interesting Recital of the many curious Accidents which befell me upon the road. But (with inexpressible regrett I say it) on rummaging my memory, I cannot recollect a single scrap of diverting Reality;1 and to attempt any thing fancifull would at present, be vain, ridiculous and absurd as I find myself (for what reason it is impossible for me to guess) even duller than usual.2 The Declaration which I have just now made is undoubtedly self-evident. It carrys conviction along with it to all who ‘know the nature of the Beast’:3 For how low how stupid must I be, when I tamely acknowledge my own dullness! A resolute Criminal must be fed upon bread and Water for a good time, and have his Spirits pretty well sunk, before you can obtain from him a Confession of his Guilt. Turpin the noted Highwayman4—even according to the starch’d Ordinary of Newgate’s account of that Heroe5—was not more hardened in Villainy, than I in self-conceit. Never did he assault People with more impudence and easy forwardness, for Gold, than I for Approbation. Never did he take more pains to appear a Gentleman, than I did to appear a Genius. I (little presuming Pronoun) who used to harangue every Company with a most delicious fluency of Declamation, on my own all perfect Character. Who used to paint in the liveliest colours, the Nobleness of Soul, Sweetness of Disposition, extensive knowledge, elegant taste, brilliant Wit and polite Address of James Boswell Esq: Ye Gods! what a falling off6 what a turning of the Tables is it, to hear the same identical Personage in downright terms own himself dull! I hope that this voluntary confession will not make so far against me, as that I shall be capitaly convicted before the High Tribunal of your Judgment. You may let me off with Banishment, if there can be any greater than what I allready endure when banished from the enchanting eyes of ****7 the adorable Mistress of my heart. At any rate, I am willing to enlist in his Majesty’s service; provided however that it be as an officer of the Foot Guards.8 I am etc.

1 JB’s ‘Harvest 1761’ journal for 14 Aug.– 21 Oct. (the first surviving journal after the partial North Circuit account of May 1761) noted nothing of consequence save a terse ‘Came to Auch. middle of Augt.’ In his letter to JJ of 21 Aug., JB noted that ‘We had a good journey west and have been in good health and spirits’ (Corr. 1, p. 12). 2 JB had kept up a relatively lively round of visiting in Aug., though mainly on Saturdays. The ‘Harvest 1761’ journal shows that JB visited Lord Eglinton, and the Lainshaw estate c. 14 Aug., dined with Steele and

imbibed ‘too much drink’ c. 15 Aug., and went to Dumfries House c. 22 Aug. 3 A proverbial expression, recorded in 1678 by John Ray in A Collection of English Proverbs as ‘It is the Nature of the beast’ (Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, ed. W. G. Smith, 1970, p. 556). 4 Richard ‘Dick’ Turpin (1706–39), alias John Palmer, highwayman, murderer, and horse-thief. A smuggler, cattle- and deerstealer and houserobber, his crimes were more diverse than implied by the legend of the fast-riding ‘Gentleman’ highwayman.

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After Turpin was hanged in 1739 (for horse-stealing), he was so popular with the local people that they saved his body from dissectors and gave him a churchyard burial. Turpin owed his legend to diligent pamphleteers who either embroidered or fabricated his exploits. 5 The ‘ordinary’, or chaplain, of Newgate prison prepared criminals spiritually for their executions. He had the profitable sideline of publishing in pamphlets the confessions of the condemned (Arthur Griffiths, The Chronicles of Newgate, 1884, i. 273–74). W. Roberts’s ‘Dick Turpin in Literature’ makes no mention of a pamphlet on Turpin by the ordinary (National Review, 1923, lxxxi. 885–94), nor does ESTC for the years 1739–61. Turpin was gaoled and hanged in York, not at Newgate. JB’s allusion to Turpin is further evidence of his interest in the glamour of criminals as portrayed in fiction and chapbooks. In London in May 1763, he went to see an execution at Tyburn and noted: ‘In my younger years I had read in the lives of the Convicts so much about Tyburn that I had a sort of horrid eagerness to be there’ (Journ. 4 May 1763). 6 Perhaps an echo of Hamlet, I. v: ‘O Hamlet! what a falling-off was there’. 7 The four asterisks are as they appear in the MS. The identity of ‘****’ is uncertain. JB’s letters To Eglinton, 25 Sept., To AE, 17 Nov. and 22 Jan. 1762, and To JJ, 23 Sept.

1763, mention various prospects for marriage, and presumably refer to his interest in Katherine Colquhoun, ‘Miss Bruce’, Margaret ‘Peggy’ Stewart, and perhaps Isabella Thomson (Corr. 1, pp. 94–96 and n. 10, 115 and n. 14; for Isabella Thomson, see From McQuhae, 27–30 Dec. 1762, n. 23). The likeliest candidate for ‘****’ is Katharine ‘Kitty’ Colquhoun (for whom see From Katherine Colquhoun, c. 10 Dec. and n. 1). 8 JB later admitted to Eglinton that ‘my great plan in getting into the Guards was not so much to be a soldier as to be in the genteel character of a gentleman’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763). Yet JB showed considerable naïveté if he assumed that the Foot Guards never left the delights of the Court End even in time of war, or that their sole concern was guarding the monarch. Foot Guards units (e.g., the Scots Guards) were sometimes stationed outside the court precincts to reduce quartering in London and Westminster, were often brought in for crowd control in London riots (sailors’ riots, 1763; Wilkes riots, 1768), and found themselves in the thick of fighting in significant battles of both the Seven Years’ War (Cherbourg, 1758) and the American War (Brandywine, 1777). See Anthony Goodinge, The Scots Guards [The 3rd Guards], 1969, pp. 15–20; see also next letter and n. 4. For John Wilkes, see From McQuhae, 30 June 1763, n. 19.

From Andrew Erskine, Friday 11 September 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 3–6 [LETTER II].

Kelly,1 Sept. 11, 1761. HAIL! mighty Boswell! at thy awful name The fainting muse relumes her sinking flame. Behold how high the tow’ring blaze aspires, While fancy’s waving pinions fan my fires! Swells the full song? it swells alone from thee; Some spark of thy bright genius kindles me! ‘But softly, Sir’, I hear you cry, ‘This wild bombast is rather dry: ‘I hate your d____n’d insipid song, ‘That sullen stalks in lines so long; ‘Come, give us short ones, like to Butler,2 ‘Or, like our friend Auchinleck the cutler.’3 A Poet, Sir, whose fame is to support, Must ne’er write verses tripping pert and short: 90

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Who ever saw a judge himself disgrace, By trotting to the bench with hasty pace? I swear, dear Sir, you’re really in the wrong; To make a line that’s good, I say James, make it long. You see, Sir, I have quite the best of the argument; and indeed I was determined not to give it up, ’till you acknowledged yourself vanquish’d; so to verse I go again, tooth and nail. How well you talk of glory and the guards,4 Of fighting heroes, and their great rewards! Our eyes behold you glow with martial flame, Our ears attend the never-ceasing theme. Fast from your tongue the rousing accents flow, And horror darkens on your sable brow!5 We hear the thunder of the rolling war, And see red vict’ry shouting from her car! You kindly took me up an aukward cub,6 And introduc’d me to the *Soaping-Club;7 Where ev’ry Tuesday eve our ears are blest With genuine humour, and with genuine jest: The voice of mirth ascends the list’ning sky, While, soap his own beard every man, you cry. Say, who could e’er indulge a yawn or nap, When **Barclay8 roars forth snip, and **Bainbridge9 snap?10 Tell me how I your favours may return; With thankfulness and gratitude I burn. I’ve one advice, oh! take it I implore! Search out America’s untrodden shore; There seek some vast Savannah11 rude and wild, Where Europe’s sons of slaughter12 never smil’d, With fiend-like arts insidious to betray The sooty natives as a lawful prey. At you th’astonish’d savages shall stare, And hail you as a God, and call you fair: Your blooming beauty shall unrivall’d shine, ***And Captain Andrew’s whiteness13 yield to thine. In reality, I’m under vast obligations to you. It was you who first made me thoroughly sensible (indeed I very readily believ’d it) of the excellencies of my own Poetry; and about that time, I made two wonderful discoveries, to wit, that you was a sensible man, and that I was a good poet;14 discoveries which I dare say are yet doubted by some incredulous people. Boswell, I shall not praise your Letter, because I know you have an aversion at being thought a genius,15 or a wit.16 The reluctance with which you always repeat your Cub,17 and the gravity of countenance which you always assume upon that occasion, are convincing proofs of this assertion. You hate flattery too; but in spite of your teeth18 I must tell you, that you 91

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are the best Poet, and the most humourous letter-writer I know; and that you have a finer complexion, and dance better19 than any man of my acquaintance. For my part, I actually think you would make an excellent champion20 at the approaching coronation.21 What tho’ malevolent critics may say you are too little,22 yet you are a Briareus in comparison of Tydeus the hero of Statius’s Thebais;23 and if he was not a warrior, then am I Andrew Erskine, lieutenant in the 71st regiment, blind of one eye, humpback’d, and lame in both legs. We all tired so much of the Highlands, that we had not been there three weeks before we all came away again. Lady B———24 is gone a visiting, and the rest of us are come to Kelly. It was most unaccountable in me to leave New-Tarbat;25 for no where will you meet with such fine ingredients for poetical description. However, we are all going back again when Mr. M———26 comes from London; so some time in October you may expect a most cordial invitation. This is all at present (according to the simple but eloquent expression of the vulgar) from your sincere friend, ANDREW ERSKINE. * [JB’s note:] The Soaping-Club—a Club in Edinburgh, the motto of which was, ‘Every Man soap his own Beard; or, Every Man indulge his own Humour.’ Their game was that facetious one, Snip, Snap, Snorum. ** [JB’s note:] Barclay and Bainbridge, two members of this Club. *** [JB’s note:] ‘And Captain Andrew’s whiteness, &c.’] The writers of these Letters instead of being rivals in wit, were rivals in complexion. 1 Kellie Castle in Fife, the seat of the Earls of Kellie. The estates around it were kept in the Kellie line until 1769, when AE’s brother, the seventh earl, sold all the lands ‘save the castle and some of the grounds beside it’ to Sir John Anstruther (A. H. Millar, Fife: Pictorial and Historical …, 1895, i. 433–37, with plate p. 434). 2 Samuel Butler (1612–80), who became famous after publication of his Hudibras (1663–78). ‘Hudibrastic’ verse was in iambic tetrameter, a foot shorter than the more common heroic couplets. JB wrote his Cub ‘in Hudibrastic stile’ (Cub, p. 16). Butler’s poem continued to be popular in the 1750s and 1760s, particularly in new Scottish editions. JB mentioned the poem in his ‘Notes in Holland’, 30 Nov. 1763, and his 1770 booklist records ‘Butler’s Hudibras M.S.’ (Lincoln, pp. 210, 292). 3 Gilbert Auchinleck (m. 1751, d. 1780), Edinburgh cutler c. 1752–77, with premises at Gray’s in Bull’s Close East, High Street North (Register of Marriages of the City of Edinburgh, 1751–1800, 1908, SRS 35, p. 32; Register of Testaments, 1701– 1800, The Commissariot of Edinburgh, p. 11; Scots Mag., Feb. 1780, xlii. 110; Gilhooley,

pp. 5, 65, 91, 109; Williamson’s Dir. 1774– 75 [appendix], 1776–77). There are no known verses by Gilbert Auchinleck. ‘Short ones’ may well be a double-pun referring to a branch of Auchlinleck’s craft as well as JB’s coincidentally-named family seat. The term ‘Short-Cutler’ was in use as early as 1723 (OED, citing London Gazette). In the cutlery trade, swords, rapiers, and other such implements were known as long-ware; the term short-ware applied to knives, daggers, razors, and the like (Charles Welch, History of the Cutlers’ Company of London, 1923, ii. 5 n.). Such short-ware is clearly relevant to the Soaping Club, given its recurrent shaving jargon. The metre demands that ‘Auchinleck’ be pronounced as two syllables rather than three. ‘Affleck’ was a common pronunciation of the name in JB’s day. JB in his reply (see To AE, 14 Sept.) gives the name three syllables. 4 JB’s pursuit of a commission in the army (see previous letter, n. 8) had been an idea kindled by Lord Eglinton during the London 1760 stay. JB queered the pitch by insisting that the commission be in the Foot Guards, but not in a regiment to be posted

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11 SEPTEMBER 1761 12 The criticism of the imposition of racial slavery and the treatment of the natives as ‘lawful prey’ (enslaving American Indian as well as imported African peoples) grew from 1760 to 1775. The importance of the colonial theatres of the Seven Years’ War contributed to this sense of ‘sons of slaughter’ intruding into the sentimentalized world of noble savagery which AE imagined. See Bruce P. Lenman, Jack P. Greene, and Daniel K. Richter’s chapters in The Oxford History of the British Empire Vol. II: The Eighteenth Century, ed. P. J. Marshall, asst. ed. Alaine Low, 1998, pp. 160–62, 225–27, 350–63. 13 Another of many jokes about the relative darkness of JB’s and AE’s hair and complexion. 14 AE confessed two decades later that he had no very high opinion of his own poetry. JB wrote: ‘I insisted he should have cultivated his poetical talents. He said he never could have been great, and he did not care for being like Pomfret or others whom I told him I would like to be’ (Journ. 19 Aug. 1782). This letter confirms that AE’s selfassessment had arisen much earlier, since his rhetoric in these paragraphs is one of burlesque inversion: JB is not sensible, nor is AE a good poet. 15 JB’s hope to be considered a ‘genius’, his protestations of his ‘genius’, and his desire to be in the company of men of ‘genius’ are all recurrent leitmotifs in his letters and journals of the years 1760–63. He had published his first pamphlet, Observations … On Squire Foote’s … The Minor (1760) under the pseudonym ‘a Genius’, attributed some of his contributions in Collection II to ‘A Genius’, and in his own review of E–B, in Lond. Chron. 1763 xiii. 404, he described his letters and AE’s as ‘a Book of true Genius’ (Lit. Car. pp. 2–24). This generic use of ‘Genius’ to denote a wit and writer can be found as well in Addison and Smollett (see Addison, Spectator, no. 160; Smollett, Humphry Clinker, letters of 5 and 10 June). 16 JB’s aspiration to equal the achievements of the wits of the eras of Charles II and Anne and to be remembered as one of the wits of the age of George III becomes another leitmotif in his letters and journals in the years 1760–63. 17 JB had insisted upon reading selections from Cub to many people, including not only friends (including presumably AE and possibly the Earl of Eglinton), but also casual acquaintances such as the Duke of York—who JB claimed in his ‘Dedication’ had ‘laughed at’ the verses—and perhaps

to the Germanies. JB’s dream of becoming an ensign in the guards did not collapse fully until 1763. 5 JB’s dark hair and complexion form a recurrent theme in E–B. In Cub, p. 17, JB described himself as a man of ‘Plumpness’, with a ‘Belly prominent’, ‘a large and pond’rous head’, and ‘stiff, lank hair’ suitable for a scarecrow. 6 Despite his lively and extroverted prose style, AE was painfully shy, particularly among strangers (see From GD to AE, c. 9 May, n. 2). JB himself noted that ‘Captain Erskine … has an aukward bashfullness amongst Strangers, but with his friends is easy and excellent Company …. He has a great deal of humour and simplicity of manners’ (Journ. 30 Oct. 1762). 7 AE would have become a member of the Soaping Club after his meeting with JB in May 1761; he was likely among the most junior members, perhaps even the ‘cub’ of the clubmen. AE picks up JB’s common youthful reference to himself as a ‘cub’. 8 Bennett tenatively linked ‘Barclay’ to Dr. John Berkeley, who received his M.D. from Edinburgh in 1762 (List of Graduates in Medicine in the University of Edinburgh, from MDCCV to MDCCCLXVI, 1867, p. 7). JB would later record during the Stratford Jubilee, ‘I found my old Brother Soaper Dr. Berkeley’ (Journ. 6 Sept. 1769). Bennett also thought that he might be linked to the Harry Barclay who figures in a joke of Lady Kames’s in ‘Boswelliana’, who was identified by Rogers as Harry Barclay of Collairnie, Fifeshire (Boswelliana, p. 303). 9 The identity of Bainbridge, like Barclay’s, remains a mystery. Attempts by Bennett to link him to Capt. William Bainbridge of the 56th Foot (Army List, 1761, p. 110) or to the unidentified ‘Bainbridge’ of ‘Bainbridge and the two Agents’ (mentioned in the context of a meeting with the Duchess of Douglas, Journ. 1 Mar. 1767) have proved mere guesswork. 10 ‘Snip-Snap-Snorum’, a gamblers’ card game of simple rules—highly social, fastpaced, and noisy. As AE noted, players ‘roar[ed] forth’ each of the matches (Robert Hardie, Hoyle Made Familiar: Being a Companion to the Card Table, 9th ed., 1848, pp. 80–81; OED). JB’s footnote to the published letter admitted the ‘facetious’ nature of the game. 11 A treeless plain or a tract of low-lying damp or marshy ground; properly, one found in parts of tropical America (‘the more extended plains are commonly called Savanas’: P. Browne, Jamaica, 1756).

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Sterne. JB’s Cub reached print half a year later, in Mar. 1762 (Lit. Car. p. 16). In Cub, he boasted that ‘these Verses have had the honour of being approved by those whose Taste it would be the highest Arrogance in me to call in question’ (p. viii). 18 ‘Spite of His Teeth (In): In spite of opposition; though you snarl and show your teeth like an angry dog’ (Brewer’s Dict.). Walpole would use a similar expression in the context of the first meeting between himself and JB (see To AE, 18 June 1762, n. 11). 19 Given AE’s strategy of speaking in opposites, evidence that AE thought JB an awkward dancer. 20 The medieval office of King’s Champion was held in 1761 by Mr. Dymocke, who enjoyed that office by virtue of being lord of the manor of Scrivelsby, in Lincolnshire. 21 George III was not crowned until 22 Sept. 1761, a week and a half after this letter, although his accession to the throne had occurred immediately upon his grandfather’s death on 25 Oct. 1760. The vestigial ceremony of the champion took place at the coronation feast between the first and second courses:

‘gilt bowl of wine’ for the champion to drink from. The champion and his attendants then ‘rode out of the hall, [the champion] taking the [gilt] bowl and cover with him as his fee’ (ibid., p. 228). 22 JB described himself as ‘rather fat than lean; rather short than tall’ (see To AE, 17 Dec.). His height was estimated by Pottle at no more than five feet six inches (Earlier Years, pp. 35, 463). His weight in 1775 was recorded as 11 st. 12 lbs.—that is, 166 lbs. (Yale MS. M 177). 23 Briareos, or Aegeon, was one of three brother-giants with fifty heads and a hundred hands. Tydeus from Calydon was one of the ‘seven against Thebes’. The various accounts of him stress his fighting skill. Defending himself from an ambush, he killed fifty men in single combat. He was gravely injured by Melanippus in the attack on Thebes, but he killed Melanippus and ate his brains. Publius Papinius Statius, c. 45–c. 96, Latin poet, was author of two epics in the manner of Virgil. Thebais is AE’s error for Thebiad , Statius’ twelve book epic. See Thebiad i. 414–17 for one of his many references to Tydeus. 24 ‘Lady Betty’, Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane, AE’s sister. 25 The seat of the Macfarlane family. ‘Lady Betty’ appears to have divided her time among the residences at New Tarbet, Kellie, and Edinburgh. 26 AE’s brother-in-law, Walter Macfarlane (1705–67), 20th Laird of Macfarlane, an antiquary and ‘eminent genealogist’ whose extensive genealogical and geographical collections were eventually published in five volumes by the SHS, 1900–06 (James MacFarlane, History of the Clan MacFarlane, 1922, pp. 130–39). AE’s ‘Mr. M———’ may have been taken as an insult by Macfarlane, even if not intended as one. SJ wrote that the Macfarlane ‘considered himself as disrespectfully treated, if the common addition was applied to him. Mr. Macfarlane, said he, may with equal propriety be said to many; but I, and I only, am Macfarlane’ (Journey, p. 153; cf. JB’s note in Life v. 156–57, n. 3 [first]).

After the first course, and before the second, the king’s champion … entered the hall, completely armed, in … white armour, mounted on a fine white horse … lance, carried upright … gauntlet in his right hand, his helmet on his head …. [T]he herald at arms, with a loud voice, proclaimed the [king’s] champion’s challenge: ‘… his champion [says that anyone who denies George III is the rightful king] lieth, and is a false traitor, [the champion] being ready in person to combat with him ….’ And then the champion throws down his gauntlet; which … the herald took up and returned …. (Ann. Reg. 1761, pp. 232–33)

Once the challenge had been issued three times at three different points in the banqueting hall, the champion had his gauntlet returned for the final time, and George III ‘drank to the champion’ and then sent the

To Andrew Erskine, Monday 14 September 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 7–12 [LETTER III].

Auchinleck, Sept. 14, 1761. DEAR Captain Andrew! Poet of renown! Whether the chairmen1 of Edina’s town 94

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You curious draw, and make ’em justly speak,2 To use a vulgar phrase, as clean’s a leek;3 Or smart Epistles,4 Fables,5 Songs6 you write, All put together handsome trim and tight; Or when your sweetly plaintive muse does sigh, And elegiac7 strains you happy try; Or when in ode8 sublime your genius soars, Which guineas brings to Donaldson9 by scores;10 Accepts the thanks of ME, as quick as sage, Accept sincerest thanks for ev’ry page, For ev’ry page?—for ev’ry single line Of your rich letter aided by the Nine.11 Here pause, my friend, and while you pause admire; See how to write in clymax I aspire: Of which in all good critics you may read Who have obtain’d eulogiums for their meed. Say, don’t my rising lines at least pretend, By steps of just proportion to ascend? Have I not now your path of numbers trode, From homely eclogue12 up to lofty ode?13 You say, to write long lines I am not able, No more than Fairy Queen to work a cable; But wait with patience and I’ll make you own With your own weapons I have knock’d you down.14 Knock down perhaps too clumsy may appear, And sound but roughly in a soldier’s ear; And why for this of weapons should I vaunt, Which like the razor15 keenest sharpness want; When to confound and stupify the skull, Sufficient weight will serve, tho’ ne’er so dull? To this I answer, grumble as you may, To use the readiest word was still my way; And still shall be while I can hold a pen, And to make lines like these, count fingers ten. Of Auchinleck the cutler16 much you talk, And think by that my vanity to baulk; But, Sir, remember we as surely know Erskine, the coppersmith, in the west bow.17 Compare the trades, thou mighty son of war! To point my couplet take the well-known Mar;18 From whose great stock the noble Kelly race,19 A———20 the most of all their lineage trace: Compare the trades of coppersmith and cutler, Does not the last excel as colonel, Sutler?21 He who a shaving instrument can make, Should somewhat of the soaper’s praise partake; 95

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But low is he who fashions ne’er so well, Kettles and cauldrons with a dinning knell; Had he a tinker been, why then ding dong As, clout the cauldron,22 runs the Scottish song; My cutling cousin had to him knock’d under, And fairly yielded to his rousing thunder: But, as it is, indeed, I am afraid, As Presbyterian priest23 to D———r24 said, When he adventur’d ’gainst the potent ———25 For *Edinburgh’s liberty aloud to bawl,26 ‘I am afraid;—e’en let it gall your pride, ‘That of this argument you’ve the wrong side.’ Exult, O Boswell! o’er the vanquish’d bard, Who ne’er again shall dare his lines to lard With greasy, tho’ perhaps diverting jokes, Upon thy ancient pedigree,27 which mocks All his endeavours, all his turns of wit, Which only serve to show their author bit: For since you’ve serious taken up the cudgels, You prove more stout than twenty Eustace Budgels;28 And to repel the captain’s rash attacks, You have return’d his honour double thwacks. Your last from Kelly29 greets your faithful friend; ____ ’Tis hard, affection from the mind to rend For the sweet native spot, which Virgil30 says We are enamour’d of thro’ all our days.31 Else why would you with haste so sudden quit The rude romantic Arrochur?32 where sit On mossy stones, or walk the airy hills, Or silent tread the banks of storied rills; The Highland genii, who in ages old Inspir’d such bards33 as have in rapture told Fingal’s34 atchievements, and the dire alarms That sounded horrid35 from great Ossian’s36 arms!37 When dull October comes, if you return, As sure as Roman ashes sought an urn, If I have no black orders from grim death, And Heaven preserves my health as well as breath, So sure shall I my trusty gelding take, And with swift pace the shire of Ayr38 forsake; So sure shall far extending Lowmond39 boast Newmarket’s cub40 on its exulting coast; So sure shall Tarbat’s hospitable roof Receive the man whose parts require no proof; Whose heart is good,41 and tho’ he’s vain ’tis said, 96

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Yet is his person tolerably made. Then with the circle once again well met, To whom for hours of bliss I’m drown’d in debt; I chearfully shall live away at ease, And soap my beard as freely as I please. In vain shall you endeavour to eraze From Boswell’s mind his best-beloved phrase; To quit his brush and bason to forsake, No bribes can sooth him, and no threat’nings shake. In vain shall Andrew polish’d verses bring, Or even attempt some tender tune to sing; In vain shall Lady A———42 th’ enchanting day Italian airs, or Kelly’s music43 play; In vain shall Lady J———44 murmur plaints, For poor knight-errants, love’s dejected saints; In vain shall SHE, where all attractions meet, The eldest Grace!45 —tho’ suppliant at her feet, I Boswell proudly boast that I adore, And to her health make every man say more, In vain shall she, or pleas’d or angry, hope, To make me yield my razors and my soap. This being so,—as pond’rous lawyers say, To draw the bench’s nod the proper way, That we this warm contention may agree, If I won’t come to you, come you to me. Now my Lieutenant, with the dusky face; For tho’ you’re cloath’d in scarlet and in lace,46 The gorgeous glare of which to art you owe, Yet Nature gave you not my snowy brow. Tell me in words, quite opposite to rude, Whether I may not safely now conclude. Tho’ one, indeed, of penetration less, Might without much ado your meaning guess; One thing I’m sure of, you whose taste is size, Who length of line with so much ardour prize, Can never think this same epistle wrong, For sure, my friend, ’tis moderately long.47 You are now so heartily tired, that it would be absolutely barbarous to stun your ears any longer; only give me leave to tell you in one good round sentence, that your prose is admirable, and that I am just now (at three o’clock in the morning) sitting over the poor pale remnant of a once glorious blazing fire, and feasting upon it, till I am all in a Lather.48 I cannot stop yet. 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.49 What a solemn idea rushes on my mind! They are all gone; I must follow. Well, and what then? Let 97

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me shift about to another subject. The best I can think of is a sound sleep. So good night, and believe me Yours, JAMES BOSWELL. * [JB’s note:] ‘For Edinburgh’s liberty &c.’] During the election 1761, when an attempt was made by the Duke of Argyle50 to bring in Mr. F———51 as member. 1 The ‘chairmen’ or carriers of Edinburgh sedan chairs were as prominent a feature of city life as the hackney-drivers and cadies. In 1779, there were 188 hackney sedan chairs, but ‘very few’ hackney coaches. That proportion changed 1774–83 with the rise of the two- and four-wheeled hackneys, yet the familiar chairmen persisted on the streets until 1850. Indeed the sedan chairs often fared better in the narrow wynds and closes than their rivals, the increasingly more fashionable wheeled hackneys (Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 120, 282, 343–44). 2 The public chairmen were ‘for the most part’ Highlanders, who wore short tartan coats. Their ‘strange jargon’ and ‘fiery irritability of temper’ were often ‘deemed highly amusing’ by citizens (Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 120, 282, 343–44). 3 As clean’s a leek: wholly or to perfection (English Dialect Dictionary, ed. Joseph Wright, 1898, s.v. ‘leek’). AE had written the burlesque pastoral ‘The Chairmen: a Town-Eclogue’ which Donaldson printed in Collection I, pp. 180–83. AE’s series of poems which used bucolic pastoral conceits in absurd urban situations continued in the 1760s with four more town-ecologues which he eventually published in 1773: Town-eclogues. I. The hangmen, II. The harlequins, III. The street-walkers, IV. The undertakers. By the Honourable Andrew Erskine, [1773] (ESTC T51494). Bennett (pp. 224–25) points out that in the ‘Advertisement’ of the work AE noted that he had written these pieces ‘About eight or ten years ago’, that is, c. 1763–65. 4 AE’s had published one ‘Verse Letter’ at this point, in Collection I, pp. 81–82: ‘Wrote in Answer to a Gentleman who sent a Lady a present of Landscapes, accompanied with verses’. Collection II, pp. 13–14, 32–37, would contain three more, at least two of which Bennett concluded were written in 1761. These verse letters were ‘An Epistle to Mr. D[onaldso]n’, ‘An Epistle to a Gentleman on his being elected Member of Parliament’, and ‘Epistle from the Old Chaise at K[ellie] to a New One which a

Gentleman brought there’ (Bennett, pp. 179–81). 5 AE had published two fables by this time: ‘The Hare and the Redbreast. A Fable’ (Scots Mag. 1759, xxi. 475; republished Collection II, pp. 25–27), and ‘The Starling, the Crows, the Fox, and the Hawk. A Fable’ (Collection I, pp. 89–91). See Bennett, pp. 179–81. 6 AE’s songs already published included ‘How bless’d is the man who supplies’, ‘A Pastoral Ballad. In the manner of Shenstone’, and ‘A Pastoral Ballad’ (‘How vain are the efforts of art?’), all in Collection I, pp. 92–96; 1762 would add ‘The Witch’ in Collection II, pp. 27–28 (Bennett, pp. 179– 81). 7 AE’s published serious elegies to this point were all simply titled ‘Elegy’, so are here distinguished by their first lines: ‘When late I panted for the warlike field’, ‘While other youths play sportive in the shade’, and ‘Cherish’d by Fortune now my work’s complete’ (Collection I, pp. 76–80). The volume of 1762 would see printed ‘Tis done: pale sickness all her form invades’, along with a burlesque elegy ‘The Pigs, an Elegy, occasioned by seeing two that were roasting …’ (Collection II, pp. 23–25, 57– 58). See Bennett, pp. 179–81. 8 AE’s odes by this time included ‘To Midnight. An Ode’ (Collection I, pp. 174– 77). 1762 would see printed ‘Ode to Memory’ and ‘Ode to Pity’ (Collection II, pp. 15–22). See Bennett, pp. 179–81. Independently of Donaldson, and in collaboration with R. and J. Dodsley, AE published Two odes. To indolence, and to impudence, 1762 (ESTC N36533). A second edition two years later was printed in Edinburgh rather than London: Two odes. To indolence, and to impudence.The second edition, 1764 (ESTC T196833). 9 Donaldson had hardly grown rich on AE’s verses. In autumn and winter 1761, JB and AE supplied Donaldson with poems for his Collection II (Lit. Car. pp. 12–14). 10 A joking reference to the poor sales of most poetry, including AE’s and JB’s. Sales

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on 1760’s Collection I, which contained many of AE’s poems, were robust enough to encourage Donaldson to publish a second volume, but the puny sales of that one encouraged him to terminate the series. AE’s six-penny Swiftian scatalogical mock epic ‘The Cloaciniad’ was advertised under the publisher’s name of ‘Donaldson’ in Jan. immediately following an item promoting Donaldson’s edition of the works of Swift (Scots Mag. Jan. 1761, xxiii. 37). The poem appeared in print (though without Donaldson’s name as publisher) as The Cloaciniad. A poem. To which are annexed, verses on an author’s first play, 1761 (ESTC N26494). AE reprinted the poem in Collection II, pp. 44–53. 11 That is, the nine muses. 12 In the first stanza, JB summarizes the various poetic forms in which AE had written, more or less in the ascending order of the hierarchy of genres, or the steps up Parnassus: eclogues, epistles, fables, songs, elegies, and odes. The multi-book heroic epic would have been the highest possible attainment in this progess, yet AE wrote only burlesque epic (see n. 10 above). In Collection II, JB would publish no eclogue; his ‘Plan’ for the MSS in Douce 193 does not appear to include an eclogue either (Werner, pp. 19–22). 13 Scots Mag. Nov. 1761 contained an advertisement for a six-penny pamphlet written by JB and printed and published by Donaldson. An Ode to Tragedy. By a Gentleman of Scotland, 1761, though published pseudonymously, was prefaced by a dedication ‘TO JAMES BOSWELL, Esq’ in which he wrote of the ‘subject grave and solemn’ which ‘may be considered by many people, as not so well suited to your volatile disposition’ (ESTC T71923; An Ode to Tragedy, 1761, pp. 2–4; Lit. Car. pp. 7–9). The ‘Ode to Tragedy’ appeared in the original and revised versions of JB’s ‘Plan’ for the Douce 193 poems; in both cases, the poem was 160 lines (Werner, pp. 19–22). AE did not seem to know about this poem’s appearance as a pamphlet until his letter of 15 Dec. In Collection II, JB would publish two more odes: the serious ‘Ode on the Death of Marshal Keith’ and the mock ‘To Gluttony. An Ode. In Imitation of Midnight, an Ode’ (Lit. Car. pp. 13–14). 14 JB expressed similarly half-humorous, half-serious defences of his poetic prowess in his dedication to himself which preceded An Ode to Tragedy. By a Gentleman of Scotland, 1761, p. 4: ‘As to my merit as a poet, I shall only say, that while I am certain of

YOUR approbation, I shall be entirely satisfied’. He also mentioned his skills as a poet slightingly in the song ‘B——— of Soapers the King’, published in Collection II: ‘B—— — is modest enough,/ Himself not quite Phoebus he thinks’ (Werner, pp. 161–62). 15 Presumably a pun on the Soaping Club’s vocabulary of ‘soaping’ and ‘shaving’ with the razor of sharp wit. 16 Gilbert Auchinleck, Edinburgh cutler. See From AE, 11 Sept. 17 An Alexander Erskine, a ‘white iron smith’, was entered onto the rolls as an Edinburgh burgess in 1760 (C. B. Boog Watson, ed., Roll of Edinburgh Burgesses …, 1701–1760, 1930, SRS 62, p. 65). An ‘Alexander Erskine, Smith’ was on the tax rolls for 1752 as located at Halyburton’s, Grassmarket West, which fits JB’s geographical location (Gilhooley, p. 18). ‘Alexander Erskine, smith and ferrier, in S.S.W.p.’ was listed in the marriage register, although if he is the same man as the burgess named A. E. he would have had to have remarried between 1742 and 1760 (Henry Paton, ed., The Register of Marriages for the Parish of Edinburgh, 1701–50, 1908, SRS 35, p. 173). 18 Presumably John Erskine (d. 1572), 6th Lord Erskine and 1st (or 6th) Earl of Mar. He was a Privy Councillor from 1561, Regent of Scotland from 1571, and a significant power-broker in the tumults of the 1560s, taking charge of the young James VI and I for many of those years. The antiquity of the title was in doubt into the nineteenth century. The House of Lords in 1875 would rule that Erskine’s patent of 1565 making him Earl of Mar was not a continuation of the old title, but a new creation. 19 Sir Thomas Erskine (1566–1639), the 1st Earl of Kellie or ‘Kelly’ by a patent of 1619, was a nephew of the 1st Earl of Mar. He was the same age as James VI and I, and was educated and brought up with him (Scots Peer. v. 81, 84–86, 611–15). JB and AE were both descended from the sixteenth-century 5th Lord Erskine and the ‘Mar family’. They also shared a keen interest in ancient genealogies. As JB wrote over a decade after this letter, ‘Captain Andrew allways revives notions of family and antiquity and Toryism in my mind’ (Journ. 25 June 1774). 20 Uncertain. Bennett in his notes on this letter read ‘Andrew’, who is, after all, the focus of the letter. But AE’s name was not masked in their letters. A marginal note argued that it might be a reference to Erskine of Alva, an ancestor of JB, but that

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idea seems to have been dismissed. ‘Archie’— i.e., Archibald—also fits the metre, and is therefore another likely nominee. Capt. the Hon. Archibald Erskine (1736–97) was one of AE’s two older brothers. He had joined the army c. 1755, and was soon promoted to the army rank of captain on 17 Oct. 1761, gaining a regimental captaincy in the 30th Foot in 1762, and eventually rising to the rank of Lt.-Col. of the 104th Ft. (1782). He would later (1781) become 7th Earl of Kellie, and served from 1790 to 1796 as one of Scotland’s Representative Peers in the House of Lords (Army List, 1772; Comp. Peer. vii. 103; Scots Peer. v. 90; Scots Mag. Oct. 1802, lxiv. 787–93). JB would refer to him by the nickname of ‘Archie’ in letters to AE of 22 Jan. and 16 Feb. 1762. After Archibald became Earl of Kellie, JB associated with him closely. An entry for 1782 would record that ‘the last day of Lord Kelly’s being in Scotland … was quite as I could wish, pleasing myself that the Earl of Kelly and the Laird of Auchinleck would pass many days together’ (Journ. 16 Feb. 1782). JB succeeded as 9th Laird of Auchinleck at the end of Aug. 1782. 21 That is, as a colonel far outranks a sutler. Considered menial, a sutler was a civilian who followed an army or lived in a garrison town and sold provisions to the soldiers. 22 The earliest imprint of the title and subject of this song in a Scottish collection was in the 1724 edition of Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany (‘Have you any pots or pans, or any broken chandlers?’). The Scottish version was printed with music for the first time in Orpheus Caledonius, 1733, no. 25. The song was a version of a much older English song, printed as ‘The Tinker’ in Merry Drollery, 1661, p. 134 (James C. Dick, The Songs of Robert Burns, 1903, p. 447). Ramsay’s version was apparently a model used by Burns for the air ‘My bonie lass I work in brass’ in ‘Love and Liberty—A Cantata’ (The Songs and Poems of Robert Burns, ed. James Kinsley, 1968, i. 204, iii. 1158). 23 This clergyman has not been identified. Whoever he was, he presumably supported Argyll’s nominee in this controversy (see nn. 25–26 below). 24 That is, GD. 25 The missing word must rhyme with ‘bawl’ to complete the couplet, although JB’s sometimes shaky command of metre cannot here be trusted to guarantee that it must be a word of one syllable. JB’s own note suggests something like ‘Argall’ or

‘gall’, i.e., the Duke of Argyll mentioned in JB’s explanation of the passage. But the possibility of a more creative emendation— such as ‘Saul’ (the Israelite king) or ‘Noll’ (Oliver Cromwell)—also remains. 26 In the wake of the controversial nomination of Alexander Forrester (see n. 51 below) to stand for the seat of Edinburgh in the general election of 1761, various corporations and societies held protest meetings and offered up ‘addresses, answers, queries, songs, &c.’, going so far as to issue a blackedged mourning card announcing that the liberty of Edinburgh had died. The Merchant Company and at least nine of the incorporated trades sent protests to the Council against Argyll’s puppetry and a ‘stranger’ (Forrester having spent much of his life in England) being put forward. By the time of the polls on 4 Apr., only John Fordyce (for whom see From Agatha Home Drummond, Lady Kames, 28 Dec. 1762, n. 14) and Lord Provost Lind were candidates; Lind won, although in the changeover after Argyll’s death from the patronage of Argyll to that of Bute he agreed to accept a place and vacate his seat, leaving it open for a Bute client. Thus, Westminster-centred patronage (‘the abject dependence of the city on a great man’, which had been protested against) eventually triumphed over GD’s independence. The nomination of a ‘stranger’ as M.P. for Edinburgh seems to have been the real root of the fracas, with some enemies claiming Forrester hailed from Ireland or even Geneva (Scots Mag. 1761, xxiii. 147– 53; Namier and Brooke, i. 502, ii. 451–53). 27 JB’s consciousness of his pedigree was intense. His kinship to the royal House of Stewart was a proud boast, as were his connections to the peerage and numerous landed families as well. As Pottle noted, ‘Boswell was descended from the Earls of Arran, Caithness, Kincardine, Lennox, and Mar, and from the progenitors of the Earls of Carnwath, the Dukes of Hamilton, the Earls of Loudoun, and the Earls of Wigtown’. Among peers contemporary with himself he was in varying degrees of cousinage with the Earl of Buchan, Lord Cathcart, and the Earl of Kellie, the lastmentioned being AE’s brother (Earlier Years, p. 453; see also Ominous Years, Appendix C, Charts I, II, IV, V and VI). It suggests something about JB’s consciousness of pedigree that he knew his fourth cousin twice removed as well as more proximate cousins. He later described himself as ‘of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself not a

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little’ (To AE, 17 Dec. [E–B]). In his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, he wrote of himself as ‘a gentleman of ancient blood, the pride of which was his predominant passion’ (18 Aug. 1773; as in Life v. 51). 28 Eustace Budgell (1686–1737), M.P. (Ire.) 1715–27, Grub Street miscellaneous writer, journalist, and poet. He was the author of about thirty-seven Spectator papers, wrote for the Craftsman, and received his cousin Addison’s praise for his translation of Theophrastus. Despite this, and despite his anti-Walpole stance, he was made a laughingstock by various wits such as Pope. He declined mentally 1727–37, and killed himself by jumping into the Thames with his pockets filled with stones. JB’s association of Budgell with ‘cudgels’ is likely simply a puerile rhyme. Yet it may equally well refer to Budgell’s multifarious conflicts in pamphlets and in law courts. 29 From AE, 11 Sept., dated as written at ‘Kelly’. 30 JB’s frequent references to his patrons as ‘Maecenas’ suggest that he took Virgil as one role model for his poetic career, although Maecenas was most often used as a general term for patron (OED). 31 Unclear. JB was perhaps thinking of the lines of Meliboeus in the first Eclogue ‘Ah, shall I ever … look again on my country’s bounds, on my humble cottage …?’ (i. 68–70; cf. i. 3–5, Loeb ed., trans. H. Rushton Fairclough). However, the love of one’s native spot and desire for return home also appears as a theme in the Aeneid. JB and his circle in the 1760s made frequent references to Virgil’s Aeneid, Eclogues, and Georgics. 32 Arrochar or Arroquhar, a village and parish; here referring to the parish (Cary’s New Map, pl. 74). AE’s brother-in-law Walter Macfarlane’s estate of New Tarbet was in Arrochar at the head of Loch Long. 33 Some of ‘Ossian’s’ poems had been published by James Macpherson (1736–96) in Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland (1760), and were reviewed in the Scots Mag. (1760, xxii. 360). A second book, Fingal, an ancient epic poem, in six books: together with several other poems. Composed by Ossian, the son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic language by James Macpherson (1761; ESTC T132461; largepaper issue, ESTC N7970), for which see next note, was also reviewed in the Scots Mag. (1761, xxiii. 638–46, 681–88). Though Macpherson claimed the poems were of ancient origin, and only collected and translated by him, many critics, including SJ,

believed that Macpherson had invented them, and passed the forgeries off as genuine. Later scholars reasserted the basic veracity of the oral tradition, though discounting the idea that Ossian ‘wrote’ the poems and Macpherson ‘translated’ them (Howard Gaskill, ed., Ossian Revisited, 1991, pp. 6–16; see also Alfred Nutt, Ossian and the Ossianic Literature, repr. 1972). 34 Fingal (or Fionn mac Cumhail or Finn MacCool), ‘the first of men, the breaker of the shields’, king in western Scotland. This semi-mythical Irish-Caledonian hero of the third century first became a focal point of Scots literary nationalism, and then of Irish. His exploits were recorded in long narrative poems attributed to his son Ossian, and in the Fenian ballads named for the Fianna, Finn’s warriors. The stories of Fingal which survived in Scots Highland oral folk tradition inspired the Fingal (1761) of James Macpherson. The work was published, in two quarto formats, by T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, whom JB had considered as potential publishers of his own verse (Werner, p. 19). Strahan’s ledger reveals that Fingal was printed in Nov. 1761, though ‘1762’ appeared on the title page (see William B. Todd, ‘Note 122: Macpherson’s Fingal and Temora’, Book Collector viii [1959], 429– 30). The work was advertised as published 1 Dec. (Lond. Chron. 18 Nov.–1 Dec., x. 528). Macpherson succinctly summarized the convoluted plot in his preface to Fingal, excerpted in Scots Mag. Dec. 1761, xxiii. 638–40. Among Fingal’s ‘atchievements’ was thwarting the plot of King Starno to kill him, and defeating the Scandinavian army of Swaran who were invading Ireland. 35 Ossian said of himself: ‘Myself, like a rock came down …. Many were the deaths of my arm; and dismal was the gleam of my sword …. Often have I fought, and often won in battles of the spear’ (Scots Mag. xxiii. 683). 36 Ossian or Oisin, legendary Gaelic poet, ‘king of songs’, son of Fingal. The traditional tales were preserved in Ireland and in the Scottish Highlands, with Ossian as the bard who sang of the exploits of Finn and his Fenian warriors. A later cycle of ‘Ossianic’ poetry centred on Cuchulain. Ossian was generally represented as a greyhaired ancient who had gone blind in his old age, and who had outlived both his father and his son. 37 This line and the preceeding eleven make up one of the passages of verse JB selected to reproduce in the highly favorable review of E–B which he himself

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wrote for Lond. Chron. 26–27 Apr. 1763, xiii. 404–05. In the review JB included three other passages of verse: (a) the thirty-eightline verse that opens From AE, 1 May 1762; (b) ll. 51–58 of the introductory verse in To AE, 4 May 1762, in which ‘Mr. Boswell pays his friend the following compliment on the regularity of his manners’ (p. 405); (c) the entire ‘Ode on … a Turkey-Cock’, which had been printed in the E–B version of To AE, 1 June 1762. To illustrate the prose style of the letters, JB reproduced From AE, 1 Nov. and To AE, 17 Nov. 38 JB was in Ayrshire at Auchinleck from mid-Aug., a stay enlivened by a multitude of ‘jaunts’ for visits. The ‘Harvest 1761’ journal (Yale MS. J 1.1) explains his whereabouts from 14 Aug. to 21 Oct.; the journal in Edinburgh 12 Nov. 1761–7 Apr. 1762 noted his presence in that city during those months. 39 Loch Lomond. The road from Dumbarton to Tarbet village, which would be the most likely route for JB’s journey to New Tarbet, went along the loch’s west side (Cary’s New Map, pl. 74). 40 A reference to JB’s Cub. In From AE, 11 Sept. (E–B), AE had noted sarcastically ‘The reluctance with which you always repeat your Cub, and the gravity of countenance which you always assume upon that occasion’. 41 JB’s dedication to himself in An Ode to Tragedy, 1761, remarked: ‘if I can any how improve the noble feelings of that honest open heart of yours, I shall reckon myself infinitely happy’ (p. 4). 42 Lady Anne Erskine. 43 Thomas Alexander Erskine (1732– 81), 6th Earl of Kellie, known as ‘the musical Earl’, had studied music in Mannheim, and was highly thought of as a fine amateur composer and violinist by musicians such as Burney. He apparently composed his music rapidly, and his music tended to be loud, in fast tempi, and enthusiastic. Although most of the compositions JB would have heard have vanished, or remain unlocated, a collection of his minuets and songs appeared in 1839 (Minuets and songs composed by the right honourable Thomas, Earl of Kelly, now for the first time published, with an introductory notice by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, 2nd ed.), and some of his overtures and his musical setting of the poem ‘A Lover’s Message’ also survived. Recent publications of his works include the Trio-sonata 4 in C major, for two violins (or flute/oboe and violin), and continuo Earl of Kelly, ed. David Johnson, 1973; and the Symphony in E flat major:

Periodical overture 17: for flutes, clarinets/ oboes, bassoon, horns, strings, and continuo, ed. David Johnson, 1974 (Scots Peer. v. 89– 90; Comp. Peer. vii. 103; New Grove 2). 44 Lady Janet ‘Jenny’ Erskine. 45 Lady Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Macfarlane. She was the ‘eldest’ of the daughters (JB alludes to the Three Graces) by about one year. 46 A reference to AE’s British army uniform, although AE’s loathing of the military life and frequent absences on leave meant that he was rarely on active duty. 47 The poem ends with a series of penile jests, but also refers to the debate on heroic couplets versus hudibrastics in the previous E–B letter. 48 Yet another ‘Soaping Club’ reference. 49 By contrast to its successor, the ‘Old House’ or ‘Old Place’, designed more than a century earlier in a ‘Scots Renaissance style’ of ‘tower house’ or ‘turris’, would indeed have seemed unfashionable—‘old’ and ‘ruinous’—to JB in 1761. The Old House had been constructed in 1612 by James Boswell, the fourth laird (d. 1618), and expanded by the fifth laird, David (d. 1661), into an Lshaped structure with the stair turret at the inner corner. In 1761, the Old House was in its final years of habitation by the Boswell family (see Earlier Years, pp. 10, 454; Corr. 8, xxxvii–xxxviii; see also Caroline Stanford, Auchinleck House, Landmark Trust Guide [2001], pp. 10, 20). The Old House was sketched in 1789, and the resulting illustration appeared in D. McGibbon and T. Ross, Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland, 1889, iii. 497. SJ, ever the contrarian, famously preferred the ‘sullen dignity of the old castle’ to the ‘elegance of the modern mansion’ (Journey, p. 161). 50 Archibald Campbell (1682–1761), 3rd Duke of Argyll, a leading manager of Scottish politics for much of the eighteenth century. He died eleven days after the controversial Edinburgh election of 4 Apr. 1761 in which his nomination of Forrester had played such a role, and his Edinburgh ‘men’ put themselves under Bute’s patronage (Namier and Brooke, i. 38–46, 502; ii. 451–53). 51 Alexander Forrester, Esq. (?1711–87), a successful counsel from 1731, specializing from 1758 in cases before the House of Lords including (ironically) Scottish election appeals; M.P. for three different English boroughs, 1758–74. He came from a Scots Jacobite family, and was probably born in France. He was well-connected to the Scottish elite through his friendship with the

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Maules of Panmure and through the local patronage of Argyll from 1759 to 1761. Yet for all those bona fides, Forrester had spent much of his life from 1727 in England, and as M.P. for Dunwich was seen as an outsider in Edinburgh, ‘too much an Englishman’. The Duke of Argyll nominated Forrester for the city’s Parliamentary seat in 1761 only after (allegedly) receiving assurances of the

backing of twenty-two Argyll clients on the Edinburgh town council. Argyll’s nomination produced such an outcry from the constituents that Forrester withdrew from the race. It was a further irony that Forrester’s Bedfordite ‘patriot’ politics were not such a far cry from GD’s own independentism (Scots Mag. 1761, xxiii. 147–53; Namier and Brooke, i. 502; ii. 451–53).

From Anne Mackintosh, Tuesday 22 September 1761 MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). Transcribed from a photostat. HEADING: To Mr. Boswell

Moyhall, Sep. 22. 1761 When you doe cleave the Weaves of Forth And hasten to the Blythsom North A hearty Welcome you Shall find I hope it will be to your Mind. The Leand-lord Says a Cheerfull Gless The Leand-lady a Bonny lass To trip and Dance it all day long When Evening coms a Merry Song And your Reward,1 when ere you Crave it You have wrote well. And well deserves it In Pretty way, you beg a line And I have wrote you mor then Nine But as my Muses is not Prolifick I must beg to be Passifick And in dull Pross. Express my Sence Of your kind Verse, and Eloquence NOW DEAR SIR: Dont laugh at my Poor Performance, But to my Salf, I have done my best as a Small Acknowledgement for your Pretty, well wrote letter, for which I thanke you. The Character you ar so Good as to geve McIntosh,2 I Esteem you for, as it is realy Trouth Pretty told, And I hope he will always deserve it. He begs his Leove and Best wishess to you, he says he Dubley Esteems you, for your own Worth, and beeing the Sone of a Worthy Mane,3 this is his own words. May I beg his Respects and mine to Leard and Leady Auchinleck.4 Will you have the Goodness to answer this Stuped Scrall, as it will always geve me Pleasure to hear from you. And I am, Dear Sir, your Most Obedient and faithfull, humble Servant. A. MCINTOSH 1 The kiss JB mentioned in ‘An Epistle to Lady Mcintosh’. See To Anne Mackintosh, between 12 and 25 Aug., ll. 6–7. 2 Angus (or Aeneas) Mackintosh, Lady Anne’s husband.

3 Although a Highland chieftain, Mackintosh was an army military officer and (at least externally) a ‘Hanoverian’ in politics. Unlike his Jacobite wife, had been in arms on the side of Government and Georgian

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loyalism in 1745–46. He was presumably the impetus behind the invitation to Lord Auchinleck to visit. There was an old connection between the Mackintosh and the Boswell families for which evidence is extant, though cryptic. In 1766, Anne Mackintosh would write to JB: ‘McIntosh desires me to tell you that he hopes you will be the same [real friend] to his Poor family As your Grand father: And Father was’ (From Anne Mackintosh, 12 May 1767, Corr. 5, p. 161). No further details of this ‘ancient friendship’ have been located, though some have guessed the relationship may have involved legal assistance. 4 Euphemia Erskine Boswell (1718–66), the first Lady Auchinleck, JB’s mother. She had married Alexander Boswell (later Lord Auchinleck) in 1738 (Ominous Years, p. 377). Wives of Court of Session and/or Justiciary justices were given the courtesy title ‘lady’, which, like the justices’ courtesy titles of ‘lord’, were unconnected to any hereditary claims of peerage or lairdship. JB’s relationship with his mother is far more difficult to reconstruct than that with his father. In his 1791 autobiography, JB described her as ‘descended in the line of

Alva from the noble House of Mar, a lady of distinguished piety’ (Memoirs JB, pp. xxix– xliv). He wrote of her in ‘Ébauche de ma vie’: ‘Ma mere etoit extremement pieuse. Elle m’inspiroit de la devotion. Mais malhereusement elle m’enseignoit le Calvinisme.… Ma Mere fut de cet Secte qui croit qu’il faut une conversion marqué de chaque particulier pour être sauvé. Elle m’a donc pressé beaucoup de ceder aux operations de la grace de Dieu, et elle me mit entre les mains une petite livre ou Je lisois des conversions des enfants tres jeunes.’ JB also stressed her religiosity when he later told SJ that she was ‘a woman of almost unexampled piety and goodness’ (Journ. 2 Nov. 1773). The earliest surviving autograph letter by JB, to ‘My Dear Mamma’, was written to her 17 July 1754 (Yale MS. L 127), and a fragmentary letter c. 1755 from her to ‘Dear Jame’ survives (Yale MS. C 331). A later letter (7 Mar. 1763) noted her concern for his returning to Scotland (Yale MS. C 332). JB did not see his mother after he left Scotland 15 Nov. 1762; he received news of her death from a copy of the St. James’s Chronicle he obtained while in Paris in Jan. 1766.

From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ (JB)1 to the Earl of *** (the Earl of Eglinton), Friday 25 September 1761 Scots Mag. Sept. 1761, xxiii. 469–71. TITLE: AN ORIGINAL LETTER, From a GENTLEMAN of SCOTLAND to the EARL of *** in London.

Sept. 25 1761 MY DEAR LORD, The splendid magnificent coronation is now over. How is your Lordship after it?2 I dare say you are so much out of breath with your great share of the courtly fatigues of the day, that I cannot expect an answer to this letter, for at least a post or two.—— Well said, my boy;— I fancy you may think yourself well off, if you are slightly glanced over a month hence.—— Undoubtedly you have had a noble show of grandeur. But, if I mistake not, my Lord, you and I have run through more agreeable scenes together, when I had the honour of living under your Lordship’s roof and patronage, at London.3 I say living; for at that time, by enjoying, I really knew the value of life.4 Your Lordship convinced me, that this same existence of ours,— bad as some philosophers and divines may call it,— is yet worth the having; aye and thanking God Almighty for too, if we will but make the most of it. I believe, my Lord, when you and I, after a pleasant drive in the chariot5 from Ranelaugh,6 have sat down by ourselves in your dining-room, to an enlivening bottle of Old Hock,7 and, with all imaginable gaiety, have resumed the adventures of the day—sometimes indeed the former night too, has dropt into the scale—I believe then, my Lord, our sentiments of all things under the sun8 were 104

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somewhat different from that illustrious monarch’s,9 who to be sure was a very wise man, but who, for the very reason that he was a man, might chance to fall into a little mistake.—— Is not this a lounging length of a sentence? It is so. But, notwithstanding, you must take its appendix, which is but a short one. Only this: Perhaps we may be as sagacious as Solomon, when we have got as great a surfeit of pleasure as his Jewish Majesty;10 but, till that time comes, we must beg leave to differ from him. Your Lordship is a complete master of the noble science of Happiness. Theory and practice both are not wanting. You have taught me a smattering, for which I thank you. Did you not find me an excellent scholar?— I certainly did pretty well for my time. But I am impatient for a regular course of lectures, and full scope for the exercise of my knowledge; which cannot be, till my propitious stars—Venus for one,— and, I take it, Mars for another,11— shall grant us to meet again in the delightful BRITISH METROPOLIS. The Spectator tells us, that men generally are fonder to appear happy, than to be really so.12 The observation may hold good for the most part; but, you know, every rule has its exceptions; and from this, take your humble servant as one: for if that were my opinion, I should at this moment be superlatively blest; being undoubtedly reckoned one of the happiest men alive, especially by every young fellow in this country, who has not got the eyes of a mole, or the perceptions of a burgomaster.13 You will now think, I suppose, that I am playing the sphynx, and endeavouring to perplex your understanding by a dark and inconceivable enigma. Be it so, my dear Lord.— I will not attempt to beat you out of your conjecture. I might, perhaps, find it as difficult as to persuade a hypochondriac14 that the tower of Babel15 is not built upon his left shoulder. If a skilful physician was employed to cure a man of this dreadful malady, instead of vainly opposing his disturbed imagination, he would instantly call for workmen, drive the building down about his patient’s ears, save him from the ruins, and so deliver him from the terrible apprehension which nodded over his head. This simile may not be entirely applicable to the present case. No matter for that: Omnis simile claudicat, as the old churchman said;16 and why not this? So, my Lord! I will humour your supposition, that I am playing the sphynx; but will likewise double a part,17— as the players say,— and in the character of Œdipus, will unravel the wonderful mystery. Like all other discoveries hard to be come at, it is very plain when known. In short, my Lord, the voice of this part of the world has it, that I am just going to be married18 to an angel of light,19— to talk as a poet,— or to give you an expression which you may like better,— to a most beautiful young lady, whom you know very well, and have said a thousand fine things to. You cannot mistake who it is,— the idol of every public place, the toast of every private company. Is not this exaltation enough? Must I not have my own share of envy? The most certain indication of a man’s being esteemed fortunate.—— However, this is not enough for me. I understand as much of the law, as to know, that the kernel is better than the shell, and that a sagacious man will always prefer substance to shadow. The last of these I look upon as of the same species with transient fame; the short-liv’d breath, whether sweet or the contrary, of the ignorant world; which, for the most trifling reasons, and frequently for no reasons at all, circulates, with eager 105

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rapidity, every thing that fancy suggests.20 I have indeed experienced the full extent of this in my own person. Not long ago, they paid me the compliment, forsooth, of swinging upon Tyburn-tree,21— which, though now dignify’d by better company, the want of which Macheath regrets so much,22— I should not yet be over-fond of.23 Now the note is chang’d; nothing for it but Bravo! — Hymen24 for ever! — A very pretty man! — He deserves her! Would not this, my Lord, have made ONSLOW25 smile from his chair, during an important debate, could it but have occurred to him? If your Lordship will permit me to use a conceit, this chimerical περιπετεια,26 (excuse the pedantry of a Greek word; — I love it,27 and must down with it; — you shall have it in English too), this chimerical change of fortune reminds me of a curious expression of some poor, well-meaning, persecuted zealot or another, who used to call the gallows the gate of heaven:28— for from that, it seems, they have transported me to the paradise of Miss ———’s29 arms Charming project truly for the amiable creature! A pretty sort of a juvenile husband she would have! — How becoming would the volatile pate of Ranger30 look, when wrapp’d up in the matrimonial nightcap! —What a grave prudent master of a family would a flighty young officer of the GUARDS make! Your Lordship’s fertile invention may contrive two or three more exclamations of the same kind. In the mean time, let me not forget that you may, by this time, have uttered many an exclamation of impatience at the prodigious extent of this epistle. Indulge me a little longer: you shall soon get free: I am now near the end of my paper, which is far from being a puny slip.— And what does it contain? — Why, truly, a great deal about my important self. I am sorry to find myself so remarkable an Egotist. But self-sufficiency is so much my style, that I am persuaded, if you will but read a single sentence of this to Sir Charles S———,31 or any of our common friends, without tipping them the smallest wink, they will tell you who it is from, in the snapping of a hard biscuit. What is Tristram Shandy32 doing? skipping about alamode de bon vivant? I wish you great folks would give him as broad a hint to rise in the church, as the Irishman once received to go down stairs.33 He is the best companion I ever knew,34 and the most taking composer of sermons35 that I ever read. I shall write to him soon. Pray be so good as to ask Lord G——— if he has not forgot me. I lik’d him much, when Sir Richard;36 I hope his peerage has not banished his good humour. Remember me to all with whose acquaintance I have been honoured through your Lordship’s kindness. It would take up the live-long day to name every one of them, from his R——l H———ss,37 downwards. I must insist that you present my best respects to Lady M———,38 and tell her, that to hear her Ladyship’s divine harpsichord, for another forenoon, I would gladly serve her for half a year, as a downright footman, without any mental reservation whatever.—— I remain, with perfect esteem and gratitude, My DEAR LORD, your, &c. 1 Pottle guessed correctly in his early attributions, made mainly on stylistic grounds, that this pseudonymous letter was JB’s (‘Bozzy and Yorick’, pp. 301–05). The decisive evidence, which Pottle lacked before the discovery in 1930 of the London

journal of 1762–63, is in a comment JB makes in Journ. 15 Mar. 1763: ‘I ordered every thing just as I pleased. I made it just an evening which we past when I was first in London, which I described in my letter to his Lordship, which was published in The

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Scots Magazine. “We sat down in the dining-room, to an enlivening Bottle of old hock.”’ (This entry closely matches the wording in the present letter: ‘my Lord, when you and I … have sat down by ourselves in your dining room, to an enlivening bottle of Old Hock’.) The pseudonym ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ had been used elsewhere. See, among others, Third night. Theatre Canongate … the new tragedy Douglas. Taken from an ancient Scots story, and writ by a gentleman of Scotland, 1756 (ESTC T174838); Letters from a gentleman in the north of Scotland … The third edition, 1760 (ESTC N60663); A letter from a gentleman in Edinburgh, to his friend in the country …, 1765 (ESTC N5544), none of which was by JB. Donaldson’s Collection I and II were both issued as by ‘Scotch Gentlemen’. 2 The coronation of King George III and Queen Charlotte on 22 Sept. featured a sermon by the Bishop of Salisbury (Robert Hay Drummond) and anthems by William Boyce (both published in the press). Printed accounts which JB could have read were numerous. Besides magazine and newspaper accounts, see the following: The form of the proceeding to the royal coronation, 1761 (ESTC T88230); The form and order of the service … and of the ceremonies … in the coronation …, 1761 (ESTC T114263); and An account of the ceremonies observed at the coronation …, 1761 (ESTC T85314). The coronation, in the same month as the royal wedding (which had taken place 8 Sept.), did involve ‘courtly fatigues’, especially for those such as Lord Eglinton with posts at court. As a Lord of the Bedchamber (from 1760 to 1767), Eglinton would have been assigned a place in the procession either by virtue of his Court office or as an earl (Scots Mag. Sept. 1761, xxiii. 497). 3 JB lived in an apartment of Eglinton’s house during his stay in London Mar.–June 1760. JB wrote in his 1791 autobiography that ‘his views of the world were chiefly opened by … Alexander Earl of Eglintoune, one of the most amiable and accomplished noblemen of his time, who being of the same county, and from his earliest years acquainted with the family of Auchinleck, insisted that young Boswell should have an apartment of his house, and introduced him into the circles of the great, the gay, and the ingenious. He in particular carried him to Newmarket …’ (Memoirs JB, pp. xxix–xliv). 4 JB in Cub had praised Eglinton’s vibrant life: ‘LORD E*******N [i.e., ‘Eglintoun’], who has, you know,/ A little dash of whim, or so;/ Who thro’ a thousand

scenes will range/ To pick up any thing that’s strange’, referring to him as ‘The sprightly PEER’ (Cub, pp. 13, 19). In ‘Ébauche de ma vie’, JB credited a Lord ‘———’, generally thought to have been Eglinton, with dispelling his religious gloom fuelled by Calvinist guilt and fear of Hell and replacing it with a more measured epicureanism: ‘Milord ——— me fit Deiste. Je me livrois aux plaisirs sans borne’. From his youth, JB repeatedly sought out friends like WJT, McQuhae or Eglinton who could offer him a theism more comforting than the rigorous orthodoxy of his childhood. The first important figure in this sequence was his boyhood tutor, John Dun (see n. 12 below). 5 JB noted that Eglinton had ‘got’ the ‘curious cub’ JB and spent time ‘driving him about/ Thro’ London, many a diff’rent rout’ (Cub, p. 13). 6 Ranelagh Gardens. 7 Hochheim wine, or ‘hock’, is referred to several times in this correspondence (see From AE to GD, ?2 Aug. 1761, n. 25), and JB here suggests that Eglinton’s cellar contained examples aged either in cask or in bottle. 8 There are twenty-nine occurrences of the phrase ‘under the sun’ in the Authorized (KJV) version of the Bible, all in Ecclesiastes, but only two contain the word ‘thing’ which JB here remembered as part of the verse. Ecclesiastes 1:9 contains the world-weary sentiments against which JB revolted: ‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun’. Ecclesiastes 8:15 was more consistent with Eglinton’s mode of living: ‘Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry: for that shall abide with him of his labour the days of his life, which God giveth him under the sun.’ 9 King Solomon, renowned for his unparalleled ‘wise and understanding heart’ (1 Kings 3:12). Ecclesiastes (Gr.) or Qoholeth or Koheleth (Heb.), the book by an anonymous ‘assembler’ or preacher, was widely presumed on the basis of Judeo-Christian religious tradition to have been written by King Solomon, although modern scholars have disputed the traditional identification. 10 Here referring not merely to Solomon’s luxurious royal palace and the love of wines and foods expressed in the so-called ‘Song of Solomon’, but to Solomon’s surfeit of women: ‘And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines’ (1 Kings 11:3, KJV).

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25 SEPTEMBER 1761 11 Venus being love (both sexual and marital) and Mars war. In his letters in this volume, JB proved abundantly that his interest in the Foot Guards was, unlike his interest in sex, dependent on his being exempted from any genuine active duty or hazardous engagements. 12 ‘But what maintains the Humour is, that outward Show is what most Men pursue, rather than real Happiness’ (Spectator, no. 193). JB was assigned the Spectator by his tutor John Dun sometime during 1748– 52, and it was from this period that he dated ‘mes premiêrres idees du gout pour les beaux arts, et du plaisir qu’il y avoit de considerer la varieté de la vie humaine’ (‘Ébauche de ma vie’). 13 Less likely a joke about Dutch or Flemish borough-masters than about ridiculing the provinciality of local elites such as those of Ayr or Edinburgh. 14 JB more typically had a sympathetic view of hypochondria, from which he recurrently suffered throughout his life, and which he generally defined in a manner resembling modern clinical depression. When he chose a pseudonym for his series of seventy essays published 1777–83 in Lond. Mag., he chose ‘The Hypochondriack’ (see Bailey). 15 The story of the Tower of Babel is in Genesis 11:3–9. Here it is used simply as a symptom of insane delusion, and of the power of Sterneian hobby-horses. 16 ‘Every simile limps’. A similar expression appears in Chapman’s commentary on Iliad vol. 2: ‘Spondanus … alledges the vulgar understanding of a Simile … that a similitude must uno pede semper claudicare’ (Chapman’s Homer, ed. Allardyce Nicoll, 1967, i. 69–70). The old churchman, if he existed, has not yet been identified. 17 Doubling a part refers to the same actor playing two different roles. Doubled parts are usually ones isolated some distance from each other in the play, so as to allow the actor enough time to make the necessary costume changes in time for his cue. The nonsense in this metaphor is that it is a physical impossibility for an actor to play two characters who must conduct a dialogue with one another ‘onstage’. 18 The rumour that JB was considering marriage had reached AE by Nov. From AE, 1 Nov. spoke of it: ‘I heard you was just going to be married’. 19 The ‘angel of light’ has not been conclusively identified. On the evidence of the journal, she was perhaps Katharine Colquhoun, although JB normally used either a code

name or a real name rather than both. Furthermore, as Pottle noted, JB’s ‘initials, ciphers, and pseudonyms for his various ladies are usually in some way related to their real names’ (Earlier Years, p. 485). JB had several concurrent romantic interests in autumn 1761. 20 See Pope’s An Essay on Man, IV: What’s Fame? a fancy’d life in others breath, A thing beyond us, ev’n before our death. (ll. 237–38, Butt ed.) 21 Tyburn gallows, or ‘Tyburn Tree’, was the major site of public execution in London from 1388 to 1783. After 1783 the public hangings, with their crowds of spectators and vendors, were moved to Newgate. The permanent triangular gallows was so large that twenty-one people could be hanged from it simultaneously. 22 JB paraphrases Macheath’s Air LXVII from The Beggar’s Opera (III. xiii):

Since Laws were made for ev’ry Degree, To curb Vice in others, as well as me, I wonder we han’t better Company, Upon Tyburn Tree! But Gold from Law can take out the Sting; And if rich Men like us were to swing, ’Twould thin the Land, such Numbers to string Upon Tyburn Tree!

While JB was in London, the 4th Earl Ferrers was hanged at Tyburn on 5 May 1760 for murdering his steward (Gent. Mag. May 1760, xxx. 230–36, 246). Although there were some objections to a peer’s not being granted the right of beheading rather than being hanged as a common criminal and dissected, his fate was offered for decades as ‘proof’ of the equity of British justice whose class biases Gay’s opera had questioned (Douglas Hay, ‘Property, Authority and the Criminal Law, in Douglas Hay et al., Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, 1975, pp. 33– 34). 23 JB’s joke could be that he had once considered marrying as equivalent to being publicly executed. Many men who were hanged wore the clothes of a bridegroom to the gallows (Lond. Encyclopedia, s.v. ‘Tyburn’; Peter Lindebaugh, ‘The Tyburn Riot Against the Surgeons’, in Douglas Hay et al., Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, 1975, pp. 112–15). Alternatively, the joke may refer merely to jabs that JB was fit only for the noose. See Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, bk.

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III, ch. 2: ‘it was the universal Opinion of all Mr. Allworthy’s Family that [Tom] was certainly born to be hanged’ (Tom Jones, Wesleyan ed., i. 118). 24 The goddess of marriage. 25 Arthur Onslow (1691–1768), M.P. 1720–61, Privy Councillor from 1728, served as ‘Speaker in [i.e., of] the House of Commons’ from 1728 to 1761. He had retired as speaker on 18 Mar. He asserted that his goal as speaker had been ‘authority and impartiality’, and others such as Lord Hardwicke praised him as someone who ‘has never yet … and … never will, take sides in the factions and divisions at court’ (Namier and Brooke, iii. 226). 26 Peripeteia, a turning right about, reversal of the normal order, esp. a sudden change of condition or fortune, mostly from good to bad, less freq. from bad to good; generally, any strange occurrence, or unexpected event (Liddell, Scott and Jones, Greek-English Lexicon). 27 In the dedication ‘TO JAMES BOSWELL, Esq.’ which preceded Ode, JB admitted to his critical self that ‘to display my extensive erudition, [I] have quoted Greek, Latin, and French sentences, one after another with astonishing celerity’ (Ode, p. 3). 28 A relatively common sentiment, although many of the heterodox were burned rather than hanged. See John Foxe, Acts and Monuments (or ‘Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’) in its account of the persecution of Zisca: ‘Simeon Sussickey … was ordered to be executed on a gallows. He went cheerfully to death, and appeared impatient to be executed, saying, “Every moment delays me from entering into the Kingdom of Christ.”’ 29 ‘Miss ———’ is presumably the same marital prospect mentioned earlier in this letter. 30 Ranger was one of JB’s favourite stage characters, along with Macheath. In Act I, Scene I of Benjamin Hoadly’s The Suspicious Husband he pulls off his wig and says: ‘give me my cap’. He manages to avoid being married in the final act, and tells his friends in the final speech of the play, ‘I had rather you should be married than I … Never did Matrimony appear to me with a Smile upon her Face, ’till this Instant’ (Act V, Scene II). 31 Sir Charles Sedley (c. 1721–78) of Nuthall, Bt., M.P. for Nottingham, 1747– 54, 1774–78 (Comp. Bar. iv. 187; Sedgwick, ii. 415; Namier and Brooke, iii. 419). It is clear from Cub (where his name is spelled out) that he was a ‘friend’ of Eglinton. He

was descended from an illegitimate son of the Restoration dramatist of the same surname, and when he died left his property to an illegitimate daughter. JB described his meeting with Sir Charles at the Jockey Club in Cub. There, he called him: SEDLEY, a truly worthy Knight, In whom strong sense quick parts unite, Whose humour of peculiar cast Surprizes you from first to last; Who, tho’ few really are more wise, To look a little foolish tries; And likes Exotics to discover, As a fine Lady a new Lover;… (pp. 17–18) 32

That is, Laurence Sterne. The source for this is unknown, perhaps a play or a jest-book, but of course implies a kick in the posterior. One of JB’s early poems was an eight-line effort entitled ‘Kick on the Bretch’ (Werner, p. 20). JB also recorded an anecdote in which Lord Mark Ker and Lord Stair wagered on ‘a throw of the dice’ as to ‘which of us two kicks this Scoundrel down stairs’, the scoundrel in question being an ‘impudent fellow’ who was ‘saying some rude things against Scotland’ (‘Boswelliana’, Hyde Collection, p. 15). For Sterne’s lack of further preferment in the church, see To Sterne, after 7 Apr. 1760 and ?before Oct., nn. 1, 7, 8, 16. 34 This praise of Sterne as ‘the best companion I ever knew’ seems an odd phrase given the apparent brevity of JB’s meeting with Sterne. Sterne’s schedule was crowded with visitors in London, and his lack of mention of JB in his letters as edited by Curtis suggests that if he did meet JB, JB made little or no impression on him, even if JB did foist a reading of Cub on him, as Pottle alleged in ‘Bozzy and Yorick’. The passage may instead be a reference to the transformation which JB’s reading of Tristram Shandy had made on his prose style (witness E–B) and whimsical sense of life. 35 For the sensation caused by Sterne’s Sermons, see To Sterne, after 7 Apr. 1760 and ?before Oct., n. 8. 36 Sir Richard Grosvenor (1731–1802), Bt., M.P. for Chester, 1754–61, cr. Baron Grosvenor of Eaton from 8 Apr. 1761, later (1784) cr. Viscount Belgrave and Earl Grosvenor. As he did not marry until 1764 (and even then unhappily), he was a likely companion to Eglinton’s cadre of bachelors. He shared Eglinton’s interest in literature, being the patron of William Gifford and publisher of literary pieces read by his

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house-guests at Eaton (Eaton Chronicle, or the Salt Box, 1789). He had served in the coronation of George III as grand cupbearer. He was a great patron of the turf, and a major breeder of racing horses (Comp. Peer. vi. 209–10; Namier and Brooke, ii. 557). 37 That is, ‘His Royal Highness’: in this case, Edward Augustus, Duke of York, both friend and patron to Eglinton. 38 Unidentified. The information that she was a London (or Scottish?) acquaintance of JB’s who lived in or was visiting London and played the harpsichord has not allowed for a conclusive identification. Perhaps a misprint of ‘Lady N———’, i.e., Lady Northumberland. Hankins (i. 57–58, n. 16) notes that Pottle tentatively identified Lady M——— as Lady Mary Coke (1726–1811, for whom

see Scots Peer. i. 377–78; Comp. Peer. vii. 558–59). A Scot by birth and an acquaintance of Eglinton, in her portrait by Ramsay (?1762) she posed beside a harpsichord, grasping an erect theorbo (or chitarrone) ‘of gigantic proportion’ (Richard D. Leppert, Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-Cultural Formation in Eighteenth-Century England, 1988, pp. 171–75, pl. 73). She was also an intimate of the Duke of York, and in later years claimed to have married him secretly. Pottle also attempted to link Lady Mary with the equally mysterious ‘Lady Mirabel’ of the London journal of 1762–63 (14, 18, 20, 21 Jan. 1763). All possible grounds for these tentative identifications were presented by Pottle in Earlier Years, pp. 484–85, where Pottle himself admitted the tenuousness of his suggestion.

To Laurence Sterne, after 25 September 1761 Not reported; doubtful. Mentioned in the preceding letter: ‘What is Tristram Shandy doing? … He is the best companion I ever knew, and the most taking composer of sermons that I ever read. I shall write to him soon’. It remains in debate whether JB’s claim that ‘I shall write to him soon’ (a) refers to the verse epistle from Douce 193 printed in this volume; (b) refers to another letter, not Douce 193, which JB wrote and sent; or (c) refers to a letter which JB failed to write, although he had hoped or planned to do so.

To Thomas Sheridan, Sunday 27 September 1761 MS. Yale (L 1156). A draft or foul copy. HEADING: To Thomas Sheridan Esq.1

Auchinleck, 27 Septr. 1761 DEAR SIR: I hope this will find you perfectly happy—at home—with your agreable Family.2 This Sentence, to a considerable3 part of the World may seem to imply a Contradiction in Terms—Happiness and Home especially with a Wife—being esteemed incompatible, by a great many of those who distinguish themselves by the pretty Epithet of gay.4 I myself forsooth must needs give into this fashionable Opinion and have my own Juvenile laugh at the Hymenaeal Chains and all that,5 though indeed Sir you have allmost convinced me that the shackles of Matrimony are not so heavy as I imagined but on the contrary (to borrow an Expression from no less a Man than Mr. Locket) sit as easy as a Glove.6 Since I am come to You and me with it I shall be at You, with a vengeance. Yes Sir I will tell you in spite of all your injunctions to the contrary, that your Behaviour to me has been noble and generous, that your kindness has lay’d me under the greatest Obligations—and that I ardently wish for an Opportunity to show the Sense that I entertain of it. Pray don’t be offended with me—Forgive7 this transgression against your commands with as much lenity—as you have done my other Offences—I can plead the same excuse, warmth of Passion, or perhaps8 in critical precision of Language, Affection—Gratitude My Dear Sir which must 110

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have it’s way a little. I am sure I have not exceeded the bounds of Moderation. You are My Socrates9—You have sayd so yourself. With unfeigned Joy do I thank Heaven for it. Plutarch10 tells us11 that when this Philosopher12 saw the Young Alcibiades13 in danger of being ruined by an improper course14 of life. ‘He resolved to interpose and save so hopefull a Plant from perishing in the Flower, and before it’s Fruit came to Perfection’.15 Was not this exactly the case with respect to us? Am not I then ‘a hopefull Plant’? Dont answer me. Indeed I do not deserve it. I am most confoundedly impudent. And here You must be informed of one bad consequence of the particular notice which You have been pleased to take of Me—which is that I am grown prodigiously vain.16 That I think is rather too severe. Let me then trace this feeling of mine to a higher source & say that I am grown prodigiously Ambitious. I have been studying Law very hard since You left Scotland,17 which makes the Old Gentleman18 extremely happy. He is really a good Man. I hope he will act quite properly with regard to me, and that all our Schemes19 shall go well. I presume that you have taken the trouble to have my name entered in the Middle Temple.20 Address me when you write under the appelation of a Student there it will please me. I need not say any thing to you about the unusual Gayety of the Metropolis. But pray how do the Theatres go on? Have you made your Appearance yet?21 Is Garrick22 under any Trepidation? I hear Covent Garden has got the laugh on it’s side—I mean the risible Foote23 is engaged there. If you can conveniently afford me a little time, I shall be infinitely happy to hear from you. I am etc. 1 Presumably the actual letter was addressed to TS’s London residence in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. 2 Frances (Chamberlaine) Sheridan (1724–66), novelist and playwright, had married Thomas in 1747. Her most successful work was Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, extracted from her own journal, and now first published, 1761 (ESTC N10549). In 1761 her novel already had a second edition (ESTC T142760), and the posthumous sequel appeared in 1767 (Conclusion of the memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, as prepared for the press by the late editor of the former part, 1767; ESTC N26662). The work was so popular that in her later works’ titles, she was referred to as ‘the editor of Miss Sidney Bidulph’. Of the Sheridans’ six children, two, Thomas (1747–50) and Sackville (b. and d. 1754), had died in infancy. There were four children in 1761: Charles Francis (1750– 1806), an M.P. in the Irish Commons 1776 –90, and Under-Secretary, Mil. Dept. for Ireland 1782–89 (Oxford DNB); Richard Brinsley (1751–1816), later playwright, theatrical manager and ‘King of Drury Lane’, M.P. 1780–1812, and government official 1782–83 and 1804–1816 (Biog. Dict.; The House of Commons, 1790–1820, ed. R. G. Thorne, 1986, v. 143–69); Alicia (b. 1753,

m. Joseph LeFanu 1781, d. 1817), later playwright (Sons of Erin, 1812), and the maternal grandmother of the Victorian novelist J. S. LeFanu; and Anne Elizabeth or ‘Betsy’ (b. 1758, m. Capt. Henry LeFanu 1789, d. 1837), later known as author of letters to her brother Richard 1784–90 (letters published in 1960 and 1992 as Betsy Sheridan’s Journal), and mother of the Alicia Lefanu who published the memoirs (referred to as ‘Lefanu’ in this volume) of Mrs. Frances Sheridan , as well as historical romances and poems. See Sheldon, pp. 204–05, 207, 212 n., 215 n., 222 n., 259 n., 300, 302 n.; Lefanu, pp. 48–49, 67–68, 88; William LeFanu, ed., Anne Elizabeth Sheridan, Betsy Sheridan’s Journal, Letters from Sheridan’s Sister 1784–1786 and 1788– 1790, 1960, repr. 1992; Oxford DNB, s.v. ‘Le Fanu, Philip’. 3 MS. ‘considerable’ written over deleted ‘great’ 4 An epithet JB frequently used, applying it to bon-vivants such as Eglinton who had evaded marriage. 5 ‘And all that’ was a cant phrase of the day. For other examples, see Pope, The Rape of the Lock, iii. 17–18 (Butt ed.) and Richardson, Pamela, iii. letter 22 (ed. Peter Sabor, 1980).

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27 SEPTEMBER 1761 6 That is, ‘Lockit’, the gaoler in The Beggar’s Opera (II. vii): ‘LOCKIT. Those [chains], I see, will fit the Captain better— Take down the further Pair. Do but examine them, Sir.— Never was better work.— How genteely they are made!— They will fit as easy as a Glove, and the nicest Man in England might not be asham’d to wear them. [He puts on the Chains.]’ 7 MS. ‘Forgive’ written over deleted ?‘Excuse’ 8 MS. ‘some’ deleted, presumably replaced by the text’s ‘in’ 9 Socrates (469–399 B.C.), Athenian philosopher, was, along with Maecenas, one of JB’s names for his mentors and patrons. 10 Plutarch, ?46–c. 120, Greek essayist and biographer whose ‘Parallel Lives’ comprised forty-six dyadic biographies of eminent Greeks and eminent Romans. He also wrote four single biographies. 11 MS. ‘tells us’ written above deleted ‘says’ 12 MS. ‘this Philosopher’ written above deleted ‘Socrates’ 13 Alcibiades, c. 450–404 B.C., Athenian statesman and general of the noble family of Alcmaeonidae, a student of Socrates, who entered politics in 421 B.C. JB would have seen many Plutarchan parallels between his life and Alcibiades’: their brash youthfulness, their intellectual mentoring, their interest in war, and their questioning of established pieties. 14 MS. ‘course’ written above deleted ‘Plan’ 15 Plutarch’s ‘Life of Alcibiades’ (Plutarch: The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, in Dryden’s translation):

It was manifest that the many well-born persons who were continually seeking his company, and making their court to him, were attracted and captivated by his brilliant and extraordinary beauty only. But the affection which Socrates entertained for him is a great evidence of the natural noble qualities and good disposition of the boy, which Socrates, indeed, detected both in and under his personal beauty; and, hearing that his wealth and station, and the great number both of strangers and Athenians who flattered and caressed him, might at last corrupt him, resolved, if possible, to interpose, and preserve hopeful a plant from perishing in the flower, before its fruit came to perfection. For never did fortune surround and enclose a man with so many of those things which we vulgarly call goods, or so protect him

from every weapon of philosophy, and fence him from every access of free and searching words, as she did Alcibiades; who, from the beginning, was exposed to the flatteries of those who sought merely his gratification, such as might well unnerve him, and indispose him to listen to any real adviser or instructor. 16 JB’s dedication to himself in An Ode to Tragedy spoke of this amour propre: ‘To entertain agreeable notions of one’s own character, is a great incentive to act with propriety and spirit. But I should be sorry to contribute to any degree, to your acquiring an excess of self-sufficiency’ (see From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’, c. Nov.). See also JB’s 1760 description of himself in Cub (pub. 1762), p. vi: ‘To be so deficient in Vanity, which, if I am not mistaken, may be reckoned an inseparable Characteristic of a Poet’. 17 TS had been made an honorary freeman of the City of Edinburgh 8 July 1761. He was engaged to appear with Garrick’s company at Drury Lane in the seasons of 1760–61 and with Rich’s and Beard’s company at Covent Garden 1761–62 (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 808, 883). 18 That is, Lord Auchinleck. 19 These ‘Schemes’ presumably included TS’s plan for JB to register as a student in the Temple. This compromise would simultaneously satisfy Lord Auchinleck’s desire for JB to study law while gratifying JB’s hunger to live in London. 20 Instead, TS entered JB’s name in the Inner Temple. See From TS, 21 Nov. 21 TS’s ‘first time on any stage this season’ was advertised at Covent Garden for 22 Dec. with TS as Hamlet, for the benefit of the General Lying-In Hospital (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 909; Sheldon, p. 2). 22 Garrick’s company at Drury Lane were arch-rivals of Rich’s Covent Garden, and each theatre tried to lure talent away from the other. As noted above, TS had been in Garrick’s employ in the previous season. The competition was made even more intense by the frequent duplication in the rival theatres’ programmes. By 22 Dec., when TS first performed Hamlet at Covent Garden, Garrick had appeared twice in the role at Drury Lane (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 895, 904). 23 Samuel Foote (1720–77), actor and playwright, was one of the great comedians and mimics of the era. The success at Drury Lane of Foote’s play, The Minor, produced during the 1760–61 season, made his pres-

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ence in any theatre a drawing card. Despite a furious battle that season with Covent Garden’s manager John Rich when he learned that Rich planned to produce The Minor (Foote threatened to mimic Rich along with his three cats on the Drury Lane stage), Foote transferred his allegiance from Drury Lane to Covent Garden at the start of the 1761–62 season, enticed by Rich’s generous terms. TS had done the same. When he defected, Foote brought with him The Minor and the promise of a new play, The Liar. He performed The Minor several times with considerable success; The Liar, first performed 12 Jan., was received indifferently. Foote had appeared with great success

in the Edinburgh theatre in Mar. 1759 (Simon Trefman, Sam. Foote, Comedian, 1720–1777, 1971, pp. 100, 120–21, 274– 75). JB’s interest in mimicry in his youth would have made Foote appealing to him. JB’s critique of Foote’s Minor published in 1761 admitted JB’s love of mimicry: ‘I must confess that I am very fond of mimicry … — are you a mimic, Mr. Genius? —Am I a msmic? [sic] ay, and a good one too, let me tell you.— I never was with a man in my life, who had got any thing odd about him, but I could take him off in a trice: —I can, I assure you; and I often find great benefit from it’ (Observations, 1761, p. 14–15).

To Anne Mackintosh, Monday 5 October 1761 MS. Yale (L 907). A copy. HEADING: To Lady Macintosh.1

Auchinleck, 5 Octr. 1761 DEAR MADAM: Last night was I blest with your very obliging Letter. You have indeed adrest me in ‘pleasing way’.2 Your verses3 agreably surprised me. I own [I] did not expect them. For who could4 imagine any one Person posest of all pretty Accomplishments—of which to write verses is surely no despicable one—at least I must say so—and with confidence too—for your Ladyship will join with me. When a Lady5 is remarkably distinguished for Perfections which cannot be hid, but are evident to every body We cannot be blam’d considering the general character of human Nature, although we doubt of her6 being posest of others which we have had no Proof of. But indeed Madam I (who you know am your profound Admirer) am most terribly jealous of Apollo whose extravagant7 Gallantry not content with his three times three Mistresses8 who trip it so charming and gay on the banks of the Helicon, has it seems been paying court to your Ladyship. For I am very sure9 from the specimen of your Poetical Composition that lies before me, that your visits from the tunefull God10 have been more than just a day and a Dinner. The Pleasure which you promise me at Moyhall, is a Picture of my warmest Imagination. Macintosh and I shall renew the ancient friendship of our family’s over a cordial Cup of Claret. And Music and dancing and the dear dear Ladies shall place me in fancifull Paradise. My partner you say is to be a bonny lass. Indeed the County of Inverness can boast many such. Rossshire11 I beg pardon for not naming you too. But who so bonny as my Hostess? No No My Dear Lady Macintosh—nobody but Yourself for Boswell He is a very aspiring Genius. Who knows but your Ladyship meant so by that Expression12—Who knows? Who would be so stupid as to give any other meaning to it! You ask Madam if I will ‘have the Goodness’13 (very fine) to14 write you an answer. Upon my word I can make no answer to that Compliment; but I can say with the greatest truth that to be honoured with the Corespondence of Lady Macintosh was what I ardently wished for, and to let you into a Secret—vanity 113

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made me hope for it as the reward of my Rhimes which if they do not deserve it themselves at least may15 they put in a claim on account of the intention of their Author. Whenever your Ladyship pleases to write to me You may be assured that you are conferring a favour on your Slave; & if you set any value on his letters, You shall not want them. I remain with Affectionate respects to Mcintosh etc. 1 JB’s journal would record several meetings with Lady Mackintosh in Dec. (Journ. 1, 4, 19 Dec.). 2 See From Anne Mackintosh, between 12 and 25 Aug. 3 MS. ‘verseses’ 4 MS. ‘could’ superimposed upon ‘can’ 5 MS. ‘a Lady’ written above an illegible deletion, probably ‘one’ 6 MS. ‘her’ written above a deleted ‘their’ 7 MS. ‘extravagantly’, amended by crossing out ‘ly’ 8 The nine Muses. 9 MS. ‘very’ inserted above ‘sure’ 10 Here, Apollo. 11 The city of Inverness was on the northern boundary of Inverness-shire, adjacent to Ross-shire. JB implies that the ball given in Inverness to entertain the North Circuit court would be attended by ladies

from all the surrounding countryside. 12 JB was hinting that Lady Macintosh meant herself when she wrote: … The Leand-lady [will give you] a Bonny lass To trip and Dance it all day long When Evening coms a Merry Song And your Reward, when ere you Crave it …

JB played up the idea of courtly flirtation in this correspondence with Lady Macintosh (as, for example, in calling himself her ‘Slave’, below). 13 MS. ‘have the Goodness’ written above a deleted ‘be so good’. JB has altered the text so as to quote Lady Mackintosh exactly (see From Lady Mackintosh, 22 Sept.). 14 MS. ‘to’ written above a deleted ‘as to’ 15 MS. ‘may’ written above lightly deleted ‘they’

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 10 October 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 13–14 [LETTER IV].

Auchinleck, 10 Octob. 17611 Dear ERSKINE, HAD Philip of Macedon2 been saddle-sick, with riding up and down the country after his unruly son Alexander,3 and been waiting in extreme pain, till the surgeon of the next village brought him emollient relief, he could not have been more impatient than I am for a return to my last letter.4 I thought, indeed, that my firing so great a gun, would have produced a speedy and suitable echo, and I had no doubt of at least being payed the interest of a Sum so very large. I now give you fair warning, that if something is not speedily done in this affair, I shall be obliged to take very disagreeable methods.5 From this way of talking, I begin to fancy myself a School-master; a character next to that of a giant,6 most terrible to tender minds.7 Don’t think to escape the rod. Don’t think your dignity as a poet will save you from it. I make no question, but what that acrimonious pedagogue George Buchanan8 has often applied it to his pupil,9 and he you know was a poet10 and a king into the bargain. I have been reading The Rosciad.11 You see my very studies have tended towards flagellation. Upon my word Churchill does scourge with a vengeance; I should not like to come under his discipline. He is certainly a very able writer. He has great power of numbers. ‘In manly tides of verse he rolls along.’12 114

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I desire, Erskine, once again, that you may write without delay, otherwise, I shall no longer be Your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. 1 A curious dateline, perhaps in error or fabricated. JB’s journal recorded that he ‘Set out on a jaunt to Lainshaw’ on 9 Oct., was at Lainshaw and Doura on 10 Oct., and was only ‘Home at night’ on 12 Oct. (Journ. 9– 12 Oct.). Although the ‘Harvest 1761’ journal is patchy and contains gaps which compromise its reliability as an exact record of JB’s whereabouts, the discrepancy does raise questions about post facto emendations in either JB’s letters or his journal. AE’s mention of JB’s ‘last letter’ in From AE, 1 Nov., suggests that JB had written recently. All AE’s references in that letter, however, were to To AE, 14 Sept. rather than to this letter. 2 Philip II (382–36 B.C.), King of Macedon from 359 B.C. His army reforms and unification of Greece laid the groundwork for his son’s campaigns; here he is presented as a stock character in farce, the doddering father chasing an unruly son. 3 Alexander III (‘the Great’, 356–23 B.C.). A son of Philip II, Alexander was King of Macedon from 336 B.C., and conquered much of Asia 334–24 B.C. Alexander’s horsemanship and his steed Bucephalus were well-known; the impetuousity of his character was expressed in legends such as the cutting of the Gordian Knot and the burning of the Persian palace. It was also rumoured that Alexander the ‘unruly son’ had a part in the murder of his father. A family anecdote which JB preserved in his ‘Boswelliana’ notebook compares the riding styles of Lord Auchinleck and JB: ‘Lord Auchinleck and his Son were very different men. My Lord was sollid and composed. Boswell was light & restless. My Lord rode very slow. Boswell was one day impatient to get on and begged My Lord to ride a little faster; for, said he, it is not the exercise which fatigues, but the hinging upon a Beast. His Father replied. “What’s the matter man how a Cheild hings; If he dinna hing upon a Gallows”’ (‘Boswelliana’, Hyde Collection, p. 66). 4 Presumably To AE, 14 Sept. 5 Here JB mocks the tone of a dun collecting a debt. AE was impecunious most of his life, and indeed later would attempt to borrow money from JB. This passage is perhaps an indication that JB did not yet know

how low on funds he was (see To AE, 25 Aug. 1768; Corr. 7, pp. 100–01 and n. 7). 6 More evidence of JB’s childhood grounding in folk and fairy tales and chapbooks. A gigantic clubman described as ‘the CALIBAN’, ‘the MONSTER’, and ‘th’ ENORMOUS BULK’ is one of the Newmarket Jockey Club characters in Cub who thoroughly intimidated JB (Cub, pp. 19–20). In 1763 JB mentioned ‘Jack and the Giants, The seven wise men of Gotham and other Storybooks which in my dawning years amused me as much as Rasselas does now … my old darlings … I bought two dozen of the Story-books, and had them bound up with this Title “Curious Productions”’ (Journ. 10 July 1763). 7 The absence of records of AE’s education has already been noted. JB’s own memory of school up until his entry into university was, with regard to half the years described, a record of suffering, to the point where he eventually developed a nervous stomach to avoid the perceived horrors of study. As he pointed out to Rousseau in the ‘Ébauche de ma vie’, ‘Mon Pêre … me confioit a des maitres. De cinq á huit J’allois á une Ecole ou J’etois fort malheureux’. The school was James Mundell’s academy in Edinburgh’s West Bow. Although from the age of 8 to 12 he had a lenient private governor, John Dun, his tutor from the age of 12 to 13, Joseph Fergusson, was a dour taskmaster (see also Earlier Years, pp. 15–25). 8 Buchanan was previously mentioned in AE’s letter to GD. JB described Buchanan as ‘a pedantic Man, and full of prejudices’. Kames thought the ‘heavy man’ Buchanan’s abilities as a poet ‘were but small’ and that he ‘had not genius enough’. JB, although he was ‘much of his Lordship’s [Kames’s] way of thinking’ demurred that ‘Buchanan now and then is lively enough’ with ‘some humour’ and ‘jocular stories’ belying his reputation as a dour Calvinist, the popular image of Buchanan which dominates this letter (Journ. 24 Oct. 1762). 9 James Stuart (1566–1625), King of Scotland as James VI (1567–1625), King of England as James I (1603–25). The boyking was a political pawn of various regents until 1582 (coincidentally the year of Buchanan’s death), and James was kept under the care of ‘reliable’ guardians such as

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the Erskine family (initially the 1st Earl of Mar and then his brother Sir Alexander). His education by George Buchanan from 1570 was also managed in the regency interest, although Buchanan managed to give his pupil a love of theological wrangling and baroque learning. 10 The young James VI, like the young JB, was an aspiring poet. King James’ ‘The Vranie translated’, ‘Ane metaphoricall inuention of a tragedie called Phoenix’, ‘A paraphrasticall translation out of the poete Lucane’, ‘Ane schort treatise’, and ‘The CIIII. Psalme’ all appeared in The essayes of a prentise, in the diuine art of poesie, 1584 (ESTC S109108). 11 The Rosciad, by Charles Churchill (1731–64), a satire on the actors of the British stage, was first published anonymously in Mar. 1761, though in the wake of attacks and misattribution by Crit. Rev., the true author stepped forward (The Rosciad. By the author, 1761, ESTC T122799; Iola A. Williams, Seven XVIIIth-Century Bibliographies, 1924, p. 191; Gent. Mag. Apr. 1761, xxxi. 190). The Rosciad had a success comparable to its model, Pope’s The Dunciad, and may have earned Churchill as much as £1000. By the end of 1761 it was in its fifth edition (The Rosciad. By C. Churchill. The fifth edition, revised and corrected, with large additions, 1761; ESTC T74902). Churchill became one of the most feared figures in the London theatre world for his ability to destroy actors’ reputations with a few savage lines. TS was among those he attacked (ll.

987–1026). Churchill, minister of Rainham from 1756 and curate/lecturer of St. John’s from 1758, was a clergyman ‘from need not choice’ who turned poet and ‘critick’ of the theatres (Edward H. Weatherly, ed., The Correspondence of John Wilkes and Charles Churchill, 1954; Raymond J. Smith, Charles Churchill, 1977; Thomas F. Lockwood, PostAugustan Satire: Charles Churchill and Satirical Poetry, 1750–1800, 1979; for twentiethcentury annotated editions of Churchill’s poetry, including The Rosciad, see James Laver, ed., Poems of Charles Churchill, 2 vols., 1933, and Douglas Grant, ed., Poetical Works of Charles Churchill, 1956). He and his poetry were much discussed by JB and his associates, but JB did not meet Churchill until 24 May 1763. He described him upon that meeting as ‘a rough, blunt fellow, very clever’ and one of the ‘London Geniuses’ (Journ.); despite SJ’s objections to Churchill, JB referred to Churchill as ‘that great bard’ and was proud to be seen next to him in the theatre (Journ. 20 June 1763). 12 A parody of the lines describing the actor Quin in The Rosciad, ll. 945–50: His words bore sterling weight; nervous and strong, In manly tides of sense they roll’d along: Happy in art, he chiefly had pretence To keep up numbers, yet not forfeit sense; No actor ever greater heights could reach In all the labour’d artifice of speech. (Douglas Grant, ed., Poetical Works of Charles Churchill, 1956)

To ‘Miss Home’ (Jean Home),1 before November 17612 MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). Transcribed from a photostat. A draft. It remains unclear if this epistle was designed as a letter to be posted, whether it was posted, or intended as a poem to be given as a gift. Previously printed in Werner, pp. 125–27 (notes, pp. 196–97). The stanzas in this poem are based on JB’s own indentations, whether of one line or an entire group of lines, and also based on page breaks in the MS. The reconstructed stanzas are often of six lines (ll. 1–6, 17–22, 23–28, 53–58, 59–64), but not invariably. There are some short stanzas of four lines (ll. 29–32, 49–52, 65–68), and stanzas of eight lines (ll. 33–40, 41– 45), and even ten (ll. 7–16). TITLE:

An Epistle to Miss Home

[f. 23 r.] Demure as Witch’s3 Tabby Cat4 Have I th’illustrious Boswell sat5 I’m sure at least for minutes five 116

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Beating my Scull how to contrive A few sweet pretty lines to write To your sweet pretty self,6 tonight. To couple Love and Dove7 wont do With one of taste correct8 like you Nor will you let me say you shine Altho’ my words were ne’er so fine. It seems in Prose you hear enough Of that—your’e pleas’d to call it Stuff. And therefore youre resolv’d to have Some sober sense serene and grave Drest to be sure in sprightly Stile Nor would you just disdain to smile9 [f. 23 v.] Beleive me, tho’ immensely vain (To talk in my accustom’d strain) That is too much—it is indeed For me who light as coursing Steed Can give you Fancy10 by the hour But of sound Sense have little Power. All I can promise in these lays Is with warm Gratitude to praise The Kindness you have allways shown To him whom you had better own You as a Perfect Youth11 admire And to his favour much aspire. If Madam this you grant you’ll be (I think tis pretty certain) free From many a tedious keen Dispute And somewhat help to keep12 me mute. [f. 24 v.] Oft have you while weve pleasant13 sat At an amusing tete a tete In my own view my foibles brought And taught me Prudence e’er I thought At Supper (which I think no jest) You’ve14 giv’n me what I lik’d the best And often have your fingers fair Pick’d for my mouth the choicest Pear. You gen’rous Maid from Envy clear Another female worth could hear Nor would you frown altho’ I sung Of ‘Kitty beautifull and Young’15 117

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Nor would you coldly prudish blame My french romantic am’rous flame16 But with a soft Complacence say I let the *Soaper have his way. Think you I ever shall forget Your Goodness—will you take17 a bet— I would advise you not to lay Unless you have a mind to pay. *[JB’s note:] Every man soap his own Beard [f. 24 r.] Sooner shall your Paternal Lord18 Dislike my presence at his Board19 And sooner shall My Lady20 be A mortal foe to chearfull me21 And sooner shall your Brother George22 Look like black Vulcan in his forge.23 Lord Kaims shall stupid be and rude Nor labour for the public Good24 My Lady strut in haughty state And mirth and easy humour hate25 And George become with head agog An overbearing blustring Dog26 E’er you my Jeany in this heart Have not at least a little Part In way of friendship or of love Good rest my Dear my name’s above. 1 Jean Home (b. c. 1745, d. after 1782), only daughter of Henry Home, Lord Kames and Agatha (Drummond) Home, styled ‘Lady Kames’ (see nn. 20, 22, below). In Nov. 1761, Jean Home married Patrick Heron of Kirroughtrie (Scots Mag. Nov. 1761, xxiii. 615). Lady Kames told JB c. 1782 that Jean ‘was not seventeen when she married’ (‘Materials for Writing the Life of Lord Kames’, 29 Nov. 1782, Yale MS. M 135). Heron divorced Jean Home in 1772 on the grounds of her adultery with a young army officer (Commissariat of Edinburgh, Consistorial Processes and Decreets, 1658– 1800, 1909, SRS 34, p. 47, no. 600; Register of Consistorial Decreets, Edinburgh Commissariat, Scottish Record Office, xiii, 23 Jan. 1772). Estranged from the family, she appears to have left for France. Lady Kames’s description of her daughter’s downfall

caused JB to write, ‘This was a strange subject. I kept myself steady—And expatiated on that unfortunate Lady’s many engaging qualities’. Lady Kames also stated that she ‘sends her [daughter] every year £10’, offering evidence that Jean was still living in 1782 (‘Materials for Writing the Life of Lord Kames’, 29 Nov. 1782, Yale MS. M 135). Pottle supposed on the basis of the ‘Ébauche de ma vie’ (1764) and other circumstantial evidence that the ‘femme charmante’ with whom Boswell had an affair c. 1761 and onwards was Jean (Home) Heron. The ‘Ébauche’ itself is deliberately reticent: ‘J’aimois une dame la fille d’un Homme de la premiêre distinction en Ecosse. Elle se marioit avec un Gentilhomme tres riche … elle m’accordoit tout … Son Mari etoit un homme le plus honorable’. Pottle also argued that the lack of mention of any

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affair with Mrs. Heron in the ‘Journal of My Jaunt Harvest 1762’ meant that it was not ‘an honest record of the passionate and probably stormy moments’ of the affair, and was instead an attempt ‘to pull wool over the eyes’ of his two readers, JJ and McQuhae (‘Ébauche de ma vie’; Earlier Years, pp. 5, 77–79, 83, 93). Whether or not one accepts the linking of Jean (Home) Heron as JB’s lover, his description of her in late 1762 was courtly and gallant (Journ. 18 Sept. 1762; see n. 6 below). 2 This poem, as is typical for Douce 193, was undated. The title’s reference to ‘Miss Home’ rather than ‘Mrs. Heron’ would imply that the original draft predated her marriage in Nov. 1761. Still, this dating of before Nov. 1761 should be regarded as conjectural. JB’s ‘Plan of a Volume of Poems to be published for me by Becket & Dehondt’ included ‘Miss Home’ in its projected contents. In various calculations or drafts, JB had claimed that the ‘[Epistle to] Miss Home’ was sixty or seventy lines. The surviving draft is sixty-eight lines (Werner, pp. 14–22). The other verse epistles in Douce 193 seem to have been written about 1760. JB’s memoranda and journals during 1761 and 1762 mention many visits to Kames’s household. 3 MS. ‘Witchs’ 4 The witch’s ‘familiar’, or demon in the form of an animal, often feared because of its silent or ‘demure’ demeanor. John Strawhorn and Ken Andrew noted that ‘the witch cult, or at least belief in its existence, survived well into the 18th century’ (Discovering Ayrshire, 1988, pp. 38–40). Certainly JB’s childhood was filled by a steady diet of folk tales, despite his family’s religious orthodoxy: ‘Les Servantes m’amusoit d’une infinité de contes … de Sorciêrres et de Revenants … mon Imagination etant continuellement effrayé’ (‘Ébauche de ma vie’). 5 MS. A deleted line follows: ‘Beating my’ and remainder of blank line deleted between ‘sat’ and ‘I’m’ 6 JB wrote in 1762: ‘Mrs. Heron tho’ not one would stile a flaming Beauty is a very elegant Woman. Her person is tall and genteel, and her face is very lovely and expressive of good sense and sweetness of disposition’ (Journ. 18 Sept. 1762). 7 The rhyming of ‘love’ and ‘dove’ was not necessarily a sign of poetic ineptitude. Aphra Behn (‘A Translation’, ll. 13–14), William Cowper (‘Verses, Supposed to be Written by Alexander Selkirk’, ll. 17–19),

and Alexander Pope (Acis and Galatea, Air: ‘The Flocks Shall leave the Mountains’, ll. 2–4), among others, all used the rhyme. 8 ‘[Mrs. Heron] has an excellent understanding and has had a compleat Education in every respect’ (Journ. 18 Sept. 1762). 9 ‘[Mrs. Heron] has a great deal of vivacity and an inimitable vein of drollery. Her sallies of humour however are allways chastised by a delicate correctness of Behaviour’ (Journ. 18 Sept. 1762). 10 MS. ‘give you fancy’ written above deleted ‘talk gay chit chat’ 11 In 1761, JB would have been twentyone, and Jean Home around sixteen or seventeen. 12 MS. ‘keep’ written above deleted ‘have’ and ‘make’ 13 MS. ‘weve pleasant’ written above deleted ‘with you I’ve’ 14 MS. ‘My plate you’ and the remainder of a blank line deleted above ‘You’ve’ 15 The first line of Upon Lady Katherine H—de’s first appearing at the play-house in Drury-Lane. By M———w P———r, Esq, 1718 (ESTC T50617). Curll republished the poem as The female phaeton. By Mr. Prior, 1718 (ESTC T35484). The true authorship remains doubtful (The Literary Works of Matthew Prior, ed. H. B. Wright and M. K. Spears, 1971, ii. 1073–75), and ESTC noted that it was probably by Simon Harcourt, Viscount Harcourt. The ‘Kitty’ of the 1718 poem was Lady Catherine Hyde (c. 1710–77), an actress who married Charles Douglas in 1720 and later became the Duchess of Queensberry. JB may have applied this line to Kitty Colquhoun (see To Katharine Colquhoun, 11 Dec.), to whom he was paying much attention at this time. 16 Assuming Jean Home was the ‘femme charmante’, JB was prescient about her lack of sexual jealousy. He described the ‘femme charmante’ in 1764 as having informed him that ‘Ma conscience ne me reproche pas’. When he opened his heart to her and confessed his feelings of guilt and remorse at the adulterous affair, ‘Elle me Rapprochoit ma foiblêsse’ (‘Ébauche de ma vie’). 17 MS. ‘take’ written above deleted ‘lay’ 18 Henry Home (1696–1782), Lord Kames, Scottish judge, author of works of legal analysis and compilation, essays, histories, criticism, agronomy, and epistemology. Called to the Scottish bar in 1724, he assumed the title ‘Lord Kames’ upon becoming a Lord of Session in 1752, and also served as a Lord of Justiciary from 1763. He continued on both benches until a few days

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before his death. His literary production began in 1725, with his most recent works in 1761 being Introduction to the Art of Thinking, 1761, and Principles of Equity, 1760 (ESTC). He was a friend both of Lord Auchineck and JB, often serving as an informal mediator during their disagreements. For a detailed account of his life and context, see Ross. 19 Kames was and continued to be a generous host to JB despite occasional rifts between the two: ‘[Kames] is now and then a little whimsical, and impatient of contradiction’ (Journ. 16 Oct. 1762). 20 Agatha (Drummond) Home (1711– 95), styled Lady Kames. She had married Lord Kames in 1741, when she was thirty and he was about forty-five. On the death of her brother in 1766, she succeeded to the family estate of Blair Drummond, and was thereafter styled ‘Mrs. Home Drummond’ (Ross, pp. 39–40). JB, during his visit in the autumn, wrote: ‘Lady Kames was very handsome and still has a very good presence. She is a woman of good understanding and very well bred. Regulates her family with accuracy, and has in her house and at her table a remarkable degree of elegance. She has a great fund of humour, and a peculiar turn of strong and brilliant propriety of Expression’ (Journ. 16 Oct.). 21 JB did have some occasional disharmonies with Lady Kames: ‘She has now and then a little lowness of spirits which renders her more apt to be disturbed and offended than one could wish, and makes her say pretty severe things’ (Journ. 16 Oct. 1762). 22 George Home (1743–1819) was the Kameses’ only son. He attended St. Andrews, after which Lord Kames sent him to London to undertake a career in business.

Upon his mother’s succession to the estate of Blair Drummond in 1766, he became next in line of inheritance and assumed the surname Drummond (Ross, pp. 40–41). 23 There is a break of at least two lines’ height in the MS page between the line ending ‘forge’ and the line beginning ‘Lord’. The close resemblance of the stanzas beginning ‘Sooner Shall’ and ‘Lord Kaims’ suggest that they may be variora for the same section of the poem, or simply meant to expand the point by redoubling it with another six lines. 24 MS. ‘My’ deleted before ‘Lord’; ‘Kaims’ inserted after ‘Lord’. Writing in 16 Oct. 1762, JB noted that Kames was an ‘uncommon Genius, [with] great Application and extensive knowledge of which his various works are a standing proof … master of Law Philosophy and the Belles Lettres’ (Journ.). Kames had been a polite and patient Mentor to JB: on the same day, JB wrote that Kames was ‘posest of so great insight into human Nature and at the same time, a good companion chearfull and lively … He is honest friendly’. Furthermore, Kames was ‘public-spirited … [and] a great character’ (Journ. 16 Oct. 1762). JB impressed the public-spirited Kames by talking about ‘high roads’ being made ‘passable through Ayrshire’ and ‘the necessity of building a good Public House at Ayr’ (Journ. 24 Sept. 1762). 25 For JB’s account of Lady Kames, see n. 21 above. 26 Given the pattern of ironic reversal of known characteristics of the Kames family in these lines, one may assume that George Home was diffident and affable. References to him in JB’s journal and letters at this time are relatively few.

From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ (James Boswell), c. November 1761 Printed in An Ode to Tragedy. By a Gentleman of Scotland. Edinburgh: Printed by A. Donaldson and J. Reid. For Alex. Donaldson. MDCLXI [in error for MDCCLXI, i.e., 1761], pp. 2–4. This letter of dedication was one of Boswell’s many early hoaxes. (Lit. Car. pp. 7–9). The dating is based on the advertisement of the pamphlet in Scots Mag. Nov. 1761, and the announcement of the publication in Edin. Eve. Cour. 7 Dec. 1761, p. 2. The letter is also quoted in To Katharine Colquhoun, 11 Dec. AE seems to have been in on the joke, from the evidence of From AE, 13 Dec.: ‘An Ode to Tragedy by a gentleman of Scotland, and dedicated to you! had there been only one spark of curiosity in my whole composition, this

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would have raised it to a flame equal to the general conflagration’. In a note to that letter as printed in E–B, Boswell exposed some but not all of the hoax: ‘This Letter was occasioned by seeing an Ode to Tragedy, written by a Gentleman of Scotland, and dedicated to James Boswell, Esq; advertised in the Edinburgh News-papers. It afterwards appeared, that the Ode was written by Mr. Boswell himself’.

TO JAMES BOSWELL, Esq; MY DEAR SIR, IF Adam Fitzadam presumed to inscribe a volume of the WORLD to MR MOORE,1 I can see no reason why I, a Gentleman of Scotland,2 may not take much the same liberty with MR BOSWELL. Do not imagine, Sir, because this address comes in the form of a dedication, that I have been invoking the goddess of Flattery. Indeed I have no intention to pay you compliments: not that your discernment is so nice as to reject them with indignation; but because it is my sincere opinion that they would do you harm. To entertain agreeable notions of one’s own character, is a great incentive to act with propriety and spirit. But I should be sorry to contribute in any degree, to your acquiring an excess of self-sufficiency. To talk thus freely, is certainly a proof that I wish you well: and I make no doubt, Sir, but you consider me as your very good friend; although some people,— and those too not destitute of wisdom,—will not scruple to insinuate the contrary. Be that as it may, give me leave to thank you for your particular kindness to me; and chiefly for the profound respect with which you have always treated me. I own indeed, that when I have boasted of a glimpse of regard from the finest eyes, and most amiable heart in the world; or, to display my extensive erudition, have quoted Greek,3 Latin,4 and French5 sentences, one after another with astonishing celerity; or have got into my Old-hock6 humour, and fallen a-raving about princes and lords, knights and geniuses, ladies of quality and harpsichords; — you, with a peculiar comic smile have gently reminded me of the importance of a man to himself, and slily left the room, with the witty DEAN lying open at — P.P. clerk of this parish.7 The following ODE which courts your acceptance, is on a subject grave and solemn; and therefore may be considered by many people, as not so well suited to your volatile disposition. But I, Sir, who enjoy the pleasure of your intimate acquaintance, know that many of your hours of retirement are devoted to thought; and that you can as strongly relish the productions of a serious Muse, as the most brilliant sallies or sportive Fancy. As to my merit as a poet, I shall only say, that while I am certain of YOUR approbation, I shall be entirely satisfied: and if I can any how improve the noble feelings of that honest open heart of yours, I shall reckon myself infinitely happy. I must now bid you farewell, with an assurance, that while you continue the man that you are, you shall ever find me, with the greatest sincerity and affection, MY DEAR SIR, Yours, &c.

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C. NOVEMBER 1761 1 ‘Adam Fitz-Adam’ was a pseudonym of Edward Moore (1712–57) in his writings for The World. Walpole, Lord Chesterfield, Lord Lyttelton, the Earl of Bath, Soame Jenyns, R. O. Cambridge, and Edward Lovibond were among its contributors. Moore, playwright, poet, and essayist, edited The World as well as personally writing sixty-one of the papers (see J. H. Caskey, The Life and Works of Edward Moore, 1927). Walpole’s surviving personal copies of the weekly contain his own MS annotations which identified each paper’s various authors and the essays’ various code-named characters. The World. By Adam Fitz-Adam … (ESTC P1858) was a weekly periodical gently satirizing the fashionable. Its 209 Numbers were originally published separately from Jan. 1753 to Dec. 1756; its approximate circulation was 2,000–3,000 copies. Moore, as well as editing the original weekly and taking all the profits for the publication, was able before his death to complete his revisions for a collected edition, 1755–57. The essays had reached their ‘third’ collected London edition (printed for the Dodsleys, who had published the weekly originally) by 1761 (ESTC T98550). It remained sufficiently popular for additional reissues (1767, 1772, 1782, 1793, and 1794), and was also republished in standard series of essayists in 1823 and 1827. See G. P. Winship Jr., ‘The Printing History of the World’, in Richmond P. Bond, ed., Studies in the Early English Periodical, 1957, repr. 1977, pp. 183–95. The first volume of the 1767 compiled edition was dedicated to the Earl of Chesterfield, the second volume of that edition dedicated to Walpole, and the fourth to the Earl of Cork, Soame Jenyns, and ‘To Mr. MOORE’. In Moore’s self-dedication, he wrote: ‘IN the list of those whom I am proud to call my assistants in this work, and to the principal of whom, as far as they are come to my knowledge, I have dedicated the former volumes of it, to have omitted you, my best and sincerest friend, would have been strange and unpardonable … you are sensible how high a regard I have always paid to whatever came from your hand … I am convinced you never sat down to write me a paper but from motives of pure love and affection … so partial have I been to your talents and abilities, that you must own I have never through the whole course of the work refused any one of your lucubrations … whatever I may think of you as a writer, as a man I bear you a true affection, take a very interested part in all your concerns,

and should you ever meet with that reward … which I think your merits have long deserved, I hope you are satisfied that no one will more truly rejoice in your good fortune than … ADAM FITZ-ADAM’ (The World, Dodsleys’ 1767 ‘NEW EDITION’, i. 3–4, ii. 3–4, iv. 7–10). 2 For the use of the pseudonym ‘a Gentleman of Scotland’ by JB and others, see From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ (JB) to the Earl of *** (Eglinton), 25 Sept., n. 1. 3 JB began his academic study of Greek in his mid-teens, c. 1755–56, under Robert Hunter, obtained private Greek instruction 1756–57, and continued his training as a Grecian in late 1763 in the Netherlands (Matriculation Roll of Robert Hunter’s Greek Class, 10 Mar. 1756, in the Matriculation Office, University of Edinburgh). See From Hunter, 23 July 1763, nn. 1, 7. An account of JB’s classical education is offered by F. A. Pottle, ‘Boswell’s University Education’, in Johnson, Boswell, and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell, 1965, pp. 230–53. 4 JB was trained in Latin from childhood, and he enjoyed making ‘macaronic’ as well as serious use of Latin, as his letters to AE in particular demonstrate. He matriculated in [1753–]1754 and [1754–]1755 as a student of Latin under George Stuart, and perhaps had private Latin instruction 1755–57 (‘Boswell’s University Education’; From Hunter, 23 July 1763, n. 7). For a general summary of JB as a Latinist, see Earlier Years, p. 24. 5 JB knew various words and phrases in French in 1762–63. Scattered French expressions appear in the letters and journals of those years. Already in Journ. 17 Sept. 1762, before his more formal study, JB used various bits of French: ‘chansons … une Dame de France … Gayeté de Ceure [sic]’. In London in 1763, JB and ‘Louisa’ ‘talked a little in it, & agreed that we would improve ourselves, by reading & speaking it every day’ (Journ. 12 Jan. 1763). ‘Louisa and I began this day to read french …. She pronounced best, and I translated best’ (Journ. 16 Jan. 1763). Lord Auchinleck, however, thought JB’s French inadequate, and suggested that he study it in Europe: ‘If You coud [only] speak the ffrench …. Im affraid your ffrench wont serve you to converse with them …. [D]elay that visit till you have acquired some facility in speaking ffrench’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 23 July 1763, Yale MS. C 219). JB’s fluency in French, such as it was, dated from his residence in Utrecht from

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Aug. 1763 onwards. He employed a French master from the ‘English’ church. As Pottle noted, ‘The least interesting thing about [JB’s] French themes is their French. Boswell soon came to speak and write French fluently and confidently, but he never mastered its idioms nor the nice points of its grammar. His French, even at its best, is Boswellian English literally translated’ (Earlier Years, pp. 125–26, 128).

6 JB’s fondness for ‘old hock’, or German white wine, is discussed in From AE to GD, ?2 Aug., n. 25. 7 Swift was Dean of St. Patrick’s from 1713 to 1745. ‘P.P., Clerk of this Parish’ was the title of a bogus memoir, which was a satire on Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time (Life i. 383–84 n. 3), often printed in the collected works of Swift.

From Andrew Erskine, Sunday 1 November 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 15–17 [LETTER V].

Kelly, Nov. 1, 1761 DEAR BOSWELL, IF you could conceive the many twitches of conscience I have felt upon your account, the agitations, the compunctions, the remorses, you would certainly forgive me. However, I was beginning to turn callous against all suggestions of writing to you, when your last letter arrived, which like the day of judgment, made my transgressions stare me full in the face. Indolence and unwearied stupidity have been my constant companions this many a day; and that amiable couple, above all things in the world detest letter-writing. Besides, I heard you was just going to be married,1 and as a poet, I durst not approach you, without an Epithalamium, and an Epithalamium2 was a thing, which at that time I could not compass. It was all in vain, that Cupid and Hymen, Juno and Luna,3 offered their assistance; I had no sort of employment for them. When you and I walked twice round the meadow4 upon the subject of matrimony, I little thought that my difference in opinion from you, would have brought on your marriage so soon; for I can attribute it to no other cause: From this I learn, that contradiction is of use in society; and I shall take care to encourage that humour, or rather spirit, in myself. As this is the first marriage I ever made, I expect great congratulations, especially from you. I have been busy furbishing up some old pieces for Donaldson’s second volume:5 I exceed in quantity, twenty Eustace Budgels, according to your epistle.6 Pray what is become of the Cub?7 Is Dodsley8 to sell you for a shilling,9 or not? I have written one or two new things, an Ode to Pity, and an Epistle to the great Donaldson, which is to be printed: The subject10 was promising, but I made nothing of it. I must give over poetry, and copy epistles out of that elegant treatise the Compleat Letter-Writer.11 D———12 is gone to London, his parting advice to his sister13 was, to keep the key of the coals14 herself: so I suppose he intends to keep up his fire, this winter, in parliament, and not to go over the coals with the ministry.15 Lady A———16 and I set out for New-Tarbat tomorrow. Could you come? Let nothing but wedlock detain you. Oh Boswell! the soporific effluvia of a hearty dinner cloud all my faculties. I’m as dull as the tolling in of the eighth-hour bell,17 or a neighbour in the country, that pays you an annual visit. At this present moment, I’m astonished how any body can be clever; and your letter in heroic verse seems more amazing to me than if the King of Britain18 was to send an express 123

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for me, to dance a hornpipe19 before him, or the King of Prussia20 was to declare in a manifesto, that I was the occasion of the present war.21 I detest the invention of writing; and nothing could reconcile me to it, but that I can assure you at this distance, that I am yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE. There’s a genteel conclusion for you. When you come to Edinburgh,22 I’ll settle an unintermitting correspondence with you. 1 It is not known how AE received this rumour. It seems to have begun in late September, some time before the letter to Lord E*** of 25 Sept., in which the author mentioned talk of his impending marriage. Katharine Colquhoun may have been the front-runner in JB’s set of matrimonial prospects, though he was certainly actively flirting with others, including AE’s sisters. 2 Among Bennett’s catalogue of AE’s early verse, there was no marriage-anthem or epithalamium (Bennett, pp. 180–82). 3 The deities of love (Cupid), marriage (Hymen), the queen of the pantheon (Juno), and the moon (Luna), all associated with women, love, and marriage. 4 The Meadow (or Meadows), a large open park in Edinburgh to the south of the Old Town, is still preserved. It was long a fashionable promenade for the residents of the city (Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 348). 5 AE contributed twenty poems to Collection II, ranging in length from brief epigrams to a nine-page mock epic, The Cloaciniad. 6 To AE, 14 Sept.: ‘For since you’ve serious taken up the cudgels,/ You prove more stout than twenty Eustace Budgels’. 7 JB’s Cub, drafted in 1760, was printed per JB’s instructions on fine paper with large type. JB had perhaps tried to publish the poem in May 1760, but it was not published until c. 4 Mar. 1762 (Lit. Car. pp. 16–18; cf. Ralph Straus, Robert Dodsley: Poet, Publisher and Playwright, p. 376). For JB’s own subvention of the costs of the pamphlet, see To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’, 10 Feb. 1762. Since the author publishing on his own behalf theoretically retained his copyright, he received whatever profit the pamphlet made, unlike authors who sold their copyrights to a publisher outright in return for a lump sum. ‘[A]ltho’ [Dodsley] had refused to take the hazard of publishing my Cub … it had sold well, & … there was 13 Shillings of profit, which I made him pay me down. Never did I set so high a value on a

Sum. I was much in spirits’ (Journ. 24 Nov. 1762). Conventionally, if JB had covered the costs and ‘take[n] the hazard’ himself (rather than Dodsley’s risking the capital on his unknown ‘Cub’ poet), the imprint should have read ‘Printed for the Author’. The imprint of Cub, however, read ‘Printed for R. and J. Dodsley’. This typographical anomaly, not precisely a false imprint but certainly a misleading one, seems to have been at JB’s instruction: ‘If Mr. Dodsley pleases his name may be put on the Title Page together with yours and any other English Booksellers. You may also add “and for A Donaldson Edinburgh.”’ (To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’, 10 Feb. 1762). 8 Here, Robert Dodsley. Although Dodsley’s output in the years 1750–64 was generally listed as ‘Printed for R. and J. Dodsley’, when ‘Dodsley’ was mentioned by authors such as JB and SJ, it was generally Robert (rather than his younger brother James) to whom they referred. James served as Robert’s junior partner from 1750 to 1764 and thereafter became his successor. By 10 Feb. 1762, JB was threatening to move the MS from Dodsley to another (unidentified) printer (Lit. Car. pp. 16–18). 9 The eventual price of Cub was ‘One Shilling’, double the price of the typical short pamphlet. 10 AE’s ‘An Epistle to Mr. D———n’ and ‘Ode to Pity’ and were printed in Collection II (pp. 13–14, 20–22). Presumably ‘the subject’ written of here was Donaldson (rather than Pity). 11 Stanley Crowder and H. Woodgate had published in 1755 the anonymous The complete letter-writer … (ESTC T222461). By 1761, the book was in ‘The seventh edition, improved’, which was published by Crowder’s company with Benjamin Collins: The complete letter-writer: or, polite English secretary. Containing letters on the most common occasions in life. Also a variety of more elegant letters for examples, and improvement of style, from the best modern au-

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thors, together with some originals … To which are prefix’d, directions for writing letters … And at the end of the prose, some elegant poetical epistles (ESTC T162763). Only in one version of the ‘third edition improved’ was the word spelled ‘compleat’ in the title as AE recorded it (ESTC T146268). Bennett noted that rival publications in the genre— The Art of Letter-Writing and The New Art of Letter Writing—were advertised 1761–62 in Lond. Chron. (x. 611, xi. 437). 12 GD had gone to take up his seat in the House of Commons as a ‘new Scotch member’, M.P. for the Perth Burghs. Although his parting words implied that he planned to keep quiet and not put himself forward in the opening days, he broke his resolve. Sackville noted in a letter of 16 Nov. that GD ‘showed a strong desire of speaking, and seems to have abilitys sufficient to make him an object. In short, he promises well … though he diverted the House by a becoming ignorance of its forms, yet he proved that he neither wanted language, manner, nor matter’ (Lord George Sackville to General Irwin, 16 Nov., Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of Mrs. Stopford-Sackville, vol. 1, 1904, p. 86). On 6 Nov. the session began with the King’s Speech presenting the Administration programme. When the Address to the King was moved to 13 Nov., GD seconded John Wilkes’s criticisms in a speech which was remarked upon by Horace Walpole and Lord George Sackville. In his speech, he ‘pleaded for the extension of the militia to Scotland’, claimed Administration had put a ‘heavy hand’ on the English militia, and stated that the ‘German war’ (i.e., the western theatre of the Seven Years’ War on the continent) was one ‘having neither object nor end’. He condemned ‘faction’ and congratulated George III on breaking out of ministerial ‘chains’, thus establishing himself as an anti-party independent. By 28 Nov. Sir Henry Erskine had convinced him to ‘attach himself’ to Bute and attack Pitt’s war policy, but by Dec. 1762 he had broken with Bute (Namier and Brooke, ii. 314; Dempster, pp. 58–59). AE actually wrote a poem celebrating GD’s going to Parliament, which was included as one of his contributions to Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 32–36: ‘An EPISTLE to a GENTLEMAN on his being elected Member of Parliament’. The identification of the Gentleman-M.P. with GD is made plausible by the references to the expense of the election, by the defeated opponent being ‘[L]eslie’, the new M.P. being

‘Apollo’s last but greatest son’, a man who will ‘with patriots side’, and who will ‘stem corruption’s tide’, attack ‘the debt that galls the nation’, and disband the standing army since ‘Militia only can defend us’. 13 GD had five sisters: Margaret (‘Peggy’), the eldest (1731–64), Mrs. Thomas Gordon (d. London 1787), Ann (d. unm. 1805), Jean (‘Jeany’ or ‘Jeanie’, b. 1736), and Helen (b. c. 1740, m. George Burrington 1776, d. 1831). Dempster indexed the ‘sister’ mentioned in this letter as Peggy (IGI; Dempster, pp. 17 n. 1, 58–59, 89, genealogical table I; letter from Sir James Fergusson, Bt., to C. H. Bennett, 26 Aug. 1935). Jean (‘Jeany’ or ‘Jeanie’) was the sister who played the largest role in JB’s life. JB described her as ‘a fine Woman very well looked indeed elegant and remarkably witty’; three days later he proclaimed himself ‘much in love’ with her as ‘the most engaging of her sex’ (Journ. 3 Nov., 6 Nov. 1762). 14 The series of coal metaphors are unclear, but seem to revolve around GD’s temper and his resolve to keep command of it in the Commons. Presumably they mean that either (a) GD will have his sister help prevent him from possession of new coals, or new fuel for hot political controversy; (b) he will back or ‘keep’ his current fire so it will burn slowly and steadily, i.e., he will keep his temper; or (c) he will not rake over the coals and cause the flame to flare up by attacking the Administration. GD became a member of the Edinburgh Poker Club in 1762, founded that year by Alexander Carlyle and others to supplant the Select Society, but also to ‘stir-up’ the Scots to advocate a Militia Bill which would include them. The similarity of the ideas of the ‘poker’ stirring up the fire and GD ‘go[ing] over the coals with the ministry’ suggests the popularity of the image (Andrew Mungo Lang, A Life of George Dempster: Scottish Member of Parliament at Dunnichen [1732–1818], 1998, pp. 33–34). 15 The current ministry was the wartime coalition of Pitt the Elder and the Duke of Newcastle, which was in power June 1757– Oct. 1761; it was under siege for its war policy, and was to be replaced in Oct. 1761 by the coalition of the Earl of Bute with Newcastle. 16 Lady Anne Erskine. 17 The tolling of the curfew bell; see Steele’s Tatler, no. 263: ‘The curfew, or eight o’clock bell, was the signal throughout the nation for putting out their candles and going to bed’. 18 George III. ‘King of Britain’ seems to

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echo George III’s famous speech at the opening of Parliament announcing: ‘I glory in the name of Briton’ (Parl. Hist. xv. 982; Ann. Reg. 1760, iii. 248; Gent. Mag. Nov. 1760, xxx. 515). George III would consider himself as much a king of the Scots as of the English, a reading which simultaneously fuelled Scottish pride and English anxiety. 19 The humour here presumably proceeds from the image of AE, a physically awkward soldier, executing a dance associated with dexterous sailors. 20 Frederick the Great, who was often considered to have incited the war in Eu-

rope by his aggression in Silesia and Saxony. 21 The Seven Years’ War (French and Indian War), a world war occasioned in Europe (at least initially) by a dispute between Prussia and Austria over Silesia, and a conflict which led to the Prussian monarch Frederick the Great’s invasion of Saxony in 1756. The state of war ended only with the treaties in 1763, although by 1761 war-weariness dominated the debate, as GD’s early speeches in the Commons showed. 22 The first date in JB’s surviving Edinburgh Journ. is 12 Nov.

To Edward, Duke of York, c. 1 November 1761 (and before March 1762) SOURCE: Cub, pp. v–vi. Although he wrote Cub itself in 1760, JB likely wrote the dedication

close to the time he sent the poem to the publisher. The forthcoming publication of Cub by Dodsley was mentioned in From AE, 1 Nov.: ‘Pray what is become of the Cub? Is Dodsley to sell you for a shilling, or not?’ JB responded in To AE, 17 Nov. (MS): ‘My Cub is now with Bob Dodsley. I fancy He will soon make his Appearance in Print’. Cub was advertised in Lond. Chron. 11 Mar. xi. 240 (Lit. Car. p. 16), although Ralph Straus in Robert Dodsley (p. 376) claimed the publication date was 4 Mar.

TO His ROYAL HIGHNESS

EDWARD Duke of YORK. SIR, PERMIT me to take this method of thanking your Royal Highness, for condescending to like the following Sketch. Or, in other Words, permit me to let the World know that this same Cub has been laughed at by the Duke of YORK;—— has been read to your Royal Highness by the Genius himself, and warmed by the immediate beams of your kind Indulgence. HAD I been able to conceal this, I should have imagined that I had not the least Spark of the Enthusiasm of Parnassus in my Composition.— To be so deficient in Vanity, which, if I am not mistaken, may be reckoned an inseparable Characteristic of a Poet. THIS Trifle, SIR, would not presumed to interrupt you, when engaged in matters of Consequence. It only begs leave to pay it’s Respects in an hour devoted to chearful Festivity.1 I wish your Royal Highness a long, a merry, and a happy Life;2 and am, Your obliged Devoted Servant.3

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17 NOVEMBER 1761 1 According to Eglinton, the duke, normally a man of frivolity and mirth, was not amused by JB’s Dedication and poem. Indeed, Eglinton accused JB of having brought him into a ‘sad scrape’ by ‘publishing your Cub and dedicating it to the Duke of York without his leave. I can assure you he was very angry’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763). 2 The Duke of York died unmarried, aged twenty-eight, from a malignant fever at Monaco in Sept. 1767, and his body was returned for burial in Westminster Abbey in Nov. 1767. His elaborate funeral was described in Gent. Mag. Nov. 1767, xxxvii. 535. He seems to have been mainly described as a lover of frivolity and pleasure, as Walpole’s comments on the duke’s ‘inarticulate loquacity, and the levity of his conduct’ indicate (Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Derrick Jarrett, 2000, iii. 176). Walpole in a letter of 1766 wrote of the duke as ‘a milk-white angel, white even to his eyes and eyelashes, very purblind, and whose tongue runs like a fiddlestick’ (Walpole to Mann, 1 Mar. 1766, Corres. Walpole, xxii. 401–02). The Duchess of Northumberland was more critical in 1768, when she described him as having had ‘great Vivacity but with a Mind so devoted to pleasure & so little regard to

propriety as robb’d him of his Dignity & made him rather a trifling than an amiable Character’ (Diar. Duch., pp. 79–80). His manners, however, were noted even by his critics: ‘You will find him civil, condescending, and good-natured to a great degree … he is very galant, and very generous’ (Walpole to Mann, 11 Aug. 1763, Corres. Walpole, xxii. 155; cf. Walpole to Hertford, 3 Dec. 1764, Corres. Walpole, xxxviii. 475). The Duke of York’s active naval service from 1758 to 1762 did not seem to obliterate his public image as a talkative trifler. He was made a Rear Admiral of the Blue on 8 Apr. 1761, a Vice-Admiral of the Blue on 21 Oct. 1762, and he served with Howe, Hawke, and Hardy in various Seven Years’ War naval campaigns, including Cherbourg, the Spanish and Portuguese coasts, and the English Channel, (Comp. Peer. xii. pt. 2, 920–21, and n. ‘e’; Sea Officers). 3 The Dedication was not ‘signed’ with JB’s name, initials, or even a pseudonym. Furthermore, Cub’s title and half-title offered no indications of authorship. The Duke of York would have learned of JB’s authorship by other means, perhaps by receipt of an author’s copy (none has been located), or most likely by Eglinton’s explanation.

From George Dempster, c. 6–13 November 1761 Not reported. Mentioned in To GD, 19 Nov. GD informed JB that he was ‘perfectly puzled’ why he had ‘delayed so long to write’, and asked JB’s ‘opinion of the matter’ of his failure to correspond. GD’s letter also may have described his new ‘Metropolitan Connections’ in London, although he (to JB’s disappointment) did not give JB a ‘plain account’ of his ‘first Appearance’ in the Commons in that letter. This lack of description of the maiden speech suggests a date earlier than GD’s speech of 13 Nov. JB had, however, by the time he wrote on 19 Nov. already heard accounts of GD’s bold first appearance in the House.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 17 November 1761 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 507).

Edinburgh, 17 Novr. 1761 DEAR SIR: I am sorry to find You in such bad Spirits as your last strongly indicates. But I beleive we great Geniuses are all a little Subject to the Sorcery of that whimsical Dæmon the Spleen1 Tho’ indeed we cannot with reason greatly complain considering what Power of Enchantment We ourselves posess by the Magic of our flowing Numbers. So it seems You too have heard that I am going to be married, and must forsooth display a pretty vein of Jocularity upon the occasion. Did you realy beleive it? et tu Brute?2 who know me so well? If you did, You will never be able to astonish me with any thing else that’s wonderfull in your Creed: For I shall reckon your 127

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Judgment at least three Stanzas worse than formerly. No no—I am too giddy to think of settling, and too honest to engage in a Contract which in all Probability I would not be long of breaking. I have been in Town about a Week—which I am happy at. For I do not like the Country. I should be glad to know by what means you drive Old care away. Poor Lady Jenny!3 I could allmost cry for her. Donaldson is busy publishing his second Volume.4 I have mustered up a few Essays5 for him some old, some new6—I will not boast of them. But I’ll tell you one thing—The Volume will be pretty free from Typographical Errors.7 I have the honour to correct the Proof-Sheets.— My Cub8 is now with Bob Dodsley. I fancy He will soon make his Appearance in Print. Write to me often. You shall have the best Answers I can give You. Best Respects to the Ladies from Your friend, JAMES BOSWELL Not being able to furnish Prose enough I have subjoin’d part of a Sublime Ode. I have all the rest of it by me. Ode to Gluttony9 Hail Gluttony! o let me eat Immensely at thy awfull Board; On which to serve the Stomach, meet What Art and Nature can afford. I’ll furious cram devoid of fear, Let but the Roast and Boild appear Let me but see a smoaking Dish I care not whether Fowl or Fish; Then rush ye floods of Ale adown my throat And in my Belly make the Victuals float. And yet, why trust a greasy Cook? Or give to meat the time of Play? While ev’ry Trout gulps down a Hook, And poor dumb beasts harsh Butchers slay? Why seek the dull sauce-smelling Gloom Of the Beef-haunted Dining Room Where Dempster gives to ev’ry Guest With libral hand whate’er is best Whilst you in vain th’Insurance must invoke To give security You shall not choak. Ev’n now on Vennison intent et Caetera.10 1 ‘Spleen’ is a form of the eighteenthcentury malady of ‘melancholy’. The symptoms of spleen, according to Dr. John Arbuthnot, included ‘obstinate watchfulness, or short sleeps …, great solicitude and

anxiety of mind, with sudden fits of anger …, love of solitude, obstinacy in defending trifling opinions and contempt for such as are about them’ (Essay Concerning the Nature of Ailments …, 1731, pp. 364–75). At

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this time ‘spleen’ was also being used more generally, as a synonym for ‘melancholy’ (Dict. SJ). In his journals JB generally uses the term ‘spleen’ essentially interchangeably with his more frequent ‘hypochondria’. 2 Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III. i. 77. 3 Lady Janet ‘Jenny’ Erskine. The text implies that JB knew that Lady Janet was in the country rather than in Edinburgh. How JB learned this is unclear. AE’s letter of 1 Nov. had offered the news that on 2 Nov. ‘Lady A[nne Erskine] and I set out for New-Tarbat’, (New Tarbet being the home of another of AE’s sister, Elizabeth Macfarlane). Either an additional MS. section on the rest of the family’s travel to New Tarbet was deleted in the E–B version, or JB presumed that the Erskine sisters travelled as a group. 4 Collection II. The volume appeared in late Jan.–early Feb. 1762 (see To AE, 11 Feb. 1762; Lit. Car. p. 12). 5 Here meaning poems, as the revision for E–B verifies. 6 The ‘old’ poems in JB’s thirty contributions to Collection II can be grouped into four sets which overlap to a small extent. The first group are those which had been printed in the Scots Mag. and are thus datable to mid-1761 or earlier (Lit. Car. pp. 13–14, items 2, 6, 11, 20). The second group are the poems eventually in Douce 193, most of which are thought to date back to 1762 or before (Lit. Car. pp. 13–14, items 3, 11, 13, 14, 16, and 24). The third group are the poems which were not in Douce 193 or Scots Mag. but were poems of the day on topics from years preceding 1761 (Lit. Car. pp. 13–14, items 4, 5, 7, 8, 9). The fourth group are those poems mentioned in JB’s ‘Plan’ for an anthology, whose contents he may have drawn on for Collection II (Lit. Car. pp. 13–14, items 10, 14, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27). Whether this final group from the ‘Plan’ was a source for or drew from the poems sent to Collection II depends on Werner’s provisional dating of the ‘Plan’ to 1761–62 (Werner, p. 18). This final group

includes ‘To Gluttony’, which JB copied into or from his letter to AE. JB’s ‘Plan’ contained 100 lines’ worth of epigrams in the first draft, but only 40 lines of epigrams in the second draft. By process of elimination, the most likely candidates for the ‘new’ poems JB produced would have been the seven remaining items inventoried in Lit. Car. pp. 13–14—that is, items 12, 15, 17, 28, 29, 30, 31. Yet of those, all but 12 and 15 are epigrams, which may have been included in the 60 lines of epigrams JB seems to have subtracted from his ‘Plan’ between the longer and shorter drafts. 7 Collection II had at least five known typographical errors. A list of ‘Corrigenda’ for these five—correcting errors only on pp. 20–40—were noted after the ‘Advertisement’ on p. iv. 8 JB was over-optimistic in guessing that Cub, despite being sent to Dodsley in early Nov., would be ‘soon’ in ‘Print’. Several delays meant that Cub was not published until 4 Mar. 1762 (Lit. Car. pp. 16–18). 9 This ode was dispersed into two other letters of E–B because it had been printed for the most part in Collection II (pp. 106– 08) as ‘To Gluttony, an ode: in imitation of midnight, an ode; by a member of the Soaping club’. In the revision for Donaldson, the final line, ‘Ev’n now on Vennison intent’, became the first line of stanza four. JB omitted stanza three. The only other variations in the Collection II version were in accidentals of capitalization and punctuation, altered, most likely, by Donaldson’s typesetters. In E–B, JB transferred two stanzas to To AE, 2 Dec. and added the remaining four stanzas to To AE, 8 Dec. 10 This ‘et Caetera’ suggests that in making his copy of his letters to AE, JB probably omitted materials for which he possessed other duplicates, such as the ‘Ode to Gluttony’, even if those ‘duplicates’ were in fact drafts or variants. The implications of this for later correspondence on the ‘Ode to Gluttony’ is discussed in From AE, 13 Dec., n. 12.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 17 November 1761 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 18–20 [LETTER VI].

Edinburgh, Nov. 17, 1761 Dear ERSKINE, MUCH much concern does it give me, to find that you have been in such bad spirits as your last most grievously indicates. I believe we great geniuses are all a little subject to the sorcery of that whimsical dæmon the spleen, which indeed we 129

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cannot complain of, considering what power of enchantment we ourselves possess, by the sweet magic of our flowing numbers. I would recommend to you to read Mr. Green’s excellent poem1 upon that subject. He will dispel the clouds and enliven you immediately. Or if that should not do, you may have recourse to Xenophon’s method, which was boiling potatoes, and pelting the cats with them,2 an infallible receipt to promote risibility. So you too have listened to the report of my marriage, and must forsooth display a pretty vein of jocularity upon the mournful occasion. Did you really believe it? If you did, you will never be able to astonish me with any thing else that is wonderful in your creed, for I shall reckon your judgment at least three stanzas worse than formerly. In the name of every thing that is upside down, what could the people mean by marrying me? If they had boiled me into portable soup,3 or hammered me into horse-shoes, I should not have been greatly surprised. A man who has so deeply pondered on the wonders daily presented to our view, and who has experienced so many vicissitudes of fortune, as I have done, can easily make allowance for stranger things than these. But I own their matrimonial system exceeds my comprehension. Happy is it for the world that this affair did not take place. An event so prodigious must have been attended with very alarming consequences. For my own part, I tremble when I think of it. Damocles,4 Nero,5 and Richard the Third,6 would have appeared amiable princes in comparison of me. Where ever I went I should have carried horror and devastation, sparing neither sex not age. All, all should have been sacrificed to my relentless cruelty. Donaldson is busy printing his second volume. I have mustered up a few verses for him, some old, some new. I will not boast of them. But I’ll tell you one thing; the volume will be pretty free from typographical errors: I have the honour to correct the proof-sheets. My Cub is now with Dodsley. I fancy he will soon make his appearance in public. I long to see him in his Pall-Mall habit:7 Tho’ I’m afraid he will look a little aukward.8 Write to me often. You shall have the best answers I can give you. I remain, Yours, JAMES BOSWELL. 1 Matthew Green, 1696–1737, customshouse employee and poet. His most famous poem was the posthumous octosyllabic ‘The Spleen’, praised by Pope and Gray (The spleen. An epistle inscribed to his particular friend Mr. C[uthbert]. J[ackson], 1737, ESTC T49769). It appeared in three editions 1737–38, as well as Edinburgh and Dublin piracies (ESTC T160291; ESTC T69647). It was reprinted in Dodsley’s collection of 1748. For a twentieth-century edition, see The Spleen and Other Poems, ed. R. K. Wood, 1925. JB’s continued interest in Green’s poem is demonstrated by Hypochondriack no. V (Feb. 1778): ‘Mr. Green, in his poem entitled The Spleen … has enumerated exceedingly well the effects of Hypochondria upon a mind of

that light structure which his seems to have been …. [H]e brings together with truth and vivacity the minute fretful pains which are generally suffered by Hypochondriacks; but he has not had mind enough to be capable of being afflicted by its more horrible torments’ (Bailey, i. 138). See also the other references to his reading of Green in Lincoln, p. 225. 2 Xenophon, c. 430–c. 355 B.C., historian and warrior, in early life one of the young disciples of Socrates. This account of pelting cats with potatoes provides an insight into Scottish folklife of JB’s youth. Xenophon was known for his seriousness rather than for his risibility, and would certainly not have known about potatoes. 3 Similar to modern dehydrated soup mixes. OED cites a reference to ‘Portable

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soop’ as early as 1758 (s.v. ‘portable’, 1.b). The soup was sold commercially; an advertisement in the Lond. Chron. touted its virtues: ‘Portable Soup, or Solid Broth, made from beef, veal, mutton, and chicken, is found exceedingly useful on various occasions; and has particularly recommended itself to gentlemen on journies and at sea’ (Lond. Chron. 22 Sept. 1762, x. 287). On his tour to the Hebrides with SJ, JB would use the term to describe his own notes and journal: ‘A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion’ (Journ. 12 Sept. 1773). 4 Damocles, legendary courtier and sycophant at the court of Dionysius I. An odd choice in JB’s trio, since he was the victim of a tyrant’s torture rather than a tyrant himself. Dionysius gave a banquet and had a sword suspended above the head of Damocles by a single hair. Presumably JB meant ‘Dionysius’, but misremembered the legend.

5 Nero Claudius Caesar, 37–68, Roman emperor 54–68, a persecuting emperor who murdered various relatives and colleagues. 6 Richard III (1452–85), King of England 1483–85, alleged (by the proTudor propagandists) to have cleared his way to the throne by murders of his rivals, as in Shakespeare’s play. 7 That is, his most fashionable and expensive clothing. The Pall-Mall or Mall walk in St. James’s Park was a tree-lined promenade for the bon ton in the eighteenth century, with ‘High Mall’ being the time of day when the throng of promenaders in the Mall was at its height (OED). 8 JB used this sentence again (‘I long to see him in his Pall-Mall habit …’) in from To AE, 1 June 1762, perhaps in an effort to consolidate references to Cub. JB’s reference to his Cub appearing ‘a little aukward’ in his ‘Pall-Mall habit’ may be another glance at Dodsley’s lowly origins.

To George Dempster, Thursday 19 November 1761 MS. Yale (L 415). A copy. HEADING: To George Dempster Esq.

Edinr. 19 Novr. 1761 MY DEAR DEMPSTER: ‘Better late than never’ is an old, and what is much better, an excellent Saying. Upon this Principle do I act who have lately begun to learn the Violin,1 which I ought to have done some years ago; and upon this Principle do you act, who have lately written to me,2 which you ought to have done some months ago. You tell me that you are perfectly puzled to discover the reason why you have delayed so long to write, and therefore you wish to have my opinion of the matter. To be candid then, my friend, I more than imagine that the real cause for it, was the excellence of my last letter,3 which has undoubtedly produced one of two effects. It has either struck you with such extreme Admiration as to occasion an unusual Stupefaction of all your spirited faculties; or it has filled you with profound Humility, and prodigious dread of your Ability to cope with so clever a Corespondent. There may be a little vanity in my making this Supposition. I grant you a great deal. But is it not in character? is it not a continuation of the compleat Sentiments of Boswell? Does it not aptly accord with the golden Precept which Quintus Horatius Flaccus gives us—Servetur ad imum Qualis ab incepto processerit et sibi constet.4 You talk with prodigious Modesty of your Metropolitan Connections5 But by all accounts, you have made a bold push in the Senate;6 have attacked the great Pit, and raged against Continental Measures:7 This is flying at high Game indeed. Ω παποι!8 say I replete with more than conceivable Admiration. To be serious, I am glad that you have spoken, and hope to hear of your shaking the house.9 Pray let me know all about your first Appearance; give me a plain account of it. I shall take it very kind if you write to me very often. You are a Man who love Philosophical Principles. I would advise you to sit soberly down, 131

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and after the method of Mr. Professor Smith10 compute how much the quantity of Satisfaction which I receive from your Letters, exceeds the quantity of trouble which they cost you.11 This will make you write at least once a forthnight or at most once a Week. I remain etc. 1 JB’s attempts to learn to play the violin appear to have been short-lived. In an undated entry following the journal notes of 23 Dec., JB wrote, ‘Fiddle and whole general Plan’. Three years later he wrote to Rousseau, ‘Je commencois il y a deux ans d’apprendre le Violon. Mais Je le trouvois si difficile que Je le quittais J’ai mal fait’ (To Rousseau, 31 Dec. 1764, Yale MS. L 1113). The phrasing here would suggest that he began so late in 1761 that he later erroneously remembered the episode as having taken place in 1762. JB’s brother John was also an amateur violinist, and a receipt for his purchases of strings and a bridge for his violin survives. He perhaps was the beneficiary of JB’s frustration. 2 See From GD, c. 6–13 Nov. 3 The first reported letter from JB to GD is dated 27 Aug. 1761. The protests about GD’s delays in answering suggest that there was no earlier letter in return than the unreported c. 6–13 Nov. reply. 4 ‘… have it kept to the end even as it came forth at the first, and have it selfconsistent’ (Horace, Ars Poetica, ll. 126–27, ed. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb ed.). 5 GD had recently arrived in London to serve in the Commons as M.P. for Perth Burghs. 6 ‘The British Senate’ was a common metaphor for the Parliament. Although in parallelling Roman usage it should have been restricted to describing the Lords, it was commonly used of the Commons as well. 7 GD’s maiden speech on 13 Nov. had attacked the continental war associated with the Pitt-Newcastle Ministry. Walpole reported that GD ‘censured the German war, as having neither object nor end’ (Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George III, ed. Derrick Jarrett, 2000, i. 62). About fifteen days later, GD temporarily allied himself with the Bute faction to attack Pitt’s war policy more concertedly. These attacks had been so successful that Pitt resigned his offices on 5 Oct. ‘in order not to remain responsible for measures which I was no longer allowed to guide’. He had been replaced by the Earl of Bute as the new partner of Newcastle (Namier and Brooke, ii. 314, iii. 294–95; Dempster, pp. 58–59). Pitt had begun the war with opposi-

tion to the use of British troops and British money in continental Europe. In 1755 he had opposed Britain’s sending troops there, and in 1757 had fought against adding more troops to Cumberland’s army in Germany. Yet by 1761, Pitt was committed to providing expensive subsidies to the Prussian allies, and boasted that he had conquered America on the plains of Germany. Pitt wished to continue the war in order to damage France and its empire further; indeed, in Sept. 1761 he had broadened Britain’s continental measures by encouraging war with Spain. Bute, by contrast, advocated immediate efforts to make peace (Namier and Brooke, ii. 294–95). 8 Ω παποι, an interjection of surprise, is a common beginning of a Homeric line. 9 Another reference to GD’s fiery speeches in the House of Commons. 10 Adam Smith (1723–90), political economist, chair of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1752 to 1764, where he lectured on natural theology, ethics, jurisprudence, and political institutions, and also on rhetoric and belles lettres. JB, while a student in Glasgow in 1759–60, heard the lectures which were later recrafted into Smith’s books, and both Smith and JB were members of the Select Society (Earlier Years, pp. 42–43). In a letter to JJ of 11 Jan. 1760, JB highly praised Smith’s lectures and described his ‘private character’ as ‘realy amiable’ (Corr. 1, p. 7). Journ. for 14 Nov. records ‘supt Lord Kames Smith etc.’, which may be a reference to Adam Smith, and noted that when JB was in Glasgow, ‘Smith came & supt with me. We were quite agreable together’ (Journ. 1 Jan. 1762). JB referred to Smith as ‘ingenious’, ‘tender’, ‘quite a learned, accurate and absent man’ (Journ. 25 Apr. 1763, 1 Aug. 1765), and recalled his teachings on several occasions (Journ. 22 Jan., 25 Apr. 1763). JB assigned himself Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in his later course of self-improvement in the Netherlands (5, 7 Mar. 1764). He later visited Smith in London (Journ. 2 Apr. 1775). In later life JB’s opinion of Smith soured, mainly because of his public eulogy on David Hume (see Gordon Turnbull, ‘Boswell in Glasgow: Adam Smith, Moral Sentiments and the

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Sympathy of Biography’, in The Glasgow Enlightenment, ed. Andrew Hook and Richard B. Sher, 1995). 11 Whether JB has any specific passage from Smith’s published work in mind in his

encouragement for GD to conduct such a calculus of correspondence is uncertain. Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments had been published in 1759.

From Samuel Salt1 (Certificate for James Boswell’s Entry to the Inner Temple), Thursday 19 November 1761 MS. Yale (C 1582). Enclosed in From TS, 21 Nov. ENDORSEMENT (in JB’s hand): Certificate of my entry as a Student2 in the Inner Temple 19 Novr. 1761.

Interius Templum Iacobus Boswell Armiger Filius et Hæres apparens honorabilis Domini Auchenleck de Britannia Boreali generaliter admissus est in Societatem istius Comitivæ in consideratione trium Librarum sex solidorum et octo denariorum præmanibus solut decimo nono die Novembris Anno Domini 1761.3 vera Copia Examr.4 Sam. Salt Sub Thes5 To the House6 Admittance7 Treas’s Clerk 4 Junr Butlers8 Stamp Reced.

£ s d 3: 6. 8 0. 10. 0 0. 2. 6 0. 4. 0 0. 2. 0 £ 4. 5. 2

1 Samuel Salt (c. 1723–92), UnderTreasurer of the Inner Temple from 1745 to 1768, himself formerly a student at the Middle Temple (1741) and Inner Temple (1745), had been called to the bar in 1753. He was responsible for much of the paperwork of the Treasurer, Sir William Moreton. Salt, an M.P. from 1768 to 1790, was raised to the bench at the Inner Temple in 1782 and eventually became Treasurer himself in 1787 (Namier and Brooke, iii. 402–03). Charles Lamb, whose father was Salt’s clerk, wrote of him as having ‘the reputation of being a very clever man, and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice of the law’. Lamb found him shy, forgetful and careless, as well as ‘indolent and procrastinating to the last degree’, thought that ‘his knowledge did not amount to much’, but said in his favour that

‘you could not ruffle Samuel Salt’ (Oxford DNB; cf. F. A. Inderwick, ed., A Calendar of Inner Temple Records, v. v–vi). 2 JB’s was one of twenty names (including Edmond Malone’s) recorded under general admittances for the period 14 Nov. 1760–20 Nov. 1761 (F. A. Inderwick, ed., A Calendar of Inner Temple Records, v. 133). 3 ‘Inner Temple: James Boswell Esquire, the son and heir apparent of the Honourable Lord Auchinleck from North Britain, has been granted a general admittance to the society of this company, in consideration of which three pounds, six shillings, and eight pence have been paid in cash on the nineteenth day of November in the year of the Lord 1761. True copy examined by Sam. Salt, Under-Treasurer’. 4 That is, ‘vera Copia Examinatur’. 5 That is, ‘Sub Thesaurarius’.

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19 NOVEMBER 1761 6 ‘Admittance into the House’ was the fee for ‘general admittances’ (F. A. Inderwick, ed., A Calendar of Inner Temple Records, v. 133). 7 Perhaps ‘Admittances into House chambers’, which appears as a separate lineitem following ‘Admittance into the House’ on the Inner Temple Accounts (F. A. Inderwick, ed., A Calendar of Inner Temple Records, v. 133). 8 The officers of the servants in the House, such as the junior butlers, were an integral part of the Inner Temple, and would have been due an initial fee for services to be rendered. The four junior butlers—named in Inner Temple records as the second, third, fourth, and fifth butlers—all had responsibilities different from those of the bench, barristers, and students. A report from 1792 mentioned a ‘chief butler’ (or

first butler) who managed the servants, as well as the second through fifth butlers. The ‘students’ table’ at which JB would have dined was served by the fourth and fifth butlers (F. A. Inderwick, ed., A Calendar of Inner Temple Records, v. xiii–xiv, 387, 555– 56). Later, c. May 1785, during a season in which JB kept Trinity Term in the Temple Commons as part of his preparation for transfer from the Scots to the English bar, he kept a ‘List of servers, and bills of fare’ for the ‘Inner Temple’. It noted the seasonal menus for each day of the week, and also included the names of the ‘Junior Student Butler’, the chief and four other butlers (two bench butlers, bar butler, and head student butler), as well as the panier man, two porters, two server ups [sic], two washpots, two turnspits, two head cooks, two dishwashers, and a gardener (M 122; Catalogue i. 79).

From Thomas Sheridan, Saturday 21 November 1761 MS. Yale (C 2484). ADDRESS: To James Boswell Esqr. Student of the Inner Temple.

Bow-street,1 Nov. 21st I have been ill,2 I have been rambling,3 I have been busy,4 my dear Boswell; otherwise you should have heard from me sooner. How did you feel on reading the superscription of this?5 I should have been glad to have seen your honest face just then. Inclosed you have your note of admission to the Inner Temple,6 which was recommended to me by Whately7 as preferable to the other Inns of Court,8 on many accounts. Is not your fancy hard at work at this instant? Have you not already taken possession of your chambers, and strutted about them with all the insolence of independence, of Authority? Sovereign Prince of a dining-room, bed-chamber and Closet! Have you not already formed a thousand plans? Tell me truly what effect the sight of the next red coat, or sound of the next drum has on you,9 and I shall judge of your state of mind. You must be contented with a few lines from me; I am much hurried, and much out of order. I shall wish to hear often from you, and pray write a great deal; you have leisure. Don’t wait for my answers, I’ll write to you as often as I can. Pray present my duty to your excellent Father; and most respectful compliments to my Lady.10 Be a good boy, and do nothing to shame your God-father. You know I have promised and vowed many things in your name.11 Adieu my dear Boswell, I am very sincerely and affectionately your’s. THOS. SHERIDAN I shall not play till after Xmas—Garrick has been already hard run12—I think he’ll be distanced in the last heat.13

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21 NOVEMBER 1761 1 Given the Bow Street address, TS appears to have written from Covent Garden theatre rather than his house. At this time a small entrance to the pit of Covent Garden opened on the west side of Bow Street (Survey of London, ed. F. H. W. Sheppard, 1970, xxxvi. 186). The confusion about the precise location of TS’s home in London was unresolved by his modern biographer (Sheldon, p. 259 n. 12). Lefanu claimed that TS lived on Henrietta Street (Lefanu, p. 85); Whyte, who had been in TS’s house, described the residence as ‘in Bedford-street opposite Henrietta-street, which ranges with the south side of Covent Garden, so that the prospect lies open the whole way free without interruption’. One could, by using a opera-glass, see visitors approaching TS’s house ‘at a good distance’ through Covent Garden (Whyte, p. 49). Either Henrietta St. or Bedford St. would place TS’s residence to the southwest of Covent Garden, whereas Bow Street was on the east side of the Garden and ran north–south. 2 Frances Sheridan wrote that ‘He [TS] has had but very indifferent health all winter; but is now, thank God, much better’ (letters from Frances Sheridan to Samuel Whyte, 25 Feb., 30 Mar. 1762, in Whyte, pp. 104–05, 107). 3 ‘Rambling’ is used here in the sense of rambling around town on various errands rather than travelling outside London. 4 TS’s time during the autumn and winter of 1761 was not taken up with stage performances, since he did not appear on stage at Covent Garden until 22 Dec., but he might well have been busy in rehearsal (either personal or with the company) for his coming roles (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 909; Sheldon, p. 2). TS seems to have been mostly busy in 1761–62 refining, delivering, and publishing a course of lectures in London (letters from Frances Sheridan to Samuel Whyte, 25 Feb., 30 Mar. 1762, in Whyte, pp. 104–05, 107). TS published two books in the first seven months of 1762. The first was advertised for sale on 11 Feb. 1762: A dissertation on the causes of the difficulties, which occur, in learning the English tongue. With a scheme for publishing an English grammar and dictionary, upon a plan entirely new (ESTC T96346; advertised in Lond. Chron., 11 Feb., xi. 143). The lectures he had delivered at Edinburgh in the summer of 1761 were offered for sale on 24 July 1762: A course of lectures on elocution: together with two dissertations on language; and some other tracts relative to those subjects (ESTC T90536; advertised in Lond. Chron., 22–24 July, xii. 86). Like JB, he had Dodsley as a publisher.

5 That is, the reference to JB as ‘Student of the Inner Temple’. 6 See previous letter. 7 Not identified. The only near-contemporary Whately mentioned in Inner Temple records was Robert Whately, called to the bar 13 June 1714 (A Calendar of Inner Temple Records, 1660–1714, ed. F. A. Inderwick, 1896–1936, iii. 437). Two or perhaps three men of the name appear in accounts of TS. In 1763, JB met a ‘Whately, a lawyer’ at TS’s (Journ. 6 Apr. 1763). TS was doing business in 1766 with a William Whately, Esq., banker in London (Whyte, pp. 33, 36). Lefanu stated that a ‘Mr. Whately’ was among Mrs. Sheridan’s ‘ingenious and distinguished circle of friends’ (Lefanu, p. 86). The M.P. Thomas Whately (c. 1728–72), an ‘ideal man of business’ and gardener was a practising lawyer, but had been a student at the Middle (not the Inner) Temple in 1742 (Namier and Brooke, iii. 627–28). 8 The other Inns of Court are Lincoln’s Inn, the Middle Temple, and Gray’s Inn, hostels and centres of education for barristers and students (Lond. Encylopedia, pp. 409–10). 9 TS was attempting to move JB away from his plan to secure a commission in the Foot Guards and towards a more realistic career in the English bar of which, it was thought, Lord Auchinleck was more likely to approve; see To Eglinton, ?after 24 Mar.– May 1762. 10 Lady Auchinleck. 11 Pottle guessed that TS might have stood surety for JB at the Inner Temple (Hankins, i. 85, marginal note). The reference may be another of the metaphors for TS’s role as mentor, so that TS was JB’s ‘God-father’ in the same sense in which he was his ‘Socrates’. 12 By the time TS first faced an audience in the 1761–62 season at Covent Garden on 22 Dec. (Hamlet), the seemingly inexhaustible Garrick had already performed twenty different roles at Drury Lane (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 887–909). In the 1760–61 season, TS had appeared thirty-four times on stage. TS was keenly competitive with Garrick, who had acted on TS’s stage at Smock Alley, but who was now manager of the theatre where TS had played 1760–61. The two actors infamously wrangled that season over the performance of King John as to who would play the King and who would act the Bastard. Thomas Davies wrote of their ‘jealousy’ and a ‘coldness [which] had subsisted between them for some time’, although as Sheldon pointed out there was friendship and esteem amidst the rivalry. TS’s relationship with

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both major London theatres in this part of his life was ‘acting on shares’, which meant that rather than being a salaried employee of the company, he paid the theatre’s expenses for each night he acted, and then took a percentage of the night’s profits (Sheldon, pp. 258–65). TS was in the period 1758–77 attempting to redefine himself as an elocutionist and educator rather than an actor. He told JB, ‘I don’t value acting … I would have it erased out of the anecdotes of my life. Acting is a poor thing …. I engaged in it merely

as a step to something greater, a just notion of eloquence’ (Journ. 12 Jan. 1763). 13 The metaphor of the horse-race between Garrick’s Drury Lane and Rich and Beard’s Covent Garden was only partly in jest, since beyond the TS–Garrick rivalry the companies competed fiercely for audiences, often with similar productions such as the coronation re-enactments (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 633, 647–48, 654). The ‘last heat’ of their 1761–62 contest would be in the spring season 1762.

From Andrew Erskine, Monday 23 November 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 21–27 [LETTER VII].

New-Tarbat, Nov. 23, 17611 Dear BOSWELL, AS we never hear that Demosthenes2 could broil beef-steaks, or Cicero3 poach eggs, we may safely conclude, that these gentlemen understood nothing of cookery.4 In like manner it may be concluded, that you, James Boswell, and I Andrew Erskine, cannot write serious epistles. This, as Mr. Tristram says, I deny;5 for this letter of mine shall contain the quintessence of solidity; it shall be a piece of boiled beef and cabbage, a roasted goose, and a boiled leg of pork and greens:6 in one word, it shall contain advice; sage and mature advice. Oh! James Boswell! take care and don’t break your neck; pray don’t fracture your skull, and be very cautious in your manner of tumbling down precipices: beware of falling into coal-pits, and don’t drown yourself in every pool you meet with. Having thus warned you of the most material dangers which your youth and inexperience will be ready to lead you into, I now proceed to others less momentary indeed, but very necessary to be strictly observed. Go not near the Soaping-Club,7 never mention Drury-lane Playhouse;8 be attentive to those Pinchbeck buckles9 which fortune has so graciously given you, of which I am afraid you’re hardly fond enough; never wash your face, but above all forswear Poetry: from experience I can assure you, and this letter may serve as a proof, that a man may be as dull in prose as in verse; and as dullness is what we aim at, prose is the easiest of the two. Oh! my friend! profit by these my instructions; think that you see me studying for your advantage, my reverend locks over-shadowing my paper, my hands trembling, and my tongue hanging out, a figure of esteem, affection and veneration. By Heavens! Boswell! I love you more—But this, I think, may be more conveniently expressed in rhime. More than a herd of swine a kennel muddy,10 More than a brilliant belle polemic study, More than fat Falstaff lov’d a cup of sack,11 More than a guilty criminal the rack, More than attorneys love by cheats to thrive, And more than witches to be burnt alive.12 136

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I begin to be afraid that we shall not see you here this winter; which will be a great loss to you. If ever you travel into foreign parts, as Machiavel13 used to say, every body abroad will require a description of *New-Tarbat14 from you. That you may not appear totally ridiculous and absurd, I shall send you some little account of it. Imagine then to yourself what Thomson would call an interminable plain, interspersed in a lovely manner with beautiful green hills.15 The Seasons here are only shifted by Summer and Spring. Winter with his fur cap and his cat-skin gloves, was never seen in this charming retreat. The Castle is of Gothic structure, awful and lofty: there are fifty bed-chambers in it, with halls, saloons, and galleries without number. Mr. M———’s father,16 who was a man of infinite humour, caused a magnificent lake to be made, just before the entry of the house. His diversion was to peep out of his window, and see the people who came to visit him, skipping through it;—for there was no other passage—then he used to put on such huge fires to dry their cloaths, that there was no bearing them. He used to declare, that he never thought a man good company ’till he was half drown’d and half burnt; but if in any part of his life he had narrowly escaped hanging (a thing not uncommon in the Highlands)17 he would perfectly doat upon him, and whenever the story was told him, he was ready to choak himself. But to return. Every thing here is in the grand and sublime stile. But, alas! some envious magician, with his d——d enchantments, has destroyed all these beauties. By his potent art, the house with so many bed-chambers in it, cannot conveniently lodge above a dozen people. The room which I am writing in, just now, is in reality a handsome parlour of twenty feet by sixteen; though in my eyes, and to all outward appearance, it seems a garret of six feet by four.18 The magnificent lake is a dirty puddle; the lovely plain, a rude wild country cover’d with the most astonishing high black mountains: the inhabitants, the most amiable race under the sun, appear now to be the ugliest, and look as if they were over-run with the itch.19 Their delicate limbs, adorned with the finest silk stockings, are now bare, and very dirty; but to describe all the transformations would take up more paper than Lady B———20 from whom I had this, would chuse to give me. My own metamorphosis is indeed so extraordinary, that I must make you acquainted with it. You know I am really very thick and short, prodigiously talkative, and wonderfully impudent.21 Now I am thin and tall, strangely silent, and very bashful.22 If these things continue, who is safe? Even you, Boswell, may feel a change. Your fair and transparent complexion may turn black and oily; your person little and squat;23 and who knows but you may eternally rave about the King of Great Britain’s guards;24 a species of madness, from which good Lord deliver us!25 I have often wondered, Boswell, that a man of your taste in music, cannot play upon the Jews harp;26 there are some of us here that touch it very melodiously, I can tell you. Corelli’s27 solo of Maggie Lauder,28 and Pergolesi’s29 sonata of The Carle he came o’er the Craft,30 are excellently adapted to that instrument; let me advise you to learn it. The first cost is but three halfpence, and they last a long time. I have composed the following ode upon it, which exceeds Pindar31 as much as the Jews harp does the organ.

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ODE upon a JEW’s HARP. I. Sweet instrument! which fix’d in yellow teeth, So clear so sprightly and so gay is found, Whether you breathe along the shore of Leith,32 Or Lowmond’s33 lofty cliffs thy strains resound; Struck by a taper finger’s gentle tip, Ah softly in our ears thy pleasing murmurs slip! II. Where’er thy lively music’s found, All are jumping, dancing round: Ev’n trusty William lifts a leg, And capers like sixteen with Peg;34 Both old and young confess thy pow’rful sway, They skip like madmen and they frisk away. III. Rous’d by the magic of the charming air, The yawning dogs forego their heavy slumbers; The ladies35 listen on the narrow stair, And Captain Andrew straight forgets his numbers. Cats and mice give o’er their batt’ling, Pewter plates on shelves are rattling; But falling down the noise my lady36 hears, Whose scolding drowns the trump more tuneful than the spheres! Having thus, Boswell, written you a most entertaining letter, with which you are highly pleased; to your great grief I give over in these or the like words, your affectionate friend, ANDREW ERSKINE. *[JB’s note:] New-Tarbat, a wild seat in the western Highlands of Scotland, surrounded with mountains. 1 AE had apparently not received JB’s letter of 17 Nov. For his answer to it, see From AE, 3 Dec. At New Tarbet, AE received mail only once a week (see From AE, 13 Dec.). 2 Demosthenes, ?384–322 B.C., Greek orator. 3 Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106–43 B.C., Roman orator, politician, philosopher. 4 Typical of E–B’s persiflage, the humour (such as it is) arises from putting wellknown dignified authors from the respected classical world into banal and quotidian

Scottish settings. Compare to the passage in To AE, 17 Nov. where Xenophon is portrayed as pelting cats with boiled potatoes. 5 Probably a reference to Sterne’s second sermon, which began: ‘ECCLESIASTES VII. 2, 3. “It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of feasting.”— THAT I deny’ (Sermons of Mr. Yorick [1760], i. 24). AE refers to Sterne as ‘Mr. Tristram’ of Tristram Shandy, where the phrase is not used by Tristram. 6 Despite inflation of food prices from 1740 to 1790, all three of the dishes men-

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tioned were ‘solid’ country fare rather than banquet dainties. Highlanders of the sort whom AE would have met at New Tarbet allegedly disliked pork, although they raised pigs for the export market (Plant, pp. 105– 10, 115–21). Virginia Maclean, in her Much Entertainment: A Visual and Culinary Record of Johnson and Boswell’s Tour of Scotland in 1773, 1973 (p. 61), adapted a Scottish recipe for roast goose from Elizabeth Cleland’s A New and Easy Method of Cookery, 1759. 7 Ironic, since AE was himself a recent recruit to the Soaping Club to which he had been introduced by JB. 8 JB’s enthusiasm for the London theatre was one of his motivations to return to the metropolis. Furthermore, TS had in the previous season performed at Drury Lane. Why AE chose to warn JB from London’s Drury Lane rather than Edinburgh’s Canongate Concert Hall, a much closer temptation, is unclear. 9 JB’s sartorial vanity, as well as his budgetary constraints, would have been underlined by AE’s claim that he wore buckles made of pinchbeck, which was a cheap imitation of gold (5/6 copper, 1/6 zinc). JB’s pinchbeck buckles appear in his poetic selfparody of his dandyism (To AE, 4 May 1762). The mention of shoe buckles may have been the stimulus to the memories of James Bruce, overseer at Auchinleck, when he wrote to JB on 19 May 1763: ‘Leatly I saw in the Mercury an extract from … Letters ’twixt you and Capt. Andrew. Which Just brought to my remembranc[e] the … Buckles knee and Shoe Lying on a tottring Table, in a morning’ (Corr. 8, pp. 3–4 and n. 5). 10 Kennel, here meaning ‘the watercourse of a street’ (Dict. SJ); that is, a gutter, drain, or open sewer. 11 Among many instances in Shakespeare, some examples from Merry Wives of Windsor: Act II, Scene I: ‘[Y]ou love sack, and so do I; would you desire better sympathy?’ Act III, Scene V: ‘Go fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t’. 12 An unusual sequence: lines 1–3 and 5 are genuine cases where the creature mentioned could legitimately adore the thing mentioned; lines 4 and 6 break this pattern with cases where those mentioned would hate rather than love the thing mentioned. 13 Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), Florentine author and statesman. Much of Machiavelli’s correspondence has survived, as has evidence of his travels ‘into foreign parts’ on diplomatic missions to France

(1504, 1510), to the Vatican (1506), and to the court of the Holy Roman Empire (1507). Attempts to find a similar passage in The Prince or other of Machiavelli’s writings have not been successful. It seems far more likely that AE’s point here is to create an absurd contrast by setting ‘Machiavel’s’ reputation as an urbane and sophisticated Renaissance man amongst the homespun Scottish advice on travel writing that AE offers. 14 New Tarbet, at the head of Loch Long in Arrochar Parish, the home of AE’s sister, Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane. It was mapped in Taylor & Skinner, p. 12 (upper right-hand corner detail), as north of Arroquhar Kirk, and was reached by travelling west from Tarbet Inn along the ‘Inveraray Road’. In 1697, Walter Macfarlane’s father, the nineteenth chief, had built a new house at Inverioch near Tarbet. The house was variously called ‘Inverioch House’ and ‘New Tarbet’. A painting of the house suggests that its condition lay somewhere between the two extremes of the urbane golden age of the 1700s and the decadence and poverty of the 1760s, which AE presents in this letter (James MacFarlane, History of the Clan MacFarlane, 1922, p. 128; Arthur Mitchell, ed., Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland Made by Walter MacFarlane, 1906, SHS 51, pp. 354–55). In 1784, seventeen years after Walter Macfarlane died (1767), his heirs sold the Macfarlane estates to pay off debts, and emigrated to America, ending 559 years of ownership by the family (James MacFarlane, History of the Clan MacFarlane, 1922, pp. 132, 137, 143). The house was later added to and used as a hotel (Joseph Irving, Book of Dumbartonshire, 1879, ii. 269–73). 15 James Thomson (1700–1748), Scottish poet. AE refers to The Seasons, 1726– 30, ‘Spring’ (1728), ll. 191–95: The rapid radiance instantaneous strikes The illumined mountain, through the forest streams, Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist, Far smoking o’er the interminable plain, In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems.

JB was also an admirer of The Seasons, and mentioned in Journ. 23 Oct. 1762 an occasion when he had [mis]quoted a line of ‘Autumn’ from memory. Lincoln (p. 263) offers other instances of JB’s references to the poem. 16 John Macfarlane (d. 1705), 19th Laird of Macfarlane. Walter Macfarlane was his

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second but eldest surviving son (Walter Macfarlane, Genealogical Collections, 1900, SHS 33, p. 6). 17 A multiple reference. First, Clan Macfarlane had an old reputation: it had been one of the turbulent ‘broken clans’ of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, denounced in 1594 for criminality, with many members tried in 1624 for theft and robbery (Frank Adam and Sir Thomas Innes of Learney, The Clans, Septs, and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands, 4th ed., 1952, pp. 242–43). Second, the Highlanders’ involvement in the ’Forty-Five, which ended with the execution of 120 prisoners, and hundreds more threatened with execution, meant a high percentage of Highland men had been under threat of execution at some time during their lives (Sir Bruce Gordon Seton and Jean Gordon Arnot, The Prisoners of the ’45, 1928–29, SHS, 3rd series, vol. 13, i. 143–45). Third, Highlanders were still associated with theft of cattle, a hanging offence. 18 AE’s accounts of the enchantments of the ‘envious magician’ playfully suggest the delusions of Don Quixote. An English translation of Cervantes’ novel by Charles Jarvis (or Jervas) had appeared in 1742. Smollett’s translation had appeared in 1755, and was for many years the most popular English version. Quixote not only confronted magnificent ornate castles which were in reality common country inns (Part I, chs. 2–3), and giants altered into windmills by an enchanter (Part I, ch. 8), but also faced, as does AE, a shrinking room. The episode in which the malevolent magician Muñaton or Freston (also the enchanter of the giants/windmills) causes a room to shrink and even disappear occurs in Part I, ch. 7. The curate, barber, housekeeper, and niece are, of course, the true cause of the vanishing library, as they have themselves walled and plastered over the room. 19 ‘The greater part of the people in [Arrochar] are Macfarlanes, who have always had, till of late, a strong attachment to the laird, as their chief; and while this subsisted, misanthropy and ferocity of manners were prominent features in their character’ (SAS, ix. 8). AE’s theme of the decline of the Highlanders on the estate is exaggerated for effect, but reflects the degree to which the Macfarlane lands had been left behind in the rising prosperity of the era during 1700–70. 20 Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane. 21 A description of JB.

22

A description of AE. JB was darkly complexioned, short, and portly. 24 A ridiculing of JB’s very real plan to gain an ensigncy in the Foot Guards. 25 The phrase ‘O Lord, arise, help us, and deliver us’ occurs in the Litany of the Book of Common Prayer (1662). 26 Pennant noted that ‘The Trump or Jew’s Harp would not merit the mention among the Highland instruments of musick, if it was not to prove its origin and antiquity: one made of gilt brass having been found in Norway, deposited in an urn’ (Pennant, pp. 195–96). The Jew’s-harp is a small musical instrument comprised of a forged iron frame with a narrow flexible steel blade hammered into the centre. The player holds the arms of the frame against his parted teeth and twangs the blade rhythmically while moving his tongue and cheeks to adjust the resonance and harmonics. Despite its low origins, in the eighteenth century the Jew’sharp was a popular instrument, and some soloists became famous performing on it in European tours (The New Oxford Companion to Music, ed. Denis Arnold, 1983, i. 999–1000). 27 Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713), Italian composer of concerti grossi and court violinist who mainly resided in Rome. His Baroque violin virtuosity AE supposed would ludicrously clash with the fiddling of Highland airs. 28 ‘Moggie Lauther’ or ‘Moggie Lauder’ is usually attributed to Francis Sempill of Beltrees. Although it was in vogue in England early in George II’s reign, it first appeared in print in David Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1776) (The Songs of Scotland Prior to Burns, ed. Robert Chambers, 1862, p. 172). 29 Giovanni Battista (or Giovanbattista) Pergolesi (1710–36), Italian composer of the Neapolitan school. He composed several trio sonatas, as well as solo sonatas for harpsichord, organ, and other instruments (New Grove 2). His intermezzo La serva padrona suggested (despite AE’s ironic intent) that he was not in fact immune to the charms of plebeian life depicted in Ramsay’s song. 30 ‘The Young Lass contra Auld Man’, the first quatrain of which is:

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23

The Carle he came o’er the Croft, And his Beard new shaven, He look’d at me, as he’d been daft, The Carl trows that I wad hae him.

25 OR 26 NOVEMBER 1761

It was printed among other places in Allan Ramsay, Tea-Table Miscellany (1729), pp. 120–21. The lyrics quoted would have been an obvious source of appeal for the Soaping Club. 31 Pindar, ?518–c. 438 B.C., Greek poet who wrote choral lyrics and triumphal odes which featured narrative myths connected with the ode’s subject. The style of the neoPindaric ode begun by Cowley and Dryden remained popular in the eighteenth century.

32

The port of Edinburgh. Loch Lomond; New Tarbet, although close to it, was nearer Loch Long. 34 Neither trusty William nor Peg have been identified as particular members of the various Erskines or their households; they are more likely generic types. 35 Ladies Elizabeth Macfarlane, Anne Erskine, and Janet Erskine, AE’s sisters. 36 The Dowager Countess of Kellie, AE’s mother. 33

To Thomas Sheridan, Tuesday 24 November 1761 Not reported. Mentioned in To TS, 25 Nov.: ‘I wrote to you upon Tuesday, giving a most disagreable account of my present Situation’; the phrase therein used: ‘I fancy my last Letter was prodigiously confused and perhaps too full of rashness’ may refer either to this unreported letter, or to an unreported letter from JB to Lord Auchinleck.

To Thomas Sheridan, Wednesday or Thursday, 25 or 26 November1 1761 MS. Yale (L 1157). A copy. HEADING: To Mr. Sheridan.

Edinr., 25 Novr. 1761 MY DEAR SIR: I wrote to you upon Tuesday,2 giving a most disagreable account of my present Situation. Notwithstanding of my matchless want of thought, I am somewhat uneasy. I cannot undertand how My Father has forgot our Agreement.3 I am certain he must realy have forgot it; for he is a worthy, honest man. I fancy my last Letter was prodigiously confused and perhaps too full of rashness. This is the third day since I have seen My Father4—for indeed I was so much confounded—and even a little heated when I heard him declare his Sentiments, that I* scarcely know how to behave to him. In sober sadness, I am much affraid that we shall never agree. It is very hard too; for certainly we are both very good People, and both very sensible People. What think you of that Expression? is it not as just as presuming? But I know you will not answer—Because I have contrived to link myself in with another, and your Patience is not sufficient to enable you to separate and nicely distinguish the prudent Judge from the giddy—God knows what. It is now near two years—no, it is not two till June, since I left London the Mistress of my heart.5 Yes, fair Augusta!6 thy charms have captivated Boswell. To thee he sends his ardent sighs. To thee he boasts the most perfect Constancy. For thee would he give up a handsom Estate,7 and for thee would he plunge into the gulph of Hazard and subject himself to all the Storms of the most romantic Knight Errantry. You know I have been often within a little of taking my flight.— You have kept me here just now with the hopes of an excellent Plan of Life. If that is made sure to me. I am content. But if I am not in the British Metropolis next Winter,8 may he who best plays the Prince of Denmark9 despise me in this World, and the Prince of the Power of the air10 roast me in the next. Lord Kaims11 told me tonight that I was a Tom Jones. Mark that!—how must such a Comparrison flash 141

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upon my romantic brain! He added ‘You are a good, good-for-nothing fellow.’ I certainly am a fellow who may be made something of. But if check’d and discouraged will do any thing that is possible—and not bad—to attain Independence. Your letter with the note from Interius Templum12 put me quite in a flutter of Spirits. What would I give to be, as you buckishly talk—reigning in my chambers a thousand degrees beyond Master Ranger.13 Do write to me—it will be doing me important Service. Sooth me with engaging Counsel. I shall not be hasty. I remain &c. *[JB’s note:] Pray is not scarce used as an Adverb or is scarcely better? There is a Genius for you who at this time can attend to language. 1 The dating of this letter is clear in JB’s copy as 25 Nov. Yet there are two reasons to suspect that this may have been in error for 26 Nov. First, the count of days for JB’s ‘This is the third day since I have seen My Father’ seems to indicate three days after the ‘strange conversation’ with Lord Auchinleck 23 Nov. (Journ.). That, however, can be explained — as Pottle observed in his marginal notes to Hankins’s dissertation—by recourse to a Biblical concept of days. The second is JB’s observation in this letter that ‘Lord Kaims told me tonight’, a phrase which would raise the question of why a meeting with Kames is missing in JB’s journal for that day. JB’s journal for 25 Nov. suggests only a missed dinner, a walk in the Abbey, tea with Katherine Colquhoun, and supper with (?Miss) Thomson; Kames does not appear in the journal between 22 and 26 Nov. (Journ.). 2 Not reported. 3 The agreement JB alleged he had reached with Lord Auchinleck has not been recorded. Pottle guessed that JB was convinced that his father had agreed to let him pass the winter in London if he was diligent in his legal studies. Study at the Inner Temple was a compromise between Lord Auchinleck’s wish that JB would follow him into the profession of law and JB’s desire to live in London, a compromise in which TS seems to have played a role, as the sending of the certificate attests. As an English barrister, JB would have been able to practise in the Court of Exchequer in Edinburgh. Pottle attempted to reconstruct this disagreement on the basis of the scanty evidence which survives: ‘Boswell seems to have acted in a sincere belief that his father had agreed to the arrangement, and was shocked and angry when Lord Auchinleck peremptorily vetoed it’ (Earlier Years, pp. 74–75; see also p. 476). 4 JB’s journal for three days before, 23 Nov., had noted cryptically ‘at night the

strange conversation with My Lord’ (the words ‘My Lord’ were written in shorthand). 5 JB’s first residence in London occurred Mar.–June 1760. 6 ‘Augusta’ was a common poetical name for London. See, for example, Pope’s Windsor-Forest, ll. 336, 377 (Butt ed.) and Dryden’s Macflecknoe, l. 65 (The Works of John Dryden, v. 2, ed. H. T. Swedenberg, 1972). 7 A revealing turn of phrase, since Lord Auchinleck, now angry and dismayed at his son’s behaviour, had threatened in Mar. 1762 to disinherit him (Earlier Years, pp. 80–81). 8 That is, winter 1762. In the event, JB arrived in London again 19 Nov. 1762, less than a year after this letter. 9 TS appears to have first portrayed Hamlet in 1744–45 in a benefit for himself at Drury Lane, and he acted the role in Smock Alley all but one of the seasons from 1745 to 1758; he continued to portray Hamlet as late as 1773 in Cork (Sheldon, pp. 52, 279, 421–22) 10 That is, the Devil: ‘the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience’ (Ephesians 2:2). 11 Lord Kames. JB’s Journ. recorded meetings with Kames on 13, 14, 17, 20, 22, and 26 Nov. (Journ.). Since JB appears to have been diligent in recording his meetings with Kames, who was quite important to him, it is curious that Kames does not appear in the Journ. until 26 Nov. 12 The Inner Temple. See From Samuel Salt (Certificate …), 19 Nov. and From TS, 21 Nov. 13 Ranger, the law student at the Temple in Benjamin Hoadley’s The Suspicious Husband, (for which see To Anne Mackintosh, between 12 and 25 Aug., n. 36), was one of JB’s favourite stage characters.

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From Thomas Sheridan, c. Wednesday 2 December 1761 Not reported. A reply to either or both of JB’s letters of 24 and 25 Nov. Mentioned in To TS, 9 Dec.: ‘your kind Reprehension’. TS seems to have mentioned JB’s ‘impetuous’ temper.

To Andrew Erskine, Wednesday 2 December 1761 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 508).

Edinr., 2 Decr. 1761. MY DEAR SIR: Notwithstanding of your affecting Elegy on the Death of Two Pigs,1 I am just now returned from eating a most excellent One, with the most magnificent Donaldson.2 I wish you would explain to me the reason of my being so very hard-hearted as to discover no manner of Reluctance to that innocent Animal’s being brought to Table, well roasted. I will confess to you, my friend, that I fed upon it, with no small Alacrity: Neither do I feel any pangs of Remorse, for having so done. The Reason perhaps lies so deep as to elude our keenest Penetration. At the same time, give me leave to offer my Conjecture, which you may have by a little Transmutation of a vulgar Adage,3 in such manner, as to obtain at one and the same time—(so to speak)—not only a strong reason for my alledged Inhumanity; but also an apparrent Pun, and a seeming Paradox; all which you have for the small and easy charge of saying—The Belly has no BOWELS.4 Upon my Appetite, the Imperial Sovereign of Pope’s-Head,5 Caledonian Dodsley,6 Scottish Baskerville7 and Captain General of Collective Bards8 entertained us most sumptously. I question much if Captain Erskine himself ever fared better: Altho’ I was the only Author in the Company, which I own surprised me, not a little. Donaldson is undoubtedly a Gentleman perfectly skilled in the Art of Insinuation. His Dinners are the most eloquent Addresses imaginable.9 For my own part, I am never a Sharer of one of his copious Repasts, but I feel my heart warm to the Landlord; and spontaneously conceive this expressive Soliloquy,—Upon my word, I must give him another hundred lines.10 Now, my dear friend! tell me, how is it with You, after reading this? With what feeling are you most strongly posest? But, as this depends a good deal upon the time of the day at which you receive my Epistle, I shall make no farther Enquiry. Thus, Sir, have I unbosomed the big Exultation which posest me, upon occasion of what some of the Fathers11 would call Splendidum Prandium; Englished thus—A splendid Dinner. Are not you, all this time—or, rather, have you not been all this time (I mean since you began to peruse this Letter) very much astonished, nay somewhat picqued, that I have as yet made no mention of your last; notwithstanding of the wonderfull Enchantments which you relate, the sagacious Advices which you give, and the Ode to a Trump,12 which you add. Forgive me, good Captain. Blame Donaldson. Write to me, whenever you have any thing that you wish to say, and beleive me still, Your Affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL 143

2 DECEMBER 1761 1 AE’s burlesque, ‘The Pigs, an Elegy, occasioned by seeing two that were roasting; in imitation of the Larks, an Elegy, occasioned by seeing two that were shot.’ The poem ‘The Larks’ which AE parodied was in Collection I, pp. 69–70, and was by ‘Mr. R. S.’ (presumably Robert Scott); AE’s own ‘The Pigs’ was printed in Collection II, pp. 57–58. 2 JB’s Journ. for this day recorded ‘dined Donaldson [,] had Grange [,] Bridgewater [,] Mcquhae at tea’ (Journ. 2 Dec.) 3 MS. ‘Adge’ 4 Bowels here meaning the locus of tenderness and sympathy, and by inference pity, compassion, feeling, and ‘heart’ (OED). The original ‘vulgar Adage’ is ‘The Belly has no ears’, that is, the belly cannot hear when it is told it has had enough (Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of Proverbs, 1950). 5 Alexander Donaldson’s shop sign was the Pope’s Head (Dict. of Printers). On the locations of his shop and home in Edinburgh, see To Donaldson, 28 July, n. 2. 6 Here meaning ‘Donaldson is the Caledonian equivalent of Dodsley’. The Dodsleys had served as a London distributor for Collection I and Collection II, and several of Donaldson’s other books (see From GD to AE, 2 Aug., n. 15). 7 Here meaning ‘Donaldson is the Scottish equivalent of Baskerville’. John Baskerville (1706–75), Birmingham japanner, typefounder in competition with Caslon (from c. 1750), printer under his own name from 1757 to 1775. He was one of the printers to Cambridge University c. 1758–69, and was known for his various ‘Baskerville’ fonts from 1757. Why JB knew of Baskerville is not clear. ESTC does not suggest he ever printed anything for Donaldson, but Baskerville did print two works sold under Dodsley’s name (John Huckell, Avon a poem in three parts, 1758 (ESTC T22811), Select fables of Esop and other fabulists. In three books, 1761 (ESTC T84696). During 1760–62, beyond his editions of Latin and English literature, he was busily printing editions of the Book of Common Prayer, which may explain how JB was acquainted with his name. JB might have also heard of him through their mutual friend

Samuel Derrick. He worked in Birmingham c. 1726–59, and in Cambridge for many of the years c. 1759–69 (Dict. of Printers). 8 A reference to Donaldson’s anthologies of Scottish poetry by various hands, Collection I and II. 9 In Journ. 21 Sept. 1762, JB remembered ‘one of the dinners which the great Donaldson graciously gives to his Authors’ and recalled Donaldson’s attitude at table: he ‘had thrown himself back upon his chair and listend to us with a very odd sort of attention’. The dinner described in this letter was unusual since Donaldson typically had more than one of ‘his Authors’ at table. 10 The ‘another hundred lines’ is far more likely to be a round number than an exact estimate. JB’s ratio of contributions to the volume did not expand drastically towards the end of the volume, as one might expect. Collection II had 232 pages. JB authored 23 poems for the first 100 pages. He only wrote 8 poems for the final 132 pages, many of them epigrams and brief fables (Lit. Car. pp. 10–14). In JB’s longer ‘Plan’ in Douce 193 for a volume of poems, he calculated that he had 100 lines’ worth of epigrams, although in his shorter plan it was down to 40 lines’ worth. The longer ‘Plan’ estimated ‘Fables’ at 190 lines’ worth, with no fables appearing in the shorter ‘Plan’. ‘To Gluttony’ was estimated at 60 lines in the longer ‘Plan’. Collection II appears to have been more copyhungry in its final stages of compilation than Collection I. JB was working as its copyeditor, as he explained in To AE, 17 Nov. (‘Donaldson is busy publishing his second Volume … I have the honour to correct the Proof-Sheets’). That task allowed JB to play a major role in padding out the volume. 11 A reference to the Latin Church Fathers; again, a macaronic pseudo-quotation. There are some possible echoes of Latin Patristic texts which deal generically with criticizing worldliness, such as Eucherius of Lyons’ De Contemptu Mundi. 12 ‘Trump’ is an alternative word for a jew’s harp (‘The Trump or Jew’s Harp … among the Highland instruments of musick’ (Pennant, pp. 195–96). See From AE, 23 Nov.

To Andrew Erskine, Wednesday 2 December 1761 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 28–31 [LETTER VIII].

Edinburgh, Dec. 2, 1761. Dear ERSKINE, Notwithstanding of your affecting elegy on the death of two pigs, I am just now 144

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returned from eating a most excellent one with the most magnificent Donaldson. I wish you would explain to me the reason of my being so very hard-hearted as to discover no manner of reluctance at that innocent animal’s being brought to table well roasted. I will confess to you, my friend, that I fed upon it with no small alacrity—neither do I feel any pangs of remorse for having so done. The reason perhaps lies so deep as to elude our keenest penetration;— at the same time give me leave to offer my conjecture, which you may have by a little transmutation of a vulgar adage, in such manner as to obtain at one and the same time (so to speak) not only a strong reason for my alledged inhumanity, but also an apparent pun, and a seeming paradox; all which you have for the small and easy charge of saying, The belly has no bowels. I do assure you the imperial sovereign of Pope’s head, Caledonian Dodsley, Scottish Baskerville, and captain general of collective bards, entertained us most sumptuously; I question much if captain Erskine himself ever fared better; although I was the only author in the company, which I own surprised me not a little. Donaldson is undoubtedly a gentleman perfectly skilled in the art of insinuation. His dinners are the most eloquent addresses imaginable. For my own part, I am never a sharer in one of his copious repasts, but I feel my heart warm to the landlord, and spontaneously conceive this expressive soliloquy,—Upon my word I must give him another hundred lines. Now, my dear Captain, tell me how is it with you, after reading this? With what feeling are you most strongly possest? But as this depends a good deal upon the time of day at which you receive my epistle, I shall make no farther enquiry. Thus, Sir, have I unbosomed the big exultation which possest me upon occasion of what some of the fathers would call splendidum prandium; Englished thus, a splendid dinner. Are not you all this time very much astonished, nay, somewhat picqued, that I have as yet made no mention of your last, notwithstanding of the wonderful enchantments which you relate, the sagacious advices which you give, and the ode to a Jew’s Harp, which you add. Forgive me, good Captain. Blame Donaldson. Write to me whenever you have any thing that you wish to say, and believe me, Yours, JAMES BOSWELL. P.S. Are you not very proud of your Ode to Midnight?1 Lord K——— calls it the best Poem in the English language.2 But it will not be long so. For in imitation of it I have written an Ode to Gluttony,3 of which take two stanzas. I. HAIL Gluttony! O let me eat Immensely at thy awful board, On which to serve the stomach meet, What art and nature can afford. I’ll furious cram, devoid of fear, Let but the roast and boil’d appear; Let me but see a smoaking dish, I care not whether fowl or fish; 145

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Then rush ye floods of ale adown my throat, And in my belly make the victuals float! II. And yet why trust a greasy cook? Or give to meat the time of play? While evr’y trout gulps down a hook, And poor dumb beasts harsh butchers slay? Why seek the dull, sauce-smelling gloom, Of the beef-haunted dining room; Where D———r gives to ev’ry guest With lib’ral hand whate’er is best; While you in vain th’insurance must invoke To give security you shall not choak? 1 AE’s ‘Ode to Midnight’ was printed in Collection I, pp. 174–77. 2 Lord Kames. JB’s journal shows him as visiting Kames on 26 Nov., although he may have seen Kames at the Select Society meeting on 1 Dec. (Journ.). Kames’s Elements of Criticism was ‘apparently ready for the press’ by 21 Oct., the dedication bears a date of Dec., and it was published the following year in Jan. and Mar. 1762. JB was perhaps among those who had seen the section on ‘the two Species of Poetry’ which Kames had in draft in Mar. 1760, and probably had heard Kames discuss aesthetics. Kames’s process of composition and his theories on literature (which combined regard for neoclassical form with emphasis on sentiment, ‘naturalness’, and ‘the sensitive part of our natures’) are summarized in Ross, pp. 266–91. Kames—the pioneer of a new ‘science of criticism’ which was based on ‘the roll of the

great English authors’ up to Pope and Swift with almost no reference to ‘his contemporaries’ (Ross, p. 279)—would never have praised AE’s ‘Ode’ as the best poem in English, unless in jest. A letter From Lord Kames (Yale MS. C 1648), tentatively dated to ?Jan. 1762 (Catalogue ii. 737), mentioned the extent to which JB had puffed AE’s poems in their conversations: ‘I hear your friend Capt. Erskine is in Edr. at this precious moment. I long to see the outlandish monster that soars beyond an Eagle, & is yet tame like a dove, that can sting like a Serpent, and yet lull you into Pleasure like a Syren. Will you shew him here this Evening?’. 3 No surviving manuscript source supports this statement that JB’s ‘Ode’ was an imitation of AE’s. JB’s inclusion of the assertion in E–B provides evidence beyond the stylistic similarities that one poem was designed to parody the other.

From Andrew Erskine, Thursday 3 December 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 32–40 [LETTER IX].

New-Tarbat, Dec. 3, 1761 Dear BOSWELL, EV’N now intent upon thy Ode,1 I plunge my knife into the beef, Which, when a cow—as is the mode— Was lifted by a Highland thief.2 Ah! spare him, spare him, circuit Lords!3 Ah hang him not in hempen cords; Ah save him in his morn of youth From the damp-breathing, dark *tolbooth,4 146

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Lest when condemn’d and hung in clanking chains,5 His body moulder down white-bleach’d with winter rains! But let not me inter-meddle with your province; to parody the ode to midnight,6 could only be thought of7 and executed by the mirth-moving, humour-hunting, raillery-raising James Boswell. You must send me the rest of your Gluttony8 by the return of the post, even though it should prove the night of the Beard-soaping Club.9 Did you ever suspect me of believing your marriage?10 No, I always said from the beginning, there was nothing in it; I can bring twenty witnesses to prove it, who shall be nameless; indeed if you had been married, I don’t know but the same gentlemen might have been prevailed upon to vouch for me that I frequently declared my firm persuasion of it; these kind of witnesses have multiplied greatly of late years, to the eternal credit of many a person’s surprising sagacity; but if you want to see this subject pursued and treated with accuracy, peruse Doctor Woodward’s Treatise of Fossils, particularly his remarks upon the touchstone.11 I am glad to hear you are returned to town, and once more near that seat of learning and genius Mr. Alexander Donaldson’s shop. You tell me you are promoted to be his corrector of the press; I wish12 you also had the office of correcting his children, which they very much want; the eldest son,13 when I was there, never failed to play at taw14 all the time, and my queue15 used frequently to be pulled about; you know, upon account of its length it is very liable to these sort of attacks; I am thinking to cut it off, for I never yet met with a child that could keep his hands from it: and here I can’t forbear telling you, that if ever you marry and have children, our acquaintance ceases from that moment, unless you breed them up after the manner of the great Scriblerus,16 and unless they be suckled with soft verse, and weaned with criticism. Write me when the volume will be published, and what sort of figure you think it will make, particularly how James Boswell and Andrew Erskine will appear; I know you will mix your opinion with a good deal of partial praise, as you are one of those extraordinary authors that have a love for their own works, and also one of those still more extraordinary ones that can flatter another. I find fault with one or two things in your letters; I could wish you wrote in a smaller hand, and that when you end a sentence in the beginning of a line, you would begin the next sentence in the same line.17 Dear Boswell, go to Donaldson and tell him he is a most inhuman miscreant, and deserves, as he is a Printer, to be press’d to death;18 then thunder in his ear that he has not sent Captain Erskine his Critical Review.19 Lady B——— entreats that you would come here and spend the Christmas holidays; she has sent for two Highland bards to entertain you, and I have a wash-ball and a stick of pomatum20 much at your service: we are all, thank God, in general pretty clear of the Itch just now, and most of us not near so lousy as we used to be, so I think you may venture.21 I received your letter ten days after the date, though it only came from Edinburgh; I had wrote you one some little time before, directed to the Parliament-Close,22 have you got it? That you may never want Odes of mine to parody, I enclose you one to Fear, nothing like it you will observe since the time of Pindar. 147

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And now, my dear Boswell, I conclude, having, as I hope for mercy, not one word more to say, which I believe is often the case of many an enormous genius. Farewell. Yours, &c. ANDREW ERSKINE *[JB’s note:] Tolbooth Prison

ODE TO FEAR.23 I. Lost in the mournful wood at eve, While round the awful torrents roll, Why fiercely does thy bosom heave, Why weary sinks thy sad’ning soul; Or what along the dark’ning waste, Impels thy steps with eager haste; What voice seems rushing on the wind, Why stop? why dart a glance behind? Alas! thy looks so wild, thy thoughts so drear, Confess th’alarming strength, th’unbounded pow’r of fear. II. What direful scenes of woe, as fancy deems, Chill the bold heart, and strike th’astonish’d eye; The visionary spectre frequent gleams, And forms terrific float in horror by; The heavy clouds are settled in the air, Loud sighs the gale, the lonely mountains o’er Deep caverns frowning gloom, and monsters glare, While starting Fear exhausts her frantic stare; By chains unseen th’imagination guides, And with a magic force o’er ev’ry thought presides. III. Away with all thy rueful train, Nor cast thy cold pale glance at me, Least reason quit my tortur’d brain, And each mad thought be full of thee; Nor ever meet my startl’d view, Array’d in robe of sanguine hue; Nor near my silent couch be found, When night is wrapt in darkness round: Away, and haunt the murderer’s care-fraught bed, And probe his guilty soul ’till ev’ry bliss be fled.

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IV. In vain on him the genial god of sleep Pours his sweet slumbers once so soft and mild; In vain they on his fallen eye-lids creep, Still broke by visions savage all, and wild: Unnerv’d, and all appall’d, he seems to tread With toilsome steps the dread funereal way, Where howling phantoms throng athwart the shade, While the wan moon scarce beams her joyless ray; Or high on hanging cliffs he seems to go, And views the deep black stream that sleeps so still below. V. Yet lead him on and let him feel The stings of conscience and remorse, Their penetrating points reveal, And wound him with their keenest force: No respite let the monster find, With ev’ry fury rack his mind, And still each sad, each ling’ring night, Before him stalk a haggard sight, ’Till wak’d to misery he raves and mourns, While ev’ry flame of Hell within his bosom burns. VI. See at the regal banquet curst Macbeth Secure of empire secretly rejoice; The fiend seems smiling at the work of death, And hears, with pleasure hears, the murderer’s voice: When lo! at once Fear’s dreadful pow’r is felt, As injur’d Banquo points the livid wound, Cold chilling dews upon his forehead melt, Fades the gay scene of splendor all around, Drops from his nerveless hand the rosy bowl, While sluggish thro’ his veins life’s purple torrents roll.24 VII. And mark where Richard near his tent, Tastes the cool fragrance of the air, Remorse within his bosom pent, And deadly hate, and black despair; Yet once again behold, he sleeps, Hark! on his ear the low groan creeps; He shudd’ring starts, convulsive shakes, He heaves, he turns, he leaps, he wakes, Each feature seems with wild amazement hung, The sudden pray’r to Heav’n drops fault’ring from his tongue.25 149

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VIII. Shakespeare alone thy ghastly charms enjoy’d, Thy savage haunts he travers’d undismay’d, In hearing thy awak’ning tales employ’d, Where the wood darkens to a deeper shade; And if I read the magic page aright, Loud thunders roll’d around th’enchanted spot, While fire-ey’d daemons growl’d the long lone night, And ev’ry tree with flashing flame was smote; And cries uncouth, and sounds of woe were heard, And tall gigantic shapes their horrid forms uprear’d.26 IX. But not alone to guilt confin’d, Thy furies dart their secret stings, They point them at the virtuous mind, Which each ideal fancy wrings; The pensive melancholy Dane Deep mourns his royal father slain; Th’unnatural murderer must bleed, The ghost appears, and prompts the deed;27 Ev’n valiant Brutus sinking to repose, Thy awful presence felt as his stern genius rose.28 X. Ye Angels sent as guardians of the good, Swift chace th’enthusiastic pow’r away, Clear the low cloud, each grief-charg’d thought exclude, Drive hence the fiend that shuns the eye of day; Ah! calm and gentle sink us down to rest, Let chearfulness the lonely void adorn, Let her mild radiance gild the fear-struck breast, While we with air-form’d terrors cease to mourn; And in such raptur’d dreams the fancy steep, As render more endear’d the deity of sleep. 1 JB’s ‘Ode to Gluttony’ (included in To AE, 17 Nov., to which the present letter is a reply). In E–B, JB transferred the Ode to the letter of 2 Dec. in order to improve the sequence. 2 Highlanders were stereotyped as cattle thieves who preyed on commercial cattledrovers and charged blackmail to Lowland cattle-owners as protection money. A common Highland distinction defined as ‘theft’ only those takings of cattle from the ‘poor widow’ or other cottars, a folk casuistry of reiving not shared by the Circuit courts. This gave rise to the lax view of cattle-

taking as a genteel trade expressed in the reasoning later to be codified in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (ch. 18), in the form of Evan Dhu Maccombich’s defence of Donald Bean Lean’s ‘lift[ing]’ cattle: ‘he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird, is a gentleman-drover …. [T]o take a … cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon’ (Plant, p. 107; Henry Hamilton, An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 1963, p. 93). 3 The Lords of Justiciary left Edinburgh in spring and autumn, dividing into pairs:

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each pair rode one of the three circuits of regional criminal courts of Scotland, with each circuit having three major stoppingpoints where trials were conducted (Defence, pp. 350 n. 2, 353). Lord Auchinleck was a Lord of Justiciary, and had ridden the North Circuit in May and the Western Circuit in Sept. JB had followed his father on the North Circuit at least twice: in Aug. 1758 and May 1761. 4 The word ‘tolbooth’ or ‘towbooth’ was used to signify any town prison, since gaol cells were often built under the toll collection office which doubled as a town hall (CSD; see also OED). 5 Although it was not a common practice, judges could deny burial to those whom they considered particularly heinous criminals. After execution, their corpses were by court order hanged up by the roadside in chains or cages, often near the site where they had committed their crimes, where their bodies were allowed to decompose in public view as an example to deter others from future crimes (Kirsten Olsen, Daily Life in 18th-Century England, 1999, pp. 216–17). On his tour to the Hebrides in 1773, JB would write that he ‘had, from that strange curiosity which I allways have about anything dismal, stepped out of the chaise & run up close to the gallows where Kenneth Leal hangs in chains for robbing the mail’ (Journ. 26 Aug. 1773). The punishment was certainly available as an option in 1760s Scotland. Lord Auchinleck wrote in 1765 that after the murderer Lt. Ogilvy was ‘hangd’, his body would be ‘delivered to the Surgeons to be anatomized. This we preferred to the hanging in chains as we wishd to have no memorial of such Schocking Crimes’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 10–15 Aug. 1765, Yale MS. C 227). 6 JB’s ‘Ode to Gluttony’ was a parody of AE’s ‘Ode to Midnight’ published in Donaldson’s Collection I, pp. 174–77. 7 E–B, ‘off’ 8 That is, JB’s ‘Ode to Gluttony’. Readers of the published version of To AE, 2 Dec. in E–B would have known that two stanzas had been sent. Manuscript evidence presented in this volume in To AE, 17 Nov. shows that the same two stanzas and a fragment of a third had been sent half a month previously. 9 The ‘Beard-soaping club’ is AE’s term for the ‘Soaping Club’. Its meeting night was Tuesday. 10 The rumour of JB’s considering marriage had reached AE by 1 Nov: ‘I heard you was just going to be married’ (From AE, 1

Nov.). In To AE, 17 Nov., JB had ridiculed AE for believing that he might have been seriously contemplating marriage. It is not clear whether JB was jesting in his discussion of marriage from Sept. to Nov. He may equally well have been courting with some seriousness in those months, and from midNov. joking in order to conceal his embarrassment at the actual rejection of his suit. 11 John Woodward (1665–1728), M.D., professor of physic in Gresham College, mocked as a pedant by the Scriblerians. A geologist, paleontologist, antiquarian, and physician. Woodward had begun his interest in collecting and classifying fossils by the 1690s, and recognized that the fossils were remains of once-living animals, although he interpreted his discoveries in order to accommodate his belief in a global flood (see Joseph M. Levine, Dr. Woodward’s Shield: History, Science, and Satire in Augustan England, 1977, pp. 24–113 passim). None of Woodward’s books bears the title Treatise of Fossils. At least four of his books dealt with the question of his research on fossils: An essay toward a natural history of the earth … especially minerals …, 1695 (ESTC R1666); The natural history of the earth, illustrated, and inlarged …, 1726 (ESTC T144873); Fossils of all kinds, digested into a method, suitable to their mutual relation and affinity …, 1728 (ESTC T131076); An attempt towards a natural history of the fossils of England; in a catalogue of the English fossils in the collection of J. Woodward …, 1728–29 (ESTC T132036). AE probably meant one of the final two titles. The ‘remarks upon the touchstone’ is another example of manufacturing scholarly citation of sources to ridicule pedantry. Touchstones were used to assess the level of base metals in pure or alloyed gold and silver. As early as the 16th century a touchstone figuratively meant any verifier of truth or falsity, or level of merit (OED). Woodward’s Fossils of all Kinds (1728) did emphasize the need for witnesses who are objective and trustworthy (p. 107), but he mentioned the touchstone only as one item in a classification of smooth and polishable stones (p. 10). 12 E–B, ‘with’ 13 Donaldson’s eldest son was James Donaldson (1751–1830), now almost ten, who matured beyond his marble-playing, succeeded his father in his Edinburgh business, and in 1774 became proprietor and editor of the Edinburgh Advertiser. James Donaldson published the newspaper until his retirement in 1820 (Robert T. Skinner, A Notable Family of Scots Printers, 1927, pp.

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7, 43; Dict. of Printers). 14 The game of marbles, named after the large marble used as the ‘shooter’ (OED). 15 AE as an army officer followed the redcoat fashion of a long queue of hair, which is displayed to some degree in Kay’s 1785 caricature of him (Kay, II. i. 56–59). 16 Martinus Scriblerus (the character invented by the ‘Tory wits’ to satirize pedants). The Scriblerian influence is clear in the letters of JB, AE, and GD which offer groundless references to the tedious and pedantic works of the learned, and mention fabricated characters. AE alludes to the fourth chapter of ‘The Memoirs … of Martinus Scriblerus’, by Arbuthnot, Pope, Swift, et al., first published in The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope, in Prose (1741), vol. 2. 17 JB’s handwriting does not appear from examples in the Yale MSS to have been markedly larger than AE’s. However, AE was convinced that this was the case. An anecdote in ‘Boswelliana’ recalled that: ‘Captain Erskine complained that Boswell’s hand was so large that his letters contained very little. My lines (said Boswell) are like my ideas very irregular, & at a great distance from each other’ (‘Boswelliana’, Hyde Collection, p. 40). Examples of JB’s ending a sentence early in a line and skipping to another line to begin a subsequent sentence can be found in Yale MSS. L 506 (To AE, 25 Aug.), L 507 (To AE, 17 Nov.), and L 508 (To AE, 2 Dec.), although those may simply be examples of JB’s erratic attempts at paragraphing. AE’s letters tended to eschew paragraphing. 18 Pressing to death was the infamous peine forte et dure, a penalty typically reserved for those accused who refused to testify. It was not designed to kill the sufferer in the first instance, but rather torture him into giving testimony. 19 During his stay at New Tarbet, AE had

asked Alexander Donaldson to forward him the Crit. Rev.; see From AE, 13 Dec. The Critical Review (1756–1817), was a toryleaning counterpart to the whiggish Monthly Review (for Crit. Rev., see English Literary Periodicals, Microfilm vols. 1–5, reels 1–29). 20 A ball of soap, often used for shaving. Pomatum (or pomade), defined by SJ simply as ‘an ointment’ (Dict. SJ), is ‘a scented ointment (in which apples are said to have been originally an ingredient) for application to the skin; now used esp. for the skin of the head and for dressing the hair’ (OED). 21 The description of Scots, especially Highlanders, as suffering from ‘itch’ and body lice had appeared in From AE, 23 Nov. JB’s own version of this sarcasm about Scottish poverty and backwardness even among the well-born appears in To AE, 22 Jan. 1762. 22 While in Edinburgh JB was staying in Lord Auchinleck’s Edinburgh residence, in Parliament Close. See To the Countess of Northumberland, 1 Apr., n. 2. 23 After the appearance of E–B, AE’s ‘Ode to Fear’ was reprinted in Scots Mag. Apr. 1763, xxv. 218–19, and Lond. Chron. 13 Apr. 1763, xiii. 356. AE did not borrow any specific lines or phrases from William Collins’s ‘Ode to Fear’. Nevertheless, the poem may contain conscious or unconscious echoes of Collins’s other works (e.g., compare AE’s l. 405, ‘And if I read that magic page aright’, to Collins’s ll. 1–2 in ‘Ode on the Poetical Character’: ‘As once, if not with light regard,/ I read aright that gifted bard’; see Roger Lonsdale, ed., The Poems of Gray, Collins and Goldsmith, 1969). 24 Macbeth, III. iv. 25 Richard III, V. iii. 26 AE perhaps echoes Julius Caesar, I. iii. 3–32. 27 Hamlet, I. v. 28 Julius Caesar, IV. iii.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 8 December 1761 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 509).

Edinburgh, 8 Decr. 1761. MY DEAR ERSKINE: It is a very strange thing that I James Boswell Esquire, although posest of ‘a happy facility of manners’—to use the very words of Mr. Professor Smith,1 which upon honour were addrest to the above-mentioned Gentleman— If it was absolutely necessary, I could yet produce the Letter2 in which they are to be found—I say it is a very strange thing that I should ever be at a loss what to do, or what to say: And yet, at this individual point of Existence, I find myself unable 152

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to express my real Gratitude, for your kindness in writing me so long an Epistle, and sending me so noble an Ode.3 May Lady Betty say unto me ‘Boswell, I detest thee’ If I am not now in downright, plain, sober earnest. Mankind are such a strange race of self-approving Beings, that they will readily lay hold of any thing that is said agreable to their dear selves, but if on the contrary they4 hear anything that is disagreable, they take care to let it Slip. Thus I—in order to illustrate this Affirmation by a recent Example—remember with the most perfect Accuracy, Mr Smith’s beautifull, I shall even grant you just Compliment: But have quite forgot his severe Criticism on a Sentence so clumsily formed as to require an I say to keep it together5—which I myself candidly think much resembles a pair of ill-mended Bretches. My Dear Erskine! having a mind to open a sluice of Happiness upon You, I must tell you, that I have lately got you great Applause and from men too whose Opinions are to be valued. What think you of Mr. Baron Muir,6 Doctor Blair Professor of Rhetorick,7 and My Lord Kaims?8 I can assure you, in particular of his Lordship’s Approbation.9 I had the honour two nights ago10 of reading your Ode to Midnight, Your Chairmen11 and some other Pieces to him with which he was highly pleased—and if you will take the evidence of a Judge,12 I beleive You will find that my good-humoured Countenance sparkled as much with Gladness at hearing the Praises of my friend, as ever You saw it, when Myself was the Theme of magnificent Eulogium. I imagine Donaldson will be far from disliking such Incidents as this; for I can venture to assure him of having some more copies of his Collection called for, than would otherwise have been the case. The Second Volume13 will not be out till January. I think it will be a very good one. Captain Erskine will make a great figure. Boswell a decent one: But he hopes to make a better next year. Lady Betty intreats me to come and pass the Christmas Holidays,14 with her! guess, my worthy friend what transport I felt on reading that. My Affection for you is much increast since you communicated to me the charming Message. I am infinitely obliged to her Ladyship, and whenever Heaven permitts me to see her, she shall hear how richly I can express my Gratitude. But, although I am a good deal of a Don Quixote,15 yet I feel myself averse to so long a Journey. Beleive me I am as sweetly indolent as any Genius in all his Majesty’s Dominions; so that I must beg leave to propose for my own Incitement, the following Scheme. You Captain Andrew shall upon Monday the twenty eig[h]th day of December one thousand seven hundred and Sixty One years, set out from New-Tarbat in Macfarlane’s Chaise, and meet me at Glasgow in the Evening.16 Next day being Tuesday we two shall get in together to the said chaise and drive like fire without the Smoke to Your present Habitation; where I shall remain till the Monday thereafter,17 when I shall be in like manner transported back to Glasgow; from thence to make my way, as well as I can to the Scottish Metropolis.18 The Advantages accruing from this Plan of Operations are my having so much more of your classical Company—and somewhat less to pay, which to a Poet is no slender Consideration—and being chaised the whole Road, which, by the by, I am determined to be; for, Boots put on will I not.19 I think I have now played a very sure Game. For, either must you fulfill every title20 of this agreable Plan, or entertain me with a plentifull Dish of well-drest Apologys. I beg it of you, however,—but indeed I may save myself the trouble—dont put yourself to any inconvenience. Pray, shall we not see you here, this Winter, at all? 153

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You ought to come and eat the fruit of your labours. I remain Your very Affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL Present my Respects to the Ladies. How does Lady Ann agree with the Highlands.21 Am not I a conceited Dog. It must be superior Merit indeed that could make you do as I prettily propose. I shall rouse Donaldson. I beg it of you think of my Proposals for delivering myself in Folio.22 However People may commonly talk. So much Happiness is no jest. Ten days bear some Proportion to the whole of Life. Write instantly. 1 For JB’s relationship with Adam Smith, see To GD, 19 Nov., n. 10. JB was exceedingly proud of this compliment, and alluded it in his journals, e.g., 22 Dec. 1765 and 3 Apr. 1775. As late as 31 Mar. 1786 in a letter to Malone, JB boasted: ‘My misfortune I have with my facility of manners (which Dr. Adam Smith early allowed me) rendered scarcely the subject even of raillery’ (Corr. 4, p. 313). 2 No letters from Smith to JB are known to have survived. This mention would indicate that JB believed that he had kept Smith’s letter and that Smith’s letter was dated ante 8 Dec. 1761. There is one known surviving letter from JB to Smith (28 Aug. 1769, Yale MS. L 1161). That short note, which is entirely on matters of business, has been printed in E. C. Mossner and T. S. Ross’s ‘Glasgow Edition’ of the Correspondence of Adam Smith, rev. ed. 1987, p. 156, and will appear in the volume of JB’s correspondence with the Scots literati, forthcoming in this series. 3 The letter is From AE, 3 Dec., which included AE’s ‘Ode to Fear’. 4 MS. ‘the’ 5 This anecdote is untraced. It probably dates from a conversation during JB’s university days at Glasgow, although it may be from an unreported letter. 6 William Mure (1718–76) of Caldwell, M.P. for Renfrewshire 1742–61, and Baron of the Scottish Exchequer from 1761 to 1776, agricultural improver and a former manager of the Bute estates. When Bute assumed management of Scottish political affairs upon Argyll’s death, Mure was one of Bute’s principal advisers in Scotland. Alexander Carlyle wrote that Mure had a ‘manner’ which was ‘blunt and unattractive’, but

that despite that he was ‘unassuming, of excellent understanding and [had] great ability for business’ (Namier and Brooke, iii. 181–82). JB noted in 1774 that he had had ‘no intercourse’ with Mure although ‘invited’, and praised Mure as ‘a friendly sensible agreable man’ (Journ. 2l June 1774). 7 Hugh Blair (1718–1800), a leading Church of Scotland divine of the Moderate Party and university professor, one of the most famous sermonists of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, and one of the ministers of the ‘High Kirk’ 1758–1800. Blair had been licensed to preach in 1741, and was ordained minister in a series of churches (Colessie, 1742–43; Canongate, 1743–54; and Lady Yester’s, 1754–58), leading up to his ministry at Edinburgh High Church from 1758 to 1800. He had begun lecturing at the University of Edinburgh in 1759, in Aug. 1760 had been made Professor of Rhetoric, and on 7 Apr. 1762 would be appointed to the new Regius Professorship of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, a post he held until 1783. See John Hill, An Account of the Life and Writings of Hugh Blair … by the Late John Hill, L.L.D. …, 1807, repr. 1997; Robert Morell Schmitz, Hugh Blair, 1948. Although no authoritative edition of all of Blair’s works has been published, there were various editions of his A Critical Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian (1763), Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783), and multiple volumes of his collected Sermons (5 vols., 1777–1801). JB’s Edinburgh Journ. recorded a meeting with ‘Dr. Blair’ on 19 Nov.; Blair was also a member of the Select Society whose meetings JB attended on 1 and 8 Dec. (Journ.). Blair later visited JB in London in 1763, at which time JB described him as ‘a

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very amiable man. In my earliest years I admired him while he was Minister in the Canongate [c. 1743–54]. He is learned and ingenious and has a degree of simplicity about him, that is extremely engaging’ (Journ. 6 Apr. 1763). 8 Kames is mentioned nine times by name in JB’s Journ. for Nov. and Dec. as having shared a meal or tea with JB. 9 Compare the printed revision of To AE, 2 Dec., where JB wrote: ‘your Ode to Midnight … Lord K——— calls it the best Poem in the English language’. JB was not reluctant to shuttle sections of his manuscripts to different days in his revisions for E–B. 10 JB’s journal does not record an evening meeting with Kames on 5 or 6 Dec., although it does note ‘breakfast Lord Kame[s]’ for 7 Dec. Kames was also a member of the Select Society, which JB had recently joined (Journ. 1, 8 Dec.). Oddly, JB had ‘sup[ped]’ with an ‘Erskine’ 6 Dec. (Journ.). 11 AE’s ‘To Midnight. An Ode’ was in Collection I, pp. 174–77. His ‘The Chairmen: A Town-eclogue’ was in Collection I, pp. 180–83; it was the first in a series of burlesque eclogues on urban themes by AE. 12 A jest, since Kames was not merely a judge on the Scottish bench, but also an astute judge of aesthetics as demonstrated in his critical writings. 13 ‘[H]is [Alexander Donaldson’s] Collection’ and ‘The Second Volume’ are both references to Collection II. The volume appeared in late Jan.–early Feb. 1762 (see To AE, 11 Feb. 1762; Lit. Car. p. 12). 14 The invitation to visit at Christmas

had been extended in From AE, 3 Dec.: ‘Lady B——— entreats that you would come here and spend the Christmas holidays’, here in the sense of passing seven of the twelve days of Christmas, since JB planned to meet AE in Glasgow on the fourth day (28 Dec.), arrive on the fifth day (29 Dec.) and depart on the eleventh day (4 Jan. 1762). Yet the evidence from Journ. suggests that JB actually arrived in New Tarbet on the second day (26 Dec.) and left on the eighth day (1 Jan. 1762). 15 JB also compared himself to Cervantes’ Quixote in Journ. 16 Mar. 1768. 16 The distance from Edinburgh to Glasgow, depending on the road taken, was about 43–48 miles. The road from Tarbet village to Glasgow was about 36 miles (Taylor and Skinner, Survey and Maps, ‘An Index … shewing the Distance from EDINBURGH’, ‘A List of Stages on the Great Roads’). 17 4 Jan. 1762 18 JB was actually in Glasgow on 1 Jan. 1762 and was back to Edinburgh by 2 Jan. 1762. 19 One of many references to JB’s reluctance to ride horse-back if a chaise were available instead. In the published revision he wrote of his ‘mortal antipathy at riding’ (see next letter). 20 That is, ‘tittle’. ‘Title’ was a variant spelling. 21 Lady Anne Erskine was presumably visiting New Tarbet with AE. She usually resided at Kellie Castle. 22 This may refer to JB’s ‘Plan’ for a volume of poems entirely of his own composition.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 8 December 1761 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 41–47 [LETTER X].

Edinburgh, Dec. 8, 1761 Dear ERSKINE, IT is a very strange thing, that I James Boswell, Esq.; ‘who am happily possest of a facility of manners,’—(to use the very words of Mr. Professor Smith, which upon honour were addrest to me. I can produce the Letter in which they are to be found) I say it is a very strange thing that I should ever be at a loss how to express myself; and yet at this moment of my existence, that is really the case. May Lady B——— say unto me, ‘Boswell, I detest thee,’ if I am not in downright earnest. Mankind are such a perverse race of beings, that they never fail to lay hold of every circumstance tending to their own praise, while they let slip every circumstance tending to their censure. To illustrate this by a recent example, you see I accurately remember Mr. Smith’s beautiful, I shall even grant you just compliment, but have quite forgot his severe criticism on a sentence so clumsily formed, 155

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as to require an I say to keep it together; which I myself candidly think much resembles a pair of ill-mended breeches. Having a mind, Erskine, to open a sluice of happiness upon you, I must inform you that I have lately got you an immensity of applause from men of the greatest taste. You know I read rather better than any man in Britain; so that your works had a very uncommon advantage. I was pleased at the praise which you received. I was vain of having such a correspondent. I thought I did not envy you a bit, and yet, I don’t know, I felt somehow, as if I could like to thresh you pretty heartily: however, I have one comfort, in thinking that all this praise would not have availed you a single curl of Sir Cloudesly Shovel’s periwig,1 had not I generously reported it to you: so that in reality you are obliged to me for it. The second volume of the Poems will not be published ’till January. Captain Erskine will make a very good figure. Boswell a decent one. Lady B——— intreats me to come and pass the Christmas holidays with her: guess, O guess! what transport I felt at reading that. I did not know how to contain my elevation of spirits. I thought myself one of the greatest geniuses in Europe. I thought I could write all sorts of books, and work at all handicraft trades. I imagined that I had fourscore millions of money out at interest, and that I should actually be chosen Pope at the next election.2 I obtest you, my friend, in the warmest spirit of love to return to her Ladyship my most sincere thanks, and tell her that when the planets permit us to meet, she herself shall judge how richly I can express my gratitude. Altho’ I am a good deal of a Don Quixote, yet I feel myself averse to so long a journey. Believe me, I am as sweetly indolent as any genius in all his Majesty’s dominions, so that for my own incitement I must propose the following scheme. You Captain Andrew shall, upon Monday the 28th day of this present month, set out from New-Tarbat in Mr. M———’s chaise, and meet me at Glasgow, that evening. Next day shall we both in friendly guise get into the said chaise, and drive with velocity to your present habitation, where I shall remain ’till the Monday sen’night; on which day I shall be in like manner accompanied back to Glasgow, from thence to make my way as well as I can, to the Scottish metropolis. I have told the story of my scheme rather aukwardly; but it will have its advantages: I shall have a couple of days more of your classical company, and somewhat less to pay, which to a Poet is no slender consideration. I shall chaise it the whole way. Thanks to the man who first invented that comfortable method of journeying. Had it not been for that, I dare say both you and I would have circumscribed our travels within a very few miles. For my own part, I think to dress myself in a great-coat and boots, and get astride a horse’s back, and be jolted through the mire, perhaps in wind and rain, is a punishment too severe for all the offences which I can charge myself with. Indeed I have a mortal antipathy at riding, and that was the true reason for my refusing a regiment of dragoons3 which the King of Prussia offered me at the beginning of this war.4 I know indeed the Marischal Duke de Belleisle in his Political Testament,5 has endeavoured to persuade the world that it was owing to my having a private amour with a Lady of distinction in the Austrian court,6 but that minister was too deeply immersed in state-intrigues, to know much about those of a more tender nature. The tumultuous hurry of business and ambition, left no room in his mind for the delicious delicacy of sentiment and passion, so very essential to a man of gallantry. 156

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I think, Erskine, in this scheme of mine, I am playing a very fine game, for you must either indulge me in every article which I have mentioned, or entertain me with a plentiful dish of well drest apologies. I beg it of you, however, don’t put yourself to any inconvenience; indeed I might have saved myself the trouble of making this request, for you are that kind of man that I believe you would not put yourself to an inconvenience to be made a Lieutenant-General. Pray shall we not see you here this winter at all? You ought to come and eat the fruit of your labours. I remain your most affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL. I shall rouse Donaldson as you desire. I shall rouse him like a peal of thunder. I wonder what you will think of this proposal of mine for delivering myself in Folio. Ten days make a period, as I use to say.7 They bear some proportion to the whole of life. Write instantly. SEQUEL8 of the ODE TO GLUTTONY. III. Ev’n now upon his elbow chair A glutton surfeit-struck reclines; See him look round with frightful stare, And beg for drink with eager signs. His gullet stuff the unchew’d bits, He groans and nods his head by fits; His high-swol’n cheeks that were so red, With egg-shell whiteness are o’er-spread; Ah! quickly thump his back, left for a boast Death from his liver rive his bouncing ghost. IV. Ev’n now on ven’son much intent, The great John Bull pleas’d with his fate, Gorges until his sides are rent, And glows voluptuous o’er his plate. He, while he eyes the godlike haunch! Rubs his rotundity of paunch; Which, when replete in ev’ry chink, His worship makes sublimely think: Or, an inveterate enemy to chat, Delighted views a splendid store of fat! V. Bread fills the mouths of hungry clowns, The blacksmith’s clumsy grinders go, The kitchens sweat thro’ all the towns, The cock now fry’d no more shall crow. 157

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The baker tarts and cheese-cakes brings, The rusty jack9 ear-grating sings; Each footman with an angry voice Damns the confounded creaking noise: The ham suspended, when the strings are broke, Assaults Bob’s powder’d pate with dreadful stroke. VI. And now perhaps the buxom wife Of Vintner* Thom10 consults her spouse, How those who play the keenest knife, She best may feast within her house. She sees before her mind’s clear glass, All sorts of fresh provisions pass; She makes pots, pans, and spits be scour’d, For dressing what shall be devour’d. Haste! let me thither hie with purpose good, To swallow monstrous quantities of food! *[JB’s note:] Thom—in whose house the Soaping-Club was always held. 1 Admiral Sir Clowdisley or Cloudisley Shovell (1650–1707), a seaman from 1664, Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet from 1705 to 1707. Addison in Spectator 26 claimed that the periwig which JB mentioned was not a typical headgear for the admiral. ‘Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s monument [in Westminster Abbey] has very often given me great offence: instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing character of that plain gallant man, he is represented on his tomb by the figure of a beau, dressed in a long periwig’. As JB read the Spectator early in his life and referred to it frequently in his journals, notes, and essays (Lincoln, p. 260), that passage may have created the mental image, although JB might equally well have rememembered the monument itself from his London stay in 1760. 2 Pope Clement XIII (Carlo Rezzonico) had been elected 6 July 1758, and was pope during JB’s brief Roman Catholic conversion. JB would later meet Pope Clement XIII and express his awe at the pontiff’s powers and gentility (Course in antiquities and arts in Rome, 25 Mar. 1765, Mem. 14 May 1765). He died 2 Feb. 1769, and his successor (Clement XIV) was elected 18 May 1769. 3 For JB’s brief consideration of a career in the British Horse Guards, see To the Countess of Northumberland, before 30 Dec. 1762, and To the Countess of Northumberland, between 15 and 19 Feb. 1763,

and n. 6. His military ambitions were largely confined to the Foot Guards (see To GD, 27 Aug., n. 8), owing to his seemingly genuine dislike of riding. 4 Frederick II, ‘the Great’. The ‘war’ is the Seven Years’ War, 1756–63. JB, of course, did not see Frederick until his Grand Tour (1764). 5 Marechal Charles Louis Auguste de Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, 1684–1761, Marshal of France, minister of war 1758–61, and diplomat, had died 26 Jan. 1761 (Gent. Mag. Feb. 1761, xxxi. 94). His ‘state-intrigues’ involving the claimants to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire were considered by some to have aided the onset of the War of the Austrian Succession. The British press had been interested in him for some time, as the announcement in 1760 of the publication of Memoirs of Marshal Belleisle [translated] From the French demonstrated (Gent. Mag. May 1760, xxx. 251; not in ESTC). JB gives ‘Marshal’ its Scots spelling, ‘Marischal’. Bennett noticed the peculiarity of JB’s reference to this book by the English title, which appears to give additional proof of the timing of JB’s revisions of the E–B letters. François Antoine de Chevrier’s Testament politique du marechal duc de Belle-Isle … was published in 1761 with a false Amsterdam imprint and republished in 1762 with an accurate Paris imprint. JB did not read French competently

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in 1761, so the first text to which he would have had access was the English translation of Chevrier’s work: The political testament of the Marshal Duke of Belleisle, 1762 (ESTC T219710). Significantly, that work was not advertised for sale until Mar. 1762, three months after this letter’s date (e.g., Lond. Chron. 11 Mar. 1762, xi. 239). JB’s ‘Plan’ for a volume of his own poems noted that his projected book was to be published by ‘Becket and Dehondt’, and although Becket was not listed among the printers of the political testament, it was advertised as sold by Becket, indeed on the same page as a notice of JB’s Cub (Gent. Mag. Mar. 1762, xxxii. 147). The circumstantial evidence therefore suggests that JB’s revision of this letter for publication in E–B can be dated to Mar. 1762 at the earliest. 6 A fantasy, of course. The closest JB would come geographically to visiting the Austrian court in Vienna would be his visit to Dresden 9–12 Oct. 1764 (Journ.). 7 A ‘period’ was normally measured in years (Dict. SJ, s.v. ‘period’, 2–3). Ten was a number commonly used to refer to a generic period of days in biblical writings, either alone (see 1 Sam. 25:38; Dan. 1:12–15; Neh. 5:18; Jer. 42:7; Acts 25:6; Rev. 2:10 [the ‘ten days of tribulation’]), or as a composite (e.g., ‘three score and ten’; see 2 Chron. 36:9; 1 Esd. 1:44). 8 Not a ‘Sequel’, but actually a continuation or second installment of the same poem. His ‘Plan’ for a volume of his poems noted that ‘Gluttony’ was projected at sixty

lines, which perfectly matches the surviving six stanzas of ten lines each (Werner, p. 20). 9 A reference to a machine for turning the spit in roasting meat. JB’s ‘The Turnspittiad’ deals allegorically with one such turnspit (Werner, pp. 77–78). A noisy bed shared by JB and AE during JB’s 1762 harvest jaunt sounded and felt as if ‘they had put in the Jack and had contrived to wind it up, by which means it was going below my backside, creaking and rattling most hideously’ (Journ. 4 Nov. 1762). ‘The spits were rested on hooks on the two front legs [of the metal basket] and were usually turned mechanically by a clockwork spitjack, then later in the century by a smokejack sited inside the chimney’ (Jennifer Stead, Food & Cooking in 18thCentury Britain, 1985, p. 6). There were also turnspits powered by dogs (‘dogspits’); for illustrations of the clockwork spitjack and the dogspit, and additional information on their use, see Stead, op. cit., pp. 7, 12, and 25. See also To AE, 25 Aug. (MS), n. 11. 10 Thomas Nicolson m. Helen Douglas in 1748 (Henry Paton, Register of Marriages for the Parish of Edinburgh 1701–1750, 1908, SRS 35). For Nicolson and his tavern, Thom’s, see From the Soaping Club, between ?June 1760 and early 1762, n. 3. ‘Nelly’ Douglas was thought by Alexander Carlyle to be a ‘Handsome Landlady’, and ‘a Comely Woman, a Person of Good Sense and very Worthy’ (Alexander Carlyle, Anecdotes and Characters of the Times, ed. James Kinsley, 1973, pp. 156–57).

To Thomas Sheridan, Wednesday 9 December 1761 MS. Yale (L 1158). A copy. HEADING: To Mr. Sheridan.

Edinr., 9 Decr. 1761 MY DEAR SIR: I kiss the rod of your kind Reprehension. My temper I own is too impetous:1 But, I hope the Torrent, in time will abate of it’s force. I am now in great Serenity. My Father has given his Consent to do every thing that is proper and agreable.2 He is an excellent Man. You know I allways said so, even when He and I were upon the worst terms together. I am sure he never knowingly deviates from Rectitude. Every thing will now go smoothly on; and I flatter myself that we shall see a Completion of your great Design—to make Boswell a Man. I beg you may take the trouble to pay Mr. Millar,3 my Subscription Money for the new splendid Edition of Thomson, the Proffits of which are to be applyed towards erecting a Monument for him in Westminster Abbey.4 I wish to be among the number of those who do honour to his Memory. Will you tell me, is it true that you are instructing the Queen in our Language? So we have it reported in this Country.5 159

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The Theatre here is not yet opened.6 I beleive they begin this Week.7 But what sort of a Company they have mustered up, I cannot as yet inform you.8 I dined with your friend Sir Alexander Dick,9 yesterday, at his pleasant Villa.10 He wishes much to hear from you. Your last made me very happy. Accept of my gratefull thanks for your Goodness. I wish you would send me every new Dramatic Piece, by the first Opportunity. If your Members of Parliament are lazy, my friend Mr. Dempster will give you as many franks11 as you chuse. I remain, etc. 1 An obsolete variant of ‘impetuous’ (OED), probably reflecting JB’s pronunciation. 2 The offer of consent by Lord Auchinleck remains as mysterious as the misunderstanding mentioned in To TS, 25 or 26 Nov. No evidence survives that Lord Auchinleck ever gave his blessing to JB’s scheme to study law in London, but JB certainly had not yet abandoned the plan (see To the Countess of Northumberland, 6 Jan. 1762). In early 1762 Lord Auchinleck and JB, now thoroughly at loggerheads, renegotiated their relationship. In a contract dated 7 Mar. 1762 (Yale MS. M 16), JB consented to be put under the control of trustees of his father’s choosing should he succeed to Auchinleck. By another contract dated 2 Apr. 1762 (Yale MS. C 210), Lord Auchinleck made JB more financially independent by granting him unconditionally an allowance of £100 per year (later increased to £200 in Nov. and to £300 when he married in 1769). The first contract revealed paternal mistrust of JB’s maturity even at the age of 21; the second demonstrated JB’s goal of obtaining some form of financial and social independence. 3 Andrew Millar (?1707–68), a London bookseller and publisher 1728–68. His professional relationship with Thomson went back to Sophonisba (1729), and he bought up copyrights to Thomson’s works when they became available (as in 1738). Although he lost money on Thomson’s Liberty, he made a profit on The Seasons (Dict. of Printers). The ‘new splendid edition’ was (as JB noted) primarily a fund-raising tool, but as such gained a high profile. It was not Millar’s first attempt at publishing Thomson’s Works, since he had sold various volumes under that title from 1736 to 1752, three of them following Thomson’s death. Indeed, Millar had already profited from a ‘definitive’ edition based on Thomson’s final revisions, which he had sold under the title The works of James Thomson. In four volumes complete. With his last corrections, additions, and improvements in 1752 and

1757 (ESTC). Millar’s 1762 edition of The works of James Thomson, with his last corrections and improvements. To which is prefixed, an account of his life and writings was advertised as to be published about 15 Feb. 1762 (Lond. Chron. 4 Feb. 1762, xi. 118). It appeared in two formats: in two volumes quarto (ESTC T39169), and in four volumes duodecimo (ESTC T12371). JB’s name appears in the list of subscribers to the work. The edition was reviewed in Monthly Rev. xxvi. 298–305, Crit. Rev. xiv. 122–30, and Brit. Mag. iii. 382. Thomson’s poetry heavily influenced JB and AE in their lyrics. 4 The monument to Thomson in Westminster Abbey was placed between Shakespeare’s and Rowe’s, and dedicated 10 May 1762. It offered sculpted symbols of Thomson’s ‘Liberty’ and ‘Seasons’, as well as of his playwriting and his other lyric poems. The inscription read: ‘Tutor’d by thee, sweet Poetry exalts/ Her voice to ages; and informs the page/ With music, image, sentiment, & thoughts,/ Never to die!’ (Gent. Mag. May 1762, xxxii. 238). 5 Charlotte Sophia (1744–1818) of the house of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The Court and City Calendar, 1762, pp. 92–94, in mentioning the queen’s household, made no mention of an official preceptor. TS’s comment on this unfounded rumour that he had been made ‘Preceptor to the Queen’ was, ‘Our countrymen are fond of engrossing imaginary distinctions; it is a trait in the national character’ (Whyte, p. 85 n.). TS received royal favour, but of a different sort. George III granted him a royal pension in 1762. He had seen TS act (in King John) in Dec. 1760. ‘Although Sheridan’s pension … was for his educational work rather than his acting, His Majesty doubtless recalled his pleasure with King John, when he approved Sheridan’s pension’ (Sheldon, p. 261 and n. 25). 6 The first performance of the season at the Canongate Concert Hall in Edinburgh was The Rehearsal on Saturday 26 Dec., followed by The Busy Body and Lethe on Monday 28 Dec. and The Beaux’ Stratagem and

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The Spell on Tues. 29 Dec. (Edin. Even. Cour., 23, 26, 28 Dec. 1761; Edin. Stage, p. 112). 7 ‘This week’ would imply the week of Sun. 6 Dec.–Sat. 12 Dec. In fact, the theatre season in Edinburgh for winter 1761 would not begin until over two weeks after the date of JB’s letter. 8 The 1761–62 season at the Canongate featured the debuts of John Jackson and George Anne Bellamy (WD’s lover) along with old favourites such as WD and Love (Edin. Stage, pp. 112–18). 9 Sir Alexander (Cunyngham) Dick (1703–85) of Prestonfield, Bt. An M.D. who ceased practice when he succeeded to the baronetcy and its estates, he changed his birth surname (Cunyngham) to his mother’s maiden name when he inherited. Sir Alexander, one of the Scots literati, served as President of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh 1756–63, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Forty-one letters from Sir Alexander to JB, dating from 1766 to 1785, survive in the Yale collection (Yale MSS. C 956–99); most have been printed in Corr. 5 and Corr. 7.

10 Prestonfield House, at the foot of Arthur’s Seat, two miles southeast of the centre of Edinburgh. According to JB, he dined on 8 Dec. with Sir Alexander, and on 12 Dec. ‘dined Sir Alexander Dick and tea’ (Journ.). 11 Members of Parliament such as GD were entitled to free postage or ‘franking privileges’ for letters under two ounces sent within the British Isles during the time of Parliamentary privilege (see Corr. 6, p. 35 and second n. 2). Abuses of the practice by handing out franked letters to friends of friends (as JB mentions in this letter) led to an eventual tightening of the rules in 1764, 1784, and 1795 (Kenneth Ellis, The Post Office in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Administrative History, 1958, pp. 39–43). In his poem celebrating GD’s going to Parliament, AE made fun of the ways in which the other two members of the literary triumverate would use GD for franks: ‘The mighty genius [JB] hopes with me [AE]/ That of your franks you’re very free …/ New poems to your franks well fitted/ To D[onaldso]N shall be transmitted’ (AE, ‘An Epistle to a Gentleman on his being elected Member of Parliament’, Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 32–36).

From Katharine Colquhoun,1 c. Thursday 10 December 1761 Not reported. Mentioned in To Katharine Colquhoun, 11 Dec.: ‘thy ravishing Epistle arrived inclosing a beautifull Emblem of delicate Friendship’ [a lock of her hair on a ribbon]. JB recorded meetings with ‘Miss Colquhoun’ on 25 Nov., and noted for Jan. 1762 that he had been at ‘Miss C’s oft’. 1 Katharine ‘Kitty’ Colquhoun (1742– 1804), the eldest daughter and second-born child of Sir James Grant or Colquhoun (1714–86) of Luss (baronet from 1786), and his wife Helen (1717–91), sister of the 17th Earl of Sutherland (Scots Peer. viii. 356–57). The family seat, Rossdhu Castle, and the

later Rossdhu House (built by her father), were on Loch Lomond (Life v. 363), yet the family spent much time in Edinburgh (William Fraser, The Chiefs of Colquhoun, and Their Country, 2nd ed., 1869, i. 344, 347). See also To GD, 27 Aug., n. 7.

To Katharine Colquhoun, Friday 11 December 1761 MS. Yale (L 376). A draft or copy. HEADING: To Miss Culquhoun.

[Edinburgh] Friday 10 Decr.1 1761 O Thou whom Heaven has blest with ‘the finest eyes, and most amiable heart in the World’2 deign to accept the sincerest thanks for all your favours to me, the most romantic Genius that now dignifys the terrestrial Globe. The Song composed by that renowned Knight, Sir David Dalrymple,3 was safely conveyed to me. How couldst thou, O Angelic Princess! bear my neglecting to acknowledge the Boon? So many lines written by thy fair hand! 161

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Scarcely had Aurora4 paid me her Compliments today, when thy ravishing Epistle arrived inclosing a beautifull Emblem of delicate Friendship. Ye Gods! She condescends to bid me wear it! With what a gratefull Submission shall I fullfill her Commands! Yes, Peerless Maid! suspended by that lovely Pink Ribbon, thy divine, Golden lock shall hang upon the Breast of Boswell. If it does not, may I have a Soul the reverse of Tom Jones.5 Most gracious Queen! frown not upon thy Slave for being so long absent from thy enchanted Palace.6 Narrow as this our City is, there is yet room for a few Adventures. 1 The date is in error. 10 Dec. 1761 fell on a Thursday. 2 JB is quoting himself in this passage. On 7 Dec. Alexander Donaldson published JB’s An Ode to Tragedy, by ‘a Gentleman of Scotland’, prefaced by a dedication to James Boswell, Esq. (Edin. Eve. Cour., 7 Dec. 1761, p. 2). He wrote in that dedication, ‘I own indeed, that … I have boasted of a glimpse of regard from the finest eyes, and most amiable heart in the world’ (see From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ [JB] to the Earl of *** [Eglinton], 25 Sept. 1761). JB’s use of the same phrase would help the letter’s recipient to recognize the reference to herself in the dedication of An Ode to Tragedy. For an account of the publication of An Ode to Tragedy, see Lit. Car. pp. 6–8 and Earlier Years, pp. 68, 474–75. 3 Sir David Dalrymple (1726–92), 3rd Bt., lawyer (Fac. Adv. 1748), historian, raised to the Court of Session as Lord Hailes in 1766. A friend of both JB and Lord Auchinleck and mediator between the two, he was also a member of the Select Society, whose meetings JB attended in Dec. (Journ.). Of JB’s letters to Hailes from 1764 to 1782, twenty-one examples survive (Yale MSS. L 597–617), as do sixty-seven of Dalrymple’s letters to JB from 1763 to 1791 (Yale MSS. C 1414–79). Dalrymple, fourteen years’ JB’s senior, was one of his early role models and mentors (Earlier Years, pp. 36, 82, 123, 148). His correspondence with JB will appear in the volume devoted to the

Scots literati, forthcoming in this series. The specific song by Sir David Dalrymple to which JB refers is unknown. Dalrymple had selected and edited two volumes of poems in the previous decade: Sacred poems: or, a collection of translations and paraphrases, from the Holy Scriptures. By various authors, 1751 (ESTC N21358); and British songs. Sacred to love and virtue, 1756 (ESTC T166800). Yet none of those verses would have been described as ‘composed’ in 1761. On at least one occasion JB wrote to Dalrymple requesting a copy of verses Dalrymple had written (see To Dalrymple 17, 18 Apr. 1777, Yale MSS. L 602, L 603). 4 Goddess of the Dawn. The entire paragraph reflects the mock-elevated style of Tom Jones. See, for instance, Tom Jones, bk. IX, ch. 2: ‘Aurora now first opened her Casement, anglicè, the Day began to break’ (Tom Jones, Wesleyan ed., i. 495). 5 JB perhaps still had in mind Kames’s comparison of him to Fielding’s hero, characterized by an external rascality that concealed a good heart: ‘Lord Kaims told me tonight that I was a Tom Jones … He added ‘You are a good, good-for-nothing fellow’ (To TS, 25 or 26 Nov.). A soul the reverse of Tom Jones would have an external appearance of good but an internal reality of evil, as in the case of Tom Jones’s nemesis Blifil. 6 JB’s last meeting with Katharine Colquhoun, mentioned in Journ., had been 25 Nov.

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 12 December 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 54–55 [LETTER XII].

Edinburgh, Saturday, Dec. 14,1 1761. DEAR ERSKINE, If my scheme2 takes, you must alter it. Thursday the 24th must be the day of our meeting, as I am obliged to return hither on Saturday the 2d of January. This is really a curious way of employing you; however, you will gain something by it; you will acquire a particular exactness in knowing the days of the 162

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month, a science too much neglected in these degenerate days, but a science which was cultivated with a glorious ardour in Greece and Rome,3 and was no doubt the cause of their flourishing so much in every respect. Have not you sometimes seen a man put his hand in his pocket, pull out a nonpareille,4 and say to his friend, ‘Will you eat an apple, Sir?’ Just so do I now say to you, ‘Will you have an Epigram?’ EPIGRAM.5 Your wife (cries James) I think ’tis queer, Brings a fresh bantling7 ev’ry year: James, let me tell you, I have wonder’d That yours produces not an hundred. 6

I am Yours sincerely, JAMES BOSWELL 1 Saturday was the 12th, as AE pointed out: ‘it is dated on Saturday the 14th, which was really the 12th … this is a blunder’ (From AE, 16 Dec.). 2 The plan for JB’s Christmas jaunt to New Tarbet, discussed in To AE, 8 Dec. JB had originally planned to meet AE in Glasgow on 28 Dec., arrive in New Tarbet on 29 Dec. and depart on 4 Jan. 1762. JB did in fact follow his plan as outlined in this letter: he met AE in Glasgow on 24 Dec. and managed to be home, ‘Glad to see room’ (Journ. 2 Jan. 1762). 3 The rectification of the calendar, since it set the dates for religious festivals whose ceremonies would be presumed ineffectual if conducted on the wrong days, was a major task of Greek and Roman priests.

4 Also spelled ‘Nonpariel’ and ‘Nonpareil’; a type of apple mentioned at least as early as 1731 (OED). In Life iv. 205, 18 Apr. 1783, JB complained that ‘nonpareils’ could not be had in Scotland. SJ replied: ‘Sir, you can no more have nonpareils than you can have grapes’. JB clarified his point: ‘We have them, Sir; but they are very bad’. 5 This epigram is not among the ten which JB had printed in Collection II (Lit. Car. pp. 13–14). Two drafts of this epigram are preserved in Douce 193 (ff. 31 r. and 33 v.), and both differ slightly from this version in accidentals. 6 The subject of this epigram, if a real acquaintance of JB’s, is unknown. 7 The word ‘bantling’ was often used as a synonym of ‘bastard’ (OED).

From Andrew Erskine, Sunday 13 December 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 48–53 [*LETTER XI].

New-Tarbat, Dec. 13, 1761 Dear BOSWELL, AN Ode to Tragedy by a gentleman of Scotland, and dedicated to you!1 had there been only one spark of curiosity in my whole composition, this would have raised it to a flame equal to the general conflagration. May G—d d——n me, as Lord Peter2 says, if the edge of my appetite to know what it can be about, is not as keen as the best razor ever used by a member of the Soaping-Club. Go to Donaldson, demand from him two of my franks,3 and send it me even before the first post: write me, O write me! what sort of man this author is, where he was born, how he was brought up, and with what sort of diet he has been principally fed; tell me his genealogy, like Mr. M———;4 how many miles he has travelled in post-chaises, 163

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like Colonel R———,5 tell me what he eats, like a cook; what he drinks, like a wine-merchant; what shoes he wears, like a shoemaker; in what manner his mother was delivered of him, like a man-midwife;6 and how his room is furnished, like an upholsterer; but if you happen to find it difficult to utter all this in terms befitting Mr. M———, Colonel R———, a cook, a wine-merchant, a shoemaker, a man-midwife, and an upholsterer, Oh! tell it me all in your own manner, and in your own incomparable stile. Your scheme, Boswell, has met with—but the thoughts of this Ode-writing gentleman of Scotland again come across me,—I must now ask, like the Spectator,7 is he fat or lean, tall or short, does he use spectacles? what is the length of his walking-stick? has he a landed estate? has he a good coal-work?—Lord! Lord! what a melancholy thing it is to live twenty miles from a post-town!8 why am I not in Edinburgh? why am I not chain’d to Donaldson’s shop? I received both your letters9 yesterday, for we send to the Post-house but once a-week;10 I need not tell you how I liked them; were I to acquaint you with that, you would consecrate the pen with which they were written, and deify the inkhorn: I think the outside of one of them was adorned with the greatest quantity of good sealing-wax I ever saw, and my brother A——— and Lady A———,11 both of whom have a notable comprehension of these sort of things, agree with me in this my opinion. Your Ode to Gluttony12 is altogether excellent; the descriptions are so lively, that mistaking the paper on which they were written, for a piece of bread and butter spread with marmalade, I fairly swallowed the whole composition, and I find my stomach encreased three-fold since that time; I declare it to be the most admirable whet in the world, superior to a solan goose,13 or white wine and bitters; it ought to be hung up in ev’ry cook’s shop in the three kingdoms, engraved on pillars in all market places, and pasted in all rooms in all taverns. You seem to doubt in your first letter, if ever Captain Erskine was better entertained by the great Donaldson, than you was lately; banish that opinion, tell it not in Gath; nor publish it in Askalon,14 repeat it not in John’s Coffee-House,15 neither whisper it in the Abbey of Holy-Rood-House;16 no, I shall never forget the fowls and oyster sauce which bedecked the board: fat were the fowls, and the oysters of the true pandour or croat17 kind; then the apple-pie with raisins, and the mutton with colliflower, can never be erased from my remembrance: I may forget my native country, my dear brothers and sisters, my poetry, my art of making love, and even you, O Boswell! but these things I can never forget; the impression is too deep, too well imprinted ever to be effaced; I may turn Turk18 or Hottentot,19 I may be hang’d for stealing a bag to adorn my hair,20 I may ravish all sorts of virgins, young and old, I may court the fattest Wapping21 landlady, but these things I can never forget; I may be sick and in prison, I may be deaf, dumb, and may lose my memory, but these things I can never forget. And now, Boswell, I am to acquaint you, that your proposal is received with the utmost joy and festivity, and the scheme, if I live ’till to-morrow fortnight, will be put in execution. The New-Tarbat chaise will arrive at Glasgow on Monday evening the 28th of December, drove by William.22 Captain Andrew’s slim personage will slip out, he will enquire for James Boswell, Esq; he will be shewn into the room where he is sitting before a large fire, the evening being cold, 164

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raptures and poetry will ensue, and every man will soap his own beard; every other article of the proposals will be executed as faithfully as this; but to speak very seriously, you must be true to your appointment, and come with the utmost regularity upon the Monday; think of my emotions at Graeme’s,23 if you should not come; view my melancholy posture; hark! I rave like Lady Wishfort, no Boswell yet, Boswell’s a lost thing.24 I must receive a letter from you before I set out, telling me whether you keep true to your resolution, and pray send me the Ode to Tragedy; I beg you’ll bring me out in your pocket my Critical Review, which you may desire Donaldson to give you;25 but above all, employ Donaldson to get me a copy of Fingal,26 which tell him I’ll pay him for; I long to see it. There are some things lately published in London, which I would be glad to have, particularly a Spousal Hymn on the Marriage of the King and Queen,27 and an Elegy on viewing a ruin’d Pile of Buildings;28 see what you can do for me; I know you will not take it ill to be busied a little for that greatest of all Poets Captain Andrew. The sluice of happiness you have let in upon me, has quite overflowed the shallows of my understanding; at this moment I am determined to write more and print more than any man in the kingdom, except the great Dr. Hill,29 who writes a Folio every month, a Quarto every fortnight, an Octavo every week, and a Duodecimo every day. Hogarth has humourously represented a brawny porter almost sinking to the ground under a huge load of his works.30 I am too lazy just now to copy out an Ode to Indolence,31 which I have lately written; besides, its fitting I reserve something for you to peruse when we meet, for upon these occasions an exchange of Poems ought to be as regular as an exchange of prisoners between two nations at war.32 Believe me, dear Boswell, to be yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE P.S. Pray write me before I set out for Glasgow.— The Ode to Tragedy, by a Gentleman of Scotland, good now! wonderful! *[JB’s note:] This Letter was occasioned by seeing an Ode to Tragedy, written by a Gentleman of Scotland, and dedicated to James Boswell, Esq; advertised in the Edinburgh News-papers. It afterwards appeared, that the Ode was written by Mr. Boswell himself. 1 AE’s surprise at the pamphlet’s appearance may be as feigned as his pretended ignorance of JB’s authorship. 2 In the fourth section of Swift’s Tale of a Tub, Peter insists that ‘he must be styled Father PETER; and sometimes, My Lord PETER’. Peter never says ‘May God damn me’, but his ranting contains analogous phrases such as ‘G——— confound you both eternally’, and ‘By G———, gentlemen … the D———l broil them eternally that will not believe me’ (ed. Kathleen Williams, 1975). 3 AE was not an M.P. or government official with franking privileges, nor was Donaldson. The franks AE termed ‘my franks’ may have been a gift from GD (see To TS, 9 Dec. and n. 11). AE’s brother the Earl

of Kellie, though a peer, was not among the sixteen ‘representative’ peers who sat in the House of Lords; his brother Archibald would serve as a representative peer from 1790 to 1796 (Kenneth Ellis, The Post Office in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Administrative History, 1958, pp. 39–43; William Ferguson, Scotland: 1689 to the Present, p. 137). 4 Presumably AE’s brother-in-law, Walter Macfarlane, who was an antiquary and eminent genealogist who laboriously compiled manuscript records of Scottish ancestries. Although he did not publish any of his compilations, from the late 1730s ‘[h]e was very liberal in allowing access to his valuable collections and transcripts’, which eventually included two volumes of ‘Collec-

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tions Relative to Several Scottish Families’. His collection was bought in 1785 by the Faculty of Advocates from his niece for the trivial sum of £21 (Sir Arthur Mitchell, ed., Geographical Collections Relating to Scotland Made by Walter Macfarlane, 1906, SHS 51, pp. vi–viii). Macfarlane’s two volumes, Macfarlane’s Genealogical Collections Concerning Families in Scotland, were edited by J. T. Clark for the Scottish History Society in 1898–99 (series volumes 33–34), as were his geographical collections (op. cit.). 5 Not certainly identified. Identification is made more difficult by JB’s and AE’s hyperbolic custom of inflating the actual military titles of officers: e.g., ‘Captain’ Erskine. The name would presumably have been recognizable to JB as well as AE as an expert on distance travelled in post-chaises. At least three possible ‘Colonel R—— —’s have been noted in previous editorial work. Bennett suggested ‘Colonel Ross’ of ‘Inverchasley’ or ‘Inverhasty’, an officer whom JB ‘had known a little in Scotland’, and before whom he ‘used to look sheepish … like a poor scholar’ (Journ. 21–22 Dec. 1765). Bennett thought that this reference was ‘probably’ to Maj. Charles Ross (d. ?1797), a second maj. in ‘The Earl of Sutherland’s Battalion of Highlanders’ who was promoted to lt.-col. on 7 Feb. 1762. Bennett also noted a Maj. Robert Ross of the 48th Regt. of Foot who was promoted to lt.-col. on 6 Jan. 1762 (army) and 2 Sept. 1762 (regiment). Both men’s promotions would have occurred in time to be incorporated into JB’s revisions for the publication of E–B (Army List, 1761, 1763, 1794, 1797). A third candidate is Lt.-Col. William Rickson (d. 1770), of the 19th Regt. of Ft., Deputy Quartermaster General in North Britain (Gent. Mag. July 1770, xl. 345; Army List, 1761, pp. 10, 72). After Rickson’s death, JB would represent his widow in a lawsuit against some officers of his old regiment (Journ. 8 July 1774, 16 Nov. 1775). Yet none of these men was connected to AE’s own regiment. A fourth possibility builds off AE’s clue that the colonel was known for his knowledge of mileages. William Roy (1726–90) had surveyed the Highlands 1747–52 and the southern region in 1752–55; he was promoted to the army rank of lt.-col. on 23 July 1762 (Yolande O’Donoghue, William Roy, 1726–90: Pioneer of the Ordnance Survey, 1977, pp. 3–20). 6 After 1733, when the use of obstetrical forceps became more common, the traditionally female occupation of midwifery was

rapidly taken up by men. By 1761 man midwives were common (H. R. Spencer, The History of British Midwifery, 1927, p. 145). JB and AE would of course have been familiar with Tristram Shandy’s Dr. Slop and his inept use of forceps at Tristram’s birth (which the novel says took place on 5 Nov. 1718). 7 ‘I have observed, that a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure, till he knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an author’ (Spectator, no. 1). 8 The closest post town to New Tarbet was Dumbarton, about twenty-two miles distant. The mail left Edinburgh for Dumbarton three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday (Universal Scots Almanack, 1763, p. 7). 9 Presumably To AE, 2 Dec. and 8 Dec. AE could not yet have received JB’s most recent letter of 12 Dec., which AE would mention as new in From AE, 16 Dec. 10 Suggesting that the Macfarlanes’ post was retrieved on Saturdays (such as 12 Dec). 11 Capt. the Hon. Archibald Erskine and Lady Anne Erskine. 12 AE was certainly responding to the first two stanzas of the ode which survive both in MS and in E–B revision (To AE, 17 Nov. [MS], 2 Dec. [E–B]). It remains in question whether he was also speaking of the four additional stanzas of the poem with which JB concluded the revised To AE, 8 Dec. (E–B) and gave the title ‘Sequel of the Ode to Gluttony’. The additional stanzas do not appear in the MS version of To AE, 8 Dec. Two explanations of this discrepancy are possible. First, the surviving MSS of JB’s letters to AE were JB’s own copies. JB may well have copied all of the prose in To AE, 17 Nov. (MS), but not have felt it necessary to make an additional copy of final stanzas of the verses (note his use of etcetera in the MS copy). In this case, AE could be responding to stanzas 3–6 of the ‘Ode to Gluttony’, missing from the MS version. Second, it is possible that the ‘Sequel’ was never actually sent, but rather was added to To AE, 8 Dec., in the padding-out of the letters for publication, and that AE’s present acknowledgement was interpolated after the fact by JB for the sake of consistency. 13 The solan goose, or gannet, a sea bird traditionally served to whet the appetite, was falling out of favour because of its overpowering odour when being cooked (Anec-

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dotes and Egotisms, pp. 56–57). Sir Walter Scott describes a dinner ‘such as suited a professed antiquary, comprehending many savoury specimens of Scottish viands, now disused at tables of those who affect elegance. There was the relishing Solan goose, whose smell is so powerful that he is never cooked within doors’ (The Antiquary, Edin. ed., ed. David Hewitt, 1995, p. 45). 14 A section of David’s lament for Saul and Jonathan in II Samuel 1: 20: ‘Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph’. 15 In the northeast corner of Parliament Close, frequented by judges and advocates (Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 178–79). 16 The Abbey of Holyroodhouse had been rebuilt in Aug. 1758, but the roof proved to be too heavy for the ruins and it collapsed in Dec. 1768. The church had been a chapel royal and was associated with the Stuart Court (Arnot, pp. 252–55). JB was a regular visitor: one of his first poems printed was ‘An Evening Walk in the Abbey Church of Holyroodhouse’ which was soon to be reprinted (Scots Mag. Aug. 1758, xx. 420, repr. Collection II, p. 68). JB during this season had ‘sauntered in Abbey’ (Journ. 25 Nov.). He mentioned his reasons for doing so in To AE, 17 Dec. (MS): ‘the Gentleman saunters down to the Abbey of Holyroodhouse, in order to think of ancient days, of King James the fifth, and Queene Mary’. JB wrote to JJ, with whom he shared a warm nostalgia for Stuart history and pre-Union Scottish events, on 17 Aug. 1762: ‘Remember you are to be ready to attend me in the Abbey of Holyroodhouse whenever I write to you. Is not this quite in taste for us? quite romantic and old Scotch?’ (Corr. 1, p. 13). 17 AE is punning on ‘pandoor’ or ‘pandore’, a large type of oyster found near Prestonpans, and ‘pandour’, a Croatian soldier (OED). The various ethnic regiments of the Austrian Empire were in the news because of their role in the Eastern Theatre of the Seven Years’ War. 18 Not only in the sense of ‘to convert to Islam’ for purposes of survival or profit, but also with the connotation of taking on the traits derogatorily imputed to the ‘Turks’ in the era: cruelty, tyranny, and savagery (OED). Because of the Ottoman Empire’s influence, ‘Turk’ was still loosely used to describe Muslims, much like the casual use of the term ‘Moors’. 19 The Khoisan or ‘Hottentots’ were derided by 17th-18th c. British writers from

Burnet to Wesley to Chesterfield, who interpreted the ‘Hottentot’ seminomadic way of life in the Southwest African bush (particularly their clicking language, usually misinterpreted as ‘stammering’) as signs of pagan barbarism and stupidity, and thus applied the term to Britons whom they thought showed these traits (OED). SJ, writing of the inhabitants of the Highlands around Inverness in 1773, used the term in this abusive way: ‘Till the Union made them acquainted with English manners, the culture of their lands was unskillful, and their domestick life unformed; their tables were coarse as the feasts of Eskimeaux, and their houses filthy as the cottages of Hottentots’ (Journey, p. 28). 20 For examples of the men’s hair bag, customarily worn for dress and full dress occasions, see Cunnington, pp. 94, 248–50, 257. JB’s Expense Account, London, 21 June 1785 (Yale MS. A 39.1), records the purchase of a ‘Bag for Wig’ for 4s 6d. 21 Wapping was an eastern riverside suburb of London, associated with seamen and shipping trades (and the lodging-houses which served them) rather than with fashion or wealth (Lond. Encyclopedia). 22 AE’s servant: also referred to in From AE, 15 Apr. and 13 May 1762. 23 Graeme’s or Graham’s was a Glasgow inn visited by JB on several occasions (‘Instructions for Mr. Temple on his Tour to Auchinleck and Adamton’, 6 July 1767, Corr. 6, pp. 193–94 and 194 n. 1; Journ. 5 Aug. 1769). ‘Graham’s’ has been connected with the Saracen’s Head Inn, which was kept by a Mrs. Graham, to whom JB referred in Journ. 20 Aug. 1776: ‘I this day wrote an Opinion for Mrs. Graham of the Saracen’s head inn Glasgow’. See also Journ. 13 Sept. 1776; 8, 25 Mar., 23 Apr. 1777. 24 ‘No Foible yet?… Foible’s a lost thing’ (William Congreve, The Way of the World, III. i). 25 Donaldson appears to have agreed to send Crit. Rev., which appeared in monthly issues from 1756 to 1817, to AE. The promise was mentioned in From AE, 3 Dec: ‘go to Donaldson … thunder in his ear that he has not sent Captain Erskine his Critical Review’. 26 See To AE, 14 Sept. 27 James Scott, A spousal hymn, or an address to his Majesty on his marriage. By James Scott, … and sold by … the booksellers in Oxford, York, and Leeds, 1761 (ESTC T49776). AE may have known of it from the favourable review in Crit. Rev. Sept. 1761, xii. 232–33. 28 Probably John Cunningham, An elegy

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on a pile of ruins …, 1761 (ESTC T141109). AE may have known of it from the favourable notice in Crit. Rev. Oct. 1761 (xii. 319–20). 29 Dr. ‘Sir John’ Hill (c. 1714–75), actor, ‘inspector’, doctor, botanist, geologist, apothecary, playwright, journalist, publisher. He published nearly eighty books and articles in his lifetime. Holder of a diploma in Medicine from St. Andrews, after 1774 he styled himself ‘Sir John’ based on his membership in the Swedish Order of Vasa. A controversialist in the 1750s, he found himself in disputes with Fielding, Smart, Woodward, and Garrick and the Royal Society, yet gained the patronage of Bute. His published works treated an array of topics as astonishing as his array of professions, ranging from medical, botanical, and other scientific treatises, to an instruction book for actors, a treatise on snuff, and several pieces of poetry (The Letters and Papers of Sir John Hill, ed. G. S. Rousseau, 1982, pp. ix–xi). In 1761 alone he had published one work under his own name and one pseudonymous work: the anti-tobacco Cautions against the immoderate use of snuff. Founded on the known qualities of the tobacco plant … and enforced by instances of persons who have perished miserably of diseases, occasioned … by its use. By Dr. J. Hill, 1761

(ESTC T28955) and Some projects recommended to the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Mamufactures [sic], and Commerce. By the Inspector …, 1761 (ESTC T12620). 30 AE was apparently alluding to the porter in William Hogarth’s ‘Beer Street’ (1751), whose load, which he has set down while drinking a hefty beer, includes ‘Hill on Royal Societies’ (A review of the works of the Royal Society of London; containing animadversions on such of the papers as deserve particular observation. In eight parts …, 1751 (ESTC T10619). The other books showing in the basket are not by Hill. 31 AE later anonymously published his Two odes. To indolence, and to impudence, 1762. The first edition had a London printer (the Dodsleys) and London distributor (ESTC N36533). They were advertised for sale 1 June 1762 (Lond. Chron. xi. 515). The odes reached a second anonymous Edinburgh edition in 1764 (ESTC T196833). In vocabulary and imagery AE’s Odes were strongly influenced by Thomson’s poetry, especially Castle of Indolence. 32 Prisoner exchanges had been arranged during the Seven Years’ War to reduce the expenses to the captors and to return the trained troops to warfare (see Gent. Mag. Jan. 1759, xxix. 42).

From Andrew Erskine, Wednesday 16 December 1761 Printed E–B, pp. 59–60 [LETTER XIV], after JB’s letter dated 17 Dec., which was entitled ‘LETTER XIII’.

New-Tarbat, Dec. 16, 1761. Dear BOSWELL, SWIFT as pen can scratch, or ink can flow, as floods can rush, or winds can blow, which you’ll observe is a very pretty rhime, I sit down on a chair which has really a very bad bottom, being made of wood, and answer your epistle which I received this moment; it is dated on Saturday the 14th, which was really the 12th, according to the computation of the best chronologists: this is a blunder which Sir Isaac Newton1 would never have excused; but I a man no less great, forgive it from my soul; and I here declare, that I will never upbraid you with it in any company or conversation, even though that conversation should turn upon the quickest and most pleasant method of swallowing oysters,2 when you know I might very naturally introduce it. I confess its singularly silly in me to turn the page3 in this manner, and that I should have followed your example, or rather ensample, as some great judges of stile usually write it.4 I see by the news-papers, that Fingal is to be published5 at Edinburgh in a few days,6 pray bring it with you. I will undoubtedly meet you at Glasgow on the 24th day of the month, being exactly that day which precedes Christmas, as was ingeniously observed by Mr. 168

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Sheridan in his fourth Lecture;7 and I hear he is going to publish a whole volume of discoveries all as notable as this, which I imagine will exceed his lectures greatly. Pray now be faithful to this appointment, and so I commit this letter to the guidance of Providence, hoping that it will not miscarry, or fail of being duly delivered. Believe me yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), English mathematician, natural philosopher, and mystic. His The chronology of ancient Kingdoms amended. To which is prefix’d, a short chronicle from the first memory of things in Europe, to the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great, 1728 was still being abstracted and expanded as late as 1782 (G. J. Gray, Bibliography of the works of Newton, 1907; cf. ESTC). 2 In the eighteenth century, oysters were particularly popular in autumn and winter, when the ‘laigh shops’ or oyster sellers offered raw oysters and porter served on rough tables in huge portions. Poets such as Fergusson celebrated ‘Oysters and a dram o’gin’ (Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 1825, ii. 267–70; Marie W. Stuart, Old Edinburgh Taverns, 1952, pp. 26–28, 60, 88–89, 96–97). William Creech, writing as ‘Theophrastus’, would note that whereas in 1763 oyster sellers were rare and for the ‘lowest rank’, by 1783 they were numerous ‘places of fashionable resort’ (Arnot, pp. 657–58). 3 The page AE turned was most likely the sheet on which he was writing. His point may have been: ‘It is pointless for me to turn this sheet of paper simply to start a new paragraph. I should follow your example and write all the way to the bottom’. 4 ‘Ensample’ was an ‘archaistic use … almost wholly due to reminiscence of the passages in which the word occurs in the

New Testament’ (OED). ‘This orthography is now justly disused’ (Dict. SJ). 5 Here ‘published’ in the sense of ‘made available for public sale’ without reference to the printer or bookseller listed as publisher. The printing was done in London, and no Edinburgh printers or booksellers were listed on the title page. 6 Fingal was already requested in From AE, 13 Dec. Eleven days after the news in the Lond. Chron. (Lond. Chron. 18 Nov.–1 Dec., x. 528), an announcement of the impending publication of Macpherson’s Fingal had appeared in the Edin. Eve. Cour. for 12 Dec. (pp. 2–3). On 9 Dec., the Courant printed an account by Macpherson promoting the importance of the poem and voicing his reassurances of the poem’s authenticity (p. 1). Fingal was advertised on 19 Dec. as ‘published’ (Edin. Eve. Cour. 19 Dec., pp. 2–3). 7 See From TS, 21 Nov., n. 4. A joke rather than an actual reference. TS’s ‘Lecture IV’ as published is on ‘EMPHASIS’ and its effect on meaning in cases such as the reading in churches of biblical texts or in the acting of Shakespeare’s plays. ‘James Boswall, Esq’ was one of the subscribers to TS’s published lectures printed in 1762, but AE was not (Thomas Sheridan, A Course of Lectures on Elocution, 1762; No. 129 in English Linguistics, 1500–1800: A Collection of Facsimile Reprints Selected and Edited by R. C. Alston, 1968, ‘Subscribers’ p. xviii ff., pp. 57–74).

From the Countess of Northumberland, c. Wednesday 16 December 1761 Not reported. Mentioned in To the Countess of Northumberland, 6 Jan. 1762: ‘Three Weeks since [you] wrote to [me] and yet no answer!’. The contents of the missing letter are hinted at in JB’s letter: ‘Many thanks to your Ladyship for your humourous description of the Assemblies at Bath … [and] the dancing Exhibitions of the Reverend Gentry.’ Also mentioned in To TS, 9 Jan. 1762: ‘I was honoured lately with an excellent Letter from Lady Northumberland at Bath’. A further mention in To AE, 22 Jan. 1762: ‘an excellent Letter from the Countess of Northumberland. It is dated at Bath, and contains a description of the present Diversions at that Place, so very humourous’.

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From the Countess of Northumberland to an unidentified correspondent, c. Wednesday 16 December 1761 To the Countess of Northumberland, 6 Jan. 1762 suggests that there was either a second unreported letter from the Countess sent at roughly the same time or that she added an enclosure or gift to her letter, both ‘Packets’ being addressed to JB. ‘I received both your Ladyship’s Packets at the same time and by good chance opened first the one intended for me; By which I discovered that I had no title to the other … [despite the fact that] it would seem and appear that the Person wills intends and inclines that the said Letter Bundle or Parcel should belong and appertain to him with whose name it is inscribed … I have returned the packet just as I received it’.

To Andrew Erskine, Thursday 17 December 1761 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 510).

Edinburgh, 17 Decr. 1761. MY DEAR ERSKINE: Had you but hinted a method of conveyance sooner than by the first Post, sooner should the Ode to Tragedy have saluted your longing eyes. At length, it comes, it comes! Hark! with what lofty Music do the Spheres proclaim it’s triumphal Entry into the majestic Edifice at Tarbat! Behold the Family gathered arround it, in a sort of quadrangular Figure! Heavens! what a Picture of Curiosity! what a Groupe of eager Expectants! they show their teeth, they rub their hands, they kick the floor! But who is this, the fire of whose look flames infinitely beyond the rest? It is Captain Andrew. It is, it is.1—Ye Gods! He seizes, he opens, he reads! Let us leave him. I can no more. It would stretch the strings2 too far, to proceed. Do you know that I purposely neglected to send the Ode, myself, and likewise prevented Donaldson from sending it, immediatly when it was published;3 in order to give play to your Impatience. I considered what amazing Effects it must produce upon Captain Erskine, to find in one Advertisement,—an Ode to Tragedy—A Gentleman of Scotland—Alexander Donaldson—and James Boswell Esq: Accordingly my Conjecture has been fullfilled, and has moreover enriched my Cabinet4 with the best Letter of Humour that ever was wrote. I swear, I consider it as a high Effort of human Genius. The Author of the Ode is a most excellent Man. He is of an ancient Family in the west of Scotland, upon which he values himself, not a little. His Education has been good; though carried on in various modes. He has travelled in Post-Chaises, miles without number. He eats of every good dish. He drinks Old Hock. He wears tollerable Pumps. How his Mother brought him forth we dont know. But at his nativity, there appeared Omens of his future Glory.5 He is rather fat than lean; rather short than tall. He never wears Spectacles. The length of his walking Stick is as yet a Secret.6 But we hope soon to favour the Republic of Letters7 with a Solution of this Difficulty: as several able Mathematicians are employed in it’s investigation, and for that purpose, have posted themselves at different given points in the Cannongate, so that while the Gentleman saunters down to the Abbey of Holyroodhouse,8 in order to think of ancient days, 170

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of King James the fifth,9 and Queene Mary,10 they may compute it’s altitude above the Street,11 according to the rules of Geometry.12 I hope my Letter reached you in which I mentioned Thursday the 24 as the day of our meeting.13 How do I exult in the Prospect of what is to happen. Fingal and your Critical Review shall accompany me. I shall remember your other Commissions. Send me your orders without hesitation, till such time as you find that I neglect them. I beg it of you, for once be a Frenchman, and in the character of Me, kneel, supplicate Worship Lady Betty. I remain Your sincere friend, JAMES BOSWELL I expect upon Saturday14 to receive your Answer to my last—Adieu till meeting.15 1 Perhaps an echo of Macpherson’s third Ossianic ‘Fragment’: ‘But, oh! what voice is that? who rides on that meteor of fire! Green are his airy limbs. It is he! it is the ghost of Malcolm!’ (Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Edinburgh, 1760, p. 17). 2 A reference to the bard’s lyre, with a possible glance at JB’s various futile efforts to learn the violin. 3 An Ode to Tragedy had been advertised for sale in Nov. 1761 (To AE, 14 Sept., n. 13). 4 A remark providing important evidence of how early in his career JB began storing away correspondence in his cabinet, a piece of furniture which figures in later letters as the depository for his collection of private correspondence. In 1775, JB wrote to Wilkes that he had preserved Wilkes’s letters in his cabinet (To Wilkes, 26 May 1775). 5 A parody both of classical pagan and Christian ‘Omens’ of the birth of a hero or demigod and of the unusual nature of their births. 6 Answers to questions asked in From AE, 13 Dec. On the length of walking sticks as a matter of fashion, see To AE, 10 Feb. 1762, n. 5. Given the dispute with Lord Auchinleck about the disposition of the family estate and JB’s role in inheritance, it is notable that JB did not answer AE’s question ‘has he a landed estate?’, even in jest. 7 The republic of letters, the collective body of those engaged in literary pursuits; the phrase was used by Addison and Hume among others (OED). 8 The twelfth-century Abbey of Holyroodhouse. It naturally inspired thoughts of King James V, who was buried (or reburied) in the royal vault there beside his first queen, and Queen Mary, who had heard mass said therein. JB would retain this association of ideas of the abbey, King James, and his

daughter Queen Mary: he would write to JJ in Feb. 1763, ‘When you come to the Abbey of Holyroodhouse that most beloved object of all Think on James the fifth—Think on Queen Mary. Be much of an Antiquarian’ (To JJ, 22 Feb. 1763, Corr. 1, pp. 49–50). The chapel had already suffered ruin and decay from the late sixteenth century because of the ravages of English invaders in 1544 (when they laid waste to all but the nave) and 1547, Scottish iconoclasts in 1567, and Cromwellian soldiers in 1650 who fired the abbey and the palace. Yet the ‘abbey church’ remained a centre for worship and even for coronations (Charles I, 1633). JB’s imagination might also have been fuelled by the period in which the edifice was refurbished, changed from a mere Church of Scotland church back into a chapel by James VII and II (1687). The newly-refurbished building featured ‘J.R.’ ciphers amidst its décor, and offered Roman Catholic masses. The abbey church was again attacked during the Revolution in 1688–89, when the throne, stalls and organ were removed and burned, and some of the coffins in the royal vault stolen. The porch had finally been destroyed in 1753, and tourists from about 1680 to about 1800 were shown the royal vault and the purported remains of of Darnley and Rizzo, as well as ‘King James the Fifth’s shoother’ (Robert Chambers, Walks in Edinburgh, 1825, p. 168). The neglected roof had been restored c. 1758, but the flagstones were too heavy, and on 2 Dec. 1768 the roof would collapse, leaving the chapel open to looters and scavengers, including thieves who at some point after 1776 (according to Grose) would steal the leaden coffin of James V (Chambers, Walks in Edinburgh, pp. 138–68; Alexander Kincaid, The History of Edinburgh …, 1787, pp. 111–16). 9 James V (1512–42), King of Scotland 1513–42. Popularly thought to have been a

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poet, celebrated as a king who wandered among the common people in disguise as the ‘Gudeman of Ballengeich’, and father of illegitimate children—three areas in which, it may be surmised, JB might have found appeal. That JB esteemed James V’s laddishness as much as his patronage of arts or poetry would be revealed when he wrote to JJ in Apr. 1763, ‘gently hurry her [an unnamed ‘Maid’] down to the Cellar and like the lively James the fifth lay her owr the gantrees, and do it again and again’ (To JJ, 5 Apr. 1763, Corr. 1, p. 65). Continuing James IV’s patronage of the arts, James V had added elements to Holyroodhouse Palace in 1528–32, such as the northwest tower and the enclosed park (Cassell’s Edinburgh, p. 65; The Grove Dictionary of Art, s.v. ‘Edinburgh’, 4 [‘Palace of Holyroodhouse’]). 10 Mary (1542–87), Queen of Scots 1543–67, the only surviving legitimate child of James V. She provoked the Reformers by repeatedly ordering mass to be said in the Holyroodhouse Chapel (Arnot, pp. 305–11; Cassell’s Edinburgh, pp. 67–68, 71, 74; Robert Chambers, Walks in Edinburgh, 1825, pp. 138–68). JB’s admiration of Mary would be rekindled when he came to read William Robertson’s History of Scotland During the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King James … (1759) in Sept. 1762. He would indeed mention ‘Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley’ among his and JJ’s ‘favourite topics’ in Jan. 1763 (To JJ, 13 Sept. 1762, 25 Jan. 1763, Corr. 1, pp. 15, 41). That AE shared JB’s and JJ’s interest in Mary is

shown in a letter of Aug. 1767, in which AE was to envision an age of bliss in which ‘it would be treason to talk of Queen Mary but as a saint and a martyr’ (AE to JJ, 4 Aug. 1767, Corr. 1, pp. 230–32). JB would later bring SJ to the palace 16 Aug. 1773, provoking JB to more thoughts of ‘our beautiful Queen Mary’ (Journ.). 11 The stroll from the Canongate to Holyrood House would have taken JB downhill; the Canongate was 2,270 feet from the High Street to Abbey Strand, and 350 feet from Strand to Palace Gate. The enclosed palace park contained Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Craigs, and St. Anthony’s Hill. These great heights formed a comical contrast to JB’s diminutive stature (Alexander Kincaid, The History of Edinburgh …, 1787, pp. 101, 105, 112). 12 A parody of the standard experiments in triangulation as used in surveying. Perhaps also an allusion to Swift’s account of the Laputans’ use of geometrical measurement in Gulliver’s Travels (III. ch. 2). 13 To AE, 12 Dec. 14 19 Dec. 15 JB’s journal notes headed ‘New Tarbat Jaunt’ show that he and AE left Glasgow on Christmas morning, spent that night at Luss on Loch Lomond, the home of Katherine Colquhoun, and reached New Tarbet in time for dinner on 26 Dec. JB stayed until Friday 1 Jan. 1762, spending the time ‘very well’ in ‘reading, conversation, eating, sleeping’; he was back in Edinburgh on the night of 2 Jan. 1762.

To Andrew Erskine, Thursday 17 December 1761 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 56–58 [LETTER XIII], immediately preceding AE’s letter to JB dated 16 Dec. (pp. 59–60).

Edinburgh, Dec. 17, 1761. Dear ERSKINE, HAD you but hinted a method of conveyance sooner than by the first post, sooner should the Ode to Tragedy have saluted your longing eyes. At length it comes! it comes! Hark! with what lofty music do the spheres proclaim its triumphal entry into the majestic edifice at Tarbat! Behold the family gathered around it in a sort of quadrangular figure! Heavens! what a picture of curiousity! what a group of eager expectants! They show their teeth, they rub their hands, they kick the floor! But who is this the fire of whose look flames infinitely beyond the rest? It is Captain Andrew! It is! It is! ye Gods! he seizes! he opens! he reads! Let us leave him. I can no more. It would stretch the strings too far to proceed. You must know I purposely neglected to send the Ode myself, and likewise prevented Donaldson from sending it immediately after it was published, 172

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in order to give full play to your impatience. I considered what amazing effects it must produce upon Captain Erskine, to find in one advertisement, An Ode to Tragedy—A Gentleman of Scotland—Alexander Donaldson—and James Boswell, Esq; How far my conjecture was just, your last letter does most amply testify. 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 an 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 observed at times to have a melancholy cast. He is rather fat than lean, rather short than tall, rather young than old. His shoes are neatly made, and he never wears spectacles. The length of his walking-stick is not as yet ascertained; but we hope soon to favour the republic of letters with a solution of this difficulty, as several able mathematicians are employed in its investigation, and for that purpose have posted themselves at different given points in the Canongate, so that when the gentleman saunters down to the Abbey of Holyrood-house, in order to think on ancient days, on King James the Fifth, and on Queen Mary, they may compute its altitude above the street, according to the rules of geometry. I hope you have received a line from me fixing Thursday the 24th, as the day of our meeting. I exult in the prospect of felicity that is before us. Fingal and your Critical Review shall accompany me. I will not anticipate your pleasure in reading the Highland bard; only take my word for it, he will make you feel that you have a soul. I shall remember your other commissions. Continue to trust me ’till you find me negligent. I beg it of you, for once, be a Frenchman, and in the character of Boswell, kneel supplicate, worship Lady B———. I remain, Your affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL.

From Tobias Smollett,1 between 24 December 1761 and 9 January 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in To AE, 9 Jan. 1762 (‘Doctor Smollett from … whom I have heard since I saw You’). The end of AE’s visit with JB on 2 Jan. anchors the date. The contents are described in To AE, 22 Jan. 1762. 1 Tobias George Smollett (1721–72), M.D., Scottish-born author. In 1762 he published The adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves. By the author of Roderick Random (see Lewis Knapp, Tobias Smollett, Doctor of Men and Manners, 1949, p. 273 and Lewis Knapp, The Letters of Tobias Smollett, 1970). JB’s early interest in Smollett appears in a journal entry, in which he reports that he

scratched a rhymed couplet about him on the window of an inn with ‘a diamond pen’ signed ‘T. Smollet M.D.’ (Journ. 15 Oct. 1762). He wrote on 4 Nov. 1762: ‘What a pity it is that he must write for Bread. His Magazine is the worst’ (Journ.). The only surviving letter by JB to Smollett is dated 14 Mar. 1768 (Corr. 7, pp. 36–38). That letter expressed JB’s ‘regard’ for Smollett.

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From the Countess of Northumberland, between 24 December 1761 and 9 January 1762 Not reported. ‘Lady Northumberland and Doctor Smollett from both of whom I have heard since I saw You’ (To AE, 9 Jan. 1762 [MS]). This may well be merely one of the letters mentioned in From the Countess of Northumberland, c. 16 Dec. rather than yet another item. Certainly a letter sent c. 16 Dec. might not have been received in Edinburgh before JB’s jaunt began 24 Dec.

To ‘a friend’,1 before January 1762 TEXT:

Donaldson’s Collection II, p. 80.

To a FRIEND, with the present of a Book. Friendship, I’ve always thought, resembles love, As both descended from the realms above, To bless mankind with happiness supreme, And make this world a second Eden seem. Pleas’d with the soft similitude, I send This book a present to my worthy friend; Which, like a lady’s to her humble slave Is valu’d only for the hand that gave. 1

The ‘friend’, if a real one, has not been identified.

To Katherine Colquhoun (MS version),1 late 1761/early 1762 MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). Previously printed in Werner, pp. 57, 168. The tentative dating of this poem is based on (a) its publication in Collection II in Jan. 1762, and (b) the evidence for the dating of JB’s courtship of Katherine Colquhoun in n. 1 to this letter, and in To Katharine Colquhoun, 11 Dec. 1761.

[f. 39 r.] To Miss Kitty Colqhoun Kitty, think, tho’ ev’ry grace Sparkles in thy lovely face, [f. 39 v.] Tho’ thy fine complexion shows Lilies blending with the Rose, Tho’ thy feautures gayly shine, Tho’ thy form’s almost divine, Yet, should’st thou (which kind Heav’n avert) 174

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With an unrelenting heart, Cloath’d with cruel, killing airs, Laugh at all thy lovers prayers, Kitty now so mild, so good, Should become an arrant Prude, Peevish as threescore and ten, Scorn of Virgins, jest of Men. Think not, fair one, that your Slave Vainly means in verse to rave, Friendship only bids me say, Love and Beauty have their day 1 As JB’s poems in Douce 193 and Collection II praising her show, Katherine Colquhoun had a high status in his affections for some time. JB’s Edinburgh journal for Nov. 1761–Feb. 1762 recorded that he was ‘oft’ with ‘Miss Colquhoun’ (Journ. 12, 14, 25, Nov.; Notes Jan./Feb. 1762). On 26 Sept. JB ‘was finely joked about Miss Colquhoun. The conceit pleases me—’tis pretty’. Among JB’s poems in Collection II, two were addressed to her: the revision of this MS, ‘To Miss Kitty C———’ (p. 81), and the epigram ‘Who will say, that adorable Kitty hates me’ (p. 209). (Immediately following ‘To Miss Kitty C———’ was ‘To the Author of the foregoing Verses’, in which JB purports to mock his own feigned indif-

ference to ‘Kitty’s’ charms.) This verse epistle was scheduled for inclusion in his ‘Plan of a Volume’ under ‘To Miss C with Johnson’ (the ‘with Johnson’ is unexplained), and both of his poems on her were in print by the publication of Collection II in Jan. 1762 (Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 81, 209; cf. Werner, pp. 20, 57). In Douce 193 (f. 39 r. and v.) ‘Miss Colquhoun’ is spelled out in the MS of the poem as ‘To Miss Kitty C———’. The Boswell and Colquhoun families had some broader social associations beyond JB’s romance, for Lord Auchinleck was appointed a trustee of a sum assigned to Lady Colquhoun in her marriage contract (William Fraser, The Chiefs of Colquhoun, 1896, i. 349, 383).

To Katherine Colquhoun (Donaldson’s Collection II version), published January 1762 TEXT: Donaldson’s Collection II, p. 81.

To Miss KITTY C———. KITTY, think, though every grace Sparkles in thy charming face, Though thy fine complexion shows Lilies blending with the rose, Though thy features gaily shine, Though thy form’s almost divine; Yet shouldst thou (which kind heav’n avert) With an unrelenting heart, Cloth’d with cruel killing airs, Laugh at all thy lovers prayers, Kitty, now so mild, so good, Should become an arrant prude, 175

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Peevish as three score and ten, Scorn of virgins, jest of men. Think not, fair one, that your slave Vainly means in verse to rave; Friendship only bids me say, Love and beauty have their day.1 1 The publication of the poem came during the time of the gradual end of the courtship. JB wrote in Nov. 1762: ‘I considered how much happier I was than if I had been married last year to Miss Colquhoun …’ (Journ. 30 Nov.). On 7 Apr. 1764, Katherine Colquhoun married Sir Roderick

Mackenzie of Scatwell, Bt.; they had two children (Comp. Bar. iv. 409). JB wrote to JJ on 11 May 1765: ‘I am by no means displeased to hear that Miss Stewart and Miss Colquhoun are both married. My Matrimonial schemes were transient flights of restless fancy’ (Corr. 1, p. 166).

To the Countess of Northumberland, Wednesday 6 January 1762 MS. Yale (L 988). A fairly heavily revised draft. JB often carefully revised letters before writing a fair copy which he then sent. HEADING: To the Countess of Northumberland.

Edin. 6 Jan. 1762 MADAM: I dare say your Ladyship has by this time pronounced some very severe Sentence against that unaccountable negligent fellow Boswell. Three Weeks since I wrote to him and yet no answer!1 Madam I own that it looks very odd but I beg you may hear my Council Mr. Serjeant Truth at your Ladyship’s service. In good plain stile Madam, I have been taking a jaunt into the Western Highlands during the Christmas Holidays2—and as my Servant3 did not know where I might be, my Letters were kept till my return. By this means I received both your Ladyship’s Packets at the same time and by good chance opened first the one intended for me; By which I discovered that I had no title to the other. This Madam was certainly true in equity:4 Altho’5 according to strict Law If any Person shall direct or cause to be directed any Letter Bundle6 or Parcel to another, it would seem and appear that the7 Person wills intends and inclines that the said Letter Bundle or Parcel should belong and appertain to him with whose name it is inscribed. Equity however prevailed so I have returned the packet just as I received it. And now Madam what shall I say in return to your most obliging Letter. I beleive the best thing I can say is to tell you8 what infinite happiness you have conferred upon me, as this will certainly please your benevolent Disposition. Madam,9 I have not language enough for that,10 I am only affraid that your kindness will render me so excessively proud11 that I shall begin to think nothing too great for me—and shall not be surprised to hear that his Majesty has created me a Peer of Great Brittain. Many thanks to your Ladyship for your humourous description of the Assemblies at Bath. I can conceive nothing more laughable than the dancing Exhibitions of the Reverend Gentry. By all accounts Bath is a very agreable Place in many respects.12 I hope sometime or another to pay it a visit.13 Much do I long for September next when I shall enter upon my reign over handsom chambers in the Temple, & shall have the14 honour to kiss Lady 176

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Northumberland’s hand in her own house.15 I have sent your Ladyship an Ode to Tragedy which I published some weeks ago. I remain with respects to My Lord. If your L[adyship] answers this pray dont delay it so long as I have done. A very pretty Demand! 1 See From the Countess of Northumberland, c. 16 Dec. 1761. 2 To see the Erskines at New Tarbet, 24 Dec. 1761–2 Jan. 1762. 3 The name of JB’s Edinburgh servant in early 1762 is unknown. 4 ‘EQUITY is defined to be “the correction of that wherein the law by reason of its universality is deficient;” and Mr. Erskine represents it as abating the rigour of the law, and giving aid to those who can have no remedy in a Court of Law”. It is this which is called the nobile officium of the Court of Session’. Sir William Blackstone among others challenged the idea that law was only rigour and equity was not beholden to law, and hoped for a synthesis of the two (Bell, s.v. ‘equity’). 5 MS. ‘Altho’’ written over ‘According to’ 6 MS. ‘Bundle’ written over ?‘Parcel’ 7 MS. ‘the’ written over ‘that’ 8 MS. ‘that’ deleted before ‘what’ 9 MS. ‘But upon my word,’ deleted before ‘Madam’ 10 MS. ‘imagine’ deleted and ‘have not language enough’ written above the line (JB originally wrote ‘imagine that’). 11 MS. ‘the’ deleted before ‘I’ 12 MS. ‘on’ and ‘accounts’ deleted and replaced by ‘in’ and ‘respects’ above the line (JB originally wrote ‘on many accounts’). The nightly balls at Bath, as instituted by Richard ‘Beau’ Nash—and continued by

his successor and JB’s friend Samuel Derrick—had more of the flavour of a performance than of a dance. Goldsmith described them in some detail in his Life of Richard Nash, Esq. (1762). ‘Each ball was to open with a minuet, danced by two persons of the highest distinction present. When the minuet concluded, the lady was to return to her seat, and Mr. Nash was to bring the gentleman a new partner. This ceremony was to be observed by every succeeding couple … till the minuets were over, which generally continued two hours’ (pp. 35–36). 13 Despite what would seem to be the obvious appeal of a jaunt to Bath for the young JB, he did not go there for another fourteen years. When he finally visited Bath on 26 Apr. 1776, it was chiefly at the invitation of SJ, who was there in company with the Thrales (Life iii. 45). 14 MS. ‘pay my’ deleted and replaced by ‘have the’ above the line. 15 Upon his arrival in London in Nov., JB gave a visit to Lady Northumberland a prominent place in his agenda of urgent matters. ‘I had called once or twice, and left my name at Northumberland House. But hearing nothing from it I began to think that they neglected me. However I now received a card of Invitation to the rout on Tuesday the 7. This raised my spirits, gave me notions of my consequence, and filled me with grandeur’ (Journ. 3 Dec.).

To Thomas Sheridan, Saturday 9 January 1762 MS. Yale (L 1159). A copy. HEADING: To Mr. Sheridan.

Edin. 9 Jan. 1762 MY DEAR SIR: If it is not too formal to send you the Compliments of the Season, pray accept them from him who sincerely and gratefully wishes you all manner of happiness. I beleive I might have rather said that I wish you a continuance of it; for, in my opinion, you are allready as happy as this present state of imperfect Existence can allow. If I am not mistaken too, I have had your own word for the truth of this. Don’t you remember our last Evening which we past together, at Clerihue’s,1 with so much cordiality, when we drank to the health of Mrs. Sheridan, and your young family:2 I beleive at that time, you said as much as to convince me that you did not think yourself at all injured by Fortune; Upon the 177

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whole, whatever freaks that whimsical Dame may have taken at certain times.3 But, to talk with serious propriety, I never felt more sollid satisfaction than when I heard you talk of your obligations to Providence, and of the perfect contentment which you was blest with. I see by the Papers that you have played once at Covent-Garden, this Winter.4 I hope to hear of your doing great things before the Spring. I hear that the Raree-Show of the Coronation has drawn shoals of Spectators.5 I wish that the love of glaring gaudy Exhibitions may not extinguish the respect, which every Nation especialy Brittain, should entertain for the noble Business of the Drama. Heaven forbid that honest John Bull should ever become an Ox. My own Affairs remain in a very good way. I mean the Prospect that I have is pleasing. My Lord Kaims6 has at last found leisure to read Miss Sidney Biddulph.7 He sends you his best Compliments, and bids me tell you that when you again favour Scotland with your presence,8 you must by no means bring Mrs. Sheridan with you; for, that She is certainly a very wicked Woman, and has sat down with a malevolent Intention to cut People’s throats. I agreed with his Lordship, and told him what Mr. Samuel Johnson said ‘I don’t know, Madam, if according to strict Justice, you have a right to torment mankind so much.’9 Pray might I ask if Mrs. Sheridan intends to deal about any more misery, soon; If she does, a little lenity would be taken kind.10 I have written to you again without receiving an answer to my last, as you desired me. I shall sit down and say something to you, whenever I find myself disposed so to do. However I hope you will now and then give me a line or two. I was honoured lately with an excellent Letter from Lady Northumberland at Bath.11 She is very good to me. Only she renders this vain head of mine still worse. I remain etc. 1 This meeting at Clerihue’s took place on some unknown date between Jul.–Sept. 1761. TS was in Edinburgh in July 1761, where he had befriended JB, and was in London for the beginning of the Covent Garden season in Sept. 1761. John Clerihue (d. 1769), was an Edinburgh tavern-keeper (The Commissariat Record of Edinburgh, Register of Testaments, 1701–1800, ed. F. J. Grant, 1899, p. 53). Although his establishment in Writer’s Court became known by his name, it was actually named The Star and Garter. It remained a favourite gathering place of the city’s lawyers, magistrates, and town councillors, including JB. JB often mentioned heavy drinking in his accounts of visits to Clerihue’s, 13 Jan., 5 Feb. 1767, 19 Jan., 2, 7 Feb. 1768 (Journ.). Sir Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering offered a novelistic look into its ‘paltry and half ruinous’ premises with its ‘villainous compound of smells’ (Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 187; Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 1825, ii. 283). 2 Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 1825, ii. 271–72 recounted various Edinburgh toasting protocols, including ‘Drinking to save the Ladies’.

3 TS’s professional life as actor, manager, lecturer and elocutionist was not always secure. In 1754, while TS was manager of the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin, the theatre was destroyed by a mob (see From WD, between 9 and 19 Apr. 1757, n. 6). TS lived riskily in insisting on maintaining his independence at the London theatres by acting on shares (independent contracting) rather than joining the company as a contracted player. His rivalry with Garrick was emotionally taxing, as he was unable to match Garrick’s rising popularity. Most importantly, TS aspired in the early 1760s to make his living entirely on his pedagogical and cultural work as an elocutionist. In Mar. he planned a series of lectures in London for the next month. Yet Fortune was again whimsical: the printing work ‘necessary previous to the new Course of Lectures’ was delayed, TS became ill, and an outbreak of illness in London stymied attempts at ‘public entertainments’; good weather which promoted travel from London was the final blow to his plan ‘to read a third Course’ (From Frances Sheridan to Samuel Whyte, 31 May [1762], in Whyte, p. 109,

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where the letter is misdated 1759 though correctly placed in Whyte’s chronological sequence). Despite some successful books and lecture series, in 1764 he was forced to flee to France for two years to escape creditors (see also From TS, 21 Nov. 1761, nn. 4, 12; Sheldon, pp. 202–08, 258–65, 270 n.). 4 TS’s ‘first time on any stage this season’ had been a hospital benefit advertised at Covent Garden for 22 Dec. 1761, in which TS played Hamlet (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 909; Sheldon, p. 2). 5 Covent Garden and Drury Lane were both presenting coronation pageants in the 1761–62 season. Covent Garden’s was the more successful, being performed 67 times between 13 Nov. 1761 and 24 May 1762. At Drury Lane, Garrick’s coronation pageant ran about forty nights. He had the theatre opened into the streets, much to the actors’ discomfort, so that the audience could see an authentic bonfire (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 892–93, 941). Although harlequin plays and pageants such as the coronation re-enactments could be condemned by discerning ‘criticks’ such as JB as mere catchpenny ‘Raree-Show[s]’, the two major London theatres were increasingly reliant on such spectacles for their income. See John O’Brien, ‘Harlequin Britain: Eighteenth Century Pantomine and the Cultural Location of Entertainment(s)’, Theatre Journal l (1998): 489–510. 6 JB’s 3 Jan.–15 Feb. journal, though not separated by days, recorded two meetings with Kames (Journ.) 7 Frances Sheridan’s anonymous Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, extracted from her own journal, and now first published had gone through two editions in 1761: see To TS, 27 Sept. 1761, n. 2. JB spoke highly of it in Life i. 389–90: ‘Her novel … contains an excellent moral, while it inculcates a future state of retribution; and what it teaches is impressed upon the mind by a series of as deep distress as can affect humanity, in the amiable and pious heroine who goes to her grave unrelieved, but resigned, and full of “hope of heaven’s mercy”’. For critical opinions other than Kames’s and JB’s, see Monthly Rev. 1761, xxiv. 260–66; Crit. Rev. 1761, xi. 186–98; Lond. Mag. xxx. 168; Brit. Mag. ii. 212. 8 TS did not return to Scotland until 1764. TS’s lectures in Edinburgh in 1761 had been undertaken at the invitation of the Select Society of Edinburgh. The lectures proved so successful that the Society proposed in 1762 the establishment of an academy in Edinburgh, under TS’s direc-

tion. TS planned to return to Edinburgh in 1762 to establish the Academy, which was to be sponsored by ‘The Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland’. The membership of this society was to be made up of ‘the general body of contributors, together with the members of the Select Society’. Among the Directors were Lord Auchinleck and JB’s friends GD, Eglinton, Kames, and Sir Alexander Dick (Scots Mag. Aug. 1761, xxiii. 440–4l; ‘LIST of the Directors’ in The Universal Scots Almanack, 1763, p. 61). TS had initiated a similar project in Dublin in 1758, where he had worked to open the ‘Hibernian Academy’. The academy was to base its programme on his own theories of education, stressing in particular English language and oratory. The Irish project failed after a few years (Sheldon, pp. 237, 255). His Scottish scheme came to an even quicker end. When TS found that his original plan had been delayed by the Scots’ partners’ ‘dilatory’ conduct in his ‘absence’ and mangled ‘through the ignorance or officiousness of some who had got some share of the conduct of it’, he took the advice of friends in Scotland to postpone his plans since ‘it would be difficult and troublesome to effect his chief design (that of the Academy)’ that year. He refused offers of a merely social visit to Scottish friends such as JB (to ‘visit, merely for his own advantage’) on the grounds that such a pleasure trip ‘would not at this juncture appear well to them’ (From Frances Sheridan to Samuel Whyte, 31 May [1762], in Whyte, p. 109). Apparently he did, at the request of the Select Society, send a Mr. Leigh to Edinburgh in the summer of 1762 to offer instruction (Cal. Merc. 28 July 1762), but in Nov. JB recorded that TS ‘inveighed much against the directors of his English Scheme at Edinburgh as if they thought from the beginning of knocking it on the head and so had lost an opportunity of improvement and honour to their country’ (Journ. 30 Nov.). TS’s Edinburgh plans came to an end when upon his return to Edinburgh in 1764 his lectures were poorly attended and when in July 1764 the Select Society officially disbanded. For a detailed account of TS’s Edinburgh venture, see W. Benzie, The Dublin Orator, 1972, pp. 23–27. 9 Mrs. Sheridan’s heroine, Sidney Bidulph, is put through a remarkable sequence of calamities and miseries in the course of the novel. This quoted remark offers further evidence of JB’s early interest in SJ and in recording his distinctive conversation and opinions. JB gives a slightly

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different version of this remark in Life i. 390: ‘I know not, Madam, that you have a right, upon moral principles, to make your readers suffer so much’. As for Kames’s remark about the cutting of throats, a textual parallel appears in the novel in the heroine’s statement about Mr. Arnold: ‘the man is at this time so ungrateful that, if he could, he would cut my throat’ (Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, Extracted From Her Own Journal, And Now First Published. In Three Volumes, Dodsleys’ edition, 1761, ii. 119, entry for ‘Boulogne, December ?6, [1704]’). 10 Frances Sheridan’s further prose works were not published until 1767, the year after her death. One, the sequel to her sentimental epistolary novel, would have dealt more misery: Conclusion of the memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, as prepared for the press by the late editor of the former part …, 1767 (ESTC N26662 ). The second, an oriental tale, The

history of Nourjahad. By the editor of Sidney Bidulph, ESTC T129359) might also have met JB’s and Kames’ expectations. Both novels were published anonymously as by ‘the editor of Sidney Bidulph’ (her most frequent pseudonym), and both had sufficient market draw to be pirated by Dublin printers. From 1762 to 1765, Frances Sheridan turned her hand to drama, writing two comedies which played at Drury Lane: The discovery. A comedy … Written by the editor of Miss Sidney Bidulph, 1763 (ESTC T943), which had a second London edition as well as an Edinburgh edition; The dupe, a comedy … By the author of The discovery, 1764 (ESTC T2474 no. 17). Her final comedy was A Trip to Bath (unacted, 1765). For JB’s prologue to Sheridan’s The Discovery, see From WD, 31 Jan. 1763, n. 19. 11 From the Countess of Northumberland, c. 16 Dec. 1761.

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 9 January 1762 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 511).

Edinburgh, 9 Janry. 1762 MY DEAR ERSKINE: Instead of endeavouring to excuse myself for neglecting so long to write, I shall present you with some Original Conjectures1 of my own upon the way and manner in which You have been affected upon this present occasion. And here I must premise that in so doing I shall not follow the formal and orderly method of Bishop Latimer in his Sermons before King Edward the Sixth,2 but on the contrary shall adopt the easy desultory Stile of One whom at present I shall not venture to name,3 but leave that to some future ingenious Commentator on the Epistolary Correspondence of The Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell Esquire.4 Either you have been sunk into a frigid state of listless Indifference, and gone whistling up and down the room upon a Fife,5 and murmuring at Intervals while you took breath ‘Let him do as he likes, let him please himself, yes yes let him soap his own Beard’: Or you have felt the most delicate pangs of afflicted Sensibility, and uttered tender tales of Woe, in softly-plaintive Elegiac Numbers— The Savage Buck returns no humorous line No Tragic Ode now sooths my Soul to rest; In vain I fly to Lady Betty’s wine, Nor can a hearty Supper make me blest. Or you have burned raged and fried like the thrice amorous Swain in the renowned English Translation of Voi Amante,6 and perhaps thundered forth all the Anathemas which Tristram Shandy has borrowed from the Church of Rome, and transferred to poor Obadiah.7 By this time the Storm is blown over. This merry Letter has made you grin and show every expression of Laughter. You are now in very good humour, and are in 180

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all human Probability saying to yourself—‘Upon my Soul, my good friend Boswell is a most excellent Corespondent. It is true He is indolent, and dissipated as the celebrated Parson Brown of Carlisle8 says, and he frequently is a little negligent, But, when he does write, ye Gods! how he does write! In short, to sing him his own inimitable Song, “There is no better fellow alive.”’9 I remain with perfect Esteem, My Dear Erskine, Your Much Obliged and Affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL My next Letter shall be much longer and shall contain a good deal about Lady Northumberland and Doctor Smollett from both of whom I have heard since I saw You.10 My Duty to Lady Betty, Love to Lady Anne and Respects to Captain Archibald. 1 JB’s capitalization suggests a parody of a book title, such as Edward Young’s Conjectures on original composition. In a letter to the author of Sir Charles Grandison, 1759 (ESTC T140626). JB and AE often ‘cite’ works and authors whether or not they have actually read them, but JB was from early in his life an admirer of Young’s poetry, especially ‘Night Thoughts’ (for Young, see From AE, c. 10–14 June, n. 8). 2 Hugh Latimer, ?1485–1555, Bishop of Worcester 1535–39, noted preacher whose controversial stances during the Reformation drove him in and out of trouble with the authorities, ending with his being burned at the stake for Protestantism. The sermons of the Right Reverend Father in God, Master Hugh Latimer … Many of which were preached before King Edward VI … on the religious and civil liberties of Englishmen, &c. To which is prefixed, Bishop Latimer’s life, 1758 (ESTC T142674), had recently brought Latimer’s court sermons of 1549–50 back into the bookstalls with a whiggish editorial emphasis. Latimer was known for his homely prose style, including metaphors of cards and ploughs. Edward VI, 1537–53, was King of England from 1547 to 1553. JB’s interest in him might have been piqued by the events of the reign which involved Scotland, including the Battle of Pinkie near Edinburgh (1547) and a proposed marriage between young Edward and Mary Queen of Scots. 3 As the appearance of ‘Tristram Shandy’ and ‘Obadiah’ in the next paragraph attests, the style that JB will imitate is Sterne’s. 4 This allocation of capital letters in the style of a book title (‘Epistolary Cor[r]es-

pondence of The Honourable Andrew Erskine and James Boswell Esquire’) is the first clear indication that JB was thinking of publishing E–B. 5 The fife had been ‘laid aside’ in the British army for much of the early eighteenth century, but had experienced a renaissance in 1745 when the Duke of Cumberland ‘introduced it into the guards’; it was adopted in ‘marching regiments’ (such as the 71st Foot in which AE served) from 1747 (Houlding, pp. 278–79). 6 ‘Voi amante, che vedete’, a ‘Rondeau’ by the Italian violinist and composer Felice (de) Giardini [Degiardino]. Giardini was orchestra leader and occasional impresario of the Italian Opera at the King’s Theatre, London from 1754 to 1784. The song had been sung in the pasticcio opera Antigona (1760). It was published in London c. 1760 in a single sheet folio arrangement for voice and harpsichord with translated lyrics beginning ‘Dearest creature, of all nature’. Several copies survive in the Bodleian, some alternatively titled ‘A favourite air’ or ‘Voi amante or Rondeau’ (e.g., Harding Mus. G 162 [10]). Antigona premiered at the King’s Theatre 17 Apr. 1760, and played 26 Apr., 3, 10, 15 May, the last performance advertising ‘Four new songs composed by Giardini’ (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 787, 789, 793, 795–96). The exact coincidence of the theatrical run with the period of JB’s first residence in London makes it probable that JB both saw the opera and perhaps even bought the sheet music while in London (New Grove 2, s.v. ‘Giardini’; Catalogue of Printed Music … now in the British Museum, 1912).

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9 JANUARY 1762 7 ‘Textus de Ecclesiâ Roffensi, per Ernulfum Episcopum’, Tristram Shandy, vol. 3, chs. 10–11: ‘a form of excommunication of the church of Rome, a copy of which, my father (who was curious in his collections) had procured out of the leger-book of the church of Rochester, writ by ERNULPHUS the bishop’ (Tristram Shandy, Florida ed., i. 200). Slop’s reading of the formula, undermined by Toby’s whistling, was to punish Obadiah’s ‘knot-tying’, and takes up an entire chapter. 8 Another joking reference, this time to An estimate of the manners and principles of the times. By the author of Essays on the characteristics, & c. (vol. 1, ESTC T147673; vol. 2, ESTC T147672) which went through seven editions, two volumes, and an explanatory defence 1757–58, and was reprinted in Belfast and Boston. It was written by John ‘Estimate’ Brown (1715–66), clergyman, author and social reformer who despite his rigorism wrote poems and stageplays. It criticized modern luxury and decadence. In Donaldson’s Collection II, JB published ‘On the Contest between the Author of an Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times, and the Writers in opposition to him, a simile’. Bennett found three references to dissipation in the third edition, 1757 (pp. 40, 50, 82). ‘[D]issipated’ is here used in both its

more common sense of wasted energy and attention as well as in the then-rarer sense of ‘dissolute’ (OED; SJ’s Life of Savage: ‘dissipated manner of life’ [Lives of the English Poets, ed. George Birkbeck Hill, 1967, ii. 431]). Although he was more frequently referred to as ‘Estimate Brown’ than ‘Parson Brown of Carlisle’, Brown was indeed associated with the city of Carlisle from the 1730s as minor canon and lecturer, and from 1747 as chaplain to the Bishop of Carlisle. In 1756 he was presented to a living near Colchester, and by 1761 he held the living of St. Nicholas in Newcastle. See JB’s verses on him in Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 74–75. 9 The last line of B———. A Song: ‘In short to declare the plain truth,/ There is no better fellow alive’ (Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 91; Werner, pp. 161–62). The song proclaimed JB ‘King’ of the Soapers, and the numerous references to soaping in this letter show his continued nostalgia for the old Edinburgh club. 10 JB and AE parted on 2 Jan. It is not clear from JB’s Journ. 2 Jan.–15 Feb. when their next meeting took place, although there is an undated account: ‘Erskine came to Town … had Ersk at Break twice … supt Thom’s din’d Thom’s’ which suggests that AE visited Edinburgh in the company of Lord Kellie, Lady Janet, and ‘Aunts’ (Journ.).

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 9 January 1762 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 64–66 [LETTER XVI], date altered to 11 Jan., and placed after From AE, 10 Jan.

Edinburgh, Jan. 11, 1762. Dear ERSKINE, INSTEAD of endeavouring to excuse myself for neglecting so long to write, I shall present you with some original conjectures of my own, upon the way and manner in which you have been affected upon this present occasion. And here I must premise, that in doing so I shall not follow the formal and orderly method of Bishop Latimer, in his Sermons before King Edward the Sixth; but, on the contrary, shall adopt the easy, desultory stile of one whom at present I shall not venture to name but leave that to some future ingenious commentator on the epistolary correspondence of the Hon. Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq: Either you have been sunk into a frigid state of listless indifference, and gone whistling up and down the room upon a fife, and murmuring at intervals, while you took breath; let him do as he likes, let him please himself; yes, yes, let him soap his own beard. Or you have felt the most delicate pangs of afflicted sensibility, and uttered tender tales of woe in softly-plaintive numbers. 182

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The savage bard returns no humourous line, No Tragic Ode now sooths my soul to rest; In vain I fly to Lady B———’s wine, Nor can a hearty supper make me blest. Or you have burned, raged, and fried like the thrice-amorous swain in the renowned English translation of Voi Amante, and perhaps thundered forth all the Anathemas which Tristram Shandy has borrowed from the church of Rome, and transferred to poor Obadiah. By this time, the storm is blown over. This merry letter has made you grin, and show every expression of laughter. You are now in very good humour, and are in all human probability saying to yourself, My good friend Boswell, is a most excellent correspondent. It is true he is indolent, and dissipated, as the celebrated Parson Brown of Carlisle says, and he frequently is a little negligent: but when he does write, ye Gods! how he does write! In short, to sing him his own inimitable song, ‘There is no better fellow alive.’ I remain Yours sincerely, JAMES BOSWELL.

From Andrew Erskine, Sunday 10 January 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 61–63 [LETTER XV].

New-Tarbat, Jan. 10, 1762. DEAR BOSWELL, CICERO in his book of Office-houses,1 defines ingratitude to be **********2 which both Dean Swift3 and Tristram Shandy4 take as a most exact definition. The storms of night descended, the winds rolled along the clouds with all their ghosts, around the rock the dark waves burst, and shewed their flaming bosoms, loud rushed the blast through the leaf-less oaks, and the voice of the spirit of the mountains was heard in our halls; it was Saturday, when lo! at once the postman came, mighty was his striding in the kitchen, and strong was his voice for ale.5 In short, I have as yet received no letter from you, and great is my wonder and astonishment, even Donaldson has not sent me my Critical Review; would to God he had one rap from Fingal’s sword of Luno.6 I feel myself at this present moment capable of writing a letter which would delight you, but I am determined not to do it, and this is the severe punishment of your neglect, I with-hold the treasures of my wit and humour from you, a perfect Golcanda mine7 of Diamonds. I have been enjoying since you left me, the most exquisite entertainment, in the perusal of the noble works of Ossian, the greatest poet, in my opinion, that ever composed, and who exceeds Homer, Virgil, and Milton. He transports us by the grandeur of his sublime, or by some sudden start of tenderness he melts us into distress: Who can read, without the warmest emotions, the pathetic complaints of the venerable old bard, when he laments his blindness, and the death of his friends?8 But how are we animated when the memory of former years comes rushing on his mind, and the light of the song rises in his soul.9 It is quite 183

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impossible to express my admiration of his Poems; at particular passages I felt my whole frame trembling with ecstasy; but if I was to describe all my thoughts, you would think me absolutely mad. The beautiful wildness of his fancy is inexpressibly agreeable to the imagination; for instance, the mournful sound from the untouched harp when a hero is going to fall,10 or the awful appearances of his ghosts and spirits.11 Notwithstanding all these beauties, we shall still continue pedants, and Homer and Virgil will be read and quoted, when Ossian shall be totally forgot; this, without the gift of prophecy, I can foresee; much could I enlarge upon this subject, but this must not be a long letter. Believe me Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 A deliberate mistranslation. De officiis should be translated ‘On duties’. ‘Office houses’ were apartments or outhouses for the work of domestics (OED), but ‘office house’ carried a secondary punning meaning of ‘toilet’. JB found a ‘curious piece of drollery’ in ‘the old house of Auchinleck’ when he was ‘very young’, and ‘used to be much diverted by it when older’. The title of the pamphlet—falsely purported to have been written by Swift—was Serious and Cleanly Meditations Upon a House of Office, Dedicated to the Goldfinders of Great Britain. By Cato To which is added The Boghouse a Poem in Imitation of Milton, 1723 (ESTC N21215). It is fitting that AE, the author of The Cloaciniad, should indulge in such an excremental version of Cicero. Cicero’s De officiis was a book on duty written from a Stoic viewpoint. It mentions little of the estate management with which Cicero was familiar, except for a few passages on preferring love rather than fear in master-servant relations (II. vi–vii). Cicero does include a polemic on how a ‘a man of rank and station’ should plan his villa for use rather than ostentation: ‘Its prime object is serviceableness … and yet careful attention should be paid to its convenience and distinction … a man’s dignity may be enhanced by the house he lives in, but not wholly secured by it; the owner should bring honour to his house, not the house to its owner’ (Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis, I. xxxviii–xxxix [trans. Walter Miller, Loeb ed.]; cf. III. xiii–xvii on the buying and selling of real estate). 2 One of Cicero’s most direct remarks on ingratitude appears in De Officiis, II. xviii: ‘For all men detest ingratitude and look upon the sin of it as a wrong committed against themselves also, because it discourages generosity; and they regard the ingrate

as the common foe of all the poor’ (trans. Walter Miller, Loeb ed.). AE’s use of a sequence of asterisks may merely duplicate their frequent use in the texts of both Swift and Sterne. 3 If AE intended an actual reference, it is probably to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, I. ch. 6, describing the Lilliputian laws rather than Cicero: ‘Ingratitude is among them a Capital Crime, as we read it to have been in some other Countries: For they reason thus; that whoever makes ill Returns to his Benefactor, must needs be a common Enemy to the rest of Mankind, from whom he has received no Obligation, and therefore such a Man is not fit to live’ (Blackwell ed., p. 44). That is the sole mention of ‘ingratitude’ in the book. Cicero is mentioned by name only once, en passant, in II. ch. 6, as a great orator. 4 The mentions of Cicero in the first six volumes of Tristram Shandy (vol. 1, ch. 19; vol. 5, ch. 3) are mere allusions to Cicero’s name rather than quotations from his doctrines. The word ‘ingratitude’ does not appear in Tristram Shandy. 5 The first sentence in this paragraph is a parody of Macpherson’s Ossianic style. Bennett, in his note to this poem, noticed the parallels with Macpherson’s lines: ‘Ghosts fly on clouds, and ride on winds’; ‘The winds came down on the woods. The torrents rushed from the rocks’; ‘Seas swell and rocks resound. Winds drive along the clouds. The lightning flies on wings of fire’; ‘Strong was the youth of Fingal, and strong is his arm of age’ (Fingal, bks. I and II, pp. 24, 30, 38–39). 6 Fingal’s sword Luno killed a man at every stroke (Note to ‘Temora’, Fingal, p. 175). 7 Golconda, a ruined city in SE India, capital from 1512 to 1687 of the Muslim sultanate of Golconda. After the Moghul Emperor Aurangzeb’s conquest of the city

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in 1687, its fortress, palaces, and mosques decayed into ruins. At its peak, the city was famed for the diamonds found to the southeast and cut in Golconda, hence its association with the riches of the East Indies. Like AE, Walpole used it as a synonym for El Dorado, a land of legendary riches (OED; Corres. Walpole, xxxiii. 225). 8 ‘My locks were not then so gray; nor trembled my hands of age. My eyes were not closed in darkness; nor failed my feet in the race’ (Fingal, p. 44).

9 ‘The song rises, like the sun, in my soul; and my heart feels the joys of other times’ (Fingal, p. 104). 10 ‘The blast came rustling through the hall, and gently touched my harp. The sound was mournful and low, like the song of the tomb. Fingal heard it first, and the crouded sighs of his bosom rose.— Some of my heroes are low, said the gray-haired king of Morven. I heard the sound of death on the harp of my son’ (Fingal, p. 168). 11 Fingal, pp. 4–6.

From George Dempster to Andrew Erskine, c. 10–20 January 1762 Not reported. GD would almost certainly have written from London, since Parliament was in session for much of the period from 3 Nov. 1761 to 2 June 1762 (Namier and Brooke, i. 535). The contents are explained in From AE, 20 Jan., below.

From Andrew Erskine, Wednesday 20 January 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 67–69 [LETTER XVII].

New-Tarbat, Jan. 20, 1762 DEAR BOSWELL, IT is a kind of maxim, or rule in life, never to begin a thing without having an eye towards the conclusion; certainly this rule was never better observed than in your last letter, in which I indeed am apt to think you kept the conclusion rather too much in view, or perhaps you forgot the beginning altogether, which is not unfrequently the case with you; but you do these things with so little compunction, that I shall very soon cease to forgive you, and answer you in the same manner. It is to be feared, that the dissolution of our correspondence will immediately follow, or dwindle into half a page of your text hand,1 which I always look’d upon as a detestable invention: if all this that I dread happens, we shall then cease to be reckoned men of LETTERS. I find it recorded in the history of the eastern Roman Empire, that it was the custom, whenever the inhabitants of Constantinople mutinied for want of bread, to whip all the bakers through the city, which always appeased the populace;2 in like manner, Boswell, I having dreamt a few nights ago, that I had whipt you severely, find my wrath and resentment very much mollified; not so much indeed I confess, as if I had really had the pleasure of actually correcting you, but however I am pretty well satisfied. You was quite mistaken as to the manner I bore your silence;3 I only thought it was a little droll. Donaldson tells me, that he wants thirty or forty pages to compleat his volume;4 pray don’t let him insert any nonsense to fill it up, but try John Home5 and John R———,6 who I hear is a very good poet; you may also hint the thing to Mr. —— —,7 and to my brother Lord K———,8 who has some excellent Poems by him. Since I saw you, I received a letter from Mr. D———;9 it is filled with encomiums upon you: he says there is a great deal of humility in your vanity, a 185

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great deal of tallness in your shortness, and a great deal of whiteness in your black complexion. He says there’s a great deal of poetry in your prose, and a great deal of prose in your poetry. He says, that as to your late publication, there is a great deal of Ode in your dedication, and a great deal of dedication in your Ode;10 it would amaze you to see how D——— keeps up this see-saw, which you’ll remark has prodigious wit in it. He says, there is a great deal of coat in your waistcoat, and a great deal of waistcoat in your coat; that there is a great deal of liveliness in your stupidity, and a great deal of stupidity in your liveliness; but to write you all he says, would require rather more fire in my grate, than there is at present; and my fingers would undoubtedly be numb’d, for there is a great deal of snow in this frost, and a great deal of frost in this snow: in short, upon this occasion he writes like a Christian and a Poet, and a Physician and an Orator, and a Jew.11 Pray, Boswell, tell me particularly in your first letter, how Fingal has been received;12 that book will serve me as a criterion, to discover the taste of the present age. Boswell, imitate me in your writing; observe how closely the lines are joined, how near the words are written to one another, and how small the letters are form’d; I am praiseworthy in this particular. Adieu. Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 ‘Text-hand’ is a ‘fine large hand in writing’, originally one ‘of the larger and more formal hands in which the text of a book was written, as distinct from the smaller or more cursive hand appropriate to the gloss, etc.’ (OED). JB’s handwriting is large and tends to sprawl. AE’s handwriting, by contrast, is of average size, neat, and regular—but no more legible than JB’s. AE provides, in the last paragraph of this letter, a fairly good description of his penmanship. 2 The source for AE’s anecdote about the Byzantine Empire, if indeed there was a source, has not yet been located. The imperial habit of blaming the bakers rather than the imperial command economy survived the fall of the Byzantines. Thomas Smith wrote of the 17th c. Ottoman Empire that when bakers’ bread was found to be light, ‘they bring them out and drub them upon the place’ (Remarks upon the Manners, Religion, and Government of the Turks, 1678, pp. 102–03). 3 See To AE, 9 Jan., in which JB assumed AE’s irritation at his not having written. 4 Collection II consisted of eight pages of preface and 232 pages of text, and so Donaldson was probably at about pp. 192– 210 in his setting of the type. JB states, in the next letter, that ‘Donaldson has yet about thirty Six Pages of his second Volume to print’, suggesting that forty pages were yet needed. Donaldson, thus, was probably at about p. 192 (To AE, 22 Jan.). JB supplied two verse fables and four epigrams to pad out that final section of the book (Lit.

Car. p. 14). AE’s contributions to Collection II, by contrast, were entirely within the first 61 pages (Bennett, pp. 180–82). 5 John Home, the author of Douglas, contributed several poems to Collection II. 6 Four poems by a ‘John R———n’ were published in Collection II, pp. 113–120. ‘Delia’ is a frequent subject in these poems. All four had been published previously in Scots Mag. (June 1757, xix. 291; Apr. 1758, xx. 198–99; June 1758, xx. 306). There, ‘R———n’ signed the poems with the pseudonyms of either ‘Philo’ or ‘P——o’ and dated them from Aberdeen. From Pottle’s and Bennett’s dissertations onwards, the various pieces of evidence on ‘R———n’ have tended to point towards John Robertson the barber-poet (fl. 1751– 69), alias ‘Philo’, resident in Aberdeen (1757– 58), Fife (1759), and Derby (1769). A song by ‘J. R—b—rts—n’ appeared in Scots Mag. Sept. 1751, xiii. 441, and two epigrams by ‘John Robertson, a journeyman barber of Derby’ appeared in Scots Mag. Feb. 1769, xxxi. 98. The first is about ‘Delia’, and a note to the poems refers the reader to a poem entitled ‘The Creation of Delia’ dated from Fife and printed in Scots Mag. Dec. 1759, xxi. 645. However, the compilers of the English Poetry Database and ESTC instead suggest identification of the ‘Delia’ poet as James Robertson (1714–95), author of Poems, consisting of tales, fables, epigrams, &c. &c. By nobody, 1770, ESTC N12185), also published as Poems on several occasions. By J.

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Robertson, 1773 (ESTC T92973). The books went through revised and expanded second (1780) and third (1787) editions. The poet in the preface to the 1773 ed. proclaimed that he wrote in the ‘little Time that cou’d be spar’d from more immediate Avocations’ and that he published ‘having no Literary Fame to lose’ (pp. v–vi). JB met James Robertson in the mid-1770s. He ‘Bought Roberts Poems. Disgusted wt licentious irrelig’ (Journ. 18 May 1776). On the fly-leaf of his copy of James Robertson’s poems, in the NLS, JB noted that Robertson was ‘a Comedian for a great many years in the York Company, a favourite of his audiences in old comick characters …. In May 1776 I saw Robertson play at York, and bought this collection. I was offended with strains of infidel levity which I found in it.’ JB had ‘liked’ some of the poems ‘first published under the title of Poems by Nobody’. After arranging a meeting through the bookseller Thomas Davies, JB met Robertson at a coffeehouse in York, and JB wrote that Robertson ‘seemed to have little knowledge or vivacity in conversation, but was a very modest man; and when I found fault with his infidel allies, appeared to know not what [I] meant’ (BP, xi. 293). JB’s fly-leaf inscription furnishes details of Robertson’s life beyond those recorded in ESTC. The notice of Robertson’s life in Biog. Dict. reports an early stay in Scotland, and a lacuna in his theatrical career 1752–62, although he was in York rather than Derby 1764–78 (Biog. Dict. xiii. 15–16). 7 Perhaps William Nairne (c. 1731–1811), advocate, later (1786) a Lord of Session as Lord Dunsinane, and also (1792) a Lord of Justiciary; eventual successor (1790) to his nephew’s baronetcy (Comp. Bar. iv. 426). JB wrote of him in the latter part of the year: ‘Nairne is an honest upright fellow; somewhat stiff in his manner, but not without parts in a moderate degree’ (Journ. 4 Nov.). His only verses in Collection II are a four-line reply to AE’s ballad on him, The Lawyer’s Overthrow (Collection II, pp. 38– 43). See From AE, 2 Mar.: ‘I was much pleased with N[airne]’s lines; how did he get them inserted?’

8 Thomas Alexander Erskine, 6th Earl of Kellie, ‘the musical Earl’ (for whom see To AE, 14 Sept. 1761, n. 43). No poems by Kellie can be identified in either Collection I or Collection II. A ballad attributed to him, ‘Kelso Races’, appears in James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum, ed. William Stenhouse, 1853, iv. 529–32. 9 That is, GD. The letter is not reported. See From GD to AE, c. 10–20 Jan. 10 A jab at JB’s Ode to Tragedy, which he had published 1761 as ‘a GENTLEMAN of SCOTLAND’ but dedicated to JAMES BOSWELL, Esq[.]’. The ridiculousness of three pages of dedication for eight pages of verse was itself a bit of Swiftian or Shandean humour. In the three pages of dedication (pp. 2–4) JB sang his own praises. In the eight pages of Ode itself (pp. 5–12) JB’s poetic persona frequently ‘dedicated’ himself to the tragic muse; e.g., the last couplet of the poem: ‘O! let me visit oft thy sacred store,/ And in ecstatic heat intranc’d adore!’ 11 Another parallel to Tristram Shandy: ‘What could my father do? He was almost at his wit’s end; … argued the matter with her like a Christian,—like a heathen,—like a husband,—like a father,—like a patriot,— like a man …’ (I. xviii; Tristram Shandy, Florida ed., i. 55). 12 Another expression of AE’s interest in the fact that so many critics were in 1762 putting Macpherson and ‘Ossian’ on a par with Homer, Virgil, and Milton (From AE, 10 Jan.). Fingal was reviewed widely: e.g., in Monthly. Rev. 1762, xxvi. 41–57 and 130–41; Crit. Rev. 1761, xii. 405–18 and 1762, xiii. 45–53, Brit. Mag. 1761, ii. 662; Ann. Reg. 1761, iv. 276–86. The Ann. Reg., despite some critical remarks on the weaknesses of the putative originals and translator, praised the ‘extraordinary poems’. The review stated that ‘the ingenious editor has a double claim to literary applause’ for his rediscovery of ‘these inestimable relicks of the genuine spirit of poetry’ and for the ‘translation, whose expressive singularity evidently retains the majestic air, and native simplicity of a sublime original’. The review predicted ‘immortality’ for both Ossian and Macpherson.

To Andrew Erskine, Friday 22 January 1762 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 512).

Edinburgh, 22 Jan: 1762 MY DEAR ERSKINE: To a delicate mind the slightest Reproof is the best, it is the sharpest and therefore the most cutting. I do assure you my friend, that this 187

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Observation was fully verified when I received your last Epistle. Beleive me I felt much remorse on account of my neglect. Indolence is what I would plead. But even allowing that as an alleviation of my Guilt, I am affraid I shall come under the Denomination and be subjected to the Reprehension of a slothfull Servant.1 Instead of saying any more I shall endeavour to do; and in so doing hope to obliterate the very appearance of my Offence. I would not for all the Books in Donaldson’s Shop, that our Corespondence should cease. Rather much rather would I trott a horse in the hottest day in Summer between Fort George and Aberdeen.2 Rather much rather would I hold the Office of him who every returning noon3 plays upon the Music Bells of the good Town of Edinburgh,4 and rather, much rather would I pass a Winter in the Country with any Six People whom You can name.5 My Dear friend let our Intimacy never fail. Let our Regard burn with a steady flame, and our Wit shine in a succession of brilliant Sparkles. Let there be no more distance between each flash of Vivacity, but what is necessary to give time to observe it’s splendid Radiance. I hope I shall never again approach so near to the Clod of Clay. I hope The fire of my Genius Shall never again be so long in kindling, or so much covered up with the dross of Stupidity. You may perfectly well imagine how I exulted upon receiving an excellent Letter from the Countess of Northumberland. It is dated at Bath, and contains a description of the present Diversions at that Place, so very humourous, that upon my word (without Compliment to her Ladyship) it is worthy either of You or of me, Which I dare say you will agree with me in thinking a very high Commendation. Doctor Smollett has written me a very polite obliging Letter.6 He says that he ‘reviews the Productions of Scotland con amori as the Italians say’ and that he and his friends shall do all manner of Justice to such as are to be found in the Shops of the Booksellers of London.7 I have desired Donaldson to cause his Corespondent Richardson8 send a Copy of his Poems to each of the Reviews, that is to say to Hamilton9 and Griffiths10 with whose names the Slate-blue Covers11 of these awfull Oracles of Criticism12 are inscribed. Donaldson has yet about thirty Six Pages of his second Volume to print.13 I have given him Two hundred lines more.14 He will have it all done next week.15 The different Pieces of which it is composed, are in truth and verity, not all of equal merit. But is not that the case in every Miscelaneous Collection? even in that excellent one published by Mr. Dodsley?16 The truth is that a Volume printed on a small type17 exhausts an infinite quantity of Copy (to talk technicaly) so that We must not be over nice in our choice; nor think every man in our ranks18 below size who does not come up to the elevated Standard of Captain Erskine. Dempster’s Eulogiums19 have rendered my humility still vainer. I suppose they have not suffered any diminution nor lost a bit of Beef on account of their long journey.20 I should imagine that the highland air has agreed with them, and that they have agreed with the highland air. It would require the Eloquence of fourteen Pits21 to tell one Erskine how Dempster’s Eulogiums pleased James Boswell Esq: Without Exageration there was a great deal of Laughter in my merriment; and a great deal of merriment in my Laughter. They have now at last given over marrying me;22 so that I am going about like a Horse23 wanting a halter ready to be bridled and sadled by the first Person who is so very fortunate as to lay hold of me, A simile not to be found in any Author ancient or modern. 188

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On Monday last We had a splendid Ball24 at the Abbey of Holyroodhouse25 given by Colonel Graeme26 where we had about Six hundred People, a number of which were of Distinction, and a number were without rags and had clean linnen and powdered heads.27 Lord Kelly28 danced with Miss Colquhoun, by the fire of whose eyes his melodious Lordship’s Heart is at present in a state of Combustion. Such is the Declaration that he makes in loud whispers many a time and oft. I danced with Miss Stewart29 our friend Houstoun Stewart’s30 Sister. He is as good and as clever and as fond of me and as fond of you as formerly. Surely your Brother Archie31 must be enraged at me for omitting to call upon him, when in Town, and by this means (as the Casuists talk) negatively committing an outrageous trespass against his Dignity. I ask his Pardon. I remain, My Dear Erskine, Your best Friend, JAMES BOSWELL [POSTSCRIPT:] Fingal has been very warmly received. A second Edition of it is just now published at London.32 I see they are flourishing away with Sixpenny and Shilling Cuts33 how and about it: A Sure sign that it is a favourite of the Public. I see your Regiment is ordered to England.34 I hope you will either be employed to recruit, or have leave of absence, so as you may not be moved from your agreable Society, which I am sure You would be very sorry to leave. Let me know how that Affair is to be settled. I beg that you may take the trouble to number the lines in one of my ordinary Letter Pages, and at the same time do so to one of your own. I beleive you will find that I have Twenty Three Whereas you have only eighteen.35 I have inclosed you the sorrowfull Lamentation of a Stabler called Hutchison who on Wednesday last was whipt through this Town, for forcing away a young man by way of a Recruit, and beating him most unmercifully.36 The said Lamentation you will find is in verse and altho’ sold for a single Penny is a Work of remarkable merit.37 The Exordium you will see opens with a passionate Address to Captains all amongst which who can more properly be reckoned than Captain Andrew? I remain etc. 1 From the parable of the talents, Matthew 25:26–30: ‘His lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant … at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him … And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ Note that although this comparison puts JB in the role of the idle servant, it also places AE in the role of the cruel master. 2 Taylor & Skinner, ‘A List of the Stages of the Great Roads’, and ‘An Index of the Cross Roads’ noted that one standard route from Aberdeen to Fort George was 106 miles and 7 furlongs. JB may have travelled this road after his first meeting with AE at Fort George in May 1761. JB’s aversion to riding horseback has been mentioned in other E–B letters. 3 MS. ‘noon’ written above a deleted ‘day’

4 A chime of twenty-three bells made by John Meikle in 1698, and hung in St. Giles’s Church. ‘A large square tower rises from the centre of the church, and is surmounted by an admirable steeple … which is formed above into the shape of an imperial crown … and contains a set of good music-bells, which are played every lawful day between one and two o’clock’ (Robert Chambers, Walks in Edinburgh, 1825, pp. 83–84). ‘All the people of business at Edinburgh, and even the genteel company, may be seen standing in crowds every day, from one to two in the afternoon, in the open street .… The company thus assembled, are entertained with a variety of tunes, played upon a set of bells, fixed in a steeple hard by—As these bells are well-toned, and the musician, who has a salary from the city, for playing upon them with keys, is no bad performer, the entertainment is really agreeable, and

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very striking to the ears of a stranger’ (Smollett, Humphry Clinker, Letter of 18 July [The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, introduction and notes by Thomas R. Preston, text ed. O M Brack, 1990, p. 211]). 5 A joke about JB’s recent visit to AE’s family at New Tarbet, and perhaps also about JB’s own dullness at Auchinleck, noted in his letters written from there. 6 Not reported (From Smollett, between 24 Dec. 1761 and 9 Jan. 1762). 7 Tobias Smollett edited Crit. Rev. from 1756 to 1763, and was also a co-proprietor and one of the magazine’s writers. JB would complain 4 Nov. 1762 that Smollett ‘writes now very little’; JB was to conclude that Professor Thomas Francklin of Cambridge and Mr. Campbell son of Principal Campbell of St. Andrews were the major writers rather than Smollett (Journ.). See James G. Basker, Tobias Smollett, Critic and Journalist, 1988, pp. 40–51, 151–57. Basker reached the conclusion that ‘Despite all the logrolling … the Critical Review was not used to pursue his own interests as singlemindedly and ruthlessly as it might have been’ (p. 157). He also (pp. 82–84) discusses Smollett’s consciousness of the public view from 1757 to 1767 (referred to in the passage of his letter to JB) that Crit. Rev. was ‘a Scotch Tribunal’ which treated Scottish authors with love but English authors with justice. Indeed, Smollett somewhat overcompensated by making anti-Scottish remarks and attacking Scotticisms (even in English authors). Smollett was concerned about how readers would react if they discovered that three of the magazine’s writers were Scots; in 1757 Smollett had claimed that only one of the five writers was a Scot. 8 Donaldson’s ‘Corespondent Richardson’ was probably Joseph Richardson (d. 1763), bookseller and publisher in Paternoster Row 1753–63, who was listed as one of the London publishers (along with the Dodsleys) on the title-page of Collection II and in the Lond. Chron. advertisements (Dict. of Printers, p. 210; Lond. Mag. Sept. 1763, xxxii. 504; Lit. Car. pp. 10–11; Lond. Chron. 11 Mar., xi. 240). See To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’ (?Joseph Richardson), 10 Feb. 9 Archibald Hamilton (d. 1793), printer and bookseller in Falcon Court, Fleet Street, 1736–93. In order to escape possible consequences of his participation in the Edinburgh Porteous riots, Hamilton removed to London in 1736. He was publisher and co-proprietor of the Crit. Rev. and also published Smollett’s History of England

(Dict. of Printers, p. 114). Basker (pp. 32– 43) discusses Hamilton’s role as ‘managing editor’ in relation to Smollett’s as ‘editorin-chief’. 10 Ralph Griffiths (1720–1803) had founded the Monthly Rev. in 1749 and remained its editor-proprietor. Smollett and Archibald Hamilton had consciously designed Crit. Rev. as a rival to Griffiths’ popular magazine, although the two magazines entered into a more friendly rivalry by the 1760s (Dict. of Printers, p. 114; cf. Basker pp. 164–87). 11 The reviews were initially sold in paper covers, but could be sent by collectors and libraries to the binders to be set into leather bindings. 12 By 1762, the reviewers were increasingly looked to with respect but also with fear of ‘These Self-Elected Monarchs’, a fear reflected in JB’s phrase. Basker (pp. 164– 87) analysed the effects of the two major reviews on modes of production, publicity, and distribution. He also proves the influence which Crit. Rev. exerted on Monthly. Rev. and even Gent. Mag. editorial policies. 13 Collection II consisted of eight pages of preface and 232 pages of text, and so Donaldson was likely at about p. 196 in his setting of the type. JB had two days earlier estimated him to be at about p. 192 (see From AE, 20 Jan. and n. 4). 14 The ‘Two Hundred lines more’ consisted of ‘The Dunce and his Pen. A Fable’, pp. 202–06 (110 lines); ‘The Lion, the Fox, and the Bull. A Fable’, pp. 206–09 (74 lines); ‘Epigram’ (‘I would have you know, Sir, though now you despise’), p. 209 (8 lines); ‘Epigram’ (‘Who will say, that adorable Kitty hates me’), p. 209 (4 lines); ‘Epigram’ (‘Says a writer genteel, of high genius and taste’), p. 210 (10 lines); and ‘Epigram’ (‘Sure he’s a blockhead and an ass’), p. 210 (4 lines). This totals 210 lines, ten more than stated. These six poems were the only ones attributed to JB in the final ‘about thirty Six Pages’ of Collection II. 15 Collection II was listed as completed and ready for publication in the Scots Mag. Jan. 1762 booklist (xxiv. 42). 16 Robert Dodsley’s landmark success with the miscellany Collection of Poems by Several Hands (1748) and its sequels (six editions with various additions and enlargements) had helped inspire Donaldson to design his Collection (Lit. Car. p. 12). 17 The text of the poems in Collection II was printed in what appears to be a tenpoint font, with the running heads and poem titles in larger fonts. This seems to be

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the same font and choice of type sizes used in both Collection I and JB’s Elegy, also printed by Donaldson. 18 Although AE and JB wrote about 95 pages of the 232-page volume, the regiment of other authors recruited for Collection II included GD, James Macpherson, William Julius Mickle, John Home, William Nairne, Lauchlan Macpherson, Jerome Stone of Dunkeld, John Ogilvie, James Beattie, Robert Scott, Francis Douglas of Aberdeen, John Maclaurin, and David Rae (Lit. Car. pp. 12–13). Most were ‘gentleman’ amateurs, although a few names would still be recognizable to modern specialists of eighteenth-century Scottish poetry. 19 ‘Since I saw you, I received a letter from Mr. D———; it is filled with encomiums upon you …’ (From AE, 20 Jan.). The fast receipt of this news from New Tarbet to Edinburgh (three days) is suspicious, and may suggest re-dated letters. From AE, 13 Dec. 1761 noted that the closest post town to New Tarbet was twenty miles distant, and that the Macfarlanes typically made only one weekly postal trip. Yet mail from Dumbarton did reach Edinburgh, fifty-eight miles away, thrice weekly and on Fridays. The Dumbarton-Edinburgh mails left Dumbarton three times a week arriving in Edinburgh on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays (Universal Scots Almanack, 1763, pp. 68–71). 20 When highland cattle were driven to market as far afield as the south of England, they usually travelled on the hoof, thus losing weight and ‘beef’ as a result of their journey. ‘[C]attle had to be sturdy and capable of bearing the fatigue of long journeys without ill effects; and in such condition that they would put on flesh rapidly when transferred to richer pastures …. Scottish cattle were appreciated for this very quality of fattening easily, and for the fine grain and flavour of their flesh’ (James E. Handley, Scottish Farming in the Eighteenth Century, 1953, pp. 222–23). 21 To GD, 19 Nov. 1761 had dealt with GD’s attacks on William Pitt’s war ministry, which had fallen in Oct. 1761. Pitt’s powers of oratory remained remarkable even after his fall, and he remained a key presence in the Commons 1761–66. In the debate of 1 Mar. he spoke ‘with great temper, great recommendation of candour and unanimity’ (Namier and Brooke, iii. 295). 22 The rumours of JB’s marrying were floated, discussed, and then dismissed in JB’s correspondence of Sept.–Nov. 1761 with Eglinton and AE. 23 JB’s comparison of himself to a spirited

horse demeaned by being saddled or yoked appeared again later that year. ‘I considered how much happier I was than if I had been married last year to Miss Colquhoun or Miss Bruce and been a poor regular animal tied down to one’ (Journ. 30 Nov.). In his letter to WJT of 1 May 1761 he also compared his situation to a horse’s life, although with reference to law study and life ‘in his Father’s strict family’ rather than to women or marriage: ‘Yoke a Newmarket Courser to a Dung-cart, & I’ll lay my life on’t, he’ll either caper and kick most confoundedly; or be as stupid and restif as an old batter’d PostHorse’ (Corr. 6, p. 33). 24 ‘This evening Colonel Graham Secretary to the Queen, gives a grand ball in the Palace of Holyrood-house, to above 600 ladies and gentlemen, in order to solemnize her Majesty’s birth-day’ (Cal. Merc. 18 Jan. 1762). The Edin. Eve. Cour. 18 Jan. 1762 reported the Monday festivities: ‘the flag was this morning displayed from the Castle, and the music bells played the greatest part of the day. Col. David Graham, her Majesty’s secretary, has particularly honoured the day by giving a splendid Ball in the royal apartments in the Abbey, to which a very numerous and genteel company are invited’ (Edin. Eve. Cour. 18 Jan. 1762). An undated entry in JB’s journal for early 1762 recorded: ‘danc’d … at Col. Grame’s Ball’ (Journ.). Queen Charlotte’s actual birthday was 16 May, as the official kalendars and magazines noted, but the other Crown holiday on which public offices closed to ‘keep’ her birth-day was 18 Jan. (The Court and City Kalendar, 1762, p. 246; Gent. Mag. Jan., May 1762, xxxii. 44, 239). The court had made the decision because the actual birthday of the queen was too close to that of George III [4 June N.S.] (Edin. Eve. Cour. 18 Jan. 1762). 25 Despite the fact that the palace complex of Holyroodhouse had been refurbished during the Restoration, the renovations aged poorly. By 1779 the repairs were falling into decay. The chambers typically referred to as ‘the royal apartments’ were on three sides of a quadrangle on the first floor (Arnot, pp. 305–08; Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 74–79). 26 Col. David Graeme or Graham (1716– 97), of Braco Castle, Perthshire, Col. of the 105th Ft. from 15 Oct. 1761, later (10 July 1762) promoted to the army rank of maj.-gen.; M.P. for Perthshire 1764–73, he was eventually (1783) promoted to General (Namier and Brooke, ii. 523–25; Army List, 1763, 1765, 1795; Anecdotes and Egotisms, p. 266; Scots Mag. 1797, lix. 72). From June to

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Sept. 1761, Col. Graeme, a protégé of Bute, had concluded the secret negotiations between George III and the family of Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, and brought the future queen from Germany; the marriage took place 8 Sept. 1761 not long before George III’s coronation. As reward for his marriage-brokering, Graham received his first (brief-lived) proprietary regiment (significantly named Queen’s Own Royal Highlanders, or 105th) and his position as secretary to the Queen which he held 1761– 74 (Romney Sedgwick, ‘The Marriage of George III’, History Today, June 1960, x. 371–77). JB would meet Graeme in London on 2 Apr. 1776 (Journ.). 27 Another indication of JB’s awareness of English ridicule of the Scots as impoverished barbarians. 28 Thomas Erskine, Earl of Kellie, AE’s brother. 29 Margaret ‘Peggy’ Stewart (c. 1745– 1816), another of the eligible young women with whom JB contemplated marriage. She married (1764) Sir William Maxwell of Springkell, Bt. (IGI; Comp. Bar. iv. 320; Burke’s Peerage, 1899, s.v. ‘Shaw-Stewart’). JB’s abbreviated journal for Jan.–15 Feb. mentioned ‘Miss Stewart’s at Kirkbraehead near West kirk …. Miss S——— a fine Woman danc’d with her at Col. Grame’s Ball & at next Assembly. Were upon a good footing—domestic notions’ (Journ.). While in the Netherlands, JB wrote to JJ, ‘Miss Peggy Stewart (daughter to Sir Michael) is a woman every way accomplished. When I was in Scotland, I thought her the woman that I would marry, had I any such intention’; as late as 1763, JB was still thinking of the possibility of such a marriage (To JJ, 23 Sept. 1763, Corr. 1, p. 115). He wrote of her to WJT on 23 Sept. 1763: ‘Stewart’s Sister is sensible amiable, has been several winters in London is perfectly accomplished. She is not handsom but is extremely agreable & what you would call a woman of fashion. She & I were allways good friends & when I was in Scotland she was the only woman I could think of for a Wife’ (Corr. 6, p. 70). JB’s statement was, of course, nonsense, since his pursuit of Katharine Colquhoun was at least as serious. 30 Houston Stewart-Nicolson (1741–86), a contributor to Collection II, had taken the surname of Nicolson upon succeeding to the entailed estate of Carnock in 1752, although he continued to be referred to by his old surname (IGI; Scots Mag. 1786, xlviii. 208; Burke’s Peerage, 1899, s.v. ‘Shaw-Stewart’). The references in this letter to ‘our friend’ as

‘good’, ‘clever’, and ‘fond of’ JB and AE suggest an initially close friendship, but it was not to be of long duration. JB first refers to Stewart in Journ. 3 Jan.–14 Feb. 1762: ‘Supt wt. Houstoun at Thom’s’. He noted in Journ. 22 Feb. 1762: ‘after supt in Johnst’s wt. Kelly Digges Gillson Houst. Stewart & Duncan. Sat till 3’. But by the spring of 1763, JB would begin to grow anxious about Stewart’s raucous conviviality: ‘Captain Andrew & I dined with Houstoun Stewart. We were too extravagant in the ludicrous stile & I was not happy’. In 1764, now on his German travels, JB would disapprove even more strongly of Stewart’s dissipation: ‘Be firm and shun falling back to Houst Stewart’; ‘I was still unruly. Something of Houstoun Stewart. Let me take care’ (Mem. 16 May 1764; Journ. 8 Sept. 1764). He is mentioned several times in JB’s later journals. When JB and AE drank tea with him 15 Mar. 1767, JB found him as ‘dissipated as ever’. An anecdote in ‘Boswelliana’ about his silent threat of a duel, to deal with the menacing manner of a ‘surly looking boorish fellow’ in Drury Lane theatre, suggests his spirited nature as well as his wit (Hyde Collection, p. 1). 31 JB would make amends by breakfasting with Archibald Erskine on 16 Feb. (Journ.) 32 Fingal, an ancient epic poem, in six books: together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal. Translated from the Galic language, by James Macpherson. The second edition, 1762, ‘beautifully printed in one volume quarto’, was published in London on 21 Jan. It was in fact a reissue of the first edition, with a cancel titlepage (ESTC T10103). An advance notice had appeared in the Lond. Chron. a few days earlier (14–16, 19–21 Jan. 1762; xi. 50, 71). Scottish subscribers were informed in Edin. Eve. Cour. 4 Jan. that ‘there are now a sufficient number of copies of this poem come down [from London] to serve the subscribers’, and copies prepaid could be had at Gavin Hamilton and John Balfour’s shop upon presenting a receipt. 33 A ‘sixpenny’ or ‘shilling’ priced ‘cut’ was a pamphlet which attempted to ‘cut’ its foes with criticism and sarcasm. JB so described his own Critical Strictures on … Elvira (Journ. 19 Jan. 1763; see also 9 July 1763). Fingal reclaimed, 1762 was one such effort, which questioned Fingal’s place of birth (ESTC T182805); see also Ferdinando Warner, Remarks on the history of Fingal, and other poems of Ossian …, 1762 (ESTC T4059). Outright parodies of Fingal in 1762 included ‘Donald Macdonald’ (whom Horace Walpole, in an MS note on his copy, identi-

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fied as Sterne’s friend John Hall-Stevenson), Three beautiful and important passages omitted by the translator of Fingal. Translated and restored …, 1762 (ESTC N14549). ‘Macdonald’s’ pseudonymous ‘cut’ was reviewed in Monthly Rev. (Dec. 1761, xxv. 504–05), and Crit. Rev. (Jan. 1762, xiii. 75). The year also produced the anti-Bute Gisbal, an hyperborean tale: translated from the fragments of Ossian the son of Fingal, 1762 (ESTC N8012); and another anti-Bute satire The staff of Gisbal: an hyperborean song, translated from the fragments of Ossian, the son of Fingal. By a young lady [1762] (ESTC T48547). In those cuts, a pre-existing scorn for Scots culture was combined with attacks on Bute’s ministry which was accused of Scottish subversion of the English constitution. 34 Petitot’s 71st Ft. had been at Fort George in 1761, and was being relocated to Morpeth, Northumberland (Lond. Chron. 5–8 June 1762, xi. 544). On 20 Jan. Edin. Eve. Cour. reported that ‘Tuesday morning last, the first division of Gen. Petitot’s regiment set out for Berwick from Aberdeen, whither the rest are to follow, and [not] to return till further orders. They are to be replaced, we hear, by Col. Lamb[t]on’s regiment [68th Foot], now on the march from Newcastle, Northward.’ 35 JB rebuts AE’s earlier remarks that JB always fills the page when he writes (see From AE, 16 Dec. 1761, n. 3). No page of this letter contains more than twenty-one lines. 36 No stabler named Thomas Hutchison, or stabler with the surname Hutchison, appears in either Gilhooley or Edinburgh Directory, 1773–74. He may have been an employee of one of the stablers of the Cowgate,

e.g., John Bell. Edin. Eve. Cour. reported 20 Jan. that ‘Serjeant’ John Grant and ‘Thomas Hutchison, Stabler in Cowgate’ had been sentenced by the House of Magistrates to be stripped, tied to a horse-drawn cart, whipped by the common hangman through the city, banished, and imprisoned pending payment of £100 expenses and damages. Their crime was ‘the unlawfully seducing, and forcibly, and in the most barbarous manner, carrying off a young man, in order to oblige him to enlist.’ Edin. Eve. Cour. was particularly concerned that the kidnapping, if not given ‘exemplary punishment’, would harm the recruitment of volunteers for the war. The number of advertisements in Jan. issues of Edin. Eve. Cour. [passim] for the apprehension of deserters, many of them new recruits, suggests its worries were well founded. On 18 Jan., Hutchison had filed a bill of suspension in order to stop the execution of the sentence, record of which survives bearing JB’s father’s name (This bill ordered by the Lord Ordinary to be dispersed this evening, in order to report to-morrow. Lord Auchinleck, reporter. Bill of suspension, Thomas Hutchison against Robert Duncan and the procurator fiscal: dated at head of the drop-head title January 18th, 1762; ESTC T218387). It had, however, been refused. After their recommitting to the city gaol, the two culprits were arrested at the instance of another victim for the crime of ‘Hamesucken’ or assaulting a man in his own house. This incident had occurred on another of their recruiting expeditions, in Fifeshire. 37 The actual broadside that JB enclosed has not been located. Nothing of that description is currently in ESTC.

To Andrew Erskine, Friday 22 January 1762 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 70–74 [LETTER XVIII]. Edinburgh, Jan. 22, 1762. Dear ERSKINE, I Would not for all the books in Donaldson’s shop that our correspondence should cease. Rather, much rather would I trot a horse in the hottest day in summer, between Fort George and Aberdeen; rather, much rather would I hold the office of him who every returning noon plays upon the music-bells of the good town of Edinburgh; and rather, much rather would I be condemned to pass the next seven years of my life, as a spiritless student at the college of Glasgow.1 Let our wit, my friend, continue to shine in a succession of brilliant sparkles. Let there be no more distance between each flash of vivacity, but what is necessary for giving time to observe its splendid radiance. I hope I shall never again approach so 193

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near the clod of clay. I hope the fire of my genius shall never again be so long in kindling, or so much covered up with the dross of stupidity. I have desired Donaldson to cause his correspondent at London, to send a copy of the first volume of his collection to each of the Reviews, that is to say, to Hamilton and Griffiths, with whose names the slate-blue covers of these awful oracles of criticism are inscribed. Donaldson has yet about thirty-six pages of the second Volume to print. I have given him two hundred lines more. He is a loadstone of prodigious power, and attracts all my poetic needles. The Volume will be out next week; the different pieces of which it is composed are, to be sure, not all of equal merit. But is not that the case in every miscellaneous collection, even in that excellent one published by Mr. Dodsley? The truth is, that a Volume printed in a small type exhausts an infinite quantity of copy (to talk technically) so that we must not be over-nice in our choice, nor think every man in our ranks below size, who does not come up to the elevated standard of Captain Andrew. D———’s encomiums have rendered my humility still prouder; they are indeed superb, and worthy of an opposer of the German war.2 I suppose they have not lost a bit of beef by their long journey, and I should imagine that the Highland air has agreed well with them, and that they have agreed well with the Highland air. They occasioned much laughter in my heart, and much heart in my laughter. They have at last give over marrying me; so that I am going about like a horse wanting a halter, ready to be bridled and saddled by the first person who is so very fortunate as to lay hold of me. A simile not to be found in any author ancient or modern. We had a splendid ball at the Abbey of Holyrood-house, on the Queen’s birthday, given by Colonel Graeme. I exhibited my existence in a minuet, and as I was drest in a full chocolate suit, and wore my most solemn countenance, I looked as you used to tell me, like the fifth act of a deep Tragedy. Lord K——— danced with Miss C———, by the fire of whose eyes, his melodious lordship’s heart is at present in a state of combustion. Such is the declaration which he makes in loud whispers many a time and oft. Our friend H——— S———3 is in town this winter. He is a most surprising old fellow. I am told he is some years past sixty; and yet he has all the vivacity and frolic, and whim of the sprightliest youth. He continues to rank all mankind under the general denomination of Gilbert.4 He patroles the streets at midnight as much as ever, and beats with as much vigour the town-guard drum;5 nor is his affection for the company of blind fidlers, in the least abated. Fingal has been very warmly received at London. A second edition of it is just now come out. The public taste you will allow is good at present: long may it last. Long may the voice of the venerable bard be heard with unaffected pleasure. I see your regiment is ordered for England. I hope you will be allowed to recruit, or have leave of absence, as it would be very severe upon you to be moved from your present situation. If you will number the lines in our pages, you will find I have twenty-three, whereas you have only eighteen. I inclose you the sorrowful lamentation of a stabler, called Hutchison, who, on Wednesday last was whipt thro’ this town, for forcing away a young man as a 194

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recruit, and beating him unmercifully. The said lamentation you will find is in verse; and altho’ sold for a single penny, is a work of remarkable merit. The exordium is a passionate address to Captains all; amongst whom, who can more properly be reckoned than Captain Andrew? I remain your sincere friend, JAMES BOSWELL. 1 Lord Auchinleck, displeased by JB’s life in Edinburgh, had decided to remove him to the University of Glasgow in the summer of 1759. ‘Boswell appears at first to have taken his father’s decision in good part and to have made a serious effort to do what was expected of him’, but he grew increasingly restless, and on 1 Mar. 1760 ran away to London (Earlier Years, pp. 43, 45). 2 GD’s opposition to the continuation of the Seven Years’ War in the German theatre had been the subject of GD’s maiden speech in the Commons. There, on 13 Nov. 1761, GD ‘censured the German war, as having neither object nor end’ (Dempster Letters, p. 59). 3 The description of Houstoun StewartNicolson is utterly facetious, as the actual Stewart had been born in 1741. 4 ‘Gilbert’ was chosen because JB found the name amusing and evocative of Scottish local colour: see JB’s anonymous ‘Gilbert Long-nose: A Scotch Character’ in the Pub. Adv. of 23 July 1763. 5 The Edinburgh ‘town guard’ or ‘City

Guard’ was the body, founded as a professional service in 1648 and re-established in 1679, 1682, and 1689–90, which served as a police force. By day they carried muskets and bayonets; by night they wielded Lochaber axes. Although it had been reestablished in 1689–90 to include 126 men, by 1788 it had only seventy-five privates, the cost of whose pay exceeded the watchmoney tax set after the Revolution to pay them. The guardsmen were mostly Highlanders, many veterans of the Scots brigades in Holland, who earned sixpence a day. They were reputed well-disciplined, capable of firing well, and active in preventing street robberies, and in one brawl in the 1780s bested riotous elements of a Regiment of Foot. Yet the joke JB makes about the sixtyyear old guardsman had an element of truth: in 1789 the Lord Provost who commanded them found a senior guard who had been in service since 1736, and who would have therefore been close to seventy (Arnot, pp. 504–07; Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 135–38).

From Thomas Sheridan, ?January–February 1762 Not reported. Perhaps an answer to To TS, 9 Jan. Mentioned in To TS, 27 Feb., in which JB apologizes for being tardy in answering it: ‘You must certainly be displeased at me for neglecting so long to acknowledge the receipt of your last favour’.

From Andrew Erskine, Sunday 7 February 1762 Printed E–B, p. 75 [LETTER XIX].

Morpeth,1 Feb. 7, 1762. DEAR BOSWELL, AND lo I am at Morpeth,2 after meeting with every accident that could possibly happen to a man in a post-chaise, overturns, breaking of springs, dropping of wheels, and sticking in roads, tho’ with four horses. We imagine we are to remain in this town some time. Upon looking over my poems, in the second volume,3 I find several errors;4 I’m afraid you have not corrected the press so violently as you boasted.5 Perhaps, Boswell, this will be the worst and the shortest letter I ever wrote to you; I’m writing in an inn,6 and half a dozen people in the room; but when I’m settled in lodgings of my own, expect epistles in the usual stile. I think you two or 195

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three times have treated me as I treat you now, so I remain your most humble servant, And affectionate friend, ANDREW ERSKINE P.S. Never was there such a tame subjected performance as this. 1 Morpeth, Northumberland, to which Petitot’s 71st Foot (in which AE served) had been sent from Fort George (Lond. Chron. 5–8 June 1762, xi. 544). ‘Regiments were shunted from one area to another in a haphazard fashion, and officers can seldom have known where in Britain their unit would be sent next’; ‘the thorough dislike of most officers for service in the wilds of Scotland’ was one constant in the system of shifting regiments (Houlding, pp. 23–45). 2 JB wrote in a journal entry covering 2 Jan. to 15 Feb.: ‘Erskine came to Town— introduced to Aunts—in love with Lady Jenny—had Ersk. at Break twice … supt Aunts’ (for the ‘Aunts’, see next letter and n. 4). AE had been in New Tarbet on 20 Jan. and was in Morpeth by 7 Feb. to rejoin his regiment. Furthermore, JB had written to AE on 22 Jan. Thus, presuming that the ‘Erskine’ mentioned in the journal was AE, the visit can be dated to c. 25 Jan.–c. 5 Feb. 3 Donaldson’s Collection II. Presumably AE was privileged to consult proof-sheets of the early pages of the volume for which he was a contributor. AE’s contributions to Collection II lay entirely within the first 61 pages (Bennett, pp. 180–82). To AE, 11 Feb. suggests that the volume was ready for issue after 15 Feb. 4 Five printers’ errors were corrected in Collection II, by means of an errata-sheet on p. iv after the ‘Advertisement’. Collection II did print five ‘corrigenda’ (four misprinted words and one omitted word), all for mistakes in AE’s poems. Since all these corrigenda were in AE’s poems, it is likely that JB was attempting to rectify only those mistakes detected by AE in his own poems. It is not known whether AE sent an inclosure of the

specific errors, or depended upon the lessthan-eagle-eyed JB to catch as many as he could. The Collection II corrigenda contained an additional clarification on Collection I: ‘N.B. In vol. l of this collection, two poems, entitled Adella and Morna, whose author is not mentioned, were wrote by Mr. A.E.’. Bennett believed he had located at least two errors in one copy of Collection II: on p. 23, in one of AE’s elegies, ‘every eye’ appears rather than ‘either eye’; the conclusion of the verse epistle p. 35 seems to have been omitted. 5 ‘I’ll tell you one thing—The Volume will be pretty free from Typographical Errors. I have the honour to correct the Proof-Sheets’ (To AE, 17 Nov. 1761 [MS; cf. E–B]). 6 The legal civil ‘rights of Englishmen’ included from the early 18th century the provision that the army could not quarter troops on private householders without prior consent and payment. Given the small number of army barracks in the modern sense, the government had to billet troops in ‘public houses’ such as inns, livery stables, alehouses, victualling houses, and dram shops (Houlding, pp. 37–41). The Universal British Directory [?1791], pp. 930–34 listed the ‘Queen’s Head’ inn, and mentioned three separate Morpeth innkeepers by name. In the ‘Alphabetical List of All the Places Mentioned in the Preceding Routes … with the Names of the Inns’ in Cary’s New Itinerary, 3rd ed., 1806, p. 842, the ‘Phoenix’ and ‘Queen’s Head’ were recorded as Morpeth’s inns. It seems unlikely that Morpeth had more than these two or three inns in the 1760s—explaining the cramped conditions of ‘half a dozen people in the room’—until private houses could be hired out.

From Andrew Erskine, Monday 8 February 1762 Printed E–B, p. 76 [LETTER XX].

Morpeth, Feb. 8, 1762 DEAR BOSWELL, I BEG you will get a copy of the second volume of the Poems,1 and send me it by the man you brings you this;2 let it be a neat one, well-bound; pray tell me what 196

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people say of the book. Your currant-jelly3 is good, has a delicious flavour, and tastes much of the fruit, as my aunts say.4 I did not make out all the names in your Race-Ballad5 cleverly.6 I am still in the way I was, when I wrote you last, in a public-house, and pestered with noise: I have not above six ideas at present, and none of them fit for a letter. Dear Boswell, farewell! pray for my recovery from this lethargy of spirits and sense which has seiz’d me. Yours, etc. ANDREW ERSKINE 1

Donaldson’s Collection II. ‘Roy the handsom Grenadier’ (To AE, 11 Feb.) acted as AE’s messenger. He was presumably a soldier or NCO in the grenadier company of the 71st Foot who was willing to travel from Morpeth to Edinburgh and back. 3 JB’s poem ‘Currant-Jelly’ appeared in Collection II, pp. 88–90. 4 The ‘Aunts’ were presumably the Pitcairn sisters, who ranged in ages from 57 to 68. JB was ‘introduced to Aunts’ and ‘supt Aunts’, likely between c. 25 Jan.–c. 5 Feb. AE’s mother Janet (Pitcairn) Erskine had three sisters, Elizabeth (bap. 1694), Margaret (bap. 1701), and Agnes (bap. 1705) (Constance Pitcairn, The History of the Fife Pitcairns, 1905, p. 399). Margaret Pitcairn died in Edinburgh in 1777 (Scots Mag. Sept. 1777, xxxix. 455). These women were, like much of AE’s family, staunch Jacobites. Because of the family’s involvement in the Jacobite uprising of 1715, the estate of Pitcairn was forfeited to the crown. The estate was afterwards bought back by a friend of Dr. Archibald Pitcairn for the support of his widow and surviving daughters (Pitcairn, History of Fife Pitcairns, p. 400). The aunts had a legendary contretemps with AE’s brother Archibald which was passed down in family tradition: ‘The Miss Pitcairns … were such red-hot Jacobites that when their nephew Archibald, seventh Earl, who held a commission in the army, first appeared at Kellie in his uniform, they took the tongs, and, tearing the [black ‘Hanoverian’] cockade from his cocked-hat, threw it into the fire’ (History of the Fife Pitcairns, p. 408). While in uniform, of course, AE would have worn the black ‘Government’ cockade so repugnant to his aunts. 5 ‘The Race, An Heroic Ballad’ was ‘Ad2

dressed to the Honourable Company of Scots Hunters’. JB had drafted it in Douce 193, ff. 42v.–45r., in a section entitled ‘Poems on Several Occasions’, and printed it in Collection II, pp. 101–05 under the pseudonym ‘By a Genius’. The 24-stanza ballad (mislabeled 25 stanzas in the draft) tells the tale of a wager between ‘an Opulent Squire’, ‘Daniel … C[ampbel]l’ of ‘S[hawfiel]d’, and a ‘Nobleman’, ‘Young D[ou]gl[a]s’ [‘D—— —s’ in MS]. When Douglas taunts Campbell about his obesity, Campbell bets 20 guineas that however fat he may be, he can carry ‘W[alter]’ or ‘Wattie’ ‘S[teuart]’ (footnoted by JB in the published version as ‘Mr. W.S. Advocate’), on his back and still beat Douglas in a footrace. Campbell emerges as the winner. The other characters include some identifiable persons or groups: ‘the man who the bottle jump’d into’ (i.e., the infamous Harlequin Conjurer of the theatres), ‘The Gentlemen Hunters’, ‘the fair Ladies’, ‘R[e]nt[o]n’, ‘handsome S[eato]n’ (i.e., Seton, ‘Seaton’ in the MS), Professor ‘Matthew’ Stewart, D.D. (footnoted by JB in the published version as ‘Dr. Matthew Stewart’), and from the past, Sir Edward ‘Coke’, and Sir Thomas ‘Littleton’. But JB also included generalized types such as the lawyers ‘Puzzle’ and ‘Blunder’, a ‘Teague’ or Irish man, ‘A Tory’, ‘Dick Idle’, ‘A wag’, as well as the fictional ‘brother Bayes’ from The Rehearsal (1672), ‘Jack Falstaff’, and Lemuel Gulliver the ‘Quinbus Flestrin’. The poem is reprinted in modernized form in Werner, pp. 44–49, 164–65. Fully identifying all of the ballad’s assortment of local characters would have demanded an intimate knowledge of Edinburgh society, of which JB had more experience than AE. 6 Perhaps a printer’s error; ‘clearly’ would make better sense.

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To Andrew Erskine, Wednesday 10 February 1762 MS. Yale (*L 513). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B.

Edinburgh, 10 Febry. 1762 MY DEAR FRIEND: Fortune I find has knit her brows upon you during your last journey: But you who are a Warrior and what is more a Heroe1 have an infinite advantage over the gentle Sons of Peace. They would it is probable be disconcerted at her frowns and their effeminate Spirits would poorly sink under the load of Woe. While you most noble Captain with admirable effrontery can look the cross capricious Hussey full in the face, and notwithstanding of her blindness,2 put her fairly out of Countenance, so that instead of exulting as a proud Oppressor, she becomes a vanquished abject Slave. Submissive kneels at Captain Andrew’s feet, And begs forgiveness with an Infant’s voice. Two extempore lines upon honour! I thank you o ye Muses! Continue thus to bestow Inspiration upon me, and I shall utter verses in numbers beyond the ken of terrestrial Arithmeticians. No day shall pass unsoothd with harmony’s soft voice. Nor shall night’s silent Watches say ‘Alas we have had no poetic strains!’ Yes ye grave ye quiet Virgins ye too shall be ravished. Or let me address the nine musical Sisters in easy modern Buckish stile. I’ll tell you what Ladies, do but tickle me up in this manner, and I swear to you by Master Jove old Square-toes that you shall have rhiming enough, or the Devil’s in’t. Ay take my word for it, every day shall cut capers to the tune of Nancy Dawson’s Hornpipe,3 and every night shall snore away like a tun-bellied quarter-master of Dragoons to Heart of oak are our ships Heart of oak are our men.4 I might make them go on about long Poles lapell’d Frocks5 Bottles of Claret and Bawdy-Houses etc. But that would fill up my paper altogether and leave me no room to say any thing myself, which you know would be very hard upon me, whatever it might be to other People. With a retrospective eye am I now considering this Letter.6 I think I have used you rather well as not, in painting you so much superior to the frowns of the fickle Dame. Since I have mentioned the word painting, I cannot help saying that I think this Epistle might furnish subject enough for two very excellent allegorical Prints designed by Hayman7 and engraved by Grignion.8 The One should represent Fortune domineering with iron sway over the pitifull-hearted profanum Vulgus;9 while Captain Andrew should stand unmov’d at her shocks and behold her with his usual torvo Vultu.10 The other should present us with a Scene magnificent indeed! a scene which human nature may for ages boast of. The Captain with the Goddess at his feet in the attitude of Supplication. What a perfect idea of a great Soul might We have 198

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from his figure, and what exquisite Expression might be thrown into her look— when ‘begging forgiveness with an Infant’s Voice!’ I am overpowered with Imagination! I remain your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 A typical burlesque epic reference. JB later would expand the hyperbole by comparing AE’s banal but annoying journey southward to the epic travels of Aeneas (see To AE, 11 Feb.). From AE, 7 Feb. had explained that AE’s journey had been rendered arduous by ‘every accident that could possibly happen to a man in a post-chaise, overturns, breaking of springs, dropping of wheels, and sticking in roads, tho’ with four horses’. 2 Fortuna, Dame Fortune, or chance, was often portrayed as blind, as a woman, or a blind woman. 3 The song ‘Nancy Dawson’, although it may have its roots in a folk tune, was popularized by the London theatres and repackaged with the name of celebrated dancer Nancy Dawson (?1730–67), who became famous 1759–63 for dancing ‘a Hornpipe’ at Covent Garden. Several portraits of Nancy Dawson, often ‘dancing her celebrated Hornpipe’, survive. The very idea of an ersatz ‘hornpipe’ or sailor’s dance was itself a sign of the fusion of folk and commercial culture in this era. In a roundabout way, Dawson may have been one cause of JB’s obsession with The Beggar’s Opera, since her supplementary dancing was often credited (along with Charlotte Brent’s landmark performance as Polly) as the reason that production had such an unusually ‘long and crowded run’ at Covent Garden from autumn 1759 into late spring 1760, a period in which JB visited London (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 781, 788, 790–91; Biog. Dict.). ‘Nancy Dawson’s Hornpipe’ was published in Nancy Dawson’s jests: to which is added the merry hornpipe; being a collection of songs written for the delight and amusement of all her admirers. Embellished with a beautiful print of Miss Dawson …, 1761 (ESTC T65140). Biog. Dict. iv. 239 prints the sheet music to ‘Miss Dawson’s Hornpipe With Variations’ with the now-familiar tune. The ‘Nancy Dawson’ lyric which begins ‘Of all the girls in our town’, is the most familiar. It survives to the present day in the mutated form ‘Mulberry Bush’, and its words were published in 1760 (Biog. Dict. iv. 240, 243). While the tune was renamed after Dawson, it is thought to have existed earlier. Robert

Ford’s supposedly traditional version from Ayrshire begins ‘There lived a lass in yonder glen’; he also cited (p. 73) a theatre version of ‘about the middle of last century’ (c. 1750, more likely 1760 on the evidence), beginning ‘Of all the girls in our town’ (Robert Ford, ed., Vagabond Songs and Ballads of Scotland, 1899, pp. 69–73). However, Biog. Dict. assumed that Thomas Arne wrote the music, and George Alexander Stevens the words. ‘Calling for Nancy Dawson’ was considered a sign of vulgarity and ‘low’ manners. JB’s son Alexander Boswell’s poem ‘Edinburgh; Or, The Ancient Royalty: A Sketch Of Former Manners’ noted the former popularity of the song in Edinburgh: ‘Or now they listen, all in merry glee,/ While “Nancy Dawson,” “Sandie o’er the lee,”/ (Than foreign cadence surely sweeter far)/ Ring on the jingling spinet or guitar’ (Alexander Boswell, The Poetical Works, 1871, ll. 175–78). Although ‘Nancy Dawson’ was a long-lived favourite in Ayrshire and Edinburgh, it reached its greatest zenith in the London theatres. The song’s popularity outlived Dawson’s brief career. John Cunningham, ‘A Prologue, Spoke in the Character of a Sailor, on opening the New Theatre at North-Shields’, ll. 13–18, in Poems, chiefly Pastoral (1766, 2nd ed. 1771) described a sailor’s visit to the London theatres: ‘Give me the merry sons of guts and rosin,/ That play—God save the King, and Nancy Dawson’. Goldsmith’s epilogue to She Stoops to Conquer (1773) derides an affected low-born woman who ‘Pretends to taste, at operas cries “caro”,/ And quits her “Nancy Dawson” for “Che faro”’. 4 William Boyce’s setting of David Garrick’s song in the wartime propaganda pantomime Harlequin’s Invasion, 1759. Like ‘Nancy Dawson’, it became a popular ‘folk’ song although its actual origins were solidly in the commercial theatres. JB apparently knew the song by heart: he sang ‘Heart of Oak’ to a group of Corsican rebels and received a great ovation (Journ. 22–27 Oct. 1765). 5 Items from JB’s comic catalogue of a ‘modern’ town buck’s mode of speech and style. Gentlemen’s fashions of the 1760s emphasized ‘long canes’, although ‘short

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ones were also used’ (Cunnington, p. 262). In 1762, Lond. Chron. observed that ‘[w]alking sticks are now reduced to a useful size’, but also that beaux and bucks ‘strut about with walking sticks as long as leaping poles , or else with a yard of varnished cane, scraped taper … tipt with a turned ivory head as big as a silver penny’ (quoted in Cunnington, p. 263). The ‘taper switch’ was a particularly fashionable style of cane in the 1760s (Cunnington, p. 262). The frock, a less rigid version of the gentleman’s coat, usually with a turneddown collar or ‘cape’ which might have a different ‘facing’ colour than the frock. The frock’s prominent collar was in contradistinction to the traditional formal collarless coat, or the formal stand-up collar of the late 1760s. In the English style the frock coat was always plain (never embroidered), though it might have military-looking trim of loops or braid. It had a shorter skirt length than the dress coat, and was optionally tailored with skirts caught back, eliminating the side vents and widening the back vent which gave a freer and more military look. As for lapels, there were ‘[n]o lapels before 1780 except for military style’ (Cunnington, p. 58). This reference provides more evidence of JB’s ambition to know and adopt the current militaristic fashion of the Seven Years’ War for civilian dress. The style of frock lapels by the 1780s was ‘small or wide or angular, sometimes with button-holes’ (Cunnington, p. 197). The frock coat was worn as gentlemen’s ‘undress’ for comfort, riding, and sport as an alternative to the formal or ‘full-dressed’ coat; its roots were in the lower orders’ simple clothes. Until the 1770 and 80s when it replaced the formal coat everywhere except

at Court (the Court itself latterly accepted a full-trimmed ‘French Frock’), the frock coat was seen as a slightly dressier version of the ‘sporting frock’ (Cunnington, pp. 57–58, 183–86, 193, 195–99). For claret, see From AE, 28 Oct., n. 3. 6 Perhaps an echo of Pope: ‘In vain the Sage, with retrospective eye,/ Would from th’ apparent What conclude the Why’ (Epistles to Several Persons [Moral Essays], ‘Epistle I, To Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham’, ll. 51–52). 7 Francis Hayman (1708–76), painter and illustrator in the ‘English Rococo’ tradition. His paintings which ornamented the supper-box alcoves of Vauxhall might have been seen by JB during his London jaunt. He had collaborated with Grignion (see below) and others in 1751–52 on a series of historical prints of famous British historical figures placed in dramatic tableaux such as the Battle of Hastings, the Conversion of the Britons, and Caractacus (Grove Dictionary of Art; Paintings, Drawings and Prints by Francis Hayman, RA, Kenwood House, 1960; Brian Allen, Francis Hayman, 1987). 8 Charles Grignion or Grignon (1717– 1810), line-engraver. He illustrated many books, and worked from the art not merely of Hayman, but also of Hogarth, John Hamilton Mortimer, and Gravelot (HubertFrançois Bourguignon). His frontispiece to Smollett’s History had been exhibited by the Society of Artists in 1761 (Grove Dictionary of Art). 9 ‘Ignorant rabble’, Horace’s phrase for the mob (Odes, III. i. 1, trans. C. E. Bennett, Loeb ed.). 10 ‘Stern visage’ (Horace, Epistles, I. xix. 12, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb ed.).

To an unidentified correspondent, Wednesday 10 February 1762 Not traced. Sent from Edinburgh. Sold by Southgate, 21 June 1833, lot 1425, to a buyer identified only as ‘Glynn’ for £1.6. It may be that this letter is To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’ (?Joseph Richardson), 10 Feb. (see next letter).

To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’ (?Joseph Richardson), Wednesday 10 February 1762 MS. Dreer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. ENDORSEMENT in an unknown hand: James Boswell. ENDORSEMENT in another unknown hand: A Cub at Newmarket a Tale was pub. in March 1762. J. Dodsly .

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ones were also used’ (Cunnington, p. 262). In 1762, Lond. Chron. observed that ‘[w]alking sticks are now reduced to a useful size’, but also that beaux and bucks ‘strut about with walking sticks as long as leaping poles , or else with a yard of varnished cane, scraped taper … tipt with a turned ivory head as big as a silver penny’ (quoted in Cunnington, p. 263). The ‘taper switch’ was a particularly fashionable style of cane in the 1760s (Cunnington, p. 262). The frock, a less rigid version of the gentleman’s coat, usually with a turneddown collar or ‘cape’ which might have a different ‘facing’ colour than the frock. The frock’s prominent collar was in contradistinction to the traditional formal collarless coat, or the formal stand-up collar of the late 1760s. In the English style the frock coat was always plain (never embroidered), though it might have military-looking trim of loops or braid. It had a shorter skirt length than the dress coat, and was optionally tailored with skirts caught back, eliminating the side vents and widening the back vent which gave a freer and more military look. As for lapels, there were ‘[n]o lapels before 1780 except for military style’ (Cunnington, p. 58). This reference provides more evidence of JB’s ambition to know and adopt the current militaristic fashion of the Seven Years’ War for civilian dress. The style of frock lapels by the 1780s was ‘small or wide or angular, sometimes with button-holes’ (Cunnington, p. 197). The frock coat was worn as gentlemen’s ‘undress’ for comfort, riding, and sport as an alternative to the formal or ‘full-dressed’ coat; its roots were in the lower orders’ simple clothes. Until the 1770 and 80s when it replaced the formal coat everywhere except

at Court (the Court itself latterly accepted a full-trimmed ‘French Frock’), the frock coat was seen as a slightly dressier version of the ‘sporting frock’ (Cunnington, pp. 57–58, 183–86, 193, 195–99). For claret, see From AE, 28 Oct., n. 3. 6 Perhaps an echo of Pope: ‘In vain the Sage, with retrospective eye,/ Would from th’ apparent What conclude the Why’ (Epistles to Several Persons [Moral Essays], ‘Epistle I, To Richard Temple, Viscount Cobham’, ll. 51–52). 7 Francis Hayman (1708–76), painter and illustrator in the ‘English Rococo’ tradition. His paintings which ornamented the supper-box alcoves of Vauxhall might have been seen by JB during his London jaunt. He had collaborated with Grignion (see below) and others in 1751–52 on a series of historical prints of famous British historical figures placed in dramatic tableaux such as the Battle of Hastings, the Conversion of the Britons, and Caractacus (Grove Dictionary of Art; Paintings, Drawings and Prints by Francis Hayman, RA, Kenwood House, 1960; Brian Allen, Francis Hayman, 1987). 8 Charles Grignion or Grignon (1717– 1810), line-engraver. He illustrated many books, and worked from the art not merely of Hayman, but also of Hogarth, John Hamilton Mortimer, and Gravelot (HubertFrançois Bourguignon). His frontispiece to Smollett’s History had been exhibited by the Society of Artists in 1761 (Grove Dictionary of Art). 9 ‘Ignorant rabble’, Horace’s phrase for the mob (Odes, III. i. 1, trans. C. E. Bennett, Loeb ed.). 10 ‘Stern visage’ (Horace, Epistles, I. xix. 12, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb ed.).

To an unidentified correspondent, Wednesday 10 February 1762 Not traced. Sent from Edinburgh. Sold by Southgate, 21 June 1833, lot 1425, to a buyer identified only as ‘Glynn’ for £1.6. It may be that this letter is To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’ (?Joseph Richardson), 10 Feb. (see next letter).

To ‘the Corespondent of … Mr. [Alexander] Donaldson’ (?Joseph Richardson), Wednesday 10 February 1762 MS. Dreer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. ENDORSEMENT in an unknown hand: James Boswell. ENDORSEMENT in another unknown hand: A Cub at Newmarket a Tale was pub. in March 1762. J. Dodsly .

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Edinburgh, 10 Febry. 1762 SIR: As you are the Corespondent of my friend Mr. Donaldson, I shall without any further Introduction give you a Commission to execute for me. Sometime ago I sent to London a Poem entitled The Cub at Newmarket a Tale which is now lying in the hands of Mr. James Dodsley Bookseller Pallmall.1 Immediatly upon receipt of this please send the inclosed line to him for the above-mentioned Essay, and when you have got it, let it be put to the Press with all Expedition. I chuse to publish for myself and to take the chance of Proffit or loss. I know that small Essays for the most part dont pay costs, but I shall venture this.2 If Mr. Dodsley pleases his name may be put on the Title Page together with yours and any other English Booksellers. You may also add ‘and for A Donaldson Edinburgh.’ Make no delay. Print it with the Dedication and Preface just as they stand. Let no Expence be spar’d to make it genteel. Let it be done on large quarto and a good Type. Price one Shilling.3 Send me a Proof of it as soon as it is thrown off which I shall correct and return.4 This to be done without further notice from, Sir, Your most Humble Servant, JAMES BOSWELL 1 James Dodsley (1724–97), bookseller in Pall Mall 1759–97, had been a partner of his elder brother Robert Dodsley from 1753. James had assumed control of the family business—located at Tully’s Head in Pall Mall—upon Robert’s retirement in 1759, although they were listed as copublishers until the more celebrated Robert’s death in 1764 (Dict. Printers; Lit. Anec. vi. 437–39; Maxted, p. 68). 2 JB eventually made money. ‘I called on Dodsley, and found that although he had refused to take the hazard of publishing my Cub, that it had sold well, and that there was thirteen shillings of profit, which I made him pay down. Never did I set so high

a value on a sum’ (Journ. 24 Nov.). 3 JB’s instructions as to paper and type were followed, but the title pages carry ‘Printed for R. and J. Dodsley, in Pall-Mall’, and ‘Price One Shilling’, without reference to any other English booksellers, nor with any mention of Donaldson (ESTC T53403). The Dedication and Preface, as JB planned, took up five pages compared to the fourteen pages of poem text. 4 JB’s request for proof suggests that he may have had a subsequent exchange of letters with Donaldson’s ‘Corespondent’. No further letters to or from the ‘Corespondent’ have been reported.

To Andrew Erskine, Thursday 11 February 1762 MS. Yale (*L 514). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B.

Edinburgh, 11 Febry. 1762 DEAR ERSKINE: I received your last this morning by the hands of Roy the handsom Grenadier.1 Our maids2 are all fallen in love with him. They are raving in heroics with such vociferation that my ears are qu’ite stunned and my senses quite stupified. It is astonishing to think what effects the amorous fury is attended with. With what inconceivable radiance it illumines the darkest minds. Here now is a parcel of uncultivated Girls who upon my word are venting the boldest flights of fancy, the most exuberant sallies of Genius arrayed in the richest language I have ever 201

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heard. I begin realy to entertain an inferior idea of Poetry from what I used to do. And how can it be otherwise, when I hear and see a common culinary dirty Damsel soaring every bit as high as either Shakespear Milton Captain Erskine or myself. I am just now My Dear Erskine, indulging the tenderest overflowings of Pity for you my ill-fated friend. Like your ancient friend Ænaeas you got to the end of your journey Per varios casus & tot discrimina rerum.3 The discrimina indeed were much of a muchness one with another. They were perhaps different in their species, but they were all comprehended under one Genus about the Origin of which Mr. King has written a Book,4 but according to my notion of the matter, as many Books as were consumed in the Alexandrian Library5 can never make it understood by Animals so organised as we are. You are now it seems, not much better. Taverns and noise succeed but ill to New-Tarbat and placid retirement. Well can I imagine your drowsy discontented Situation. Well can I imagine the strugling contest between leaden Stupidity and the half-extinguished sparks of cleverness. Often have I experienced all the different modifications of that dreary Conflict. Experience has taught me that Patience alone can administer Releif. This is no chimæra, and be assured my friend that this amiable Deity will undoubtedly come to our releif, if we are pathetic and earnest in our Invocations.6 The second Volume of Donaldson’s poems will not be ready till Monday. I shall send you a Copy handsomly bound, by the Carrier. The Epistle to Lord Eglintoun finishes it, subscribed John Home.7 It is very clever8 and looks like a point of Admiration9 at the end of a good Sentence! The Monthly Reviewers have at last taken in the first Volume.10 Donaldson has printed their Criticism, in the Advertisement to this,11 and as he is not quite well satisfied he has subjoined his own stricture upon it, in which he has given them a pretty sharp Brush. He showed it to me; but I did not alter a word. So you have his own original Ipsa Verba.12 You will be much entertained with the Editor’s13 flash. The Errata14 & your other Commission15 are taken care of. I ever am Yours sincerely. JAMES BOSWELL 1 ‘[T]he man you brings you this’ appears to have been one of the grenadier company from the 71st Foot in which AE served (From AE, 8 Feb.). 2 The names of the servants in Lord Auchinleck’s townhouse in 1762 have not been traced. 3 ‘Through divers mishaps, through so many perilous chances’ (Aeneid, i. 204, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb ed.). 4 William King, 1650–1729, Archbishop of Dublin 1703–29, theologian, controversialist, and apologist. His De origine mali …, 1702, King’s ‘magnum opus’ (ESTC T146385) attempted to explain how an allpowerful and all-good God could allow evil.

It made an impact on the continent (inducing a reply from Leibniz), but was comparatively uninfluential in Britain until translated by Edmund Law in 1729. The book had been most recently issued four years earlier as An essay on the origin of evil. By Dr. William King, … with large notes … The fourth edition corrected. By Edmund Law …, 1758, with a ‘Preliminary dissertation’ by John Gay (ESTC T133422). 5 The Hellenistic library of Alexandria was founded by Ptolemy I or II in conjunction with the ‘Museum’, and contained 100,000 to 700,000 volumes; the ‘Serapeum’ library was its auxiliary collection. Plutarch claimed that the library was ‘consumed’ by

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fire when Caesar was besieged in Alexandria. Although Dio Cassius revised the account of a cataclysmic firing of the library, later legend created an account of the total destruction of both libraries (OCD). There were other tales of its second destruction in late antiquity. One account claimed that it was burnt and partly consumed in 391 as part of Theodosius I’s destruction of ‘pagan’ relics; another argued that the Muslim calif Omar in 642 used the ‘infidel’ books as fuel for the fires to heat the baths of the city for six months (Brewer’s Dict.). 6 Donaldson’s Collection II. ‘Monday’ was 15 Feb. 7 In the ‘Epistle’to the Earl of Eglinton, John Home asked Eglinton to send him a horse from the racing steeds at Newmarket to replace Home’s broken-down nag (Collection II, pp. 230–32). 8 MS. ‘clever’ written above deleted ‘good’ 9 An exclamation mark of the sort JB self-approvingly provided (OED, s.v. ‘admiration’). 10 Collection I, although printed 1760, had been noticed ‘at last’ in the ‘Monthly Catalogue’ of Monthly Rev. Dec. 1761, xxv. 507–08. The Monthly Rev. reviewer argued that although there were ‘many good things

in this collection’, that there were also ‘indifferent productions’ containing ‘peculiar Scotch phrases and idioms’, and ‘it is to be feared, this undertaking will never equal the elegant collection, in six volumes, made by Dodsley’. 11 ‘Advertisement’ to Collection II, pp. iii–iv. Donaldson argued against the reviewer’s invidious comparison of his project to Dodsley’s: ‘Good Mr. Critic, you will remember we told you, in the advertisement prefixed to the first volume, that our collection was to consist only of three volumes; now you must be a devil of a conjurer, when you prophesy, that this collection will never equal Dodsley’s in six volumes’. 12 ‘[Donaldson’s] own exact words as he wrote them’. 13 JB had acted as a copy-editor for Donaldson on Collection II. 14 ‘Upon looking over my poems, in the second volume, I find several errors; I’m afraid you have not corrected the press so violently as you boasted’ (From AE, 7 Feb.). The errata were in fact corrected in the volume, although in an errata-sheet apart rather than in the main text. See From AE, 7 Feb., n. 4. 15 Presumably the demand that he be sent a copy of the volume by the carrier, Mr. Roy.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 16 February 1762 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 515).

Edinburgh, 16 Febry. 1762 1

DEAR ERSKINE: To see your Brother Archie at Morpeth, will I dare say surprise you as much as it did me to find him here.2 In short, nothing will serve him but a sight of the British Capital, although he is already much better acquainted with it, than either you or I. What has at present instigated him I own I am puzled to discover; But I solemnly and merrily declare that I never yet saw any body so excessively enamoured of London.3 The effects of this violent Passion are deeply imprest upon every feauture in his Countenance, his nose4 not excepted, which is absolutely most surprising. His Body is tost and shaken like one afflicted with the hot fit of an Ague, or the severest Paroxysms of Convulsion. Then as to his mind, it is altogether distempered. He is perpetualy declaiming on the Magnificence, the Liberty and the Pleasure which reigns in the Imperial British Metropolis. He swears that in that glorious Place alone we can enjoy Life.5 He says there is no breathing beyond St. James’s,6 and he affirms that the air of that delicious Spot is celestial. He says there is no Wit except at the Bedford,7 no military Genius but at George’s,8 no wine but at the Star and Garter,9 no Turbot but at the Tilt-Yard.10 He asserts that there are no cloaths made beyond the Liberties of Westminster,11 and he firmly holds Cheapside to be the sole Mart of Stockings.12 It would fill up 203

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two thirds of a Quarto Volume to enumerate the various extravagant Exclamations into which he breaks out. He declares that for his own part he will never go to Church except St. Paul’s13 nor to a Ladie’s private Lodgings, except in the Neighbourhood of Soho Square.14 I beg it of you my friend to be very attentive to him, observe his appearance and behaviour with the greatest Accuracy, so that we together, may be able to have a pretty just notion of this wonderfull Affair, and may faithfully draw up his case to be read before the Royal Society, and transmitted to Posterity in these curious Annals the Philosophical Transactions.15 And now for a little serious Business. Hold, Boswell say you, let me give you one Advice. Let serious Business come first. That Sir is impossible, for you have allready had the Rhapsodical Part. But in compliance with the orders of Captain Andrew, I shall follow a different method next time; although this is not so far wrong as you may think: For, besides the Example of Bayes, who gives his dance first,16 at every well-regulated dining Table, we are presented with slender Soup, before substantial Mutton. It is true we are entitled to swallow a Syllabub17 at the Conclusion, which is unquestionably the reverse of a dense Contexture. But I am at no loss for that, as I can easily queue my Epistle with a Compliment or two, which I presume will come to the same purpose. But, to proceed, I have sent you the second Volume, which Donaldson begs leave to present you with in consideration of your being one of those who bear the brunt of the day.18 He has also done me the same honour. No plain Shop Copy—no—no—elegantly bound and gilt!.19 I have likewise sent you Fawkes’s Poems.20 If you don’t chuse them they can be returned. Am not I a charming Corespondent just now? I have sent you three excellent Letters treading upon each other’s heels.21 I remain Your Affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 Captain Archibald Erskine was journeying southward towards London; he was in Edinburgh as late as 16 Feb. (Journ.), and had visited AE in Morpeth by 2 Mar. 2 JB’s journal for 16 Feb. recorded ‘Tuesday Break Arch Ersk’. By contrast to the New Tarbet Christmas visit, there seems to have been little advance discussion of the various Erskines’ visits to Edinburgh in Jan.–Feb. 3 JB parodies his own London-mania of 1760–63 in this passage. As he wrote to WJT, 1 May 1761, he was a ‘young fellow whose happiness was allways centered in London’ (Corr. 6, p. 33). 4 This punning on ‘nose’ echoes the phallic humour of Tristram Shandy: ‘For by the word Nose, throughout all this long chapter of noses, and in every other part of my work, where the word Nose occurs,—I declare, by that word I mean a Nose, and nothing more, or less’ (III. xxxi; Tristram Shandy, Florida ed., i. 258). 5 This remark predates SJ’s more famous comment of 1777 that ‘when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in

London all that life can afford’ (Life iii. 178). 6 The claim that the air might be clearer in St. James was not all whimsy; as late as 1690 the asthmatic William III had moved west from Whitehall to Kensington Palace in order to find better air quality. The westward sprawl of the London-Westminster megalopolis continued with some interruptions towards villages such as Kensington and Chelsea. The southwestern edge of gated St. James’ Park was therefore hardly an abrupt end of the metropolis’ reach, although the park did contain seemingly rural elements such as stands of milk cows and all-but-tame deer. The park was close enough to the urban centre to serve as a market for city prostitutes, as JB himself knew at latest by 1762’s end, if not already from his 1760 visit (Lond. Encyclopedia). 7 While an exact match is impossible, likely the famous ‘Bedford Coffee House’ in the northeast corner of the Great Piazza, Covent Garden, fl. 1730–1872, a seat of ‘criticks’ and an emporium of ‘wit’. Bonnell Thornton’s Connoisseur No. 1 (31 Jan. 1754)

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mentioned it as ‘every night crowded with men of parts. Almost every one you meet is a polite scholar and a wit’. This echoes JB’s designation of it as a locus of wits. Hugh Phillips warned, however, of ‘the difficulty of allocating various contemporary references to any particular Bedford Head, unless the street in which it existed happens to be mentioned’. There was also a notable ‘Bedford Arms Tavern and Coffee House in Bedford Court, Covent Garden c. 1730–89, where Wilkes and Walpole went, as well as the ‘Bedford’s Head’, Southampton St., Covent Garden (fl. 1716–70); and ‘Bedford Coffee House’ or ‘Duke of Bedford’s Head’ sites in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden (fl. 1741–1838). There were also various ‘Bedford’ signs around the metropolis (Lond. Coffee Houses, items 99–104, 1590–91, 1673–77, pp. 114–16, 683–84; Lond. Signs, items 2757–68, pp. 29–30; Phillips, pp. 137–50). Most of the establishments named ‘Bedford’ or some variant were so-named because they were built on the ‘Bedford Estates’ of the Dukes of Bedford in Covent Garden and Bloomsbury (Lond. Encyclopedia). A contemporary account, Memoirs of the Bedford coffee-house. By a genius, 1763 (ESTC T101296); reached a second edition, with many additions, 1763 (ESTC T129526). Its suspiciously Boswellian pseudonym makes it worth further speculation as to whether JB may have been its author. 8 As ‘George’ was one of the most popular names for coffee houses and taverns alike, exact identification remains impossible. Given the locales of the other sites mentioned by JB in this sentence (Pall Mall, Whitehall, Covent Garden), the ‘George’ in question was probably in the West End. The other clue JB provides is that it was a home to armchair generals, which suggests that it was near a military facility such as the Horse Guards. Lillywhite noted relevant ‘George’ coffeehouses such as the the famous refuge of wits at Temple Bar, Strand (fl. 1723–1891); as well as Coventry Street, Haymarket (fl. 1702–1833); Piccadilly (fl. 1702–98); Pall Mall (fl. 1708–57); Drury Lane (fl. 1710–1803); Chancery Lane (fl. 1760–1811); West Smithfield (fl. 1677– 1811); Ironmonger Lane (fl. 1672–1766) (Lond. Coffee Houses, items 442–51, 1750– 52, pp. 226–31, 697–700). For the relevant inns and taverns, Lillywhite also noted that ‘The GEORGE is one of the most numerous signs found in London’ (Lond. Signs, items 6896–7103, pp. 205–13). The choice of ‘George’ may be an allusion to the military’s

service to King George, or to Saint George’s ‘military Genius’. 9 The ‘Star and Garter’ was another common London sign. Use of the emblem attempted to link the establishment to the royal insignia of the Order of the Garter. The most famous ‘Star and Garter’ was the tavern at No. 92 Pall Mall which fl. c. 1710– c. 1801. Mentioned by Smollett in Humphry Clinker, the Star and Garter was headquarters successively to Swift’s Brothers’ Club (c. 1711) Selwyn and Williams’s Thursday Club (c. 1760–70), and the Dilettanti Society (c. 1764), and was also the site where the laws of cricket were revised in 1774. It was said to sell ‘the best claret in London’, and until 1779 one partner of the taverner was a professional vintner, which matches JB’s claim of ‘no wine but at the Star and Garter’. The fact that the Jockey Club held some meetings at the Star and Garter is another reason for linking that site to JB’s reference, since JB associated himself with that club via Eglinton (Lond. Encyclopedia; Phillips, pp. 52–53, 60–61). Lillywhite, however, noted that it was ‘a common sign in London dating from the early eighteenth century’. He also recorded less famous ‘Star and Garter’ establishments in Chelsea (fl. 1762–1860), Richmond Hill (fl. 1738–1898), and St. Martin’s Lane (fl. 1738–1804) (Lond. Signs, items 13776– 13804, pp. 516–17). 10 The ‘Tilt Yard’ was, by contrast, a unique name, and referred to the two successive coffee houses sited near the former tilt yard or jousting arena of the Royal Palace of Whitehall built by Henry VIII; the actual tilt-yard had all but disappeared by 1754. The old Tilt Yard coffee house (fl. 1702–54) had likely been demolished 1754 to clear the way for the new Horse Guards complex finished in 1760. The new Tilt Yard coffee house was ‘near the Treasury’ c. 1760–1827 (Lond. Coffee Houses, items 1353–54, pp. 577–79). Why a coffee-house would have been renowned for its fish cookery is unknown; it seems likely that JB is simply striving for alliteration. A year after this letter, JB mentions having attended a military mess in the ‘Tilt Yard’ (Journ. 29 Mar. 1763). 11 ‘Liberties of Westminster’ refers to the ‘Rolls Liberty’, a segment of the City of Westminster around Chancery Lane that maintained ecclesiastical privileges or exemptions separate from London proper (Lond. Encylopedia, p. 456). The market in Pall Mall, trading on its proximity to the royal palaces in the ‘Court End’, sold the highest quality luxury goods, including

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clothing (Phillips, pp. 63, 269). 12 ‘Cheapside was long in repute for its silk-mercers, linen-drapers, and hosiers’ (Wheatley and Cunningham, i. 370). 13 Probably Inigo Jones’ Tuscan-order ‘barn’: St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, a church associated with actors, musicians, and artists. However, it could also refer to the Wren-designed Cathedral where grandiose City of London observations of national fasts and victory thanksgivings were held during the Seven Years’ War (Wheatley and Cunningham, iii. 56–59; Phillips, pp. 137–38; Lond. Encyclopedia). 14 Soho Square in 1762 was one of the most exclusive residential areas in London, housing several ambassadors and peers. In 1761, Carlisle House, the third-largest on the Square, had been converted by its owner into a public assembly room for balls, concerts, and masquerades. Throughout the 1760s, these festivities attracted a crowd of ‘Royalty, Nobility, and Gentry’ (Lond. Encyclopedia, pp. 793–94; Phillips, pp. 203– 33). 15 The Royal Society began in 1660 as a venue for the London learned and ‘curious’ to discuss the new sciences, and was incorporated 1662 as the ‘Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge’ (Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 1667, new edition by J. I. Cope and H. W. Jones, 1959; Margery Purver, The Royal Society, 1967). The Royal Society began publishing its annual Philosophical Transactions in 1665 and the series continues to the present day. The eighteenth-century title was Philosophical transactions [of the Royal Society]. Giving some account [or accompt] of the present undertakings, studies and labours of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world … (ESTC T154206). The Transactions published the experimental research of its members (Margery Purver, The Royal Society, 1967, pp. 72–73). Various individual editors managed the series publication up to Mar. 1752, after which date the publication was superintended by a committee of the Society (ESTC). 16 At the end (not the beginning) of the ‘second act’ of the play-within-a-play of The Rehearsal (1672; usually attributed to George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham) the characters slain in the previous action rise inexplicably from the dead and begin to dance. When Bayes, the author of the piece, is asked to explain this absurdity, he replies ‘This I do, because my fancy, in this play, is to end every act with a dance’ (The Rehearsal, III. i). JB’s admiration for The Rehearsal is char-

acteristic of the long life of the play in Scotland and Ireland as well as England, both in its own right and as inspiration to Fielding’s Tom Thumb (1730, rev. 1731) and Sheridan’s The Critic (1779). The rehearsal: as it is now acted at the Theatre-Royal. Written by his Grace George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham was in its ‘seventeenth edition. With a key and remarks’ in 1757 (ESTC N50852), and had been reprinted in the late 1750s in Edinburgh (1755: ESTC T121753), Glasgow (1757: ESTC N50852), and Dublin (1757: ESTC T114192). 17 Syllabub (or ‘sillabub’), a concoction made of fresh milk or cream which has been added to wine, sherry, or cider, then sweetened with sugar and flavoured, usually with lemons (Maxime de la Falaise, Seven Centuries of English Cooking, 1973, p. 95). ‘Traditionally, syllabub was made by milking a cow into a bowl of ale or cider, which gave a frothy top to the liquor, and so it was partly eaten, partly drunk. Gradually, in the seventeenth century, milk and ale were replaced by cream and wine, whipped together, which produced a creamy froth on a liquor base. During the eighteenth century, a new development was to increase the proportion of cream, so that no separation took place, and this “everlasting syllabub” as it was called (really a modern whipped cream) existed side by side with the separated version throughout the eighteenth century.… [i]t is clear that the original traditional milk [and cider] syllabub was still enjoyed also [in 1758]’ (Jennifer Stead, Food and Cooking in 18th-Century Britain, 1985, pp. 44–45). Hannah Glasse in 1747 offered recipes for the rural tradition of a ‘fine Syllabub from the Cow’, as well as its more ornate city variations the ‘Whipt Syllabubs’ and ‘Everlasting Syllabubs’ (Hannah Glasse, The Art Of Cookery Made Plain And Easy, 1747, facsimile with introduction ed. Jennifer Stead, Priscilla Bain, and Alan Davidson, 1983, pp. 144, 146). JB presumably means the everlasting syllabub, whose pure light froth would be the opposite of ‘dense Contexture’. 18 As well as a reference to AE’s poems in Donaldson’s Collection II, a military metaphor for ‘Captain Andrew’ as a literary warrior. 19 The ‘plain Shop Copy’ of Collection II was issued ‘sewed’ for 2s 6d. The ‘elegantly bound and gilt’ volume likely remained in JB’s personal library in Edinburgh, where it was listed in a list of his books not at Auchinleck made c. 1770 (Lincoln, p. 282). By 1767, after the series’ failure, Donaldson

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offered both volumes on a discounted rate of 5s bound or 4s sewed, proving that both states remained in his shop stock for five years after the publication (Lit. Car. p. 10). 20 Francis Fawkes (1720–77), M.A., Vicar of Orpington, Kent, chaplain of St. Mary Cray and curate of Knockholt from 1755 to 1774, and afterwards (1774–77) vicar of Hayes and curate of Down. Several of his contemporaries thought him a capable

translator of ancient poets such as Anacreon and Menander. Fawkes had only published single poem-pamphlets before his Original poems and translations. By Francis Fawkes, M.A., 1761 (ESTC T146589), published by subscription. 21 That is, To AE 10, 11 Feb. JB omits this sentence from E–B, presumably since he had omitted the letters of 10 and 11 Feb. from the revision.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 16 February 1762 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 77–79 [LETTER XXI].

Dear ERSKINE, TO see your brother ———1 at Morpeth, will, I dare say, surprise you as much as it did me, to find him here. In short, nothing will serve him but a sight of the British capital, although he is already much better acquainted with it than either you or I. What has at present instigated him I own I am puzzled to discover: but I solemnly and merrily declare, that I never yet saw any body so excessively enamoured of London. The effects of this violent passion are deeply imprest upon every feature in his countenance, his nose not excepted, which is absolutely most surprising. His body is tossed and shaken, like one afflicted with the hot fit of an ague, or the severest paroxysms of convulsion. Then as to his mind, it is altogether distempered. He is perpetually declaiming on the magnificence, the liberty, and the pleasure, which reigns in the imperial British metropolis. He swears, that in that glorious place alone we can enjoy life. He says, there is no breathing beyond St. James’s; and he affirms, that the air of that delicious spot is celestial. He says, there is no wit except at the Bedford; no military genius but at George’s; no wine but at the Star and Garter; no turbot except at the Tilt-Yard. He asserts, that there are no cloaths made beyond the liberties of Westminster; and he firmly holds Cheapside to be the sole mart of stockings. It would fill up two-thirds of a quarto volume to enumerate the various extravagant exclamations into which he breaks out. He declares, that for his own part, he will never go to church except to St. Paul’s, nor to a lady’s private lodgings, except in the neighbourhood of Soho-square. I beg it of you, my friend, be very attentive to him; observe his appearance and behaviour with the greatest accuracy, so that between us we may be able to have a pretty just notion of this wonderful affair, and may faithfully draw up his case to be read before the Royal Society, and transmitted to posterity in these curious annals the Philosophical Transactions. I have sent you the second volume, which Donaldson begs leave to present you with, in consideration of your being one of those who bear the brunt of the day. He has also done me the same honour. No plain shop copy; no, no, elegantly bound and gilt. Adieu, yours sincerely, JAMES BOSWELL. 1 Archibald Erskine. Bennett surmised that the lack of an ‘A’ before the dash was a printer’s error.

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To Thomas Sheridan, Saturday 27 February 1762 MS. Yale (L 1160). A copy. HEADING: To Mr. Sheridan.

Edinr., 27 Feb: 1762 MY DEAR SIR: You must1 certainly be displeased at me for neglecting so long to acknowledge the receipt of your last favour.2 The worst of it is that3 I think you are justly so; by which means I have not even the satisfaction of repining at your severity. A strange satisfaction no doubt; but I am affraid that human Nature is so compounded that it will prefer this even to the agreable feeling which one should think would result from the contemplation of Justice. Perhaps you will say that we cannot consider Justice in a very amiable light, when exerted against ourselves; And that a Highwayman had need to be a superlatively profound metaphysician,4 who when brought to Tyburn Tree should indulge refined Speculations on the absolute Necessity and salutary nature of proper coercive penal laws without which human Society could not possibly subsist. As this matter is pretty abstruse and would lead us into many nice disquisitions and subtile distinctions I shall for the present wave it. In order however to have some conclusion, do you graciously5 grant me a remission of my fault, and then I shall certainly have a real satisfaction. I have been rather too much dissipated of late,6 which is being in one of the most unhappy situations in the World. Hope is the great support of man, and when he is deprived of that deplorable is his Situation: now when a man is given up to Dissipation, how can he releive himself. He hates to think of being busy or of having his mind properly employed without which there is no happiness. Active life7 is irksom to him and Retirement8 he dreds. My Dear Sir keep me in the right path. My Mentor! my Socrates!9 direct my heedless steps. Let not giddy Volatility hurry me along the surface of life, nor let the Bea[u]ties of the natural and moral World be unobserved by me. Let not the great characters the noble figures the elegant Landshapes drawn by the hand of the allperfect10 Creator be lost in a gay confusion of colours.11 When will you be down? I am longing very much to see you. I am longing very much to hear you. You have done me infinite Service allready. I am full of Gratitude. I trust in your future friendship. Much will I require your kind direction when I come to London. There if I do not at first get into a proper chanel I shall be a very different man from what I now hope to be. I amuse12 myself with looking forward upon13 the wide unbounded Prospect of14 the Ocean of Life. Well is it so called. How dangerous how inconstant how pleasant how terrible are they both. I have not yet got down your late Publication.15 Our Booksellers are very slow.16 I ever am, etc. 1

MS. ‘must’ written above deleted ‘will’ Presumably From TS, ?Jan.–Feb. 3 MS. ‘it that’ 4 MS. ‘metaphysian’. Properly spelled in the catchword at the bottom of the page. 5 JB’s journal notes for the first two months of 1762 began with his observation that upon his returning Edinburgh was ‘Strange & odd’ and that ‘time look’d differ2

ent’. By 20 Feb., although his jottings are often cryptic, he seems to have been complaining of being rudderless: ‘perfectly desperate thought of composed life’. On 7 Mar. he would complain about being ‘in fine Spirits—only too dissipated’. Most of his activity for Jan.–Feb. seems innocuous enough, however, and he often described himself as ‘fine & easy’, engaged in

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‘elegant conversation’, and ‘very lively’. He was romantically inclined to and unsystematically pursuing various women: ‘Miss C[olquhoun]’, ‘Miss S[tewart]’, ‘Miss T[homson]’, ‘Miss B[ruce]’, ‘Miss Max[well] of Spring[kell]’ and Janet Erskine. He attended fetes such as ‘Col. Grame’s Ball’, ‘Strang’s Ball’, ‘Kilrorock’s musical dinner’ and the ‘Assembly’. He entertained the Erskine family. Furthermore, his teas, dinners, and suppers with the Edinburgh bon ton and literati such as Lord Kames continued. Although these respectable social events would have frittered away his time, he presumably meant something more pernicious by ‘Dissipation’. He was at least six times at Thom’s, the old tavern haunt of the Soaping Club, and even on 20 Feb. planned a ‘Soaping Medal’. His attendance at plays, such as Hamlet (rehearsal 16 Feb.), The Beggar’s Opera (22 Feb.), and Venice Preserv’d (27 Feb.), when compounded by his attendance at rehearsals and after-show socializing with actors, would have put him once again among theatre people. On 15 Feb. he had met WD and, disappointed at the loss of a hero, no longer thought him a great man. Thus, his after-theatre dinner at Thom’s with WD on 27 Feb. left him ‘solemn for four hours’. His friendships with characters whose libertine life style he feared, such the Diggeses and ‘Houstown’ Stewart or Steuart, would have counted as dissipation. Yet the most dissipated act of these months is summed up in a vague journal entry, apparently a reference to sex: ‘Adventure wt. the most curious young little pretty. but tho’ all out—Good now!—no Opportunity for a long time’. 6 MS. JB originally wrote ‘grantly’, then deleted ‘nt’ and wrote ‘cious’ above it. 7 Perhaps a reference to Lord Auchinleck’s plan to form JB into a Scottish lawyer.

8 Perhaps a reference to the dullness of Auchinleck, although JB also registered a mounting discontent with Edinburgh society in these years. 9 Compare to To TS, 27 Sept. 1761, where JB in an extended passage set himself in the role of the wayward young Alcibiades in the care of TS as morally consistent philosopher-orator Socrates. 10 MS. ‘allperfect’ written above deleted ‘great’ 11 JB used the idea of multi-coloured chaos as a euphemism for the allure of a rakish life. Many years later, in 1791, he referred to ‘the late Mr. Derrick’ as ‘his introductor into “many colour’d life”’ (Memoirs JB, p. xxxi). 12 MS. ‘amuse’ written above deleted ‘please’ 13 MS. ‘upon’ written above deleted ‘into’ 14 MS. ‘of of’ 15 A Dissertation On The Causes Of The Difficulties, Which Occur, In Learning The English Tongue. With A Scheme For Publishing An English Grammar And Dictionary, Upon A Plan Entirely New, 1761 (ESTC N29013). It was probably in its second edition by 1762 (ESTC N65628; ESTC T96346). Lond. Chron. advertised it as for sale 11 Feb. (Lond. Chron. 11 Feb. 1762, xi. 143); Gent. Mag. delayed its notice until the Feb./Mar. double list (Gent. Mag. Mar. 1762, xxxii. 147, where it is priced at 1s 6d). 16 When TS published later in 1762 his A course of lectures on elocution: together with two dissertations on language; and some other tracts relative to those subjects, 1762 (ESTC T90536), he had a Scottish-born London printer (William Strahan) as well as a Scottish-born London bookseller (Andrew Millar). The title page did not, however, list official Edinburgh booksellers.

From Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 2 March 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 80–83 [LETTER XXII].

Morpeth, March 2, 1762 OH BOSWELL! if you found yourself in the middle of the Firth of Forth, and the sea fast up-springing through every leak, after the skipper had remonstrated, in the most warm manner, against proceeding to cross the water; or if, like me, you found yourself in the midst of a sentence, without knowing how to end it, you could not feel more pain than I do at this instant: in short, I have had a very excellent letter of yours in my left waistcoat-pocket this fortnight;1 is that letter answered? you say: Oh! let the reply to this question be buried in the bottom of the Red Sea, where I hope no future army will ever disturb it;2 or let it be inserted in the third volume of Donaldson’s Collection,3 where it will never be found, as the book will never be 209

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opened. What would I not do to gain your pardon? I would even swear that black was white; that’s to say, I would praise the fairness of your complexion. By that smile which irradiates your countenance, like a gleam of the moon, through the black clouds of the south; by the melting of that pomatum which gives your hair a gloss, like the first beaming of a new suit of regimentals on an assembly night,4 when twenty fidlers sweat;5 by the grandeur of your pinchbeck buckles;6 by the solemnity of your small nose;7 by the blue expended in washing your shirts; by the rotundity of your Bath great coat;8 by the well-polish’d key of your portmanteau; by the tag of your shoe; by the tongue of your buckle; by your taylor’s bill;9 by the last kiss of Miss C———;10 by the first guinea you ever had in your possession; and chiefly by all the nonsense you have just read, let the kneeling Captain (who is at present sitting on his backside) find favour in your eyes, and then, my Ode to Good-nature shall be inscribed to you, while your Ode to Ingratitude (which, I suppose, is finished) shall be burnt.11 I was, as you imagine, very much surprised to see A———12 here; I noted him, according to your direction, with a critical eye; like a gentleman in a line which you may remember13 I made on the Castle-hill,14 he seemed, to have taken the Tower of London15 for his bride; every feature, and every limb was changed wonderfully; his nose resembled Westminster-Bridge;16 his cheeks were like BloomsburySquare;17 his high forehead like Constitution-Hill;18 his chin like China-Row;19 his tongue and his teeth looked like Almack’s in Pall-Mall;20 his lips like the Shakespeare’s Head;21 his fists like Hockley-in-the-Hole;22 his ears like the Opera-House;23 his eyes like a harlequin entertainment;24 his stomach was like Craven-street;25 his chest like the trunk-maker’s in the corner of St. Paul’s Church-yard;26 the calf of his leg like Leadenhall-market;27 his pulse like the Green-market in Covent-Garden;28 his neck like Tyburn;29 and his gait like Newgate;30 his navel like Fleet-street,31 and his lungs and his bladder were like Blowbladder-street:32 every thing about him seemed metamorphosed; he had moulded his hat into the form of the Mansion-House;33 some guineas which he had, looked like the ’Change;34 but it would be tedious to relate every particular; however, I must not let his conversation be forgot, tho’ it was much of a piece with that you so humourously relate: he swore to me he never saw a rag fit for a gentleman to wear, but in Rag-fair;35 he said there was no scolding but at Billingsgate;36 and he avow’d there were no bad poets but in Grub-street;37 I could not stand that, I bid him call to remembrance an acquaintance of his who lived in the Parliament-Close,38 and also a relation of his who formerly resided in Campbell’s Land;39 he smiled, and confessed these were really very bad poets, but that he was not convinced for all that; upon this, to put the matter out of all dispute, I offered to lend him the first and second volumes of Donaldson’s Collection. At that very moment the hostler informed him the chaise was ready, and he still remains ignorant where the worst poets in the world are. Tell me how our second volume is received; I was much pleased with N———’s lines; how did he get them inserted?40 I intend writing a criticism upon the volume, and upon your writings in particular, so tremble. Dear Boswell, farewel, Yours most affectionately, ANDREW ERSKINE P.S. I hope you’ll write to me soon. 210

2 MARCH 1762 1 A fortnight before 2 Mar. would have been 16 Feb. Presumably a reference to JB’s second-most recent letter To AE, 10 Feb. 2 A reference to the drowning of the Egyptian army. ‘And the waters returned, and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them; there remained not so much as one of them.… The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone’ (Exodus 14:28–29, 15:4). 3 There would be no third volume of Donaldson’s Collection despite Donaldson’s original plan of a three-volume set. Collection II was the only sequel, despite the book’s ‘Advertisement’ (Collection II, p. iii) promising a third installment ‘about eighteen months hence’. 4 JB on 18 Feb. had attended an ‘Assembly with Miss S——— dancd with her’; he may have also gone to another Assembly dance in Jan. (Journ.). The Edinburgh Assembly took place weekly during ‘the Edinburgh season’. According to a description c. 1783, the Assembly was patronized by gentlemen ‘flustered with wine’ dancing with ‘an assembly of as elegant and beautiful woman as any in Europe’. In 1710, a private association called ‘the Assembly’ had begun, despite Church opposition to dancing. It was generally restricted to the ‘select’ elite above trade. By 1753 at latest, the dances were managed by public directors. There were, as at Beau Nash’s Bath, strict rules for the dancers. Gentlemen had to settle on a single lady as partner for the year, ‘and were upon no account permitted to change, even for a single night’. Partners were appointed at the season’s beginning, at some private party or ball, by a transparently rigged ‘lottery’ such as fans drawn from a cocked hat, in which system the men who drew a fan generally knew to whom it belonged (explaining JB’s success with his Assembly partners). The men were supposed to walk on foot alongside the sedan chairs of their partners, whatever the winter weather, as an escort, and then call on them for tea the subsequent day. The first ‘Old Assembly Room’ was in a house encountered at the first turn in descending the West Bow, and was used c. 1710–20; the room in the ‘Old Assembly Close’ was used c. 1720–58 or as late as 1766; the ‘New Assembly Room’ in Bell’s Wynd appears to have been used c. 1758 and probably earlier than 1784. Chambers’s and Grant’s tentative chronology should perhaps be amended given that ‘Edgar’s Map’ from 1746, reprinted in Gilhooley,

shows ‘Bell’s Wynd’ and ‘New Assembly Close’ as adjacent in 1746, nowhere near the ancient West Bow room, and a few sections away from the new ‘Old Assembly Close’ as labelled by Edgar (Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 1825, i. 133– 38; ii. 28–31, 108–17; Robert Chambers, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh, 1833, pp. 75– 80; Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 242–45; ii. 148– 50; for JB’s account of attendance at the assembly in 1769, see To GD, 23 Feb. 1769, Corr. 7, pp. 140–41 and n. 15). Goldsmith complained in 1753 that the ladies sat and the gentlemen stood at opposite ends of the room: … let me say something of their balls which are very frequent here; when a stranger enters the danceing-hall he sees one end of the room taken up by the Lady’s, who sit dismally in a group by themselves. On the other end stand their pensive partners, that are to be, but no more intercourse between the sexes than there is between two Countrys at war, the Ladies indeed may ogle, and the Gentlemen sigh, but an embargo is laid on any closer commerce; at length, to interrupt hostility’s, the Lady directeress or intendant, or what you will pitches on a Gentleman and Lady to walk a minuet, which they perform with a formality that approaches despondence, after five or six couple have thus walked the Gauntlett, all stand up to country dance’s, each gentleman furnished with a partner from the afforesaid Lady directress, so they dance much, say nothing, and thus concludes our assembly … (Goldsmith to Robert Bryanton, 26 Sept. 1753, The Collected Letters of Oliver Goldsmith, ed. Katharine C. Balderston, 1928, pp. 10–11.) 5 Various Edinburgh fiddlers of the lateeighteenth and early-nineteenth century were described as sounding ‘rough, like a man sharping knives wi’ yellow sand’, or ‘like the chappin o’ mince-collops—sic short bows he takes’, and a bass player ‘like wind i’ the lum, or a toom cart gaun down Blackfriars’ Wynd’. The musicians (or ‘fidlers’ as AE notes) had a small apartment in the assembly rooms for their use. ‘Formerly, in the department of ball music, there were no performers with any knowledge of the science, or able to accompany each other … [unless] a band [was] accustomed to associate … [they were not] used to each other’s perversities …. The most of the professional bands about the beginning

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of [the nineteenth] century were poor old stupid men, who never dreamed of any thing above reels, strathspeys, and countrydances ….They knew absolutely nothing of foreign music; and quadrilles, waltzes &c. were neither given nor required …’ (Robert Chambers, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh, 1833, p. 80, n. ‘*’). 6 JB’s pinchbeck buckles were an established joke between JB and AE: see From AE, 23 Nov. 1761 and n. 9. 7 Both the portrait of JB by Reynolds (1785) and the work of caricaturists (such as George Dance, who sketched him in Apr. 1793) confirm that JB had a long, prominent nose. 8 A ‘Bath great coat’ was a large, loose overcoat made of a thick, double-raised baize fabric called ‘Bath coating’ (Cunnington, pp. 222–25, 416). Its natural shape would be amorphous. JB’s inclination to plumpness would make it ‘rotund’. 9 JB’s sartorial dandyism is expressed in comments not only on his pinchbeck buckles, but on his chocolate suit (see To AE, 22 Jan. [E–B]). 10 Katherine Colquhoun. JB took tea with ‘Miss C’ on 2 Mar., although he had not mentioned her in his abbreviated journal since the random jottings for early Jan. (Journ.). 11 AE’s ‘Ode to Good-nature’ and JB’s ‘Ode to Ingratitude’ are both fictions, not actual poems. 12 Captain Archibald Erskine, AE’s brother, was on his way southward to London; he had departed Edinburgh on or after 16 Feb. (Journ.), and had seen AE in Morpeth by the time of this letter. 13 This discussion took place after AE’s first meeting with JB in mid-May 1761. The line is probably another burlesque invention, since it plays off themes in To AE, 16 Feb. (MS), and AE was in Morpeth 7 Feb. 14 The Edinburgh street called ‘the Castle-hill’ reached from the Esplanade (refurbished 1753) and ‘Castle Hill Walk’ to the Lawnmarket. It is likely that AE refers either to the walk or the hill street: ‘the hill became the favourite promenade of the citizens’ c. 1709 (Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 79–94). Arnot offers a description of Edinburgh Castle (pp. 290–93); the book has two illustrations by the Hon. John Elphinstone of the Edinburgh Castle and the rock on which it is sited. ‘It is situated on a precipitate, and in some parts perpendicular rock, about three hundred feet high from its base, and, except on its east side, is inaccessible’. Tourist access to the castle was still control-

led by the military since the Castle remained an active garrison for anywhere between 400–1000 soldiers. 15 The Tower of London was still used as a gaol for political prisoners; JB’s future friend John Wilkes would be interned there in 1763. Yet it was also a venue for tourists, and contained the remnants of a royal ‘Tower Menagerie’ or zoo which survived until 1834 (Wheatley and Cunningham, iii. 391–400; Lond. Encyclopedia). 16 Westminster Bridge, a masonry bridge linking Westminster and Lambeth, was planned 1721–38, built 1738–49, and opened 1750; dogs were forbidden and graffiti was punishable by death. Thieves hid in the bridge’s alcoves originally designed as rain shelters (Phillips, pp. 14–17; Lond. Encyclopedia). Another pun on ‘long noses’ redolent of Tristram Shandy. 17 Bloomsbury Square had been laid out in 1662 for the 4th Earl of Southampton (whose mansion north of the square, ‘Southampton House’, was renamed ‘Bedford House’ in 1734). The leases of the Square’s ‘little Towne’ regulated house sizes, and provided stables and a market (Barter Street). Its proximity to the criminal district of St. Giles meant that it had a high rate of robbery and theft. Despite its placid tone, it was the site of the 1765 Spitalfield weavers’ riot and of mob arson in the Gordon Riots of 1780 (Phillips, pp. 210–11; Lond. Encyclopedia). AE’s comparison is perhaps based on the two flanking streets which puffed out from the square. 18 Constitution Hill, NW corner of Green Park, was an unfenced trackway on a hill (hence AE’s pun on ‘high forehead’, although Primrose Hill would have been more apt). The hill had been used for constitutional walks since Charles II’s reign (Phillips, pp. 72–74; Lond. Encyclopedia). 19 ‘China Row’ is ‘Cheyne Row’, a row of Queen Anne houses. AE’s punning on ‘chin’, ‘china’, and ‘cheyne’ suggests the similarity in eighteenth-century pronunciations of those words (Lond. Encyclopedia). 20 Given the date of this letter in early 1762, possibly a reference either to Almack’s Coffee-House in Curzon Street (fl. 1754–59) which was ‘open to all comers’, or more likely to its descendant Almack’s Tavern, a ‘common Alehouse or Victualling-House’ which opened at No. 49 Pall Mall in 1759, expanded in the 1760s (and perhaps transformed into an exclusive club building in 1764). AE’s joke about ‘tongue and … teeth’ is unclear; it may refer to the talkative nature of the clientele.

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Probably not a reference to the more famous and exclusive Almack’s Club, No. 50, Pall Mall, since it was only founded 1762 (or perhaps 1764) by William Almack, who provided members with newspapers, meals, and gambling. Almack’s club was the rival of Arthur’s, and in 1762–64 the parent of Boodle’s and Brooks’s. Almack’s equally famous Assembly Rooms in King Street, St. James’s were not built until 1765 (Phillips, p. 62; Lond. Encyclopedia; Lond. Signs, items 1584 and 2148, p. 5; Lond. Coffee Houses, item 1584, p. 670). 21 Probably the much-discussed ‘Shakespear’ or ‘Shakespear’s Head’ Coffee Housecum-tavern in the northeast corner of the Great Piazza of Covent Garden, 27–28 Russell Street, fl. 1738–1833. JB would drink wine there on 19 May 1763 (Journ.), and it was later a haunt of William Hickey and politicians such as Wilkes and Fox (Phillips, pp. 137–39; Lond. Coffee Houses, item 1192, pp. 525–27). See also the anonymous account of the ribald activities there, Memoirs of the Shakespear’s Head in Covent Garden, by the Ghost of Shakespear, 1755. Its reputation for prostitution most likely accounts for AE’s linking the site to ‘lips’. Lillywhite, however, recorded similarlynamed establishments in Clerkenwell (fl. 1742–70), Little Marlborough Street (fl. 1736–50), and Drury Lane (fl. 1764); see Lond. Signs, items 13167–80, pp. 487–88. 22 Hockley in the Hole, near and northwest of Clerkenwell Green. It was known from the early 1600s for its brutal Bear Garden diversions, including igniting fireworks attached to animals, dog-fighting, bear-, bull-, and ass-baitings, and boxing (hence AE’s association of the site with ‘fists’). The Leadenhall market butchers’ dogs fought in bouts there. Mrs. Peachum says in The Beggar’s Opera: ‘You should go to Hockley in the Hole … to learn valour; these are the schools that have bred so many brave men’ (Wheatley and Cunningham, ii. 216–18). 23 The ‘Royal Italian Opera House’ was the same building as Covent Garden Theatre on Bow Street, and had opened in 1732. It contained Handel’s organ and the winecellar of the Beef-Steak Society. That structure remained in use (and was repaired after theatre riots such as those of 1763) until the 1792 renovations created what some have described as an essentially ‘new’ structure (Wheatley and Cunningham, i. 465–66; Lond. Encyclopedia). Its appeal, as some critics of the opera complained, was primarily to the ‘ears’, hence AE’s humour. 24 The harlequin shows, ancestors of

pantomime, were profitable spectacles for the London theatres, often involving ‘magical’ lavish set changes and special effects designed for visual appeal. Although the Harlequin character himself remained in the traditional commedia garb, the stagecraft transcended the simplicity of Harlequin’s origins to become elaborate machine spectacle. That focus on the visual is presumably why AE associated it with ‘eyes’. The decade spanning 1755–66 alone saw at least fourteen separate Harlequin plays: Harlequin Fortunatus (1755), Harlequin Skeleton (1755), Mercury Harlequin (1756), Harlequin Mountebank (1756), Harlequin Statue (1756), Harlequin’s Frolic … to Prussia (1757), Harlequin Ranger (1757), Harlequin’s Maggot (1757), Harlequin’s Vagaries (1757), Harlequin Happy (1757), Harlequin Sorceror (1757), Harlequin’s Invasion (1759), Harlequin Hussar (1760), and Harlequin Dr. Faustus (1766) (Lond. Stage, IV. ii, plate of Harlequin between pp. 880–81, ‘Index’ pp. xxxix, lxv; indicates earliest performance in the period 1747–76 rather than year of composition or publication, for which see ESTC). 25 Craven Street, formerly Spur Alley, redeveloped by the Craven family c. 1730; Benjamin Franklin resided there 1757–62 (No. 36) and 1764–72 (Lond. Encyclopedia). Mainly residential, it was not known for its places which would appeal to the ‘stomach’. AE’s choice of this street is more likely a pun on ‘a craven stomach’—cowardly and weak. 26 St. Paul’s Churchyard businesses, traditionally stationers and printers, were comprised of both the substantial shops and residences of printers such as John Newbery, and the humbler booths around the cathedral which were simply points of sale. In Hogarth’s ‘Beer Street’, with which AE seems to have been familiar (From AE, 13 Dec. 1761), a tag attached to a basket reads ‘Mr. Pastem, the Trunk Maker, St. Paul’s Ch. Yd’ (Lond. Encyclopedia). Here the pun is on the anatomical and utilitarian ‘chests’ and ‘trunks’. Mortimer’s The Universal Director (1763), Part II, p. 78 listed eleven trunkmakers in London. Two trunkmakers—‘James Bryant’ and Mr. ‘Clements’—were located in ‘the corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard’. 27 Leadenhall Market in Gracechurch Street was named after a 14th-century leadroofed mansion. The market and mansion burned in the Great Fire, but the market was rebuilt around three courtyards, the first being a beef market (hence AE’s jest on the word ‘calf’), which also sold leather (another dimension to AE’s use of the word ‘calf’),

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wool, and raw hides; the second being primarily vendors of veal, mutton, and lamb, but also sellers of fish, poultry, and cheese; the third being the herbmarket of fruits and vegetables. The market courtyards existed in much the same form c. 1666–1881 (Lond. Encyclopedia). 28 Covent Garden Market began 1656 with temporary stalls in the Bedford House Garden. It had been licensed in 1670 and leased with the right to set up permanent shops and buy and sell flowers, roots, herbs, and fruit, although as late as 1710 it was only a small set of sheds in a residential area. The move of the Stocks Market to Fleet Market in 1737 boosted its business, and by 1748 sheds often had ‘upper storeys’, and potters joined the greengrocers. The complex was rebuilt c. 1748, and replaced 1829– 31 (Lond. Encyclopedia). The pun on ‘pulse’ or the edible seeds of legumes notes the market’s focus on herbs and vegetables. 29 Tyburn-Tree, the place of execution, hence AE’s joke on ‘having one’s neck stretched’ as a metaphor for hanging. 30 Newgate Prison in Newgate Street had been the site of a prison since the Middle Ages. The 1672 ‘new prison’ was known for its architectural statues and emblems. That building was pulled down and yet another prison built on the site in 1770–78. The place was not only unsanitary and malodorous, but riddled with extortion rackets run by keepers, turnkeys, and prisoners. AE’s joke on a Newgate ‘gait’ refers to the fact that unless they paid the keeper a fee, convicts could be kept in irons and forced thereby to shuffle about, sometimes chained to the floor (Lond. Encyclopedia). 31 Fleet Street was perhaps a ‘navel’ of London because of its central location; additionally, the lower Fleet River until channelled underground as a sewer in 1766 was a hole in which rubbish collected (Lond. Encyclopedia). 32 Blowbladder Street later became the east end of Newgate Street. It stretched from Butcher Hall Lane to the Conduit. Blown-up animal bladders full of air were sold there for use as containers for liquid, hence AE’s joke on lungs as well as bladder. By 1720, however, the butchers and bladder vendors had left the street and were replaced by milliners and seamstresses. Samuel Foote in Taste (1752) had contrasted ‘Blow Bladder breeding’ to the manners of ‘the Court end of the town’ (Wheatley and Cunningham, i. 209–10). 33 The Mansion House, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of London. The

permanent residence, discussed from 1670 and planned 1728–35, was built 1739–52 on the site of the old Stocks Market. In 1768 pro-Wilkes Rioters broke windows and chandeliers. AE’s idea of the mansion as a ‘hat’ may have some connection to the design of George Dance the Elder which contained two tall clerestory extrusions, elements derided by critics as ‘Noah’s Ark’ and the ‘Mayor’s Nest’, and removed in 1795 and 1842 (Lond. Encyclopedia). 34 The Royal Exchange, Threadneedle Street and Cornhill. A Royal Exchange had existed from 1567. The ‘second Royal Exchange’ was built 1667–69, and used until destroyed by a fire in 1838. Since not all of the shops were leased, entities such as the R. E. Assurance, Lloyd’s, the Gresham Lecture Room, and the Lord Mayor’s Court Office were located there in the eighteenth century, with the East India Company stowing pepper in the vaults alongside bankers’ caches (Lond. Encyclopedia). As the national bourse, the ‘’Change’ dealt in sums far larger than guineas. 35 The used-clothes market of ‘Rag Fair’ operated in Rosemary Lane (Royal Mint Street), and had likely begun in the seventeenth century. Pope’s The Dunciad mentioned its ‘tatter’d ensigns’ and footnoted it as ‘a place near the Tower of London, where old cloaths and frippery are sold’ (i. 27 and Pope’s note, Butt ed., p. 351). Pennant claimed that he saw a man fully clothed for 14 d.; it remained a source of affordable clothing for the London poor until c. 1911 (Lond. Encyclopedia). 36 Billingsgate Market, E. of London Bridge, Lower Thames Street. Known for its fish sellers, it had existed since c. 1016. Until a redesign in 1850, it was only a set of ‘low booths and sheds, with a range of wooden houses with a piazza in front … as shelters, and for the purpose of … trade’. A 1698 Act of Parliament broke the fishmongers’ monopoly and allowed ‘a free and open market for all sorts of fish’, although the market also sold corn, malt, salt, victuals, and fruit. Hungerford Market competed for its business after 1749 (Lond. Encyclopedia). The association of foul language and scolding with the fishwives of Billingsgate dated back to the mid-seventeenth century and was mentioned by Marvell and Pope (Wheatley and Cunningham, i. 181–84). 37 Grub Street (later [1830] Milton Street), from the seventeenth century a byword for ‘hack’ authors (Lond. Encyclopedia). 38 The Boswell family residence in Edinburgh was in the Parliament Close.

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9 MARCH 1762 39 Probably the Erskine family residence in Canongate. Campbell’s Land was situated on the north side of the Canongate, east of the Tolbooth (The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, 1922, xi. 7). 40 William Nairne, advocate, later Lord Dunsinane. He was possibly the ‘N———’ discussed in From AE, 20 Jan., n. 7. He had written for Collection II a four-line reply to AE’s ballad on him, ‘The Lawyer’s Overthrow’ (pp. 38–43):

Your humour and jests, merry Andrew, we prais’d, We laugh’d when your ballad you read; ’Twas your figure and manner our merriment rais’d, But the joke, now you print it, is fled.

Donaldson had added Nairne’s reply to Collection II by cancelling a leaf (D4, pp. 43– 44). See Lit. Car. p. 10.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 9 March 1762 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 516).

Edinburgh, 9 March 1762. DEAR ERSKINE: Can a man walk up the Cowgate, after a heavy rain, without dirtying his Shoes1—I might have said the soles of his Shoes—and indeed, to put the matter beyond dispute, I would yet have you to understand me so; for, although nothing is so common as to use a part for the whole—pars pro toto (ut dicunt).2 Yet, if you should be out of humour, with a bad Dinner, a bad Lodging, an ill-drest shirt, or an ill-printed Book, you might be disposed to cavil, and object that in critical Precision of language (supposing a Man to walk slow) he could not be said to have dirtied his shoes; no more than a Boarding School Girl who has cut her finger in paring a turnip, could be said to have mangled her Carcase. But, to proceed, can a Man make a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land from the Island of Great-Britain, without the aid of navigation? Can a Man read Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast, without feeling an Emotion of any kind? Can a Man walk in the mall3 at noon, carrying his Bretches upon an enormous Pole, without being laugh’d at? Can a Man of acknowledged ignorance and Stupidity write a Tragedy superior to Hamlet, or a genteel Comedy superior to the Careless Husband?4 I need not wait for an answer. No word but no will do. It is self-evident. No more, my friend, can he who is lost in dissipation, write a Letter. As I am at present so circumstanced, accept this short line in answer to your last, and write very soon to your affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 In the absence of underground sewers and systematic refuse disposal the Edinburgh streets often were fouled by sewage and garbage, especially during and after heavy rains which drove the detritus downhill. JB would refer to this ‘odoriferous’ situation in the opening pages of Hebrides, on SJ’s first arrival in Edinburgh: ‘A zealous Scotsman would have wished Mr. Johnson to be without one of his five senses upon this occasion’ (14 Aug. 1773). The Cowgate was a long spinal east–west street which spanned the city; by 1833 it was ‘Low and obscure and squalid’, and it was thought of as a longstanding home to the Edinburgh poor. Yet the length and diversity of the street makes it difficult to

generalize, and like the Canongate it still had inhabitants of fashion and status in the mid-eighteenth century (Robert Chambers, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh, 1833, pp. 321–24; Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 238–67). From Nov. 1769 to May 1770, JB and his wife lived in the Cowgate immediately after their marriage (Defence, p. 7). 2 ‘A part for the whole, as they say’. 3 The Pall-Mall or Mall walk in St. James’s Park. The phallic humour of the JB– AE correspondence reappears here in the image of the ‘enormous Pole’. 4 Colley Cibber’s The careless husband. A comedy, 1705, had premiered in 1704, and remained in the repertory with revivals fre-

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quent through most of 1755–67 (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 496, 1247, ‘Index’ xxvi). The text was in its supposed ‘eighth edition’ by 1760 (ESTC T19955), and existed in Dublin piracies (e.g., 1752, 1760) and Glasgow (1753, 1759) and Edinburgh (1755) re-

prints as well as Tonson’s London editions (e.g., 1756). The general esteem (including JB’s) for Cibber’s comedies contradicts Pope’s influential characterization of Cibber as a mere dunce.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 9 March 1762 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 84–85 [Letter XXIII]. Edinburgh, March 9, 1762. Dear ERSKINE, CAN a man walk up the Cowgate after a heavy rain without dirtying his shoes? I might have said the soles of his shoes: —and, indeed, to put the matter beyond dispute, I would yet have you to understand me so; for although nothing is so common as to use a part for the whole; yet if you should be out of humour with a bad dinner, a bad lodging, an ill-drest shirt, or an ill-printed book, you might be disposed to cavil, and object, that in critical precision of language, (supposing a man to walk slow) he could not be said to have dirtied his shoes, no more than a boarding-school girl, who has cut her finger in paring an apple, could be said to have mangled her carcass. But to proceed; can a man make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from the Island of Great Britain, without the aid of navigation? Can a man walk in the Mall at noon, carrying his breeches upon an enormous long pole, without being laughed at? Can a man of acknowledged ignorance and stupidity, write a tragedy superior to Hamlet? or a genteel comedy, superior to the Careless Husband? I need not wait for an answer. No word but no, will do: it is self-evident. No more, my friend, can he who is lost in dissipation, write a letter. I am at present so circumstanced; accept this short line in answer to your last, and write very soon to Your affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL.

To ‘Madam’, and ‘your La[dyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland), ?after 22 March and before 14 April 1762 Not reported. Hypothetical, and based on the dubious accuracy of the identification of the addressee of To ‘Madam’, and ‘your La[dyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland), 14 Apr. In that letter, JB wrote: ‘your Ladyships last favour gave me infinite happiness, for by giving me so speedy an answer you convinced me of your regard and of your realy having my interest at heart’. JB’s previous surviving letter to her was To the Countess of Northumberland, 6 Jan. 1762. If the letter was to Lady Northumberland, the topic of JB’s query and the countess’ answer remains unknown: it might have concerned JB’s scheme to enter the Guards, or his London ambitions more generically. The tentative dating offered here is based on JB’s discussion of his Guards scheme for a return to London. On 22 Mar. JB reported ‘long conversation wt My Lord & resolved Guards’; on 24 Mar. he added: ‘resolved to set out immed & prosec. Guar’ (Journ.). However, as he was generally trying to cultivate Lady Northumberland’s patronage and society, there is no reason to hypothesize an inevitable business scheme in any of his letters

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to her. Furthermore, the language used—‘so speedy an answer’—implies that her letter (presuming it was her letter) arrived unexpectedly rapidly after JB had sent his, and so a date closer to early Apr. may be more likely.

To the Earl of Eglinton, ?after 24 March–May 1762 Not reported. Summarized in Journ. 25 Jan. 1763. In Jan. 1763, Eglinton offered his memory of JB’s letter’s contents: ‘You wrote to me, in May last, that you had got your Fathers consent, and therefore you hoped I would now get you into the Guards. But then you desired expressly that your Commission might be in one of the Battalions at home’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763). If Eglinton’s memory of the letter as reported by JB were the sole source, a date of May would be undisputed. This was perhaps the first of the two letters that Eglinton mentioned in the conversation of 25 Jan. 1763: ‘You wrote to me two letters. The first treated the thing [the matter of JB’s specifying his military service] slightly’ (Journ.). The reason for suggesting that JB’s letter might have been written as early as after 24 Mar. is that in the same argument, JB claimed that he had sought Eglinton’s assistance just after ‘I got my Father’s consent. I immediatly applied to you’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763). Lord Auchinleck’s consent to JB’s scheme appears to be datable to late Mar.: ‘long conversation wt My Lord & resolved Guards … My Lord & I settled I should go to Countrey & Study till June & that he would use his interest’, presumably to gain a commission (Journ. 22–24 Mar.). Furthermore, JB wrote to AE on 22 Apr. that he had already made application to procure an ensign’s commission: ‘I wrote to you last week informing you that I had at last obtained leave to go into the Guards. Application is now making to procure my Commission’. JB’s memory of writing soon after gaining consent would not correspond well with Eglinton’s recollection that JB waited until May to write. Yet JB did not in the argument or in the Journ. claim that Eglinton spoke in error when he said ‘May’, and the MS clearly reads ‘May’ and not ‘Mar’.

From the Earl of Eglinton, ?early April–?early June 1762 Not reported. Summarized in Journ. 25 Jan. 1763. Eglinton’s reply to the not reported To Eglinton, ?after 24 Mar.–May. JB accused Eglinton of having discouraged JB, either by delaying a reply or by writing discouraging or angry words, or both: ‘And you know my Lord how you used me, how you put me off.’ In his recollection of this letter in late Jan. 1763, Eglinton claimed to have pointed out the difficulties raised by his request: ‘Now will you consider what sort of demand this was. No doubt, it would have been the utmost difficulty for me to get such a thing [as a Foot Guards commission] at any rate; & I would have required every argument & among the rest, that the young man was anxious to go upon service. But how could I possibly ask for one at home[?]. And you know Jamie I wrote you this very strongly’. JB replied, ‘You did so My Lord. But you should have done it more gently’. Eglinton responded, ‘I confess to you, that my letter was too harsh from a man to his freind. But then you must consider that I was realy in a Passion, for your having brought me into a sad scrape, by publishing your Cub’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763). Eglinton’s riposte means that his letter had to have been written in the wake of his embarrassment over the publication of JB’s Cub, which was advertised as for sale 11 Mar. (Lit. Car. p. 16). Furthermore, the Duke of York would have needed the time to read or hear of the Cub and express to Eglinton that ‘he was very angry’ at the poem. The combination of JB’s memory that Eglinton ‘put me off’ and Eglinton’s memory that he was replying to a letter written in May account for the possibility of a June date.

To the Earl of Eglinton, ?early April–?early June 1762 Not reported. Summarized in Journ. 25 Jan. 1763. JB’s reply to the not reported From Eglinton, ?early Apr.–?early June. JB mentioned the letter in the conversation of 25 Jan.

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1763: ‘I answered your letter & told you that I was willing to go abroad’. Eglinton admitted that JB’s letter had expressed a willingness to serve outside Britain: ‘But it was in such a way, that I could not imagine it anything else than a genteel evasion, and what I should have expected from a man of your sense & genius, if you did not want flatly to refuse going upon service, but yet chose to shun it …’. This was perhaps the first of the two letters which Eglinton mentioned in the conversation of 25 Jan. 1763: ‘You wrote me two letters. The first treated the thing [the matter of JB’s specifying his military service] slightly’ (Journ.). Eglinton was still in possession of JB’s 1762 letters on the Guards scheme in early 1763— he told JB, ‘I have your letters yet to show you’—but the letters have not been traced beyond that point.

From Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane, ?first half of April 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in To AE, 22 Apr. (MS): ‘It will not be in my power to answer Lady Betty’s letter as it deserves.’

From ‘Madam’, and ‘your La[dyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland), c. 1–7 April 1762 Not reported. Hypothetical, and based on the dubious accuracy of the identification of the addressee of To ‘Madam’, and ‘your La[dyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland), 14 Apr. In that letter, JB observed: ‘your Ladyships last favour gave me infinite happiness, for by giving me so speedy an answer you convinced me of your regard and of your realy having my interest at heart’. The subject matter of the lady’s reply is unknown: some hypotheses are discussed in the entry for To ‘Madam’, and ‘your La[dyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland), ?after 22 Mar. and before 14 Apr.

To ‘Madam’, and ‘your La[dyshi]p’ (?the Countess of Northumberland),1 Wednesday 14 April 1762 MS. Yale (L 989). A copy.

Auch:2 14 Ap: 1762 MADAM: Beleive me your Laps3 last [fvr]4 gave me infinite happiness, for by giving me so speedy an answer you convinced me of your regard and of your realy having my interest at heart. Would you believe it [Lrd Eglnt]5 has not yet written me a line which realy affects me a good deal. Altho’ he is very clever and very good, yet he has one fault which I have taken the liberty to tell him of, and that is his being very much dissipated. I know nothing that hurts a man more than this. It makes him offend his friends by neglecting them, while at the same time he is equaly inatentive to his own Interest, And besides (which one should think a very strong Argument) I maintain that one who is much dissipated cannot be a man of Pleasure. In order to relish what is agreable we must take time to taste it. The beauties of Nature and of art must carry on the most delightfull connections that human nature is capable of Attention and Activity are absolutely requisite. Lady Harriet Stewart6 is very well and remembers your Ladyship with much Regard. She desired me to present her best Respects. I trust to your Laps good offices when I come to Town.7 I remain etc. 218

14 APRIL 1762 1 The letter’s addressee is not mentioned by name. Presumed to be the Countess of Northumberland. 2 Auchinleck House. On 7 Apr., JB had ‘Prepared for journey to Auch[inleck] next day’; his writing from Auchinleck on 14 Apr. suggests that he most likely did leave Edinburgh on schedule. 3 That is, ‘Ladyship’s’. 4 The word ‘fvr’ (i.e., ‘favour’) is in shorthand characters. JB made considerable use of shorthand during this period, especially in his journal notes. Given the choice between several competing systems of shorthand, JB used Thomas Shelton’s system. Shelton’s shorthand, which claimed that it could be mastered in two hours since it only used repositioned variants of twenty-four Roman characters, appeared in several books, including Short writing the most exact methode (1626 [lost], 2nd ed. 1630); Tachygraphy the most exact and compendious methode of short and swift writing … (1635); A tutor of tachygraphy or short-writing … (1642); and Zeiglographia. Or A new art of short-writing never before published (1650). As with Hoyle’s or Walton’s works, editors

continued and expanded Shelton’s work after his death c. 1650 (ESTC). Although the book was most in vogue in the Restoration, when its system was used by Samuel Pepys, one eighteenth-century edition was published 1710 (ESTC T90546). 5 ‘Lrd Eglnt’ (i.e., ‘Lord Eglinton’) is in shorthand characters. 6 Lady Harriet Stewart (d. 1788), fifth daughter of the 6th Earl of Galloway (Scots Peer. iv. 165–66). Lady Harriet and JB were fourth cousins. In the autumn of 1762, JB would spend three days in Lady Harriet’s company at Galloway House in Sorbie, Wigtownshire. He wrote of her, ‘Lady Harriet Stewart is well-look’d sensible, and agreable when her Mother is not present of whom she stands most prodigiously in awe, which makes her appear to disadvantage’ (Journ. 25–27 Sept.). Lady Harriet three years later (1765) married Archibald Hamilton, later (1799) 9th Duke of Hamilton (Scots Peer. iv. 166; Comp. Peer. vi. 273). 7 If the addressee was the Countess of Northumberland, then ‘Town’ would signify London; otherwise, probably Edinburgh.

To Thomas Davies,1 ?c. Wednesday 14 April 1762 Not reported. To AE, 14 Apr. contains an address line, not in JB’s hand: ‘To Mr. Davies Bookseller [?Great Russell] street’.2 This address was apparently blotted out before completely dry. 1 Thomas Davies (?1712–85), educated at Edinburgh University, was briefly (c. 1730–c. 1735) a London bookseller, became a stage actor in the 1730s, lived variously in York, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and again became a London bookseller and publisher in 1762. It was at his house that JB would first meet Goldsmith on 25 Dec. 1762, and in his shop that JB would first

meet SJ on 16 May 1763. When Davies was bankrupted in 1778, SJ arranged a benefit to help mend his fortunes (Dict. of Printers, p. 71; Maxted, p. 62; Journ. 25 Dec. 1762, 16 May 1763). 2 ‘Tom Davies’ Shop’ was located at No. 8 Russell St., Covent Garden from 1762 to 1785 (Maxted, p. 62).

To Andrew Erskine, Wednesday 14 April 1762 MS. Hyde Collection. This letter appears to be an original, not a copy or draft. JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B. (blotted, not in JB’s hand): To Mr. Davies Bookseller [?Great Russell] street (see preceding letter).

ADDRESS

Auchinleck, 14 April 1762 DEAR ERSKINE: What is human Nature? A System of Inconsistency. What is Captain Andrew He is human. Ergo, The Captain is inconsisten In the 219

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name of all Authors ancient or moder In the name of the Bark of Trees, In the name of the Ægyptian Reed,1 In the name of waxen Tables,2 In the name of Paper-mill,3 In the name of Turkey, Goose, and Crow-Quills,4 In the name of lead-Pencils,5 In the name of the Roman Stylus,6 In the name of all sorts of writing Ink,7 In the name of old Father Time, with his Scythe, In the name of Cooks French and English,8 what is the reason of your present Indolence? It is now about five weeks since you have written to me:9 A very long time let me tell you to be deprived of the salutiferous effects of your merry Epistles. I realy feel myself much the worse of your neglect, and if it were to continue as long as it has done, should be apprehensive of the most dismal consequences. I have now at last obtained my Father’s consent to go into the Guards,10 which makes me very happy, as I can live in whatever way I find most agreable. I hope soon to accost you in the following words, I know thee well a Soldier thou art. Captain Andrew!—so am I.11 I left Edinburgh about ten days ago;12 and am to be in the Country till June.13 Lady Kelly14 told me that you expected to have liberty to return to Scotland this Summer.15 If that be the case, we shall be as happy as ever. I just saw Dempster16 one minute, who told me that he had been with you at Morpeth. He looks jolly and wise, and elevates his crest, much like a Parliament Man. Pray write soon to your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL I now want Franks.17 1 The papyrus or ‘paper reed’ (Papyrus antiquorum), used by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans for a proto-paper. Its use by the Egyptians was discussed in the Cyclopedia: ‘Paper, they made … of the stalk of the Papyrus’ (Chambers’ Cyclopedia, 1727–41, s.v. ‘Paper’). 2 The wax tablet or ‘waxen table’ was a popular device in Roman culture for making temporary records, analogous to the slate in its uses. It was used in England into the Early Modern era, and often appeared in pairs (a ‘pair tables’). Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) made the analogy (which also appears in Aristotle) of the newborn human mind to a ‘rased’ and levelled waxen table free from impressions (OED, ‘tabula’, ‘table’). 3 An odd item in JB’s list. While the other writing implements were ancient or modern household items, the paper-mill was a commercial building where paper was manufactured or the machine used for its manufacture (OED). 4 The goose-feather quill was apparently the most common material for making quill

pens (OED, s.v. ‘quill’). 5 The term ‘lead-pencil’ was to distinguish the sort of graphite pencil (then wrongly called ‘black-lead’) which survives today and which had been in use since the seventeenth century. There were also pencils of chalk, charcoal, or slate, as well as the ‘pencil’ which was an artist’s paint-brush formed into a quill. See OED, s.v. ‘pencil’, ‘black-lead’, quoting Thomas Carlyle (Fraser’s Magazine [1832], v. 390): ‘Boswell is there with assskin and black-lead to note thy jargon’; see also Henry Petroski, The Pencil: a History of Design and Circumstance, 1990. 6 The stylus was a pointed iron used by Romans to etch onto tables of wax; styluses could also be used to make marks on slate. The Latin word ‘stylus’ was often englished as ‘style’ (Dict. SJ). 7 Various coloured eighteenth-century inks could be bought either ready-made (a relative luxury), or in powdered or caked form to be mixed with water as needed. Some inks were even home-made from available materials by the inventive or thrifty (Plant, p. 158).

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14 APRIL 1762 8 Particularly in elite households, French cooks and French methods grew in influence. At the beginning of the century, cookery books were mainly written ‘by men who had served apprenticeships with a French chef who had worked at court or for the aristocracy …. The attitude to French cooking was ambivalent. It was considered very fashionable to hire a French chef (whose skill consisted largely in elaborate “made dishes” using an extravagant special gravy called “cullis”), and yet they, and French food, were scoffed at’ (Jennifer Stead, Food and Cooking in 18th-Century Britain, 1985, p. 13). For the case of a notable English cook influenced by French technique, see William Verral, The Cook’s Paradise, Being William Verral’s ‘[A] Complete System of Cookery’ Published in 1759, ed. R. L. Megroz, 1948; also republished as William Verral’s Cookery Book, ed. Ann Haly [n.d.]. Verral was a pupil of M. de St. Clouet, who had been Chef to the Duke of Newcastle who was prime minister from 1754 to 1762. When Verral assumed direction of the White Hart inn, he cooked after the French fashion. There was considerable resistance to the importing of French cooks and French cuisine from culinary John Bulls who defended English tradition. One of the most famous opponents of Frenchification in British cooking was Hannah Glasse, who argued that ‘if Gentlemen will have French Cooks, they must pay for French Tricks. A Frenchman, in his own Country, would dress a fine Dinner of twenty Dishes, and all genteel and pretty, for the Expence he will put on an English Lord to for dressing one Dish …. So much is the blind Folly of this Age, that they would rather be impos’d on by a French Booby, than give Encouragement to a good English Cook!’ (Glasse, The Art Of Cookery Made Plain And Easy, 1747, facsimile with introduction, ed. Jennifer Stead, Priscilla Bain, and Alan Davidson, 1983, pp. i–ii). 9 Five weeks before 14 Apr. would be 10 Mar. Probably a reference to From AE, 2 Mar., although that date would be closer to six weeks than five. 10 The Foot Guards, in one of the regiments of which JB hoped to obtain an ensigncy. The exact timing of JB’s arrival at his Guards scheme to have a life in London is difficult to ascertain because of the sketchy and incomplete nature of the journal for these months, and this letter is the first indisputable reference to Lord Auchinleck’s granting consent for JB to enter the Guards. During the preceding months, JB seems to

have been in revolt against his promised legal studies. The 16 Mar. entry begins, ‘Had said no law & been out for many days’, and the reference to ‘the Law Class’ meeting at Thom’s Tavern 15 Mar. could either be serious or a Soaping Club joke. References to JB’s dream to abandon the law for the army are common in Mar.–Apr., and are intermingled with his feudings and reconciliations with his father. On 13 Mar. JB ‘was unsettled & thought of Guards’. An earlier entry for the same day may perhaps contain mention of the scheme: ‘was jolly— resolved to propose the scheme if it succeeds, Bravo! independence if not, a good adventure’. Also on 16 Mar. JB ‘went to my Lord [Auchinleck] made up matters’, and again ‘thought of Guards’. On 2 Apr. JB had ‘hope of Commiss but did not care much’, although on 1 Apr. he ‘talk’d of London &c.’. JB many times ‘determined’ or ‘resolved’ before gaining consent. On 20 Mar. JB ‘supt Erskine long Conversation. having now determined Guards.’ On 22 Mar. JB had ‘long conversation wt My Lord [Auchinleck] & resolved Guards’. On 24 Mar. JB again ‘resolved to set out imed & prosec. Guar[ds]’, and ‘at night My Lord & I settled I should go to Countrey [i.e., Auchinleck] & Study [law] till June & that he would use his interest’ to aid JB’s ambition. The phrase used earlier on that same day, ‘he insisted pass [legal qualifications] & then you can come back’ may have been said by Lord Auchinleck, but may as likely have been uttered by Pitfour, with whom JB supped (Journ. 13, 22, 24 Mar.). 11 An untraced quotation, seemingly in a tetrameter. Shakespeare’s ‘I know thee well enough, thy name is Gloucester’ (King Lear, IV. vi. 177) is in a different metre. 12 JB’s entry for 7 Apr. recorded ‘Prepared for journey to Auch next day’, suggesting he had left Edinburgh on 8 Apr., six days before the date of this letter. Ten days earlier than 14 Apr. would have been 4 or 5 Apr., when JB was still socializing in Edinburgh. 13 JB most likely left Edinburgh 8 Apr. and returned to Edinburgh 9 June (Journ. 7 Apr., 9 June). In June ‘Erskine and his Sisters came to town’ (Journ.). 14 The Dowager Countess of Kellie, AE’s mother. 15 JB assumed that AE was still with his regiment at Morpeth. AE’s dating his next letter from the Macfarlane country seat at New Tarbet on 15 Apr. shows that he must have been granted leave by the 71st Foot earlier than the ‘Summer’, which only commenced in late June.

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14 APRIL 1762 16 GD, six months into his term as representative in the Commons for the Perth Burghs.

17 The custom of M.P.’s being granted ‘franks’ or free postage for letters is explained in To TS, 9 Dec. 1761, n. 11.

From Andrew Erskine, Thursday 15 April 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 86–87 [LETTER XXIV].

New-Tarbat, April 15, 1762. DEAR BOSWELL, The sun which rose on Wednesday last, with his first beams beheld you set out for Auchinleck, but he did not see me arrive in Edinburgh;1 however, he was good-natured enough to lend a little light to the moon,2 by the help of which, about twelve at night I landed at Peter Ramsay’s:3 the thoughts of seeing you next day kept up my spirits,4 during a stage of seventeen miles.5 William6 he snored; I called upon you, after being refreshed with soft slumbers, in which my guardian genius did not inform me of your absence: but oh! when the maid told me you was gone, what were my emotions! she beholding me affected in a most supreme degree, tried to administer comfort to me, and plainly told me, that you would be very sorry you had missed me, this delivered in an elegant manner, sooth’d me prodigiously. I began writing this at Graham’s in Glasgow,7 but was interrupted by a jowl of Salmon; every thing there reminded me of you. I was in the same room you and I were in,8 you seemed placed before me, your face beamed a black ray upon me. I am now at New-Tarbat, once more returned to the scenes of calm retirement, and placid meditation, as Mr. Samuel Johnson says in the Idler.9 We all wish to have you here, and we all agree in thinking, that there is nothing to hinder you to come. I must beg your pardon seriously for not writing to you, but I was really in such bad spirits, and such ill temper, at that cursed place Morpeth, that it was impossible; but I assure you, I will make up terribly. I am recruiting again;10 I believe our regiment won’t go abroad this summer.11 I was glad to see by the London news-papers, that Mr. Robert Dodsley had at last published your Cub:12 Mr. H—— —13 shewed me a very severe Epigram14 that somebody in London had written upon it. You know it is natural to take a lick at a Cub.15 Pray come to us. I cannot all at once come into the way of letter-writing again, so I must conclude, Dear Boswell, Your affectionate friend, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 ‘Wednesday last’ in this case was Wed. 7 Apr. rather than Wed. 14 Apr. AE reached St. Mary’s Wynd in Edinburgh, as he reports in this letter, about midnight on 7 Apr.; the sun had risen in Edinburgh at 5:28 A.M. on that day, and set at 7:04 P.M. 2 According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, on 7 Apr. 98% of the moon’s visible disc was illuminated, and the full moon was on 8 Apr. The moon rose at 5:28 P.M. on 7 Apr., and set at 5:40 A.M. on 8 Apr., with lunar transit quite close to when AE perceived the moon at ‘twelve at night’, about

11:45 P.M. (U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department: ‘1762 Phases of the Moon: Universal Time [Greenwich Mean Time]’). 3 Peter Ramsay (fl. 1762, d. 1794), innkeeper (Scots Mag. 1794, p. 62). ‘Ramsay’s’ or ‘Peter Ramsay’s’ was an inn at the bottom of St. Mary’s Wynd, opposite the Cowgate Port. ‘Landed’ is a metaphor; the inn was not near water. The inn ‘does not appear to have ever boasted of great accommodations’ but earned its owner a fortune of £10,000–£30,000. In 1776 Ramsay adver-

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tised ‘a good house for entertainment, good stables for above one hundred horses, and sheds for above twenty carriages’. Paoli would stay there briefly in the early 1770s. James Grant claimed it was also called the ‘White Horse Inn’, but it should not be confused with the similarly-named institutions in Edinburgh such as Boyd’s White Horse Inn (Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 1825, i. 221, ii. 295–96; Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 299; Edinburgh Directory, 1773–74, 1889 reprt., p. 66). 4 E–B, ‘spririts’ 5 Here presumably a reference to AE’s stage from Morpeth to Edinburgh on the East Road, a distance of 102 miles. The ‘stage of seventeen miles’ AE mentioned was probably the final leg from Haddington to Edinburgh (The Town and Country Almanack, 1777, p. 172; cf. Taylor & Skinner, 1776, ‘A List of the Stages on the Great Roads’). 6 William ———, Erskine’s servant. ‘I need not tell you your letters are entertaining; I might as well … gravely disclose to my servant, that his name is William’ (From AE, 13 May). 7 Graeme’s or Graham’s was a Glasgow inn visited by JB on several occasions, including en route to his ‘New Tarbat Jaunt’ (From AE, 13 Dec. 1761, n. 23; Journ. 24 Dec. 1761). Graham’s was a convenient stopping-point on the way from Edinburgh to New Tarbet. The distance from Edinburgh to Glasgow, depending on the road taken, was about 43–48 miles; the road from Tarbet village to Glasgow was about 36 miles (Taylor & Skinner, ‘An Index … shewing the Distance from EDINBURGH’, ‘A List of Stages on the Great Roads’). 8 A reference to JB’s meeting AE at Graham’s in Glasgow on the preceding Christmas Eve (From AE, 13 and 16 Dec. 1761; Journ. 24 Dec. 1761). 9 ‘I am now as I could wish every man of wisdom and virtue to be, in the regions of calm content and placid meditation …’ (The Idler, no. 71 [25 Aug. 1759], ed. W. J. Bate and John M. Bullitt, 1963). 10 AE’s volunteering to serve as a recruiting-officer gave him a genteel excuse for leave from the tedium of his post in Northumberland. ‘[T]he best-known method of filling the regiments was, of course, the routine peacetime and wartime “beating up” for volunteers carried on by the recruiting parties—a subaltern, one or two NCOs, and a drummer … dispatched to likely or favourite areas direct from the regiments’. These parties were ‘especially common in

winter, after the harvest, when idle hands were most likely to be found’. The Press Acts were only in force during the Seven Years’ War from 1755 to 1757, so the recruiting parties were supposed to use economic incentives to gain volunteers (Houlding, pp. 117–18). AE seems to have spent an unusual amount of time arranging leaves from his unit. 11 Petitot’s Regiment (71st Foot) remained stationed in Great Britain into 1763, when the regiment was disbanded (Court and City Register, 1762–63; Army List, cf. early and late 1763 edns.; J. B. M. Frederick, Lineage Book of the British Army: Mounted Corps and Infantry, 1660–1968, 1969, p. 308). Although AE was (as ever) blasé about the dangers of the Seven Years’ War, the conflict dragged on. Indeed, war seemed likely to continue with France in the west. A sudden change in the east had left Austria to fight alone on the eastern front: the alteration of Russian policy from anti-Prussian to pro-Prussian, and the rumours (to be proven true on 9 Apr.) of a Swedish-Prussian peace. In fact, a new rationale for continuation of Britain’s role in the war had recently appeared through the war with Spain (declared 4 Jan.), the embarkation of British troops to help defend Portugal, and the massing of Royal Navy ships for ‘some grand enterprize … in the West Indies’. Furthermore, on 1 Apr. news of the reduction of Martinique had reached London. British and other Allied troops on the western Germanies’ front were skirmishing while awaiting the French spring campaign. In the Parliament and the press, the proponents of ending the war (because of its high cost of blood and money from 1756 to 1762) were mired in debate with those who wished to continue or even expand the war until France and Spain were decisively defeated. An article in May’s Gent. Mag. asserted that ‘The present war is a war of expence, and that nation which can the longest bear it will … prove victorious’. The author argued that Britain should continue the war in the hopes of acquiring Louisiana, Haiti, Cayenne, and the NorthAtlantic fisheries (Gent. Mag. Mar.–May 1762, xxxii. 162, 183–90, 194–95; see also ‘The History of the Present War’, Ann. Reg. 1762, pp. 1–36, and p. 65). 12 JB’s Cub, published by Robert Dodsley in quarto and sold for one shilling, was advertised in the Lond. Chron. 11 Mar. xi. 240 (Lit. Car. p. 16). Ralph Straus’s Robert Dodsley (p. 376) claimed the publication date was 4 Mar.

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Reviews appeared in Monthly Rev. 1762, xxvi. 233 and Crit. Rev. 1762, xiii. 273 (Antonia Forster, Index to Book Reviews in England, 1749–1774, 1990, p. 45). 13 Mr. H——— remains unidentified. He might perhaps be the ‘Mathew Henderson’ who ‘showed me the sarcastical Epigram upon it, which you mention’ (To AE, 8–9 May [MS] and n. 41). 14 The epigram has not been recovered. It is not known if it was published or only

circulated in manuscript. 15 A punning reference to the prevalent belief that mother bears ‘licked’ their cubs into shape after birth. See, for instance, Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI, ‘Like to a chaos, or an unlick’d bear-whelp’ (III. ii. 161), or Pope’s The Dunciad (1742), ‘So watchful Bruin forms, with plastic care,/ Each growing lump, and brings it to a Bear’ (i. 101–02, Butt ed.). To ‘take a lick’, of course, also meant to swat or whip at someone or something.

From the Earl of Eglinton, ?mid April–?mid June 1762 Not reported. Summarized in Journ. 25 Jan. 1763. Eglinton’s reply to the not reported To Eglinton, ?early Apr.–early June. Eglinton explained his objections to JB’s claim that he would prefer to serve only in a Guards regiment based in London: ‘I could not imagine it anything else than a genteel evasion …. I put that point very home to you. I expected an explicite answer’.

To the Earl of Eglinton, ?mid April–?mid June 1762 Not reported. Summarized in Journ. 25 Jan. 1763. JB’s reply to the not reported From Eglinton, ?mid Apr.–mid June. JB explained that his ‘meaning’ in the letter of clarification ‘was this, that my great plan in getting into the guards, was not so much to be a Soldier, as to be in the genteel character of a gentleman; and therefore I would have rather chose that my commission should have been in one of the Battallions at home. But I should certainly have rather gone abroad than not go in.’ He added, ‘I realy meant as I say, to go abroad, if that should be necessary’. Eglinton objected that ‘I did not understand you so’. Eglinton was angry at the evasive reply: ‘you only said that no doubt you would be very willing to go if your Regiment went. But this was what no man could refuse to do’. He also objected to JB’s ‘angry’ tone in the letter (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763). This was the second letter referred to by Eglinton: ‘You wrote me two letters … In the second you seemed very angry. I assure you, I took it in this light, that I thought you would not accept of a Commission in a Battallion in Germany’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763). Although Eglinton still claimed to have kept JB’s 1762 letters on the Guards scheme (‘I have your letters yet to show you’), the letters are not known to have survived beyond that point.

To Andrew Erskine, ?Thursday 22 April 1762 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 517).

Auchinleck, 22 August1 1762 MY DEAR ERSKINE: According to the System which actualy and at this instant of time prevails upon the countenance of the Earth Minutiae or little things (for I cannot presume so far as to use the plural littles2 altho’ we currently say the singular a little) are of most powerfull consequence. Your last Letter3 which I have just now read shows me the heart of a friend and of a Poet full of affection, And how do you think I made this very agreable discovery? Not from the cordial and warm Sentences which like good old neat Port made into a Bishop4 of moderate Zeal5 administered comfort to my heart. No no—These can be so well counterfeited and are withall so common grown that a Man whose Discernment is not 224

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above a yard deep would not judge from them. What determined my opinion was your addressing me in the words: My Dear Boswell! where the Pronoun My though consisting only of two letters beamed more conviction upon me than all the other two and twenty could have done.6 There is something so kind, something so expressive of inward heartfelt Regard in My that I perfectly doat upon it. If I dont love you, let me die! My dear My say I. If you had studied a little law7 as I have done, you would know how extensive the Dominions of Meum8 are, and if you had studied a little History as my Lady Kelly9 has done, then would you know what furious And direfull Battles have been carried on betwen the Partisans of meum on the one hand, and the Partisans of Tuum on the other hand. I have given you one example of the Prodigious consequence of little things. Multitudes more might be adduced, which I dare say you are sensible of. And now, My friend, let me congratulate you upon your Return to Happiness for without exageration I beleive you have a good share in the Affections of that fair tho’ coy Dame, where you are. For my part, I have never at any time, been so insipid so muddy and so standing-Water-like, as I have been of late.10 The Country is my aversion, and I assure you it requires great Patience to support a continued Series of Aversion. I realy have a very uncommon Distaste of a rural life, whether it be that the ordinary scenes to be met there fall infinitely short of my ideas of Pastoral Simplicity; or that I have acquired so strong a relish for the variety and hurry of a Town as to languish in the stillness of Retirement, or that I have not an agreable change of company, or that the Atmosphere is moist & heavy, I shall not determine. I wrote to you last week11 informing you that I had at last obtained leave to go into the Guards.12 Application is now making to procure my Commission. I am sure you will wish me joy On obtaining my long-desired Object. It will not be in my power to answer Lady Betty’s letter13 as it deserves. Nevertheless present her with the inclosed.14 I was realy in pain at the lethargy of our corespondence.15 Pray let us keep it up with our usual Spirit. I shall write at more length next time, & remain, Dear Erskine, Your very affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 The surviving MS of this letter is dated 22 Aug., while the heavily edited version in E–B is dated 22 Apr. JB’s statement in this letter: ‘I wrote to you last week informing you that I had at last obtained leave to go into the Guards’ shows 22 Apr. to be a more likely date, since Lord Auchinleck’s permission had been given on 24 Mar. (Journ.). JB may have correctly dated his own copy, which he used when preparing text for the printer. When revising the copy for E– B, JB omitted the first paragraph and half of the second paragraph, beginning the letter with, ‘I have never at any time, been so insipid’. Since all salutations in E–B are regularized to ‘Dear Erskine’ and ‘Dear Boswell’, JB’s comments on Erskine’s use of ‘My’ would make no sense. He substituted

for this material two shorter paragraphs on the fact that their most recent letters were written on the same day. He presumably has in mind To AE, 14 Apr. and From AE, 15 Apr., though To AE, 14 Apr. did not appear in E–B. 2 ‘Littles’ as a plural noun appears neither in English nor Scots dictionaries (OED; CSD; Dict. SJ; James Buchanan, Linguae Britannicae Vera Pronunciatio: Or, A New English Dictionary, 1757). 3 Presuming the redating of this letter is correct, probably a reference to From AE, 15 Apr. 4 Bishop, ‘A cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges, and sugar’ (Dict. SJ). JB later learned that it was one of SJ’s favourite drinks in the early 1750s (Life i. 251). OED

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defines it somewhat differently: ‘A sweet drink variously compounded, the chief ingredients being wine, oranges or lemons, and sugar; mulled and spiced port.’ 5 A joke on churchmanship as well as wine. A punch of ‘moderate Zeal’ would be moderately low in alcohol, despite being made of port, a fortified wine. A bishop of the Church of England of ‘moderate Zeal’ would have been more zealous than a Low Churchman, but less fiery than a High Churchman. 6 Since ancient Latin used ‘i’ for ‘j’ and ‘v’ for ‘u’, eighteenth-century scholars steeped in Anglo-Latinity often conflated the ‘i’ vowel and ‘j’ consonant and the ‘u’ vowel and ‘v’ consonant, although they recognized that these might be ‘more properly accounted’ or ‘ought to be considered’ as two separate letters. By this reckoning the alphabet contained 24 rather than 26 letters, ‘but as they were long confounded while the two uses were annexed to one form, the old custom still continues to be followed’ (Dict. SJ, s.v. ‘I’, ‘V’). 7 JB after his return in June 1760 had begun a reluctant two-year course of study of law under his father’s supervision. JB complained in May 1761 that he found his ‘flighty imagination quite cramp’d’ since he was ‘obliged to study Corpus Iuris Civilis’ (To WJT, 1 May 1761, Corr. 6. pp. 33–34). A letter to JJ of late Aug. 1761 had asserted, ‘I am reading law hard’ (To JJ, 21 Aug. 1761, Corr. 1, p. 12). Yet by early 1762 JB’s legal studies appear to have flagged. A 15 Mar. reference to ‘the Law Class’ meeting at Thom’s Tavern may have been in jest. Certainly the 16 Mar. entry suggested that JB had been chafing: ‘Had said no law & been out for many days’. On 24 Mar. someone, perhaps Pitfour or Lord Auchinleck, had told JB to study law until ‘he insisted pass [legal qualifications] & then you can come

back’. On 24 Mar. ‘at night’ JB and Lord Auchinleck had ‘settled’ on an agreement: ‘I should go to Countrey [i.e., Auchinleck] & Study [Scots law] till June’ (Journ. 15– 16, 24 Mar.). 8 ‘Meum’ being Latin for ‘mine’; a reference to the law of property, which attempts to define ‘meum’ and ‘tuum’ (mine and thine). Perhaps also an allusion to Tom Jones, bk. III, ch. 2: ‘the Game-keeper, a Fellow of a loose kind of Disposition, and who was thought not to entertain much stricter Notions concerning the Difference of meum and tuum, than the young Gentleman himself’ (Wesleyan ed., i. 119). 9 Janet (Pitcairn) Erskine, Dowager Countess of Kellie, AE’s mother. As a daughter of the Jacobite physician and poet Dr. Archibald Pitcairn, she would have had an additional incentive to the study of history (Scots Peer. v. 89). 10 JB’s Journal for early 1762 had contained several moments of worry about indolence and dissipation even while he was in an Edinburgh full of distractions and events. His Edinburgh journal had concluded on 7 Apr.: ‘was unsettled about life’ (Journ. 7 Mar., 7 Apr.). 11 To AE, 14 Apr., the Wednesday of the previous week (presuming the redating of this letter to be correct). 12 ‘I have now at last obtained my Father’s consent to go into the Guards’ (To AE, 14 Apr). 13 The letter (From Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane, ?first half of Apr.) is not reported. 14 The inclosure (To Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane, 22 Apr.) is not reported. 15 ‘It is now about five weeks since you have written to me: A very long time … I realy feel myself much the worse of your neglect’ (To AE, 14 Apr.).

To Andrew Erskine, ?Thursday 22 April 1762 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 88–90 [LETTER XXV].

Auchinleck, April 22, 1762. Dear ERSKINE, THIS is a strange world that we live in. Things turn out in a very odd manner. Every day produces something more wonderful than another. Earthquakes,1 murders,2 conflagrations,3 inundations,4 jubilees,5 operas,6 marriages,7 and pestilence,8 unite to make mortal men gape and stare. But your last letter and mine being wrote on the same day,9 astonishes me still more than all these things put together. 226

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This is the most unaccountable rhodomontade that I ever uttered. I am really dull at present, and my affectation to be clever, is exceedingly aukward. My manner resembles that of a footman who has got an ensign’s commission,10 or a kept mistress who is made a wife. I have not at any time been more insipid, more muddy, and more standingwater like than I am just now. The country is my aversion. It renders me quite torpid. Were you here just now, you would behold your vivacious friend a most stupid exhibition. It is very surprising that the country should affect me so; whether it be that the scenes to be met with there, fall infinitely short of my ideas of pastoral simplicity; or that I have acquired so strong a relish for the variety and hurry of a town life, as to languish in the stillness of retirement; or that the atmosphere is too moist and heavy, I shall not determine. I have now pretty good hopes of getting soon into the guards, that gay scene of life of which I have been so long and so violently enamoured. Surely this will cause you to rejoice. I have lately had the pleasure and the pride of receiving a most brilliant epistle from Lady B———. It excells Captain Andrew’s letters by many degrees. I have picked as many diamonds out of it, as to make me a compleat set of buckles;11 I have turned so much of it into brocade waistcoats, and so much into a very rich suit of embroidered horse-furniture. I know how unequal I am to the task of answering it; nevertheless present her Ladyship with the inclosed. It may amuse her a little. It is better to have two shillings in the pound, than nothing at all.12 I was really shocked at the lethargy of our correspondence. Let it now be renovated with increase of spirit, so that I may not only subscribe myself your sincere friend, but your witty companion, JAMES BOSWELL. 1 The most notable European earthquake of the century had been the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 (see From AE to GD, ?2 Aug. 1761, n. 10), whose magnitude was such that its effects were felt in Britain. At least eighteen earthquakes were recorded in Britain during 1732–61, the majority of them minor, with the most significant in 1750 and 1755 (Gent. Mag. ii. 874 [Glasgow, 1732], iv. 625 [Hampshire/Sussex, 1734], vi. 289 [Ochil Hills, 1736], ix. 45 [West Yorkshire, 1739], xiv. 103 [Merionethshire, 1744], xx. 56 [a general account of English earthquakes, 1048–1750], 89 [London and environs, 1750], 137 [Portsmouth, 1750], 184 [Liverpool 1750], 378 , 456 [Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, 1750], 473 [Northampton, 1750], xxi. 356, 357, xxiii. 263 [Chester, 1750], xxv. 365, 399 [York, 1754], 541 [English effects of Lisbon quake, 1755], xxvi. 8, xxvi. 149 [Kent, 1756], xxvii. 335 [Falmouth, 1757], xxix. 426 [Cornwall, 1757], 462 [Surrey, 1758], xxxi. 282 [Sherborne, 1761]. The causes, material and spiritual, of earthquakes were a

popular topic in the magazines and the Philosophical Transactions (ibid.; cf. Samuel Ayscough, General Index to Fifty-Six Volumes of the Gentleman’s Magazine [1731–86], Volume the First: Containing An Index to the Essays, Dissertations, and Historical Passages, 1818, pp. 136–38). 2 Among many recent examples: ‘A child of about 7 years old was found in the forest of Whier, in Worcestershire, with its throat cut from ear to ear, its right hand cut off’; ‘A woman is committed to Worcester goal [sic], for endeavouring to murder her son (about 7 years old) by forcing him into a hot oven’ (Gent. Mag., Historical Chronicle, 21 Mar., 21 Apr. 1762, xxxii. 190). 3 ‘A powder-mill at Hounslow blew up, and one man, who had worked there 30 years, was killed … At Rochester assizes, Hannah Arthur [was convicted] for setting fire to her master[’s] dwelling-house’. A ‘house [in Cheapside] was burnt quite down in half an hour after the first discovery’ (Gent. Mag., Historical Chronicle, 3, 16 Apr. 1762, xxxii. 190–92).

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?22 APRIL 1762 4 ‘The river Lee was swelled six inches higher than was ever known by any of the inhabitants along its banks. At the same time there was a prodigious tide in the river Thames, which swept away several casks of merchandize from the wharfs, and overflowed the prison-yard in the Borough Compter, a circumstance not known these 40 years’; ‘There are the most melancholy accounts from all parts of the kingdom, of an incredible number of persons perishing in the snow, which fell immoderately on th 21st and 22d inst.’ (Gent. Mag., Historical Chronicle, 9 Feb., 22 Mar. 1762, xxxii. 141). 5 In the period 1740–95, the term ‘jubilee’ was a flexible one. It most famously meant a papally declared year of remission from penalties for sin every quarter-century (Pope Benedict XIV, Peregrinantes, 1749, Apostolica Constitutio, 1750). During Jubilee years, there were several plenary indulgences for pilgrimages to Rome and certain churches there, and penitential confessions, often allied to fasting and alms-giving (H. Thurston, The Holy Year of Jubilee: An Account of the History and Ceremonial of the Roman Jubilee, 1900). As JB had been a covert Roman Catholic during the years c. 1758–59, and explicitly converted in early 1760, it is possible that he heard from London Roman Catholics about the famous Papal Grand Jubilee of 1750 in Rome, attended even by non-Catholics as a Grand Tour or expatriate event (Gent. Mag. Aug. 1749, xix. 382; Jan. 1750, xx. 45; Chesterfield to His Son, 22 Sept. 1749, David Roberts, ed., Lord Chesterfield, Letters, 1992, repr. 1998, p. 160 and n.; An Account of all the Ceremonies … of the … Jubilee, 1750 [ESTC T583]). The British Crown itself proclaimed jubilee events such as the ‘grand jubilee … in the Venetian taste’ at Ranelagh Gardens (1749) at which George II and other dignitaries celebrated the end of the War of the Austrian Succession (Gent. Mag. Apr. 1749, xix. 185–87). Another ‘jubilee-masquerade’ followed, also by the King’s command. Walpole discussed these galas in letters to Mann. In comparing the English jubilees with the Roman, he quipped ‘here you know we imagine that a jubilee is a season of pageants, not of devotion’ (Walpole to Horace Mann, 3, 17 May, 25 June 1749, Corres. Walpole, xx. 46–50, 56–58, 71). Collegiate organizations in Britain also proclaimed and celebrated jubilees, on the anniversary of their foundations. In 1760, the Bishop of Rochester preached ‘at a Jubilee then kept by the Members of the Colle-

giate Church’ (Zachary Pearce, A sermon … June 3. 1760: at a jubilee …, 1760 [ESTC T2780]; Monthly Rev. Oct. 1760, xxiii. 336). This Westminster Abbey event occurred during JB’s time in London in 1760, and he therefore may have known of it. (See also the Pembroke Hall Jubilee of 1743, mentioned in Thomas Gray to Thomas Wharton, [c. 27 Dec.] 1743, in Paget Toynbee, Leonard Whibley, eds., Correspondence of Thomas Gray, 1935, repr. with corrections and additions by H. W. Starr, 1971, i. 222 n.) Jubilee could also mean a rare event. ‘It was one of the warm days of this jubilee summer, which appears only once in fifty years’ (Walpole to Horace Mann, 4 Aug. 1757, Corres. Walpole, xxi. 121–22; see also Walpole to Mary Berry, 15 Apr. 1791, Corres. Walpole, xi. 246). Later famous jubilees included Garrick’s Stratford Shakespeare Jubilee (1769), which JB attended, and the Handel Jubilees (1784 et seq., 1791 last; see New Grove 2, s.v. ‘London’, sect. V, ‘Musical Life: 1600– 1800’), which JB would attend in 1787 (see Experiment, p. 139 and n. 3). A successful jubilee scheme might be continued as long as the market would bear: ‘I please myself with the prospect of attending you at several more Jubilees at Stratford upon Avon’ (To Garrick, 18 Sept. 1771, Corr. 4, p. 36). 6 The operas at the King’s Opera House in the Haymarket in Mar.–mid.-Apr. included a mixture of serious, comic, and burletta performances: Arianna e Teseo, Tolomeo, Il Filosofo di Campagna, La Disfatta di Dario, Le Nozze di Dorina, La Famiglia in Scompiglio, and Il Mercato del Malmantile (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 920–30). 7 The most discussed marriage of the past months had been that of George III and Charlotta Sophia soon before his coronation. 8 The last major outbreak of plague in Britain had been 1665, although the realm had fasted against the possibility of the plague arriving from Marseilles in 1722. Various fevers and ‘epidemic diseases’ were also cause for concern. Diseases like the horned-cattle plague rinderpest had struck in the mid-1740s, and had also been the occasion of crown-sponsored fasts. As in the case of earthquakes, Biblically-based spiritual explanations of the events co-existed alongside scientific theories of their origins and causes (Samuel Ayscough, General Index to … the Gentleman’s Magazine [1731–86], Volume the First, 1818, pp. 77–78, 152, 162, 355). 9 Presumably a reference to 14 Apr. Certainly JB dated his previous letter to AE 14

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Apr. Although AE dated his previous to JB from New Tarbet 15 Apr., he made it clear that he had begun it the day before at the way-station on the route to his sister’s home: ‘I began writing this at Graham’s in Glasgow’. 10 Here ‘footman’ is used in the sense of a ‘foot-soldier’ rather than a domestic servant. An ensign was a commissioned officer of foot, although ensigns were the lowliest rank among officers of foot. Therefore, ensigns tended to be of a higher social rank than common footsoldiers and NCOs (the sons of peers [AE], and greater and lesser landed gentry [JB and his brother John] or yeomen farmers and clergy, or sons of other ‘good families’, including children of career

military officers). There was, however, a group of officers ‘greater in numbers than is generally realized’ who had been promoted from the ranks of footsoldiers and NCOs. The shortage of officers during the Seven Years’ War did allow some ‘footmen’ to rise from the ranks (Houlding, pp. 104–10). 11 JB’s taste for ornamental buckles (particularly of pinchbeck) forms a considerable part of the humour in E–B. 12 A jest about paying off or ‘compounding’ debts at 10% of the amount originally owed. JB’s concerns about fiscal independence and his ability to live not only as a gentleman but as a well-dressed man of fashion were based on his recently agreedupon annual allowance of £100 per annum.

To Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane, Thursday 22 April 1762 Not reported. Enclosed in To AE, 22 Apr.: ‘It will not be in my power to answer Lady Betty’s letter as it deserves. Nevertheless present her with the inclosed.’ JB’s excuse that he could not answer Lady Macfarlane’s letter as it deserved suggests he sent a brief note or a paper of verses rather than a full letter.

From Samuel Derrick, ?May 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in To AE, 9 May: ‘Derrick has sent me a Copy of his Versification of the Battle of Lora and some of the Erse fragments.’

From Andrew Erskine, Saturday 1 May 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 91–96 [LETTER XXVI].

New-Tarbat, May 1, 1762. WELL then, my friend, you leave the bar, Resolv’d on drums, on dress, and war, While fancy paints in liveliest hues, Swords, sashes, shoulder-knots,1 reviews, You quit the study of the laws, And shew a blade in Britain’s cause, Of length to throw into a trance, The frighten’d kings of Spain and France!2 A hat of fiercest cock3 is sought, And your cockade’s4 already bought, While on your coat there beams a lace,5 That might a captain-general6 grace! For me, who never show admir’d, Or very long ago was tir’d, I can with face unmov’d behold, A scarlet suit with glittering gold;7 229

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And tho’ a son of war and strife, Detest the listless languid life; Then coolly, Sir, I say repent, And in derision hold a tent; Leave not the sweet poetic band, To scold recruits, and pore on Bland,8 Our military books won’t charm ye, Not even th’enchanting list o’th’ army.9 Trust me, ’twill be a foolish sight, To see you facing to the right; And then, of all your sense bereft, Returning back unto the left; Alas! what transport can you feel, In turning round on either heel? Much sooner would I chuse indeed, To see you standing on your head; Or with your breeches off to rub, Foul cloaths, and dance within a tub, Like Scottish lasses on the green, When every naked limb is seen, And all without a blush reveal’d, By modest maids with care conceal’d.10 Besides, my dear Boswell, we find in all history ancient and modern, lawyers are very apt to run away. Demosthenes the Greek, writer to the signet,11 who managed the great suit against Philip of Macedon,12 fairly scoured off, I think, at the battle of Cheronea;13 and Cicero the Roman advocate is universally accused of cowardice.14 I am not indeed ignorant that some of your ancestors15 behaved well at Flowden;16 but as they lost the day, I think the omen but bad, and as they were killed, I think that makes the omen still worse; however, perhaps you don’t think so, and I allow that argument to be very convincing, and rather more conclusive, than if you had said, ‘I don’t know that.’17 You complain much of the country, and you assign various reasons for disliking it; among others, you imagine the atmosphere too moist and heavy; I agree with you in that opinion, all the black clouds in the sky are continually pressing upon you, for as the proverb says, Like draws to like.18 Believe me, I have sometimes taken you at a distance, for the pillar of smoke which used to accompany the Israelites out of Egypt;19 it would be impossible to tell how many things I have taken you for at different times; sometimes I have taken you for the witches cauldron in Macbeth;20 this resemblance was in some degree warranted by your figure and shape;21 sometimes for an enormous inkbottle; sometimes for a funeral procession; now and then for a chimney sweeper, and not unfrequently for a black-pudding. For my part, Boswell, I must confess I am fond of the country to a degree; things there are not so artificially disguised as in towns, real sentiments are discovered, and the passions play naturally and without restraint. As for example, it was only in the country, I could have found out Lady J———’s particular attachment, to the tune of Appie 230

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MacNab;22 in the town, no doubt, she would have pretended a great liking for Voi Amante;23 in the town, I never would have seen Lady B——— go out armed for fear of the Turkey-cock, which is her daily practice here, and leaves room for numberless reflections; she cannot eat Turkeys when roasted or boiled; and she dreads them when alive so much, that she displays every forenoon a cudgel to them, fitted by its size to strike terror into a bull, or a butting cow. What can her keeping of Turkeys be owing to?24 Assuredly to vanity, which is of such an insinuating nature, that we are apt very often to meet it where we least expect it; I have seen it in an old shoe, in a dirty shirt, in a long nose, a crooked leg, a red face, and you will scarcely credit me when I tell you, that I once met with it in a chamber-pot made of the coarsest delft. So much it seemed good for me to say upon the subject of vanity, supporting by the most irrefragable arguments, the doctrine of Solomon.25 We had a visit from Mr. C——— of S——— 26 here this morning; he came in a chaise drawn by four bay horses; I am certain of the number, you may draw what inference you please from this intelligence, I give you only a simple narration of the fact. I am surprised you say nothing of my proposal of your coming here, and still more, that you say nothing of your Cub. Why don’t you send me a copy?27 We were all so much entertained with your letter to Lady B———,28 that I was really seized with a qualm of envy; we regard it as one of those efforts of genius, which are only produced by a fine flow of spirits, a beautiful day, and a good pen. I pray you, Boswell, note well this sheet of paper, its size is magnificent: If Lady B——— was possessed of such an extent of plain ground, she would undoubtedly throw it into a lawn, and plant it with clumps of trees, she would vary it with fish-ponds, and render it rural with flocks; here, where I am writing, might a cow feed; here might be an arbour; here, perhaps, might you recline at full length; by the edge of this stream might the Captain29 walk, and in this corner, might Lady B——— give orders to her shepherds. I am drawn in the most irresistible manner to conclude, by the external impulse of the cloth’s being laid, and by the internal impulse of being hungry. Believe me, Boswell, to be in the most unconscionable manner, your affectionate friend, ANDREW ERSKINE P.S. I send you franks,30 which return filled with the utmost wit and humour. 1 ‘As far as can be ascertained there was no regulation dress for general officers at this period; portraits usually show them wearing scarlet and blue laced with gold, and the spacing of the laced buttonholes may have indicated exact rank’ (Robin May, Wolfe’s Army, 1974, p. 47). The insignia of eminence were unsystematic, likely limited in 1762 to placement of buttonholes, and by no means as extensive or systematic as the later system of grade-specific rank-pips. ‘[T]here were as yet no distinguishing rank badges, and the chief distinction of an officer was the wearing of a gorget at the throat and a crimson sash round the waist’. The ‘old-fashioned shoulder-cords’ or shoulder-knots were soon to be

replaced in the uniform changes of 1767–68 by the more modern ‘epaulettes’. By 1775 ‘an embryo system of distinguishing ranks by means of epaulettes’ had emerged (John Mollo, Uniforms of the American Revolution, 1975, p. 16, 155–57; pl. 241–43). Illustrations of a typical uniform of an ensign of foot (such as JB aspired to be in his 1762–63 Guards scheme) and that of a senior officer of foot wearing shoulder-knot and sash (JB’s grander social ambition) may be consulted in Robin May, Wolfe’s Army, 1974, pl. C2, E2, H1 and pp. 43–48. As the plate of Wolfe on campaign in that volume demonstrates, however, in field use 1756– 62 and 1775–82 officers wore a ‘Plainer dress’ than that which JB coveted, not only

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to avoid damage to their splendid dress uniforms, but also to prevent making them the targets of snipers. 2 Britain had been officially at war with France since 1756, but had only entered into war with Spain on 2 Jan. The King of Spain, Charles or Carlos III (1716–88), reigned as King of Naples and Sicily (1735– 59), and King of Spain (1759–88). The King of France, Louis XV (1710–74) reigned 1715–74. These kings were hardly ‘frightened’ in May 1762. Indeed, Choiseul presented a set of peace terms far from suggesting he thought France had been defeated, and he also planned a French invasion of Britain. Spain, having just begun to fight, was not yet as war-weary or financially drained as France and Britain were. The possible terms of a separate FrancoBritish peace had been mentioned as early as Aug. 1759. The ‘Peace Party’ led by Bute had gained in strength from George III’s accession, particularly after the fall of William Pitt’s pro-war administration. Indeed, the negotiations which would eventually lead to ‘Bute’s Peace’ had been advanced by receipt of peace proposals 22 Apr. Yet the suspicions—not only between duplicitous enemies but also between faithless allies—delayed the agreements, and Britain only officially returned to peace with France and Spain after the Treaty of Paris signed on 10 Feb. 1763 (Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, 1907, ii. 72–77, 101, 148–54, 171–204, 285–95, 326–32). 3 Here the term ‘cock[ed]’ hat is used to signify the three-cornered or tricorn hat. In the early 1760s the terms cocked hat and tricorn hat could have been used interchangeably (see OED), but the two styles would diverge later in the decade. The military headgear more typically referred to by military historians as the ‘cocked hat’ replaced the venerable old tricorn in the 1767–68 uniform changes: ‘The hat became less of a three-cornered hat and more of a cocked hat’ (John Mollo, Uniforms of the American Revolution, 1975, p. 15). 4 ‘The uniform of the infantry consisted of a black felt hat, adorned with a black “military” or Hanoverian cockade’ (John Mollo, Uniforms of the American Revolution, 1975, p. 15). The black military cockade had been a symbol of pro-Georgian or ‘Government’ loyalism even as the white cockade had been a symbol of Jacobite loyalism. 5 The red coat had ‘different colour facings and laced button-holes [which var-

ied by] regiment’; in the later 1767 regulations gold and silver lacings decorated the button-holes of officers (John Mollo, Uniforms of the American Revolution, 1975, pp. 15–16, 155–56). 6 Captain-General, a term for the chief commander of a force or commander-inchief of an army (OED). Unlike Field Marshal, General, Lieutenant-General, or Major-General, it was not presented as an official army rank in the Army List in 1761–63. 7 The scarlet or red coats of the British infantry remained a distinctive trait: in the Seven Years’ War, the majority of the line infantry also wore red breeches (John Mollo, Uniforms of the American Revolution, 1975, pp. 15–16). 8 Lt.-Gen. Humphrey Bland (?1686– 1763), Governor of Edinburgh Castle 1752– 63, Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Scotland 1753–63, and Col. of the 1st (King’s) Dragoon Guards 1752–63, probably began his military career in 1704 as a cavalry officer, and held the rank of lt.-gen. from 1747. Although he primarily remained an officer of horse, he also became a proprietary colonel of foot. He fought in the War of the Spanish Succession, the ’Fifteen, the War of the Austrian Succession, the ’FortyFive, and was governor of Fort William during the period 1743–52 (Army List, 1761). Bland wrote his famous manual of military procedure during the long peacetime lull in the 1720s. A treatise of military discipline; in which is laid down and explained the duty of the officer and soldier, thro’ the several branches of the service, 1727 (ESTC T143736) went through nine editions, as well as Dublin piracies and Boston reprints. It had been abstracted and reprinted for use by the Yorkshire militia in 1760 (ESTC T58703). The book reached its final edition in 1762 in a version revised by ‘W. Faucitt’: The ninth edition, revised, corrected, and altered to the present practice of the army (ESTC T101320). 9 The tradition of a published ‘list o’ th’ army’ went back at least to the General list of His Majesty’s land forces & marines, shewing the number of regiments, and men in each …, 1740 (ESTC T96130). Publication of the Army List was continuous, with some gaps, from 1755 onwards. The most common edition in 1762 would probably have been A list of the general and field-officers, as they rank in the army. Of the officers, in the several regiments … Complete for 1761. To which is added, the succession of colonels, 1761 (ESTC T91974); the next known edition was in 1763 (ESTC). The list was ‘enchanting’ because it mapped out the number of officers

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greater than one in seniority and their time at that rank. The list thereby aided ambitious officers to select a regiment with a more likely chance of a series of vacancies (which could lead to advantageous promotions through purchase of the vacated ranks). 10 The immodesty occasioned by this tub-stamping method of laundering was remarked on with horror by Edward Burt in his travels through Scotland in 1725–26. Burt wrote that ‘commonly to be seen by the Sides of the River, (and not only here, but in all the Parts of Scotland where I have been) that is, Women with their Coats tucked up, stamping, in Tubs, upon Linnen by Way of Washing … But what seems to me yet stranger is … as People pass by, they divert themselves by talking very freely to them’ (Edward Burt, Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, 1754, i. 52–53). 11 ‘Writer to (of) the Signet (abbrev. W.S.), originally, a clerk in the Secretary of State’s office, who prepared writs to pass the royal signet; in later use, one of an ancient society of law-agents who conduct cases before the Court of Session, and have the exclusive privilege of preparing crown writs, charters, precepts, etc.’ (OED). Demosthenes was, of course, never a W.S., and in fact was not even an Athenian equivalent. However, AE’s pun is likely on the literal translation of Demosthenes’ early employ as a ‘logographos’: a ‘word-writer’ who spoke in private law-court actions. Demosthenes’ career as an Athenian advocate 363–22 B.C. included both private lawcourt speeches (díkai) as well as political law-court speeches in public trials (graphaí). 12 Demosthenes, although he was throughout his life a pleader, did not bring a lawsuit against Philip. He instead publicly and repeatedly denounced in political speeches (lógoi sumbouleutikoí) the threat Philip’s Macedonian ascendancy posed to the Hellenic poleis’ autonomy. The three Philippics (351, 344, 341 B.C.) and three Olynthiacs (349 B.C.) all attempted to gain support for a Hellenic alliance against Macedonian incursions (OCD). 13 Chaeronea, ancient town in Boeotia, Greece, northwest of Thebes. In a decisive battle 338 B.C., the Macedonians under Philip II defeated the Athenian and Theban allies who opposed Macedon’s annexation of the European side of the straits and the Dardanelles in 340 B.C. AE’s evaluation of Demosthenes as a coward at Chaeronea likely comes from ‘Dryden’s’ Plutarch: ‘Thus far, therefore, Demosthenes acquitted himself like a brave man. But in the fight he did

nothing honourable, nor was his performance answerable to his speeches. For he fled, deserting his place disgracefully, and throwing away his arms’ (Plutarch, ‘Demosthenes’). His lifelong opposition to Macedonian hegemony ended in suicide by poison after the failure of his final attempt to resist Macedonian overlordship (OCD). 14 In his ‘Philippics’ delivered against Marcus Antonius, Cicero consciously paid homage to Demosthenes. Cicero’s legal cases were pleaded 81–45 B.C. About fifty texts survived to be taught to schoolchildren (such as JB and AE) as models of oratory (OCD). AE’s idea of Cicero as a coward also most likely comes from ‘Dryden’s’ Plutarch: ‘Cicero … hearing of the proscriptions … determined … to take shipping from thence …. It was judged, therefore, most expedient that Cicero should make what haste he could to fly’. Yet although he was sleepless and distracted in his last days, ‘losing resolution and changing his mind’, and vacillating between the options of trusting Caesar, killing Caesar, or fleeing Caesar, Cicero faced his assassins serenely at Capitie (Plutarch, Cicero). 15 Two notable Boswells died at Flodden. JB’s ancestor Thomas Boswell (d. 1513), 1st Laird of Auchinleck, died in battle at Flodden Field along with his older brother Sir Alexander Boswell of Balmuto (?m. c. 1498, d. 1513). ‘[Sir Alexander Boswell] was a man of remarkable fortitude and resolution, and accompanied king James to the fatal field of Flowdon, together with his brother Thomas Boswell of Auchinleck, and were both killed on the spot with their royal leader’ (Douglas’s Baronage, pp. 309– 10; cf. Earlier Years, p. 7). 16 Flodden Field, Northumberland, near Branxton, across the border from Scotland. In the battle of Flodden Field (9 Sept. 1513), the English army defeated King James IV’s Scots. The ‘flower of Scots chivalry’ died at Flodden. AE’s point is that JB’s forbears, like their King James IV, died in chivalric battle rather than in suicide (as Demosthenes) or at the hands of assassins (as Cicero). 17 Erskine appears to be using ‘know’ in its sense of ‘acknowledge’ or ‘admit’, that is, ‘I don’t admit to that’. 18 Another of the many references to JB’s ‘black’ or dark complexion. 19 ‘And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud … and by night in a pillar of fire’ (Exodus 13:21). 20 Macbeth refers to the witches as ‘black’ and their conjuring is punctuated by

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the song ‘Black spirits’, but the precise appearance of their ‘boiling cauldron’ and ‘charmed pot’ is not described in Macbeth IV. i, despite the three witches’ frequent and famous mentions of it. 21 Again, a joke about JB’s short stature and rotundity. 22 The song ‘Appie McNabb’ was popular and its title spelt variously; the first name being rendered ‘Appy’ or ‘Eppie’ or ‘Effie’, and the last name ‘McNab’ or ‘McKnab’. Its brief two or four stanzas describe the treachery of Eppie towards her lover ‘Jock Rob’ or ‘Rab’. It was available at this period in Oswald’s publications such as Caledonian Pocket Companion, c. 1754 and A Curious Collection of Scots Tunes, With Variations for the Violin, With a Bass for the Violoncello of Harpsichord, Edinburgh, 1759. ‘Eppie McNab’ is now often known from Robert Burns’s sanitized 1792 version, which begins much the same as rival versions but excises the bawdy of some variants for ‘sentiment and pathos’. Burns himself noted that ‘The old song with this title’ had ‘more wit than decency’. Indeed, the lovers’ dialogue as printed in The Giblet Pye did mention how Jock Rob had driven his ‘dool’ (dowel) into Eppie’s ‘gavel’ (gables) in such a way as to ‘play bab, bab, bab’ with her ‘buttocks’. She also notes that when she met him his trousers were so full of holes that his ‘——— hung out’ and his ‘——— play’d ay did dod, did dod’. The bawdy version of the poem concludes: ‘Thy wee bit dud sark it play’d dod o’ thy dab, And thy ——— was as black as a crab, a crab’ (Hans Hecht, ed., Songs From David Herd’s Songs of Robert Burns, 1968, no. 355, ii. 615–16, iii. 1391–92; The Giblet Pye, ?1806; James Johnson, Scots Musical Museum [1853], ‘Number 336’, ii. 346). 23 For the song ‘Voi Amante’ see To AE, 9 Jan. (MS), n. 6. Italianate tastes and manners and the Italian opera in particular were often condemned in the era as signs of urban over-refinement, as was ‘Frenchification’. 24 The Mexican turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), domesticated by native Mexicans and brought to Europe by Spanish conquistadors, was the likely source of the domesticated breed in Britain from the 16th century. There may have been two domesticated breeds, known in England as the ‘Norfolk’ and the ‘Cambridgeshire’ breeds, per-

haps mixed with M. americana (Kirsten Olsen, Daily Life in 18th-Century England, 1999, pp. 75, 232, 235, 237; OED). The turkey-cock’s propensity to violence was noted by Swift in Country Post, 1727, Wks. 1755 III. I. 176: ‘An old turkey-cock attacked a maid in a red petticoat, and she retired with great precipitation’ (OED). As for their presence in Scotland, Mitchell, writing of Ayrshire, noted: ‘The domestic [fowl] consisted … almost altogether of the common dung-hill fowls, with rarely now and then a variety of them, still more rarely of a foreign specimen of the same genus, somewhat less seldom of the turkey cock & hen, often of the house pigeon & the goose, and most frequently of the duck’ (Memories of Ayrshire, pp. 269–70). The turkey-cock was often presented as a sacrificial victim in feasts: on 6 Mar. 1795, Parson James Woodforde ingested at dinner, among other things, ‘a prodigious fine, large and very fat Cock-Turkey roasted’ (Kirsten Olsen, Daily Life in 18th-Century England, 1999, p. 235). 25 Ecclesiastes 1:2: ‘Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.’ The word ‘vanity’ appears in Ecclesiastes thirty-three times. The claim that King Solomon was the author of Ecclesiastes was the majority view in the eighteenth century, although later scholars would doubt the attribution. 26 Not conclusively identified. Perhaps Archibald Campbell (fl. 1734, d. 1790) of Succoth, W.S., whose Dumbartonshire seat was about a mile from New Tarbet. He was one of the principal clerks of session (Scots Mag. Sept. 1790, lii. 363; George Brunton and David Haig, An Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice, 1832, pp. 539–40; Fac. Adv. p. 29, s.v. ‘Campbell, Sir Ilay’). 27 JB explained in To AE, 9 May why he had no copy to send: ‘That unaccountable Man Dodsley has never yet sent me a Copy of it. Donaldson expects soon to have a parcel of them down.’ 28 The unreported To Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane, 22 Apr. 29 That is, ‘Captain’ Andrew Erskine. 30 Presumably supplied by GD, who as an M.P. would have had franking privileges. See To TS, 9 Dec. 1761, n. 11.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 4 May 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 97–102 [LETTER XXVII].

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Auchinleck, May 4, 1762. 1

O Captain! wherefore art thou captain? Why rather not the clerk of Knapton, Who on the hill of Ludgate dwells, And books in every language sells?2 That placid bus’ness would agree With such a quiet man as thee, And suit your genius better far, Than prancing as a son of war: Methinks I see you in the shop, Quite a new man from tail to top; Your scarlet cloaths are chang’d to grey, On which no lace outshines the day; No bold lapel now bids defiance To men of military science; No sword hangs dangling on your thigh, To check the giver of a lie; Alas! I now no more can view Your thund’ring longitude of queue,3 A vile obdurate bob4 appears, And hides great Andrews lofty ears!

Mark how astonishing the change! Was ever any thing so strange? Is this, ye gods! the potent blade, Once dignify’d with a cockade?5 Is this the heroe who has been Admir’d as far as Aberdeen?6 Who in the North, the other year, Beside the fort at Ardersier,7 In Boswell’s penetrating sight, Has wheel’d about from left to right, When blithe Bob M———’s8 rousing roar Startled the Petitonian corps?9 Indeed, my friend, I’m of opinion, You are not Mars’s favourite minion; For cutting throats I’m sure you hate, With all the toils on camps that wait.10 The King of Prussia,11 if he chuses, May court Bellona with the muses;12 But I could bet a cod in Lent,13 With the nine girls you are content, And with your knitted brows declare, You think Bellona a she-bear, That will with horrid jaws devour Poor wretched mortals by the hour.14 235

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I think too, honest Captain Andrew, —Sure as Sir Godfrey a good hand drew,15 That you are not a perfect slave To the amusements of the brave; I mean our modern British Hectors, Of dress and fashion the directors; I never saw you live so gay, As to exceed three times your pay;16 I never saw your cloaths so fine, As to prevent your drinking wine; No tradesman rowls his gloomy eye, And heaves for bills unpaid, a sigh;17 No female labourer in the tub E’er damns you for a foppish scrub. Altho’ you are of stature tall, I never saw you grace a ball:18 For you, Edina’s ladies might Ne’er have a dear assembly night;19 Or, as in dancing-schools they do, Be doom’d to trip it two and two; And bite their lips, and pinch their stays, And look at once five different ways. Thus, taking you in every light, Pray is not my conjecture right? Pray, Erskine, do you ever find The warlike fury stir your mind? I’m sure, that your external air, Has nothing in it militaire. O what a different man am I! Who hold my head prodigious high, Who move about with haughty stride, And Port beseeming martial pride; Whose visage looks like dire Macbeth, Portending horror, wounds, and death!20 West Digges, fair Scotland’s Roscius21 deem’d, Ev’n by your critic self esteem’d, Ne’er show’d a more intrepid face, Ev’n when he fill’d fierce Pierre’s22 place! For military operation I have a wondrous inclination; Ev’n when a boy, with chearful glee, The red-coats march I used to see; With joy beheld the corporals drill, The men upon the23 Castle-hill;24 And at the sound of drum and fife, Felt an unusual flow of life. 236

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Besides, my honest friend, you know I am a little of a beau. I’m sure, my friend need not be told, That Boswell’s hat was edg’d with gold; And that a shining bit of lace, My brownish-colour’d suit did grace; And that mankind my hair might see, Powder’d at least two days in three.25 My pinchbeck buckles are admir’d By all who are with taste inspir’d. Trophies of Gallic pride appear, The crown to every Frenchman dear, And the enchanting fleur de lys, The flower of flowers you must agree; While for variety’s sweet sake, And witty Charles’s tale to wake, The curious artist interweaves A twisted bunch of oaken leaves.26 Tell me, dear Erskine, should not I My favourite path of fortune try? Our life, my friend, is very short, A little while is all we’ve for’t; And he is blest who can beguile, With what he likes, that little while. My fondness for the guards must appear very strange to you, who have a rooted antipathy at the glare of scarlet.27 But I must inform you, that there is a city called London, for which I have as violent an affection, as the most romantic lover ever had for his mistress. There a man may indeed soap his own beard, and enjoy whatever is to be had in this transitory state of things. Every agreeable whim may be freely indulged without censure. I hope, however, you will not impute my living in England, to the same cause for which Hamlet was advised to go there; because the people were all as mad as himself.28 I long much for another of our long conversations on a fine forenoon, after breakfast, while the sun sheds light and gladness around us. Believe me, Yours sincerely, JAMES BOSWELL 1 ‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ (Romeo and Juliet, II. ii. 33). 2 JB is alluding to John Knapton (1696– 1770), bookseller and publisher in London. He was originally part of a trio, with his brothers James (1687–1736), and Paul (ESTC entries show that Paul fl. 1728–58). ‘This eminent firm were connected with the chief publications of the day’ (Dict. of

Printers, p. 148; ESTC). The Knapton booksellers was located at the Crown in Ludgate Street from c. 1735 to 1770 (Dict. of Printers, p. 148). The Knapton firm published lists of their extensive publications (see Books printed for John and Paul Knapton, in Ludgate-Street, ?1755 [ESTC T193501]). Knapton was less known for publishing books in other languages than for transla-

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tions into English of important reference works, mainly from the Latin: for example, Christoph Cellarius, Geographia antiqua, 1755 (ESTC T203848); Gerard, Freiherr van Swieten, The commentaries upon the aphorisms of Dr Herman Boërhaave, 1759 (ESTC N3698); A compleat system of the blood-vessels and nerves, taken from Albinus’s edition of Eustachius, 1758 (ESTC T85948); Jacques Savary des Brûlons, The universal dictionary of trade and commerce, translated …, 1757 (ESTC N35490). 3 The military trappings of scarlet clothes, regimental lace, sword, and long queue of hair are discussed in notes to From AE, 3 Dec. 1761, n. 15 (queue), and From AE, 1 May, n. 1 (uniform). The ‘Military Queue’ fashion ‘Worn by officers of the Guards and smart young men affecting a military air’ spread outside the army into general fashion. The queue was ‘a long—gradually diminishing— plait of hair tied with black ribbon bows above and below, or sometimes only below’. By the latter half of the century the queue was ‘short and thin, tied tightly above and below where it was frizzed out like a sweep’s brush’ (Cunnington, pp. 90–94, 248). 4 ‘WIGS WITHOUT QUEUES.… Both LONG BOBS and SHORT BOBS continued in use to the last decade’ of the eighteenth century. ‘Several rows of curls, often broken up, round the back of the head, were more usual than a single roll. FULL-DRESS BOBS came into fashion in the 1760’s.… THE SCRATCH BOB, usually the colour of the natural hair, covered part of the head, the natural hair being swept back from the forehead and mingled with that of the wig by means of pomatum’. ‘Natural hair dressed to resemble a wig might be worn for economy, and the artisans wore their own hair rather long if without a wig’ (Cunnington, pp. 89, 241–43). 5 The Georgian black cockade worn on the tricorn hat of soldiers and officers. 6 Presumably ‘Aberdeen’ is used for the sake of the rhyme and variety. Fort George (see below) would be more ‘far’ from Edinburgh and Auchinleck. 7 The second Fort George is on the peninsula of Ardersier opposite Chanonry Point (Pennant, pp. 158–60). JB and AE had met at Fort George ‘the other year’ in May 1761. 8 Presumably Robert Murray, who had been promoted to the rank of maj. in the 71st Regt. of Foot in Apr. 1758 (Army List, 1761, p. 130). 9 The 71st Foot was a ‘Petitonian corps’ because its proprietary regimental colonel

from its raising in 1758 was Maj.-Gen. William Petitot (fl. 1721–d. 1764). Petitot had received his first commission in 1721 and had recently (Mar. 1761) been promoted to the army rank of maj.-gen. (Army List, 1740, Army Historical Society reprt. of 1931, p. 32; Army List, early 1763, p. 129; Gent. Mag. July 1764, xxxiv. 351). 10 AE was distinctly unmilitary: unlike the seemingly fearless and combat-hardened Frederick the Great, with whom he is contrasted in this poem, AE had never faced the enemy in battle, and had never fired a shot in combat. ‘Erskine had little genius or inclination for a military life; his habits and tastes were decidedly of a literary character’ (Hugh Paton, in Kay, II. i. 58). 11 Frederick the Great of Prussia fancied himself a poet as well as a military thinker (Robert B. Asprey, Frederick the Great, 1986, pp. 146–47, 395–96; Poésies diverses du roi de Prusse …, 1760). 12 Bellona, goddess of war, and the nine Muses, subsequently referred to as the ‘nine girls’. 13 Fish would have been in higher demand and more highly valued during Lent, the season in which flesh was forbidden to Roman Catholics. JB briefly converted to Catholicism in spring 1760, and remained fascinated with observances such as Lent which conventional Church of Scotland doctrine denounced as ‘Popish’. 14 In a controversial declaration, George III had criticized the Seven Years’ War as ‘expensive, but just and necessary’ (Parl. Hist. xv. 980). The peace party which gained prominence 1759–62 under Bute had argued that the protraction of the war would needlessly lead to further losses of men and money. 15 Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), born Gottfried Kniller, painter from c. 1668, a court painter in the courts of Charles II, James II, William III, and Anne, and ‘principal painter’ to the monarchs from 1691 to 1723. His series of beauties and admirals were indicative of his wide range of portraits of the elite. In his later career he left details of draperies and furnishings to his studio assistants, and the actual ‘Kneller’-drawn components comprised faces and sometimes the hands. 16 The printed ‘Daily Pay of the Land Forces &c.’ bound in with Army List 1756 noted that a lieutenant of a standard line regiment of foot received 4s 8d in [full] ‘pay’ (full pay being subsistence plus gross off-reckonings) and 3s 6d in ‘subsistence’. The subsistence was the more important

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number, since it reflected the fraction of a military man’s pay which remained [net] after all ‘stoppages’. 17 The refusal of aristocratic and gentry patrons to pay their bills was a stock theme in eighteenth-century humour. 18 ‘[I]t would be difficult to discover in the letters of Erskine any marks of the dull, reserved disposition which was natural to him. His manner was unobtrusive and bashful in the extreme …. Erskine does not appear to have been influenced by any romantic adoration of the fair sex .… [H]e remained all his life a bachelor’ (Hugh Paton, in Kay, II. i. 57–58). 19 The Edinburgh Assembly dances are explained in From AE, 2 Mar., n. 4. 20 Macbeth, I. ii. 25–28. 21 Quintus Roscius Gallus (d. c. 62 B.C.), popular and wealthy Roman actor, celebrated for his comic talents (OCD). His name became synonymous with great actors. 22 Pierre, one of the conspirators in Otway’s Venice Preserved. Two days before his departure for London on 15 Nov., JB saw WD again as Pierre (Journ. 13 Nov.). 23 E–B, ‘the the’ 24 The Castle-Hill parade ground before the Castle entrance, as well as serving as a fashionable Edinburgh promenade, was also used as a formal parade-ground for the Castle garrison (From AE, 2 Mar., n. 14). 25 ‘Wigs were worn by all classes until the

last decade of the century except for a brief interlude about 1765 when among younger men it was modish to wear the natural hair.’ Even when gentlemen affected the ‘own hair’ fashion in the mid-1760s, the natural hair was often dressed with pomatum and powdered; certainly wigs needed consistent dressing and powdering (Cunnington, p. 241). 26 Charles II after his defeat at Worcester in 1651 had escaped capture by Commonwealth soldiers by hiding in the ‘Royal Oak’ tree near Boscobel House, ‘a bushy oak in a Shropshire forest’. The Restoration Day of 29 May was celebrated as one of the annual Church of England ‘State Services’. Popular and plebeian celebrants of the Restoration Day often wore oak leaves on their clothing as favours in order to demonstrate their Cavalier or Tory principles on ‘Oak-Apple Day’ (R. Chambers, Chambers’s Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar …, s.v. ‘May 29’). 27 Perhaps an allusion to AE’s Jacobite ancestry. More likely an allusion to AE’s aversion to military duty. 28 Hamlet, V. i: HAMLET: Ay, marry, why was he sent into England? FIRST CLOWN: Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, it’s no great matter there.

?To Andrew Erskine, c. 6–8 May 1762 Not reported; perhaps a ‘ghost’. JB wrote to AE on 8–9 May: ‘I wrote to you, only two days ago’ (To AE, 8–9 May). No internal evidence indicates that a letter is missing in this section of the E–B sequence, and there is no known letter of 6–8 May (except To AE, 8–9 May). It might be speculated that the letter dated ‘May 4’ in E–B is the one to which JB referred. This would require that JB had redated the 4 May letter for E–B revisions, or begun the letter on 4 May and finished and posted it on 6 May or so. An alternative hypothesis: much of the ‘alien’ material in the E–B revision may actually come from a missing letter of c. 6–8 May which survives in part in the E–B. Of course, as usual, JB’s often faulty sense of time could well be the culprit.

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 8–Sunday 9 May 1762 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 518).

Auchinleck, 9 May 17621 MY DEAR ERSKINE: To tell a Story well, is perhaps one of the highest Accomplishments that a Man can be posest of. This Talent is not only estimable in itself, on account of it’s being a most effectual method of communicating entertainment, but it has likewise an adventitious value, by reason of it’s being rarely to be met with, and difficult to be acquired. Notwithstanding, however, of all that, I shall 239

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now venture to attempt the task, without even so much as asking for a single grain of allowance. About the end of January or the beginning of February last, I went to pay a visit to a beautifull young Lady of rank and fortune,2 whom I had not been so happy as to see for a long time; When I was show’n into the room where she was sitting, I glowed with delightfull Expectation at the thoughts of receiving a kiss from her lovely lips; but figure to yourself my friend, to what a sublime pitch my Extasy rose, when, instead of one kiss, the divine Creature generously gave me two. And thus my friend, you have my Story concisely related; but I am pretty certain that you are not able to guess the reason why I have just now introduced it. To keep you no longer in the disagreable state of Suspence which Swift has humourously enough called the condition of a Spider,3 and I make no doubt that if you were allowed to be tormented with that anxious feeling, any longer, your temper would be so ruffled, and you would become so peevish and so fretfull, that upon disecting that large Body of yours, a skillfull Anatomist, such as Doctor Monro of Edinburgh4 or Doctor Hunter of London,5 would find as great a quantity of Venom lodged in your intestines, as many People beleive to be contained in that nauseous, crawling, weaver-like Animal.6 To keep you no longer in Suspence, it is introduced with design to form the Segment of an excellent Simile, nicely applicable to the present occasion As you shall just now hear.— As I was most agreably surprised at receiving two kisses instead of one, so, you Captain Erskine are most agreably surprised at receiving two Letters instead of one. According to our usual form of Proceeding, you could not expect this Epistle, as I wrote to you, only two days ago,7 and have not as yet, nor indeed could not as yet have received any Answer. Our Corespondence, I think, may be compared to two Boys riding at opposite ends of a deal-Board,8 whose motion must in the nature of things be alternate. What a degrading Similitude say you for the LITERARY Intercourse of the two greatest Geniuses that Scotland can boast of: The Glory of Donaldson’s shop, and the Ornament of every polite Library. How inexcusable, How unsufferable is it, when the Bards of Mantua9 and Twittenham10 furnish one so much more beautifull & so much more applicable. Sing then by turns; by turns the Muses sing.11 I should have wondered very much had I been told of Lady Jenny’s great attachment to the tune of Appie Macnab, two months ago:12 But, you must know that a few days before I left Edinr. having occasion to look into the Advocate’s Library,13 I there chanced to turn up an old Roman Book of Songs,14 and to my great surprise met with the individual air of Appie Macnab which I discovered to be part of an original Patrician Cantata,15 upon the Daughter of Appius,16 accurately set for the Tibiae Sinistrae.17 In a manuscript marginal note, it is said to have been composed by Tigellius the celebrated Musician,18 whose death Horace takes occasion to mention in the second satire of his first Book.— Ambubajarum Collegia, Pharmacopolae, Mendici, Mimi, Balatrones, hoc genus omne Maestum ac sollicitum est cantoris morte Tigelli.19 240

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So that you see Lady Jenny’s taste for Italian Music, cannot be called in question: Indeed I think her fondness for Appie Macnab a very strong proof of it, as she could not possibly know of it’s having been brought from Italy.20 The Song-Book, a very great Curiosity, was brought from Rome, by Father Macdonald a Popish Priest, some hundred years ago; who returned to his native country the Isle of Sky,21 died there, and left it in a Legacy to the Duke of Gordon,22 one of whose Successors23 made a present of it, to Sir George Mackenzie of Roystoun one of the Lords of Council and Session, at whose sale it was bought for the Advocate’s Library.24 It is probable that some Musician in the North-Country, has transcribed the Appian Cantata from it, while it lay at Gordon-Castle,25 and giving it’s air a Scottish manner, and adapting words to it, has produced the vulgar Ballad of Appie Macnab. Lady Betty’s terror for the Turkey-Cock diverts me much.26 Did they but come to an Engagement, how laughable would it be! The Conceit realy makes a strong Impression upon my Fancy. I shall certainly write an Ode upon it, in the manner of the Author of Olympia,27 or an Epic Poem, in the manner of the Author of Fingal.28 This charming weather has made me fond of the Country; it enlivens me prodigiously, and I am chearfull and happy. This is Sunday, and I am not at Church29 but at home by myself, wandering placid and serene up and down the sweetest Place in the world. The Sunshine is mild, the Breeze is gentle, my mind is peacefull. I am indulging the most agreable reveries imaginable, I am thinking of our jointly composing some elegant Work which shall be much read, and much admired.30 I am thinking of the brilliant Scenes of happiness that I shall enjoy in the Guards, How I shall be acquainted with the Grandeur and Politeness of a Court, be entertained with all the elegance of dress and Diversions, become a favourite of Ministers of State, and the adoration of Ladies of Quality, Beauty and Fortune. How many parties of Pleasure shall I have in Town! How many fine jaunts to the noble Seats of Dukes, Lords and members of Parliament. I am thinking of the perfect knowledge that I shall acquire of men and manners, of the many ingenious and learned Men whose Intimacy I shall be honoured with, Of the many literary amusing Anecdotes which I shall pick up, and of the magnificent Letters which I shall write to You. I am thinking of traveling abroad, and feasting on the delicious Prospects of France and Italy!31 Of feeling all the Transport of a Bard at Rome, and writing noble Poems on the Banks of the Tiber.32 I am thinking of the time when I shall have seen enough of the World and had enough of Adventures suited to my romantic Disposition. I am thinking of retiring, of marrying an amiable young Lady of good sense delicacy and softness, in whose confidence I can repose and on whose Bosom I can escape from care.33 I am thinking of my flourishing family of Children and of the happiness which I shall have as the Father of Men of Sense and Spirit and Women of Beauty and Merit. I am thinking of my being unfit to support the character of a Master of a Family, and when I retire chusing rather to steal silently and unperceived through the World. Of my passing the Winter in London in the way that the Spectator describes himself to have done.34 And in Summer living sometimes here at home, sometimes in such a pleasing Retreat as Mrs. Rowe35 describes in her Letters moral and entertaining,36 a Book which I realy like. I read it first when very young,37 and I am perswaded that it contributed to improve my tender Imagination. I am 241

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thinking of the agreable days which I shall pass with my dear dear Cousins at Kelly—Here I am allmost weeping—and the gentle Lady Anne when she hears it, will say, ‘Poor Man!’ I am glad to find you have so much curiosity to hear about the Cub38 at Newmarket. ‘Love me, love my Cub.’39 However I can tell you nothing about it. That unaccountable Man Dodsley40 has never yet sent me a Copy of it. Donaldson expects soon to have a parcel of them down. Mathew Henderson41 showed me the sarcastical Epigram upon it, which you mention. It is not bad if the Cub was not good. I have written this Answer to it. Epigrammatist wou’d be! do heark ye a bit; You wou’d fain seem a Serpent of Spleen and of wit; But your horns Master Snail! in their Shell prithee keep; You’re no more like a Serpent but that you can creep. You talk much in your last of my head’s being full of military Reviews, I wonder you did not mention the Critical and Monthly ones,42 considering that the poor Cub is to exhibit his more than four—Quart-o Pages43 before their Excellencies and must either be chalked on the Back, or not.44 Derrick has sent me a Copy of his Versification of the Battle of Lora and some of the Erse fragments.45 If you want to see it, send not a Post chaise, But a frank to save Postage, for it. I never was so poor in Franks as I have been of late. Whenever I meet with Dempster, he shall be so fatigued as to be in danger of losing the power of his right arm for sometime. However it cannot be long, for holding it under a spout of cold Water for a few mornings will restore it to it’s usual Vigour. I shall be at Dumfries next week; where I hope to see our friend Johnston.46 He is a most worthy fellow, and much of a Gentleman. He has a high regard for you. Pray mention him kindly in your next.47 He will be glad to find that he is remembred by you. And now My Dear Erskine are you not wearied? I will not wait for your answer, but conclude with my usual Epithet of Your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 In E–B the letter is dated 8 May. Pottle, in a marginal note to this letter in Hankins, speculated that the letter sent to AE was copied on 9 May while the draft which JB used for printer’s copy was dated 8 May. 2 JB’s journal notes (which are incomplete for the period Jan.–15 Feb.) refer to several young ladies as the object of his interest: ‘Miss C’s oft’, ‘Miss Stewart’s’, ‘Miss S—a fine woman’, ‘the most curious young little pretty’, ‘Miss J’, ‘Lady Jenny’ Erskine. JB professed ‘domestic notions’ of marriage and a desire to be ‘in love’, at the same time he evinced a presumably more carnal search for ‘Adventure’ and ‘Opportunity’. The episode of the double kiss presented in this letter is not recorded in Journ. JB’s romantic pursuits during this period are reconstructed by Pottle (with occasionally

tentative conclusions) in Earlier Years, pp. 76–85. 3 ‘It is a Miserable Thing to live in Suspence; it is the Life of a Spider’ (Swift, ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects’, in A Tale of a Tub, With Other Early Works, 1696– 1707, ed. Herbert Davis, 1957, p. 244). 4 Either Dr. Alexander Monro I or II, more likely Monro II. Alexander Monro I (1697– 1767), M.D., the first university professor of anatomy at Edinburgh University from ?1720 or 1725, delivered an annual course of anatomical lectures in Oct.–May for 39 years. In 1762 he suffered from various serious ailments, and he resigned his professorship in 1764, although he continued to lecture at the hospital. His collected Works were published in 1781. His son and grandson, of the same name, were also noted anatomists.

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Dr. Alexander Monro II (or ‘secundus’; 1733–1817), M.D. since 1755, Fellow of the College of Physicians of Edinburgh from 1759, had lectured for his father since 1753, and from 1755 was his official ‘coadjutor’ as university professor of anatomy. He offered a full course of lectures every year from 1759 to 1800. His also assuming his father’s responsibilities as secretary of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh suggests that in the 1750s and 1760s he was supplanting his father, and is therefore the more likely of the two Monros whom JB would have known from Edinburgh. 5 William Hunter (1718–83) of Long Calderwood, M.D. 1750, Licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians 1756, had been a student of the Dr. Monro I, discussed in the preceding note. Though born in Lanarkshire, and owner of the family property there from c. 1751, Hunter was ‘of London’ 1741–83. Indeed, in 1762 Queen Charlotte consulted him on obstetrical questions, and by 1764 he was the queen’s physician extraordinary. His lectures were celebrated in the 1750s. The Hunterian Museum in Glasgow was a result of his bequest. This is probably not a reference to his younger brother, pupil in the art of dissection, and fellow-anatomist, the surgeon John Hunter (1728–93), who did not settle permanently in London until 1763, and as a plain surgeon who avoided university was not technically a ‘doctor’. John Hunter had been in London 1748–60 as a student of (and lecture assistant for) his brother. In 1760–63, John was often abroad, serving as surgeon for the military expeditions to Belleisle (1761) and Portugal (1762). The two brothers became progressively more hostile towards each other 1760–80 over the question of which of the two should receive credit for several important discoveries. 6 JB’s equating the contents of AE’s intestines with the venom in a spider’s poison glands is another ‘Swiftian’ trope. 7 See ?To AE, 6–8 May (not reported). 8 A thin board of pine or fir (OED). JB here is describing using such a board as a see-saw. 9 Virgil was born near Mantua, in Gallia Cisalpina. Although the family estate there was confiscated 41 B.C., and Virgil spent his active years as a poet in Rome, his memories of rural life in Mantua provided many of the bucolic elements in his poetry. 10 See To AE, after mid-May 1761, n. 1. 11 The line ‘Then sing by turns, by turns the Muses sing’, from Pope’s Pastorals (Spring, l. 41, Butt ed.) is an imitation of

Virgil’s ‘alternis dicetis: amant alterna Camenae’ (Eclogues, iii. 59, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb ed.). 12 The Scottish country tune of ‘Appie Macnab’ and Lady Janet Erskine’s alleged love for it are explained in From AE, 1 May, and n. 22. ‘Two months ago’ would suggest a date in Mar., but seems more closely to fit events in Jan. or Feb. when ‘Erskine came to town’ and JB fell ‘in love wt. Lady Jenny’ (Journ. undated events from 3 Jan. and 14 Feb.). 13 The fragments of JB’s Journ. for early Apr. contain no mention of any visits to the Advocates’ Library. The Advocates’ Library was founded in 1682 by the Dean of the Faculty of Advocates and in this era was housed in the ‘undermost floor of the parliament-house’. From the time of the 1710 Copyright Act of Queen Anne, a copy of every book entered in Stationers-hall had to be sent to the library as well as to the universities. Its collection of about 30,000 books, manuscripts, prints, coins, and medals was notable, and its ‘keepers’ included David Hume and Adam Fergusson. Books could be borrowed by members of the Faculty of Advocates, and could be consulted (unlike university-owned volumes) by the wider public. The library’s catalogue was published in 1742 (ed. Ruddiman and Goodall). It was revised and expanded with vol. 2 in 1776 (ed. Brown) and vol. 3 in 1807 (A catalogue of the library of the Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh …, 1742–1807: ESTC T145210). By 1830 it possessed over 100,000 books. The Advocates’ Library’s unusual status as a national library for Scotland administered by a private body ended in 1925 when all but the legal items were transferred to the National Library of Scotland (Arnot, pp. 295–97; William Chambers, The Book of Scotland, 1830, pp. 485– 88; Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 123; Brian Hillyard, Thomas Ruddiman and the Advocates’ Library, Library History, v. 8 no. 6, 1990). 14 JB’s fiction aside, the Advocates’ Library was known for a fine collection of manuscripts, especially relics of Scottish history from the Middle Ages onward, but also including ‘a few ancient manuscripts of the classics’ (William Chambers, The Book of Scotland, 1830, pp. 485–88). 15 The ‘cantata’ (‘the most important form of vocal music of the Baroque period outside opera and oratorio, and by far the most ubiquitous’) was early modern Italian rather than ancient Roman, having developed in Italy in the 1620s and solidified as a

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form in subsequent decades. The earliest relevant use of the term appears to have been in 1589. JB seems to have used ‘cantata’ here in error for ‘cantica’, a musical interlude used in ancient Roman comedy: ‘By the time of Plautus (c 254–185 SC) tibicines [‘tibia players’] performed a prelude at the beginning of the play, accompanied the sung portion (cantica) and certain spoken verse passages, providing also music between the acts and accompaniments for dance interludes’ (New Grove 2, s.v. ‘cantata’, ‘tibia’). 16 JB is probably referring to Appius Claudius Pulcher (fl. 72 B.C., d. c. 48 B.C.), consul (54 B.C.), and proconsul, a staunch defender of patrician hegemony who when censor in 50 B.C. had ousted all sons of freedmen from the Senate. In Horace’s Satires, ‘Appius’ is mentioned by name (I. vi. 20–21). The ‘Patrician’ gens of ‘Claudius’ was one of the oldest and most noble Roman gens, dating back in legends to c. 508 B.C. 17 The tibia was an Ancient Roman wind instrument (an aerophone), occasionally referred to as a fistula, and analogous to the Greek aulos. In early Rome the tibia was played in the temples, at the games, in funeral rites, in wedding processions, as ‘an essential ingredient in marriage ceremonies’, at banquets, and during manual work (New Grove 2). The tibia sinistra was described in Varro’s Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres, I. ii. 15. Nothing could be ‘set’ for it, however, for it was merely the tenor half of a double flute called the tibiae impares. JB’s expression ‘set for the Tibiae Sinistrae’ probably puns also on Latin medical terminology related to the setting of broken bones. 18 Marcus Hermogenes Tigellius (?d. c. 35 B.C.), musician and singer, friend of Julius Caesar, as well as later of Augustus, reputedly a wealthy and profligate celebrity. JB cited Tigellius as an example of an unstable character in Hypochondriack no. LXIV (Jan. 1783), ‘On Change’ (Bailey, ii. 245; cf. B. L. Ullman, ‘Horace, Catullus, and Tigellius’, Classical Philology 10 [1915], pp. 270–79). 19 ‘The flute-girls’ [pseudo-]guilds, the drug quacks, beggars, [mime-]actresses, buffoons, and all that breed, are in grief and mourning at the death of the singer Tigellius’ (Horace, Satires, I. ii. 1–3, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb ed.; cf. p. xi). ‘Ambubajarum’ is, of course, ‘Ambubaiarum’; ‘Mimi’ should read ‘mimae’. JB’s close knowledge of this passage reflects his simul-

taneous attraction to the theatre and his fear of its ‘low’ social status and association with the supposedly dissipated. Lord Auchinleck ‘gave him a reward (presumably in cash) for every ode of Horace he got by heart, and at one time he could repeat more than forty of them, besides passages from Horace’s Epistles and Satires’ (Earlier Years, p. 24). 20 ‘Appie McNab’, of course, was an indigenous Scots song. 21 Aeneas Macdonald of Glenaladale (d. 1683) appears to have been the only vocation to the Catholic priesthood in the Western Highlands or Islands throughout the seventeenth century (P. F. Anson, The Catholic Church in Modern Scotland, 1937, p. 35). He could plausibly have been in Rome in 1662, but JB’s tale of the song is farcical rather than historical, intermingling actual historical personages with invented characters. Presuming the ‘Father Macdonald’ in JB’s letter to be another of JB’s ‘inventions’, Macdonald was a likely choice for a fictive inhabitant of the Isle of Skye, since the name Macdonald was long associated with those who ‘held the island estates of Skye’. For several centuries, despite dormancies and disputes, the chieftain of Clan Macdonald and the owner of the Macdonald estates in Skye had been synonymous, and the tradition of the Macdonald Lords of the Isles was wellknown (Frank Adam, revised by Sir Thomas Ines of Learney, The Clans, Septs, and Regiments of the Scottish Highlands, 1952, pp. 232–41). 22 Again, given the context, more likely a joke rather than an actual identification. The Duke of Gordon in the late seventeenth century was George Gordon (c. 1649–1716), Earl and Marquess of Huntly, cr. 1st Duke of Gordon in 1684, of a prominent Roman Catholic family. In 1688–89 he had defended Edinburgh Castle for James II and was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle on suspicion of Jacobitism in 1708 despite the Jacobite Court’s having given him an icy reception. He was known for his understanding of ‘Belles Lettres’. 23 The ‘Successors’ to whom JB refers in plural as dukes c. 1716–62 were Alexander Gordon (d. 1728), 2nd Duke of Gordon, a Roman Catholic who fought for ‘James III’ in 1715 and had been imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle before his pardon and restoration, or Cosmo George Gordon (c. 1720– 52), 3rd Duke of Gordon, named after the Medici Duke of Tuscany and brought up as a Protestant, and Alexander Gordon

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(1743–1827), 4th Duke of Gordon, a representative Peer 1761–84, who was a military officer from his teens and patron of the 89th Foot raised on his estates in 1759 for the Seven Years’ War (Scots Peer. iv. 549–57; Comp. Peer. vi. 3–6). 24 Probably a conflation of two different names. Sir James Mackenzie (c. 1671–1744), Bt., became a Lord of Session as Lord Royston in 1710. A Sir George Mackenzie (1630–1714), Bt. was also a Lord of Session as Lord Tarbat (1681), and afterwards (1703) Earl of Cromarty—but he was of Tarbet, not ‘of Roystoun’. His estate of Tarbet and death at New Tarbet make it possible that AE might have heard of him (George Brunton and David Haig, Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice, 1832, pp. 356–58, 490–91). In 1746, a 168page book was issued comprising A catalogue of rare, valuable, and curious books, on all subjects, collected with the greatest care, by the late ingenious and learned lawyer Sir James MacKenzie of Roystoun …Which will begin to be sold by auction on Wednesday the 12th of November 1746, by A[lexander]. Kincaid …, 1746. (ESTC T162567). This makes it even more likely that JB is referring to Mackenzie of Royston rather than Cromarty. 25 Gordon Castle ‘is situate near the village of Fochabers, on the banks of the Spey, at the confluence … with the Moray frith …. The modern structure, all but one old tower, which is incased in freestone, was erected under the auspices of the present peer [i.e., the 4th Duke]’ ([Joshua Wilson], A Biographical Index to the Present House of Lords, 1808, pp. 276). 26 See From AE, 1 May. 27 ‘Olympia’ was a transliteration of the Greek term for the ‘Olympic Odes’ of Pindar, one of the poets most frequently discussed in AE’s and JB’s correspondence (e.g., Pindarou Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia … Juxta editionem Oxoniensem accuratissme impressa, 1755: ESTC T135842; and the Foulis press’ Panta ta Pindarou sozomena. Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia … Glasguae …, 1744: ESTC T135982). The ‘pindaric’ style was a serious influence on both AE and JB. 28 The ‘Author of Fingal’ was still presumed to be the ancient bard ‘Ossian the Son of Fingal’ rather than James Macpherson, who presented himself as the prose translator rather than as the poems’ author. JB never ventured an epic poem, but his burlesque ode on the turkey-cock theme is discussed in To AE, 1 June. 29 An unusual admission for JB, who was for much of his life either attending church

on Sunday (sometimes twice) or feeling guilty if not so doing. JB omits this detail in his revision. 30 Probably JB thought that this ‘jointly composing some elegant Work’ was attained in the creation of E–B, since this passage is deleted from E–B. 31 One of JB’s first explicit references to his considering the ‘Grand Tour’, which he would undertake through France and Italy in 1765–66. 32 JB was in Rome from 16–25 Feb. and 24 Mar.–14 June 1765. Although while there he was full of neoclassical ardour and Scoto-Latinity, he did not write any poems while on the Tiber’s banks (the relevant memoranda are transcribed in Robert Warnock, ‘Boswell in Italy’, Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1933). 33 An early indication that, whatever his notions of marrying an heiress or engaging in sexual adventures or perfecting his ‘romantic’ art of courtly love, JB even before his decision in 1769 to marry his penniless cousin and close confidante Margaret Montgomerie associated marriage with domesticity and retreat: a ‘companionate marriage’ based on ‘good sense’ and amiability. 34 ‘There is no Place of general Resort, wherein I do not often make my Appearance; sometimes I am seen thrusting my Head into a Round of Politicians at Will’s … Sometimes I smoak a Pipe at Child’s; and whilst I seem attentive to nothing but the Post-Man, over-hear the Conversation of every Table in the Room …. In short, wherever I see a Cluster of People I always mix with them’ (Spectator, no. 1). The description of how the Spectator passed his time in London at many points served as a model for JB’s own behavior the following winter. 35 Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674–1737), devotional author of meditations and poet, wife of poet Thomas Rowe. See The works of Mrs Elizabeth Rowe: in four volumes …, 1796 (ESTC T92689). Her poetry and her acquaintance with Matthew Prior, one of JB’s poetic models, may have been one of his impetuses for interest in her devotional works. Her interest in reforming dissipated morals through epistolary fictions was preRichardsonian, as SJ noted (Life i. 312). 36 Elizabeth Singer Rowe, Letters on various occasions, in prose and verse. By the author of Friendship in death. To which are added ten letters by another hand, 1729 (ESTC T182395). In its second volume it was retitled Letters moral and entertaining, by the author of Friendship in death. To which are added, some letters by another hand. Part the

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second, 1731 (ESTC N34142). The new title Letters moral and entertaining prevailed in Part III, 1733 (ESTC N34143) and in subsequent reprintings. Rowe’s Friendship in death. In twenty letters from the dead to the living. To which are added, Thoughts on death. Translated from the Moral essays of the Messieurs du Port Royal, 1728 (ESTC N18632) was even more popular, appeared in five editions by 1738, and indeed established her literary reputation. In Hypochondriack no. XLV (Jun. 1781), JB would later allude to Rowe’s Friendship in Death (Bailey, ii. 94). The two texts were often combined from 1735 onwards into composite editions for the publishers in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dublin. In the years 1760–62, these usually appeared under the title Friendship in death: in twenty letters from the dead to the living. To which are added, letters moral and entertaining. In prose and verse. In three parts. By Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe (ESTC N68600; ESTC T134487 [Donaldson’s Edinburgh edition 1762]; ESTC T151849; ESTC T134485; ESTC T134497; ESTC N18610; ESTC N31805). 37 Rowe’s Letters, along with the Spectator, are two of the works for which we have concrete evidence that JB read as a child. 38 AE in his letter of 1 May had referred to it instead as ‘your Cub’. 39 JB’s variant of the proverbial ‘Love me, love my dog’. The saying goes back to St. Bernard, who used it in a sermon (‘Qui me amat, amat et canem meum’, 1153), and by the time of Heywood (1546) and Chapman (1612) had become a colloquialism (The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd ed., 1970). 40 Robert Dodsley. 41 Matthew Henderson (1737–88), of Tannochside, Lanarkshire, antiquary and bon-vivant, counted both JB and Robert Burns among his friends. In the Lond. Chron. for 22 Dec. 1768, JB published ‘A Matrimonial Thought: To Matthew Henderson, Esq.’. After Henderson’s death, Burns wrote an ‘Elegy on Capt. M——— H———’ (The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ed. James Kinsley, 1968, i. 438–42, iii. 1285–89; Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 239; Lit. Car. p. 243; Life, 10 Nov. 1769, ii. 110–11, 489; Scots Mag. 1788, l. 571). Henderson and JB were distantly related. He may perhaps have been the ‘Mr. H———’ mentioned in From AE, 15 Apr. 42 The Mar. issues of Crit. Rev. and Monthly Rev., in which JB’s Cub at Newmarket is noticed, had probably not reached Edinburgh when JB left on 8 Apr. Monthly

Rev. found the Preface ‘sprightly’ but the poem disappointing and ‘scarce intelligible’ (xxvi. 233); the authorship of the review is unknown (B. C. Nangle, Monthly Review, first series, 1749–1789, 1934, p. 232). Crit. Rev. began its brief note by wishing that ‘young Bruin had been licked into some form before he showed himself for the entertainment of the public’ (xiii. 273). Later AE may have commented on this critical reception; see To AE, 1 June. 43 Cub was twenty-four pages in quarto. 44 The phrase may be military cant for a practice in reviewing soldiers. JB’s use of the phrase ‘chalked on the back, or not’ resembles Horace, Satires, II. iii. 246, ‘Into which list are they to go? Marked with chalk as sane, or with charcoal?’ (Loeb ed., trans. H. R. Fairclough). 45 Derrick, quick to take advantage of Fingal’s great popularity, published on 6 Apr. his own verse adaptation of portions of the work: The Battle of Lora. A poem. With Some Fragments written in the Erse, or Irish language, By Ossian, the Son of Fingal. Translated into English Verse By Mr. Derrick, 1762; ESTC N15478 (Lond. Chron. 1–3 Apr. 1762, xi. 119). For the poem’s rather equivocal evaluation in the Crit. Rev. for Apr., see From AE, ?c. 10–14 June, n. 17. 46 John Johnston of Grange (?1729–d. 1786), landowner, ‘writer in Edinburgh’ (cf. Corr. 1, p. xxxiv; citing Deed of Assignation from Isabella Scott to John Johnston, 11 May 1762; Timperley, pp. 97, 101). JB and JJ had become friends while they were at Edinburgh University, presumably c. 1755. Although his age remains open to question, he appears to have been ten or eleven years older than JB, a ‘mature student’. JJ was a reader of JB’s 1762 Harvest Jaunt journal (along with McQuhae) and JB’s 1762–63 London journal (Earlier Years, pp. 28–29, 36–38, 86, 92–93, 98). JB wrote of JJ in 1786: ‘my oldest friend, Grange, who is steady to me upon all occasions … was a benevolent and pious man … it may please God that we may never meet, never to undergo the distress of being separated’ (To Sir Alexander Boswell, 4 Aug. 1786, Yale MS. L 73). Corr. 1 is devoted to the correspondence between him and JB. The Introduction to that volume (pp. x–xliv) provides the most comprehensive biography of him. JJ’s three farms, Grange, Upperbanks, and Heithat, were in Dumfriesshire (Corr. 1, pp. xi–xiii). 47 This request was omitted from E–B. If Erskine did mention him kindly, the passage was omitted when the letter was

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printed in E–B; see, however, From AE, 5 July. The surviving correspondence between JJ and AE is helpfully printed in

Corr. 1. Unfortunately, no JB–JJ correspondence survives between the letters of 21 Aug. 1761 and 17 Aug. 1762.

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 8–Sunday 9 May 1762 (E–B ) Printed E–B, pp. 103–07 (LETTER XXVIII).

Auchinleck, May 8, 1762. Dear ERSKINE, I SHOULD have wondered very much, had I been told of Lady J———’s particular attachment to the tune of Appie Mac-nab, two months ago; but I must inform you, that a few days before I left Edinburgh, having occasion to look into the advocates library, I there chanced to turn up an old Roman song-book, and, to my great surprize, met with the individual air of Appie Mac-nab, which I discovered to be part of an original Patrician cantata on the daughter of the famous Appius, set for the Tibiae sinistrae. In a manuscript marginal note, it is said to have been composed by Tigellius the famous musician, whose death and character Horace takes occasion to entertain and instruct us with, in the second satire of his first Book. You see, therefore, that lady J———’s taste for Italian music, cannot be called in question; and indeed, I think her liking Appie Mac-nab, is a very strong proof of it, as she certainly could not know its original. The Roman song-book, a very great curiousity, was brought from Rome some hundred years ago, by father Macdonald, an old popish priest, who left it as a legacy to the Duke of Gordon. It is probable, that some musician in the North of Scotland, has transcribed the Appian cantata from it, and giving its principal air a Scottish turn, and adapting proper words to it, has produced the vulgar ballad of Appie Mac-nab. Lady B———’s terror for the Turkey-cock, diverts me extremely. Did they but come to an engagement, how noble must it be! The idea makes a strong impression on my fancy. I shall certainly write something astonishing upon it. This charming weather has reconciled me to the country. It enlivens me exceedingly. I am chearful and happy. I have been wandering by myself, all this forenoon, through the sweetest place in the world. The sun-shine is mild, the breeze is gentle, my mind is peaceful. I am indulging the most agreable reveries imaginable. I am thinking of the brilliant scenes of happiness, which I shall enjoy as an officer of the guards. How I shall be acquainted with all the grandeur of a court, and all the elegance of dress and diversions; become a favourite of ministers of state, and the adoration of ladies of quality, beauty, and fortune! How many parties of pleasure shall I have in town! How many fine jaunts to the noble seats of dukes, lords, and members of parliament in the country! I am thinking of the perfect knowledge which I shall acquire of men and manners, of the intimacies which I shall have the honour to form with the learned and ingenious in every science, and of the many amusing literary anecdotes which I shall pick up. I am thinking of making the tour of Europe, and feasting on the delicious prospects of Italy and France; of feeling all the transports of a bard at Rome, and writing noble poems on the banks of the Tiber. I am thinking of the distinguished honours which I shall receive at every foreign court, and of what infinite service I shall be to all my countrymen upon their travels. I am thinking of returning to England, of 247

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getting into the house of commons, of speaking still better than Mr. Pitt,1 and of being made principal secretary of state.2 I am thinking of having a regiment of guards, and of making a glorious stand against an invasion by the Spaniards.3 I am thinking how I shall marry a lady of the highest distinction, with a fortune of a hundred thousand pounds. I am thinking of my flourishing family of children; how my sons shall be men of sense and spirit, and my daughters women of beauty, and every amiable perfection. I am thinking of the prodigious respect which I shall receive, of the splendid books which will be dedicated to me, and the statues which will be erected to my immortal honour. I am thinking that my mind is too delicate, and my feelings too fine for the rough bustle of life; I am therefore thinking that I shall steal silently and unperceived through the world; that I shall pass the winter in London, much in the same way the Spectator describes himself to have done; and in summer, shall live sometimes here at home; sometimes in such a pleasing retirement as Mrs. Row beautifully paints in her letters moral and entertaining. I like that book much. I read it when I was very young, and I am persuaded, that it contributed to improve my tender imagination. I am thinking that I shall feel my frame too delicate for the British Climate. I am thinking that I shall go and live in one of the most pleasant provincial towns in the South of France, where I shall be blest with constant felicity. This is a scheme to which I could give vast praise, were I near the beginning of my letter; but as that is very far from being the case, I must reserve it for a future epistle. I am glad to find you are so anxious to hear about the Cub at Newmarket. Love me, love my Cub. However, I can tell you nothing about him. Dodsley has not yet sent me a copy. Derrick, a London author, whom you have heard me mention, has sent me his versifications of the battle of Lora, and some of the Erse fragments. If you want to see them, let me have some franks. I shall be at Dumfries soon, where I hope to see my friend Johnston. We will talk much of old Scotch history,4 and the memory of former years will warm our hearts. We will also talk of Captain Andrew, with whom we have past many a pleasant hour. Johnston is a very worthy fellow: I may safely say so; for I have lived in intimacy with him, more years than the Egyptian famine lasted.5 And now, O most renowned of Captains! having fairly written myself out of pen, ink, and paper, I conclude with my usual epithet, of Your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1

William Pitt the Elder. There were two principal secretaries of state, the ‘Northern’ Secretary (domestic matters plus Low Countries, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Russia) and the ‘Southern’ Secretary (domestic matters plus France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey). There had been a Secretary of State for Scotland from 1708 to 1746, but the post was no longer in being. A colonial secretary was later added for America in 1768–82. 2

This system was reformed in 1782, with the two secretariats reformed into a division of power between ‘Home’ and ‘Foreign’ Secretaries (Joseph Haydn and Horace Ockerby, The Book of Dignities, 1894, pp. 221–22). The current officeholders were the Earl of Bute (Southern Department) Mar. 1761– 29 May 1762, and the Earl of Egremont (Northern Department), who replaced Pitt in Oct. 1761 and continued until Sept. 1763.

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13 MAY 1762 3 Although to later scholars the war seemed to be losing impetus and energy in 1759–63, and especially in 1761–63, the British public had been somewhat re-energized by the entry of Spain into the war in Jan. Although the Spanish had no plans to land troops in Britain in 1762, the French in fact did project an invasion, less for conquest than to frighten Britain into a disadvantageous peace. 4 JB often associated JJ with romantic idealizations of the Scottish past: see Corr. 1, Introduction, pp. xiv–xv, and passim. 5 The ‘Egyptian famine’ lasted seven

years: ‘And there shall arise … seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land …. And the seven years of dearth began to come, according as Joseph had said: and the dearth was in all lands’ (Genesis 41:30, 54). The editor of Corr. 1. assumed that ‘The companionship of Boswell and Johnston was probably of four years’ standing when the first of the letters in this volume was written’, i.e., in 1759 (Corr. 1, pp. xv, 3), which would suggest that the two men had been friends since c. 1755.

From Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck to the Duke of Queensberry, Wednesday 12 May 1762 Not reported. ‘A Letter I wrote his Grace desiring him to use his interest to procure an Ensigncy in the Guards for my Eldest son, who then had a desire to go in to the Guards.’ Queensberry recorded the letter’s date—‘your Lordship’s letter of the 12th Instt.’—as well as the fact that Lord Auchinleck’s letter was ‘enclosed in one from [the] Lord President of the Session’ (From Queensberry to Lord Auchinleck, 24 May).

From Andrew Erskine, Thursday 13 May 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 108–14.

New-Tarbat, May 13, 1762. DEAR BOSWELL, YOUR first Epistle being of a length which modern letters seldom attain to, surprised me very much; but at the sight of your second, consisting of such an exuberant number of sheets,1 I was no less amazed than if I had wakened at three o’clock in the morning, and found myself fast clasped in the arms of the empress Queen;2 or if I had found myself at the mouth of the river Nile, half eaten by a crocodile; or if I had found myself ascending the fatal ladder in the Grass-market at Edinburgh,3 and Mr. Alexander Donaldson the hangman. To confess a truth, I imagine your funds for letter-writing are quite inexhaustible; and that the fire of your fancy, like the coal at Newcastle,4 will never be burnt out; indeed, I look upon you in the light of an old stocking, in which we have no sooner mended one hole, than out starts another; or I think you are like a fertile woman, who is hardly delivered of one child, before slap she is five months gone with a second. I need not tell you your letters are entertaining; I might as well acquaint King George the Third, that he is sovereign of Great Britain,5 or gravely disclose to my servant, that his name is William. It is superfluous to inform people of what it is impossible they should not know. You think you have a knack of story-telling, but there you must yield to me, if you hearken attentively to what I am about to disclose, you will be convinced; it is a tale, my dear Boswell, which whether we consider the turnings and windings of fortune, or the sadness of the catastrophe, is delightful and improving.— You demand of me, Sir, a faithful recital of the events which have distinguished my life. 249

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Though the remembrance of every misfortune which can depress human nature, must be painful; yet the commands of such a revered friend as James Boswell must be obeyed; and Oh, Sir! if you find any of my actions blameable, impute them to destiny, and if you find any of them commendable, impute them to my good sense. I am about fifty years of age,6 grief makes me look as if I was fourscore; thirty years ago I was a great deal younger; and about twenty years before that, I was just born; as I find nothing remarkable in my life, before7 that event, I shall date my history from that period; some omens happened at my birth: Mr. Oman at Leith was married at that time;8 this was thought very portentous; the very day my mother was brought to bed of me, the cat was delivered of three kittens; but the world was soon bereaved of them by death, and I had not the pleasure of passing my infancy with such amiable companions; this was my first misfortune, and no subsequent one ever touched me more nearly; delightful innocents! methinks, I still see them playing with their tails, and galloping after corks; with what a becoming gravity did they wash their faces! how melodious was their purring! from them I derived any little taste I have for music;9 I composed an Ode upon their death; as it was my first attempt in poetry, I write it for your perusal; you will perceive the marks of genius in the first production of MY TENDER IMAGINATION;10 and you will shed a tear of applause and sorrow, on the remains of those animals, so dear to the premature years of your mourning and lamenting friend.

ODE ON THE DEATH OF THREE KITTENS. STROPHE. ATTEND, ye watchful cats, Attend the ever lamentable strain; For cruel death, most kind to rats, Has kill’d the sweetest of the kitten-train. ANTISTROPHE.11 How pleas’d did I survey, Your beauteous whiskers as they daily grew, I mark’d your eyes that beam’d so grey,12 But little thought that nine lives were too few. EPODE. It was delight to see My lovely kittens three, When after corks through all the room they flew, When oft in gamesome guise they did their tails pursue. When thro’ the house, You hardly, hardly, heard a mouse; And every rat lay snug and still, And quiet as a thief in mill; But cursed death has with a blow, Laid all my hopes low, low, low, low. 250

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Had that foul fiend the least compassion known; I should not now lament my beauteous kittens gone. You have often wondered what made me such a miserable spectacle; grief for the death of my kittens, has wrought the most wonderful effects upon me; grief has drawn my teeth, pulled out my hair, hollowed my eyes, bent my back, crooked my legs, and marked my face with the small-pox; but I give over this subject, seeing it will have too great a hold of your tender imagination: I find myself too much agitated with melancholy, to proceed any longer in my life to-day; the weather also is extremely bad, and a thousand mournful ideas rush into my mind; I am totally overpowered with them; I will now disburthen myself to you, and set down each sad thought as it occurs. I am thinking how I will never get a clean shirt to my back; how my coat will always be out at the elbows; and how I never will get my breeches to stay up.13 I am thinking how I will be married to a shrew of a wife, who will beat me every evening and morning, and sometimes in the middle of the day, and who will throw a chamber-pot at my head. I am thinking what a damn’d whore she will be, and how my children will be most of them hanged, and whipt through towns, and burnt in the hand.14 I am thinking of what execrable poems I will write; and how I will be thrown into prison for debt; and how I will never get out again; and how nobody will pity me. I am thinking how hungry I will be; and how little I will get to eat; and how I’ll long for a piece of roast-beef; and how they’ll bring me a rotten turnip.15 And I am thinking how I will take a consumption, and waste away inch by inch; and how I’ll grow very fat and unwieldy,16 and won’t be able to stir out of my chair. And I am thinking how I’ll be roasted by the Portuguese inquisition;17 and how I’ll be impaled by the Turks;18 and how I’ll be eaten by Cannibals;19 and how I’ll be drowned on a voyage to the East-Indies;20 and how I’ll be robbed and murdered by a highwayman;21 and how I’ll lose my senses; and how very mad I’ll be; and how my body will be thrown out to dogs to devour;22 and how I’ll be hanged, drawn, and quartered;23 and how my friend Boswell will neglect me; and how I’ll be despised by the whole world; and how I will meet with ten thousand misfortunes worse than the loss of my kittens. Thus have I, in a brief manner, related a few of the calamities which, in the present disposition of my mind, appear so dreadful; I could have enlarged the catalogue, but your heart is too susceptible of pity, and I will not shock you altogether. You will doubtless remark the great inequality of our fortunes. In your last letter, you was the happiest man I was ever acquainted with; I wish it may last, and that your children may have as much merit as you imagine; I only hope you won’t plan a marriage with any of mine, their dispositions will be so unlike, that it must prove unhappy. Pray send me Derrick’s versifications, which though they are undoubtedly very bad, I shall be glad to see, as sometimes people take a pleasure in beholding a man hanged.24 And now, Boswell, I am going to end my letter, which being very short, I know will please you, as you will think you have gained a compleat victory over the captain,25 seeing that you are several sheets a-head of me; but times may alter, and when I resume my adventures, you will find yourself sorely defeated; believe me, Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE 251

13 MAY 1762 1 Presumably a reference to JB’s letters: (1) To AE, 4 May, of which no MS survives but which ran six pages printed; and (2) To AE, 8–9 May (Yale MS. L 518), which is eight sheets or leaves and written on fourteen sides. In the unlikely event that JB had recrafted AE’s text to accommodate the changes in sequence of the letters, the previous letters would have been To AE, 4 May (Letter XXVII) and To AE, 8 May (Letter XXVIII). However, as these letters are respectively six and five pages printed, they are unlikely candidates, since neither is extraordinarily long. 2 Maria Theresa (1717–80) reigned as Archduchess of Austria and Queen of Hungary and Bohemia from 1740 to 1780 and as Holy Roman Empress from 1745 to 1765. Her husband Francis I’s role in government and military planning was limited, with the Empress-Queen making most (though not all) crucial decisions (Jeremy Black and Roy Porter, The Penguin Dictionary of EighteenthCentury History, 1994, repr. 1996). 3 For more than a century the Grassmarket, south of the Castle Hill, was the site of public executions in Edinburgh. After 1784 hangings took place at the Tolbooth (Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 230–31). 4 The proverb of ‘Carry coals to Newcastle’ was already old in 1762, having been used since 1586 (by Melville) and equivalent to the Scots ‘Salt to Dysart’ (The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd ed., 1970). 5 Another indication that AE did not share the unwavering Jacobitism of his Pitcairn mother and aunts. For doctrinaire Jacobites, ‘James III and VIII’ was indisputably de jure sovereign of Great Britain from 1701 to 1766. 6 More burlesque: AE was born on 10 Aug. 1740, and would therefore have been twenty-one years old (Register of Births and Baptisms for the Parish of Carnbee in the County of Fife, 1742). 7 E–B, ‘before before’ 8 JB and AE were at Oman’s shop at Leith 3 Nov.: ‘We went to Oman’s, drank tea’ (Journ.). He was probably the Leith vintner, William Oman (fl. 1762, d. ante 1778). Williamson’s recorded the shop as ‘on the shore’ (Williamson’s Dir. 1773–74, p. 59). Margaret Oman (d. 1778), was ‘vintner in Leith, relict of William Oman, vintner there’ (Williamson’s Dir. 1773–74, p. 59; Commissariat Record of Edinburgh, Register of Testaments 1701–1800, 1899, p. 211). AE is obviously exploiting the homonym of ‘omens’.

9 AE’s elder brother the ‘musical Earl’ of Kellie has typically been considered the outstanding musical talent of AE’s siblings. Yet as Paton noted, AE ‘could “touch it very melodiously” on other instruments than the Jew’s harp. He was an excellent musician— little inferior to the “musical Earl” himself—and composed several much-admired airs. To Thomson’s Collection of Scottish Songs he contributed, among others, the delightful air and words of “See the moon on the still lake is sleeping,” etc.’. 10 A phrase from To AE, 8–9 May (MS). 11 E–B, ‘ANSTROPHE’ 12 Compare, for example, AE’s earlier humour with the idea of cat-grey eyes: ‘Apollo light’ned in his cat-grey eyes’ (From AE to GD, ?2 Aug. 1761). 13 Paton’s character of AE in his years of genteel poverty (1770–90) noted that ‘His dress consisted of the same fashion for nearly half-a-century; and he wore the garters and flapped waistcoat to the last. The only change he latterly adopted was a curiously formed flat round hat’ (Hugh Paton, in Kay, II. i. 59). 14 Enlightened Edinburgh only gradually discarded the forms of public corporal punishment which had prevailed earlier in the city’s history. Chambers wrote: ‘Inferior corporal punishments [below hanging] are now almost never inflicted. Public scourging, once so common, is practically abrogated’ (William Chambers, The Book of Scotland, 1830, pp. 328–29). William ‘Thumbie’ Anderson was remembered as the last man stripped in the Stripping Close; he was whipped through the streets in 1805 for returning from banishment. Yet William and David Beatson and Robert Kay were ‘publicly whipped at the usual places between the Castle Hill and Netherbow’ in 1822. The punishment left its name in local geography. The ‘Stripping Close’ in Castle Hill gained its name from being used as the place where ‘criminals stripped before undergoing the punishment of flogging at the different public wells’ (Skinner, pp. 11–12). This whipping through the town was a public ritual in Edinburgh during the 1760s. Indeed, JB considered the punishment uncontroversial enough to make a children’s game out of mimicking the custom during his visit to Lagwine on 15 Sept. 1762: ‘with their hands behind their backs made a fashion of whipping them thro’ the Town’. Branding on the hand or face with a letter signifying the specific crime was another punishment gradually falling into disuse. Nonetheless, branding was still em-

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ployed at the Old Bailey in London in 1762. London criminals in 1762 were branded for bigamy (14 Jan.), manslaughter (24 Feb.), and simple grand larceny or theft in a specified place (14 Jan., 24 Feb., 21 Apr., 26 May). Convicts who were allowed to plead ‘benefit of clergy’, and those who were adjudged guilty of manslaughter rather than murder, were branded on the thumb. The symbols employed included ‘T’ (theft), ‘F’ (felon), and ‘M’ (murder), the brands intended to serve as a guarantee that the criminals could only receive this judicial clemency once. The convicted were branded publicly in front of spectators, in the courtroom itself, at the end of the sessions. Some London criminals supposedly bribed the executioner to brand them with a cold iron. London shop-lifters had not been branded on the cheek since 1706. The punishment was finally abolished in London in 1779 (see The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London, 1674 to 1834, commonly known as the ‘Old Bailey Sessions Papers’). 15 Both foods had cultural connotations. ‘Roast Beef’ was a Hogarthian symbol of liberty as well as a Highland pastoralist symbol of prosperity and independence. The turnip or ‘neep’, by contrast, despite its improving the level of nutrition and providing a cycle of crop yield without a fallow, was initially seen as a poor man’s food to be eaten only in case of dearth and mainly relegated (like the potato) to the job of fodder for livestock (CSD, ‘neep’; James E. Handley, Scottish Farming in the Eighteenth Century, 1953, 203–04). In Scotland, where it was among ‘crops hitherto unknown’ in the late seventeenth century, turnips were associated with the controversial agricultural improvers of the eighteenth century in the Borders and Lothians, remaining rare in the north until after 1782. SJ wrote in 1773 of the innovation: ‘Young Col [Donald Maclean] … has introduced the culture of turnips, of which he has a field …. His intention is to provide food for his cattle in the winter. This innovation was considered … as the idle project of a young head, heated with English fancies; but he has now found that turnips will really grow, and that hungry sheep and cows will really eat them’ (Journey, p. 124). As late as the lifetime of the Earl of Findlater (1716–70), Banffshire people ‘came to see this strange crop’ out of ‘curiousity’, often stealing them (J. A. Symon, Scottish Farming Past and Present, 1959, 101, 107–08, 111, 140–49, 459–60). The turnip was also tainted (for some) by its symbolical association in Jacobite polemic

with the House of Hanover. 16 AE was both ‘tall’ and ‘stout’ (Hugh Paton, in John Kay, A Series of Original Portraits, 2nd ed., 1877, II. i. 57–59). 17 The ceremonial of the ‘auto da fe’ or the punishment of heretics by public humiliations (sometimes ending in their execution by burning) persisted despite the eighteenth-century decline in the powers of the Inquisition. Burning was rarer than in the ‘Golden Age’, but could still happen, as Malagrida’s well-publicized case in 1761 demonstrated. In 1752 ‘Thirty three men and 29 women having been sentenced to several punishments, made the usual procession at an auto de fe; but no person was burnt, a thing very unusual at this cruel and detestable ceremony, which the Portugueze themselves, begin to regard with aversion and horror’ (Gent. Mag. Nov. 1752, xxii. 538). ‘At the auto da fé in Lisbon, on the 20th of September, the number of criminals amounted to 54, including three in effigy. Father Malagrida was the only person burnt at the stake, for writing heretical books, and pretending to the spirit of prophecy and revelations. This Auto exceeded all before it in magnificence, boxes were built around the square … a grand entertainment was given in the convent by the inquisitor’ (Gent. Mag. Oct. 1761, xxxi. 478). ‘A LIST of the Persons, with their Offences and Punishments, who came out of the Inquisition in Lisbon, at the late Auto da Fe, on the 27th of October, 1765’ noted that the most frequent punishments in another contemporary instance of the ceremony were deprivation or suspension of Church employments (where the offender was employed by the Church), whipping, slavery in the galleys, banishment, imprisonment in the cells of the Inquisition or a convent, branding, and the forced wearing of a ‘habit of ignominy’. Burning did not appear in that list (Gent. Mag. Suppl. 1765, xxxv. 603–07). Information (or propaganda) on the Inquisition in Portugal was readily available in the press of the early 1760s, e.g., Authentic memoirs concerning the Portuguese Inquisition, never before published …, 1761 (ESTC T73182); The proceedings and sentence of the spiritual court of inquisition of Portugal, against Gabriel Malagrida, Jesuit, for heresy, hypocrisy, false prophecies …, 1762 (ESTC T100082). 18 AE is using the term ‘Turk’ broadly, as JB and other English writers of the period typically did. Usual Ottoman forms of corporal punishment were amputations of a hand or leg, the bastinado, or a sentence to

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row in the galleys, with beatings for minor crimes common (Halil Inalcik, The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age, 1300–1600, 1973, p. 74). Rebels were often punished in mass beheadings, their bodies burned in mass graves, sometimes followed by the exhibition of their severed heads on spears (Robert Dankoff, trans., The Intimate Life of an Ottoman Statesman: Melek Ahmed Pasha, 1588– 1662 …, 1991, pp. 75–77, 181, 190, 246). It is perhaps this image of severed heads impaled on spikes which AE and JB knew. The legal text Punishments of Life and Limb … contained the information that ‘[i]n barbaric regions, particularly in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Salee, where inveterate pirates dwell, if a man is thought guilty of treason, he is impaled. This is done by inserting a sharply pointed stake into his posterior, which then is forced through his body, emerging through the head, sometimes through the throat. This stake is inverted and planted in the ground, so that the wretched victims, as we may well imagine, live on in agony for some days before expiring.… It is said that nowadays not so much trouble is taken with impalement as once the case, but such criminals simply have a short spit thrust into their anus and are left to crawl thus upon the earth until they die’ (cited in Michael Kunze, Strasse ins Feuer, trans. William E. Yuill as Highroad to the Stake: A Tale of Witchcraft, 1987, p. 412). A late-nineteenth century Bulgarian Christian poet exemplified a strand of Balkan accounts of Ottoman rule: ‘And the tyrant rages/ and ravages our native home:/ impales, hangs, flogs, and curses’ (Donald Quataert, The Ottoman Empire, 1700–1922, 2000, p. 174). 19 Cannibalism was generally associated with exotic locales and peoples categorized as ‘savage’, although the phenomenon on rare occasion was said to have resurfaced in eighteenth-century Britain (A shocking discovery, of human cannibals, who resided near the turnpike at Mile End, and were apprehended on Monday last, when searching the house, two hundred skeletons were found, and coppers boiling with human flesh in them. Also, a skull made into a saltcellar, with the handles of knives and forks made of human bones, ?1725, ESTC N23936). James Douglas (1697–1715), styled Earl of Drumlanrig (de jure Marquess and Earl of Queensberry) was legendary in Scotland as the ‘Cannibalistic idiot’ of 1707. ‘He was kept in confinement in a cell at Holyrood, but was left unguarded, while the servants went out to see the riots at Edinburgh during the debates on the Union. He

escaped from his cell and fell upon a cookboy, who was turning the spit in the kitchen and whom he killed, spitted and roasted before the fire’ (Comp. Peer. x. 697). Gibbon’s Decline and Fall would later poke fun at the allegedly cannibalistic past of Scotland: ‘If in the neighbourhood of the commercial and literary town of Glasgow, a race of cannibals has really existed, we may contemplate, in the period of the Scottish history, the extremes of savage and civilised … to encourage the pleasing hope that New Zealand may produce, in some future age, the Hume of the Southern hemisphere’ (Gent. Mag. Nov. 1781, li. 522, quoting Gibbon). 20 The arrival of East India ships was particularly newsworthy because the war and its resultant preying on commercial vessels added even more anxiety to the usual concerns about East-Indiamen being lost to shipwreck ‘The Stretham Indiaman, Capt. Mason, was lost, after landing most of the cargo. The crew are saved’ (Gent. Mag. June 1760, xxx. 295). The news was not always so pleasant: ‘there is the melancholy news [from a China trade vessel] of the Elizabeth’s taking fire, on the 8th of January last, and afterwards blowing up, by which the captain, 2d and 5th mates, and 44 men perished’ (Gent. Mag. July 1763, xxxiii. 359). 21 Fear of highwaymen remained high, especially in attacks on isolated travellers in places such as Hounslow Heath and Sutton Common; attacks on notable gentlemen were often publicized in the press (Gent. Mag. Nov., Dec. 1763, xxxiii. 564, 613). 22 Perhaps a reference to the death and devourment of Jezebel: ‘And he said, Throw her down. So they threw her down … they went to bury her: but they found no more of her than the skull, and the feet, and the palms of her hands …. In the portion of Jezreel shall dogs eat the flesh of Jezebel’ (2 Kings 9:33–36). 23 A punishment traditionally meted out to rebels and traitors. The last executions for High Treason ‘in the old-fashioned way’ were in 1820 in London, Stirling, and Glasgow, but although the convicted were beheaded they were not eviscerated as tradition demanded (V. A. C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People, 1770–1868, 1996, pp. 298 and n. 1). 24 Pottle speculated that JB, as a pupil at Mundell’s School in the West Bow (which he attended from 1746 to 1748/49), would perforce have walked by the public place of execution on hanging-days. The execution in Edinburgh reported in ‘Boswelliana’ probably occurred in or before summer

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1762, and seems to be the first specific mention of JB’s attending a hanging: ‘At an Execution in the Grass Mercat Boswell was observing that if you will consider it abstractly there is nothing terrible in it. No doubt Sir replied Mr. Love if you will abstract every thing terrible that has about it nothing terrible will remain’ (‘Boswelliana’, Hyde Collection, p. 14); the anecdote almost certainly dates from before James Love’s departure from Edinburgh to London in summer 1762, as there is no record of Love’s returning to Edinburgh). The first execution mentioned in a journal entry by JB seems to be that of the highwayman Paul Lewis at Tyburn, 4 May 1763: ‘My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist

it; altho’ I was sensible that I would suffer much from it .… I was most terribly shocked, & thrown into a very deep melancholy … gloomy terrors came upon me so much, as Night approachd that I durst not stay by myself’ (Journ. 4 May 1763). For reflections on JB’s obsession with death and executions, see Bruce Redford, ‘Boswell’s Fear of Death’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 1986, xxi. 99–118; and Gordon Turnbull, ‘Boswell and Sympathy: The Trial and Execution of John Reid’, in Greg Clingham, ed., New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the Bicentenary of the Life of Johnson, 1991. 25 Lt. Erskine again refers to himself as ‘Captain’.

From the Duke of Queensberry1 to Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, Monday 24 May 1762 MS. Yale (C 2333.8) ENDORSEMENT in Lord Auchinleck’s hand: From the D. of Queensberry May 24 1762 In answer to A Letter I wrote his Grace desiring him to use his interest to procure an Ensigncy in the Guards for my Eldest son, who then had a desire to go in to the Guards.

Ambresbury2 May. 24th. 1762 MY LORD: I have this day receiv’d the favour of your Lordship’s letter of the 12th Instt.3 enclosed in one from my Lord President of the Session.4 I will certainly use my best endeavours to procure an Ensign’s Commission in the Guards for your son, and shall be very glad if I can meet with success so soon as I wish. Those Commissions are not so easily obtain’d as in marching Regiments,5 fewer vacancies happening in the Guards than in the Army in general, & perhaps several people may now be waiting for them on promises already given, which may occasion delay;6 but I will do all I can to succeed in it, & shall always be ready to employ any interest I have to serve your Lordship, being with great regard & esteem, My Lord, Your Lordship’s most obedient humble servant, QUEENSBERRY ETC. I return to London a very few days hence & will lose no time in applying personally there & previously by letter. 1 Charles Douglas (1698–1778), 3rd Duke of Queensberry and 2nd Duke of Dover, was born in Edinburgh. He was a younger brother of the infamous ‘cannibalistic idiot’ of 1707 (see preceding letter, n. 19). A longstanding courtier, he had served the courts of the first two Georges 1720–29, and even after a contretemps in 1729 with George II over his duchess’s patronage of Gay’s Polly which caused him to resign the

title of Vice-Admiral of Scotland, he continued to serve the House of Hanover at the Court of Frederick, Prince of Wales 1733– 51. He had been appointed Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland on 10 June 1761, and in 1763 would become Lord Justice General of Scotland (Comp. Peer. x. 697–99). Because he was considered a friend to both George III and the King’s former tutor and current favourite, Lord Bute, Queensberry

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was thought to have great influence. Bute was literally in his last days of coalition government with Newcastle (Oct. 1761– May 1762); on 26 May Bute would assume the post of First Lord of the Treasury and effectively become ‘prime minister’ (Chris Cook and John Stevenson, British Historical Facts: 1760–1830, 1980, p. 12). 2 The third duke had several residences, including Queensberry House in Burlington Gardens (1721), where the duchess died in 1777, and Douglas House, Petersham. Yet ‘he and his wife spent much of their time at Amesbury, Wilts, a house built from the designs of Inigo Jones by his pupil, John Webb’ (Comp. Peer. x. 699 n. b; Violet Biddulph, Kitty, Duchess of Queensberry, 1935, pp. 29–31). 3 Not reported. See From Lord Auchinleck to Queensberry, 12 May. 4 Robert Dundas of Arniston (1713–87), advocate from 1738, Lord Advocate and M.P. for Edinburgh [both] 1754–60, Lord President of the Court of Session from 1760. A zealous Church of Scotland man and loyalist to the House of Hanover, supporter of increased Crown ‘English’ influence over Scots management, opponent of the bill for a Scots militia, and prosecutor of Jacobites. ‘[D]uring the twenty-seven years he presided over that court, he devoted himself to the duties of his office with an ardour and zeal’ in clearing the ‘long roll’ of old business (George Brunton and David Haig, An Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice in Scotland, 1849, pp. 523–25; Namier and Brooke, ii. 361–64). His letter to Queensberry has not been recovered.

5 The ‘marching Regiments’ or ‘Infantry Regiments of the Line’ were the non-guards regiments of foot on the British and Irish establishments (numbered in order of precedence from 1747). The line regiments were ‘proprietary’, and generally referred to either by their sequence number or by their colonel’s name (with the exception of certain regiments with permanent names, which preserved their cognomen regardless of colonel). Their number had been 51 in 1755, had expanded during the crisis of the Seven Years’ War to 62 in 1757, 94 in 1761, 124 in early 1763, but by late 1763 had been reduced to 75. Their numbering system does not mean that marching regiments were interchangeable. Several numbered regiments bore the distinction of being ‘Royal’ regiments of the line, and the ‘Six Old Corps’ (later awarded the ‘Royal’ title) had an esprit de corps which rivalled the Guards’ (Army List, 1755, 1761, 1763 [both early and Nov. revised]; ‘Order of Precedence’, 1751, in David Ascoli, A Companion to the British Army: 1660–1983, 1983, pp. 28–34, 74–79; cf. Houlding, pp. 10–13). 6 For the system of seniority and promotion and waiting one’s turn for commissions and promotions, see Houlding, pp. 99–116. Although the purchase system was indeed corrupt, it did not follow that even eldest sons of minor gentry and local eminences (such as JB) could expect the system to allow them to jump the queue. Furthermore, commissions of the sort JB wanted, which were gratis patronage gifts, were far rarer than commissions for which one had to pay cash.

From Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 25 May 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 115–18 (LETTER XXX).

New-Tarbat, May 25, 1762. Dear BOSWELL, IT has been said, that few people succeed both in poetry and prose. Homer’s prose essay on the gun-powder-plot,1 is reckoned by all critics inferior to the Iliad; and Warburton’s rhyming satire on the methodists, is allowed by all to be superior to his prosaical notes on Pope’s works.2 Let it be mine to unite the excellencies both of prose and verse in my inimitable epistles. From this day, my prose shall have a smack of verse, and my verse have a smack of prose. I’ll give you a specimen of both—My servant addresses me in these words, very often— The roll is butter’d, and the kettle boil’d, Your honour’s newest coat with grease is soil’d; 256

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In your best breeches glares a mighty hole, Your wash-ball and pomatum, Sir, are stole. Your taylor, Sir, must payment have, that’s plain, He call’d to day, and said he’d call again. There’s prosaick poetry; now for poetick prose—Universal genius is a wide and diffused stream that waters the country and makes it agreeable; ’tis true, it cannot receive ships of any burthen, therefore it is of no solid advantage, yet is it very amusing. Gondolas and painted barges float upon its surface, the country gentleman forms it into ponds, and it is spouted out of the mouths of various statues; it strays through the finest fields, and its banks nourish the most blooming flowers. Let me sport with this stream of science, wind along the vale, and glide through the trees, foam down the mountain, and sparkle in the sunny ray; but let me avoid the deep, nor lose myself in the vast profound, and grant that I may never be pent in the bottom of a dreary cave, or be so unfortunate as to stagnate in some unwholsome marsh. Limited genius is a pump-well, very useful in all the common occurrences of life, the water drawn from it is of service to the maids in washing their aprons; it boils beef, and it scours the stairs; it is poured into the tea-kettles of the ladies, and into the punch-bowls of the gentlemen. Having thus given you, in the most clear and distinct manner, my sentiments of genius, I proceed to give you my opinion of the ancient and modern writers;3 a subject, you must confess, very aptly and naturally introduced. I am going to be very serious, you will trace a resemblance between me and Sir William Temple,4 or perhaps David Hume, Esq;5 A modern writer must content himself with gleaning a few thoughts here and there, and binding them together without order or regularity, that the variety may please; the ancients have reaped the full of the harvest, and killed the noblest of the game: in vain do we beat about the once plenteous fields, the dews are exhaled, no scent remains. How glorious was the fate of the early writers! born in the infancy of letters; their task was to reject thoughts more than to seek after them, and to select out of a number, the most shining, the most striking, and the most susceptible of ornament. The poet saw in his walks every pleasing object of nature undescribed; his heart danced with the gale, and his spirits shone with the invigorating sun, his works breathed nothing but rapture and enthusiasm. Love then spoke with its genuine voice, the breast was melted down with woe, the whole soul was dissolved into pity with its tender complaints; free from the conceits and quibbles which, since that time, have rendered the very name of it ridiculous; real passion heaved the sigh; real passion uttered the most prevailing language. Music too reigned in its full force; that soft deluding art, whose pathetick strains so gently steal into our very souls, and involve us in the sweetest confusion; or whose animating strains fire us even to madness: how has the shore of Greece echoed with the wildest sounds; the delicious warblings of the Lyre charmed and astonished every ear. The blaze of rhetorick then burst forth; the ancients sought not by false thoughts, and glittering diction, to captivate the ear, but by manly and energetic modes of expression, to rule the heart and sway the passions. There, Boswell, there are periods for you. Did not you imagine that you was reading the Rambler of Mr. Samuel Johnson;6 or that Mr. Thomas Sheridan 257

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himself was resounding the praises of the ancients, and his own art?7 I shall now finish this letter without the least blaze of rhetoric, and with no very manly or energetic mode of expression, assure you, that I am, Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 The foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of Guy Fawkes, 5 Nov. 1605, was annually commemorated in the State Services of the Church of England, and after the Glorious Revolution the powder plot church service was twinned with a service on the same day commemorating the ‘providential’ events of 1688–89. See, e.g., Forms of prayer with thanksgiving to almighty God; to be used in all churches and chapels within this realm, every year, upon the fifth day of November, the thirtieth day of January, and the twenty ninth day of May …, 1728 (ESTC T80029). Speculation on the era in which Homer lived (probably not later than 700 B.C.), or if there was indeed a single ‘Homer’ who wrote the Iliad, would not alter the fact that there are no prose works attributed to ‘Homer’ and that AE’s joke conjoins events at least 1300 years apart in time. 2 William Warburton (1698–1779), a clergyman from 1727 and Bishop of Gloucester from 1760. Warburton did not write original ‘rhyming satire’. He was the author of Miscellaneous translations, in prose and verse, from Roman poets, orators, and historians, 1724 [1723] (ESTC T132384), repr. 1745. The methodists were until 1795 still chiefly members of the Church of England; they did not separate into ‘dissent’ until the end of the century. Therefore the ire of an Anglican bishop against methodist itinerant preaching, cells or circles, and flamboyant emphasis on religion of the heart was still of some consequence. As far back as 1738, Warburton had expressed concern at ‘our new set of Fanatics, called the Methodists’. He had preached an anti-methodist sermon which in 1761–63 had ‘grown’ beyond a general warning about claims of spiritual gifts into a particular attack on methodism’s ‘fanatic’ view of the Spirit. In 1763, Warburton issued a comprehensive attack on the methodists: The doctrine of grace: or, the office and operations of the Holy Spirit vindicated from the insults of infidelity, and the abuses of fanaticism … In two volumes, 1763 (ESTC T132385). The book set out to prove similarities between the Wesleys and the Quakers and Jesuits. The work quickly went through three editions in 1763, was reviewed in Monthly Rev. xxvii. 369, 399,

and provoked refutations from the leading methodists, George Whitefield and John Wesley (A. W. Evans, Warburton and the Warburtonians: A Study in Some EighteenthCentury Controversies, 1932, pp. 235–38, 289, 302–03; see also J. S. Watson, The Life of William Warburton, 1863, pp. 7, 14, 516– 17, 624). The reference to Warburton’s printed anti-methodist campaign may be a clue that this letter was revised in 1763 for the E–B publication (1763), but Warburton’s anti-methodist opinions were public long before that year. Warburton was a well-known annotator, and among other texts (including a controversial Shakespeare, 1747) had edited The works of Alexander Pope Esq. In nine volumes complete. With his last corrections, additions, and improvement … Together with the commentaries and notes of Mr. Warburton, 1751 (ESTC T5432). 3 Whether the classical or ancient GrecoRoman civilization and culture was superior to those of modern times, or if indeed societies such as France under Louis XIV had surpassed them—not only in material measurements of population and economic productivity and wealth and technical proficiency in the sciences and engineering, but also in visual and literary arts, music, virtue, and elegance—was a major debate of the late seventeenth and eighteenth century. AE’s comments in this letter suggest that he was one of the ‘ancients’ since he believed that ‘the ancients have reaped the full of the harvest, and killed the noblest of the game’. 4 Sir William Temple, for whom see To AE, ?after 2 Aug. and before 8 Aug. 1761, n. 13. Temple cogently presented his views on ancient and modern writers in Miscellanea. The second part. In four essays. I. Upon ancient and modern learning …, 1690 (ESTC R2967). Temple’s essay was an English contribution to the French debate on the relative merits of ‘ancients’ and ‘moderns’, Temple being an ‘ancient’. The brief piece had ignited an English ancients-versusmoderns debate with Wotton and Bentley attacking Temple, and Boyle and Swift defending him. 5 David Hume (1711–76), philosopher, historian, political theorist. Librarian of the Advocates’ Library 1752–57. His philo-

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sophical career having tapered off by 1751, he wrote his six-volume History in 1752–61, a work which made him ‘opulent’. He had formerly lived in AE’s section of Edinburgh, the Canongate, but in May 1762 moved into a house in James’s Court (The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J. Y. T. Greig, 1932, i. 359, 366–67). JB had been introduced to Hume in July 1758 and described him as ‘a most discreet, affable man’, who possessed ‘realy a great deal of learning’ along with ‘a choice collection of books’, and who was ‘indeed an extraordinary man … [with] genius, fine language … sollid learning … a very proper person for a Young Man to cultivate an acquaintance with’ (To WJT, 29 July 1758, Corr. 6, pp. 6–8 and nn. 5–7). JB had kept up the acquaintance, and taken tea with ‘D. Hume’ in Edinburgh 13 Mar. and 3 Apr. JB would take AE to see Hume on 4 Nov. and subsequently write the essence of a long conversation among the three men (Journ.). Two letters from him to JB survive in the Yale collection (1763 [C1562], 1768 [C 1563]). Hume’s Essays contained ‘A Dialogue’ comparing the ancients’ ideas of morals with the moderns’ (Essays, moral and political, 1741, ESTC T4004; Volume II, 1742, ESTC T142762). The book was newly popular, having been reissued, this time with Hume’s name rather than anonymously, as Vol. I. Containing essays, moral and political, in Essays and treatises on several subjects, 1753 (ESTC T217867), was in its third edition at least by 1760, and continued to be reprinted. 6 AE, like JB, enjoyed literary mimicry; his efforts in this letter at ‘Johnsonese’ are a good example of his literary impostures. AE’s ‘Johnsonese’ is more likely a general hit at SJ’s style in the Rambler essays than a

specific reference. SJ commented on the pastoral in the Rambler in phrases which are close to AE’s: ‘We have seen fields, and meadows, and groves from the time that our eyes opened upon life; and are pleased with birds, and brooks, and breezes, much earlier than we engage among the actions and passions of mankind’ (Rambler no. 36 [21 July 1750], ed. W. J. Bate et al., 1969). G. B. Hill in his edition of E–B (1879) noted the similarity between this statement of the ancients’ superiority and a passage from SJ’s Rasselas, ch. 10, in which Imlac states: ‘[I]n almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be that every other kind of knowledge is an acquisition gradually attained, and poetry is a gift acquired at once; … or whether, as … Nature and Passion … are always the same, the first writers took possession of the most striking objects for description, and the most probable occurrences for fiction, and left nothing to those that followed them, but transcription of the same events, and new combinations of the same images’ (Hill, p. 75). 7 A fundamental principle held by TS, which he stated repeatedly in his works on education and elocution, is that the spoken word is a gift of God, and therefore superior to the written word, which is a mere work of art. The Greeks and Romans, realizing this, emphasized the spoken word. According to TS, modern Britain and Ireland had lost sight of this principle and wrongly based their education on the written word, a situation that he proposed to remedy (Wallace A. Bacon, ‘The Elocutionary Career of Thomas Sheridan [1719–88]’, Speech Monographs 31/1 [Mar. 1964]: 10, 11, 22, 25, 28–29).

To Andrew Erskine, Thursday 27 May 1762 MS. Yale (L 519). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B.

Cassilis,1 27 May 1762 DEAR ERSKINE: Monsieur Bayle in his voluminous Dictionary2 has given us a surprising magazine of knowledge: much more in my opinion than is to be found in all the magazines which are published every month in Great Brittain;3 But, notwithstanding of that, I cannot help thinking that Bayle is dead; and if he is dead, pray what connection has he with his own Dictionary? You who are a great Metaphysician, and have often sat in the diving bell4 of deep discernment, may possibly think proper to oppose the doctrine which I am just now endeavouring to teach, and as you are a very able antagonist, I certainly pursue the wisest course when I decline the unequal combat. At the same time I 259

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beg leave to say that if one assertion is built upon a sandy foundation, I have got another, which is without all dispute, erected upon the sollid rock:5 For, altho, it may not be perfectly clear, that Bayle by Reason of his decease has no connection with his own Dictionary,6 yet I am positively certain that he has not the smallest connection with my present Epistle, into which he has introduced himself without the least ceremony, for which reason I shall, without any Apology, make bold to leave him. Pray, Erskine, do you know any good Author who writes sensibly upon the difference between gold and silver lace? or do you imagine that cogent arguments could be brought to prove that Gold is infinitely preferable to Silver, or that Silver is infinitely preferable to Gold,7 or that there is such an exact equality between them or at least that the[y] approach so near to one another, either in real or comparative value, that a man of the best-formed taste, would hardly know which to chuse, and might think himself a very happy man, if Fortune had granted him either of the two. The reason of my anxiety is shortly this. My own capital hat is just now full in my view; the gold lace of which is become so tarnished, that it is scarcely to be distinguished from Silver.8 Now I am puzled and perplexed what to think upon this subject, which I have twisted and turned as many different ways, as I have seen Mr. Garrick9 do his hat, when much agitated by some very strong passion.10 I beg you may take the trouble to study this matter fully, and give me all the information about it that you are able to pick up. The Circuit is over11 and I am returning to Auchinleck, from whence I shall answer your last. I am paying a visit to the Earl of Cassilis.12 Your Cloaciniad13 lies in the Window and reminds me of my friend ‘I like him much I must talk a little to him.’14 To indulge that humour, I have written this and remain your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 Cassillis House, a few miles south of Ayr, was at this time the seat of the Earl of Cassillis. The Earls of Cassillis made Culzean Castle their principal seat upon its completion in 1777 (OGS, pp. 247, 281). 2 Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), French Protestant philosopher, professor of philosophy at Sedan until he left France for Holland in 1687. A strong advocate of free thought, tolerance, and the Republic of Letters. Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique was completed and published in 1697. It was a biographically-organized dictionary which attacked previous biographers and historians and undermined claims of certainty (Francis McKee, ‘Bayle’, in Jeremy Black and Roy Porter, The Penguin Dictionary of EighteenthCentury History, 1994, repr. 1996). Several English adaptations and extensions of it had been published, most recently A General Dictionary Historical and Critical, 10 vols. 1734– 41. JB quotes SJ’s praise of ‘Bayle’s Dictionary’ as ‘a very useful work for those to consult

who love the biographical part of literature’ (Life i. 425, conversation dated 6 July 1763). Most British readers would have known the various translations such as An historical and critical dictionary. By Monsieur Bayle. Translated into English, with many additions and corrections, made by the author himself, that are not in the French editions …, 4 vols., 1710 (ESTC T143095). The 1730s reprints often included expansions and additions by others than Bayle, under titles such as A general dictionary, historical and critical: in which a new and accurate translation of that of … Mr. Bayle, with the corrections and observations printed in the late edition at Paris, is included; and interspersed with several thousand lives never before published.… With reflections on such passages of Mr. Bayle, as seem to favour scepticism and the Manichee System, ten volumes, 1734–41 (ESTC T143096) and The dictionary historical and critical of Mr Peter Bayle. The second edition …, five volumes, 1734–38 (ESTC T143097).

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27 MAY 1762 3 By the early 1760s, there were at least twelve monthly magazines, not counting the monthly reviews. The term had been used from 1731 to denote periodicals designed for general readers, presenting a miscellany of fact, fiction, and criticism (OED). They included Gent. Mag.; The Universal magazine of knowledge and pleasure; The Imperial Magazine, or, Complete monthly intelligencer; The London Magazine: or, Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer; The Court magazine: or, Royal Chronicle of news, politics, and literature, for town and country; The Royal magazine: or Gentleman’s monthly companion; The lady’s magazine; The Christian’s magazine, or a treasury of divine knowledge …; and The general magazine of Arts and Sciences, philosophical, philological, mathematical, and mechanical …. Some monthly magazines catered to the Scottish market, including Smollett’s The British magazine. Or monthly repository for gentlemen & ladies …; The Edinburgh Magazine; and Scots Mag. In 1762 alone three new magazines (The Political controversy: or, Weekly magazine of ministerial and anti-ministerial essays; consisting of the Monitor, Briton, … entire; … with additions, anecdotes and remarks; The St. James’s Magazine; and The universal museum, or gentleman’s & ladies polite magazine of history, politicks and literature …) were added to the already crowded field (ESTC). 4 Interest in underwater exploration had been well under way ever since Dr. Edmond Halley, the physicist and astronomer, developed in 1715 a method to supply air to a diving bell while it remained under water (F. M. Barber, Lecture on Submarine Boats, 1875, p. 7). 5 Matthew 7:24–27: ‘a wise man … built his house upon a rock … it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock … a foolish man … built his house upon the sand: … it fell: and great was the fall of it.’ 6 Presumably a joke on the fact that ‘Bayle’s’ Dictionary had been reissued several times after Bayle’s death with expansions and additions not by its author, yet continued to appear as ‘Bayle’s’ Dictionary. A similar fate was to befall the reference works originated by SJ, Noah Webster, and Edmund Hoyle. 7 The coinage of Britain was itself a testimony to the fact that gold was worth more than silver. The Guinea (worth 21s), halfGuinea, quarter-Guinea, and two-Guinea and five-Guinea pieces were of 22-carat (or ‘sterling’) gold. The pennies (1d, 2d, 3d, 4d [groat], 6d), the Shilling (12d), and crowns (2s 6d [half-crown], 5s [crown]) were of

11oz. 2dwt. ‘Sterling’ silver (Wyndham Beawes, Lex Mercatoria Rediviva: Or, The Merchant’s Directory …, 6th ed., 1773, p. 755). Yet paradoxically, silver was actually overvalued in coinage compared to its fair market price, leading to issuance of paper scrip or coin-clipping (Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727– 1783, 1989, p. 569). 8 Since gold does not tarnish, one may assume that JB, who strove to be a man of fashion on what he considered his meagre paternal allowance, bought false-gold lace or point in the same manner that he bought pinchbeck (copper-zinc) buckles rather than real golden ones (Cunnington, pp. 86–88). 9 JB’s long friendship with David Garrick (1717–79), actor and theatre manager, is addressed in Corr. 4, where the surviving letters 1767–78 are printed (see also George Winchester Stone, Jr., and George M. Kahrl, David Garrick: A Critical Biography, 1979). It is unknown when JB and Garrick first met; Pottle concluded that ‘Boswell had made [Garrick’s] acquaintance in 1760’. Pottle probably inferred a 1760 meeting from JB’s letter to SJ, 2 Feb. 1779, which stated: ‘I was obliged to [Garrick] in my days of effervescence in London, when poor [Samuel] Derrick was my governour’ (Lond. Journ. p. 140 n. 1; Life iii. 371). Corr. 4 agreed that JB and Garrick ‘first met in 1760’, although it added, ‘Where or when [in Mar.–June 1760] he met Garrick [via Derrick] is uncertain’ (pp. 1–2). 10 ‘Unluckily, the only specific part Boswell mentions having seen Garrick play [in the 1760 London visit] was that of Aemilius in John Home’s … The Siege of Aquileia’ (Corr. 4, pp. 1–3). JB claimed Garrick performed it ‘exquisitely’ (To Dalrymple, 22 Mar. 1760 [MS not at Yale]). During the months of Mar.–May 1760, the period in which JB could have seen him perform, Garrick was extremely active on the Drury Lane stage, appearing in some twenty different parts (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 777–99; Corr. 4, p. 2 lists eleven separate roles in ‘a wide range of his most noted parts’). The stage-business of twisting and turning the hat when agitated by ‘some very strong passion’ could have been used in anything from tragedy to farce. 11 Lord Auchinleck and Lord Justice Clerk (Lord Minto) had been appointed to ride the Southern Circuit during the Spring Term. They sat at Ayr on 22 May (Scots Mag. 1762, xxiv. 337). JB’s mentioning the Circuit being finished in the same context as his ‘returning to Auchinleck’ via Cassilis

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suggests that JB attended some or all of the Circuit as part of his agreement with Lord Auchinleck. JB had previously ridden the North Circuit in Sept. 1758, and the North Circuit in May 1761 after he had begun his legal education. He had skipped the Western Circuit Sept. 1761 despite the fact that he was studying law by then (To AE, 25 Aug. 1761 [MS], n. 14). 12 Thomas Kennedy (fl. 1744, d. 1775), 9th Earl of Cassillis, to whom the title had been adjudged by the House of Lords on 27 Jan. after a protracted legal dispute from 1759 to 1762 between the heir male (Kennedy, the baronet of Culzean from 1744) and the heir general (the Earl of Ruglen and March). The Court of Session, on which Lord Auchinleck had sat since 1754, had previously ruled in Sir Thomas’ claim’s favour, ‘though by a narrow majority’. He had served as an officer in the army, and was, according to JB, a ‘fine fellow’. His

aunt was Susanna, [Dowager] Countess of Eglinton, the mother of JB’s friend Lord Eglinton (Journ. 17 Oct. 1764; Comp. Peer. iii. 78–79; Scots Peer. ii. 492, iii. 456–59; Comp. Bar. iv. 316). 13 AE’s The Cloaciniad. A poem. To which are annexed, verses on an author’s first play, Edinburgh, 1761 (ESTC N26494) is a rare book, with only three copies reported as surviving (Scots Mag. Jan. 1761, xxiii. 37). Erskine’s twenty-four-page mock epic was reprinted in Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 44–53. Cloacina was the Roman Goddess of sewers (from the Latin word for sewer, cloaca). John Gay had celebrated her in his Trivia as ‘Cloacina, (Goddess of the tide/ Whose sable streams beneath the city glide)’ (Trivia: or, The Art of Walking the Streets of London, bk. 2, ll. 115–16 and ff.). 14 This quotation has not been identified.

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 29 May 1762 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 520).

Auchinleck, 29 May 1762.1 DEAR ERSKINE: At this delightfull Season of the year, when every thing is chearfull and gay, when the groves are all rich with leaves, the Gardens with flowers, and the Orchards with blossoms, one would think it allmost impossible to be unhappy; yet such is my hard fate at present, that instead of relishing the beautifull appearance of Nature, instead of participating the universal joy, I rather look upon it with aversion, as it exhibits a strong contrast to the cloudy darkness of my mind, and so gives me a more dismal view of my own Situation. Fancy, capricious Fancy will allow me to see nothing but shade. How strange is it to think that I who lately abounded in bliss, should now be the Dungeon Slave of black Melancholy, How unaccountable does it appear to the reasoning mind, that this change should be produced without any known cause.2 I have some notion that I have rather been too speculative, and have been enquiring with too much care and curiosity into the ‘eternal fitness of Things’,3 and by overstretching my faculties4 have brought myself into my present disagreable frame. But, I will be patient, and a little time and pleasing Amusement will restore me to sweet Serenity and ease. You must excuse this leaf of serious Sententiousness: For it has releived me a good deal, by giving vent to my distress; and you may look upon it as much the same with coughing before one begins to sing or deliver any thing in public in order that the voice may be as clear as possible. The death of your Kittens5 my dear Erskine affected me very much. I could wish that you would form it into a Tragedy, as the Story is extremely pathetic and could not fail greatly to interest the tender passions. If you have any doubts as to the propriety of their being three in number, I beg it of you to reflect that the immortal Shakespear has introduced three Daughters into his Tragedy of King Lear, which 262

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has often drawn tears from the eyes of multitudes. The same Author has likewise begun his Tragedy of Macbeth with three Witches; and Mr. Alexander Donaldson has resolved that his Collection of Original Poems by Scotch Gentlemen shall consist of ‘three volumes and no more.’6 I don’t know indeed but your affecting tale might better suit the Intention of an Opera; especialy when we consider the musical Genius of the feline race. Were a sufficient number of these Animals put under the tuition of proper Masters, nobody can tell what an astonishing Chorus might be produced. If this Proposal shall be embraced, I make no doubt of it’s being the Wonder of all Europe, and I remain your affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 In E–B, pp. 131–33, the date appears as 9 June, with To AE, 1 June and From AE, 5 June preceding it. As with JB’s other redatings of the letters in E–B, he presumably thought that the change in sequence improved the structure and flow of the volume. Again, the revisions demonstrate his attempt to reshape the events in his life and the lives of others, a technique he would later perfect in the Life. 2 An early expression of the feelings of depression, the causes of which he could not explain, that JB would later explore in his Hypochondriack essays on the topic of hypochondria itself (nos. V [Feb. 1778], XXIX [Dec. 1780], and LXIII [Dec. 1782], in Bailey, i. 135–141, ii. 40–46, 234–40). 3 ‘The eternal fitness of things’ was a characteristic phrase of the ‘intellectualist’ school of Deism, which attempted to establish ethics as a science (A. R. Humphreys, ‘“The Eternal Fitness of Things”: An Aspect of Eighteenth Century Thought’, Modern Language Review, Apr. 1947, xlii. 188– 98). Fielding’s Tom Jones was one of JB’s favourite texts: he ‘heard it read in the year 1761 by Mr. Love the Player’ (Journ. 29 June 1782). Fielding’s deist Mr. Square ‘measured all actions by the unalterable Rule of Right, and the eternal Fitness of Things’ (Tom Jones, bk. III, ch. 3, Wesleyan ed., i. 126; Journ. 29 June 1782). Pope’s An Essay on Man had famously argued that:

All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; All Discord, Harmony, not understood; All partial Evil, universal Good: And, spite of Pride in erring Reason’s spite, One truth is clear, ‘Whatever IS, is RIGHT.’ (I. x, ll. 289–95, Butt ed.)

JB had himself produced a literary work on

this topic, a poem beginning, ‘Rebel against eternal Providence’. That poem expressed awe at ‘The mazy lab’rynths of the ways of God’ (Werner, pp. 102–03; cf. MS in Douce 193). As were the Calvinist and Knoxian theories of predestination, the doctrine of Eternal Fitness was intended to provide comfort by suggesting that the universe and the course of an individual’s life were rational and part of a consistent and orderly plan, rather than a chaotic and meaningless jumble of random events. Yet as in the case of predestination, necessitarianism could also lead to despair and fatalism. For a discussion of JB’s disturbance by the doctrine of necessity and its connection with his recurrent fits of depression, see Earlier Years, pp. 131–35. 4 ‘Faculty’ psychology—a set of ‘systems of psychology in which certain mental faculties were held to be the forces and powers accountable for the phenomena of mind’ (OED)—competed with sensationalism, associationism, physiology, and empiricism in eighteenth-century accounts of the mind (Christopher Fox, ‘Defining Eighteenth Century Psychology: Some Problems and Perspectives’, in Christopher Fox, ed., Psychology and Literature in the Eighteenth Century, 1987, pp. 1–22; Graham Richards, Mental Machinery: The Origins and Consequences of Psychological Ideas, Part One: 1600–1850, 1992). 5 AE’s bathetic ‘Ode On The Death Of Three Kittens’ (From AE, 13 May). 6 Collection II, published in Jan., was projected to be the second in a set of three, but poor sales of the second volume made Donaldson cancel the plans for a third which he had described in his ‘Advertisement’ (Alexander Donaldson, ‘Advertisement’, Collection II; See To Donaldson, 28 July 1761, nn. 4–5, 9).

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To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 29 May 1762 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 131–33 (LETTER XXXIII).

Auchinleck, June 9, 1762. Dear ERSKINE, AT this delightful season of the year, when every thing is chearful and gay, when the groves are all rich with leaves, the gardens with flowers, and the orchards with blossoms, one would think it is almost impossible to be unhappy; yet such as my hard fate at present, that instead of relishing the beautiful appearance of nature, instead of participating the universal joy, I rather look upon it with aversion, as it exhibits a strong contrast to the cloudy darkness of my mind, and so gives me a more dismal view of my own situation. Fancy, capricious fancy will allow me to see nothing but shade. How strange it is to think, that I who lately abounded in bliss, should now be the slave of black melancholy! How unaccountable does it appear to the reasoning mind, that this change should be produced without any visible cause. However, since I have been seized with the pale cast of thought,1 I know not how, I comfort myself, that I shall get free of it as whimsically. You must excuse this piece of serious sententiousness; for it had relieved me; and you may look upon it as much the same with coughing before one begins to sing, or deliver any thing in public, in order that the voice may be as clear as possible. The death of your kittens, my dear Erskine! affected me very much. I could wish that you would form it into a tragedy, as the story is extremely pathetic, and could not fail greatly to interest the tender passions. If you have any doubts as to the propriety of their being three in number, I beg it of you to reflect, that the immortal Shakespeare has introduced three daughters into his tragedy of King Lear, which has often drawn tears from the eyes of multitudes. The same author has likewise begun his tragedy of Macbeth with three witches; and Mr. Alexander Donaldson has resolved, that his collection of original poems by Scotch gentlemen, shall consist of three volumes, and no more. I don’t know, indeed, but your affecting tale might better suit the intention of an opera, especially when we consider the musical genius of the feline race: were a sufficient number of these animals put under the tuition of proper masters, no body can tell what an astonishing chorus might be produced. If this proposal shall be embraced, I make no doubt of its being the wonder of all Europe, and I remain, Yours, as usual, JAMES BOSWELL. 1 From Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy (Hamlet, III. i, ll. 83–84):

… And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought …

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 1 June 1762 (MS) MS. Yale (*L 521).

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Auchinleck, 1 June 1762. DEAR ERSKINE: I have just finished my first reading of Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism, which has given me very great pleasure, not only as a Work of great merit, but as the production of a man whose regard and Intimacy I have the happiness to enjoy.1 Pray dont you thank me for bringing you acquainted with him?2 and altho’ you are not fond of being acquainted with many People, will you not cultivate a Connection with him. I can assure you that you are very much in favour with him; for his Lordship has strong feelings of every kind, and never can be lukewarm. He has exprest his good opinion of you, upon many occasions.— ‘Erskine is a most amiable young man, and has a great deal of Genius. Boswell, d’ye hear, in your very next letter, make my best Compliments to Captain Andrew.’ (I smil’d at his gravely giving you the Family Epithet3) ‘Come, come seria mixta Iocis.4 Tell him, that if he lies at Morpeth, this Summer, I invite him to my house in the Country,5 where he shall live just as he chuses, and have a hearty wellcome.’ One evening at Supper, when you was the Subject of our conversation, He addrest himself to David Hume Esq. and said with a good deal of earnest Vehemence, ‘I will loose him against Rabelais.’6 My dear Bard! this is all true as the London Gazette extraordinary.7 I dont know but some such Anecdotes may be prefixed to the Quarto Edition of your Works.8 At any rate some future Theophilus Cibber9 will introduce them into his continuation of The lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland;10 a Book which I am far from despising so far, as it is published, and I hope it will continue to be as good. Indeed I am under some Apprehension that the Poets of this Age, altho’ prodigiously numerous, will scarcely equal those of the last. I remember when I was in London, about two years ago,11 I chanced to have a Conversation with Mr. James Dodsley Bookseller, upon this very subject. He was of opinion that we have at present, men of as great Poetical Genius as ever existed in England; but that the Sons of the Muses have long ago exhausted every Subject so much, that there is now no opportunity for such an exercise of their talents, as to procure a high degree of admiration and applause. This Observation ratified by taking a plentifull pinch of Rappee,12 appeared at first hearing to have a good deal of Justness, and as it has often occurred to me since, without losing such of it’s original force, I am pretty much in a state of dubiety whether to hold it as a Truth, or not. Ruminating lately upon the above-mentioned obstacle to Poetical fame; a Subject perfectly new and at the same time of a very elevated Nature happily presented itself to my luxuriant Imagination. This was An Engagement between Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane and a Turkey-Cock, which I fancied in a former Letter.13 I accordingly invok’d Apollo, and undoubtedly inspired by him, have finished an Ode upon it, which I have sent you.14 I consider it as perhaps one of the greatest of modern Productions. In my humble Opinion, it is the perfect model of an Ode. Just that sort of Piece which we form an awfull and ravishing Conception of, in these divine moments when the Soul (to use a Metaphor) is in full blow, and soaring Fancy reaches it’s utmost heights! The thoughts are exquisite Sublime! The numbers flowing Majesty! But, I will restrain my Commendation, lest I should seem to be too sensible of my own Merit, and so dispose you, to give all the check you can to my vanity, by declaring that this Ode about which I have made such a prodigious noise, has been far from answering the big Expectation which my large 265

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Panegyric has so amply raised. You will perhaps feel yourself strongly inclined to exclaim ‘Good Heavens! what extravagant Encomiums does he lavish upon this Ode of his! Pliny15 has not bestowed half as much praise even upon the Emperor Trajan.’16 Softly, my dear Erskine! it is granted but pray, Sir, take this along with you. There have been many Emperors as good as Trajan, Our Alfred17 beats him, all to nothing; But I beleive you will find it difficult to show me an Ode equal to this of mine. Could it but be realy personified, it would be like Saul18 of old, taller than any of the People, and were it to be guilty of any capital crime, it could not enjoy one of the greatest privileges of a British Subject, which is that of being tried by one’s Peers.19 You may suppose that my Spirits are pretty high, by the manner in which I express my present Sentiments: And indeed I shall not treat your supposition in the same contemptous manner that the Duke of Buckingham’s comic Heroe does the Supposes of the much puzled and doubting Mr. Smith,20 for I frankly acknowledge that your Conjecture is right; which is to be sure allmost a self-evident Proposition. If a Philosopher could but discover a certain method of preserving these same good Spirits at all times, I should think him entitled to as great a Reward as he who shall be so fortunate as to find out the Longitude,21 and were I a member of Parliament, I should make a motion in the house for such a Præmium22 to be voted to him, and I hope, upon that occasion, I should have the honour to be seconded by our friend Mr. Dempster. I am sorry that I cannot be with you at New-Tarbat, when he and Miss Dempster23 are there. You can scarcely fail to be very happy. As to my Cub, I think he has allready got praise enough from People of rank and consequence;24 perhaps too much;25 so that I am not much concerned whether the profest Critics like him, or not.26 It was not to acquire additional praise that I sent him into the World; My reasons for so doing are merrily recited in the Preface.27 I long much to see him in his Pall-mall Habit:28 But am affraid he may look a little aukward in it. I see your ode to Pity in the last Scots Magazine.29 It does our Collection30 good, to have a Poem now and then transplanted from it, to the Periodical Publications, which are much read. I remain, My Dear Erskine, as usual your affectionate Friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 Kames’s Elements of criticism. In three volumes …, 1762 (ESTC T32597) bore the dedication date of Dec. 1761, and was published Jan. and Mar. 1762. The book’s dedication did not employ Kames’ judicial honorific, and simply read ‘Henry Home’. It appeared in a second edition in 1763 (ESTC T32598), a third in 1765 (ESTC N1391), and a fourth in 1769 (ESTC T32595), all advertised as ‘With additions and improvements’, and it continued to be reissued after Kames’s death. For Kames’s literary theory, see Ross, pp. 266–91. JB had perhaps seen a section of Kames’s Elements (‘the two Species of Poetry’) in draft post Mar. 1760. In To AE, 19 Oct. JB would briefly praise Elements of Criticism. Journ.

(winter 1761–62) had noted several visits to Lord Kames. JB supped with Kames 26, 28 Feb. and 7, 13, 15, 21 Mar., and dined with Kames 25 Mar. (Journ.). He probably would have seen Kames in other professional and social contexts as well. When his journal resumed on 9 June, an undated entry remarked, ‘now & then with Lord Kelly [AE’s brother], often with Lord Kames’. 2 Kames read and appreciated AE’s poems before meeting him. The JB–AE letters for Dec. 1761 mention Kames’s reactions to reading AE’s poems: ‘your Ode to Midnight … Lord K——— calls … the best Poem in the English language’ (To AE, 2 Dec. 1761 [E–B]); ‘Lord Kaims? I can assure you, in particular of his Lordship’s Approbation. I

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had the honour two nights ago of reading your Ode to Midnight, Your Chairmen and some other Pieces to him with which he was highly pleased.’ (To AE, 8 Dec. 1761 [MS]). In To AE, 19 Oct. JB would repeat Lord Kames’s invitation to visit the estate of Kames. It is not known precisely when JB brought AE acquainted with Kames, although this letter provides a terminus ad quem of 1 June, before which the meeting must have happened. A letter from Lord Kames tentatively dated to ?Jan. 1762 (Yale MS. C 1648, Catalogue ii. 737) contained Kames’ request for a meeting: ‘I hear your friend Capt. Erskine is in Edr. at this precious moment. I long to see the outlandish monster that soars beyond an Eagle, & is yet tame like a dove, that can sting like a Serpent, and yet lull you into Pleasure like a Syren. Will you shew him here this Evening?’ It is unknown, however, if that invitation was accepted. The dating of that letter was probably based on the undated entries for early 1762: ‘Erskine came to Town … had Ersk at Break twice’; ‘supt Lord Kaims’ (undated Journ./Notes, 1 Jan.–15 Feb.). The first of two likely hypothetical periods for the meeting is between 20 Jan. (when Erskine wrote from New Tarbet) and 7 Feb. (when he wrote to tell JB that his regiment had arrived at Morpeth). The second of the two likely times in which AE and Kames could have met is c. 20–21 Mar. AE wrote from Morpeth 2 Mar., but from New Tarbet 15 Apr., and he appears to have travelled to and from Morpeth via Edinburgh. JB’s notes mentioned ‘Supt Erskine long Conversation’ on 20 Mar., and on the following day ‘supt Lord Kames’ (Journ. 20–21 Mar.). 3 ‘Family Epithet’ here refers to ‘Captain Andrew’, the Erskine family’s cognomen for AE. 4 ‘[S]eria mixta Iocis’: seriousness mixed with jocosity. It was a common neo-Latin phrase, used for example by Lope de Vega in his Arte Nuevo De Hacer Comedias (l. 382) and by the Scottish author John Dick. ‘The Nature of my Jests shall be such, as we call in Latin, seria mixta jocis, and in broad Scots, half jest half earnest’ (John Dick, Testimony to the Doctrine, Worship, Discipline, and Government of the Church of SCOTLAND, and the Covenanted work of Reformation As it was Profess’d in the Three Kingdoms [?Edinburgh, 1684], p. 48). 5 Kames, a house of ‘cheerful domestic castellation and crow-stepped gables’ dating back to the seventeenth century, was in southern Berwickshire, about fifty miles

north of Morpeth. The estate had been purchased by the family c. 1600, was Henry Home’s birthplace and residence in youth, and was under a load of debt until 1752, by which time he had improved the family fortunes. It was also a working farm, with Home instituting ‘crop-rotation, grass sowing, turnip and potato cultivation, scientific manuring, enclosures, and afforestation’. He ‘delighted in returning to his birthplace when his official duties permitted, bringing with him or inviting down companions … promis[ing] that a stay at Kames would recruit their jaded spirits’. Kames would later shift his focus to his wife’s inherited estate at Blair Drummond, Perthshire in 1766. He sold the estate of Kames in 1775 (Ross, pp. 3–7, 307, 315, 354; pl. 1 shows the house c. 1900, pl. 7 maps the estates in 1752–54). 6 Presumably Kames meant that AE’s bawdy and scatalogical poetry would be well-suited to versifying themes from the works of François Rabelais (c.1490–1553), author of the bawdy tales of Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–52/62). 7 The London Gazette Extraordinary was an occasional supplement to its quotidian parent-publication The London Gazette (1666–). The London Gazette, published ‘by authority’ by E. Owen and T. Harrison 1757–71, reported ‘British and Parliamentary news’ from a Government point of view. The paper ‘gazetted’ various promotions of clergy, military, bureaucrats, and other officials of the realm, and publicized ‘marriage and death notices, bankruptcies, official appointments, [and] patent medicine advertisements’. The ‘extraordinary’ gazettes reported ‘the announcement of significant events, including … the battle of Fort Ticonderoga in 1758’ (ESTC P2469). The ‘extraordinary’ issues were generally confined to times of rebellion or world war, e.g., the Supplements entitled ‘London gazette extraordinary’ which accompanied Gazette issues in 1745, 1755, 1759, 1762, 1777, 1786, and 1799 (ESTC P1830). The series from 1666 to 1788 has been microfilmed (Early English Newspapers: unit 23, reels 1135–49; unit 4, reels 199–210; unit 10, reels 458–81; unit 18, reel 884). 8 There has never been an edition of AE’s collected Works. 9 Theophilus Cibber (1703–58), actor and playwright, would-be historian of the stage, a son of the more famous Colley Cibber. He died in a shipwreck off the coast of Scotland while attempting to travel to Dublin to aid TS in establishing the Thea-

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tre Royal Smock Alley company. In Donaldson’s Collection II (p. 74), JB republished one of his early verses, ‘Epigram on hearing that Mr. Theophilus Cibber, Comedian, was drowned in his passage to Ireland’, which had first appeared in Scots Mag. Nov. 1758, xx. 587. 10 In Dec. 1752 appeared Proposals for publishing by subscription, The lives of the poets, from Chaucer, down to Pope and Swift. By Mr. Cibber (ESTC T189519). The series, largely a pastiche of earlier compilations, was originally published in 25 parts. In 1753 appeared the five-volume cumulation: The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland, to the time of Dean Swift. Compiled from ample materials scattered in a variety of books … by Mr. Cibber. In four [sic] volumes, 1753 (ESTC T82891). The compilation reached a second edition in 1753, but was never subsequently expanded past the age of Pope and Swift. (As the series author had died in 1758, a continuation would have been less likely, although not impossible). The Lives typically appeared under Cibber’s name or as ‘By Mr. [Theophilus] Cibber, and other hands’. According to SJ, Cibber had accepted ten guineas from the booksellers for allowing them to place his eminent name as author. Most of the text was collected and digested by the Scottish author Robert Shiells (or Shiels) and others. However, Cibber did revise and modify the entire series, polishing and ‘englishing’ the style, removing the ‘Jacobitical’ and ‘Tory’ sentiments, even writing some of the notes and lives on his own, and was paid twenty guineas for his efforts (Life iii. 29–31; Donald W. Nichol, ‘The Lives of the Poets’, in Eighteenth-Century British Literary Biographers, ed. Steven Serafin [Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 142], 1994, pp. 294– 300; and W. R. Keast, ‘Johnson and “Cibber’s” Lives of the Poets, 1753’, in Restoration and Eighteenth Century Literature, ed. Carroll Camden, 1963, pp. 89–101). 11 A reference to JB’s first London residence in Mar.–June 1760. This episode is another of the few surviving concrete accounts of what precisely JB did while there. 12 ‘Rappee’ or ‘rasped’ snuff was a coarse grade of snuff made from the darker and ranker tobacco leaves, and originally obtained by rasping a piece of tobacco (OED). It is mentioned in SJ’s The Idler, no. 34 (9 Dec. 1758), ed. W. J. Bate et al., 1963. 13 See To AE, 8–9 May [MS]; see also From AE, 1 May. 14 The MS of the poem JB sent to AE is not now with the JB–AE letters at Yale, and

does not appear in Douce 193. The poem only survives because JB appended to the revised letter in E–B, under the same date, his Ode on an Engagement between the Right Honourable Lady B**** and a Turkey-Cock. 15 Pliny the Younger is mentioned by AE in his letter to GD, ?2 Aug. 1761. His Panegyricus, an epideictic oration of lavish praise of the emperor, was an expanded version of the gratiarum actio which he delivered when consul suffectus in 100. Nine of the ten books of Pliny’s letters were published during his lifetime, and revised even more carefully than E–B (OED). 16 Marcus Ulpius Trajanus, c. 53–117, referred to as ‘Optimus’ or ‘the Best’, who reigned as Roman emperor from 98 to 117. The tenth book of Pliny the Younger’s letters consists of letters between Pliny, while governor of Bithynia, and Trajan. 17 Alfred (849–99), King of Wessex (West Saxons) and overlord of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and Essex from 871 to 899, sometimes called ‘Alfred the Great’. He was technically a Roman official, since in his visit to Rome in 853, the pope gave him the title of Roman consul. The use of Alfred the Great as a symbol of Saxon liberty and the traditions of English freedom was encoded in works such as Alfred: A Masque (1740), by David Mallet, James Thomson, and Thomas Arne. Note the unusualness of JB’s reference to a king of the English as ‘Our Alfred’; the closest to Scotland Alfred’s domains reached was influence in Mercia. The correct identity and sequence of the relevant Scottish kings in the era of the Saxon King Alfred was debated, but the rival and contradictory Scots king-lists for this period as published in popular histories would have included names such as Constantine II (r. 859–74), Ethus (r. 874–76), Gregory ‘The Great’ (r. 876–93) and Donald VI (r. 893– 904) (A History of the Whole Realm of SCOTLAND, Civil, Natural, and Ecclesiastical; COMPREHENDING An Account of all its Kings …, 1760, pp. 12–13). 18 Saul, first king of the Israelites. ‘Saul, a choice young man, and a goodly: … from his shoulders and upward he was higher than any of the people’ (I Samuel 9:2). 19 The generic right of subjects to trial by a jury of one’s peers survives, although the peerage’s specific right of trial ‘by peers’ in the House of Lords has ended. ‘“Privilege of peerage” belongs to all peers, whether or not they are members of the House of Lords, and also to the wives of peers and widows of peers provided they do not marry commoners …. Three of its features survived into the

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twentieth century. The first was the right of trial by peers, which was abolished by statute in 1948’ (House of Lords/House of Commons, Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, First Report, Volume I, Report and Proceedings [HL 43-I /HC 214-I], 1999, ch. 7, ‘Other Privileges’, s. 329). 20 George Villiers (1628–87), 2nd Duke of Buckingham, politician in the Cabal, military officer, satirist. JB has in mind a scene from Buckingham’s The Rehearsal (performed 1671, printed 1672). In Act V, Smith, who has been asking Bayes embarrassing questions, suggests that an eclipse can be ‘supposed’. Bayes replies, ‘Supposed! Ay, you are ever at your suppose; ha, ha, ha! Why, you may as well suppose the whole Play. No, it must come in upon the stage, that’s certain: but in some odd way that may delight, amuse, and all that’. JB’s admiration for The Rehearsal is discussed in To AE, 16 Feb. (MS), n. 16. 21 In 1714 Parliament passed an Act providing a graduated scale of three prizes from £10,000 (third prize) upwards to £20,000 (first prize) for the discovery of a method to determine longitude at sea more precisely. The near-disastrous 1740 circumnavigation of the globe by Anson’s ships had reaffirmed the need for a stable shipboard measure of longitude. Early in 1762 the first official test of John Harrison’s model H–4 watch-style marine chronometer was conducted aboard H.M.S. Deptford, a ship captained by WD’s brother, Dudley Digges. At the end of a round trip from Britain to Jamaica and back (on the Merlin), the chronometer was less than two seconds slow. Yet Harrison’s recompense in Aug. 1762 was £1,500, with a promise of an additional £1,000 once H–4 returned from the next sea-trial. It was not until 1765 that an aging and embittered Harrison was finally awarded a lesser prize of £10,000 by the Board of Longitude; he also received £8,750 from Parliament in 1773 (Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story Of A Lone Genius Who Solved The Greatest Scientific Problem Of His Time, 1995, pp. 17– 20, 53–54, 119–22, 129, 132, 148–49). 22 Lat. ‘prize’. A bill was passed on 8 Apr. 1762 ‘to render more effectual an act for allowing a public reward for discovering the longitude at sea’ (Gent. Mag. Apr. 1762, xxxii. 191). 23 See From AE, 1 Nov. 1761, n. 13. 24 JB had treasured an early reaction by Lord Eglinton to the 1760 draft of Cub: ‘Have you not caper’d at my Cub/ Like puritanic Priest in tub./ And did you not my shoulder pat / And call me child of Dorset’s

Mat?’ (To Eglinton, c. 7–11 Apr. or 29 Apr.–3 May 1760 [expanded 1761]). He also boasted of the favour shown the poem by the Duke of York when JB read the poem to him in 1760: ‘this same Cub has been laughed at by the Duke of YORK;—has been read to your Royal Highness … and warmed by the immediate beams of your kind Indulgence’ (Cub, pp. v–vi). This claim of the praise of the good and the great was retailed in the Preface: ‘These Verses have had the honour of being approved by those whose Taste it would be the highest Arrogance in me to call in question’ (Cub, p. viii). 25 Eglinton later relayed to JB the Duke of York’s anger about the thoughtless use of his name in JB’s dedication. Eglinton would blame JB for bringing him into a ‘sad scrape’ by ‘publishing your Cub and dedicating it to the Duke of York without his leave. I can assure you he was very angry’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763). 26 JB’s Preface to the poem revealed that he anticipated a negative reaction from the critics. ‘AND now for the Critics—Pray, good Gentlemen, be quiet. Do not apply your confounded Squares and Compasses to a Performance, whose Beauty—if it has any … consists in a careless ease. What have your grave Countenances to do here?—It is not at all becoming in People of your Dignity and Consequence, to keep company with Cubs …. [C]an’t a comical fellow take a hearty laugh, but one of you sage Philosopers must clap on a pair of damnation Spectacles, and stare him full in the Face, in order to find out Pimples upon his Nose? (Cub, pp. viii-ix)

AE had known about the negative reactions to JB’s Cub since mid-Apr.: ‘Mr. H— —— shewed me a very severe Epigram that somebody in London had written upon it. You know it is natural to take a lick at a Cub’ (From AE, 15 Apr.). One disgruntled reader of a copy which ‘belonged to the Chapter [Coffee House]’ (but became part of the British Museum collection by 1925) emended the title page from the printed ‘THE CUB AT NEW-MARKET’ to read ‘THE CUB is a Scrubb/ AT NEW-MARKET he does Jockey ——— it ———:’. (‘Scrub’ was slang for a runt or a puny insignificant fellow; to ‘jockey it’ was ‘to impose upon, to cheat, overreach’ [OED]). Photostat is Yale Im B654 762; presumably copied from Brit. Lib. 11633.f.20 whose entry men-

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tions ‘MS. notes’ (but the 1925 photostat guideline reads 37874[1]); see ESTC T53403. Reviews by professional ‘Critics’ had been lukewarm or negative: see Monthly Rev. 1762, xxvi. 233 and Crit. Rev. 1762, xiii. 273. The worst was yet to come with the news in Jan. 1763 of the dedicatee’s (York’s) and literary patron’s (Eglinton’s) shock and resentment of the Cub. 27 ‘My reasons for publishing it are twofold …. The former is, without flattery, the merit of the poem ….The latter is in order to let my friends have copies of it, which they may be in no danger of not being able to read’ (Cub, p. viii). 28 This suggests that the copy of Cub

from Dodsley, anticipated in previous letters, had still not arrived. A ‘Pall-mall Habit’ would be clothes purchased in the fashionable shops around Pall Mall, or suitable attire to impress the throngs who promenaded down the Mall at ‘High Mall’ hours, or both. 29 AE’s ‘Ode to Pity’ was reprinted in Scots Mag. Apr. 1762, xxiv. 176. It was also reprinted in Lond. Chron. 17–20 Apr. (xi. 372). 30 Specifically referring to Donaldson’s Collection II, in which both JB and AE had poems, although AE had also published in Collection I. AE’s ‘Ode to Pity’ appeared in Collection II, pp. 20–22.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 1 June 1762 (E–B) Printed E–B, pp. 119–24 [LETTER XXXI].

Auchinleck, June 1, 1762. AT length, O Erskine! Lady B——— and the Turkey-cock are sung in strains sublime. I have finished an ode. Receive it with reverence. It is one of the greatest productions of the human mind. Just that sort of composition which we form an awful and ravishing conception of, in those divine moments, when the soul (to use a bold metaphor) is in full blow, and soaring fancy reaches its utmost heights. Could it but be really personified—it would be like Saul of old, taller than any of the people, and were it to be guilty of a capital crime, it could not enjoy one of the greatest privileges of a British subject, to be tried by its Peers. I am sure that my ode is great. Mr. James Bruce1 the gardener, my faithful counsellor and very excellent companion, declares it is quite to his mind. He stood by me while I took my portrait of the cock, from a large one which struts upon the green. I shall be in Edinburgh in a few days;2 for which reason, I remain your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL.

ODE ON AN ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LADY B****, AND A TURKEY-COCK. I. SWELL, swell, the mighty song, Let strains exalted rend the trembling air; The great atchievments of the fair Deserve poetic fire! Such as sublimely blaz’d around, 270

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When at the elevating sound Of lofty Pindar’s lyre, Astonish’d stood th’attentive Grecian throng. II. Th’ Olympic games of old Ne’er saw such resolution bold.3 The Amazonian train, Could they recall’d to life, but see, O dame! the valiant deeds of thee, Would own their prowess vain; In vain were they as soon as born, Doom’d by their mothers fell, to mourn The female comeliness of breast, By the knife’s cruel edge opprest;4 When Lady B——— can deride, Their feeble far inferior power, In horrid conflicts trying hour, And yet retain her bosom’s snowy pride. III. See the imperious Turkey-Cock, Of size like Ardven’s rock!5 See him in rage advance, Like Marischal Turénne, the warlike boast of France!6 See! how he proudly treads the ground, Looking with fierce disdain; His varied feathers ruffling all around, While scarlet ire his head and neck does stain. His wings extended wide the pavement brush, As on he comes with hideous rush; His chest sends forth a sounding hum: As from the hollow womb of unbrac’d drum:7 Or, like the twang of smoaking cord Fix’d to the bow of yew, Which ancient Caledonian Lord, Or chieftain much renown’d in bloody battle drew.8 IV. But lo! with grand majestic mein, Her handsome Ladyship is seen, In rich blue sattin robe array’d, The colour that can never fade:9 Not lovelier could Malvina10 seem, When in her hunting vestment cloath’s with grace, By Lora’s11 sweetly-murmuring stream, She wander’d eager for the sportive chace:12 271

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In her smooth alabaster hand She grasps an oaken wand;13 And now approach thou furious vaunting bird! Thro’ all the circling air is loudly heard. V. The youthful family in haste To all the windows fly; While Andrew blest with genius and with taste, Shoots glances wild from either eye. Just so, in Rome’s Augustan age,14 (If truth resides in the historic page)15 At the Circensian games,16 The glittering crowds of knights17 and peerless dames The gladiators saw The direful terror-gleaming blade Against Hyrcanian tygers18 draw, Nor of the forest’s sovereign19 ought afraid. VI. Behold the admirable sight! See now they close in fight. A while the boist’rous bully tries With his tremendous spurs, As oft he so has serv’d the herdsman’s curs, The Lady to annoy: But she endued with Hector’s heart of steel, Warm’d glory’s fullest power to feel, With her uplifted rod To the indignant foaming foe, Hard as the thunder of mount Ida’s god,20 Deals a resistless blow, And like a puny sniveling boy, The lumpish monster shaking screaming flies. VII. Let songs of triumph ring, And on the western breeze’s fluttering wing, Let the exulting shouts be borne Far as the hills of Lorn!21 The sacred trump of fame, Whose sound the sons of men adore, Shall ever and anon proclaim To ev’ry distant shore, While the great globe does last, My Lady B———’s strength and enterprizes vast! 272

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VIII. Upon her natal day, Let amorous Boswell tune the festive lay;22 Let him be plac’d beside her at the board, Round which the generous sons of Kelly sit, Who with the daughters fair, afford Sense, beauty, music, wit! And while he drinks the sparkling wine, Brought from the fruitful banks of Rhine, Apollo bless him with ideas bright, His fancy, O ye muses! sweet employ, That all resign’d to elegant delight, His honest soul may taste celestial joy! 1 James Bruce (1719–90), overseer of the Auchinleck estate from 1741 to 1790. JB described him as ‘a worthy man of uncommon Abilitys’ (To WJT, 28 Apr. 1766, Corr. 6, pp. 146–47). As Nellie Pottle Hankins and John Strawhorn noted, ‘for Boswell, Bruce was more than an overseer; he was a friend in whom he confided, who followed with interest his legal and literary career, and who mediated the often tumultuous relationship between Boswell and his father, a relationship on which the future of the estate depended’. The letters between the ‘avuncular’ Bruce and JB were written over a series of three decades from 1762 to 1790, and ‘James Bruce … knew [JB] intimately for nearly fifty years—longer than any other person’ (Corr. 8, pp. xxxiii– xxxiv). Bruce corresponded with JB on personal as well as estate and other matters for two decades before JB became Laird of Auchinleck. Their friendship is explained in detail in Corr. 8, pp. xxxiii–xxxvi, and in the surviving JB–Bruce letters printed in that volume, pp. 1–125. Note JB’s use of the genteel ‘gardener’ to describe Bruce rather than the word ‘overseer’ which would suggest more the workaday agricultural aspect of Auchinleck estate. In a discarded portion of the ‘Ébauche de ma vie’, he also described Bruce as ‘Jardinier’ (Yale MS. L 1109, Corr. 8, p. xxxiv). 2 JB arrived in Edinburgh 9 June: ‘June 1762. Came to Edinr on the 9[th]. Was in very bad Spirits & had little relish of life’ (Journ.). The fact that JB mentions his visit to Edinburgh in the revision for E–B, but not in the original MS, suggests that he may not have planned the trip when he wrote the MS. 3 The Olympics were held from 776 B.C. every fourth summer, at Olympia, in honour

of Zeus, and attained their zenith in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the era in which Pindar composed his Olympic Odes. The idea of Lady Elizabeth as an Olympic athlete is additionally incongruous, since only men competed in and watched the Olympics (Hellenic women held the quadrennial Heraea games from c. 6th cent. B.C. until c. the Roman conquest). JB had previously informed AE of his intention to honour the fight in Pindaric ode: ‘I shall certainly write an Ode upon it, in the manner of the Author of Olympia’ (To AE, 8–9 May [MS]). 4 ‘The Amazons were a race of women famous for valour, who inhabited Caucasus; they are so called from their cutting off their breasts, to use their weapons better. A warlike woman; a virago’ (Dict. SJ, s.v. ‘Amazon’). 5 Ardven, a mountain on the isle of Arran, a craggy home of tombs and ghosts, referred to as ‘the gloomy Ardven’ (Fingal, bk. II); references to it occur also in ‘Ardven’s sea-surrounded rocks’ (Fingal, bk. III), and ‘the hills of Ardven’ (Fingal, bk. IV), and it is a place of ‘mist on the rocks’ (Fragments of Ancient Poetry, 1760, IV, VII, XIII [numberings from 1805 Works]). Macpherson’s dramatic poem ‘Comala’ (printed in Fingal) takes place on the snowy mountain, and it is mentioned in other of Macpherson’s Ossianic poems (‘The War of Caros’, ‘Carric-Thura’). 6 Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne (1611– 75), Vicomte de Turenne, Marechal de France. (JB’s addition of a gratuitous accent mark to Turenne’s name was typical of his erratic accenting of French). Turenne was an important commander in the Thirty Years’ War, the War of Devolution, and the Third Franco-Dutch War; he was an active and impetuous leader, and died in battle.

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1 JUNE 1762 7 The ‘brace’ of a drum is ‘a leathern thong which slides up and down the cord of a drum, and is used to regulate the tension of the skins, and thus the pitch of the note’ (OED). JB would have likely gained his interest in drums during his period of military fascination, which reached back to his childhood: ‘Ev’n when a boy, with chearful glee,/ The red-coats march I used to see;…/ And at the sound of drum and fife,/ Felt an unusual flow of life’ (To AE, 4 May). 8 Macpherson, Fingal, bk. I:

Chief mixes his strokes with chief, and man with man; steel, clanging, sounds on steel. Helmets are cleft on high. Blood bursts and smokes around. Strings murmur on the polished yews.’

Macpherson, Fingal, bk. III: To-day, O my sons, we shall break the echoing shields. Ossian, stand thou near my arm. Gaul, lift thy terrible sword. Fergus, bend thy crooked yew. Throw, Fillan, thy lance through heaven. 9 The idea that ‘true blue would never fade’ was a variant of the old proverb ‘True blue will never stain’. The political significance of ‘true blue’ or ‘true blew’ was variable. The presbyterian and whiggish Covenanters of seventeenth-century Scotland had chosen blue as their colour, and the idea of a ‘tough true-blue Presbyterian’ remained an understandable concept to the readers of Sir Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian in 1818. Yet by 1860 ‘true blue’ meant ‘staunchly Tory’ (OED, s.v. ‘blue’, 6. b). Even more confusingly, ‘true blue’ was also used as a colour of the radical whig Wilkite movement in the 1760s (John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III, 1976, pp. 186, 188, 192–93). 10 Malvina, the daughter of Toscar and lover of Oscar. ‘[L]ead me, O Malvina, to the sound of my woods; to the roar of my mountain streams. Let the chace be heard on Cona’ (Macpherson, ‘The War of Caros’; see also Malvina’s appearances as a character in ‘Carthon’, ‘Croma’, ‘Berrathon’, ‘Cathlin of Clutha’, ‘Sulmalla of Lumon’, ‘Oina-Morul’). 11 ‘The murmur of thy streams, O Lora, brings back the memory of the past …. Dost thou not behold, Malvina, a rock with its head of heath?’ (Macpherson, ‘Carthon’). 12 ‘Come, thou huntress of Lutha, Malvina’ (Macpherson, ‘Cath-Loda’). 13 The cudgel mentioned in the prosaic description by AE.

14

Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus (63 called Augustus from 27 B.C. His reign as Roman imperator (from 29 B.C.) and princeps (from 28 B.C.) was considered a ‘golden age’ of literature given Augustus’s beneficence to Virgil, Ovid, Livy, and Horace. 15 JB’s precise textual allusion is uncertain, and may combine several Roman authors rather than one ‘historic page’, unless it is from a secondary history in English. Augustus’s lavish patronage of the gladiatorial games and staged animal-hunts (venationes) is celebrated in the Res Gestae Divi Augusti of 13 A.D., Tabula IV, Section 22. ‘I gave gladiatorial shows three times … and five [additional] times …; at these shows about 10,000 fought …. I presented games … four times, and in addition twenty-three times …. I provided hunting spectacles of African wild beasts twenty-six times, in the Circus or in the Forum or in the amphitheaters … in these exhibitions about 3,500 animals were killed.’ 16 The Ludi Circenses or Circensian games, one of the eventually more than forty different kinds of ludi in Rome. The Ludi Circenses were thought to mimic and promote the orderly change of seasons; the games were administered by Roman magistrates (OCD). In the Augustan Age, the Circus Maximus was a combined-events venue for chariot races, gladiatorial contests, and animal hunts. The gladiatorial contests and animal hunts were moved to the Flavian Amphitheatre (Colosseum) in the late first century. Augustus built an imperial viewing-stand in the circus. 17 The Roman equites, typically (mis)translated into English as ‘knights’, were part of the equester ordo, the second rank of nobility of ancient Rome from which cavalrymen were originally drawn. The emperors favoured the equites, who steadily gained power at the expense of the first-rank senatorial class; Augustus revived several of their military customs such as the annual parade or transvectio (OCD). 18 Hyrcania, region SE of the Caspian Sea. It was never conquered by the Roman Empire: in the time of Augustus it was a portion of the Parthian Empire. The Hyrcanian tiger or Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) formerly ranged in present-day Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Mongolia, and the Central Asiatic region, but became extinct in the mid-twentieth century. 19 Presumably the lion. 20 Ida was a nymph who raised the infant Zeus (Jupiter). Ida is also the name of the B.C.–14 A.D.);

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tallest mountain on the island of Crete, the site of an ancient shrine and the cave where Zeus, a god of thunder and lightning, was said to have been reared. 21 Lorn, a district of Argyllshire. The Highland topography there was typically hilly (OGS). It was mentioned in the

Ossianic poems: ‘Usnoth, lord of Etha, which is probably that part of Argyleshire which is near Loch Eta, an arm of the sea in Lorn’ (Macpherson, ‘Dar-Thula’). 22 An allusion to the practice of the Poet Laureate’s ode on the king’s birthday.

From Andrew Erskine, Saturday 5 June 1762 Printed E–B, p. 125 [LETTER XXXII].

New-Tarbat, June 5, 1762 DEAR BOSWELL, The first idea of our correspondence was not yours; for, many months before you addressed me,1 I wrote you the following letter2 at Fort George, where you may remember our acquaintance commenced.3 You’ll observe that some of the stanzas are parodies on Gray’s Elegy in a Church-yard,4 I use the liberty to mark them. I stood too much in awe of you, to send it when it was written, and I am too much at my ease now, to be with-held any longer from presenting you with it. I am, Sir, with the greatest respect and esteem, Your most obedient, and most humble servant, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 AE’s first letter to JB, although postponed in its sending, was composed 23 May 1761. JB’s first extant letter to AE was composed in early Aug. 1761, more than two months later (To AE, ?after 2 and before 8 Aug. 1761). 2 The ‘following letter’ which AE en-

closed appears in this volume as a separate letter under the date of its composition: From AE, 23 May 1761. 3 AE and JB had met at Fort George c. 14–19 May 1761. 4 See From AE, 23 May 1761.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 8 June 1762 MS. Yale (*L 522). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B.

Auchinleck, 8 June 1762. DEAR ERSKINE: No less than three letters have I written to you, since my exuberant one.1 I hope you have received them. The first begins with ‘Monsieur Bayle’2 the second with ‘At this delightfull’3 the third with ‘I have just finished.’4 Taking it for granted that they have not been miscarried, or lost, or met with any other accident, I am thrown into a mingled situation of Wonder, Regret and Rage, that I have as yet had no answer.5 As I allways endeavour to make the best of a bad bargain, which by the by, is doing a very great deal; for it is not only changing the original Subject into it’s contrary, which is good, but it is carrying the Transformation to a superlative degree—by the aid of my fertile fancy, I have amused myself a good deal, by viewing your present Taciturnity in various lights, and magicaly summoning up many different Personages to furnish me their asistance by giving suit and presence6 in the way of Comparrison. I have considered you as one of the wells in the City of Edinburgh,7 which altho’ for most part it abundantly supplies the chrystal fluid to crowds of Watermen, Foot-boys and Maid-servants,8 yet is 275

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now and then in a dry humour, and will not give a drop. I have considered you as the Hen in the Fable, which upon being too plentifully fed gave over laying altogether;9 as the renowned Worthy who upon receiving an unexpected number of Benefits from his Sovereign, was rendered silent with Gratitude;10 as the Athenian Boy that Plutarch mentions, who having cram’d a whole Pancake into his mouth, was not able to tell his dancing Master the french word for a pair of Nut-crackers;11 as the famous Judge in King Charles the Second’s time, who having bit his tongue severely at a Lord Mayor’s feast, made no other answer to a question of his Majesty’s, but grinning in his face, and crying baw! aw! aw!12 I have considered you as a Gentleman of a moderate fortune, who having a very expensive turn himself, and a Wife still more foolishly extravagant, has involved himself in a labyrinth of debt, and altho’ he has had many letters from some of his Creditors, who being People of a most humane disposition have no intention to distress him and his family, yet he has neglected to make them any Return.13 I have considered you as one of the Muphti14 at Constantinople,15 an able Resolver of the Problems of the mahometan faith, but who during the severe season of Ramadan, has fasted till he is dumb.16 I have considered you as the Earl of Galloway when he has got the toothach,17 as Sir Ralph Gore when he is washing his mouth,18 as Miss Chudleigh when she has four or five Pins between her lips;19 as a French Valet de Chambre stealing up a Mahagony Stair, to the Bed-room of My Lady’s Woman; as a Bell that has lost it’s tongue, as a Comb that has lost it’s teeth, as a Needle that has lost it’s eye, as a Table that has lost it’s feet, as one Bottle that has lost it’s neck, and another that has lost it’s Belly; and as a Chair that has lost it’s Back, and perhaps it’s Bottom. Images crowd upon me. You must take them in their natural flow. I am not at leisure to examine their propriety. I consider you as a Coach that has lost it’s head,20 and as a Comet that has lost it’s tail. I consider you as a Porter without his shoulders, as a setting-dog without a nose, as a Musquet without a lock,21 as a German-flute22 without holes. I look upon you as a Book whose leaves are all glewed together; as a Bowling-green accross which there are high Stone Walls at the distance of only two feet;23 as a Wig put on with the Cawl outermost,24 as a dish of very hot tea poured into one’s fob, or as an Aberdeen Professor riding cross-leg’d upon the Steeple of the Tron Church.25 You appear to me like a pair of Shoes that want to be soled, like a Street that wants to be raked, like a Vessel of milk that wants to be skim’d, like a Waistcoat that wants to be laced, and like a room that wants to be painted. I perceive a strong resemblance between you and a Liverpool Wherry,26 an old Dragoon Horse,27 a Miner at Leadhills,28 five Recruits for the Scots Fuzileers,29 and the political constitution of Great-Britain.30 I could enlarge upon this Subject; but think you have got enough. I go for Edinburgh tomorrow,31 where I expect many letters from you. I remain your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1

JB’s letter To AE, 8–9 May (MS). To AE, 27 May. It was not selected for inclusion in E–B. Its mention in this letter of 8 June suggests that JB had copies of AE’s letters which he later did not opt to publish, not from lack of a proof-text to hand to the printers, but from a conscious editorial deci2

sion on their fitness for the volume. 3 To AE, 29 May (MS). 4 To AE, 1 June (MS). JB’s personal copies of his letters to AE, which enabled him to quote these beginnings, have not been found. That they survived until 1763, presumably to be used as copy for E–B, is

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shown by JB’s letter of 10 Feb. 1763 to JJ asking that they be sent to him in London: ‘I want to have the copies which I kept of my letters to Erskine’ (To JJ, 10 Feb. 1763, Corr. 1, p. 45). 5 Assuming the date of From AE, 5 June to be authentic, JB had presumably not received it in the post when he wrote indignantly. AE’s last known letter prior to that was From AE, 25 May, two weeks back. 6 ‘Suit[e] and presence’ or ‘presence and suit’ was a Scots expression for ‘attendance at court and personal service due from a tenant to his lord; hence used as a formula in describing certain forms of tenure’ even after the manorial age of personal services had mostly passed. (The English-language equivalents were ‘suit and service’ or ‘homage and suit’.) The feudal-remnant custom of suit and presence was in most cases antiquated and merely vestigial, as an act of 1748 noted: ‘the ancient usage of … being obliged to give suit and presence, or to appear at head courts at certain times of the year, has of a long time been useless’ (Act of 20 Geo. II, c. 50 §18; ). A ‘suit-roll’ was ‘a list of tenants bound to attend at a particular court’, and to ‘call the suits’ was to ‘call the names or designations of those bound to attend at a particular court’ (CSD, s.v. ‘suit’; see also OED, s.v. ‘suit’, ‘head-court’). 7 From 1674 to 1849, Edinburgh depended for its water on a system of a reservoir and a water-house which fed into ten public wells or cisterns, and ‘a very considerable number of private pipes’ (a luxury paid for by householders if requested). The old Castle Hill reservoir, which could hold over 291 tons of water, dated to the 1670s. The ‘old water-house’, removed in 1849, was provided with its supply of water through pipes from Comiston. ‘[S]ince [1704], the increased number of buildings … rendered the quantity of water brought from these parts greatly insufficient to supply the inhabitants’. From JB’s account of its ‘dry humour’, and period complaints about its insufficiency, the reservoir-cistern system is the one described in this letter. In addition to this supply to the cisterns, there were ‘many pit-wells in Edinburgh’ and the ‘foot of the Canongate’ had access to ‘a pure stream brought from Arthur’s Seat’. Yet Kincaid’s 1787 guidebook noted that ‘all the wells sunk about Edinburgh afford water of very indifferent quality’ (Arnot, pp. 340– 44; Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 82; Alexander Kincaid, The History of Edinburgh …. By Way of Guide to the City and Suburbs, 1787, p. 202).

8 The ‘Watermen’ or ‘water-carriers’ provided a commercial service for delivery of water from the public wells; footboys and maids would also have been sent to fetch water (Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 82). 9 The Woman and Her Hen: ‘A Woman possessed a Hen that gave her an egg every day. She often pondered how she might obtain two eggs daily instead of one, and at last, to gain her purpose, determined to give the Hen a double allowance of barley. From that day the Hen became fat and sleek, and never once laid another egg’ (George Fyler Townsend, Three Hundred and Fifty Aesop’s Fables. Literally Translated from the Greek, 1882). It is not known precisely which Aesop JB would have used in 1762. The edition that appears in his 1770 ‘A List of Books Belonging to James Boswell. Esq.’ cataloguing books JB owned in Edinburgh is the 1766 London eighth edition (London, 1766) of Samuel Croxall’s 1722 Fables of Aesop and others, translated into English. With instructive applications; and a print before each fable (ESTC T184569; Lincoln, p. 295). From 1740 to 1762, Aesop was published or republished in collections ‘edited’ by J.[?John or Joseph] Jackson, 1708; Samuel Croxall, 1722; Samuel Richardson, 1749; John Newbery and Christopher Smart, 1757; Charles Draper, 1760; and Robert Dodsley, 1761 (ESTC). Aesop was advocated for instruction of British youth in Greek and Latin: the fables appeared in editions designed to teach Latin (H. Clarke’s LatinEnglish Aesop, 4th ed., 1750), and Greek (at Eton, 1755: ESTC T170732; and in Edinburgh, 1747: ESTC T152210). An Edinburgh edition of the translation by Samuel Croxall and John Jackson (ESTC T185164) was printed in 1754 for use in ‘English schools’ for Scots, and a popular Glasgow Aesop edition claimed to be ‘fitted for the meanest capacities’ (11th ed., 1751, ESTC T164578). 10 Reference unknown. JB veers from the factual to the fabricated. 11 Another joke. Dancing-masters were associated with frenchification, and were often themselves French; the French for ‘nutcracker’ is ‘le caisse-noix’ or ‘le cassenoisettes’; Plutarch lived, of course, well before French had emerged from its Latin parent. As with JB’s historical jokes, the putative fun often originates by placing homely Scottish things such as pancakes in dignified surroundings such as ancient Athens. 12 The events described are doubtless another Boswellian invention; no event from

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1660 to 1685 (Charles II’s reign) fitting this description has been located. The Lord Mayor of London held numerous feasts; a particularly splendid one took place on ‘the Lord Mayor’s day’, 9 Nov. 1761, ‘Being the day on which the Lord Mayor … entered into his office’, with George III and Queen Charlotte as guests. Each table had four services and removes, and the total dishes served were 414, not including dessert (Gent. Mag. Nov. 1761, xxxi. 533–34). 13 References to distressed gentlemen delaying payment of their bills were not only present realities in the lives of JB’s friends (e.g., TS, GD, AE, WD, and Love), but were also common in the drama and fiction of the period. Such jokes in these letters reflect both AE’s and JB’s concerns with trying to maintain genteel status without great means. AE struggled on a lieutenant’s meagre pay most of his life, later attempting to borrow money from JB. The Erskine family was not wealthy. JB had, as has been noted, recently won an allowance from his father, but he felt it insufficient. 14 The mufti was a Muslim priest or expounder of the law. In the Islamic religiojudicial system, muftis wrote opinions on legal subjects. The collected opinions of the muftis were similar to the decisions of the Scots or English jurists in their utility as pragmatic precedent where the law was unclear. In the Ottoman Empire, the term ‘mufti’ was restricted to the official head (‘grand mufti’) and to deputies appointed by him in some of the larger cities. The muftis were officials of the Sultan (Mustafa III, reigned 1757–74), and the mufti of Constantinople was the highest of them. It was one of his prerogatives to dress in white (Stanford J. Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Volume I: Empire of the Gazis … 1280–1808, 1976; cf. OED). SJ reflected mid-18th-c. British understandings of Islam in defining ‘Mufti’ as ‘The high priest of the Mahometans’ (Dict. SJ). 15 Constantinople had, of course, been renamed ‘Istanbul’ upon its capture by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. 16 Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim calendar. The Fast of Ramadan lasted the entire month. Muslims abstained from food, liquids, and sexual activity only during the daylight hours, and in the evening were allowed to eat small meals. 17 Alexander Stewart (c. 1694–1773), 6th Earl of Galloway from 1746, a Lord of Police c. 1740 or 1743 to 1768, and Grand Master of Scots Freemasons 1757–59, later (1765–68) Pres. of Council of the Royal

Archers (Scots Peer. iv. 164–65; Comp. Peer. v. 606). JB described him as ‘a Man of great quickness and uncommon spirits for his age [i.e., 68]’, and ‘a good Father, a good Husband, a good Master’. JB applauded the fact that ‘[Galloway] has seen a great deal and has lived allways as a man of Pleasure, that is to say, he has followed his own inclinations’. Yet he added that Galloway’s interest in ‘Politicks … the great Study of his life’ had ‘led him to do things not at all right’. ‘Had he never engaged in Politicks he might have past thro’ life with esteem, without any disagreeable Imputation’ (Journ. 25 Sept.). JB had written (probably when he was 18) a poem ‘To the Countess of Galloway, on the Death of her Son the Honourable George Stewart, Esq.; killed at Ticonderoga [1758]’, which he published in Collection II (p. 71). For its text, see To the Countess of Galloway, after 21 Aug. 1758. JB had visited Galloway House on Sept. 25–27 (Journ.). 18 Lt.-Col. Sir Ralph Gore (1725–1802), Bt., an Irish officer and politician. He began his long military service in 1744, fought at Fontenoy (1745) and Lauffeld (1747), was Lt.-Col. Com. of the 92nd Foot (in Ireland) from 1760. He was eventually (1796) a general. Gore was later elevated to the Irish peerage as Baron Gore (1764), Viscount Bellisle (1768), and Earl of Ross (1772). He was M.P. for County Donegal in the Irish Commons 1747–64 (Comp. Bar. i. 234; Comp. Peer. xi. 164–65; Army List, early 1763, p. 158; John Lodge and Mervyn Archdall, The Peerage of Ireland, 1789, iii. 285–86). It remains a mystery why JB chose him for this list. 19 Elizabeth Chudleigh (for whom see To Sterne, after 7 Apr. 1760 and ?before Oct. 1761, n. 60). The pins-in-mouth joke may be a reference to her tasks as a maid of honour to the (Dowager) Princess Augusta from 1743. 20 Presumably a reference to the head of a chaise: ‘Head Plates … are ornaments made to fix … on the flats of a chaise head’ (OED, ‘head-plate’). 21 The flint-lock musket generally in use by the British army in the Seven Years’ War was the 46-inch-barrelled Long Land Pattern Service Musket, developed in the late 1720s. It was replaced in 1768 by the Short Land Service Musket (New Pattern), later nicknamed the ‘Brown Bess’, but production of the Long Land Pattern Musket did not end until 1790. 22 The archaic flute was blown through a mouthpiece at the end, as with the recorder and pennywhistle. About the middle of the

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18th century it was almost entirely ‘superseded by the transverse or German flute’, ‘which is blown through an orifice at the side near the upper end.’ (JB himself briefly took up the German flute: see To AE, 19 Oct., n. 1.) Unlike its simpler predecessor, the ‘Baroque’ flute was ‘a conical-bore instrument, divided into three [or more] sections’, and with 1–6 keys. Music for the German flute had been published in England since c. 1701, and several eminent German-flute-makers worked in London in the 1750s and 1760s. ‘In London by the mid-18th century music shops supplied a growing middle class with flutes, tutors and music’ (New Grove 2, s.v. ‘flute’; OED, s.v. ‘flauto’, ‘flute, German’). 23 A typical modern regulation bowling green is about 120 ft. square and typically divided into six alleys, or rinks, each 20 ft. wide and 120 ft. long. 24 That is, inside-out; the wig’s cawl was supposed to remain unseen, and adhere to the scalp. 25 One of the principal churches in Edinburgh, ‘Properly called CHRIST’S CHURCH’, it was a church for the southeast parish. It gained its nickname from its proximity to ‘the Tron or public beam, for the weighing of merchandize’ which then stood near it. The church was built 1637–63, and the steeple contained a bell and the old Tron clock (Alexander Kincaid, The History of Edinburgh …. By Way of Guide to the City and Suburbs, 1787, pp. 193–95; Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 187–88). 26 Wherries were light boats used on rivers (Dict. SJ). A Liverpool wherry would presumably be worn down with incessant use, since from 1700 to 1800 Liverpool emerged from being a regional port into status by the century’s end as second only to London in the urban ranks (‘Liverpool’,

Jeremy Black and Roy Porter, The Penguin Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century History, 1994, repr. 1996). 27 In 1763, there were three regiments of Dragoon Guards, and twenty-one regiments of Dragoons, about ten of the regiments serving in Germany. Their horses were exposed to constant wear (Army List, early 1763). 28 A Scottish village in South Lanarkshire, famous for its lead mines. Eighteenthcentury lead miners not only risked lead poisoning, but also suffocation, cave-ins, and other disasters. Even where they did not die prematurely, the strain of their labour took a toll on their health. 29 The ‘Royal North British Fuzileers’, (21st Foot), though stationed in Britain 1762–63, had been very active the previous year in the hazardous expedition against Belle-Isle in the Bay of Biscay (Richard Cannon, Historical Records of the British Army, Twenty-first Foot, 1849, p. 24). 30 A suggestion of JB’s sympathies for the ‘Patriot’ movement, which fuelled his early fascination with Pitt the Elder. It was a contention of the patriots and Wilkites of the 1760s that the constitution was being corrupted by the influence of placemen, pensioners, and courtiers. Lord Bute in particular, even after losing his place as effectual prime minister, was suspected by Wilkes and Burke of having masterminded this assault on the ancient constitution’s virtue (John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III, 1976, pp. 112–36, 245–57; John Brewer, ‘The Misfortunes of Lord Bute: A CaseStudy in Eighteenth-Century Political Argument and Public Opinion’, Historical Journal 16/1 [1973], pp. 3–44). 31 JB recorded in his journal his arrival in Edinburgh 9 June (Journ.).

From Andrew Erskine, ?c. 10–14 June 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 134–38 [LETTER XXXIV].

New-Tarbat, June 14,1 1762 AND are YOU gloomy!2 oh James Boswell! has your flow of spirits evaporated, and left nothing but the black dregs of melancholy behind? has the smile of chearfulness left your countenance? and is the laugh of gaiety no more? oh woeful condition! oh wretched friend! but in this situation you are dear to me; for lately my disposition was exactly similar to yours.3 No conversation pleased me; no books could fix my attention; I could write no letters,4 and I despised my own poems. Tell me how you was affected; could you speak any? could you fix your thoughts upon any thing but the dreary way you was in? and would not the sight of me have made 279

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you very miserable? I have lately had the epidemical distemper; I don’t mean poverty, but that cold which they call the influenza, and which made its first appearance in London;5 whether it came to Scotland in the waggon, or travelled with a companion in a post-chaise, is quite uncertain.6 Derrick’s versifications are infamously bad; what think you of the Reviewers commending such an execrable performance?7 I have a fancy to write an ironical criticism upon it, and praise all the worst lines, which you shall send to Derrick, as the real sentiments of a gentleman of your acquaintance on reading his work. For want of something else to entertain you, I begin my criticism immediately.— To versify poetical prose has been found a very difficult task. Dr. Young8 and Mr. Langhorne,9 in their paraphrases upon the Bible,10 (which Lord Bolingbroke tells us, is an excellent book)11 have succeeded but indifferently: I therefore took up Mr. Samuel Derrick’s versifications from Fingal, with little expectation of being entertained; but let no man judge of a book till at least he reads the title page; for lo! Mr. Samuel Derrick has adorned his with a very apt and uncommon quotation, from a good old poet called Virgil.12 I am much pleased with the candour, so conspicuous in the short advertisement to the public, in which Mr. Derrick seems very willing to run snacks13 in reputation with Mr. MacPherson,14 which will greatly rejoice that gentleman, who can’t justly boast of so extensive a fame as Mr. Samuel Derrick.15 The dedication is very elegant, though, I am apt to think, the author has neither praised Lord Pomfret16 nor himself enough; two worthy people, who, in my opinion, deserve it.17 But at last, we come to the poems themselves; and here I might indulge myself in warm and indiscriminate applause; but let it be my ambition to trace Mr. Derrick step by step through his wonderful work; let me pry both into the kitchen and dining-room of his genius, to use the comparison of the great Mr. Boyle.18 The first lines, or the exordium of the battle of Lora, are calmly sublime, and refined with simplicity.19 In the eighth line, our author gives the epithet of posting to the wind,20 which is very beautiful: however, to make it natural, it ought to be applied, in poetical justice, to that wind which wafts a packet-boat.21 I had almost forgot, the sixth line says, the voice of songs, a tuneful voice I hear.22 Now, I should be glad to know, whether these same songs be a man or a woman.23 Lines 23 and 34.24 In secret round they glanc’d their kindled eyes, Their indignation spoke in bursting sighs.25 It seems to me improbable, that a pair of kindled eyes could glance in secret; and I cannot think that sighs are the language of indignation. Lines 57, 58, 59. So on the settled sea blue mists arise, In vapory volumes darkening to the skies, They glitter in the sun.26 These mists that glitter, and are dark at the same time, are very extraordinary, and the contrast is lovely and new. Line 67th begins—His post is terror.27 —This is a post, that, I believe, none of our members of parliament would accept.28 Lines 175, 176, 280

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An hundred steeds he gives that own the rein, Never a swifter race devour’d the plain.29 Devoured the plain! if this is not sublime, then am I no critic; however, its lucky for the landed interest, that the breed of those horses is lost; they might do very well, I confess, in the Highlands of Scotland; but a dozen of them turned loose near Salisbury,30 would be inconceiveably hurtful. I’m tired of this stuff; if you think it worth the while you may end it, and send it to Derrick; but let your part be better than mine, or it won’t do. Grief, for thy loss, drank all my vitals dry31—I laughed heartily at that line. In this letter I have bestowed my dulness freely upon you; you have had my wit, and you must take my stupidity into the bargain; as when we go to the market, we purchase bones as well as beef; and when we marry an heiress, we are obliged to take the woman as well as the money; and when we buy Donaldson’s collection, we pay as dear for the poems of Mr. Lauchlan MacPherson,32 as we do for those written by the incomparable Captain Andrew. You are in Edinburgh, I imagine, by this time, if the information of Mr. Alexander Donaldson may be depended upon.33 I shall be in town one night soon on my way to Kelly, for the H———s of D——— threaten an invasion upon this peaceful abode.34 Farewell, Yours sincerely, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 The date of 14 June poses difficulties, and the letter should perhaps be redated closer to 10 June. AE says, ‘I shall be in town one night soon on my way [from New Tarbet] to Kelly’, but JB’s MS reply from Edinburgh dated 15 June speaks of Erskine’s visiting Edinburgh en route to Kellie Castle, presumably in the context of a recent visit: ‘The Evening and Morning which we past together, in your way to Kelly did me much good’. AE’s letter of 5 June was dated from New Tarbet. The trip from New Tarbet to Edinburgh would have taken one to two days, the trip often being broken overnight at Glasgow as JB’s and AE’s previous travels there suggest. Further confusing dating in Erskine’s printed letters occurs in the letters dated 5 and 6 July. 2 AE is replying to JB’s letter of 29 May, in which JB complained of ‘the cloudy darkness of my mind … a more dismal view of my own Situation. Fancy … will allow me to see nothing but shade’ (To AE, 29 May [MS], which in E–B is dated 9 June, apparently to improve the sequence). The statements in one of JB’s intervening letters (1 June [MS]) that his spirits were again high suggest that that message had not yet reached AE when he wrote this letter. At any rate, JB was depressed again by 9 June. ‘Was in very bad Spirits & had little relish

of life … nothing could engage my attention or agitate my Spirits, so that I was listless & out of humour’ (Journ., undated ‘June 1762’). 3 AE was also recurrently depressive, and ended his life in suicide in Oct. 1793. 4 AE had written letters to JB on 13 and 25 May and 5 June. The largest gap in that time period is the eleven days between 13– 25 May, followed by the ten days between 25 May and 5 June. The days between 5 and 14 June, by contrast, were only eight—even fewer if we accept that this letter was written earlier. 5 The influenza epidemic AE describes originated on the Continent and was transmitted to England in Apr.–May (Theophilus Thompson, Annals of Influenza … in Great Britain from 1510 to 1837, 1852, pp. 68–84). As Walpole wrote to George Montagu on 29 Apr., ‘The time is wonderfully sickly; nothing but sore throats, colds, and fevers’ (Corres. Walpole, x. 25–26). 6 The lumbering cargo ‘waggon’, a step even below the crowded stage coaches, ‘sometimes even carried a few passengers too poor to pay for a stagecoach’, travelling at only two to three miles per hour. The stagecoaches were also crowded, seating 4– 6 inside and more atop, travelling about four miles per hour. The post chaise was

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both faster, and more exclusive, since it was typically a used private chariot (meaning a chance of better upholstery though not suspension) and ‘seated only two passengers and a small amount of luggage’ (Kirsten Olsen, Daily Life in Eighteenth-Century England, 1999, pp. 175–79). 7 Derrick’s The Battle of Lora received its comments from ‘the Reviewers’ in Monthly Rev. xxvii. 157–58 and Crit. Rev. xiii. 364 (Antonia Forster, Index to Book Reviews in England, 1749–1774, 1990, p. 82). 8 Dr. Edward Young (1683–1765), one of the major poets of the Hanoverian Court circle, Rector of Welwyn, Hertfordshire (from 1730) and Clerk of the Closet to the Princess Dowager Augusta (from 1761). Young had published his verses from 1713 onward but his greatest fame as a poet began in 1742. At the age of nearly eighty he had recently (1759) published his Conjectures on Original Composition. His last poem, ‘Resignation’, appeared in 1762. JB’s reading of Young’s poems is dealt with in Lincoln, p. 270. 9 William Langhorne (1721–72), M.A., Rector of Hawkinge and Perpetual Curate of Folkestone, Kent (1754–72). With his brother he translated Plutarch in a 1770 edition meant to supersede North’s and ‘Dryden’s’ translations (Oxford DNB, s.v. ‘Langhorne, John’). 10 Young paraphrased one book of the Bible: A paraphrase on part of the Book of Job. By E. Young …, 1719 (ESTC T136054). Young’s paraphrase of Job was commonly added to editions of his ‘Night-Thoughts’ from 1748 onwards (ESTC T27209). See, for instance, Donaldson’s Edinburgh reprint The complaint; or night-thoughts on life, death, and immortality. To which are added, some thoughts on the late rebellion, and a paraphrase on part of the book of Job, 1761 (ESTC T76299). Langhorne tried his hand at paraphrasing two books. The first was Job. A poem. In three books. By William Langhorne …, 1760 (ESTC T124709), followed by A poetical paraphrase on part of the book of Isaiah. By William Langhorne, M.A.…, 1761 (ESTC T979). 11 Henry St. John (1678–1751), first Vicount Bolingbroke, statesman and philosopher, historian and political scientist, M.P. 1701–08 and 1710–12, one of the most prominent government ministers of Queen Anne’s reign. He rebuilt his reputation after a brief and disastrous association with the Jacobites c. 1714–16, and a pardon in 1723 by George I. He was an indefatigable oppo-

nent of Sir Robert Walpole in The Craftsman essays and a major influence on George III’s father, Frederick Prince of Wales, from 1737 to 1751. It was formerly suspected that the ‘Patriot’ ideology of Bolingbroke’s The Idea of a Patriot King (1738) was used as a blueprint for rule by George III and Lord Bute in the early 1760s (Comp. Peer. ii. 205– 07; H. T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke, 1970; Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke And His Circle; The Politics Of Nostalgia In The Age Of Walpole, 1968, 1979). Bolingbroke’s writings on the Bible had expressed his deistic doubts as to its literal authenticity. See, for instance, Bolingbroke’s Works, 1841, ii. 204, iii. 469, iv. 65, 315. 12 ‘Quis talia fando temperet a Lachrymis?’ Derrick condensed Aeneid, ii. 6–8: ‘… quis talia fando/ Myrmidonum Dolopumve aut duri miles Ulixi/ temperet a lacrimis?’ (‘What Myrmidon or Dolopian, or soldier of stern Ulysses could in telling such a tale refrain from tears?’) into a more generic statement: ‘Who in telling such a tale could refrain from tears?’ (Loeb ed., trans. H. R. Fairclough). 13 To ‘run snacks’ or ‘go snacks’ is to ‘share in’ or divide profits or spoils (OED, s.v. ‘snack’). 14 AE quotes the ‘Advertisement’ to The Battle of Lora, in which Derrick acknowledged that it ‘would be unjust to send the following Pieces into the World, without acknowledging the high Respect I have for Mr. M’PHERSON’s great Abilities; since he has a very particular Right to share in the Reputation these Poems may chance to acquire’. That was truer than Derrick probably assumed, since James Macpherson had invented or embellished much of the ‘Ossian’ material out of his own imagination. It was only with the ‘Ossian controversy’, in which anti-Ossianists such as SJ attacked Macpherson’s claims for Ossian as the Gaelic Homer, that Macpherson’s claims about the poems’ authenticity were questioned (Fiona Stafford, The Sublime Savage: A Study of James Macpherson and the Poems of Ossian, 1988; Howard Gaskill, ed., Ossian Revisited, 1991). 15 AE’s dig at Derrick’s relative obscurity. Although Derrick had published nine works by the end of 1762, he was better known in the beau monde as Master of Ceremonies at Bath. Derrick published another work in 1762, the two-volume A collection of travels, thro’ various parts of the world; but more particularly, thro’ Tartary, China, Turkey, Persia, and the East-Indies … by Mr. Derrick (ESTC T135777).

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?C. 10–14 JUNE 1762 16 George Fermor (1722–87), 2nd Earl of Pomfret, formerly an officer in the 4th Horse and 2nd (Coldstream) Foot Guards. From 1763 to 1781, he served the Court of George III as a Lord of the Bedchamber, and Ranger of the Little Park of Windsor. He was a man of combative temper, was convicted of manslaughter in a duel in 1752, and in 1780 was imprisoned for an ‘insulting challenge’ to the Duke of Grafton. By the end of his life he was stigmatized as ‘mad’ and as one whose life ‘exhibit[ed] Vice in its genuine Deformity’ (Comp. Peer. x. 574 and n. ‘e’). The first earl had been a more noted connoisseur than the second. Derrick had cultivated Pomfret’s patronage earlier. He wrote three letters to Pomfret in 1760 which he later published (Samuel Derrick, Letters Written from Leverpoole, Chester, Corke, The Lake of Killarney, Dublin, Tunbridge-Wells, and Bath, 1767, i. 41– 45, 46–51, 61–65). Derrick’s dedication to the Earl of Pomfret began:

‘My Lord, Though I am seldom inclined to think much of my own little Abilities, I cannot help feeling some Vanity, when their Essays are crown’d with the Approbation of so great a Master in the Belles Lettres, as your Lordship. To be able to engage the Attention, or acquire the Patronage of the Earl of POMFRET, implies Merit: Since to the many Virtues which reflect Honour upon elevated Rank, he adds deep Penetration, strong Judgment, well digested Learning, and a Taste truly elegant …’. 17 The Crit. Rev. for Apr. remarked: ‘These poems are dedicated to the earl of Pomfret, whose approbation is a sufficient encomium on the performance’ (xiii. 364). AE’s praise of Pomfret, lumping him in with Derrick, is certainly ironical; the Crit. Rev. reference to Pomfret may be as well. 18 Hon. Robert Boyle (1627–91), ‘father of modern chemistry’, Irish natural philosopher and chemist (‘Boyle’s Law’), who worked in Oxford and London, and a prominent natural theologian. He founded the Boyle Lectures (Roger Pilkington, Robert Boyle, 1959; Reijer Hooykaas, Robert Boyle: a Study in Science and Christian Belief, 1997; Jan W. Wojcik, Robert Boyle and the limits of reason, 1997). The 1772 edition of his works ed. by T. Birch was reprinted 1965–66. This reference to Boyle is likely another of AE’s jokes, in which various eminences are placed in ludicrous or inappropriate contexts.

Swift’s Meditation upon a Broom-Stick (1710) had ridiculed Boyle’s ornate use of figures of speech in Occasional reflections upon several subjects. Whereto is premis’d a discourse about such kind of thoughts (1665 and many subsequent editions; ESTC R17345). 19 ‘Son of the distant Land, within whose Cell,/ Calm Peace and Heavenly Contemplation dwell,/ What Notes of warbling Melody are these,/ That pierce thy Grove and sigh upon the Breeze?’ (Derrick, The Battle of Lora, ll. 1–4). 20 ‘Perhaps you call your Country’s Chiefs to mind;/ Or praise the Spirits in the posting Wind’ (Derrick, The Battle of Lora, ll. 7–8). The phrase ‘posting Wind’ to which AE objects is Derrick’s; it does not originate in Macpherson’s prose poem ‘The Battle of Lora’. 21 The image of ‘posting to the wind’ (AE’s deliberate misquoting of Derrick’s ‘the posting Wind’) conjured up ideas of the post-boys who rode like the wind as they carried the mails. The wind-driven ‘packetboat’ also carried the mails. 22 ‘Tho’ loud th’impetuous Torrent in mine Ear,/ The Voice of Songs, a tuneful Voice I hear’ (Derrick, The Battle of Lora, ll. 5–6). Ironically, Macpherson’s prose poem ‘The Battle of Lora’ had itself used the wording objected to: ‘or is it thy voice of songs? The torrent was loud in my ear; but I heard a tuneful voice’. 23 Derrick himself answers the question in the poem’s ‘Argument’: ‘It was deliver’d by Ossian … to a … Christian Hermit … whose Sacred Hymns he imagined were composed in Honour of his deceased Chiefs, or Addresses to the Spirits in the Air’ (Derrick, The Battle of Lora, ‘Argument’). The singer of the tuneful songs in ll. 5–6 is presumably this ‘Culdee’ or hermit. 24 A printer’s error in E–B. The actual lines quoted are ‘Lines 53 and 54’. AE perhaps originally wrote ‘Lines 33 and 34’, a suspicion given credibility by the fact that in Derrick’s The Battle of Lora, line 50 is misnumbered ‘30’, thus leading to AE’s confusion. 25 ‘In secret round they glanc’d their kindled Eyes, / Their Indignation spoke in bursting Sighs.’ refers to the anger of the heroes Ma-ronnan and Aldo at not being invited to the feast. Their being ‘in secret’ referred to their isolation from the festivities (Derrick, The Battle of Lora, ll. 53–54). Once more, the phraseology to which AE objects is not Derrick’s, but the purest ‘Ossian’ of Macpherson: ‘They rolled their

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red eyes in secret. The sigh bursts from their breasts’ (Macpherson, ‘The Battle of Lora’). 26 ‘So on the settled Sea blue Mists arise./ In vapory Volumes darkening to the Skies;/ They glitter in the Sun; but Seamen fear/ The Lustre short, and rising Tempests near’ (Derrick, The Battle of Lora, ll. 56–59). Again, the image which AE finds risible originates in Macpherson’s prose poem rather than in Derrick’s verse: ‘They were two dark clouds, in the midst of our joy; like pillars of mist on the settled sea. They glitter to the sun; but the mariners fear a storm’ (Macpherson, ‘The Battle of Lora’). 27 ‘To Foreign Lands, we’ll bear our martial Might,/ And strengthen Erragon in dubious Fight;/ His Post is Terror, and his Eyes are Flame,/ War points his Spear, and Death attends his Name’ (Derrick, The Battle of Lora, ll. 65–68). In this instance, the choice of the word ‘post’ as a poetic metaphor for spear or war-staff was Derrick’s, not Macpherson’s. 28 A rueful joke reflecting on the many changes of ministry and cabinet reshufflings (i.e., from Pitt-Newcastle to Bute-Newcastle to Bute solus in [and subsequently to Grenville in Apr. 1763]) in the unusually unstable politics of 1760–63 (Namier and Brooke, i. 539). Macpherson’s Fingal was dedicated to the Earl of Bute, who had been a patron and aided in its publication. Bute also served as literary patron and source of all funds for the publication of Macpherson’s even more controversial Temora (1763). The English rejection of ‘Ossian’ occurred within the political context of the rejection of Bute’s ministry and the suspicion of Scottish influence at the Court of George III. 29 Bosmina’s message from Fingal to Erragon: ‘The Wealth of Kings we offer, if you chuse;/ Nor you to hear what Aldo says refuse./ An hundred Steeds he gives that own the Rein,/ Never a swifter Race

devour’d the Plain’ (Derrick, The Battle of Lora, ll. 173–76). Macpherson’s ‘The Battle of Lora’ offered a far more prosaic inventory of the gifts: ‘Then hear the words of generous Aldo [Fingal?]. He gives to Erragon an hundred steeds, the children of the rein’. 30 A jesting reference to the c. 300 square-mile chalk plateau of ‘Salisbury Plain’, Wiltshire, which was not as useful to the landed interest as was much of the surrounding region. 31 ‘Clos’d in the wintry House of Death I lie;/ Grief, for thy Loss, drank all my Vitals dry’: Vinvela’s speech to Shilric in Derrick’s ‘The Apparition: An Elegy’, ll. 41–42, the final poem in Derrick’s edition of Ossiania. The corresponding text of Vinvela’s speech in Macpherson’s ‘Carric-Thura’ is ‘Alone I am, O Shilric! alone in the winter-house. With grief for thee I fell. Shilric, I am pale in the tomb’, which does not contain the wording which made AE laugh. A similar phrase (also without the imagery of drained vitals and only stating ‘With grief for thee I expired. Shilric, I am pale in the tomb’) appeared in Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry, II (‘I sit by the mossy fountain’). 32 Lauchlan Macpherson of Strathmassie (fl. 1760–98) assisted James Macpherson in collecting Gaelic materials (Howard Gaskill, ed., Ossian Revisited, 1991, p. 9; Douglas’s Baronage, p. 363). Macpherson’s three poems in Donaldson’s Collection II (pp. 61–67) were published amongst the verses of AE and JB. 33 JB was indeed in Edinburgh from 9 June (Journ., notes for June 1762). 34 No definite identification has been made thus far of the family whose impending visit drove AE from New Tarbet. Potential candidates for ‘the H———s of D———’ are the Hamiltons of Dalziel, in Lanarkshire, south of Glasgow, and the Halls of Dargavel, Erskine parish, Renfrewshire.

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 15 June 1762 MS. Yale (*L 523). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B.

Edinburgh, 15 June 1762. DEAR ERSKINE: Again I sit down to write in the ancient City of Edinburgh for which I have now exchanged1 the romantic Groves2 of Auchinleck. Why have I told you this? seeing that you already know it?3 I beleive I have done so without any particular intention; altho’ many People as wise as me, are not unfrequently liable to have the same question put to them. How many Doctors both of Physic and Divinity, how many Counselors learned in the law, how many serious and 284

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pains-taking Story-tellers may justly come under this Predicament. If it were reckoned as great a crime as high-treason, to tell People what they already know, Pray what would become of all our drawing-rooms and genteel tea-drinkings, where every Lady as soon as she is seated, or a very little time after, delivers an ample disquisition upon the Weather, and the News of the day. What would become of our Courts of criminal Justice, where we are told that Murder is a crime of a very heinous Nature?4 What would become of James Boswell Esq: who declares himself a Man of lively parts & most amiable dispositions? And what o what would become of Mr. Alexander Donaldson who averrs that the adventures of Signior Gaudentia di Lucca5 is a most entertaining Book. The Evening and Morning which we past together, in your way to Kelly did me much good.6 Your Expression that ‘we are friends as well as Poets’ has dwelt upon my mind with much serene pleasure, ever since. Indeed, my dear Erskine we are more strongly connected than by the pleasant feelings of mutual Genius, a connection which is generaly very slight and very transient; We have a regard for each other as good men, which is a much more permanent one. I have heard of many Wits, who were so agreable that they were inseparable Companions, while at the same time each beleived his Neighbour a worthless or an insignificant fellow, and would not part with a Guinea or take an hour’s trouble to releive him from Misery. But you and I my good Captain Andrew proceed upon a different Plan. I have realy an affection for Thom’s which has allways been the scene of our social Evenings, an incontes[t]ible proof of it’s being an excellent Tavern,7 as we both agree in this Proposition That no man can be said to have a good taste, who does not love good eating and drinking. I am perswaded we have much more relish of our elegant and temperate Meals, than the mistaken sons of riot who loudly boast of their luxury.8 I have sent you Two new Elegys which I had from London last Post. The Nunnery9 is not a bad Parody on the famous Elegy in a Churchyard.10 The one written among the Tombs in Westminster Abbey11 is flat enough. I remain Your affectionate freind, JAMES BOSWELL 1

MS. ‘exhchanged’. In the ‘Ébauche de ma vie’, JB dated the emergence of his ‘romantic’ feelings for Auchinleck to his period under the tutorship of John Dun: ‘Je lisois les Poetes Romains et Je sentis un enthousiasme classique dans les ombres romanesques de notre Campagne’. JB’s susceptibility to romanticism led him to perceive the ‘romantic’ aspect of Auchinleck even as he complained of its social isolation. In other contexts, he had described himself as having a ‘romantic brain’ (To TS, 25 or 26 Nov. 1761) and as being ‘the most romantic Genius that now dignifys the terrestrial Globe’ (To Katherine Colquhoun, 11 Dec. 1761). See also his paean to the ‘The rude roman2

tic Arrochur’, the Highland locale of New Tarbet (To AE, 14 Sept. 1761). The idea of Auchinleck as romantic was not simply a quirk of JB’s imagination. The Duchess of Northumberland’s diary for 16 Aug. 1760 had described Auchinleck as having ‘but a middling House, but justly it is a romantick spot’ (Diar. Duch., pp. 18–26). 3 JB’s previous letter to AE had already informed him that ‘I go for Edinburgh tomorrow’ (To AE, 8 June). The conscious inclusion of details that would already be known to the recipient often serves as evidence that the author intended to publish the letters, or at least imagined them handed down to a posterity to whom the details would not be familiar. Such a self-

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footnoting in a manuscript serves as additional evidence that JB early on thought of his correspondence with AE as destined for publication, or at least for posterity. 4 Despite the differences in the English and Scottish legal systems, Douglas Hay’s account of the practice in England applies equally: ‘[in] a considered use of imagery, eloquent speech, and the power of death … visits of the high-court judges had considerable psychic force …. There was an acute consciousness that the courts were platforms for addressing “the multitude” …. [T]he charge to the grand jury … was often a secular sermon on … the virtues of authority and obedience …. Before passing sentence of death, the judge spoke about the crimes and the criminals … “inculcating the enormity of vice, and the fatal consequences to which it leads”’ (Douglas Hay, ‘Property, Authority and the Criminal Law’, in Douglas Hay et al., Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, 1975, pp. 27–28). The belabouring of the death sentence was made more prominent in Scotland in the practice of making the jury stand while the presiding judge ‘sum[med] up the evidence in a harangue to the jury … with the expression of the law on the subject’. The practice of telling people what they already knew was underlined in Scots courts by the custom of the ‘dempster’ or doomster (likely the origin of GD’s family name). ‘Prior to the year 1773, according to an old barbarous usage, sentence of death was first read by the clerk from the engrossed record, and repeated by the macer, after which it was uttered in discordant tones by the doomster or executioner, who was brought out from a retired part of the court for the purpose, on the ringing of a hand bell placed on the desk of the judge’ (William Chambers, The Book of Scotland, 1830, pp. 317–19; cf. CSD). 5 Simon Berington (1680–1755) was author of the utopian romance The memoirs of Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca: taken from his confession and examination before the Fathers of the Inquisition at Bologna in Italy … Faithfully translated from the Italian, by E. T. gent., 1737 (ESTC T59628; in the Garland Press series Foundations of the Novel). The book was ‘Sometimes wrongly attributed to Bishop Berkeley’. The book was in its second (or ‘fifth’?) edition by 1762, had been pirated in Dublin (e.g., 1752), would be reprinted in London in 1763 (ESTC N4267) and Glasgow in 1765 (ESTC T153150), and it was reprinted into the late century in America as well as the British Isles, so Donaldson’s view

of its saleability was hardly eccentric. Alexander Donaldson’s edition was published in 1761 (ESTC N4265); John Donaldson’s in 1773 (ESTC T164988). 6 The visit of AE cannot be dated exactly, but was a brief stopover somewhere between 10 and 16 June. AE was still in New Tarbet on 10 June or 14 June at the latest, and in his previous letter he had informed JB that ‘I shall be in town one night soon on my way to Kelly’ (From AE, ?c. 10–14 June). AE’s letter of 5 July was written from Kellie Castle (From AE, 5 July). JB’s notes for 9 June to 1 July are undated. His note on AE’s visit stated: ‘Erskine & his Sisters came to town; I was close wt them at Paxton’s, & being late out offended My Father. But this was made up’ (Journ.). 7 Thom’s Tavern, the site of the meetings of the Soaping Club (see From the Soaping Club, between ?June 1760 and early 1762, n. 3). Of JB’s youthful haunts in Edinburgh, it is the most consistently identified by name in this period. JB ‘Supt’ twice and ‘dind’ once at Thom’s in 2 Jan.–15 Feb (undated Journ.), breakfasted there 17 Feb., enjoyed ‘Bread & Cheese & Porter’ as a noon meal there 23 Feb., endured an aftertheatre supper there 27 Feb., took coffee there 14 Mar., and ‘din’d’ there on 7 Apr., the night before his departure for Auchinleck. He met with ‘Johnst[on]’ there mainly, but also with WD and ‘Houstown’. The ‘Soaping Club’ to which AE and JB both belonged was still in high roar in early 1762; on 20 Feb. JB ‘consulted about Soaping Medal’, and on 4 Mar. he was ‘After [the Assembly] at Soaping Club’; the Soaping Club also met and were ‘merry’ on 27 Mar. In addition, JB’s ‘Law Class’ had met at Thom’s on 15 Mar., where they chose him as ‘President’; this ‘law class’ presumably doubled as a social organization, since on 16 Mar. JB wrote ‘Had said no law & been out for many days’, which probably referred to his father’s complaints about his tavern-going. After his return on 9 June, his journal mentions fewer visits to Thom’s by name; a lone entry for 23 July records a ‘meeting at Thom’s’ (Journ.). 8 Evidence of JB’s early Epicureanism. JB vacillated in these months between licentiousness and asceticism, but attempted (as in his second London residence) to set a golden mean of Epicurean balance between the two. 9 Edward Jerningham anonymously published the eleven-page The nunnery. An elegy. In imitation of the Elegy in a church-yard, [1762] (ESTC T131186). R. and J. Dodsley

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were his publishers, which may explain why the title was sent to JB. The book appeared in a second edition in 1763 (ESTC T74918). It was popular enough for the publishers of Jerningham’s next poem, The Magdalens: An Elegy, 1763, to describe it as having been written ‘By the author of The nunnery’ (ESTC T74530). ‘The Nunnery’ appeared under Jerningham’s name in Poems on various subjects, 1767 (ESTC T149405). 10 For AE’s parody of Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy’, see From AE, 23 May 1761. One wellknown parodist of Gray’s ‘Elegy’ was John Duncombe. John Duncombe had published, An evening contemplation in a college. Being a parody on the Elegy in a country church-yard. By another gentleman of Cambridge, a twelvepage book printed for the Dodsley brothers, in 1753 (ESTC T33556). A second edition, also printed for the Dodsleys, appeared in 1757 attached to the second edition of The feminead: or, female genius (ESTC T122403).

By 1776, there was even a double edition which printed Thomas Gray’s poem in the same volume with John Duncombe’s parody: An elegy written in a country church-yard. A new edition. To which is added An evening contemplation in a college. Being a parody on Gray’s elegy, 1776 (ESTC T71698). 11 An elegy written among the tombs in Westminster Abbey, 1762, was published anonymously, and is now attributed to Reginald Heber (ESTC T12528). Heber was more widely known for his editing of An historical list of horse-matches run; and of plates and prizes run for in Great-Britain and Ireland, from 1752 to 1769. Like the other parodies of Gray’s ‘Elegy’, ‘An elegy written among the tombs’ was twelve pages, and ‘printed for R. and J. Dodsley’, 1762. The fact that both books were Dodsley imprints strongly implies that the ‘Two new Elegys which I had from London last Post’ were sent by one or both of the Dodsleys to JB.

To Andrew Erskine, Friday 18 June 1762 MS. Yale (*L 524). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B.

Edinburgh, 18 June 1762 DEAR ERSKINE: Having accidentaly got posession of a Frank,1 I am eager to make use of it immediatly; and on this account it is that I write my present letter. A whimsical reason enough to be sure: But not more so than those by which many People are actuated in what are reckoned the important Concerns of life, and many more in those matters which are esteemed of lesser moment. Have we not heard of a Man’s determining to become a Parson because Clergymen are entitled to wear bands:2 Of a Man’s breakfasting upon balm tea,3 because Shakespear calls Sleep ‘Balm of hurt minds’;4 Of a Man’s learning to fence, because the Author of Paradise lost5 was very fond of that Exercise; and of a Man’s marrying a Woman because she had two large moles upon her left breast, wore nothing upon her head but a leathern Cap, and allways snuff’d the candles with her fingers. Have we not recent Instances of Peoples chusing to dine for a shilling, because it is white Money;6 to ride upon an Ass because they can hold by his ears; to go aboard the east-India Ships, because they like the smell of tar;7 to study Hebrew because it is read backwards;8 To open the Window because nobody knows the consequence of it’s being too long shut9 and to have no fire in Winter, because there is a good deal of Sulphur in coal.10 Mr. Horace Walpole11 has lately published Anecdotes of Painting in England,12 from materials collected by Vertue.13 I would advise you, Erskine to read this Book. It will amuse you much. It contains a number of little Stories too which you may get by heart, and retail occasionaly with much advantage. I give you this friendly hint, with a sincere intention to your improvement. I beseech you to attend to it, and o beleive that I am indeed in earnest. I am sure I can lay my hand upon my heart, and declare that I mean well, and am actuated by no selfish sinister views. I 287

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wish all our great men who make what you call a figure and are of consequence and all that, could say as much, tho’ indeed they all do say as much; and therefore if you please, I wish they could all think as much. The testimony of a good Conscience is a great deal, and truly it is a thing so serious that I beleive it is wrong to introduce it into this Epistle, which from all that I can understand, is not intended as a Specimen of human gravity. My Barber just now stands in the threshold of my chamber, impatient to put the outside of my head in order; so that the operations of the inside being disclosed must be interrupted. I remain Your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 See To TS, 9 Dec. 1761, n. 11. Presumably JB was getting his franks from GD, who was an M.P. for Perth Burghs, but how he ‘accidentally got possession’ of the frank for this letter is not known. 2 The ‘bands’ were a vestigial falling collar, surviving in the form of a pair of starched strips (bands), usually of white fabric, hanging down in front of the surplice, gown, or coat (OED). SJ defined ‘bands’ as ‘a neckcloth of particular form worn by clergymen, lawyers, and students in colleges’ (Dict. SJ). 3 ‘Balm’, according to Culpeper, was ‘an inhabitant almost in every garden’ whose ‘virtues … are many’. Culpeper mentioned that balm ‘drives away all troublesome cares and thoughts out of the mind, arising from melancholy or black choler’, which may explain JB’s having it in mind in his months of melancholy. The various balm plants were ‘fragrant garden herbs’ including Lemon Balm/Balm Gentle/Balm-mint (Melissa officinalis), Bastard [or Common] Balm (Melittis melissophyllum), and Field Balm (Calamintha Nepeta) which could be made into medicines such as syrups, balm-teas, waters, and herbed wines. Mary Granville Delany, among others, was a consumer of balm tea, which was used for a vast number of purposes ranging from digestive to sedative to restorative. Lemon balm continues to be used for ‘Nervous sleeping disorders’ and ‘Functional gastrointestinal complaints’ (Nicholas Culpeper, The English physician enlarged …[‘The Compleat Herbal’], 1765 ed.; OED, citing Mary Delany’s autobiography of 1752 [1861 ed.], III. 131; Blumenthal, The Complete German Commission E Monographs: Therapeutic Guide to Herbal Medicines, 1998). 4 Macbeth, II. ii, ll. 34–36:

MACBETH: Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, Balm of hurt minds …

5 Milton, in his Defensio Secunda (1654), described his skill in fencing: ‘But I am not so meagre nor truly of such spirit and strength but that, when my age and mode of life so demanded, I could handle a sword or draw it skillfully through daily practice’ (trans. J. M. French, The Life Records of John Milton, 1949–66, iii. 383). Yet it seems probable that the humour was intended to come from another quarter: by the time he became the published ‘Author of Paradise lost’ (1667), Milton was blind, and JB’s joke plays off the incongruity of a blind swordsman. 6 ‘White money’ is standard silver coinage; ‘black money’ is copper coinage, and possibly also debased silver coinage (OED). See also the note on currency in To AE, 27 May, n. 7. 7 All wooden ships used tar, often in the form of pitch (‘tar boiled with a certain quantity of water and with a portion of coarse resin melted with it’) to seal the ship’s caulked seams and protect it from water. The smell of pitch and tar would have been an unpleasant component of any shipboard experience, but the length and heat of East-India voyages would make the odour all the more striking (OED, s.v. ‘pitch’). 8 The University of Edinburgh had a Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages, James Robertson (Edinburgh Almanack, 1760, p. 61; 1764, p. 67). Neither JB nor WJT appears to have taken classes in Hebrew, although WJT boarded in the house of ‘the little grinning Hebrew professor’ (Corr. 6, pp. xxxvi, 161, 163). 9 JB’s reference to windows may merely be one item in the random catalogues typical of his correspondence with AE, but it might be noted that one of the main causes of opening windows in early- and mideighteenth-century Edinburgh was rubbish disposal, 10 P.M. being (c. 1740) ‘the hour when every body is at liberty by beat of drum to throw their filth out at the win-

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dows. The throwing up of a sash, or otherwise opening a window, made me tremble, while behind and before me, at some little distance, fell the terrible shower’. By 1774 the use of fines and other punishments had ‘long put a stop to the throwing any thing from the windows into the open [high] street’, though the inhabitants of the unlighted, narrow, and isolated wynds ‘still continue these practices with impunity’ (Robert Chambers, Minor Antiquities of Edinburgh, 1833, pp. 45–48, quoting Letters from the North of Scotland, 1754/1815 and Topham’s Letters from Edinburgh [1774]). See also To AE, 9 Mar., n. 1. 10 Coal fires contributed heavily to the reek of ‘Auld Reekie’ and the fog of Georgian London. London was an extreme case of the effects of (mainly domestic heating) use of coal: ‘skies almost perpetually full of rain or coal smoke … soot fell in the rain’ (Kirsten Olsen, Daily Life in 18th-Century England, 1999, p. 58). Indeed, coal had been suspect in Edinburgh as late as ‘the beginning of the sixteenth century’, when ‘coalsmoke was deemed very pernicious’ (Arnot, pp. 83–84). 11 Hon. Horace [Horatio] (William) Walpole, later (1791) 4th Earl of Orford, author, politician, amateur architect, collector, patron. Amateur historian whose Memoirs and journals spanned the years 1751–91. Grand Tour 1739–41; M.P. for Callington 1741–54, Castle Rising 1754–57, and King’s Lynn 1757–68 (Namier and Brooke, iii. 595–97). In 1762 Walpole was still redesigning Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, which in 1753 he had begun enlarging in a Gothic style. His renovation would not be completed until 1776, although his printing press there was functioning from 1757 (and had published an edition of Gray’s Odes). In 1760 Walpole had already begun the work cataloguing and analysing the house and its furnishings with an eye to later publication in his famous Description (Grove Dictionary of Art, s.v. ‘Walpole’; W. S. Lewis, gen. ed., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, 48 vols, 1937–83; W. S. Lewis, Horace Walpole, 1960; W. H. Smith, ed., Horace Walpole: Writer, Politician, Connoisseur, 1967). JB had declined Sir David Dalrymple’s offer of an introduction to Walpole for use in his 1760 London visit. As he wrote, ‘I am afraid that Mr. Walpole moves in rather too high a sphere for your humble Servant— whose Company would of Consequence be rather burthensome to him’ (To Dalrymple, 22 Mar. 1760 [MS not at Yale]). Events

were to prove that even in 1766, JB was ‘burthensome’ to Walpole. JB finally met him (Notes, 22 Jan. 1766) in Paris after an exchange of social notes, and described him as ‘lean’ and ‘genteel’; Walpole later remembered JB as ‘a strange being … [who] has a rage of knowing anybody that was ever talked of. He forced himself upon me at Paris in spite of my teeth and my doors, and I see has given a foolish account of all he could pick up from me about King Theodore. He then took an antipathy to me on Rousseau’s account, abused me in the newspapers, and exhorted Rousseau to do so too: but as he came to see me no more, I forgave all the rest …. I hope it will not cure him of his anger to me’ (Walpole to Gray, 18 Feb. 1768, in Corres. Walpole, xiv. 166– 71; see also F. A. Pottle, ‘The Part Played by Horace Walpole and James Boswell in the Quarrel between Rousseau and Hume’, Philological Quarterly, iv. 4 (1925): 351–63; and Corr. 6, Appendix 1, pp. 436–38). 12 For George Vertue, see n. 13 below. Walpole had already by 1762 edited, introduced, or aided in the publication of three major works which were revisions and expansions of Vertue’s compilations of materials on royal collections for Prince Frederick: Abraham Vanderdoort’s A catalogue and description of King Charles the First’s capital collection … now first published … The whole transcribed … by the late ingenious Mr. Vertue …, 1757 (ESTC T70680); William Chiffinch’s A catalogue of the collection of pictures, &c. belonging to King James the Second; to which is added, a catalogue of the pictures and drawings in the closet of the late Queen Caroline …, 1758 (ESTC T70978); and Brian Fairfax’s A catalogue of the curious collection of pictures of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. In which is included the valuable collection of Sir Peter Paul Rubens …, 1758 (ESTC T30236). Over the course of the years 1757–80, Walpole worked to transform Vertue’s manuscript ‘Note-books’ into the works in five volumes published at his Strawberry Hill press as the ‘Anecdotes of Painting’ (Anecdotes of painting in England; With some account of the principal artists; and incidental notes on other arts; collected by the late Mr. George Vertue; and now digested and published from his original MSS. by Mr. Horace Walpole …, 4 vols., 1762–71/80 [ESTC T71274]).The ‘fifth volume’ was A catalogue of engravers, who have been born, or resided in England; digested by Mr. Horace Walpole from the MSS. of Mr. George Vertue; to which is added An account of the life and works of the latter, 1763

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(ESTC T63208). The first two volumes appeared 15 Feb. 1762 (Allen T. Hazen, A Bibliography of the Strawberry Hill Press, 1942, p. 55; Grove Dictionary of Art, s.v. ‘Walpole’). 13 George Vertue (1684–1756), writer, engraver, and antiquary. He was trained and apprenticed from c. 1698–1709, and contributed to many illustrated works, including Pope’s Shakespeare (1725) and Rapin’s History of England (1732–47). Late in life (1749–51) he served as an engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, and cataloguer of the collections of Frederick, Prince of Wales (Grove Dictionary of Art). Vertue’s manuscript notes towards the ‘Musæum’, his projected comprehensive account of the arts in England, ‘amassed information from aged artists and active contem-

poraries, traced or catalogued collections extant or dispersed and gathered information on medieval and later art and monuments.’ After Vertue’s death, Walpole had purchased most of Vertue’s ‘Note-books’ at auction in 1757; Walpole ‘obtained additional material the next year from Vertue’s widow.’ Following Walpole’s death, Vertue’s ‘Note-books’ eventually became part of the collection of the British Library. Vertue’s manuscript ‘Note-books’ included ‘details on hundreds of English and immigrant painters, engravers, sculptors, medallists and architects’ (Grove Dictionary of Art, s.v. ‘Walpole’, ‘Vertue’). ‘The Note-books of George Vertue’ were published by the Walpole Society, xviii (1930), xx (1932), xxii (1934), xxiv (1936), xxvi (1938), xxix (1942) [index], xxx (1950).

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 19 June 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 139–41 [LETTER XXXV].

Edinburgh, June 19, 1762. DEAR ERSKINE, YOU have upon many occasions made rather too free with my person, upon which I have often told you that I principally value myself. I feel a strong inclination to retaliate. I have great opportunity, and I will not resist it. Your figure, Erskine, is amazingly uncouth. The length of your body bears no manner of proportion to its breadth, and far less does its breadth bear to its length. If we consider you one way, you are the tallest, and if we consider you another way, you are the thickest man alive.1 The crookedness of your back is terrible;2 but it is nothing in comparison of the frightful distortions of your countenance. What monsters have you been the cause of bringing into the world! not only the wives of serjeants and corporals of the 71st regiment, but the unhappy women in every town where you was quartered,3 by looking at you, have conceived in horror. Natural defects should be spared; but I must not omit the large holes in your ears, and the deep marks of the iron on your hands. I hope you will allow these to be artificial. Nature nails no man’s ears to the pillory.4 Nature burns no man in the hand.5 As I have a very sincere friendship for you, I cannot help giving you my best advice with regard to your future schemes of life. I would beseech you to lay aside all your chimerical projects, which have made you so absurd. You know very well, when you went upon the stage6 at Kingston in Jamaica,7 how shamefully you exposed yourself, and what disgrace and vexation you brought upon all your friends. You must remember what sort of treatment you met with, when you went and offered yourself to be one of the fathers of the inquisition at Macerata, in the room of Mr. Archibald Bower;8 a project which could enter into the head of no man who was not utterly destitute of common sense. You tell me, that your intention at present is, to take orders in the church of England;9 and you hope I will approve of your plan: but I must tell you honestly, 290

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that this is a most ridiculous hair-brained conceit. Before you can be qualified for the smallest living, you must study nine years at Oxford;10 you must eat at a moderate computation, threescore of fat beeves, and upwards of two hundred sheep; you must consume a thousand stone of bread, and swallow ninety hogsheads of porter.12 You flatter yourself with being highly promoted, because you are an Earl’s brother, and a man of genius. But, my dear friend, I beg it of you to consider, how little these advantages have already availed you. The army was as good a scene for you to rise in as the church can be; and yet you are only a lieutenant11 in a very young regiment. 13 I seriously think, that your most rational scheme should be, to turn inn-keeper upon some of the great roads:14 you might have an elegant sign painted of Apollo and the Muses,15 and entertainment for men and horses, by THE HONOURABLE ANDREW ERSKINE, would be something very unusual, and could not fail to bring numbers of people to your house. You would by this means have a life of most pleasing indolence, and would never want a variety of company, as you would constantly dine and sup with your guests. Men of fashion would be glad to receive you as their equal; and men of no fashion would be proud to sit at table with one who had any pretensions to nobility. I hope the honest concern which I shew for your real welfare, will convince you how much I am, My dear Sir, Your most affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 ‘Altho’ you are of stature tall,/ I never saw you grace a ball’ (To AE, 4 May). AE was both ‘tall’ and ‘stout’ (Hugh Paton, in Kay, II. i. 57–59). He worried jocularly about becoming either rail-thin or obese: ‘And I am thinking how I will take a consumption, and waste away inch by inch; and how I’ll grow very fat and unwieldy, and won’t be able to stir out of my chair’ (From AE, 13 May). 2 Kay’s caricature of AE (see previous note) suggests that he walked with a slight stoop. 3 AE and the 71st had most recently been ‘quartered’ in Morpeth. William Hogarth’s painting ‘March of the Guards to Finchley’, 1749–50 (Coram Foundation, London) portrays the various wives, lovers, and camp followers who trailed after even an elite eighteenth-century British regiment as they left their quarters. Prominently displayed in the paintings is a pregnant woman, along with children presumably fathered by various of the soldiers of the guards (Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works, 2 vols., 1965, rev. 1989; Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, 3 vols, 1992–93; B. Nicolson and J. Kerslake, The Treasures of the Foundling Hospital, 1972). 4 Chambers wrote in 1830, ‘Nailing the

luggs [ears] to the trone (a post at the market place at which goods were weighed) was a very common punishment in Scotland, prior to the eighteenth century. It was latterly only applied to gipsies or tinkers, who could be so used merely for being habit and repute “Egyptians”’ (William Chambers, The Book of Scotland, 1830, pp. 328– 29; see also From AE, 13 May, n. 14). 5 For the punishment of branding, see From AE, 13 May, n. 14. 6 A case of JB’s ‘invention’, since AE was never an actor, and also a case of sarcasm, since AE was indeed painfully shy in any company. There was theatre in colonial Jamaica, although Spanish Town rather than Kingston was the major venue for theatre until the later eighteenth century. Kingston began its professional theatre history at Harbour Street in 1746; a second theatre in Harbour Street helped create ‘an enlivened theatrical scene in Kingston’ in the late 1750s, despite the war. Yet Edward Long, writing in 1774, ‘deplored the absence of an active theatre in Kingston’ by the mid1760s (Errol Hill, The Jamaican Stage, 1655–1900: Profile of a Colonial Theatre, 1992, pp. 4–7, 19–30; Long, History of Jamaica, 1774, quoted in Hill, p. 24). JB’s simultaneous attraction to and fear of an

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actor’s life is dealt with in his correspondence in this volume with TS, WD and Love. 7 Another case of JB’s ‘invention’. AE was never in Jamaica, and probably grateful for that fact, since he later successfully avoided being sent to another hardship post, Gibraltar. The strategic importance of the sugar islands meant that especially during conflicts such as the Seven Years’ War, West Indian outposts like Jamaica needed to be garrisoned against French and Spanish attacks with somewhere between two to eight regiments (in the 1740s as high as thirteen regiments). Soldiers and officers in the British army scorned and feared service in the West Indies, the ‘grave of English soldiers’, where regiments quickly dwindled and were sometimes left to suffer monstrous attrition rather than rotated home (Houlding, Fit for Service, pp. 15–23, 410–13). The British military had so much trouble getting men to fill the regiments in the West Indies that the ‘most hardened criminal could hope for pardon if he enlisted for Jamaica’ (J. W. Fortescue, History of the British Army, 1910, i. 562–63). In the Cuban campaign of 6 June– 14 Aug. 1762, in which British soldiers and their allies temporarily captured Havana from the Spanish, there were characteristically high casualty rates from heat, thirst, and tropical disease. By Oct. 1762, at least 4700 men had died from disease, as opposed to the c. 560 men killed in action or dead from war-wounds (Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, 1907, ii. 246–82). 8 Archibald Bower (1686–1766), S.J. (from 1706 to ?1726 and again from c. 1745 to ?1747), Scottish Jesuit, scholar and teacher who taught at, among other places, the University of Macerata from c. 1724 to 1726. He fled from Perugia to England in 1726. The reason was debated, his opponents claiming he was caught in a sexual relationship with a nun, he claiming that trauma stemming from his role as ‘counsellor’ for the Inquisition at Macerata was the true cause. He was editor of a literary magazine, Historia litteraria (1730/31–34), and translator and compiler of a seven-volume history of the popes (1748–66). Yet he gained his fame from his biographical account, publicized from his oral account in the 1720s, but published 24 years after his ‘escape’. He was initially celebrated as a brave convert to Protestantism, although he would later be exposed as a cryptoCatholic. Richard Barron edited Bower’s pamphlet-length autobiography, A faithful account of Mr. Archibald Bower’s motives for

leaving his office of Secretary to the Court of Inquisition …, 1750 (ESTC T86846), which was in its second edition by 1750. It was reprinted in Dublin (1750), Belfast (1750), and New Haven (1757). The dispute from 1756 to 1758 regarding the truth of Bower’s claims was yet another of the divisive literary conflicts and pamphlet wars of the 1750s and 1760s, and was to anti-Popery what the Lauder scandal of 1747–54 was to Milton studies, what the Ossian fracas of 1762–1805 was to Gaelic poetry, and what the Douglas Cause dispute of 1761–69 was to family law. The main stream of criticism began with John Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, Six letters from A— —d B——r … tending to ascertain the authenticity of the said letters, and the true character of the writer, 1756, ESTC T86860); Douglas wrote three additional pamphlets impugning not only Bower’s biography, but accusing him of plagiarizing Tillemont’s papal history. Bower retaliated against his accusers with a flood of at least eleven pamphlets in his own defence published from 1756 to 1758, four of them thought to have been printed in Edinburgh (see ESTC). Bower was only one of many whose writings popularized the anti-Inquisition concepts of the Enlightenment riformatore Pietro Giannone; a network of Jacobites and Non-Jurors with ties to Italy spread his ideas in Britain (Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘Pietro Giannone And Great Britain’, Historical Journal, xxxix [1996]: 657–75). The interest in Bower’s horror stories of the Roman Inquisition fuelled British ‘anti-popery’ sentiments, which would later be played upon by the Gordon Riots (1780). 9 Another of JB’s ‘inventions’. JB’s friend WJT, who appears to have introduced JB to the Church of England services, would take religious orders in the Church of England in 1766, but from 1758 to 1765 was at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, from which he received his LL.B. (Corr. 6, pp. xviii–xix). JJ was another of JB’s friends who attended the Church of England services (Corr. 1, pp. xvi, 17–18). JB was friends with Church of England clergymen such as Edward Colquitt, of the Soaping Club, whose correspondence with JB appears in this volume. JB is thought to have attended Church of England services with WJT c. 1755, and at the end of 1763 ‘received the sacrament for the first time in the Church of England’ (Earlier Years, pp. 30, 131, 460–61). 10 WJT’s Cambridge education was in its third year of an eventual six years. JB here parodies the contemporary reputation of stu-

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dent life at Oxford for gluttony and bibulousness. The Victorian stereotype depicted Oxford in the eighteenth century as solely characterized by High-Church drones overseeing aristocratic playboys (A. D. Godley, Oxford in the Eighteenth Century, 1908). More recent work on Oxford history has challenged the old stereotypes of port and prejudice and suggested a surprising level of scholarship (and at times student diligence) even in the supposed age of Georgian decadence (V. H. H. Green, A History of Oxford University, 1974; L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell’s The History of the University of Oxford, Volume V: The Eighteenth Century, 1986). 11 AE was entitled to be addressed as ‘The Honourable Andrew Erskine’ since he was a younger brother of the 6th Earl of Kellie. Had AE not committed suicide in 1793, and lived on into his later fifties and sixties, he would have become 8th Earl of Kellie upon the death in 1797 of his unmarried elder brother Archibald, the seventh earl. AE’s aristocratic lineage did nothing for his chances of being ‘highly promoted’ in the army: he was still a lt. when he resigned his commission in the 24th Foot in 1769–70 (Army List). 12 The mass quantities of beef, mutton, bread, and porter to be consumed are perhaps a nod to Swift’s Gulliver, who eats in one meal in Lilliput ‘Baskets full of Meat’, ‘Flesh of several Animals … Shoulders, Legs, and Loins shaped like those of Mutton’ which he ingested ‘two or three at a Mouthful’, ‘three Loaves [of bread] at a time’, and two ‘of their largest Hogsheads’ of a beverage which tasted ‘like a small Wine of Burgundy’ (Gulliver’s Travels, I. ch. 1, Blackwell ed., pp. 7–8 ). The huge amounts of food are equally Rebelaisian or Cervantesque. The images also play off the JB–AE humour about gluttons and gluttony expressed in AE’s verse letter from Fort George and his ‘The Pigs, an Elegy, occassioned by seeing two that were roasting …’, and JB’s ‘Turnspittiad’ and ‘Ode to Gluttony’. Porter, a dark brown beer, popularly said to have been so called because it was associated with city cargo-carriers, ‘orig. made for or chiefly drunk by porters and the lower class of labourers’ (OED). It was one of the more popular brewed alcoholic beverages in mid-Georgian London, and therefore evoked images of English life in JB’s mind. Porter was firmly associated with London and its people. Indeed, ‘the adoption of porter brewing was the factor chiefly responsible for the rapid expansion of the common brewers of London in the eighteenth cen-

tury’ such as Henry Thrale. London Porter became so pervasive a style that a writer in 1758 noted that ‘Beer’—the ‘universal cordial of the populace’—was ‘commonly call’d Porter’. However, the ‘Porter’ or ‘Entire Butt’ of the 1760s–90s was ‘a different product from the modern one’. It was made from brown malt, was of a ‘dark colour’, was very hoppy (3 lbs per hogshead, the hops perhaps brewed four times), often aged in butts to achieve mellowness, and perhaps from an ‘entire’ blend of mixed strong and weak worts to vary the strength and colour (H. S. Corran, A History of Brewing, 1975, pp. 110– 18, 168–73). See also Peter Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England 1700–1830, 1959, and esp. Oliver MacDonagh, ‘The Origins of Porter’, The Economic History Review, xvi [1964]: 530–55; MacDonagh (p. 530) noted that the recipe for porter was first published in 1750. In 1760, the output of porter by the ten most substantial firms such as the Mercer Street Brewery (Meux and Mungo Murray), Henry Thrale’s Anchor Brewery, and Lady Parsons’ brewery ranged from 10,012 barrels upwards to 34,098 barrels (Jimmy Young, A Short History of Ale, 1979, pp. 37–39). 13 A ‘young’ regiment was one such as the 71st Foot (AE’s regiment) which had been formed solely for the purpose of augmenting the army during a military crisis. The peacetime standing army of Britain, in order to reduce spending and to quell constitutional fears of the political dangers of a ‘standing army’, was kept small, c. 40–69 numbered ‘marching regiments’ of foot (not counting guards, artillery, marines, dragoons, or horse, whose ebb and flow followed analogous patterns). In the peace of 1718–39 the standing army had 40 or 41 ‘marching’ regiments of foot, expanded in wartime 1739– 48 to 62 regiments, reduced again 1748–55 to 48 regiments (51 by 1754), ballooning to 126 regiments in the ‘largest increase in the size of the army’, and reduced once again in the peacetime period 1764–75 to 69 regiments of foot, thereby eliminating or ‘invaliding’ regiments numbered above 69 or 70 (Houlding, pp. 9–13). In AE’s case, his ‘young regiment’ was formed in 1758, and disbanded in 1763. 14 Perhaps a reference to AE’s complaints about the inn at Morpeth in which his regiment had been quartered. Morpeth was a stage town on the ‘East Road’ from Edinburgh to London (Edinburgh Almanack, 1760, pp. 3–6). The culture of the inns and coaches of the ‘great roads’ c. 1660–1823 is dealt with in W. Outram Tristram, Coaching

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Days and Coaching Ways, 1893, which covers the Bath, Exeter, Portsmouth, Brighton, Dover, York, and Holyhead roads. 15 Lillywhite mentioned in London an ‘Apollo’ coffee-house (1744–50s), although

the ‘Apollo Inn’ in Marylebone did not appear until the 1800s. The Nine Muses are absent from Lillywhite’s lists, however (Lond. Signs, pp. 15, 370–71).

From the Seventy-First Regiment of Foot to Andrew Erskine, after 19 June and before 12 July 1762 Not reported. ‘Donaldson tells me that he has sent you a Letter from the Regiment …. [I]t may perhaps order you up’ (To AE, 12 July).

?To Andrew Erskine, c. late June 1762 Not reported. See From AE, 5 July: ‘You compliment me highly on my elegies, and tell me that I have even dared to be original now and then; and you ask me very seriously, how I come to be so well acquainted with the tender passion of love’. The thoughts referred to are missing from the extant JB letters to AE from this period. It may be the case, however, that AE was referring to a conversation he and JB had rather than a letter. A later letter from JB implies that there were only three letters from JB to AE in the gap between 10–14 June and 5 July (To AE, 12 July).

From Andrew Erskine, Monday 5 July 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 142–44 [LETTER XXXVI].

Kelly, July 5, 1762.1 DEAR BOSWELL, VANITY has, in all former ages, been reckoned the characteristic of poets; in our time, I think they are more particularly distinguished by modesty: I have carefully perused their works, and I have never once found them throwing out either thought, sentiment, or reflection of their own; convincing proof of their humility: they seem all to allow that the ancients, and some few of the earlier moderns, were much better writers than themselves; therefore they beg, borrow, and steal from them, without the smallest mercy or hesitation.2 In some things, however, they are quite original; their margins and prices are larger than any ever known before; and they advertise their pieces much oftener in the news-papers than any of their predecessors.3 You compliment me highly on my elegies, and tell me that I have even dared to be original now and then; and you ask me very seriously, how I come to be so well acquainted with the tender passion of love.4—Ah, Sir, how deceitful are appearances! under a forbidding aspect and uncouth form, I conceal the soul of an Oroondates,5 a soul that thrills with the most sensible emotions at the sight of beauty. Love easily finds access where the mind is naturally inclined to melancholy; we foster the pleasing delusion, it grows up with our frame, and becomes a part of our being; long have I laboured under the influence of that passion; long vented my grief in unavailing sighs. Besides, your thin meagre man is always the most violent lover: a thousand delusions enter his paper-scull, which the man of guts never dreams of. In vain does Cupid shoot his arrows at the plump existence, who is intrenched in a solid wall of fat: they are buried like shrimps in melted 294

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butter; as eggs are preserved by mutton-tallow, from rottenness and putrefaction, so he, by his grease, is preserved from love. Pleased with his pipe, he sits and smoaks in his elbow-chair; totally unknown to him is the ardent passion that actuates the sentimental soul: alas! unhappy man! he never indulged in the pleasing reverie which inspires the spindle-shanked lover, as he strays through nodding forest by gliding stream; if he marries, he chuses a companion fat as himself; they lie together, and most musical is their snore; they melt like two pounds of butter in one plate in a sun-shiny-day. Pray, Boswell, remember me kindly to honest Johnston.6 Let me know if his trees are growing well, at his paternal estate of Grange;7 if he is as fond of Melvil’s memoirs8 as he used to be; and if he continues to stretch himself in the sun upon the mountains near Edinburgh. I ever am, Yours most affectionatly, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 The datelines of this and the subsequent letter, ostensibly written on consecutive days and followed by a third on 7 July, are both suspicious. From AE, 6 July describes a trip to Aberdeen, which was not mentioned in this letter. In the letter of 7 July, moreover, AE remarked that he had not written to JB ‘for some time’, and JB in replying to it (see To AE, 12 July) wrote of his objection to AE’s ‘long silence’. 2 Both JB and AE favoured the idea that the Moderns mainly emulated (or plagiarized) the Ancients: ‘ I proceed to give you my opinion of the ancient and modern writers …. [T]he ancients have reaped the full of the harvest’ (From AE, 25 May); ‘I am under some Apprehension that the Poets of this Age, altho’ prodigiously numerous, will scarcely equal those of the last’ (To AE, 1 June [MS]). 3 An ironic comment in light of JB’s increasing prices for his verse. While his An Ode to Tragedy … By a Gentleman of Scotland, 1761 (12 pp.) had sold for 6d, Cub, 1762 (24 pp.) was priced at 1s. This may have something to do with the differences between Edinburgh and London prices, but just as likely stemmed from JB’s ambition with Cub to produce a deluxe pamplet above the sixpenny herd. 4 No comments in the previous months’ surviving letters on AE’s verse fit the compliments AE describes here. 5 Oroondates, a character in Cassandre (1642), by Gaultier de Coste, seigneur de La Calprenède, a tale of Cassander, King of Macedonia and Alexander the Great. Sir Charles Cotterell was Cassandre’s earliest translator into English prose. His translation of a part of the work appeared in 1652, but he rendered the entire romance in English in the Restoration as Cassandra: the

fam’d romance … in five parts …, 1661 (ESTC R14411), and remained popular through the 1660s and 1670s. A new translation appeared in 1703: The famous history of Cassandra … In five parts … newly tran[s]lated into English, by several hands (ESTC T99106). Hogarth engraved prints for a 1725 edition of Cotterell’s translation (ESTC T1753); a fourth edition appeared in 1737 (ESTC T98056). JB may have read the romance in prose, but might also have known about the story from the stage. The romance was adapted for at least three Restoration tragedies. John Banks’s The rival kings: or The loves of Oroondates and Statira. A tragædy. Acted at the Theater-Royal, 1677 (ESTC R2618) was based on La Calprenède’s romance, as were the wedding-gift tragedy for William and Mary, Edward Cooke’s Love’s triumph, or, The royal union: a tragedy … [1678] (ESTC R5604) and Nathaniel Lee’s The rival queens, or the death of Alexander the Great …, 1677 (ESTC R13215). During Mar.–May 1760 when JB was in London there were three performances of The Rival Queens at Covent Garden (Lond. Stage, pp. 777–99). Oroondates was a stereotype of the constant and ardent young lover; see, for example, ‘if you will believe Mr. Methuen’s account of himself, neither Artamenes nor Oroondates ever had more valour, honour, constancy, and discretion’ (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘Account of the Court of George I’; in Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Essays and Poems and Simplicity, A Comedy, 1977, p. 92). Rousseau’s Confessions mention the young Jean-Jacques’ admiration for the sentimental romance’s young lover: ‘Plutarque surtout devint ma lecture favorite. Le plaisir que je prenais à le relire

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sans cesse me guérit un peu des romans; et je préferait bientôt Agésilas, Brutus, Aristide, à Orondate, Artamène et Juba’ (JeanJacques Rousseau, Les Confessions, livre premier [1782], ed. Raymond Trousson, 1995, i. 156). 6 AE here follows JB’s request: ‘I hope to see our friend Johnston. He is a most worthy fellow, and much of a Gentleman. He has a high regard for you. Pray mention him kindly in your next. He will be glad to find that he is remembred by you’ (To AE, 8 –9 May [MS]). 7 On 28 Apr. 1763, JJ wrote to JB, ‘I return to Grange on Monday, will Stay a few days there and write from that place, and date my Letter below a tree of my own planting’ (Corr. 1, pp. 72–74). JB later supplied JJ with trees from Auchinleck to plant at Grange (From JJ, 24 Apr. 1767, Corr. 1, pp. 224–27; To JJ, 31 Mar. 1769, Corr. 1, pp. 249–51). 8 Sir James Melville of Hallhill, Fife (1535–1617), diplomat-courtier, initially a page to Mary, Queen of Scots, rose, after a career of battle and political legerdemain

on the continent, to be a privy councillor, pension recipient, and gentleman of the bedchamber at Mary’s court. He remained a courtier, negotiator, and diplomat in the reign of James VI, and James’s queen, Anne. Melville married Christian Boswell in ?1575(Douglas’s Baronage, p. 310). Sir James was author of extensive manuscript memoirs rediscovered in 1660 and first published in the 1680s: The memoires of Sir James Melvil of Hal-Hill … relating to the kingdoms of England and Scotland, under the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, Mary Queen of Scots, and King James.… Now published from the original manuscript [edited] By George Scott [of Pitlochie], Gent., 1683 (ESTC R201). Melville’s memoirs remained popular. They were reprinted in a second edition in Edinburgh, 1735 (ESTC T124427); a suspicious [?Jacobite] French ‘Edimbourg’ imprint of 1745 (ESTC T153535); a Glasgow third edition, 1751 (ESTC T124399), and a London third edition, 1752 (ESTC T124824). JJ was a devoted antiquary and, like JB, had a particular interest in the age of Queen Mary and the story of the Stuarts.

From Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 6 July 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 145–47 [LETTER XXXVII].

Kelly, July 6, 1761.1 DEAR BOSWELL, NOTHING happened during my journey; I arrived in Aberdeen on Thursday last;2 the town is really neater, cleaner, and better than you would imagine;3 but the country around is dismal; long gloomy moors, and the extended ocean, are the only prospects that present themselves;4 the whole region seems as if made in direct opposition to descriptive poetry. You meet here with none of the lengthened meads, sunny vales, and dashing streams, that brighten in the raptured poet’s eye; however, as I believe you have been here,5 I shall trouble you with no farther descriptions. Never was parting more tender than that of mine with George Robertson6 the postilion, and the Kelly chaise at Dundee water-side;7 we formed as dolorous a trio as then existed upon the face of this valley of tears. Oh George! O Erskine! were the cries that echoed across the waves, and along the mountains. Tears trickled down the rugged boatman’s face, An unpaid freight he thought no harder case; The seals no longer sported in the sea, While ev’ry bell rung mournful in Dundee, Huge ploughmen wept, and stranger still, ’tis said, So strong is sympathy, that asses bray’d. 296

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Farewel lovely George, I roared out, and oh! if you should happen to be dry, for such is the nature of sorrow; take this shilling, and spend it in the sugared ale, or the wind-expelling dram:8 with sweet reluctance he put forth his milk-white hand, cold with clammy sweat, and with a faultering voice, feebly thanked me.9 Oh! I shall never forget my emotions when he drove from me, and the chaise10 lessened in my view; now it whirled sublime along the mountains edge; now, I scarcely saw the head of George nodding in the vale. Thus, on the summit of a craggy cliff, which high overlooks the resounding waves, Jean, Susan, or Nell, sees in a boat her lovely sailor, who has been torn from her arms by a cruel press-gang;11 now it climbs the highest seas; now it is buried between two billows, and vanishes from her sight. Weep not, sweet maid, he shall return loaded with honours; a gold watch shall grace each fob, a pair of silver buckles shall shine resplendent upon his shoes, and a silk handkerchief shall be tied around his neck, which soon shall cover thy snowy bosom. When the chaise was totally lost, and my breast was distracted with a thousand different passions; all of a sudden I broke out into the following soliloquy.— Surely, surely mortal man is a chaise; now trailing through the heavy sand of indolence, anon jolted to death upon the rough road of discontent; and shortly after sunk in the deep rut of low spirits; now galloping on the post-road of expectation, and immediately after, trotting on the stony one of disappointment; but the days of our driving soon cease, our shafts break, our leather rots, and we tumble into a hole.12 Adieu, yours, ANDREW ERSKINE 1 In E–B the date of this letter is printed ‘1761’—clearly a printer’s error, since the letter is solidly in sequence in E–B between letters of 5 July and 7 July 1762. It remains open to speculation whether JB consciously redated AE’s letters which appear in E–B for 5 July, 6 July and 7 July. The sudden mention of the Aberdeen journey gives one pause, as does the fact that in the letter of 7 July he claims he had failed to flood JB with the ‘damm’d up’ materials he had stored ‘by ceasing to write to you for some time’. 2 That is, Thursday, 1 July. Assuming that the letters from AE in early July are correctly dated, AE would have arrived in Aberdeen on 1 July and departed in time to make the journey (of about 70–86 miles) south, and write from Kellie Castle on 5 July (the distance by road from Dundee to Aberdeen was listed as 48 miles in Edinburgh Almanack, 1760, pp. 3–6, although Taylor & Skinner’s route suggests 64 miles, with a further 22 miles from Dundee to Pittenweem). AE had been away from his regiment for several months, at least initially (and perhaps still) on recruiting duties (‘I am recruiting again; I believe our regiment won’t go abroad this summer’, From AE, 15 Apr.). 3 ‘Aberdeen is pleasantly situated near the Sea, being a tolerable harbour, into

which the Ships come up under the Castle, almost close to the town …. The fine oblong Square called the Cross … is for the most part well built …. It is a great pity that a town which is so finely situated, should be so ill laid out in other parts as to its streets …. It is computed that there are about 9000 souls in this town, and in the old town and in the Suburbs to both about six thousand … good Shops to supply the Country round … And the University … besides professors about two hundred Students’ (Richard Pococke, 1760 tour, from Tours in Scotland: 1747, 1750, 1760, 1887, SHS 1, pp. 201– 10). Pennant also noted ‘a fine city, lying on a small bay formed by the Dee … about two miles in circumference, and contains thirteen thousand souls, and about three thousand in the suburbs …. The town of Aberdeen is in general well built, with granite …. The best street … is the Castle-street …. [O]ld Aberdeen … [is by contrast] a poor town’ (Pennant, pp. 121–27). 4 Pococke disagreed: ‘All the Country round the Town is extremely pleasant, being uneven ground, and covered with Corn or garden Stuff’ (Richard Pococke, 1760 tour, from Tours in Scotland: 1747, 1750, 1760, 1887, SHS 1, pp. 204–10). Pennant wrote in 1769 of ‘a fine view of an extensive

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and rich country; once a most barren spot, but by the industry of the inhabitants brought to its present state. A pretty vale bordered with wood’ (Pennant, p. 127). 5 JB presumably had visited Aberdeen in 1758 and 1761, years in which he accompanied Lord Auchinleck on the North Circuit (which consisted of courts in Perth, Inverness, and Aberdeen). In 1758 the court convened in Aberdeen on 19 Sept. (Scots Mag. Nov. 1758, xx. 608). JB wrote twice to WJT about his 1758 trip. On 29 July 1758 he explained to WJT that his father had promised to take him on the circuit (Corr. 6, pp. 6–7), and on 16 Dec. 1758 he wrote to WJT that he had indeed travelled the circuit, along with Sir David Dalrymple (Corr. 6, pp. 14–16). Sadly, the ‘exact journal’ of the 1758 North Circuit trip, written at the request of James Love, and ‘sent … to him, in sheets, every post’ has not been recovered (To Love [Dance], c. 1 Sept.–c. 19 Sept. 1758). Among the Boswell papers at Yale are three of JB’s burgess tickets issued in Sept. 1758 for Perth (Yale MS. C 2244.4), Inverness (Yale MS. C 1583), and Brechin (Yale MS. C 569.7), but none for Aberdeen. Lord Auchinleck received a ticket from Brechin on the same date as JB, but he had previously received Aberdeen and Perth burgess tickets in 1756 (MSS. Yale, Talbot Inventory no. 3). Lord Auchinleck by 1773 was also a quite wellknown guest at the New Inn in Aberdeen, where he ‘puts up … when on his Circuit’ (Journ. 21 Aug. 1773). JB would probably have visited Aberdeen more recently with his father on 23 May 1761 on another North Circuit sitting (Scots Mag. 1761, xxiii. 327). The surviving fragment of JB’s ‘Journal of North Circuit’ ends on 16 May while the two were still at Inverness. When SJ and JB visited Aberdeen 23 Aug. 1773, JB noted that SJ received a burgess ticket, but made no mention of himself receiving one (Hebrides, p. 65). JB’s method of recounting the anecdote may simply be taken as focusing the reader’s attention on SJ’s experience of gaining the freedom of the city, yet it has also traditionally been interpreted as evidence that JB already had received a burgess ticket. 6 George Robertson (fl. 1762), a postilion of the Erskines at Kellie Castle. The footnote to page 37 of Donaldson’s Collection II described him simply as ‘the driver’. A ‘postilion’ typically drove the chaise while riding on one of the horses pulling the chaise, rather than driving from atop the

box or inside the chaise. AE’s fondness for Robertson is evident in his ‘EPISTLE from the OLD CHAISE at K——— [Kellie] to a NEW ONE which a Gentleman brought there …’. From his description, Robertson was an old enough retainer to have seen the old chaise when it was new: ‘Now George surveys with wat’ry eyes,/ What once he did so dearly prize;/ And while of ale he takes a sup,/ he swears that he must give me up’ (Collection II, pp. 36–37). 7 On his journey northward from Kellie Castle, Fifeshire (near Pittenweem) to Aberdeen, AE would have had to cross the Firth of Tay by ferry. Dundee was on the north bank of the firth, Woodhaven on the south of the ‘Dundee water-side’ where AE and Robertson parted and the ‘rugged boatman’ took AE to Dundee (Taylor & Skinner, pl. 33). Although JB’s Hebrides left a vivid account of the Leith-Kinghorn ferry, his entry for 20 Aug. 1773 did not mention the ferry to Dundee. 8 Eighteenth-century Britain knew several types of carminative medicines designed to help the expulsion of flatulence. Tatler No. 224, 1710, mentioned ‘The Carminitive Wind-Expelling Pills’. Edward Ward, Nuptial Dialogues and Debates, 1723, ‘DIALOGUE V. Between a melancholy fanciful Gentleman and his merry bantering Wife’, ll. 22–26, 51–60, contained a reference to these medicines: My Cordial will effect the Cure, Here take a lusty Dram, my Dear, ’Tis a rare Antidote, I’ll swear; One Glass will carry off the Wind, And raise a stinking Storm behind … I’d take but one refreshing Coag, Of this Balsamick Chimagog, And in a quarter of an Hour ’Twould expel Wind with so much Pow’r, That ev’ry Puff at Mouth or Tail, Would blow round any Windmil-sail, And each Eruption roar as loud As Clap of Thunder from a Cloud: Thus would it carry off the Wind, Not only upwards, but behind … 9 Given AE and JB’s Shandeism, perhaps a parody of the dying Yorick’s farewell to Eugenius (Tristram Shandy, vol. 1, ch. 12), which is itself a parody of the sentimental genre. More likely a generic burlesque of the literature of romantic love and sentiment. 10 The dilapidated ‘OLD CHAISE at K——— [Kellie]’ was described by AE in his verse ‘Epistle from the OLD CHAISE’:

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7 JULY 1762 I’m but a cart … I once was beautiful and new … Never was a chaise so drove about; But now, alas! my date is out; I’m mighty crazy grown, and shatter’d; With dirt and horse-dung all bespatter’d; My body, wheels, and shafts are broke, They scarce can stand the slightest shock; My paintings gone, worn out my crest’ (Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 36–37)

Its state was indicative of the family of Kellie’s declining wealth. The ‘K——— chaise’ and its ‘bays’ also make a brief appearance in Stanza IX of AE’s ‘The LAWYER’s OVERTHROW; or the ADVOCATE’s FALL at the Leith Races’ (Collection II, p. 41). 11 The use of impressment of merchant and privateer seamen into the Royal Navy, although allowed by statute, was controversial despite widespread agreement that it was the only politically acceptable way to resolve the sudden naval manpower crisis faced in the Seven Years’ War. The press was made even more controversial by the abuses of the statute committed by overeager Impress Officers and their press gangs in raiding seamen’s taverns. Press gangs faced local resistance by seaport magistrates acting in the name of the civil rights of the subject (magistrates often even opposing

legal press warrants). Fierce resistance by seamen and townspeople to the gangs produced numerous fights and riots. From 1755 to 1757 over 70,566 Britons had been pressed into the Navy on land alone (See N. A. M. Rodger, The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy, 1986/87, pp. 145–53, 164–82; J. R. Hutchinson, The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore, 1913). One article written soon after the war ended complained, ‘The practice of pressing is, perhaps, too wantonly practised by officers in the navy’ (Gent. Mag., Sept. 1764, xxxiv. 444–45). AE in a revealing conversation at Macfarlane’s told JB ‘that he was kept as a blackguard when he was a boy, then went to sea, and then came into the Army [by 1759]’ (Journ. 25 Dec.). AE’s knowledge of the practice of press-gangs in the era of the naval manpower crisis 1756–63 could have been learned while ‘at sea’ in his youth, since merchant marine and Royal Navy crews alike would have shared press gang tales. 12 AE parallels thoughts in Swift’s Meditation Upon a Broom-stick (1710): ‘[A]t length, worn to the stumps in the service of the maids, it is either thrown out of doors or condemned to the last use—of kindling a fire. When I behold this I sighed, and said within myself, “Surely mortal man is a broomstick!”’

From Andrew Erskine, Wednesday 7 July 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 148–50 [LETTER XXXVIII].

Kelly, July 7, 1762. DEAR BOSWELL, I IMAGINED, that by ceasing to write to you for some time,1 I should be able to lay up a stock of materials, enough to astonish you, and that, like a river damm’d up, when let loose, I should flow on with unusual rapidity; or like a man, who has not beat his wife for a fortnight, I should cudgel you with my wit for hours together; but I find the contrary of all this is the case; I resemble a person long absent from his native country, of which he has formed a thousand endearing ideas, and to which he at last returns; but alas! he beholds with sorrowful eyes, every thing changed for the worse; the town where he was born,2 which used to have two snows and three sloops trading to all parts of the known world, is not now master of two fishing-boats;3 the steeple of the church, where he used to sleep in his youth, is rent with lightning; and the girl on whom he had placed his early affections, has had three bastard children, and is just going to be delivered of a fourth;4 or I resemble a man who has had a fine waistcoat lying long in the very bottom of a chest, which he is determined shall be put on at the hunter’s ball;5 but woes me, the lace is tarnished, and the moths have devoured it in a melancholy manner; these few 299

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similies may serve to shew, that this letter has little chance of being a good one; yet they don’t make the affair certain. Prince Ferdinand6 beat the French at Minden;7 Sheridan, in his lectures, sometimes spoke sense;8 and John Home wrote one good play.9 I have read Lord Kames’s Elements,10 and agree very heartily with the opinion of the Critical Reviewers;11 however, I could often have wished, that his Lordship had been less obscure, or that I had had more penetration; he praises the Mourning Bride12 excessively, which, nevertheless, I can’t help thinking a very indifferent play; the plot wild and improbable, and the language infinitely too high and swelling.13 It is curious to see the opinions of the Reviewers concerning you and me; they take you for a poor distressed gentleman, writing for bread,14 and me for a very impudent Irishman;15 whereas you are heir to a thousand a year,16 and I am one of the most bashful Scotsmen that ever appeared:17 I confess, indeed, my bashfulness does not appear in my works, for them I print in the most impudent manner; being exceeded in that respect by no body but James Boswell, Esq; Yours, etc. ANDREW ERSKINE 1 Assuming that the dates JB provided in E–B were not amended by him to improve the sequence, or were not the results of printers’ errors, then this passage—‘by ceasing to write to you for some time’—must not be taken to mean that AE had ceased to write JB from 10–14 June to 7 July. Instead, it must be taken to refer to the gap between 10–14 June and 4 July, in which AE had presumably ‘damm’d up’ three letters worth of material which he then ‘let loose’ on 5, 6, and 7 July. 2 AE was born in the parish of Carnbee, Fife, and spent most of his youth at Kellie Castle, amidst farmland and trees (Register of Births and Baptisms for the Parish of Carnbee in the County of Fife, 1742, recording AE’s birth 10 Aug. 1740). Thus, his description of a city lad returning to ‘the town where he was born’ is a fictional reverie. 3 A ‘snow’ or ‘snaw’ is a small sailingvessel ‘resembling a brig, carrying a main and fore mast and a supplementary trysail mast close behind the mainmast’; a sloop is a ‘small, one-masted, fore-and-aft rigged vessel, differing from a cutter in having a jib-stay and standing bowsprit’. Both snows and sloops had been employed as warships as well as commercial vessels in the eighteenth century. The multitudinous types of fishing boats used in this era make it impossible to identify the precise type meant. By the second half of the nineteenth century AE’s native region of Fife would be celebrated for its distinctive ‘fifies’ (OED). 4 AE was not known to have fathered any children. JB had either discovered or was on the brink of discovering that he indeed had. JB’s first illegitimate child, Charles Boswell, seems to have been con-

ceived about Apr. 1762; JB met with Cairnie and the kirk treasurer on 23 July on an unspecified matter, and made veiled and vague arrangements for Cairnie to expedite ‘my little affair’ by mid-Aug. For the tentative reconstruction of the events leading up to JB’s son’s birth, see To JJ, 17 Aug., Corr. 1, p. 13 n. 5, and Earlier Years, pp. 79–80, 84–85, 94, 98, 479, 483. 5 The Honourable ‘Company of Hunters’ were ‘a company of gentlemen, instituted for enjoying together the sports of the field’, i.e., hunting and horse-racing. Arnot noted that the Company had gone through several different incarnations, because of the combination of deaths of original members and overspending. The ‘Company of Hunters’ to which AE refers, founded in 1758, would be defunct by 1766, and reincarnated c. 1778 as ‘The Caledonian Hunt’ (pp. 362–63, using Arnot’s preface date of 1779). Cassell’s Edinburgh, ii. 75–76 contains a description of an earlier company’s Holyrood Palace ball of Jan. 1736. JB’s ‘The Race: an Heroic Ballad’ is ‘Addressed to the Honourable Company of Scots Hunters’ (Collection II, pp. 101). 6 ‘Prince Ferdinand’ (Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, 1721–92), a prince of the house of Brunswick, and a brother-inlaw of Frederick the Great, had been an officer in the Prussian army from 1740. He began the Seven Years’ War campaigning with Frederick in Saxony and Bohemia. Yet his fame in Britain stemmed from his role from 1757 as commander of the joint Prussian and allied forces in the west, where he bore the title of ‘generalissimo of his Britannick Majesty’s army in Germany’ (see

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ESTC T224556). His military importance in the western German front of the Seven Years’ War rivalled Frederick’s in the eastern theatre. After the war in 1766, a break with Frederick (a rift eventually healed) led him to serve the Habsburg Austrian Empire for a time. Thanks to his close co-operation with British commanders such as the Marquess of Granby, Ferdinand became one of the most popular commanders of the war. Popular histories of Ferdinand included W. Salmon’s Memoirs of the life and glorious actions of Frederick III. [sic] King of Prussia.… In which is included a concise history of the glorious atchievements of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick …, 1759 (ESTC T171828). His campaigns in the German territories commanding the British and German allied troops were mentioned with lavish gratitude by George III in the King’s Speech of 25 Nov. 1762, in which the king referred to Ferdinand as ‘My general’. In addition, on 9 Dec. 1762, the House of Commons had sent Prince Ferdinand ‘their Thanks for the great and important services he had performed to this country in the several campaigns, during which he had commanded his Majesty’s army in Germany’ (Parl. Hist. xv. 1230–80). The continuing esteem in which Ferdinand was held by many in Britain even after the war’s end led to the offer of a command in the American War, which he declined. His popularity had, as AE implies, ebbed in 1760–62. One magazine reported that ‘some English officers hav[e], it is said, taken a disgust to their present commander’ on the grounds of his cupidity, his inaction in the campaigns after 1759, his refusing to allow British generals to command separate corps, and his placing British troops in the fiercest fighting. It added that ‘Most of the English officers who have arrived within these few days from the army in their way to England, complain openly of Pr. F———, that he aims at nothing but getting honour to himself, and filling his pockets’, although it presented the contrary view that ‘most of our officers … who are asked particularly about Pr. F———, give him an extraordinarily good character, and declare that he used them all with the greatest affability and good nature imaginable’. The article printed in double columns the complaints against the prince alongside refutations of them (Gent. Mag. Jan. 1761, xxxi. 36). 7 The battle of Minden, 1 Aug. 1759. See A plan of the battle which was fought August the first, 1759, between the allied army … and

the French army … in the plains near Minden, [1759] (ESTC T215296). It was considered so decisive that Sunday 12 Aug. 1759 was observed in England as a thanksgiving for the victory: A form of prayer and thanksgiving to almighty God; … for the glorious victory obtained over the French on Wednesday the first day of August, at Dodenhausen near Minden …, 1759 (ESTCT80023). William Pitt in a speech of 9 Dec. 1762 referred to the battle as ‘the Marathon of Minden’, suggesting his view of its epic and decisive nature in stopping the French threat (Parl. Hist. xv. 1267). The afterglow of the victory was soured by Lord Sackville’s court-martial in 1760 for disobeying Ferdinand’s orders, and by increasing objections to the Prince’s command over the allied army (see above). A selection of documents relating to the battle and court-martial may be found in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on the Manuscripts of Mrs. Stopford-Sackville, 1904, vol. 1, ‘XIII. Minden Papers. Papers Relating to the Battle of Minden and the Trial of Lord George Sackville’, pp. 312–22. Secondary accounts include A. E. Sullivan, ‘Was Lord Sackville Guilty?’, Army Quarterly, lxxiii/2 (1957): 242–50; and Piers Mackesy, The Coward of Minden: The Affair of George Sackville, 1979. Popular accounts included high-cultural works, such as Ode on the glorious victory obtained by the allied army in Germany, under the command of His serene Highness Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, over the French, under Marshal Contades; at Thornhausen, near Minden, on the first day of August, 1759, 1759 (ESTC N20541); and Sidney Swinney, The battle of Minden, a poem. In three books. Enriched with critical notes by two friends, and with explanatory notes by the author, 1769–[72] (ESTC T88015). Low-cultural tributes also appeared, such as The battle of Minden? [sic] A new song [1759?] (ESTC T197963); and The songster’s fresh supply: … 1. A new song, made upon the late battle near Minden, [1760?] [ESTC T49511]). Beyond such panegyric, critical summaries of the news reached print, such as The black book; or, a complete key to the late [b]attle at Minden. By a blacksmith, 1759 (ESTC N15109). 8 AE had attended TS’s lectures in Edinburgh, as had JB and GD, but AE expressed scorn for them (for his opinion of them, see From AE, 16 Dec. 1761). 9 Home’s Douglas remained his most popular piece. David Hume had referred to it as ‘your Noble tragedy of Douglas; one of the most interesting and pathetic Pieces,

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that was ever exhibited upon any theatre … you possess the true Theatric Genius of Shakespear and Otway, refined from … Barbarism … and Licentiousness’ (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 585). In the six London theatrical seasons 1756/7–1766/7, Douglas was performed and revived reasonably steadily from Mar. 1757 to May 1762, whereas Agis, although it undeniably ‘went off with applause’ and set ‘a record of ten performances’, held the stage for a shorter period from Feb. 1758 to Feb. 1761, and Siege of Aquileia, despite a command performance for the future George III, only managed nine performances from Feb. to Mar. 1760 (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 586–937 [for Douglas], 607–841 [for Agis], and 775–78 [for The Siege of Aquileia]). Matters were quite similar in the textual tradition. Douglas (1757), though the oldest of Home’s plays, was still popular in the decade of JB’s and AE’s deaths, and was printed in a vast array of fifty-six identifiable printings, including various ‘new’ editions, and multiple reissues, ‘marked’ versions, adaptations, and piracies: eight 1757– 58, eight 1761–69, ten 1770–78, thirteen 1780–89, and fourteen 1790–99 (ESTC). Outside collections of Home’s Works, Agis was only issued in five printings, all printed 1758 (though three from Edinburgh, Belfast, and Dublin), and Siege of Aquileia in four printings, all in 1760 (ESTC). 10 Kames’s book, despite AE’s cavils, reached its 4th ed. by 1769. 11 The laudatory three-part review of Elements in Crit. Rev., with extracts, published in the issues for Mar., Apr., and May 1762, began, ‘The present age hath not furnished a more striking instance of the union of a refined philosophical genius, with an exquisite taste for the arts, than in the production now under consideration’ (xiii. 205). 12 William Congreve, The mourning bride, a tragedy, 1697 (ESTC R8328). Congreve’s play was reprinted at least once (and usually more often) in every decade from 1690 to 1800, and it was still on the London stage in the spring of 1762, although it does not appear to have been on stage during Mar.– May 1760 when JB was in London (ESTC, Lond. Stage IV. ii. 921, Index, xxviii). There were eleven reprints in 1753–62 alone, including the 1758 Glasgow printing (ESTC T218017) and a 1762 Dublin piracy (ESTC T14317). 13 AE’s view that Kames was excessively generous to Congreve is odd. In the second and third volumes of Kames’s Elements (published in three volumes, Edinburgh, 1762)

there was considerable censure of certain passages in Congreve’s Mourning Bride, along with praise of other passages (Elements, 1762 edition, ii. 180, 181, 197, 224– 25, iii. 31, 134, 162, 279, and 292–93). AE might only have read the first volume, or read carelessly in the second and third. On the other hand, AE may merely be ironic. 14 In 1760, JB had published pseudonymously in Edinburgh his Observations, good or bad, stupid or clever, serious or jocular, on Squire Foote’s dramatic entertainment, intitled, The minor. By a genius, 1760 (ESTC T176870), a pamphlet of fifteen pages which was printed a second time in London in 1761 (ESTC T2743). A review of JB’s Observations had sneered that ‘[t]his seems to be the production of some dinnerless admirer of the ingenious Mr. Foote’ (Crit. Rev. Jan. 1761, xi. 77). 15 AE had published in 1762 Two odes. To indolence, and to impudence (ESTC N36533). The major statements of the ‘Reviewers’ were in Monthly Rev. xxvi. 473–74; Crit. Rev. xiii. 443–44; and Brit. Mag. iii. 324. AE seems to refer to the review of his Two Odes that appeared in the Lond. Chron. 1 June 1762, xi. 515 (in which Lond. Chron. mistakenly identified the second of AE’s poems as an ode to ‘Imprudence’). It claimed that AE’s phrasing in the line ‘[a]nd they were wise before their beards had hairs’ suggested that ‘none but an Irishman’ could have written the poems (Monthly Rev. June 1762, xxvi. 474). The English press of the era was indefatigable in its hunting-down of Irishisms and Scotticisms. 16 AE overestimated JB’s access to the wealth of Auchinleck in 1762. Lord Auchinleck in 1762 was haunted by anxiety ‘that the family [estate] which he represents … may be preserved’ after his death, given that he had spent much of his life and money ‘in building inclosing planting and improvements’ to Auchinleck. His fundamental mistrust of JB led him to draw up an agreement to limit JB’s access to the wealth of Auchinleck. In the contract of 7 Mar. 1762 (Yale MS. M 16), JB had had his hands tied by his father to keep him from having access to the family assets: ‘to vest the said estate for and during my life after his death in such persons as he shall think proper … in trust … for payment to me in liferent during all the days of my life’. JB’s liferent was to be based on half of the estate’s free rents (after deducting estate debts and JB’s mother’s liferent and the debts of his grandfather James Boswell). A second contract dated 2 Apr. 1762 (Yale MS. C

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210), had recently confirmed the contract’s ‘alimentary Provision of one hundred Pounds Sterling yearly settled on me by my Father … for life’ (Yale MS. M 16). Thus, although the partial valuation rolls for Ayrshire c. 1759–70 mentioned Boswell of Auchinleck properties with a ‘valued rent’ of £1282 2s (based on a ‘real rent’ from 1656, and therefore far greater a century later) JB would have found himself ‘passing

poor’ on a hundred pounds a year. The valuation from incomplete Ayrshire rolls appears in Timperley, p. 47. For further accounts of the state of JB’s finances before and after he succeeded to Auchinleck in 1782, see Corr. 8, pp. xl–xlii and passim. 17 ‘His manner was unobtrusive and bashful in the extreme’ (Paton, in Kay, II. i. 56–59).

To Andrew Erskine, Monday 12 July 1762 MS. Yale (*L 525). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B.

Edinburgh, 12 July 1762 DEAR ERSKINE: Your Letter this morning1 has convinced me that a wise man should not depend too much on the certainty of his own conjectures, even when he imagines them allmost as just as Doctor Young’s on Original Composition.2 That I James Boswell Esq. am a wise man is an Axiom that I modestly presume cannot be contraverted, and yet I now find that I have been recently mistaken. In short your long silence made me conclude that your Epistolary store was quite exhausted and that I must rest satisfied with the letters which I have already been favoured with.3 You appeared to my fancy like a man in his last moments when the Lamp of life scarcely burns and we are uncertain whether or not it is extinguished altogether. In imitation of the Romans who upon such a mournfull occasion gave three shouts,4 I wrote three letters,5 and as no answer came, like the same warlike People, I pronounced my Conclamatum est.6 However, my good friend it seems you have taken your word again; and as our Countrey-People say, are still on this side of time. I have sent you the Annual Register7 and Monthly Review8 by the Servant;9 which I think may employ you for a day or two; and if I hear from you before Thursday,10 you shall have a greater Supply by the Carrier. Donaldson tells me that he has sent you a Letter from the Regiment.11 As it may perhaps order you up,12 I thought it better to delay sending you many books. This Letter must be short, as I cannot as yet bring myself to say much to a man whom I look’d upon as dead. I remain your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1 JB refers to the date of receipt of AE’s letter rather than the date of its composition: since JB only refers to one letter rather than three, it presumably answers From AE, 5 July. 2 Dr. Edward Young, Conjectures on original composition. In a letter to [Samuel Richardson] the author of Sir Charles Grandison, 1759 (ESTC T140626). JB had used the concept of ‘Original Conjectures’ in To AE, 9 Jan. (MS). 3 In his letter to JB of 7 July, AE had apologized for ‘ceasing to write to you for some time’ (He had not written between

10–14 June and 4 July). JB’s ‘the letters which I have already been favoured with’ referred to those letters that AE sent 5 June and earlier. 4 In ancient Rome, after the death of a person, friends would call out for him by name, and only after his failure to respond would pronounce him dead (Walton B. McDaniel, Roman Private Life, 1924, p. 190). The religious custom of calling for the deceased required the bereaved ‘to call repeatedly by name, and lament him seven (acc. to others, eight) days, until his burial’ (Lewis & Short, Latin Dictionary, s.v. ‘conclamo’).

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To AE, 15, 18, and 19 June. ‘Conclamatum est’ literally means, in the funerary context, that ‘the calling-out is finished’. The proverbial phrase which JB uses, ‘jam conclamatum est’, was also a Roman idiom meaning ‘it is all over’, or ‘all is lost’ (Lewis & Short, Latin Dictionary, s.v. ‘conclamo’. The expression is employed in Terence, The Eunuch, II. iii). 7 Presumably JB meant the volume which recounted the previous year’s events: i.e., The annual register, or a view of the history, politicks, and literature, of the year 1761, 1762, a publication ‘printed for R. and J. Dodsley’, JB’s London publishing contacts (ESTC T213218). However, it should be noted that the Dodsleys reissued previous years’ compilations back to the periodical’s beginning in 1758. The ‘third edition’ of the years 1758 (ESTC T213483), 1759 (ESTC T213484), and the ‘second edition’ of the year 1760 (ESTC T212940) also appeared in 1762 to allow collectors to complete the series. The periodical was initially closely associated with the reporting of the Seven Years’ War, and the magazine prided itself that ‘We have taken the war from its commencement’ [with the Anglo-French hostilities in 1755]. The Preface to the 1758 volume boasted that an annual publication had the advantage over a monthly of additional time for ‘care’ and ‘order’, as well as providing ‘State Papers’ and ‘Reviews 6

… [and] abstracts of some of the best books published within the year’ (Ann. Reg. 1758, iv–vii). See William B. Todd, ‘A bibliographical account of the Annual Register’, Library xvi. (1961): 104–20. 8 The whiggish Monthly Rev. 1749– 1845, founded by Ralph Griffiths (cumulated issues, May 1749–Dec. 1820, in the Early English Newspapers series [Microfilm reels 1215–47]). AE was already supposed to be receiving forwarded copies of the Monthly Rev.’s chief (and more toryish) rival, Crit. Rev., from Donaldson in Edinburgh (From AE, 3 Dec. 1761; From AE, 13 Dec. 1761; To AE, 17 Dec. 1761 [MS]; From AE, 10 Jan.; From AE, 7 July). 9 It has not been possible to identify ‘the Servant’. 10 Thu. 15 July. Pittenweem, about thirty-three miles from Edinburgh, was the closest postal town to Kellie Castle. The ‘Bags’ of post for Pittenweem left Edinburgh on Monday at 10, Wed. at 11, and Thu. at 9 ‘at Night’; the post from Pittenweem returned to Edinburgh at 8 A.M. on Mon./ Wed./Thu./Sat. (Universal Scots Almanack, 1763, pp. 68–71; Taylor & Skinner). JB presumably sent this letter in the Mon. evening post, and hoped that it could be received and answered by AE in time to arrive for the 8 A.M. Thu. arrivals. 11 Not reported. 12 AE was on another of his many leaves of absence from his regiment.

To ‘Madame’ (Unidentified Correspondent), Monday 12 July 1762 Not reported. A false start on the sheet of paper used to write To AE, 23 July (Yale MS. *L 526). The false start reads: ‘Dear Madame, Edinburgh, 12 July 1762’ with an explanatory note to AE: ‘For want of other Paper I have taken this.’ JB’s journal for July is unhelpful, since his note for 12 July simply records ‘Nothing happened.’

To Andrew Erskine, Friday 23 July 1762 MS. Yale (*L 526). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B. Written on a sheet which JB used to start another letter. See To ‘Madame’, 12 July.

Edinburgh, 23 July 1762. DEAR ERSKINE: In compliance with your very earnest Request,1 I have endeavoured to pick up a little intellectual food for you. I have been led to express myself in this manner from hearing a phrase of the same family used by the renowned Donaldson, who left me two minutes ago. ‘The Captain’, (said he) ‘will swallow a great many books yonder. Indeed a man for most part has a better appetite in the Country and what is more, a better digestion.’ I have sent you the Crazy tales 304

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which you desired me to purchase for you. I am sorry that they are so grossly obscene for the Author has a Luxuriancy of humour, and an easy masterly Expression.2 I have likewise sent you De Piles’s Lives of the Painters,3 being of opinion that you will be entertained with the memoirs of the Sister of your own enchanting Mistress.4 Also The Actor written by Doctor Hill5 in which you will find a good deal of entertaining Theatrical Criticism: Smith’s Longinus with notes,6 which I have read with Pleasure; and The Edinburgh Miscellany7 being an Attempt in the manner of Mr. Donaldson to collect Original Poems; but how far unequal to him you will easily see! Horace Walpole in his Catalogue of Royal and noble Authors8 when talking of Montrose,9 calls this a dull Miscellany.10 There are however some good things in it, and you will be diverted to see the sprouts of Genius at Edinburgh, forty years ago. These four last-mentioned are from my own Library.11 I have likewise sent Spenser’s Fairy Queen12 which I had from Mr. Arbuthnot.13 I insist upon your reading it through. It has warmed the fancy of many an English Bard, and our Thomson14 first caught his poetic fire from thence. And now Erskine am not I a man of Business and a man of friendship? Do not I execute a Commission15 with accuracy and with chearfullness? But do you deserve any favour even of the most trifling nature, when you thus persist to withold my usual entertainment from me? Not a Letter have I had this forthnight. This is cruel and savage-like and unworthy of him who tells us how ‘the amiable Passions stole’16 into the human breast. Indeed my friend, to be serious I dont blame you, for he who can allways write letters must write such, as I should not wish much to read. I only beseech him whose Bow is not allways bent17 (a circumlocution in Shaftesburys18 stile) to restore you to your former State of Vigour and activity. What think you of the Critical Review on Donaldson’s Collection?19 You and I are allowed to bear the laurel in some degree. I am glad they have admonished you a little about your Nastiness.20 It is a sad thing; worse than Obscenity. They have made me very happy: I puff it about. ‘Agreable light Pieces’21 sounds in every Company, and is become the byword of the Literati. I am to pass tryals on the Civil Law this day senight immediatly22 after which I intend to be a night or two with you at Kelly.23 Pray let me hear from you soon. I remain with much Affection Yours, JAMES BOSWELL 1 A written account of AE’s ‘very earnest Request’ for books is missing from the extant AE–JB letters. This request and the ‘commissions’ mentioned below might be taken to imply that a letter from AE is missing. Yet JB complained that ‘Not a Letter have I had this forthnight’, suggesting that there were no letters from AE received between 8 or 9 July and 23 July. Perhaps the MSS of AE’s letters for 5, 6, or 7 July originally contained the book order, which JB edited out in his revision for E–B. But it is equally plausible that during AE’s visit to Edinburgh, the two men had made an agreement for JB to send books to Kellie Castle ‘in the Country’.

2 Crazy Tales, 1762 (ESTC T34379). The book went through a second edition, 1764 (ESTC T10176), and was in its fourth edition in 1785 (ESTC T223123). The tales stayed in print despite unflattering reviews in the June issues of Crit. Rev. (xiii. 475– 80), and Monthly Rev. (xxvi. 450–54). The author was John Hall-Stevenson, Sterne’s friend, who had signed the preface to Crazy Tales ‘A.S.’, i.e., ‘Anthony Shandy’. 3 Roger de Piles (1635–1709), Conseiller Honoraire to the Académie Royale, French amateur painter, engraver, theorist, critic and diplomat. His influential writings on art began in 1667–68, and among other things

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defended the followers of Rubens’s emphasis on colour against the followers of Poussin who privileged design (Grove Dictionary of Art). De Piles’s L’Abrégé de la vie des peintres … avec un traité du peintre parfait (1699), was a history of the lives and styles of various artists. ‘By deliberately selecting artists and categorizing them into schools, de Piles offered a less cumbersome history of painting than Félibien’s famous Entretiens’ (Grove Dictionary of Art). Abrégé de la vie des peintres was translated into English and published as The art of painting, and the lives of the painters: containing, a compleat treatise of painting, designing, and the use of prints: … Done from the French of Monsieur de Piles …, 1706 (ESTC T10568). It was in its third edition by c. 1750 (ESTC T71752). 4 AE’s mistress was the muse of poetry. 5 The anonymously published The actor: a treatise on the art of playing. Interspersed with theatrical anecdotes, critical remarks on plays, and occasional observations on audiences, 1750 (ESTC T84927). The book was an adaptation of P. R. de Sainte-Albin’s Le comédien. The 1755 revised edition was significantly different: The actor: or, a treatise on the art of playing. A new work, written by the author of the former, and adapted to the present state of the theatres. Containing impartial observations on the performance, manner, perfections, and defects of Mr. Garrick, Mr. Barry …, 1755 (ESTC T84928). JB does not specify which edition he sent AE. The pamphlet has been in the past attributed either to Dr. John Hill (for whom see From AE, 13 Dec. 1761 and n. 29) or to the actor Aaron Hill. The British Library catalogue formerly attributed it to Aaron Hill; ESTC, JB and Oxford DNB all credit it to John Hill (William Angus, ‘The Actor: A Treatise on the Art of Playing’, Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1935, p. 1; Samuel Halkett and John Laing, Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature, 1971, i. 24). 6 William Smith (1711–87), D.D. (1758), rector of Holy Trinity, Chester (1735–80), minister of St. George’s, Liverpool (1753–67), dean of Chester (from 1758), and holder of two later rectories which he obtained 1766 and 1780. A translator of Thucydides and Xenophon as well as Longinus. Dionysius Longinus on the sublime: translated from the Greek, with notes and observations, and some account of the life, writings and character of the author. By William Smith …, 1739 (ESTC T121442). Smith’s Longinus, based on Pearce’s Latin ed., was meant to

replace the editions of Hall or Welstead. Smith’s translation remained popular throughout the century, with several Dublin piracies in addition to various London editions. It was supposedly the edition which influenced Burke’s theory of the sublime. In 1762 the most recent reprinting was The fifth edition [sic], corrected and improved, 1757 (ESTC T120757; cf. ESTC N65698), although confusingly there was a ‘fourth edition, corrected and improved’ published in 1770 (ESTC T119943). 7 ‘W.C.’ was the editor of The Edinburgh miscellany: consisting of original poems, translations, &c. By various hands, vol. 1, 1720 (ESTC T203985). James McEuen or McQueen (Dict. of Printers) was the volume’s ‘Mr. Donaldson’, i.e., its Edinburgh printer and publisher, although the unidentified ‘W.C.’ presumably did the ‘collect[ion of] Original Poems’. The second edition of vol. 1, 1720, was actually a reissue of the first edition with cancels (ESTC T217136). The series failed even sooner than Donaldson’s Collection. There are no known second volumes of Edinburgh miscellany. 8 Walpole’s A catalogue of the royal and noble authors of England, with lists of their works …, 1758, was originally printed at Twickenham and the Strawberry-Hill Press (ESTC T63207). The text JB read was more likely one of the second editions done for the Dodsley brothers: The second edition, corrected and enlarged …, 1759 [i.e., 1758] (ESTC T63206; cf. ESTC N68573). A ‘third edition’ (Dublin piracy) appeared in 1759 (ESTC T63188). 9 Walpole’s poet-‘Marquis’ was James Graham (1612–50), 5th Earl and 1st Marquis of Montrose, the famous general and politician of the Great Civil Wars. (See Park’s brief life in Horace Walpole, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland; With Lists of their Works, enlarged and continued by Thomas Park, 1806, iv. 93–96; see also Stuart Reid, The Campaigns of Montrose: A Miltary History of the Civil War in Scotland 1639 to 1646, 1990.) Eight poems by ‘Montrose’ appeared in The Edinburgh Miscellany, including his poem in praise of women, and seven short pieces. Several poems attributed to him were published in eighteenth-century editions: I’le never love thee more[,] to be sung with its pleasant new tune, ?Edinburgh, ?1710 (ESTC T154177); A proper new ballad, To the tune of I’le never love thee more, ?Edinburgh, 1710 (ESTC T42769); and the collected Verses

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composed by James Marquis of Montrose, ?Edinburgh, ?1745 (ESTC T212933). Twentieth-century editions of his Poems appeared in 1901 and 1938, and more recently Robin Graham Bell, ed., The Collected Poems of James Graham, First Marquis of Montrose, 1970, which edition verified Montrose’s eight contributions to The Edinburgh Miscellany. 10 In his account of Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll, Walpole wrote that ‘he can scarce with propriety be called an Author, no more than the Marquis of Montrose, whom I have omitted … tho’ he is said to have been the author of several poems, published in a dull miscellany of Edinburgh’ (Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, 1759, ii. 274–75; this comment also appears in the edition of Walpole’s Catalogue expanded by Park, 1806, iv. 119, despite the fact that Park did include a life of Montrose). 11 The earliest surviving library list of JB’s books is from 1770, and only included his books kept in Edinburgh, omitting his volumes kept at Auchinleck. These four titles he lent to AE: ‘Lives of the Painters’, ‘The Actor’, ‘Smith’s Longinus’, and ‘Edinburgh Miscellany’ do not appear in that list, suggesting either that AE failed to return them or sent them to Auchinleck. Margaret Boswell’s catalogue of the Auchinleck library (?summer 1783, Yale MS. C 437.6) showed only the editions of Longinus by ‘Tollii’ (Jakob Tollius). The Catalogue of Greek and Latin Classics in the Auchinleck Library, [1810] (Yale MS. P 15; see Catalogue iii. 1041), noted editions of Longinus by ‘Tollii’ (1694), ‘Hudson’ (John Hudson, 1710), and ‘Toupii’ (Joannes Toupius, 1778), but not Smith (1739 etc.). For more on the collections at Auchinleck, largely the work of JB’s father and grandfather, see Bibliotheca Boswelliana: a catalogue of the entire library of the late James Boswell, esq. … which will be sold by auction, by Mr. Sotheby … May 24, 1825, and nine following days … (London, J. Compton, printer, 1825). 12 Edmund Spenser (?1552–1599). As well as the printings of ‘Spenser’s Fairy Queen’ in editions of his Works, there was a wave of editions at this time, including the illustrated edition (The faerie queene. By Edmund Spenser. With an exact collation of the two original editions, … a new life of the author, and also a glossary. Adorn’d with … drawings of the late W. Kent, Esq; … Brindley and Wright, 1751, ESTC T35152); Ralph Church’s edition (The faerie queene, by Edmund Spenser. A new edition, with notes

critical and explanatory …, 1758–59, ESTC T135123); and John Upton’s ‘new edition’ (Spenser’s Faerie queene … with a glossary, and notes explanatory and critical, Tonson, 1758, ESTC T134641). Augustan neoSpenserianism had resulted in performances such as Gilbert West’s 1739 forgery-imitation of a ‘new canto’ of the poem. 13 The identity of ‘Mr. Arbuthnot’ remains uncertain. Perhaps Robert Arbuthnot (1735–1803), of Haddo, ‘a relation of the celebrated Dr. [John] Arbuthnot’, whom JB presented to SJ at Edinburgh 15 Aug. 1773 (Life v. 29, 32; Scots Mag. 1803, lxv. 816). 14 James Thomson. It is ironic that JB praised ‘our Thomson’ in the same letter that he depreciated McEuen’s Edinburgh Miscellany of 1720. Thomson published his ‘On a Country Life’, ‘On Happiness’, and ‘Verses on Receiving a Flower From His Mistress’ in that volume. As for Thomson catching ‘poetic fire’ from Spenser, the Shiells/Cibber Lives of the Poets said of Thomson, ‘He is indeed the eldest born of Spenser, and he has often confessed that if he had any thing excellent in poetry, he owed it to the inspiration he first received from reading the Fairy Queen, in the very early part of his life’ (‘Cibber’s’ The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, 1753, v. 217; see To AE, 1 June for JB’s knowledge of those Lives). 15 As with the ‘earnest Request’ for books, there is no surviving written evidence of AE’s ‘Commission’ to JB to procure him books. 16 From AE’s Ode to Pity: ‘From thee [Pity], into the human soul/ The amiable passions stole,/ That soften and improve’ (Collection II, p. 21.) 17 ‘[H]im whose Bow is not allways bent’ is the merciful God, as contrasted to the angry, punishing God who ‘hath bent his bow, and made it ready’ (Psalms 7:12; see also Lamentations 2:4, 3:12). The contrast between divine justice and divine mercy was a major element in JB’s early religious thought, and part of JB’s revolt against Knoxian Calvinism in the Church of Scotland was a sense that the Kirk of his boyhood under-emphasized mercy and Heaven and over-emphasized wrath and Hell. For JB’s fullest account of his early religious education, see ‘Ébauche de ma vie’. See also James J. Caudle, ‘James Boswell and the Bi-Confessional State’, in Religious Identity in Britain, 1660–1832, ed. William Gibson and Robert G. Ingram, pp. 119–47. 18 Anthony Ashley Cooper (1671–1713), 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, moral and aesthetic philosopher, politician, and writer. He was

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author of Characteristicks of men, manners, opinions, times (ed. Philip Ayres, 1999, and ed. Lawrence Klein, 1999) and other philosophical works (see also the biography by Robert Voitle, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671–1713, 1984). Shaftesbury’s benevolentist theory—that the passions of egoism and altruistic sociability (the moral sense), when combined, could promote the general good—was a rejection of pure rational actor theory and neo-stoicism. Wit and humour, according to Shaftesbury, could be used to police enthusiasm, and separate true (benevolent) enthusiasm from false. JB might have been aware of Shaftesbury’s doctrines through courses at the University of Glasgow, where Francis Hutcheson taught a Shaftesburian ‘benevolent theory of morals’ from 1729 to 1746, influencing in turn successors such as JB’s professor, Adam Smith. JB’s circumlocution catches both the style and content of Shaftesbury’s prose. Shaftesbury frequently used expressions such as ‘sovereign mind’, ‘empowering Deity’, and ‘wise economist’ (see in particular Theocles’s meditations in Shaftesbury’s The Moralists, part 3, section 1). Shaftesburian theism argued in general that nothing happened by chance and everything was for the best. 19 In the notice for Collection II in Crit. Rev., AE’s ‘Ode to Pity’ and JB’s ‘B———. A Song’ were quoted in their entirety, the only other poem so honoured being Home’s ‘Epistle to the Earl of Eglintoun’. AE’s ‘Ode to Memory’ and JB’s ‘Ode to Gluttony’ were also mentioned in complimentary terms, with ‘Gluttony’ described as ‘diverting and picturesque’ (Crit. Rev. June 1762, xiii. 495–99). 20 Of AE’s Cloaciniad, one reviewer

wrote, ‘In composing this piece we can perceive he has had Swift in the wind. Here is all the Dean’s stench without his spirit; all his ordure without his unction’ (Crit. Rev. June 1762, xiii. 497). 21 ‘In the collection we find some agreeable light pieces by J.B. Esq.’ (Crit. Rev. June 1762, xiii. 495–99). 22 ‘[T]his day senight’ from Fri. 23 July would be Fri. 30 July. JB’s undated journal notes for this period report of the week which contained 26 July: ‘All this week was busy preparing for tryals, & went every day to Prof. Wallace, who examined me’. JB was reading for his examination in civil law with William Wallace of Cairnhill, Advocate and Professor of Universal History at Edinburgh University. Concerning the examination, which appears from the journal scraps to have taken place as JB projected, on 30 July, JB wrote a long entry: ‘In the Morning [went] & saw all my Exam-inators; took a little soup & bread at two & at 3 went over all with W———, & at 6 was tried. Was a little frightened but it was rather an agreable sensation as I felt myself much in earnest; I recovered myself and realy went through it easily and with Applause. I was very happy at it’s being over indeed’ (Journ. ?30 July). 23 JB’s Edinburgh Journ. scraps ended after the note on his passing his examination. It is not clear from the surviving sources if JB did go to Kelly Castle after he passed his examination. His next surviving letter was written from Auchinleck and dated 3 Sept. On that day he wrote: ‘as I want much to see you & all the rest, how will it do to leave Galloway about the end of September and come to Kelly for a week’ (To AE, 3 Sept.).

?From Janet Erskine, August–September 1762 Not reported; dubious. Mentioned in To AE, 3 Sept.: ‘I have as yet got no prints for Lady Jenny. Her commission was curious “You must not buy any.”’ Precisely how this ‘commission’ appeared remains in doubt. There are at least three plausible possibilities: 1) Lady Janet’s commission may have been written by her own hand, and sent under cover of a letter from AE, or under its own cover; 2) Lady Janet’s commission may have been quoted by AE in a portion of an earlier AE letter which JB deleted from the printed revision in E–B; or 3) Lady Janet’s commission may have been issued by word of mouth either in June (when AE and his sisters had visited Edinburgh [Journ.]), or in Aug. (when JB planned a visit to Kellie Castle [To AE, 23 July]).

To John Cairnie,1 before 17 August 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in To JJ, 17 Aug.: ‘I have written to Cairnie to meet with you and concert a plan about my little affair, as he will probably be gone before you return’. Since written to an Edinburgh doctor and confirmed by a letter addressed to JJ ‘in Edinburgh’, it

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was almost certainly written not from Edinburgh but rather from JB’s ‘neat elegant Apartment’ in the newly-completed mansion at Auchinleck. JB had returned to Auchinleck ‘After a very safe and very composed sort of a journey’, which he must have made at some point between 30 July and 17 Aug. (To AE, 23 July; To JJ, 17 Aug., Corr. 1, pp. 13–14 and n. 1). JB’s reference to ‘my little affair’ has traditionally been interpreted as a reference to the pregnancy of Margaret (‘Peggy’) Doig. In Jan. 1762, JB appears to have met ‘P’, usually identified as Doig. Their illegitimate child, Charles Boswell, seems to have been conceived about the first week of Mar. 1762 (Earlier Years, pp. 79–80, 84, 94, 98, 479, 483; IGI provides confirmation of the birth month, Dec. 1762). At the time of writing Doig would likely have been in her fifth month of pregnancy (Earlier Years, pp. 79–80, 84, 94, 98, 479, 483). JB turned to JJ to act as an intermediary, but none of his correspondence with Cairnie survives. The JB–Cairnie correspondence has been reconstructed through mentions in letters to and from JJ. In the journal and memoranda, the mysterious ‘C———’ whose identity JB concealed has traditionally been identified as Cairnie. 1 John Cairnie or Cairney (fl. 1745–d. 1791), an Edinburgh physician and later (1766) M.D. (List of the Graduates in Medicine in the University of Edinburgh [1705–1866], 1867). Cairnie was a staunch Jacobite, so much so that he even insisted on being laid out after his death in a shirt which had belonged to ‘Charles III’ (From Forbes, 28 May 1791, Yale MS. C 1294). Although he knew ‘of France’ as a Jacobite plotter (Corr. 1, p. 15), he was in Edinburgh in 1755. According to Sir William Forbes (Cairnie’s friend from c. 1754 to 1791), Cairnie served as ‘private Secretary’ to a ‘son’ of the first titular Duke of Perth; Forbes’s reference here would imply one of

three men: 1) the ‘second duke’ (1674– 1720); or, more likely, 2) the ‘fifth duke’ (1679–1757), who was in Scotland from 1715 to 1757 as a Jacobite agent and member of the Jacobite ‘Association’ of 1739, but was not ‘out’ in the ’Forty-Five; or, another likely candidate, 3) the ‘sixth duke’ (1690–1760) who was in France from 1716 to 1760 (From Forbes, 28 May 1791; Comp. Peer. x. 481–88; see also Corr. 1, p. 15 n. 7). Cairnie and JB were also fellow Masons of the Canongate-Kilwinning Masonic Lodge, to which Cairnie had been initiated in 1755 and JB in 1759 (Allan Mackenzie, History of the Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, 1888, p. 238).

From ‘C———’ (?John Cairnie), after 17 August and before 13 September 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in To JJ, 13 Sept.: ‘I had a letter from C——— lately who said he thought it needless to talk to you of the Affair till Novr. At that time we shall meet with him’ (Corr. 1, pp. 14–17). The traditional identification of ‘C———’ with Cairnie was made on the basis of JB’s association of ‘C———’ with Jacobite antiquities as well as the ‘affair’ which would need to be addressed in Nov.

To John Ogilvie,1 ?September–October 1762 Not reported. JB began his harvest jaunt on the morning of 14 Sept., and concluded his travels 3 Nov. (Journ.). Mentioned in From Ogilvie, 16 Nov.: ‘It is some time since I was favoured with your’s’. 1 John Ogilvie (?1732 or 1733–1813), M.A. (later [1766] a D.D.), graduate of Aberdeen, Church of Scotland clergyman, had been appointed to the ministry of the parish of Lumphanan in 1759. He had subsequently been made minister of Midmar in

1760, where he remained for life (Fasti Scot. vi. 108). An Aberdonian, his comment in praise of the Scottish landscape was occasion for SJ’s infamous remark that ‘the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!’

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(see JB’s ‘A Minced Pye of Savoury Ingredients For the Honourable Andrew Erskine’ [Yale MS. *L 528], and Life i. 425; see also From Ogilvie, 23 June 1763, and n. 4). Although he was not a conventional member of the ‘Scots Literati’, his literary output was significant. Ogilvie was author of numerous poems, hymns, treatises, and sermons published from 1753 to 1794. His The day of judgment. A poem. In two books, 1753 (ESTC T8396), originally published in Edinburgh, was in its third edition, published in London in 1759: The day of judgment. A poem. In two books. The third edition, corrected. To which are now added, I. An ode to melancholy.… VI. The third chapter of

Habakkuk paraphrased. By John Ogilvie, A.M., 1759 (ESTC N431). He had contributed poems to Collection II (Lit. Car. p. 12), and was also author of Poems on several subjects. To which is prefix’d, an essay on the lyric poetry of the ancients …, 1762 (ESTC T42659), a book which was in its third edition by 1771 (ESTC T131786). JB and AE were soon to read Ogilvie’s Poems with pleasure (Journ. 7 Nov.), and JB would meet Ogilvie in London, and introduce him to SJ on 6 July 1763 (Journ 4–6 July 1763). His esteem for Ogilvie as poet continued into the 1790s: JB noted in a footnote to Life that The day of judgment had ‘no inconsiderable share of merit’ (Life i. 423 n. 1).

To Andrew Erskine, Friday 3 September 1762 MS. Yale (*L 527). JB did not select this letter for inclusion in E–B.

Auchinleck,1 3 Septr. 1762. DEAR DASH:2 Memento mori3 is my momentous motto. I am as melancholy4 as a Mauritanian Miller’s Motherly Mare with much Milk plunging for a misty month in the Middle of a miserable moorish Mire. You may see how low I am by My thus M-ing, or as they pronounce it in Aberdeenshire,5 aiming at Wit. Alas! alas! is it come to this. MY DEAR FRIEND: I realy can write none I am so dull; but I assure you, I love you better than ever. I long to hear of you,6 and more to see you. Pray how are you? Have you yet recovered any Spirits.7 I am to go to Mrs. Heron’s in Galloway8 in ten days where I am to meet Lord Kames, and stay till the first of October, from thence I shall go to Kames and stay till Novr. This is the concerted plan:9 But as I want much to see you and all the rest, how will it do to leave Galloway about the end of September and come to Kelly for a week.10 Will I be kindly entertained Will you be glad to see me? Will you perhaps meet me at Kinghorn?11 (Remember I don’t ask this) Is it not impossible but you may go with me to Kames on the 912 and see the Kelso Meeting?13 Pray write to me immediatly.14 For heaven’s sake let our friendship be firm My worthy Captain Andrew! I value you very highly. I hope the utmost Indolence will not make you neglect to answer me by the first Post. If you do neglect me, while in my present situation it will be inhuman to the last degree. Where is Dempster? Where is Miss Jeanie?15 These I also wish to see. I have as yet got no prints for Lady Jenny. Her commission was curious ‘You must not buy any.’16 However as I come through Edina, I shall get her some. Write me an affectionate and a serious or even dull letter. Let there be no wit in it. That I am at present incapable of and so I hate it. Present my best Respects to all the Family. Tell Lady Betty17 that I am melancholy and that I would fain say that it is owing to my passion for her, But my delicacy of conscience will not suffer me to impute it to so noble a cause. I am, My Dear Erskine, ever yours, JAMES BOSWELL 310

3 SEPTEMBER 1762 1 JB had been in Edinburgh on 30 July (Journ.), and was certainly at Auchinleck by 17 Aug. (To JJ, 17 Aug., Corr. 1, p. 13). 2 This nickname for AE also appears in JB’s London memoranda for 1763. Nothing in the surviving documents explains its meaning. The Scots ‘casting a dash’ was equivalent to the English ‘cutting a dash’, but AE’s shy, awkward demeanour makes it unlikely he was being referred to as dashing (unless ironically). It more likely referred to AE’s insouciant, hasty method of poetical composition: ‘His ready pen he drew,/ And dash’d the glowing satire as he flew’ (Samuel Foote, ‘Epilogue’ to The Maid of Bath, 1771, Works, 1799 ed., ii. 201, as cited in OED). The name connoted Grub Street ink-stained wretches, as in Fielding’s The Author’s Farce (1729), where ‘Dash’ is one of the four ‘scribblers’ in the play. 3 Lat., ‘Remember death.’ Here employed as much for its alliteration as for its melancholy-inducing morbidity. 4 JB’s letter to JJ of 13 Sept. also reports this bout of melancholy, between early Aug. and 13 Sept.: ‘Since my arrival here [at Auchinleck] I have had days of it, but am now (thank God) extremely chearfull, have good health and a moderate flow of lively spirits’. ‘It’ in this context referred to melancholy or depression, typically described as ‘age’ in JB’s and JJ’s personal argot (To JJ, 13 Sept., Corr. 1, pp. 14–17). 5 Perhaps a jest on AE’s recent trip to Aberdeen as detailed in From AE, 6 July. Among JB’s current acquaintances, the Rev. John Ogilvie would likely have had an ‘Aberdeenshire’ pronunciation which JB’s keen ear for mimicry would have captured. 6 The previous surviving letter from AE to JB was dated 7 July, and suggested that AE had not written to JB for nearly two months. His next surviving letter to JB was written about a month and a half after this plea by JB (From AE, 28 Oct.). 7 AE’s letter of 6 July in particular had suggested that AE was in a melancholy frame of mind. His letter to JB on 28 Oct. confirmed that he had in fact sunk into a deep depression which had led to his inaction for three and a half months: ‘the truth is, I really could not write, my spirits have been depressed so unaccountably’ (From AE, 28 Oct.). 8 Jean (Home) Heron, daughter of Lord Kames, one of JB’s amours to whom he had written a verse epistle before her marriage (To ‘Miss Home’ [Jean Home], before Nov. 1761). She had married Patrick Heron of Heron in Nov. 1761 (Corr. 1, p. 16 n. 9,

18–19 n. 4; R. G. Thorne, ed., The House of Commons, 1790–1820, 1986, iv. 187 fails to mention Heron’s first marriage, but provides relevant details of his later career as an M.P.). Patrick Heron’s estate of Kirroughtrie or Kirrouchtree (in Minnigaff Parish of Kirkcudbright Stewartry) had been a part of the Lordship of Galloway, hence JB’s description of it as ‘in Galloway’. The estate was near the town of Newton-Stewart (M’Kerlie, iii. 68; iv. 19, esp. 429–30; OGS; Timperley, pp. 199, 201 [based on a 1799 valuation roll], 349; Joseph Foster, Members of Parliament, Scotland … 1357–1882, 2nd ed., 1882, p. 179). JB referred to it as ‘a good house and Garden [with] a good many trees’ (Journ. 23 Sept.). 9 JB’s ‘concerted plan’ was mostly accomplished. He planned to begin his trip ‘in ten days’, and his harvest jaunt indeed began 14 Sept. at 8 A.M. He had assumed he would stay in Kirroughtree from a few days after his departure, and he arrived at Kirroughtree at 3 P.M. 18 Sept. He had planned to meet Kames there, and Lord Kames joined the guests there at 5 P.M. on 22 Sept. JB projected that he would remain at Heron’s estate until 1 Oct. Including side visits such as those to Galloway House from 24 to 27 Sept. and Wigtown from 28 to 29 Sept., JB remained until 4 Oct. He planned to travel to Kames ‘on the 9’ Oct. and stay until the turn of Nov. In actuality, JB stayed at Kames from 16 to 26 Oct., and extended his visit with Lord and Lady Kames by travelling to Kames for much of the journey in their company (Journ. 4–5 and 9–16 Oct.). 10 Although this letter shows that JB planned to visit AE at Kellie in late Sept. or early Oct., he did not visit AE there until 30 Oct.–3 Nov., after returning to Edinburgh and environs from 26 to 29 Oct. (Journ.). 11 Kinghorn was the northern terminus of the ferry across the Firth of Forth which was part of one route from Edinburgh and Leith to Kellie (Cary’s New Map, pl. 76 shows both the dotted-line route of the Leith-Kinghorn ferry route and the location of Kellie Castle). JB had previously taken the 61/2 mile ferry voyage from Leith to Kinghorn on 5 May 1761 (Journ.). On 30 Oct. JB did in fact take the boat from Leith to Kinghorn (although his baggage travelled on the Leith-Anstruther boat), and endured a ‘tedious passage of about three hours’ because of calm winds. By contrast, on the return voyage 3 Nov.—on ‘a pretty rough day’ which made JB ‘affraid’—the trip only took ‘an hour’. Yet rather than AE’s meeting JB at Kinghorn as hoped (perhaps,

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JB assumed, riding in the much-discussed Kellie Chaise), JB alone rode a ‘lean, white hack’ for fourteen Scots miles in a ‘dreary Journey’ from Kinghorn to Kellie. JB stayed at Kellie 30 Oct.–3 Nov. (Journ.). 12 Presumably 9 Oct. AE and JB did not meet again until 30 Oct., but they were together, after JB’s Kellie visit, in Edinburgh, almost every day until 11 Nov. (Journ.). 13 Kelso, by JB’s estimate, was six miles from Kames. For the season of horse-races in 1762, see Heber’s annual guide to the turf: An historical list of horse-matches run; and of plates and prizes run for in Great-Britain and Ireland, in the year 1762 …. By Reginald Heber, vol. 12, 1763 (ESTC T25764). AE’s brother Lord Kellie wrote an MS ballad which depicted ‘a Kelso race-week’, which he allegedly authored while ‘dead drunk’ (Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 1825, ii. 138–39). JB did attend the running of the ‘Hunters Purse’ there on 20 Oct., but after feeling ‘a little vivacity at the sight of the equipages and horses’ as he ‘came upon the turf’, he soon sunk into a depression. JB ‘rode up and down without any feeling, laughing at mankind for engaging in such ridiculous pursuits and despising the whole species …. I lost sixpence at a bett which was all that I had’. He did not record meet-

ing AE on his day at the races, but instead briefly visited AE’s brother, Lord Kellie, ‘a Gamester, a Nobleman and a musical Composer’ for whom JB professed esteem: ‘I felt a strong regard for him’, and ‘he was allways fond of me’ (see To AE, 14 Sept. 1761, n. 43). After borrowing five guineas from Lord Kellie, JB bet again: ‘The Horses were unequally matched, so that the race did not afford much diversion’ (Journ.). 14 Despite JB’s pleas, the next surviving letter from AE to JB was not to come for another month-and-a-half (From AE, 28 Oct.), ironically just a few days before JB would arrive at Kellie on 30 Oct. 15 Jean Dempster. In autumn 1762 JB’s admiration for GD’s sister increased, and he professed himself ‘much in love’ with her (Journ. 6 Nov.). 16 Presumably Lady Janet meant that she wanted JB’s prints to be gifts from him or others rather than purchases. The ‘curious’ nature of her request may have been based on the Erskine family’s meagre finances. 17 Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane. In the course of his visit to Kellie in 30 Oct.–3 Nov., his passion for her in 1762 was to reach in quick succession its zenith and its nadir (‘My Passion for Lady Betty which I should have remarked as posessing me at Kelly, was now gone’ [Journ. 6 Nov.]).

To John Gordon (styled Viscount Kenmure),1 c. 16–20 September 1762 MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). Previously printed in Werner, pp. 91, 182–83. This undated verse epistle was probably produced during or soon after JB’s visit to Kenmure on 16–18 Sept. 1762 (Journ.). During JB’s departure from Kenmure on 18 Sept., he promised to ‘corespond’ with ‘My Lord’ (Journ. 16–18 Sept.). It is not known if this musical offering was written as a quasi-impromptu effort during the visit, or as a souvenir afterwards. It may have arisen as a result of a bout of ‘crambo’, a poetical ‘game in which one player gives a word or line of verse to which each of the others has to find a rime’ (OED). See, by way of formal structural parallel, JB’s three-stanza ‘A Crambo Song on losing my Mistress’ (1768), in which the phrase ‘the Knight Sir Sawney’ serves the same function in the verse as the phrase ‘the Laird of Craigubble’ (the poem appears in To WJT, 8–11 Feb. 1768, Corr. 6, pp. 223–34 and n. 4, as well as in Douce 193 f. 62 r).

[f. 61 r.] Song to Lord Kenmore2 1762 to the tune of a free and an accepted Mason.3 It has grieved me long that almost every Song4 Is about some poor pitifull Bubble 312

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And therefore Id try a Subject that’s high And sing of the Laird of Craigubble5 In harvest your geese you may if you please Turn out to be fed upon Stubble6 But I can tell you that leavings wont do With the good honest Laird of Craigubble To render you bright with choice liquor at night Take Punch made of rum that is double And I give you this charge be your Bowl full and large To content the good Laird of Craigubble In this World there are few that are sound men and true7 Or who will for the neighbours take trouble8 But to Kirroughtre a safe Pilot to me Has been the goo Laird of Craigubble9 1 John Gordon (1713–69) of Kenmure, styled 8th Viscount Kenmure from 1741. He was not officially eligible to assume that title because of its forfeiture with the attainder and execution of the sixth viscount (his father) in 1716 for his participation in the 1715 Rebellion. Although Gordon of Kenmure had been raised by his elder brother as a Jacobite, and had paid court to Charles Edward Stuart during the ’FortyFive, he chose not to be ‘out’ in that rising. He sold off several of the family estates. He was known for his interest in the sport of curling, and was perhaps a religious freethinker (Comp. Peer. vii. 119–20; Scots Peer., v. 131–33; Scots Mag. xxxii. 249). JB recorded a pen-portrait of Gordon in his Harvest Jaunt journal for 16–18 Sept. 1762, where he referred to Gordon as ‘My Lord’ or ‘Kenmore’, either crypto-Jacobitically, or simply from regard to the nobility of the family: ‘My Lord received me in the kindest manner. He is a Man of a good heart a chearfull temper and uncommon Genius. He has seen much of the World, knows Mankind well and reads a great deal. As his fortune is not great and as he married Lord Seaforth’s Sister [Lady Frances Mackenzie] he retired to the Country where he makes life very agreable. He is fond of all Country Sports, He reads and he now and then has Company’ (Journ. 16 Sept. 1762). JB’s impression of Gordon as an admirable Scots nobleman and host led him to propose a correspondence when he departed from Kenmure: ‘My Lord and I parted with much cordiality and agreed to

corespond by letters from which I hope to have much Entertainment’ (Journ. 18 Sept.). 2 The fact that JB entitled the song ‘to Lord Kenmore’ has caused some confusion for Werner, who confessed his puzzlement: ‘I am unable to explain why Boswell describes Lord Kenmure as “Laird of Craigubble”’ (pp. 182–83). The likely answer is that while the song was a gift to John Gordon as stated in its title, its text refers to a composite picture of the hearty and hospitable laird, perhaps with some of the characteristics of JB’s travelling companion, James Chalmers of Fingland. 3 JB was a Mason of the CanongateKilwinning Masonic Lodge, to which he had been initiated on 14 Aug. 1759, and in which he was a Junior Warden in 1761. His uncle Dr. John Boswell’s prominence within the Masons (Depute Master of the Canongate Lodge from June 1759, Master Mason from July 1759) was doubtless one source of his involvement. JB remained in that lodge, and later rose in the masonic hierarchy to be Depute Master (1767–68), Right Worshipful Master (1773–75), Senior Grand Warden (1773), and Depute Grand Master for Scotland (c. 1776–77); see Allan Mackenzie, History of the Lodge Canongate Kilwinning No. 2, 1888, pp. 85, 238. The song used as the model—‘a free & an accepted Mason’—is attributed to the actor Matthew Birkhead (see Foxon B220), and was printed in James Anderson (c. 1680–1739), The Constitutions Of The Free-

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Masons …, 1723 (ESTC T86287). It was also published in broadsheet form: The Enter’d Prentices Song. By Our Late Brother Mr. Mathew Birkhead, Deceas’d. To Be Sung When All Grave Business Is Over, And With The Master’s Leave, Dublin, ?1726 (ESTC T5233). It has survived in Masonic lodges to the present day as ‘The Entered Apprentice’s Song’. One early example of a variant set of lyrics from 1760s Edinburgh is ‘The ODE’ by Alexander Nicol (fl. 1739–66). Nicol’s metre matches JB’s, despite variations by the printer of Nicol’s tune and the fact that JB only managed four stanzas to Nicol’s six and Birkhead’s seven. The following is Nicol’s first stanza (Poems On Several Subjects, Both Comical And Serious. In Two Parts. By Alexander Nicol …, Edinburgh, 1766, p. 90): Here’s a health to each one, From the king on the throne, To him that is meanest of station; If they can contend, To have lawfully gain’d The name of an accepted Mason. 4 Several entries in the Harvest Jaunt journal noted Gordon’s poetic abilities, and particularly his ability to compose festive songs: ‘He tells a story with much life and sings a comical song extremely well … upon [his drinking companions] he composes the most ludicrous madrigals’ (Journ. 16 Sept.; see n. 7 below). JB noted that ‘Before Supper I copied some of My Lord’s Verses of which I shall give a Specimen’ (Journ. 17 Sept.), yet no copies of JB’s transcriptions of Gordon’s verses seem to have survived, nor were they transcribed for JJ and McQuhae. Thus, even if the song was not directly about Gordon, JB could safely presume that it would be the sort of raucous comic song he preferred. 5 The ‘Laird of Craigubble’ is almost certainly a name invented by Boswell. The name reappears in JB’s Justiciary Opera, in ‘Patrick Macrone o’ Craiggubble’ (Sir Alexander Boswell, ed., James Boswell, Songs in the Justiciary Opera Composed Fifty Years Ago, by C[ullen], M[aclaurin], and B[oswell], 1816; Catalogue i. 82–83, M 134; the recurrence of the name was noticed by Werner, p. 183 n. 4). One likely inspiration for JB’s invention of the name Craigubble was John McAdam (d. 1790), the Laird of Craigengillan, whom JB and Fingland had visited on 14 Sept. (Journ.). He was later, in 1787, to be the subject of a quite different poem by Burns,

the ‘Extempore Epistle to Mr. McAdam of Craignengillan’ (James Kinsley, ed., The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, 1968, i. 329 [poem 150], iii. 1231). Yet the real-life Laird of Craigengillan hardly seemed at the time to fit the hearty masonic image of JB’s imaginary laird: ‘We came to Berbeth to dinner, the Seat of the Laird of Craigengillan …. We were entertained with a hearty wellcome … [yet] B[y] the time that dinner was over, I had exhausted all my little stock of country conversation … and as no other could be well understood at least could not please—I was heartily wearied …. Accordingly we set out to the great joy of Fingland upon whom the Laird had played several coarse jokes, which made him be of opinion that he was not at all an agreable Companion, and he likewise added that we would have got raw rooms and damp beds which I beleive was a pretty just apprehension and weighed somewhat with me’ (Journ. 14 Sept.). 6 As this poem was probably written during JB’s harvest jaunt, the sight of geese being fed on the stubble after the harvest would have been relatively common. 7 JB had commented in his journal on Gordon’s local drinking-companions: ‘Since he has not many Neighbours he contrives to make the most of all the two leg’d animals near him and in a manner creates Companions. Nathaniel Mcghie a strange Caliban of a Clergyman and Samuel Spaldie of Dullard a drunken Laird are by him rendered Props to his Existence, and upon them he composes the most ludicrous madrigals. He had with him Mr. Mcghie Secretary to the Hunters a cousin of his a good-natured man, who has no aversion to be a Butt; altho’ he takes care to have a good enough Præmium for every arrow that he receives’ (Journ. 16 Sept.). 8 JB was initially concerned about the Gordons’ insouciance towards his visit: ‘During this day I did not find myself so easy as I could have wished. I was somewhat grave and constrained and began to ruminate about setting off next day’ (Journ. 16 Sept.). He soon after reconciled himself to their distant manners, and indeed soon found them ‘very chearfull at dinner’ the next day: ‘I had been uneasy from expecting that Lord and Lady Kenmore were studiously to set themselves about making every thing appear agreable to me. Whereas in reality, they had just the manners of People of Fashion, and it was my own fault if I was not easy …. However so it was that we were all mirth and joy this day’(Journ. 17 Sept.). 9 JB explicitly states that Gordon did not

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serve as a guide on the route to Kirroughtree: ‘My Lord and I parted with much cordiality …. We left him about eleven o clock and rode 12 miles upon hard Stony road encompassed with huge mountains mostly barren and rocky. We got to Kirroughtree about three o clock’ (Journ. 18 Sept.). Chalmers of Fingland had been JB’s guide to Kenmure: ‘I set out about 8 o’clock

accompanied by Mr. Chalmers of Fingland who was so good as to be my guide to Kenmore’ (Journ. 14 Sept.). Fingland had begun his travels with JB on the first recorded day of the harvest jaunt, 14 Sept. He did not part with JB until ‘Fingland my faithfull guide left me this morning’ (Journ. 19 Sept.).

To William McQuhae,1 Wednesday 29 September 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in Journ. 29 Sept. Written from McQuhae’s parents’ house in Wigtown. ‘I went and sat a good time in Bailie [David] McQuhae’s. I was happy to see the Father and Mother of the renowned Doctor of Divinity [another of JB’s hyperboles], to whom I wrote a letter dated from his Mother’s Kitchen. The Bailie is a good–natured indolent, honest man, and Mrs. Mcquhae a smiling sweet tempered active Woman. They exprest their gratitude strongly on account of my civility to their Son.’ 1 William McQuhae (1737–1823), M.A. (Glasgow, 1756), Church of Scotland clergyman. Educated at Glasgow from 1752 to 1756, he had been licensed by the Presbytery of Wigtown on 24 Mar. 1762. He was ‘assistant in the parish’ of St. Quivox from 1762 to 1764, a parish to which he was later presented in Aug. 1763, and which he served from 1764 to 1823. At this time, he was employed in the household of the Rev. George Reid, minister of the parish of Ochiltree (for whom see To McQuhae, 16 Dec., n. 3), as tutor to the Reids’ son James. ‘Mcquhae was very comfortably situated in their family. They were all very fond of him, and he lived social and independent which is just the life that he likes’ (To JJ, 21 Dec., Corr. 1, pp. 32–34). He would be ordained in 1764, and later (1794) would be awarded the D.D. (St. Andrews). McQuhae rose in the Church of Scotland hierarchy, though he declined the nomination to be Moderator in 1806; he died honoured as ‘Father of the Synod’ in 1823 (W. Innes Addison, The Matriculation Albums of the University of Glasgow from 1728 to 1858, 1913, entry 1516; Fasti Scot. iii. 66–67). McQuhae had first met JB when he was tutor to JB’s younger brothers (Earlier Years, p. 75), and held an avuncular place in JB’s life despite McQuhae’s being only three years older than JB. Close to the date of this letter, JB described him as follows: ‘Mr. Mcquhae also did me much service. He is a

Man of good parts, great & accurate knowledge, easiness of manners & goodness of heart. I regard him much’ (Journ. 11 Dec.). In his attempt to define his ‘true friends’ five months after this letter, JB placed ‘Honest’ William McQuhae in the list with only two others: JJ (‘most strictly’ a ‘true friend’) and WJT (‘also’ a ‘true friend’) (Journ. 16 Feb. 1763). JB noted that McQuhae was a man … whom I regard much. He has excellent parts, & has had a most accurate education. He has a good heart, fine dispositions, and an agreeable vivacity of manners. He had a high relish for the scenes of active life and a great natural share of spirited Ambition: But considering the uncertainties and the hazards of a Soldier of fortune, he cooly checked his aspiring ideas, determined to embrace a sure competency and live contented as a Country Clergyman … passing his time pretty much to his mind with the duties of his station, the pursuit of elegant literature, and the enlivening pleasures of Society, which, tho’ not in profusion, are yet to be enjoyed in the country. (Journ. 26 Feb. 1763)

McQuhae, with JJ, was the recipient and reader of JB’s journal of his harvest jaunt written during this autumn (14 Sept.–14 Nov.).

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 19 October 1762 Printed E–B, p. 151 [LETTER XXXIX].

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Kames, October 19,1 1762. DEAR ERSKINE, IN my own name, and in the name of Lord Kames, I desire to see you here immediately. I have been reading the Elements of Criticism.2 You and the Reviewers have pronounced enough of serious panegyric on that book. In my opinion, it has the good properties of all the four Elements. It has the solidity of earth, the pureness of air, the glow of fire, and the clearness of water. The language is excellent, and sometimes rises to so noble a pitch, that I exclaim in imitation of Zanga in the Revenge.3 I like this roaring of the Elements.4 If this does not bring you, nothing will; and so Sir, I continue, Yours as usual, JAMES BOSWELL 1 JB had originally planned to visit Kames House from c. 9 Oct. until the turn of Nov. He was instead at Kames House 16– 26 Oct. (Journ.). The dating and provenance of this letter are suspect. In his entry for 19 Oct., JB noted: ‘I was still out of spirits. I walked up and down the room, I took up my german flute, played a little, was not pleased, laid it down again, tried to read, but had no attention, nor any relish for it, Attempted to write but could do nothing’ (Journ. 19 Oct.). The brevity of this letter could reflect that mood of inaction, unless it suggests a ‘make-weight’ for the revised E–B which would incorporate the praise of Kames’s book from a letter which he had not selected for inclusion in the volume. 2 In To AE, 1 June (MS), JB had mentioned that ‘I have just finished my first reading of Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism, which has given me very great pleasure, not only as a Work of great merit, but as the production of a man whose regard and Intimacy I have the happiness to enjoy’. But in this letter JB again seems to be reading the Elements anew. The use of the phrasing ‘I have been reading the Elements of Criticism’ in this E–B letter of 19 Oct. suggests that that phrase at least (and perhaps the letter itself) was added for the revised volume of letters as printed. JB continued to be impressed by the Elements. He cited SJ’s relatively high opinion of it (Life i. 393–94; ii. 89–90) and quoted from it in his Hypochondriack no. LXII (Nov. 1782), in Bailey, ii. 224. 3 Zanga, the Muslim slave of Alonzo in Young’s Revenge (The revenge a tragedy. As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. By His Majesty’s servants. By E[dward]. Young, LL.D., 1721 [ESTC T44866]). Zanga is a ranting, Iago-like character who plots revenge against his master. JB’s poem of c.

1758–59, ‘On hearing that Mr Digges and Mrs Ward were lost in the Irish seas. A Fantastical Essay’ shows that JB had seen WD play Zanga, presumably in 1756–58: ‘Again, the nobly-frantic Zanga raves,/ I like this rolling of the boist’rous waves’ (Donaldson’s Collection II, pp. 75–76). WD’s acting of Zanga is mentioned also in the verses published in Cal. Merc. 20 June 1759 (see To WD, summer 1759 [after 20 June], n. 6). The play, although in its premiere it ran only six nights, continued to be popular on the stage in the eighteenth century as well as in printed editions into the 1760s and beyond, with numerous London reprints in the 1730s, 1750s, 1760s, and numerous Dublin piracies in the 1720s, 1740s, 1760s, accompanied by Cork piracies in the 1760s (ESTC), as well as Glasgow editions of 1752 (ESTC N13261), 1755 (ESTC T175051), and an Edinburgh edition of 1768 (ESTC T119743). The play was not being performed in London during JB’s stay in Mar.– June 1760, but had been performed there as recently as 1757 (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 580). 4 JB’s version of the opening lines of Young’s The Revenge, I. i, as spoken by Zanga: Whether first Nature, or long want of Peace Has wrought my Mind to this, I cannot tell; But Horrors now are not displeasing to me: I like this Rocking of the Battlements. Rage on, ye Winds, burst Clouds, and Waters roar! You bear a just Resemblance to my Fortune, And suit the gloomy Habit of my Soul.

JB in this letter and in his poem ‘On hearing that …’ in Donaldson’s Collection II, p. 76, rendered the line in different ways: ‘I like this rolling of the boist’rous waves’; ‘I like this roaring of the Elements’.

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From Andrew Erskine, Thursday 28 October 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 152–53 [LETTER XL].

Kelly, October 28, 1762 DEAR BOSWELL, HOW shall I begin? what species of apology shall I make? the truth is, I really could not write, my spirits have been depressed so unaccountably. I have had whole mountains of lead pressing me down: you would have thought that five Dutchmen1 had been riding on my back, ever since I saw you; or that I had been covered with ten thousand folios of controversial divinity;2 you would have imagined that I was cramm’d in the most dense part of a plumb-pudding, or steeped in a hogshead of thick English port.3 Heavens! is it possible, that a man of some fame for joking, possessed of no unlaughable talent in punning, and endued with no contemptible degree of liveliness in letter-writing, should all of a sudden have become more impenetrably stupid than a Hottentot legislator,4 or a moderator of the general assembly of the kirk of Scotland.5 By that smile which enlivens your black countenance, like a farthing candle in a dark cellar, I perceive I am pardoned; indeed I expected no less; for, I believe, if a sword was to run you through the body, or a rope was to hang you, you would forget and forgive: you are at Kames just now, very happy, I suppose; your letter seems to come from a man in excellent spirits;6 I am very unequal at present to the task of writing an answer to it, but I was resolved to delay no longer, lest you should think I neglected you wilfully; a thought, I’m sure, you never shall have occasion to entertain of me, though the mist of dulness should for ever obscure and envelope my fancy and imagination. I cannot think of coming to Kames, yet I am sufficiently thankful for the invitation; my lowness would have a very bad effect in a chearful society; it would be like a dead march in the midst of a hornpipe,7 or a mournful elegy in a collection of epigrams.8 Farewell. Yours, etc. ANDREW ERSKINE 1 Following one eighteenth-century British stereotype of the Dutch as overweight, cowardly, avaricious, and bibulous, as popularized by Ned Ward and other satirists:

Farewel to your Beef, Pudden, Capon, and Mutton, And all your fine Dainties, so fit for a Glutton, You’ve nothing so Good for a Dutchman to Eat, As Burgooe, Red-herring, Dry’d Whiting and Scate; It’s Food for a Bu[r]gher, or Chief of the State (Edward Ward, ‘THE Dutch-Guards Farewel TO ENGLAND’, ll. 31–35, printed in The Revels of the Gods: or, a Ramble thro’ the Heavens, 1704, p. 142.)

A similar stereotype appears in the lines: So like a brawny Dutchman fed, On Bread and Butter ready spread, As if he thought his craving Guts

Wanted more greasing than his Boots, Swilling down Tea and Coffee a’ter, As thirsty Cattle do cold Water (Ward, ‘THE Merry Travellers: OR, A Trip upon Ten-Toes, FROM Moorfields to Bromley. An Humorous Poem’, ll. 228–32, printed in The Wandring Spy: or, the Merry Observator … Being the Sixth Volume of Miscellanies by Ed. Ward, 1724, p. 15.) 2 The ponderous folios of religious controversy were often associated with the reformation debates and systematic theology of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, but the eighteenth-century divines of Britain produced their fair share of ‘controversial divinity’, less often printed in folios than in more manageable quartos and octavos. JB’s library list of his own Edinburgh collection c. 1770 contained two weighty folio editions, both of pre-eighteenth-century Church of England theology: a 1723

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London edition of Richard Hooker’s Works, and a 1638 Oxford edition of William Chillingworth’s anti-Roman Catholic The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation. 3 Port wine was vinted, of course, in Portugal rather than in England. Yet Scots such as AE often thought of port as an ‘English’ imposition on the Scots, since the English Methuen Treaty of 1703 was the basis for the continuing policy that Portuguese wine exports to Britain would pay one third less duty than French wines did. As JB’s acquaintance John Home wrote, Firm and erect the Caledonian stood; Old was his mutton, and his claret good; ‘Let him drink port!’ The English statesman cried— He drank the poison, and his spirit died. (F. Marian McNeill, The Scots Cellar, 1973, p. 36)

Because of the auld alliance with France, both Lowland and Highland Scots had generally drunk claret as their wine of choice. As Ramsay stated, ‘for many ages French wine was the favourite regale of the Scots … for many years they hardly drank anything else in the tavern … till 1720’. By contrast, as Ramsay noted, ‘Formerly very little port wine was drunk in Scotland, unless by gouty people who were forbid claret’. Yet ‘The duties imposed upon [French] wine from time to time, and the interruption of our trade with France [e.g., in 1743], rendered claret too costly a liquour for gentlemen of moderate fortune to drink in their own houses’. Thus, port steadily gained ground in the Scottish wine market from 1720 to 1800 (Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 78–82). See also Henry Hamilton, An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, 1963, pp. 53, 104, 252–53, 283; F. Marian McNeill, The Scots Cellar, 1973, pp. 32–36; David Buchanan, ‘Liquors at Auchinleck’, Book of Company, pp. 161–65. 4 The Khoisan or ‘Hottentots’ had previously been cited by AE as examples of ignorance and barbarism (see From AE, 13 Dec. 1761, n. 19). 5 AE levelled his wrath in particular at the conservativism of the General Assembly, and in general expresses his prejudice against the Church of Scotland. The 356member General Assembly, composed of 203 clergymen and 153 laymen, was ‘the supreme Ecclesiastical Court in Scotland’, who met annually, traditionally in mid or late May in Edinburgh. The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of

Scotland was ‘speaker of the assembly’, who called and dissolved the assembled. He was chosen from among a slate of two or three ministers nominated by the late moderator and augmented by the Assembly’s nominees, and after election took ‘the chair at the foot of the throne’. The Moderator had ‘no negative’, and ‘only sum[med] up the debates, and [put] the question’. The moderator of the preceding assembly served as preacher to the new assembly (Arnot, pp. 264–67; Alexander Kincaid, The History of Edinburgh … By Way of Guide to the City and Suburbs, 1787, pp. 120–23). The Moderators who served in 1761–62 were hardly ‘stupid’ (two were university professors), and at least two even had ties to the Moderate ‘Literati’ by late 1762. The Moderators of the era were ‘Dr Robert Hamilton, professor of divinity in the College of Edinburgh’, 15 May 1760–21 May 1761; ‘Dr John Hyndman, one of the ministers of West Kirk’, 21 May 1761–20 May 1762; and ‘Dr Robert Traill, professor of divinity in the university of Glasgow’, 20 May 1762–May 1763 (Scots Mag. May 1760, xxii. 258; May 1761, xxiii. 268; May 1762, xxiv. 274). Robert Hamilton was a supporter of Moderate Hugh Blair’s candidacy for ‘translation’ (appointment) to the pulpit of the New/High Kirk of Edinburgh in 1758. By 1766, according to Richard B. Sher, Robert Hamilton was ‘certainly a Moderate sympathizer if not an actual party “member”’. John Hyndman had a more complicated past. He was formerly a prominent member of the anti-Moderate Popular Party/Patrick Cuming Faction and a figure of particular evangelical ‘zeal’ who had been a leader in the attacks on Home’s Douglas; Hyndman also successfully opposed Blair’s translation to the New Kirk pulpit. However, in 1761 he had changed over to Robertson’s side, the Moderates ‘engineered’ his election as moderator, and he atoned for his attacks during the Douglas and Blair battles (Richard B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh, 1985, pp. 79, 83 n. 151, 84, 96–99, 112, 117, 135). Hyndman was author of two works: A Just View Of the Constitution of Scotland, And Of The Church Of Scotland, And Of The Proceedings The Last General Assembly In Relation To The Deposition Of Mr Gillespie, 1753, and A Sermon, On Proverbs XIV. 34. Preached Before The Society In Scotland For Propagating Christian Knowledge, … February 23. 1761, 1761. Traill’s only known published work was The Qualifications And

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Decorum Of A Teacher Of Christianity Considered; … A Sermon … At Aberdeen, April 8, 1755, 1755, so he may have been the ‘stupid’ moderator to whom AE referred; certainly the date fits. In May 1763, Rev. William Robertson (for whom see To AE, 20 Nov., n. 4), Principal of Edinburgh University, the leader of the Edinburgh ‘moderates’ and a noted historian who could hardly be described as ‘impenetrably stupid’, was elected moderator of the General Assembly, changing its tone in his years of governance. 6 A reference to JB’s jovial tone in To AE, 19 Oct. Yet as the notes to that letter demonstrate, JB struggled with depression and sloth on the very date of the composition of that letter to AE. In To AE, 3 Sept. he had complained openly of ‘melancholy’. 7 A ‘dead march’ is a funeral march ‘of solemn music played at a funeral procession, esp. at a military funeral’. Examples included Purcell’s funeral music for Queen Mary (1695) and Handel’s ‘Dead March’ in Saul (1738). See OED; New Grove 2, s.v. ‘march’. 8 A joke about AE’s and JB’s own contri-

butions to Collection II. AE’s mournful elegy ‘’Tis done: pale sickness all her form invades’ was a serious effort in the manner of the graveyard school of poetry (Collection II, pp. 23–25). It appeared, however, with AE’s six humourous epigrams with first lines such as ‘I hear, the jealous husband cries’ and ‘In vain each day with hideous clack’. One epigram even mocked the graveyard school of poetry: ‘Dear Doctor, your wife in the parlour’s a dying’. All of AE’s epigrams were clustered together in Collection II, pp. 59–61. JB’s contributions to Collection II also juxtaposed serious musings such as ‘To the Countess of Galloway, on the Death of her Son’ (Collection II, p. 71) with humorous epigrams such as ‘Jack Bluster, a comical jolly old boy’ and ‘A Hardhearted wretch thus derided his wife’ (Collection II, p. 74). JB had contributed ten epigrams, printed amidst pp. 70–210, but only a few serious poems such as the epistle to the Countess of Galloway and his ‘Epitaph on the Rev. Mr. John Campbell’ printed on pp. 71 and 86 of Collection II (Lit. Car. pp. 13–14). Thus, both poets had themselves placed ‘a mournful elegy in a collection of epigrams’.

To Andrew Erskine, Wednesday 10 November 1762 Printed E–B, p. 154 [LETTER XLI].

Parliament-Close,1 Nov. 10, 1762. DEAR ERSKINE, ALL I have now to say, is to inform you, that I shall set out for London on Monday next,2 and to beg that you may not leave Edinburgh before that time.3 My letters have often been carried to you over rising mountains and rolling seas.4 This pursues a5 simpler tract, and under the tuition of a cadie,6 is transmitted from the Parliament-Close to the Cannongate.7 Thus it is with human affairs; all is fluctuating, all is changing.8 Believe me, Yours, etc. JAMES BOSWELL 1 Lord Auchinleck’s town residence, in Blair’s Land on the east side of Parliament Close. It was JB’s usual Edinburgh postal address, as is shown in From AE, 3 Dec. 1761: ‘I received your letter ten days after the date, though it only came from Edinburgh; I had wrote you one some little time before, directed to the Parliament-Close’ (see also From AE, 2 Mar.). In his youthful Edinburgh visits, JB customarily took temporary lodgings in other rooms ‘till the family came to town’. Thus, he was at ‘Paxton’s new Inn in the Grass Market’ from 3 to 5 Nov., and also from 6 to 9 Nov. rented ‘a room in Mrs. Mcenna’s in

our own Stair, where I formerly lodged’ (Journ.). Since Lord Auchinleck had arrived in Edinburgh the night of 8 Nov., and JB waited on him 9 Nov. and breakfasted with him 10 Nov., he probably moved back to the family house on 9 Nov. (Journ.). 2 JB departed for London as planned at 10 A.M. on Monday 15 Nov. (Journ.). 3 JB and AE stayed together much of the time even after JB’s visit to Kellie Castle from 30 Oct. to 3 Nov. They were in each other’s company on 3–7, and 10–11 Nov. The 11 Nov. was, however, the last time JB specifically mentioned seeing AE before the departure for London on 15 Nov.: ‘Erskine

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and and I supt at Lord Kames’s so so. Not very lively’ (Journ.). 4 Highland ‘rising mountains’ surrounded AE’s sister’s house at New Tarbet; the standard route from Edinburgh to the Erskine seat of Kellie Castle was via the ‘rolling seas’ from Leith to Kinghorn. 5 E–B, ‘a a’ 6 Cadies or caddies were Edinburgh street messengers who were known for their slovenly appearance, their willingness to perform any odd job, and their encyclopedic knowledge of the city, its streets, and its news. They acted as guides for new arrivals in the city, were eager gatherers and disseminators of oral news, city gossip, and personal information, and also ran errands such as in-town postal messages (Cassell’s

Edinburgh, i. 151–52). ‘Sinkum the Cadie’ was one notable example of the craft, who daily offered JB’s recent host Lord Kames the gossip of Edinburgh as Kames walked to the Parliament-House (Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh, 1825, ii. 171). 7 Presumably ‘Lady Kellie’s house in the Cannongate’, to which JB mentioned having driven on the previous Saturday (Journ. 6 Nov.). 8 A Lucretian view of the mutability of life. JB’s early philosophical speculation had been confronted by the problems of determinism (and its theological variant in predestination) as well as the problems of neoLucretianism (as presented by Hume, among others).

From John Ogilvie, Tuesday 16 November 1762 MS Yale (C 2109).

Manse of Midmar,1 Novr: 16. 1762. DEAR SIR: It is some time since I was favoured with your’s,2 a circumstance which will give You an opportunity of retorting upon me the charge of indolence.— I shall make no apology, as You might perhaps suppose that I could have as easily wrote You from Banffshire3 where I have been jaunting ever since I received your last as from the closet in my own house where I am just now writing. I wish I could obtain forgiveness myself as easily from some of my Correspondents for neglecting to answer letters as I can forgive You for an omission of which I am so frequently and I am affraid justly accused.— I shall resume however our interrupted correspondence with pleasure, and the idea of reading your answer will perhaps compensate for the pain I shall feel in starting a subject.—You were I dare say very happy in company of the Author of Elements of Criticism.4 I have read the book with greater pleasure than I ever found in perusing any thing on the subject. The train of reasoning is at once closs and perspicous, and I think the Author discovers at the same time Taste and Judgment (two Qualitys which seldom meet in a Critic) in the choice of His illustrations.— There is nothing in my opinion less useful than general remarks on the beautys or blemishes of works of Taste as one seldom meets with any observation which every common reader is not able to make for himself. But an Enquiry into the Original Principles from which both these proceed, affords one a pleasure of the same kind as we should receive from observing (if that was possible) the internal process of vegetation, and the manner in which Nature transforms the juices extracted from the earth into the nameless variety of leaves, blossoms, and fruits. I know not whether this is distinctly expressed.— But let it go.— Will you Sir take this for a letter, hurried off as it is with the utmost rapidity of my pen, and near a company who are clamorous below me.— If You can I shall endeavour to compensate for it’s faults afterwards by more regularity and accuracy. I am with much Esteem, Dear Sir, Your most obedient Humble servant, J. OGILVIE 320

20 NOVEMBER 1762 1 The parish of Midmar, of which Ogilvie was minister from 1760 until his death, lies in South Aberdeenshire, nine miles from Kintore. 2 Not reported (see To Ogilvie, ?Sept.– Oct.). No earlier correspondence with Ogilvie has yet been reported, and nothing in the journals would allow reconstruction or dating of unreported letters before that of c. Sept.–Oct. However, Ogilvie’s comment about a ‘charge of indolence’ suggests an earlier run of letters between the two men, as does his statement that he wished to ‘resume … our interrupted correspondence’. 3 It is not known which specific friends Ogilvie was visiting on his Banffshire jaunt. 4 JB had been in Kames’s company, barring a few interruptions, for almost a month. Kames hosted JB at Kames House from 16 to 26 Oct. Furthermore, JB had also spent several of the days at Kames’s son-in-law’s

house at Kirroughtree from 22 Sept. to 4 Oct. in the company of Kames, and travelled much of the route to Kames House with Kames 4–5 and 9–16 Oct. (Journ.). Although Ogilvie had no way of knowing it, JB’s time at Kames had not been uniformly ‘very happy’, and had indeed witnessed several awkward moments between JB and the family. On 23 Oct. JB ‘had some altercation’ with Lady Kames, and remarked: ‘[I] thought [Lord Kames] was tired of me …. [I was] vexed to find that the high opinion which we entertain of distinguished People flies off upon being much with them’. When JB left on 26 Oct., he noted that Kames ‘seemed displeased somewhat and asked me if I was tired allready … [of] an embarrassing situation’. On a visit to Lord and Lady Kames in Edinburgh on 11 Nov. he awkwardly ‘laughed off my abrupt departure from them’ (Journ.).

To John Ogilvie, between 16 November 1762 and 23 June 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in From Ogilvie, 23 June 1763: ‘It is a great while since I was favoured with a letter from you.’ JB’s letter was presumably a reply to From Ogilvie, 16 Nov.

To Andrew Erskine, Saturday 20 November 1762 Printed E–B, pp. 155–56 [LETTER XLII]. This was the final letter selected for printing in E–B.

London, Nov. 20,1 1762. DEAR ERSKINE, What sort of a letter shall I now write to you? Shall I cram it from top to bottom with tables of compound interest?2 with anecdotes of Queen Anne’s wars?3 with excerpts from Robertson’s history?4 or with long stories translated from Olaus Wormius?5 To pass four and twenty hours agreeably was still my favourite plan. I think at present, that the mere contemplation of this amazing bustle of existence, is enough to make my four and twenty go merrily round. I went last night to Covent-Garden;6 and saw Woodward play Captain Bobadil:7 he is a very lively performer; but a little extravagant :8 I was too late for getting into Drury-Lane, where Garrick9 played King Lear.10 That inimitable actor is in as full glory as ever; like genuine wine, he improves by age, and possesses the steady and continued admiration even of the inconstant English.11 I don’t know what to say to you about myself: if I can get into the guards,12 it will please me much; if not, I can’t help it. Perhaps you may hear of my turning Templar,13 and perhaps ranger of some of his Majesty’s parks.14 It is not impossible but I may catch a little true poetic inspiration, and have my works splendidly printed at Strawberry-hill, under the benign influence of the Honourable Horace Walpole.15 You and I Erskine are, to be sure, somewhat vain. We have some reason too. The Reviewers gave great applause to your Odes to Indolence and impudence; 321

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and they called my poems ‘agreeable light pieces’, which was the very character I wished for.16 Had they said less, I should not have been satisfied; and had they said more, I should have thought it a burlesque.17 What a fine animated prospect of life now spreads before me!18 Be assured, that my genius will be highly improved, and please yourself with the hopes of receiving letters still more entertaining.19 I ever am, Your affectionate friend, JAMES BOSWELL 1

‘[S]at in all the afternoon and wrote letters’ (Journ. 20 Nov.). 2 Tables of compound interest were common accessories of merchants, agriculturalists, clerks, stockbrokers, pawnbrokers, and advocates. JB’s Edinburgh booklist of c. 1770 mentioned ‘Hay’s Tables of Interest’ as printed in London, 1758, i.e., Richard Hayes, Interest at one view, calculated to a farthing: … The tenth edition, with additions. Carefully calculated and examined from the press … To which is added, a concise table …, 1758 (ESTC T110917). Rival compilers of tables of interest ‘useful for all academies, schools, merchants, brokers, clerks, and accomptants’ in the years 1751–62 were Charles Brent, 1751 (ESTC T191834), John Watson, 1758 (ESTC T200636), and Benjamin Webb, 1759 (ESTC T172679). 3 Anne (1665–1714), Queen of Great Britain and Ireland 1702–14 (E. R. Gregg, Queen Anne, 1982). ‘Queen Anne’s wars’ were the global conflicts of the War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–13/14, which lasted for most of her reign. (These wars figure prominently in the background of the events in Tristram Shandy.) The controversial events of the War of the Spanish Succession, especially in the ‘four last years’ of her reign which included the much-disputed Treaty of Utrecht, were the subject of numerous histories published either as new works or as reissues in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. They were generally characterized either by a ‘whig’ bias which praised Marlborough’s generalship and the war party’s aims and attacked the queen and the architects of the Peace of Utrecht, or by a ‘tory’ bias, which defended the termination of the war and the dismissal of Marlborough and venerated the queen as a heroine of the Church of England. Examples of histories dealing specifically with her reign included the works of Gibson, Memoirs of Queen Anne …, ed. of 1729 (ESTCT90442); Abel Boyer, The history of Queen Anne …, ed. of 1735 (ESTC T122942); John Oldmixon, The history of England, during the reigns of … Queen Anne, ed. of 1735 (ESTC T135555); Paul Chamberlen, An impartial history of the life

and reign of … Queen Anne …, ed. of 1738 (ESTC T55565); and Thomas Salmon, The history of the life and reign of her late Majesty Queen Anne …, e.g., 1740 (ESTC T89116). 4 William Robertson (1721–93), D.D. (Edinburgh, 1758), clergyman from 1741/ 43, minister of the Old Greyfriars from 1761, and historian, a founding member of the Edinburgh ‘Select Society’, Principal of Edinburgh University from 1762 to 1792. JB’s comments on him may be found in JB’s article ‘Sceptical Observations upon a Late Character of Dr. Robertson,’ Lond. Mag. June 1772, xli. 281–83 (Richard B. Sher, gen. ed., The Works of William Robertson, 12 vols., 1996; Stewart J. Brown, ed., William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire, 1997). Robertson’s The history of Scotland, during the reigns of Queen Mary and of King James VI. till his accession to the crown of England. With a review of the Scotch history previous to that period; and an appendix …, 1759 (ESTC T78970), was written in 1753– 58 while he was minister of Gladsmuir. It was in its ‘fifth edition’ by 1762 (ESTC T78973). Praise for the book came from George III, Walpole, Hume, Chesterfield, Gibbon, and many others, and its high estimate was not seriously diminished by critics’ fault-finding of Scotticisms and bias towards Mary Queen of Scots. On the book’s strength Robertson was appointed Historiographer for Scotland in 1763. 5 Olaus Wormius, or ‘Ole Worm’ (1588– 1654), was a Danish historian and antiquary. JB probably uses ‘Wormius’ to stand generally for the tattered books of the past. See, for instance, Pope’s The Dunciad: ‘Right well mine eyes arede the myster wight,/ On parchment scraps y-fed, and Wormius hight’ (iii. 187–88, Butt ed.). 6 ‘I went to Covent Garden—Every Man in his Humour. Woodward played Bobadil finely. He entertained me much. It was fine after the fatigues of my journey, to find myself snug in a theatre my body warm, & my mind elegantly amused’ (Journ. 19 Nov.). 7 Henry Woodward (1714–77), comic actor from the turn of the 1730s onward,

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also a harlequin-dancer, singer, manager, and playwright. A decade after joining Garrick’s company, he had broken with Garrick at Drury Lane in 1758 over salary questions, and was actor-manager in Dublin from 1758 to 1762 in the company meant to rival TS’s troupe at Smock Alley. Woodward, who had been at Covent Garden for much of 1740–47, had recently come back to London and signed on for his return to the stage at Covent Garden, which he celebrated in a prologue on 5 Oct. (Biog. Dict. xvi. 246–66). He had been playing Bobadil since 1751–52, ‘a character that was immediately acclaimed as one of his finest’ (ibid.); see Biog. Dict. xvi, plates 251 and 253, for pictures of Woodward in costume as Bobadil. Bobadil is the cowardly braggart soldier in Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour (1598, printed 1601, 1616 and onward). Every Man in His Humour had been acted at Drury Lane numerous times during the period from 1755 to Oct. 1762. The Covent Garden production which premiered on 25 Oct. was supposedly a new arrival of the play on the Covent Garden stage, as the entry in Lond. Stage. for its performance noted: ‘Mainpiece: Never acted there before’. The performance JB saw on 19 Nov. also included the afterpiece ‘Thomas and Sally’ and the dance performance ‘The Jealous Woodcutter’ (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 513, 958, 963, and Index xliii). 8 JB’s reaction perhaps reflects the influence of Churchill’s The Rosciad (1761), in which Woodward had been lashed as ‘endow’d with various tricks of face,/ Great master in the science of grimace’, the practitioner of ‘a mere monkey’s art’, and a contorting ‘speaking Harlequin, made up of whim’. Yet Churchill admitted that Woodward remained a ‘favourite of the town’ (Biog. Dict. xvi. 246–66). 9 Garrick’s fame was always sniped at by ‘criticks’, but the seasons from 1760 to 1763 were filled with carping by Purdon (1760) and the critics of his Coronation Pageant (1761). Garrick himself, as his letter to his brother Peter of 6 Nov. 1762 showed, was weary of the London theatrical world: ‘the name of Players makes me Sick—however they are less damnable with Me, than Any body Else’ (Biog. Dict. vi. 32–35). Davies claimed that ‘The profits of Drury-lane Theatre, in 1763, fell very short in their amount to those of preceding years’ (Thomas Davies, Memoirs of the Life of David Garrick, 1780, ii. 61). Sir William Weller Pepys alleged ‘that the pit was often

almost empty’ (Recollections of the TableTalk of Samuel Rogers. To which is added Porsoniana, 1856, p. 7; Biog. Dict. vi. 1– 103). 10 Garrick performed as Lear at Drury Lane on 19 Nov. ‘by Desire’; he had last performed the role on 17 Apr. Garrick had first portrayed Lear in 1742 in the softened Nahum Tate adaptation, The True and Ancient History of King Lear and His Three Daughters, in which Lear is allowed to live and retire. Among Tate’s many changes, ‘the part of Lear himself is left relatively intact, though all too many of his lines are mangled’. From 1742, Garrick’s ‘superb’ Lear was one of his most-admired tragic leads, often acted as his ‘benefit’ or on demand (as in the case of George III’s command for a performance in 1760–61), and his acting in the role so effective that ‘some performances were said to have been interrupted by the weeping of the audience’. From 1756, Garrick acted Lear in a new script which offered some ‘Restorations from Shakespeare’ which grew in number through subsequent years, although ‘he never completely eradicated Tate’s depredations’ (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 909, 929, 963; Biog. Dict. vi. 8, 15, 27, 30, 33). 11 JB’s esteem of Garrick was somewhat out of step with the current tone of the ‘criticks’ (see n. 10 above). As Churchill noted in The Rosciad, ll. 1027–28: ‘Last Garrick came.— Behind him throng a train/ Of snarling critics, ignorant as vain’. But the pamphlets and articles from 1742 expressing Garrick-phobia, or Garrick-weariness, usually were inspired by resentment of Garrick-mania; furthermore, they usually were refuted in the defences by admirers (including the ordinarily scathing Churchill) and occasionally by Garrick himself (Biog. Dict. vi. 8, 32). 12 JB had mentioned the Guards in his Harvest Jaunt journal, generally in the context of personal transformation. On 5 Nov., after a long run of ‘shaving’ which had made his friends ‘angry’, he noted that ‘When I get into the Guards and am in real life, I shall give it over’. On 11 Nov., he noted that once he got ‘into the Guards’, he planned to quit his low habits of mimicry and ‘shaving’. Thus, as of mid-Nov., he had temporarily convinced himself that the Guards would be a doorway into serious respectable manhood. His first mention of the guards in the London journal of 1762– 63 would be 26 Nov.: ‘I liked to see a Colonel of the Guards in his elegant house.’ On 27 Nov. he first mentioned seeing the ob-

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ject of his ambition: ‘saw the Guards drawn up in the Court of the Palace while the Moon shone & showed their splendor’ . 13 On 27 Sept. 1761, JB made it clear that he wished TS would ‘have taken the trouble to have my name entered in the Middle Temple’ (To TS, 27 Sept. 1761). TS had actually entered JB’s name in the rolls of the Inner Temple (see Samuel Salt, Certificate for … Inner Temple, 19 Nov. 1761; From TS, 21 Nov. 1761). JB visited the ‘Inner Middle Temple’ in search of his friend WJT on 27 Nov. (Journ.), and the way in which he first wrote ‘Middle’ and then corrected it to ‘Inner’ shows the Middle Temple’s continuing place in his imagination. His disappointment with TS’s response to his mention of the law scheme in late Nov. was testimony that he still considered it to be an option for his remaining in London: ‘went to Mr. Sheridan’s.… I felt a little out as his plan for me of the Temple was changed’ (Journ. 28 Nov.). 14 In 1762–64, the Crown appointed ‘RANGERS and KEEPERS’ for at least nineteen royal parks, forests, and chaces. JB would have been ineligible to be a titular ‘Ranger’ or ‘Keeper’, since the titles were generally held by dukes and earls, or at least M.P.’s. Most of the rangerships were therefore sinecures (e.g., the Earl of Bute’s supervision of Richmond Park), in which the nobles employed a deputy to perform the actual task of the ‘ranger’ (Court and City Kalendar, 1762, 84–85; 1764, pp. 84–85). 15 JB did not choose to meet Walpole until Jan. 1766 (see To AE, 18 June, n. 11), despite having had an opportunity to meet him in 1760 (Journ.). The standard bibliography of Walpole’s press is by A. T. Hazen, and contains a visual record of the ‘Printing-House’ as well as a catalogue of its output from 1757 to 1764 and onwards. The first of Strawberry Hill’s imprints was Odes by Mr. Gray (1757), which was presumably the source of JB’s reference to the press as a printer of works of ‘poetic inspiration’. JB may also have been thinking of Walpole’s printing of his own Fugitive Pieces in Verse and Prose (1758). The next poet Walpole published after Gray (and himself) was the Countess Temple, whose Poems he published in 1764. Strawberry Hill’s other volumes from 1757 to 1764 had little to do with poetry. They included two antiquarian travel books (A Journey into England. By Paul Hentzner, In the Year M.D.XC.VIII, 1757; An Account of Russia as it was In the Year 1710. by Charles Lord Whitworth, 1758), three catalogues (A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of

England, 1758; Catalogue of Pictures and Drawings in the Holbein-Chamber, at Strawberry-Hill, 1760; Catalogues of the Collections of Pictures of the duke of Devonshire, General Guise, and the Late Sir Paul Methuen, 1760); one edition of the classics (M. Annaei Lucani Pharsalia …, with notes by Richard Bentley’s and Hugo Grotius, 1760) and one essay putatively in aid of a charitable cause (A Parallel; In the manner of Plutarch: Between a most celebrated Man of Florence [Antonio Magliabechi]; And One, scarce ever heard of, in England [Mr. Hill, a poor tailor of Buckingham]. By the Reverend Mr. Spence, 1758. Much of the time and effort of the Press in Nov. 1760–Feb. 1764 were taken up by the printing and publication of the first three volumes of Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting …, 1762, 1764 (A. T. Hazen, A Bibliography of the Strawberry Hill Press …, 1942, frontispiece and pp. 23–77; cf. ESTC). 16 JB repeats a segment of To AE, 23 July: ‘What think you of the Critical Review on Donaldson’s Collection? You & I are allowed to bear the laurel in some degree … They have made me very happy … “Agreable light Pieces”’. That repetition may simply be another case of JB’s habit of bringing back into attention felicitous comments made about him, such as Smith’s praise of him as having ‘a happy facility of manners’ (To AE, 8 Dec. 1761 [MS]). However, since To AE, 23 July was not selected for inclusion in E–B, and this letter of 20 Nov. is known only in the version as revised for E–B, it may constitute another case of retailored material. 17 JB was extremely sensitive to ridicule coming disguised as praise, since that was precisely what he did in his ‘soaping’ and ‘shaving’ of unsuspecting victims. The entire volume of E–B itself was an example of the Soaping-Club manner of ‘burlesque’, and so was a large amount of JB’s poetry. Indeed, much of JB’s tendency to encode his works in spoof or burlesque seems to have stemmed from a view that by depicting his efforts as a poet and letter-writer as bagatelles, he could thereby insulate himself from criticism and ridicule. Paradoxically, his Shandeism, Scriblerianism, and macaronic wordplay themselves seriously undermined his contemporary reputation as an author from 1758 to 1763. 18 The ‘prospect’, of course, was opened by JB’s arrival in London on 19 Nov.: ‘had a view of London[.] I was all life & Joy …. [M]y Soul bounded forth to a certain prospect of happy futurity’ (Journ. 19 Nov.).

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AFTER 25 NOVEMBER AND BEFORE 6 DECEMBER 1762 19 Paradoxically, JB’s correspondence with AE tapers off from this point, with his next known communication with AE being ‘A Minced Pye of Savoury Ingredients For the Honourable Andrew Erskine’ (Yale MS. *L 528, written 5–22 July 1763), an impersonal pastiche of events generally recorded also in Journ. Subsequent letters to AE are few: 26 July 1763, 20 Apr. 1764 (not reported; see Reg. Let.), 25 Aug. 1768, and 6 Mar. 1793. The returns from AE were also sparse compared to the previous lode: the next letters from AE to JB were c. 22 Dec. (not reported; see Reg. Let.), and 16 Feb. 1764 (Yale MS. C 1197); for other later correspondence, see Catalogue ii. 641–44. However, the lack of a Reg. Let. for JB’s correspondence before his departure for the Netherlands in Aug. 1763 makes any speculation on missing letters for the period 1757–63 far more difficult than for the peri-

ods 1763–66 and 1769–90, years for which a Reg. Let. exists in whole or in part. The Reg. Let. for those years for which it exists should be used in light of the caveats supplied by Marion Pottle (Catalogue i. 113–14). The immediate lapse in the JB–AE correspondence is attributable, of course, to AE’s arrival in London on 1 Dec. and his presence there, in frequent contact with JB, until their farewell at some point probably after 5 July 1763 (Mem.) but before 7 July 1763 (Journ.). (Although JB frequently did send social notes to friends ‘in town’, as the letters in this volume amply demonstrate, he was obviously less likely to correspond with those with whom he was able to converse.) Moreover, this period in London saw a significant revision in JB’s perception of the nature of his friendship with AE (see Journ. 16 Feb. and 7 July 1763, and To AE, 26 July 1763, n. 1).

From the Earl of Eglinton, Thursday 25 November 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in Journ. 25 Nov: ‘I got a cart from Lord Eglintoune asking me to the house of Lords. I accordingly went & heard the King make his Speech.’1 1 JB witnessed ‘The King’s Speech on Opening the Session’ on 25 Nov. George III’s speech praised the military successes of the British and their allies in 1761–62 under ‘My general’ Ferdinand of Brunswick in ‘Germany’, lauded the success of the troops engaged in the defence of Portugal, and congratulated the British and allied troops who had captured Martinique and subsequently Havana, Cuba. Yet the speech JB heard was chiefly aimed at gaining the Par-

liament’s assent to Preliminary Articles of peace signed at Fontainebleau on 3 Nov. between Britain and the Franco-Spanish Bourbon alliance, as negotiated by the Earl of Bute. Ninety-seven M.P.’s in the Commons voted against the controversial ‘Lord Bute’s Peace’; GD was among them, as were JB’s future friend John Wilkes and JB’s political idol William Pitt the Elder (Parl. Hist. xv. 1230–79).

To the Duke of Queensberry, after 25 November and before 6 December 1762 Not reported. ‘I wrote a letter to him, some days ago very fully’ (Journ. 6 Dec.). This letter may be the communication referred to in a memorandum for 3 Dec., ‘Send to Duke by Chairman’ (Mem. 3 Dec.). Probably an initial request for a visit, which might provide an opportunity for a discussion of Queensberry’s possible patronage in obtaining an ensign’s commission in the Guards. When JB first sought out Queensberry in London on 25 Nov., he discovered that the duke was not to arrive in town until 28 Nov.: ‘The Duke of Queensberry was now come to town. I had called once or twice, but had never found him’ (Journ. 1 Dec.). In principle, Queensberry was vaguely committed from May to aiding JB’s Guards scheme. JB’s father had written a letter asking for the duke’s help in procuring a commission (From Lord Auchinleck to Queensberry, 12 May). Queensberry’s initial response had been cordial but noncommital: ‘I will certainly use my best endeavours to procure an Ensign’s Commission in the Guards for your son, and shall be very glad if I can meet with success so soon as I wish’ (From Queensberry to Lord Auchinleck, 24 May).

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The chief purpose of JB’s visits and notes to Queensberry was to enlist the duke’s aid in getting JB a commission in the Guards. Since JB was eager not to seem a mere beggar, he was circumspect and did not initially mention the favour he desired (Journ. 25 Nov., 5 Dec.). Even when the matter was introduced into discussion, JB was somewhat reluctant to press the duke, as their first meeting in London shows: ‘He told me that he found it very difficult to get me a Commission, but that he would try. I was rather more bashfull than I could have wished; altho’ there was nobody with him’ (Journ. 2 Dec.). JB received bad news on 6 Dec.: ‘General Douglas … told me that the Duke told him that he thought it would not be in his power to get me a Commission.… At one I went to the Duke’s, & being in a kind of despair I talked freely & boldly to him. He was gently informing me that the thing was very difficult’ (Journ.). This letter is perhaps the same one mentioned in Journ. 26 Dec.: ‘I this day received a letter from the Duke of Queensberry (in answer to the one that I had wrote him; telling me that a Commission in the Guards was a fruitless pursuit’. If so, From Queensberry, 22 Dec. would have been a reply to this letter rather than to the not reported letter To Queensberry, ?16 Dec.

To Agatha Home Drummond, Lady Kames, December 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in From Lady Kames, 28 Dec.: ‘you flatter me by desireing to hear from me, it is like your good nature tho to wish to make other people happy while you are so’. JB and Lady Kames had last been in company on 11 Nov. On that day, JB and AE supped at the Kames house in Edinburgh, and noted ‘My Lord and My Lady received me kindly. I laughed off my abrupt departure [while at Kames House 26 Oct.] from them’. His conversation with her on 11 Nov. had by implication also been JB’s effort to excuse his behaviour on 23 Oct., on which day he ‘had some altercation with Lady Kames. She was somewhat sowr. I imagined her more so …’ (Journ.).

To Basil Cochrane,1 December 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in From Cochrane, 20 Dec.: ‘I am glade and very glade att what you tell me that you have Settled a plan of œconomy which as you Say will make you live easily and Creditably. If So there is no fear but all will goe well’. JB sent parcels to Cochrane which often contained enclosed items of family correspondence. ‘By the letters you Receive from your Father and Mother you will find that I Faithfully deliver what letters and Pamphletes you Inclose to me.’ As Commissioner of Excise in Scotland Cochrane had ‘franking privileges’ and therefore paid no postage for his letters. 1 Hon. Basil ‘Commissioner’ Cochrane (c. 1701–88), JB’s great uncle, one of the Cochranes of Ochiltree, a brother of the 8th Earl of Dundonald. In 1776 JB estimated his age as seventy-five, which would make him Lord Auchinleck’s senior by more than five years (Journ. 9 Oct. 1776). Although the date of his first commission in the army is unknown, ‘Basil Cockraine’ was a lt. from 1726 to c. 1740, and a capt. in the 44th Foot in 1745 (Army List, 1740, p. 25, placed him in the 12th Regt./Suffolk/Whetham’s; Douglas’s Peerage, i. 475). Governor of the Isle of Man 1756–63, Commissioner of Excise in Scotland from 1761, and later (1764) Commissioner of Customs in Scotland. He and his elder brothers Thomas and James

were strong loyalists to the House of Hanover, and Basil had fought in battle against the Jacobite rebels at Prestonpans (Scots Peer. iii. 349; Hayden’s Book of Dignities, 1894, p. 666). It was James Cochrane who gave the young JB ‘who wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James’, a shilling to pray for George II (Life i. 431 n. 1). He was a brother of JB’s maternal grandmother, Euphemia (Cochrane) Erskine. Cochrane was a close friend of Lord Auchinleck as well as JB. Thus, he was able to serve as an intermediary between father and son in matters such as the payment of JB’s debts and the establishment of his allowance of £200 p.a. (Journ. 11 Nov.). As Cochrane never married, JB was a substitute

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son to him. JB thought of Cochrane as ‘a Man of great common sense and prudence’ (Journ. 30 Oct.). The editor of Corr. 1 hypothesized that he was ‘probably already living at Pinkie, near Musselburgh, where he certainly resided from 1769 to 1777’

(Corr. 1, pp. 31–32, n. 3); he resided by 1788 at Dalry, ‘a small property to the west of Edinburgh’. A caricature of Cochrane, a ‘tall, straight personage’, appears in Kay, ii. 384–85.

From the Earl and Countess of Northumberland, Friday 3 December 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in Journ. 3 Dec. ‘I had called once or twice, and left my name at Northumberland House: But hearing nothing from it, I began to think that they neglected me. However I now received a card of Invitation to the rout on Tuesday the 7. This raised my spirits, gave me notions of my consequence, & filled me with grandeur.’ JB’s full account of the ‘rout’ is in Journ. 7 Dec.

To West Digges, Saturday 4 December 1762 Not reported. JB sent a packet of recent issues of the North Briton to WD (Mem. 4 Dec.: ‘Send off North Brits to Digges. Get the one of the day’). For the North Briton, see From WD, 9 Dec.; the 4 Dec. 1762 issue was No. 27. That JB executed his plan in the 4 Dec. memorandum is proven by a subsequent letter from WD: ‘I beg leave in the Warmest Manner to thank You for Your continued indulgencies towards an Absent freind—Your care about My little bundle of pamphlets is infinitely obliging—I doubt not, but I shall recieve them safe’ (9 Dec.). While in London, JB set up a routine of purchasing the North Briton and posting it, postage-free, to WD. The North Briton (see From WD, 9 Dec., n. 4) was ‘continued every Saturday’ and cost ‘two pence halfpenny’ per issue. JB initially bought it the day of its publication at a pamphlet shop: ‘I also … [Saturday] morning call at the Pamphlet-Shop [in the passage] going into the Temple-Exchange Coffeehouse in fleet street, and buy the North-Britton which I send at night by commission, in a frank to Digges. He is very gratefull to me. He says it makes a great feast in his family circle & when they have read it, they drink a bumper to the health of Mr. Boswell. He calls himself my poor corespondent as he cannot make me a return for the valuable commodities of my letter’ (Journ. 11 Dec.; see also From WD, 9 Dec.). Three of WD’s surviving letters show that JB kept up this routine at least into Feb. 1763 (see From WD, 29 Dec. 1762, 31 Jan., 18 Feb. 1763). Probably before the beginning of his confinement with gonorrhoea from 22 Jan. 1763 (and on a day which could have been described as ‘Sometime ago’ from the perspective of 9 Feb. 1763), JB changed his place of purchase of the North Briton: ‘I left off the Pamphlet shop in the passage to the Temple-exchange-Coffee-house & took the North-Briton from the Publisher of it, Mr. Kearsley in Ludgate Street, hard by Child’s. I have it now sent to me regularly by the Penny Post & read it with vast relish. There is a poignant acrimony in it that is very relishing’ (Journ. 9 Feb. 1763). Saturdays for JB were conceived of as North Briton days, as the memoranda of mid-February demonstrate, e.g., ‘This is the day of The North Britton’ (Mem. 12 Feb. 1763). When his health improved, he returned to a scheme of buying the North Briton direct from the presses around 4 P.M. on Saturdays, to be combined with visits to Child’s Coffee-House (Mem. 9, 29 Apr. 1763, though Journ. 12, 19 Mar. 1763 mention visits to Child’s without the North Briton). The first mention of JB’s return to his Saturday regime of Child’s and the purchase of the North Briton was in late Mar. 1763, when he observed that ‘The North Briton is now never published till four o’clock so that I shall dine in the City, every Saturday, so as to have it fresh from the Press’. At the beginning of Apr. 1763, he wrote that ‘I then got the North-Briton & read it at Child’s. I shall do so now, every saturday Evening’ (Journ. 2 Apr.). Oddly, the Journ. and Mem. show no evidence of this renewed plan’s being followed.

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It has been impossible to determine whether JB always included a letter or even a brief note to WD within these Saturday packets. This volume includes in the record of correspondence only those instances in which documentary evidence indicates that JB did actually send his weekly packet to WD. JB was still a great admirer of WD: ‘the manners of Mr. Digges were [among] the ideas which I aimed to realize. Indeed I must say that Digges has more or as much of the deportment of a man of fashion, as anybody I ever saw; and he keeps up this so well that he never once lessened upon me even on an intimate acquaintance; altho’ he is now & then somewhat melancholy, under which it is very difficult to preserve dignity; and this I think is particularly to be admired in Mr. Digges. Indeed he & I never came to familiarity which is justly said to beget contempt’ (Journ. 1 Dec.).

From ‘C———’ (?John Cairnie), c. Tuesday 7 December 1762 Not reported. Mentioned in letter to JJ of 14 Dec.: ‘I suppose C——— has informed you particularly about my having got what I wished for. I am realy fond of the character of a Father …. C——— writes me that He had never seen you as then when he wrote. I am surprised at that. Pray don’t neglect to see and talk with him often about my ——— which he was taken to much trouble about …. In the present political disturbance, I am told all letters are opened at the Post-Office. I hope it is not true’ (Corr. 1, pp. 29–30). While the identification of ‘C———’ as Cairnie is not certain, ‘C———’ and ‘Cairnie’ are both typically associated with the events surrounding the birth and care of JB’s illegitimate son by ‘Peggy’ Doig, Charles Boswell (c. Dec. 1762–c. Mar. 1764). However, if ‘C———’ was indeed JB’s code for ‘Cairnie’, JB was inconsistent in its use. ‘Cairnie’ is sometimes mentioned as ‘Cairnie’ (To JJ, 17 Aug., Corr. 1, pp. 13–14), but elsewhere seems to be disguised as ‘C———’ (To JJ, 13 Sept., Corr. 1, pp. 14–17), yet both times is mentioned in the context of managing the ‘affair’. JB sometimes uses his code ‘C———’ in the same letter in which he writes of Cairnie, as in To JJ, 24 Nov. 1762: ‘leave a line at Stewart and Lindesay’s shop for Cairnie.… Go and meet him and talk to him about my girl [i.e., ‘Peggy’ Doig]. I left £10 in his hands for her behoof. Enquire every thing about the affair …. When she is delivered go and see the Child …. Consult with C——— in all respects about the affair’ (Corr. 1, pp. 24–25). JB’s use of initials and dashes to conceal identity presumably reflects his concern about the secret of his son, especially in light of the presumed insecurity of the post office. Yet in the letter of 14 Dec. he boasted: ‘By all means let the Nurse give my child the sirname of Boswell immediatly. I am not ashamed of him And I am not affraid of it’s being known’ (To JJ, 14 Dec., Corr. 1, p. 31). The child’s brief life is dealt with in Corr. 1, pp. 25–123, passim, since JB had left JJ to oversee arrangements concerning him in Edinburgh. After hearing of Charles’s death (Mar. 1764), JB noted to JJ in a letter of 9 Apr. 1764, ‘Your care of my child while he lived, was allways tender’. He noted in that same letter that ‘Cairnie is a worthy fellow. I have been very much obliged to him. I retain a very gratefull sense of his kindness, and wish much for an opportunity of being of use to him’ (Corr. 1, pp. 121–22).

From William McQuhae, Tuesday 7 December 1762 MS. Yale (C 1881).

Barquharry,1 7 Decr.2 1762 DEAR SIR, This is now the third or fourth Letter which I have begun to write you3 within these last three weeks but never could I find time to finish one of them. None of them appear to me at present worth the reading. So great a Change of views and Sentiments has a few Days brought about in my mind. This morning 328

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about four O’Clock poor Jamie Reid4 was carried off in the sixteenth day of a nervous fever. During the whole time of his Illness whether sensible or in a Delirium he repeated my name every minute. Few hours have I been from his Bedside. You may easily judge of the melancholy Situation of this unhappy family. Even amidst the hurry of Businiss or pleasure I doubt not you will feel the most tender Sympathy with his afflicted father and Mother. I am much obliged to you for your kind remembrance of me in so many difft. places. I read with as much pleasure as melancholy would admit, your Journal.5 I rejoiced at the last page not because it was the last but because it contained a promise of continuing a practice so very entertaining to those who are affectionately attach’d to you.6 I wish you all Success in your present Schemes.7 And how should you be unhappy with two hundred a year a Sum which is double of my highest Ambition.8 At present I do not at all imagine any Sum however great, is an useful Ingredient in human happiness. I wonder how I have been able to write so much. Farew[e]ll. Every that is good be your portion.9 I am Your most Obliged Servant, WILLIAM MCQUHAE 1 A property in the parish of Ochiltree, about two and a half miles south of Auchinleck estate (Ayrshire, p. 274). In Cary’s New Map, p. 66, it appears as ‘Balauherry’ (presumably in error for ‘Balquherry’). It is variously spelled ‘Balquherry’ (Ayrshire, p. 274), and ‘Barwharrie’ (Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 618, 656), although JB in other writings spelled it ‘Barquharrie’ (Journ. 3 June, 14 Apr. 1767; 4 Nov. 1778; 15 May 1782). The valuation roll for Ayrshire, 1759 with augmentations, listed ‘Barwharrie’ as taxed on an archaic worth of £56 14s (Timperley, p. 64). The house was at the time the residence of George Reid ‘of Barwharrie’ (see n. 4 below). The property was in the possession of the Campbells of Barquharrie, but Reid’s wife was a Campbell of Treesbank. The estate appears to have been for sale by 1767. JB at one time considered buying Barquharrie for his brother John. John wrote of the estate, ‘you mentioned the purchasing of Barqharie for me, which I should be extreamly well pleased with, as I should be situate in a very agreable County, and nigh Affleck [i.e., Auchinleck]’ (From John Boswell, 14 Feb. 1767, Yale MS. C 408). 2 The letter was about nine days in transit to London. ‘I received a letter from Mcquhae, with an account of the death of his pupil the only son & comfort of his parents. I was much shocked with it: Yet the consideration of the vanity of this life, and the hopes of a better made me easy’ (Journ. 16 Dec.).

3 These three or four unsent drafts of letters by McQuhae have not been located; as he neither finished them, sent them, nor considered them ‘worth the reading’, he presumably discarded them. However, since paper was more valuable in the eighteenth century, unfinished scraps often found reincarnation as paper for other projects, as JB’s Douce MSS show. 4 James Reid (1754–7 Dec. 1762), son of Rev. George Reid. ‘Poor Mcquhae he is just now in great Affliction on account of the death of his Pupil the only child of Mr. George Reid a worthy old Clergyman and a most amiable Woman a cousin of my Father’s …. They were very fond of this Boy. He was a remarkable Genius. They are much to be pitied’ (To JJ, 21 Dec., Corr. 1, pp. 32–34). Young James Reid was JB’s second cousin (Robertson, ii. 242; cf. IGI). JB twice mentioned James as an ‘only child’ (To JJ, 21 Dec.; To McQuhae, 16 Dec.). However, Fasti Scot. (iii. 62) listed James as one of three sons (Alexander, James, and George). Alexander Reid appears to have been born in 1750, and George Reid in 1751 (IGI Pedigree Resource File). Fasti Scot. (iii. 62) mentions the younger George as ‘of Ratho’; a man of that name appears on the Midlothian valuation rolls for 1771 (Timperley, p. 232). Even more perplexingly, George Robertson stated that one of Reid’s children was ‘George Reid, Esq. late Factor of Eglinton’ (Robertson, ii. 242). JB might well have been in error, or been using the phrase ‘only child’ in a sense other than

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its modern one. Otherwise, it must be presumed that the nineteenth century sources erred, or that other sons of George Reid were born after 1762. 5 The ‘Journal of My Jaunt Harvest 1762’, which JB kept from 14 Sept. to 14 Nov. He stated in his introduction that his journal was meant only for the perusal of two close friends: ‘as it is only intended for the perusal of Doctor Mcquhae and Johnstone I shall be quite easy and unconcerned’ (‘Introduction’ to Journ.). 6 ‘Thus have I brought down my Journal from the time of my leaving Auchinleck to my setting out for London. The various scenes it exhibits must amuse, and all the little Incidents must please those who are particularly attached to me. I shall make no Apology for it’s defects, as I have obviated these in my Introduction. The last days are imperfect; as I was hurried. I shall continue the method of keeping a Journal, which will amuse me at the time, and lay up a store of entertainment for me afterwards’ (Journ. 14 Nov.). 7 McQuhae’s use of the plural form ‘Schemes’, unless accidental, suggests that JB’s law scheme and Guards scheme were both still live options, though both were experiencing obstacles, and both were subplots of the London scheme. Certainly JB’s disappointment in TS on 28 Nov. implied that he was still interested in ‘his plan for me of the Temple’, and JB’s interviews with the Duke of Queensberry’s circle on 2, 5, and 6 Dec. were all in aid of the Guards scheme (Journ.). In his own ambitions, McQuhae soon moved beyond his life as a tutor. He had been licensed to preach in Mar., but was not presented to St. Quivox by a patron until Aug. 1763, and not ordained there until 1764 (Fasti Scot. iii. 66). 8 The ‘two hundred a year’ is a reference to JB’s allowance as confirmed by his father in the journal which McQuhae had read. Lord Auchinleck was continuing his efforts to limit the damage JB could do to the family patrimony by offering him a fixed income: ‘My Father would … allow me two hundred a year: and then if I did not do well I should only have myself to blame’ (Journ. 11 Nov.). JB’s scheme for living had expressed anxiety about having to make do on this £200 p.a.: ‘My Allowance from My Father is £25 every six weeks; in all £200 a year. To support the rank of a Gentleman with this is difficult. Yet I hope to do it’ (‘Scheme of living written at the White Lyon Inn Waterlane, Fleetstreet the morning after my arrival in London 1762.’).

As a boy’s home tutor and later a parish assistant minister, McQuhae’s pay would have been meagre (though in later years he would become an ‘able man of business’; see Fasti Scot. iii. 66). McQuhae’s view that a modest and moderate clergyman could be passing rich on one hundred pounds a year reflects a more plebeian view of an acceptable income in a world where the poor vastly outnumbered the rich. Joseph Massie’s 1759 Population Estimate noted that, in that year, 218,000 families among the English survived on a family income of £14 or less per year, and the most common family income (on which half a million families survived) was probably about £15– 24 per year. Langford estimated that an income of £50 was ‘the minimum at which it was possible to aspire to membership of the middling rank’; £20 was the amount ‘generally thought necessary for mere subsistence’. JB’s sense of budgetary anxiety stemmed from the fact that he was living precisely on the razor’s edge of Massie’s dividing line between prosperous gentlemen and citizens and the middle echelons of the middling sort. Massie estimated that there were only 28,700 families in the income bracket of the population which included gentlemen, merchants, tradesmen, and manufacturers who had a family income of between £200– £399. By contrast, the 84,000 families in the income bracket of the population which included clergy, lawyers, military officers, freeholders, tenant farmers, tradesmen, innkeepers and manufacturers had an annual family income of between £80–£199, and many less prosperous English clergy only brought in a family income of £50–£79. Even after taking into account the difference between the Scottish and English currency, JB was living alone on a sum which placed him in an income bracket which included fewer than 30,000 families in a country of one-and-a-half million families, and above which only 12,370 families had a grander family income (Paul Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727– 1783, 1989, pp. 62–65 and n. 3; Peter Mathias, The Transformation of England: Essays in the Economic and Social History of England in the Eighteenth Century, 1979, pp. 186–87; and P. H. Lindert and J. G. Williamson, ‘Revising England’s Social Tables, 1688–1812’, Explorations in Economic History, 1982, xix. 395–408). 9 Presumably intended to read ‘Every thing that is good be your portion’.

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?To William McQuhae, c. Thursday 9 December 1762 Not reported. Inferred from Mem. 9 Dec.: ‘Send M’s letter tonight’.

From West Digges, Thursday 9 December 1762 MS. Yale (C 1039). ADDRESS: To, James Boswel Esqr., at Mr Douglass Surgeon,1 Pall mall, London. POSTMARK: [London] 13 DE.

Edinr., Decr. 9 1762 DEAR SIR: I beg leave in the Warmest Manner to thank You for Your continued indulgencies towards an Absent freind2—Your care about My little bundle of pamphlets is infinitely obliging—I doubt not, but I shall recieve them safe.— I own I do not much approve of the Rancour of the North Britton,3 but I admire the spirit and wit with which it is written—I assure You it makes up a great feast for my family Circle, and after we have banqueted on the genius of Mr Churchill,4 we never fail with pious Gratitude to drink the health of Mr Boswel Who I may call the founder—5 We are here Very thin as to Company—Our Theatre6 however Goes on with Spirit—and after Christmass7 I expect to see full houses Every Evening.8 —I am preparing Congreves Comedys9 for Exhibition, We begin with the Way of the World.10— I assure You our Boxes are generally crowded—But Until the Season Advances Our pit appears now and then but so so11 —Macbeth and Hamlet brought Bumpers.—12 But You Dear Sir Are now in the center of pleasures—The Comedy of Mr Woodward,13 and the Tragedy of Mr Garrick,14 —The Musick of the Opera House,15 And the more private Yet More delightfull disipations of A Bagnio,16 all these Enjoyments are at Your Command, When Ever You please to call upon them.— Amidst the Rage of party17 I fear Your good sense cannot keep quite clear of some little taint of the Infection.— If Ever Any Anecdote of the House of Commons Affords matter worthy of transcribing You will much oblige Your poor Correspondent with transmitting it to him18—I say poor, because I have Nothing Worthy of a return for such Valuable commoditys as You can and do send me.— Conversation is the Traffick of the Mind, for by Exchanging our Ideas we Enrich one Another.— You must trade at a loss with me, but Whatever I may want as to Stock be assurd the attachment of Your Correspondent is sincere and that I am with truth, Your most obliged and Obedient Servant, W. DIGGES God bless You! send me 2 or 3 Dozn of Franks by 6 at a time19—I am ashamd to put You to 6 pence Expence—Mrs. Digges20 begs her kindest Compliments to You— 1 ‘I immediatly went to my friend Douglasse’s Surgeon in Pallmall a kind- hearted plain sensible man; where I was cordialy received …. He was my great Adviser as to every thing; & in the mean time insisted

that I should have a bed in his house till I got a lodging to my mind. I agreed to come there next day’ (Journ. 19 Nov.). He remained a friend, and in his professional capacity treated JB’s gonorrhoea in Feb. 1763: ‘My

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freind Douglas attends me and I follow his directions most carefully’, and a letter of July 1763 referred to him again as ‘My friend Douglas’ (To JJ, 8 Feb. 1763, 2 July 1763, Corr. 1, pp. 43, 83). It is not known when JB and Douglas first met. JB lived in Douglas’s house 20–26 Nov., and socialized with the family beyond his lodging: he dined there on the 20, took tea on 21 Nov., and breakfasted with the son George Douglas on 30 Nov., though by 25 Nov. he had tired of Mrs. Douglas’s company (Journ.). He used the house as his standard postal address during those days: JB had written to JJ on 20 Nov., ‘Address for me at Mr. Douglasse’s Surgeon Pallmall London. This Gentleman has kindly insisted that I shall stay in his house till I get a lodging to my mind’ (To JJ, 20 Nov., Corr. 1, pp. 23–24). Yet JB’s friend Andrew Douglas has not been identified with certainty in corroborative records. Westminster School Lists noted a George Douglas, son of Andrew Douglas of St. Martin’s, London, which seems to match the George Douglas mentioned in Journ. 30 Nov. (G. F. R. Barker and A. H. Stenning, The Record of Old Westminsters, 1928, i. 278). George Douglas matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, 17 June 1772, aged 18 (Alum. Oxon.). Beyond that, identification is less certain. The records of the Royal College of Surgeons show an ‘Andrew Douglass’ who qualified as a naval surgeon in three stages: Second Mate Fourth Rate, 1755; First Mate Third Rate, 1755; Surgeon Sixth Rate, 1756. As a Naval Surgeon he would be free to practice in London after leaving the service, though not as a member of the Company of Surgeons (Letter from W. R. Le Fanu, Librarian, Royal College of Surgeons, to William B. Ober, M.D., 17 July 1967). 2 JB had continued his friendship with WD in the Edinburgh visit following the 1762 harvest jaunt. Yet most of his recorded contacts were viewings of performances, such as WD as Macheath in The Beggar’s Opera on 10 Nov. Likewise, on 11 Nov.: ‘At night I was at the Play, Venice Preserved and saw Mrs. Bellamy play, and Mr. Digges in Pierre. I felt a pleasing regret at leaving the Edinburgh Theatre’. The two men had said their goodbyes on 14 Nov., when JB had ‘sat a while with Digges’ (Journ. 10, 13, 14 Nov.). 3 The North Briton, the most controversial political weekly of the 1760s, chiefly written by JB’s future friend John Wilkes, with assistance and contributions from

Charles Churchill (see note following). The original series ran for forty-five numbers, issued during the months June 1762 to Apr. 1763, with a forty-sixth number published out of sequence on 12 Nov. 1763. It advertised itself as ‘To be continued every Saturday. Price two pence halfpenny …. [L]etters directed to the North Briton (post-paid) will be received for the author.’ The first issue of this paper ‘appeared immediately following the first number of The Briton,’ a pro-Bute ‘tory’ weekly managed by Smollett. Issues consisted of political papers attacking Bute’s ministry and influence on George III, the 1762–63 peace policy, and Scots influence on English politics. ‘Wilkes ended his connection with this publication with no. 46 (12 Nov. 1763) as he was having serious legal trouble which resulted in his exile and expulsion from Parliament.’ The weekly was controversial enough to have continuations, reprints, and collections. It had two rival immediate continuations published by J. W. Brooke (no. 47– 235, [1763–66]) and W. Bingley (no. 47– 218 [1768–71]), as well as frequent reprints which included the original canonical Wilkes-Churchill 46 numbers, such as that of Bingley (1769, ESTC T177671). Wilkes himself ‘was assumed to have edited and corrected two London [collected] editons of 1763 [e.g., ESTC N26370] and a 4 vol. reissue of 1772’ (ESTC; George Nobbe, The North Briton: A Study in Political Propaganda, 1939). 4 Churchill from the journal’s inception acted as its editor, preparing manuscripts, writing contributions, reading proof, and ushering the numbers into print. He appears to have borne major authorial credit for, among others, North Briton nos. 7, 8 (2 Oct.), 10, 18, 21, 22, 26, 27, 42, and the unpublished ‘original’ of the most famous number of the paper, the controversial ‘Number 45’. WD’s letter provides additional evidence for Schaeffer’s view that Churchill’s association with the paper was no longer a secret by July 1762 and onwards, and that in some ways Churchill’s name was more associated with the paper than Wilkes’s (Neil Schaeffer, ‘Charles Churchill’s Political Journalism’, Eighteenth-Century Studies ix [1976]: 406–28); Edward H. Weatherly, The Correspondence of John Wilkes and Charles Churchill, 1954; Wallace Cable Brown, Charles Churchill: Poet, Rake, and Rebel, 1953). 5 That is, ‘the founder of the feast’. Henry Cockburn later recalled the 18th c. Scottish custom by which ‘every glass during dinner

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required to be dedicated to the health of some one.… [A]fter dinner, and before the ladies retired, there generally began what were called “Rounds” of toasts’, typically accompanied by flowery ‘sentiments’ (Henry Cockburn, Memorials of His Time, ed. Karl F. C. Miller based on the Harry Cockburn text, 1910/1974, pp. 32–36). 6 The ‘Canongate Concert Hall’; Edinburgh did not recognize an official ‘theatre’ until the 1767 royal patent which legitimated a ‘Theatre Royal’. WD was actormanager of the Concert Hall in 1756–58 and again in 1761–64, and performed in late 1762 under the name of ‘Mr. Bellamy’ (see To WD, ?first half of Apr. 1757, n. 1). The theatre, after a brief autumn season from 4 to 18 Sept., had begun its winter season of 1762–63 on 10 Nov., with JB’s favourite The Beggar’s Opera. The management promoted the building’s renovations in the 25 Aug. Edin. Eve. Cour.: ‘The inside of the Theatre in Canongate is now painting and decorating …. The orchestra is enlarged and a fine Harpsichord added to the band of music. Some new comedians are expected from England to appear in the five select plays advertised’ (Edin. Stage, pp. 120–23). JB’s fond memories of the theatre appeared in his journal in London: ‘At night I went to Drury lane … which brought the Cannongate full in my head’ (Journ. 22 Nov.). 7 Although Edinburgh Episcopalians celebrated Christmas as ‘the holidays’, the Church of Scotland and the Scots presbyterian tradition in general kept Christmas the same way they kept theatres: either not at all, or under an elaborate subterfuge. As Ramsay recalled, ‘The Presbyterians, in general, had no objection to eat and drink with their friends at that season; but if exceedingly rigid, their feasts were delayed till the end of the old or the beginning of the new year’. Some strict Knoxians ‘affected to fast on Christmas day’, or at least did not feast on goose. The ‘Whiggish’ and moderate Church of Scotland habit of euphemistically calling Christmas ‘the daft days’ was a means of avoiding the opprobrium of a popish holiday while enjoying its jollity, in the same manner as respectable Edinburghers could bring themselves to attend plays at a ‘concert hall’ but not a ‘theatre’ (Scotland and Scotsmen, ii. 73–74). 8 WD still believed at the end of Dec. that the audiences would begin to flock in after Christmas: ‘Now our Xmass is over, I shall Expect very full houses—I have the pleasure to assure You our Theatric Entertainments are in great Reputation’ (From

WD, 29 Dec.); yet he later reported ‘The town is not so full, as We expected it Would be’ (From WD, 31 Jan. 1763). 9 WD postponed his season of Congreve revivals until after the New Year began. Love for Love was performed on 3 Jan. 1763, The Way of the World on 20 Jan. 1763, and The Mourning Bride on 14 Feb. 1763 (Edin. Eve. Cour. 1 Jan., 19 Jan., 12 Feb. 1763). 10 On 1 Dec. WD had advertised that The Way of the World was in rehearsal but later was forced to announce that the play was deferred ‘on account of Mrs. [George Anne] Bellamy’s indisposition’ (Edin. Eve. Cour. 18 Dec. 1762). The 1762–63 season turned out to be very successful despite the shaky start described by WD (Edin. Stage, p. 124). 11 The boxes were the most expensive seats, favoured by the fashionable and welloff; the pit was a more middling haunt of ‘criticks’ and those of moderate incomes; the ‘gallery’ or ‘gods’ provided cheap seats for the poor and servants (James Lynch, Box, Pit, and Gallery; Stage and Society in Johnson’s London, 1953). Dibdin estimated that the Canongate house could bring in £65 ‘as a maximum hold’, with ‘£50 for boxes and pit, and £15 for gallery’. ‘[T]he majority of the pittites’ were presumably the key to the theatre’s profitability since, Dibdin concluded, they ‘frequented the theatre oftener than once a week’ (Edin. Stage, p. 124). JB, with his need to economize in London, sometimes sat in the pit: ‘At night I went to Covent-Garden & saw Love in a Village …. I saw it from the Gallery, but I was first in the Pit’ (Journ. 8 Dec.). 12 Macbeth was performed in the brief autumn season on 11 Sept. (Edin. Eve. Cour. 8 Sept., 1 Dec. 1762). It was advertised as presented ‘as written by Shakespere’ and staged ‘with all the original songs and dances’ (Edin. Stage, p. 120). Hamlet was performed early in the winter season on 4 Dec. (Edin. Eve. Cour. 8 Sept., 1 Dec. 1762). One puff-piece letter to Edin. Eve. Cour. 8 Sept. praised WD for the ‘remarkable decency’ of his productions, ‘the late addition to your company of some people of acknowledged merit’ and noted not only ‘the applause with which you [the managers] are always received, but by the crowds that eagerly frequent your house’. Dibdin estimated that ‘there were a certain number of regular playgoers—who probably might each of them average at least one night a week in the theatre’. He estimated the size of the entire Edinburgh theatre audience ‘who

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were regular playgoers’ at fewer than 2,400 (Edin. Stage, p. 122–24). 13 Woodward’s Covent Garden season is described in To AE, 20 Nov., nn. 8–10. JB had noted that he had seen Woodward act on 19 Nov., but Woodward is not mentioned again by name in the London journal of 1762–63 (Journ.) 14 Garrick’s Drury Lane season is described in To AE, 20 Nov., nn. 11–13. JB first noted seeing Garrick onstage in 1762 on 22 Nov.: ‘At night I went to Drury lane and saw Garrick play Scrub and the Farmer returned …. I was exceedingly well entertained’ (Journ. 22 Nov.). He next saw Garrick on stage on 10 Jan. 1763: ‘At night I went to Drury-lane Pit and saw the Second part of King Henry IV where Mr. Garrick in the pathetic scene between the old King & his son drew tears from my eyes.’ (Journ.). JB continued his devotion to Garrick despite TS’s attempts to point out Garrick’s shortcomings as an actor (e.g., Journ. 30 Nov., 13 Dec.) 15 JB had not yet attended the Opera. The closest he had come was 27 Nov. when he ‘went & saw the King & Queen pass from the Opera’ (Journ.). The comic opera Love in a Village which he saw on 8 Dec. played at Covent Garden, and the next ‘opera’ he saw was Artaxerxes, on 9 Apr. 1763, but that again was at Covent Garden rather than the King’s Opera House in the Haymarket (Journ.). 16 Some London bagnios were genuine bath-houses, whereas others served as convenient and discreet places for sexual liaison, as in JB’s reference on 3 Jan. 1763: ‘beg she may … kindly invent how to make you blest, either there at night or by coming to you, or going to … Bagnio’ (Journ.). 17 The ‘rage of party’ in 1760–63 is dealt with in detail in Sir Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution, 1930, 2nd ed. 1961–62, which deals mainly with high party politics of faction and interest, and in John Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III, 1976, which examines the persistence of ‘whig’ and ‘tory’ partisan labels in the context of Bute, Wilkes, the North Briton and the oppositionist press, and the ‘Massacre of the Pelhamite Innocents’. 18 JB had first visited the House of Commons for the King’s Speech on 25 Nov. (Journ.). His friend GD was a strong opponent of Bute’s Peace Preliminaries. On 2 Feb. 1763 JB and GD discussed patronage and independency of the Court and ministerial power in the context of GD’s work as

an M.P. (Journ.). He probably did not attend ‘the house of Commons’ until he went on 11 Mar. 1763 as GD’s guest (although a memorandum for 1 Mar. 1763 mentioned ‘House Commons’). On 11 Mar. 1763 he noted that ‘[t]he Novelty of being in the high court of Parliament which I had heard so much about, pleased me exceedingly. My Respect for it was greatly abated by seeing that it was such a tumultous scene. Yet I felt an ambition to be a speaker there. I wish that may be the case: It must afford very high satisfaction to make a figure as an Orator before an Assembly of so much consequence.’ He again attended the Commons debates on 22 Mar., when he heard Pitt in debate with Fox on the Cider Bill (Journ.). Since the letters to WD are not reported, and WD’s later letters mention politics mainly in the context of the North Briton, it is not known if JB followed WD’s advice. 19 JB’s memoranda and journal for London are filled with accounts of his campaigns to ‘get franks’ or ‘take franks’: his sources included GD (Mem. 30 Nov., 22 Feb., 31 May, 5 July 1763), Coutts (Mem. 30 Nov.; 7 May, 8 June 1763), Mackye (Mem. 4, 5 Dec.), Sir David Dalrymple (Mem. 11 Mar. 1763), the Lord Advocate (Mem. 27 Mar., 2 Apr., 6 Apr. 1763) and Colonel Montgomerie (Mem. 8 June 1763; see also Mem. 23 Mar. 1763). Lord Eglinton was also cajoled into providing JB franks: ‘I asked My Lord to frank some covers. Certainly said he, I am your scribe, and every thing else that you please.’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763; cf. Journ. 6 June 1763; Mem. 8 June, 8 July 1763). JB appears to have asked for ‘ 2 doz franks’ or even ‘3 doz.’ franks at one time. JB handed the franks about to friends such as WD, Donaldson, WJT, and ‘Bob’ ?Temple as this letter and several memoranda demonstrate (see also Mem. for 13 Apr. 1763, 19 Apr. 1763, 28 May 1763, 5 July 1763). JB even handed a frank to ‘Nancy’, a housemaid where he lodged (Journ. 6 June 1763). He on occasion kept ‘franks in pocket’ (Mem. 16 June 1763). 20 George Anne Bellamy (b. c. 1727–33, d. 1788), actress known during the height of her popularity as ‘Inchanting Bellamy’. Bellamy herself alternately provided birthdates of 1731 and 1733 (see Biog. Dict. ii. 3–7 for the scholarly dispute about her claim that she was daughter of an actress and an Irish peer and the debate on her age). She began acting in 1741 in London, although she remembered her debut as in 1744. She had

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acted in TS’s company at Smock Alley 1745–48 and again (after TS’s departure) in 1760–61, was at Covent Garden 1748–50, 1753–59, and 1761–62, with Garrick’s company at Drury Lane 1750–53. In 1762, she had signed on for a three-year engagement with the Edinburgh theatre, although she returned to Covent Garden in 1764–70. Her greatest popularity had been c. 1745–55, and she was faced, as she aged, with increasing unsuitability for the ingenue roles depending on pathos and innocence, in which roles she had gained her fame, and which she was still acting in her final season (Biog. Dict. ii. 6–20; Edin. Stage, pp. 112–31; cf. Thomas Gilliland, Dramatic Mirrour, 1808, ii. 652–53). Biographies of her include, besides Biog. Dict., her own six volumes of memoirs (for which see Bellamy), and Cyril Hartmann, Enchanting Bellamy, 1956. As for her life as ‘Mrs. Digges’, her ‘serious connection’ with WD (another in her ‘string of lovers’) had begun while they were both acting at Smock Alley in 1761, and the two supposedly went through a ceremony of marriage in Scotland in 1763 (Biog. Dict. ii. 6–20). Mrs. Bellamy, in her own memoirs, stated that she was married to WD (George Anne Bellamy [as told to her amanuensis Alexander Bicknell], An Apology for the Life

of George Anne Bellamy, late of Covent Garden, Written By Herself, 1785, iv. 69, a source whose often-discussed problems of veracity were caused by her remembering the events at a remove of twenty or more years). WD (whose marriage to another at the time of his alliance with Bellamy is discussed in To WD, ?first half of Apr. 1757, n. 1) is alleged to have told her, ‘Madam, I give you leave to treat me like a foot-pad, rob me and let me go, but don’t tie me neck and heels’ (Charles Lee Lewes, Memoirs, 1805, iii. 47 n.). Yet Scots law of the era would have argued that WD and Bellamy were indeed legally married. By Scots law, legal marriage could be constituted by ‘consent followed by a copula’, by ‘a promise of marriage followed by a copula’, or ‘inferred from cohabitation; and the parties living together at bed and board, and being habit and repute husband and wife’ (Bell, s.v. ‘MARRIAGE’, sect. I). Indeed, during the 1762–63 season, WD was actually acting under the name of ‘Mr. Bellamy’ for ‘family reasons’ (Edin. Stage, pp. 120–21), which certainly would have placed him in a habit and repute of being her spouse. After her relationship with WD ended, she became the ‘platonic’ lover of Henry Woodward from 1767 to 1777 (Biog. Dict. ii. 17).

To West Digges, Saturday 11 December 1762 Not reported. JB continued in his plan to send the North Briton to WD: ‘There is something to me very agreable in having my time laid out in some method. Such as every Saturday … morning call at the Pamphlet-Shop going into the Temple Exchange Coffeehouse in fleetstreet, and buy the North-Britton which I send at night by commission, in a frank to Digges’ (Journ. 11 Dec.). The 11 Dec. issue was No. 28.

To [?Rev. James] Grant,1 c. Tuesday 14 December 1762 Not reported. Referred to in To JJ, 14 Dec.: ‘Your account of the proceedings about [the birth and baptism of JB’s son] Charles [Boswell] is very accurate and gave me much satisfaction. It was quite proper to have it done by Grant. I shall send you a letter of thanks to him if you think it right’ (Corr. 1, pp. 30–32). 1 The priest Grant whom JB had on 24 Nov. requested ‘baptize’ his son. The letter of 14 Dec. shows that it was Grant who performed the service (see To JJ, 27 Oct., 24 Nov. 14 Dec., Corr. 1, pp. 17–19, 24–25, 30–32). Ralph S. Walker suggested that he was

‘perhaps’ James Grant (fl. 1746–64), who ministered to one of the Church of England’s ‘qualified chapels’ in Edinburgh (Corr. 1, p. 18 n. 2). James Grant was incumbent at St. Paul’s Chapel, in Skinner’s Close, from 1747 to 1764 (Bertie, p. 54).

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?To General the Viscount Ligonier,1 c. Tuesday 14 December 1762 Not reported. Likely planned (on evidence of Mem.); less certain if written. Referred to in Mem. 14 Dec.: ‘Dine home—Dress—then Duke—push Secretary at War—be explicite. Get letter to Lord Ligonier. Joke about getting Corporal, or going in Volunteer—Then home. break.’ Although the memoranda are, as usual, gnomic, they suggest that JB intended to write a letter to Lord Ligonier in which he would jest that he was so serious and impatient about entering the Guards that he would be willing to enlist as a corporal or a ‘Volunteer’ rather than insisting upon a free commission for an ensign’s rank. The memorandum may, however, indicate JB’s desire to obtain a letter to Ligonier written by someone else. Possibly, JB hoped that Queensberry would provide him with a letter to Ligonier. Nonetheless, JB was certainly daring enough to draft a letter to Lord Bute, one of the first personages of the kingdom, in his own words and under his own name. 1 John Louis (originally Jean-Louis) Ligonier (1680–1770) of Cobham Place, Surrey. Viscount Ligonier in the Irish peerage (of Enniskillen from 1757, of Clonmell 1762), and later (1763) Lord Ligonier, Baron of Ripley and (1766) Earl Ligonier in the British peerage. Born in France, he arrived as a Huguenot refugee in 1697, and was naturalized in 1702. He was a career officer in the army from the 1700s, was a capt. by 1703, and fought with distinction in the Wars of Spanish Succession, Austrian Succession, and in the defeat of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Gen. from 1746, Master Gen. of the Ordnance, 1759–63, and later (1766) Field Marshal. Politically, he had served in the courts of the first two Georges (as a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and aide-de-camp), and was an M.P. 1748–63 and Privy Councillor (1749). JB’s interest in cultivating Ligonier’s favour is a prominent theme in his memoranda and journals referring to the Guards scheme. Ligonier was titular Commander-

in-Chief in Great Britain 1757–66, proprietary Col. of the 1st Foot Guards 1757–70, and had from 1753 to 1757 been proprietary Col. of the Royal Horse Guards. Yet as Commander-in-Chief he was chiefly a figurehead for the strategic planning of Pitt the Elder, although he did oppose Pitt’s plans for war with Spain and the continuation of the Prussian subsidies. According to Sedgwick, ‘Under Bute he had no more share than before in the conduct of the war and less in military appointments, which tended to be settled direct by Bute with the King’. Of Ligonier’s personality, Walpole remarked that ‘[h]e had all the gallant gaiety of his nation … and was universally beloved and respected’, and Newcastle noted ‘his natural turn for silence and douceur’ (Comp. Peer. vii. 654–55; Namier and Brooke, iii. 43, citing Walpole, Mems. George II, i. 139–40). See Rex Whitworth, Field Marshal Lord Ligonier: A Story of the British Army 1702–1770, 1958.

To William McQuhae, Thursday 16 December 1762 MS. Yale (L 915).

London, 16 December 1762 1

MY DEAR SIR: Your letter this morning affected me in a very different manner from what I expected. Alas I little dreamt of the melancholy news that it bore. I do assure you that it gave me a most severe shock.2 You know my regard for Mr.3 and Mrs. Reid:4 Poor People my heart bleeds for them. Pray don’t think it affectation in me to quote the Bible upon this occasion. They may say with Job ‘The thing which they greatly feared is come upon them.’5 Indeed I cannot conceive a distress greater than they must suffer on the loss of an only Son,6 and a son so remarkably promising, in whom the whole wish of their hearts was centered. Nothing but the consolations of Piety can possibly support their minds, under such a load of 336

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Affliction. Pious they are—I hope they will make themselves as calm as possible. I have inclosed a letter to Mr. Reid.7 If you think it will not disturb him, you may deliver it. Poor little Jamie! I regret him most sincerely. He was a fine Boy. He might have been a fine man. But God thought proper to take him away, now. And God is wise, and we are very ignorant.8 I can conceive your sorrow upon this occasion. His calling so often on you, was particularly affecting. Pray keep up your spirits as well as you can, and gently try to sooth the dejected minds of the worthy old man my reverend freind, and his amiable Lady. I think it is very lucky that you happened to be there. You can do them great good. You must not leave them.9 They have need of you. Write to me all the particulars of their behaviour and how they are from time to time. If my sympathy can do them any good, I am sure they have it most sincerely. Mention me to them in the kindest manner. Amidst the hurry of Business and Pleasure in this great Metropolis, I am far from being unmindfull of them or of you My Dear Mcquhae whom I much regard, and wish and hope to help to happiness. That word indeed at present is to you without meaning. Your mind is wholly engrossed with sadness. You cannot see a bit of light. All the picture of life is dusky shade. But I tell you, this will wear away; and a train of gay ideas will insensibly fill your imagination. Such is the mind of Man. For my own part, I am So fully so peremptorly satisfied of the vanity of this world, that in Judgment I have a most philosophical indifference,10 altho Passion makes me keenly pursue pleasure. Thus we fly from Ghosts in the dark11 altho’ we think there are none there. O Hominum caecae mentes!12 I am very content and very independent here. You shall get full accounts of me. Lady Betty Lady Ann and Capt Andrew are here.13 Inclose to Mr. Terrie14 at the Plantation Office Whitehall London,15 remain yours affectionately, JAMES BOSWELL Write as soon as much and as often as you can. 1 From McQuhae, 7 Dec. The letter had taken nine days to reach JB. 2 ‘I received a letter from Mcquhae, with an account of the death of his pupil the only son & comfort of his parents. I was much shocked with it: Yet the consideration of the vanity of this life, and the hopes of a better made me easy’ (Journ. 16 Dec.). 3 Rev. George Reid (1696–1786), the son of a covenanter, M.A. (Edinburgh, 1723), licensed 1723, chaplain to JB’s paternal grandfather and tutor to JB’s father, minister at Ochiltree in 1725–86 (Fasti Scot. iii. 62; Journ. 5 May 1777). He was still living ‘wonderfully well’ at Barquharrie in 1782, and died Father of the Church 6 Apr. 1786 (Journ. 15 May 1782, Fasti Scot. iii. 62). Described as ‘George Reid of Barwharrie, minister of Ochiltree’ (Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 656). JB described him in a letter written five days later as: ‘Mr. George Reid a worthy old

Clergyman’ (To JJ, 21 Dec., Corr. 1, pp. 32– 34). In an entry of 1767 he noted that Reid was welcomed at dinner at Auchinleck ‘as a worthy old friend of the family’ (Journ. 2 Apr. 1767). JB repeatedly marvelled at Reid’s heartiness (‘same as ever’, ‘Geo R. kept things quite as in old times’) into his old age, although JB also noted that Reid until his very last years was troubled by fears of death (Journ. 30 Aug., 2 Sept. 1775; 15 May 1782). From McQuhae, 27–30 Dec. provides an additional sketch of Reid’s character and verifies his depressive fear of death. 4 Jean or Jane (Campbell) Reid (c. 1721–d. 1770), who had married George Reid in 1746 (Fasti Scot. iii. 62). JB referred to her as ‘a most amiable Woman a cousin of my Father’s’; she was the second daughter of George Campbell of Treesbank and Anne Boswell (To JJ, 21 Dec., Corr. 1, pp. 32–34; cf. IGI, Pedigree Resource File). JB was kin

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to the Campbell families of Treesbank and Barquharrie through several lines, and remained close to them all his life (Robertson, ii. 242). 5 Job 3:25: ‘For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me’. 6 See From McQuhae, 7 Dec. 7 Not reported. See To Reid, 16 Dec. 8 Compare to JB’s earliest surviving letter to his mother, of 17 July 1754, consoling her on the loss of an infant son (Yale MS. L 127): ‘I was indeed very sorry to hear of the death of my poor little Brother, but however We must be submissive to the hand of a wise Providence that super[in]tends every thing that is done here below … for wise ends and purposes (though unknown to us) removed him out of this Valley of tears, this World of Sin and Misery unto the World which is above …. And besides if he had been more advanced in years it would have been a much greater grief to you’. 9 As McQuhae had presumably been taken into the household as James Reid’s tutor, the boy’s death would have rendered his services unnecessary. JB suggests he should remain as a family chaplain to Reid. From McQuhae 27–30 Dec. explains the scheme to keep McQuhae at Barquharrie: ‘Scheme proposed for my continuing at Ochiltree as an ordain’d assistant & Successor to Mr. Reid …. Mr. Reid is very fond of it & will freely part with one half of his Stipend to me which is really very kind.’ McQuhae’s search for a parish ministry, either as an assistant or as a minister, forms the substance of subsequent JB–McQuhae correspondence. He became assistant at St. Quivox in 1762 or 1763, but was not presented by the patron until Aug. 1763. 10 A sentiment partly derived from the book of Ecclesiastes, partly from Epicurean and Stoic ideas, with Lucretius thrown in as well (see note below). JB had previously referred to Ecclesiastes in From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ (JB) to the Earl of *** (Eglinton), 25 Sept. 1761; see AE’s sentiments in From AE, 1 May. JB and WD had discussed Epicurean ideas of happiness in the autumn (Journ. 23 Oct.). 11 JB would later write of his boyhood: ‘Les Servantes m’amusoit d’une infinité de contes de Voleurs, de Meutriers, de Sorciêrres et de Revenants. De sorte que mon Imagination etant continuellement effrayé Je devenois l’etre le plus craintif le plus meprisable’ (‘Ébauche de ma vie’). His concern with phantoms went beyond the rhetorical, as he remained genuinely afraid

of ghosts. ‘[T]he terror for Ghosts was strongly imprest upon my imagination when young, altho’ I have now got the better of it, yet it will now and then recurr upon me’ (Journ. 17 Sept.). He had joined in a conversation ‘upon Ghosts Witches and the second sight’ on 1 Oct., and had written on 11 Dec. that ‘a Man is affraid of Ghosts in the dark, altho’ he is sure there are none’. The conversations could occasionally drive him into an actual night terror, as after an evening (12 Mar. 1763) with the Erskines: ‘we talked of death, of theft Robbery Murder & Ghosts …. This was very strong. My mind was now filled with a real horror, instead of an imaginary one. I shuddered with apprehension. I was frightened to go home. Honest Erskine made me go with him & kindly gave the half of his bed’ (all refs. to Journ.). 12 ‘Oh, the blind minds of men!’ JB appears to have conflated two lines of Lucretius in his memory: ‘O miseras hominum mentes! O pectora caeca!’ (‘O pitiable minds of men! O blind intelligences!’) (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, ii. 14, trans. W. H. D. Rouse, Loeb ed.). 13 Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane, Lady Anne Erskine, and AE had arrived on 1 Dec., somewhat to JB’s shock and dismay: ‘This afternoon I was surprised with the arrival of Lady Betty Macfarlane, Lady Ann Erskine Captain Erskine & Miss Dempster who were come to the Red-Lyon Inn at Charing-Cross …. I immediatly went to them. To tell the plain truth, I was vexed at their coming. For to see just the plain hamely fife family hurt my grand ideas of London’ (Journ.). His account of the arrival in a letter to JJ was also disparaging: ‘Lady Betty Mcfarlane Lady Ann and Captain Erskines came here last week. Would you believe it. It vexed me. It confounded my ideas of London to find there just my auld fife hameliness’ (To JJ, 6 Dec., Corr. 1, pp. 25–27). Lady Anne Erskine and Lady Elizabeth Macfarlane (with her husband the Laird of Macfarlane) would leave London on 14 Mar. 1763, on which day JB noted: ‘I felt a little regret at the Ladies of Kelly being gone altogether’ (Journ.). AE would remain until at least 5 July 1763 (Mem.), and would depart London by 7 July 1763 (Journ.). 14 Thomas Terrie (fl. 1758–67) served as ‘Office Keeper’ or ‘Chamber Keeper’ for the Council of Trade and Plantations 1758–67. Terrie was paid £45 p.a. for his services until his dismissal (J. C. Sainty, Office-Holders in Modern Britain III: Officials of the Board of Trade, 1660–1870, 1974, pp. 6 n. 46, 35,

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118). According to JB, Terrie was ‘originally from the shire of Murray. He had a Wife but no children’ (Journ. 26 Nov.). Terrie was JB’s landlord from 26 Nov. 1762 to 6 July 1763. ‘At last I fixed in Downing-Street Westminster. I took a lodging up two pair of Stairs with the use of a handsom parlour all the forenoon … I also made bargain that I should dine with the family whenever I pleased, at a shilling a time …. The Street was a genteel street, within a few steps of the Parade; near the house of commons & very healthfull’ (Journ.). Their relationship was initially amicable, with JB noting on 12 Dec.: ‘My Landlord is a jolly civil man’ (Journ.). By 1 Mar. 1763 his opinion would shift: ‘He is a fellow of a high Scotch spirit very passionate & very easily perswaded …. Terrie is a sad harsh dog. But not a bad fellow in the main. However I shall allways have a worse opinion of him, & have less acquaintance with him. Tho’ I shall make him very serviceable to me, as usual’ (Journ.). By July 1763 matters were to worsen; JB complained of Terrie’s ‘full force of low rudeness and passionate ill-manners’, and observed: ‘I would

most certainly represent [Terrie] as a very rude unmannerly fellow, in whose house no Gentleman could be safe to stay: And I advised [Mrs. Terrie] to make him give over letting lodgings, as he was very unfit for it’ (Journ. 5–7 July 1763). 15 The Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations, which was in operation from its refoundation in 1696 until its abolition in 1782. Halifax’s departure from office as First Lord of Trade in 1761 had weakened the board’s control over colonial matters such as nomination of colonial officials (J. C. Sainty, Office-Holders in Modern Britain III: Officials of the Board of Trade, 1660–1870, 1974, pp. 3–6, 28; A. H. Basye, The Lords Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, 1748–1782, 1925). JB noted going to the office on only one occasion, 6 July 1763 (Journ.), although he was several times in the neighbourhood of Whitehall. Presumably JB received his mail at a Crown Office in order to avoid paying postage. Certainly Terrie helped JB to other perquisites of office: ‘Mr. Terrie is in a public office, so that he supplies me with Paper and all materials for writing in great abundance, for nothing’ (Journ. 12 Dec.).

To the Rev. George Reid, Thursday 16 December 1762 Not reported. Enclosed in To McQuhae, 16 Dec.: ‘I have inclosed a letter to Mr. Reid. If you think it will not disturb him, you may deliver it’. It was presumably predominately a letter of spiritual and philosophical consolation to the Reids on the death of their son, James, similar to that expressed in the letter to McQuhae on the same subject. The only known letter from JB to Reid is To Reid and McQuhae, 23 July 1766, printed in Corr. 5, p. 48; see also From McQuhae and Reid, 14 July 1766, Corr. 5, p. 44–45.

To the Duke of Queensberry, ?Thursday 16 December 1762 Not reported. Probably the letter mentioned in Journ. 26 Dec: ‘I this day received a letter from the Duke of Queensberry (in answer to one that I had wrote him; telling me that a Commission in the Guards was a fruitless pursuit’. From Queensberry, 22 Dec., may be the reply to this letter, assuming JB wrote a second letter of request about the Guards. The hypothetical date is based on the fact that JB had called on Queensberry on 16 Dec., but had found that the Duke was setting out for Amesbury, Wilts., and could not see him in person (Journ.). Queensberry’s answering JB from Amesbury rather than London is the chief reason for suggesting that there was a second letter of request from JB, instead of only one sent and received in London. However, as Queensberry claimed that he received the news about the army from Ligonier’s friend the day before he left town (‘having met with an intimate friend of his, the day before I came out of town’), this late news may have delayed his reply to the letter he had received from JB a half-month previously. If that were the case, this entry would be a ‘ghost’.

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To West Digges, Saturday 18 December 1762 Not reported. JB sent WD the 18 Dec. issue of the North Briton (see From WD, 29 Dec., n. 2). If he followed his plan, it was sent on the day of publication, and thus would have been issue No. 29. From WD, 29 Dec., shows that WD received and read No. 29 which contained the ‘paper about the family of the Wise Acres’.

From Basil Cochrane,1 Monday 20 December 1762 MS. Yale (C 798).

Edinburgh, Decr. 20th 1762 DEAR JAMIE: By the letters you Receive from your Father2 and Mother3 you will find that I Faithfully deliver what letters and Pamphletes you Inclose to me.4 I am glade and very glade att what you tell me that you have Settled a plan of œconomy5 which as you Say will make you live easily and Creditably. If So there is no fear but all will goe well. The first Setting out of Life is the Grand Point and a young Fellow that Stumbles into a proper Channel att first Setting out in the World may slip but Seldom falls Totally and therefore my Dear Jamie alow me to beg of you to be much upon your Guard.6 Doe your utmost to please your Father and if So take my Word for it all will come about again. Every thing will goe as you would have it. Tho’ he is angry yett I know he Loves you and if you would behave with Common Discration. There is nothing that you would aske of him to make you easie and happy that he would Refuse you but Don’t lett Such Silly expressions drop from your Pen that you would rather be a Seargent in the Guards than have five hundred pounds in any other part of the World.7 If this is your way of thinking pray keep it to your Self. Play the Politician. Don’t Speak out every thing you think.8 Numbers of Folks that you Converse with are goeing their Game with you Pumping every thing they can gett out of you purposely either to Repeat to your Father or to those that will.9 I Sincerly wish you well my Dear Jamie and am with great affection Your Faithfull, Humble Servant, BASIL COCHRANE 1 Cochrane’s advice to JB in this letter parallels Lord Auchinleck’s. As Lord Auchinleck’s letter of 24 Dec. shows, he and Cochrane socialized (for example, they dined together 24 Dec.), and seem, on the evidence of the overlap in their views, to have discussed the question of how to guide JB’s life in London (From Lord Auchinleck, 24 Dec., Yale MS. C 212). 2 In the period of the London journal of 15 Nov. 1762–4 Aug. 1763, Lord Auchinleck wrote ten letters to JB which survive and which are scheduled to be published in the ‘Family Correspondence’ volume later in this series (Yale MSS. C 211– 20; see Catalogue ii. 430–32). By this time, Lord Auchinleck had certainly written one letter to JB, dated 27 Nov. (Yale MS. C 211). In that letter, he had offered JB the

choice of life between being a man of ‘honour’, ‘learning’, and the ‘active life’ and being shallow, talkative, and one of the supposed ‘men of pleasure’. He advised JB to be ‘much upon your guard’ in ‘Conduct’, and set to ‘improving your mind’ with ‘usefull knowledge’ by ‘listening attentively’ and ‘reading’. Among his suggestions were that JB attend the debates in the Lords and Commons, and the proceedings in the Courts of Chancery and Exchequer, and make a study of ‘Reading, Gardening, planting &c’, especially ‘fruit & Kitchen & fflower gardens’—presumably with an eye to preparing himself for his future work on the Auchinleck estate. He criticized JB’s Guards scheme as unrealistic, counselled JB to avoid ‘Low company’ and ‘Strangers’, to beware of resorting to strong drink and ‘the

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Gin Shop’, and to cease ‘mimickry of others, the last Shift of Witlings’. He also reminded JB that he should particularly mind his behaviour in light of his foolishness when in London in 1760, and in the light of his brother John’s mental illness: ‘It is necessary you shoud be more upon your guard than ordinary both on account of the escapade you made three years ago And the State of poor Johnie …. Beware too of Strangers And look on every man as a Stranger whose character you have not had from one you can confide in’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov., Yale MS. C 211). On 24 Dec., Lord Auchinleck wrote another letter to JB (Yale MS. C 212), which answered two of JB’s not reported letters, and criticized him for failing to acquire any useful knowledge or to follow a suitable plan for living. 3 There are no surviving letters written by JB’s mother, Euphemia Boswell (Lady Auchinleck) between her fragment from c. 1755 (Yale MS. C 331) and her later letter of 7 Mar. 1763 (Yale MS. C 332), which ended with Lady Auchinleck’s plea to JB to conform more closely to his father’s wishes (Catalogue ii. 465). 4 It is not known which ‘Pamphletes’ JB sent to his parents. No letter (or even excerpt of a letter) from JB to his father has been reported prior to an excerpt from 1765, and the first full surviving letter from JB to his father is a draft from c. 1775. The only surviving letter from JB to his mother (see To McQuhae, 16 Dec., n. 8) dates from 1754 (Catalogue i. 149, 159). But evidence survives of other letters from JB to his parents during Nov. and Dec. Lord Auchinleck’s letter of 27 Nov. stated, ‘I have received yours giving account of your arrival at London’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov. [Yale MS. C 211]). A Memorandum of 2 Dec. appears to read ‘Send Lett to Johnst &c also to [Mother].’ (Mem.). JJ informed JB on 13 Dec. that ‘my Lord and Lady [Auchinleck] were much pleased with a letter they received from you this day Se’ennight [i.e., 6 Dec.]’ (From JJ, 13 Dec., Corr. 1, pp. 28–29). And Lord Auchinleck’s letter of 24 Dec. 1762 noted that ‘since my last [?27 Nov.] I have received two of Your Letters’ (Yale MS. C 212). 5 JB’s ‘Scheme of living’ (see From McQuhae, 7 Dec., n. 8) worked out a budget based on ‘My Allowance from My Father’ who ‘has now made me my own master’. He noted that on ‘£200 a year’ it would be ‘difficult’ to ‘support the rank of a Gentleman’. His plan included ‘A genteel

lodging in a good part of the town’, ‘a regular place to dine at’, ‘a fire in my dining room … for seven months a year’, ‘wax candles’, ‘ a suit of clean linnens every day’, daily professional hair-dressing and shoewiping, and new ‘Cloaths’. Having noted that these basics left him little money for ‘coach-hire diversion & the Tavern’, he added that ‘I hope to conform my method of living to my circumstances’ since ‘[t]hey may grow better in time’ (Yale MS. M 259). Cochrane’s comment reflects Lord Auchinleck’s concern that even at the end of Dec. JB had failed ‘to acquire a little usefull knowledge and to set up upon a sensible prudent & Discreet plan’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 24 Dec., Yale MS. C 212). JB’s ‘Scheme’, with its emphasis on foppish material concerns, did not meet his father’s standard of a rational plan for selfcontrol, discretion, listening, and reading which could render JB’s time in London educational. Yet JB’s Journ. for Nov.–Dec. shows his concern with developing a more discreet, Addisonian character, less prone to ‘rattling’, ‘mimicry’, and ‘shaving’ (see Journ., esp. 11, 21 Nov., 3 Dec.). 6 An earlier not reported letter from JB to his father had apparently offered, along with an account of JB’s arrival in London, a statement of JB’s ‘resolution to be much upon [my] guard as to [my] Conduct [here]’. 7 Presumably a phrase in one of the not reported letters from JB to his father. On 26 Dec. JB’s conviction that his father had the entire Scots elite arrayed against his Guards scheme rose to a pitch which provoked another such set of what Cochrane had called silly expressions: ‘I was quite stupified & enraged …. I imagined my Father was at the bottom of it. I had multitudes of wild schemes. I thought of enlisting for five years as a Soldier in India, of being a private man either in the horse or footguards &c.’ (Journ. 26 Dec.). JB’s desperation at the thwarting of his Guards scheme is evident in his mounting threats: in the pre-20 Dec. letter to which Cochrane referred, JB’s threat was to become a Guards sergeant, by 26 Dec. he was threatening to be a Guards private or even a soldier of the East India Company. 8 The advice closely resembles JB’s father’s: ‘[be] swift to hear & slow to speak … if a Young man will still be breaking in with his conversation[,] in place of getting applause which he aims at contempt insues[,] for a presumptuous forward talkative Youth never can be liked’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov., Yale MS. C 211).

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20 DECEMBER 1762 9 Lord Auchinleck had written to JB: ‘Above all things keep out of Low company, they will flatter you for a belly full & laugh

at you afterwards’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov., Yale MS. C 211).

From the Earl of Eglinton, Tuesday 21 December 17621 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 22 Dec. (Yale MS. J 2.1, p. 151), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. C 1178). The original copy was in the hand of an unknown amanuensis. The use of the amanuensis annoyed JB: ‘The card was not written with his own hand, which I was not pleased at’ (Journ. 22 Dec.). JB in his reply (To Eglinton, 21 Dec.) made a point that he, by contrast to Eglinton, did not employ ‘a Secretary’. Eglinton freely admitted that his note of 21 Dec. had been ‘wrot by his Vale de chamber’ (From Eglinton, 22 Dec.).

Lord Eglintoune1 presents his Compliments to Mr. Boswell, and returns him a great many thanks for being so good as call on him, so often.2 He is sorry he happened to be allways out when Mr. Boswell call’d.3 1 Since the original does not appear to have survived, the date is editorially supplied from Journ. 22 Dec.: ‘Last night I received a card from him …. This he intended as a sharp reproof’. 2 Eglinton had been JB’s host and guide for much of the London stay in 1760 (Earlier Years, pp. 45–52). In a 1760 letter JB had described Eglinton as ‘one of the best men in the world’ and boasted of ‘my Lord’s elegant and polite conversation’ (To Dalrymple, 22 Mar. 1760 [MS not at Yale]). This adoring, awestruck attitude towards Eglinton from 1760 to 1762 is reflected in JB’s unpublished verse epistle to Eglinton (To Eglinton, c. 7– 11 Apr. or 29 Apr.–3 May 1760 [expanded 1761]), as well as JB’s published Scots Mag. letter (From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ [JB] to the Earl of *** [Eglinton], 25 Sept. 1761), and Cub (1762). However, JB had begun to sour on Eglinton as a result of the letters in which Eglinton had brought up his scepticism about the Guards scheme and his irritation at the publication of Cub (To Eglinton, ?after 24 Mar.–May; From Eglinton, ?early Apr.–?early June; cf. Journ. 25 July). 3 When JB had arrived in London, he had initially resolved to be cool towards Eglinton: ‘As Lord Eglintoune had used me neglectfully, and as I considered him as not to be depended upon I determined to keep clear of him as a Patron; but to like him as a Companion; and if he offered to do me any service good & well; But I should ask no assistance from him.’ Yet he had met, and again been charmed by, Eglinton on 23 Nov.: ‘I called thrice, but he was out. This day, I received a formal card of invitation to dine with him, I went & was warmly received. Finding myself with him in the very

dining room where in my days of youthfull fire I had been so happy, melted me much’ (Journ. 23 Nov.; cf. 27 Nov., 1 Dec.). He had socialized with Eglinton on 25–27 Nov., 29 Nov., 3 Dec., and 7 Dec., writing his extended character sketch of Eglinton for the entry of 27 Nov., but noted on 22 Dec. that ‘I had not been at Lord Eglintoune’s for ten days’, presumably meaning from 11 to 21 Dec., perhaps loosely referring to 8–21 Dec. (Journ.). Eglinton, as a Scots Representative Peer who sat in the House of Lords, had at least some demands placed on his time by the session of the Parliament which had begun on 25 Nov. JHL reveals that on that date he was appointed to a committee to ‘consider of the Orders and Customs of this House’. He was marked as in attendance at five meetings of the Lords on 25 Nov., and 3, 6, 9, and 20 Dec. But he was hardly an indefatigable politician, and he was absent from eight meetings on 26, 29 Nov., and 7, 10, 13, 16, 17, and 21 Dec. (Journal of the House of Lords, vol. covering 1760–64, entries for 25 Nov.–21 Dec. 1762). On 9 Dec. occurred the crucial Lords’ debate on the controversial Preliminary Treaty of Peace with France and Spain brokered by Eglinton’s patron Lord Bute. Although Eglinton was in attendance, the Earl of Hardwicke and Bute himself were the only peers whose speeches were recorded in the Parl. Hist. edition of that debate (Parl. Hist. xv. 1230–79; Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, 1907, ii. 363; cf. Journ. 25 Nov.). JB’s social calls while Eglinton was absent presumably took place about the time of that debate.

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To the Earl of Eglinton, Tuesday 21 December 1762 1 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 22 Dec. (Yale MS. J 2.1, p. 151– 52), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 488). Presumably one of the cards referred to by Lord Eglinton in Joun. 25 Jan. 1763: ‘Writing me such cards & never coming near me, was enough to make me break with you. But I made allowances for your mistakes’ (Journ. 25 Jan. 1763).

Mr. Boswell presents his Compliments to Lord Eglintoune; hopes he will excuse his writing this card with his own hand: He has not a Secretary.2 Mr. Boswell has payed his respects to Lord Eglintoune, several times.3 He lodges at Mr. Terrie’s in Downing Street. 1 Since the original does not appear to have survived, the date is editorially supplied from Journ. 22 Dec. (see previous letter, n. 1): ‘I am the easiest fellow in the world to those who behave well to me: But if a man has the least slight I will keep him to every punctilio. I sent him for answer …’. 2 JB’s entire domestic retinue in London consisted of ‘Molly the maid … one of the stupidest human beings that I ever met with’; Thomas Terrie’s wife, who managed his purchases; and Terrie’s sister, who

sewed for him (Journ. 12, 14 Dec.). His experience of having a valet de chambre came later, on the continent, e.g., Jacob Hänni on the Grand Tour (Journ. 25 July 1764). JB’s first professional amanuensis was James Brown, whom JB employed c. 1766–c. 1770 (see Corr. 5, p. 203, n. 1). 3 Presumably a reference to JB’s various attempts to visit Eglinton (see notes for previous not reported entries in this sequence).

From the Earl of Eglinton, Wednesday 22 December 1762 MS. Yale (C 1179). See From and To Eglinton, 21 Dec. While JB entered the first two letters of the exchange in his journal, he did not select this one for inclusion. That omission constitutes yet another case of JB’s selective shaping of the narrative of his life in the journal he sent to JJ. Certainly Eglinton’s sarcastic rhetorical defeat of JB, so clear in this note, is transformed in Journ. into JB’s victory of forcing a nobleman to pay court to him.

Queen Street,1 Decr. 22 Lord Eglinton presents his compliments to Mr Boswell, and returns him a great many thanks for being so good as to teach him good breeding. He did not know he had been upon cerimony with Mr Boswell otherwise he would have done him self the honor to have waited on Mr Boswell sooner. Lord Eglinton may be mistaken (and2 submits it to Mr Boswels better judgement) but he always lookd on cerimony to be, certain rules for the conduct of those who had not sence to guide them: and never to be used by a man of true politeness but to keep impertinance at a distance. As to the message sent Mr Boswel being wrot by his Secretary as he is pleasd to call it, Lord Eglinton begs leave to assure Mr Boswel it was not from want of respect, but as the Duke de Nivernoiz3 the Duke of Kingston4 &c. &c. generally send messages to him wrot by the Footman or the porter he thought he might venture to send one to Mr Boswell wrot by his Vale de chamber.5 Lord Eglinton sends this by a Servant out of Livery.6 343

22 DECEMBER 1762 1 Eglinton’s London residence was in Queen Street, Mayfair (see From Eglinton, before 18 Jan. 1763). 2 MS. ‘mistaken, and’. Eglinton apparently lost track of his punctuation, and began his parenthetical phrase with a comma, but ended it with a parenthesis. 3 Louis-Jules-Barbon Mancini-Mazarini (1716–98), Duc de Nivernais, Governeur de la dite Province (from 1730), Grande de España, Ministre d’Etat, membre de l’Académie Française (1743) and l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres (1744), friend of Duclos and Montesquieu. A soldier from the age of 18 despite his delicate constitution, he had fought in the War of the Austrian Succession, and rose to the rank of Brigadier (1743). His fragile health forbidding subsequent army service, he became a diplomat from 1748 (to the Vatican, then Prussia 1755–56). He was an admirer of poetry, and himself composed verses which placed in him Eglinton’s tradition of the poet-amateur. He was also a historian. His collected works were to be published in 1796 and 1807. From 1762 to 1763, he was a negotiator of the Anglo-French peace whose preliminaries were under debate in the Parliament Nov.– Dec., and whose definitive form would be concluded 10 Feb. 1763. While in London Nivernois became a member of the Royal Society. He had arrived in London on 12 Sept. as ambassador and plenipotentiary to help negotiate the peace treaty between England and France, as he was fluent in English. He had a personal stake in concluding the war, as his son-in-law had died of wounds sustained at Krefeldt in 1758 (BU, xxxi. 294– 98; Dictionnaire de la Noblesse, xiii. 98; Gent. Mag. Sept., Oct. 1762, xxxii. 446, 501; Julian S. Corbett, England in the Seven Years’ War: A Study in Combined Strategy, 1907, ii. 357). 4 Evelyn Pierrepont (1712–73), 2nd Duke of Kingston from 1726, K.G. (1741), who had sat in the House of Lords from 1733

(though with no recorded speeches or protests) and had been a staff-bearer at the coronation of George III. He was in the military from 1745 at latest, when he had raised a regiment which had helped destroy the Jacobite army at Culloden; he was a lt.-gen. (1759), and eventually a gen. (1772). He was later (1763–65) Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire and steward of Sherwood Forest. He was described by Horace Walpole as a very weak man, of the greatest beauty, and finest person in England (Oxford DNB; Comp. Peer. vii. 308–09; Horace Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of King George III, ed. Derrick Jarrett, 2000). In 1769 he married Elizabeth Chudleigh (whom JB mentioned in To Sterne, after 7 Apr. 1760 and ?before Oct. 1761). When JB attended Eglinton’s breakfast and concert, Kingston was present (Journ. 7 Dec.). 5 The name of Lord Eglinton’s valet de chambre has not been discovered. The gist of the social insult intended is that a valet (even if a valet de chambre) ranked lower in a noble household than a personal secretary. 6 Journ. 22 Dec.: ‘[A]s Lord Northumberland had called for me, I thought Lord Eglintoune might do so: As I was quite independent of him … I sent him [an] answer …. This had a proper effect; for today he called, when I was abroad; which satisfied me much.’ Presuming JB to be correct in his assertion that ‘he called’, ‘a Servant out of Livery’ was a jocular reference to Eglinton himself. Chesterfield, in letter to his son of 13 Feb. 1748, pointed out the difference between a ‘servant in livery’ and a ‘servant out of livery’. A servant who undertook his daily duties ‘out of Livery’ generally held, or presumed to hold, a higher status within the household, and might think himself exempted from certain demeaning tasks that a man in livery could be ordered to perform (The Letters of … Chesterfield, ed. Bonamy Dobrée, 1932, iii. 1098–99).

From the Duke of Queensberry, Wednesday 22 December 1762 MS. Yale (C 2334). Received 26 Dec.: ‘I this day received a letter from the Duke of Queensberry (in answer to one that I had wrote him; telling me that a Commission in the Guards was a fruitless pursuit, and advising me to take to a civil rather than a military life. I was quite stupified & enraged at this. I imagined my Father1 was at the bottom of it.’ (Journ. 26 Dec.). He was still mindful of the letter on 20 Jan. 1763, when he confronted the duke about its meaning (Journ.).

Ambresbury, Decr. 22d 1762 SIR: I am sorry you have set your mind so much upon going into the guards,2 because I am perfectly convinced you will now find it a fruitless pursuit, and 344

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therefore the best advice I can give you, is to turn your thoughts some other way. My regard for your father’s recommendation,3 and desire of gratifying your inclination, made me wish to obtain what I had very little hopes of doing,4 and you know from the beginning I never flatter’d you with any prospect of success, and therefore I hope you will the easier reconcile your mind to a Civil instead of Military occupation, especially when you consider that altho’ you are a young man, yet you are above the age when an Ensign’s Commission is thought desireable. I found it would be in vain to apply to my Lord Ligonier,5 having met with an intimate friend of his, the day before I came out of town, who assured me it would be to no purpose to sollicite him, nor indeed any body else, in the present state of the Army.6 I am with much regard Sir Your obedient humble servant,7 QUEENSBERRY ETC. 1 JB’s belief that his father had acted to undermine his military ambitions was fuelled by the Countess of Northumberland: ‘Sir, said she, I am sorry to find these guards so difficult to be got. I have been speaking to some Officers on that Subject. I imagined that your Father had wrote in such a way to the Duke of Queensberry that he had not been in earnest to get it’ (Journ. 30 Dec.). As late as 1791, JB recalled that ‘Queensberry … was to obtain for him what he wished; but, perhaps from a secret understanding with Lord Auchinleck, it was delayed from time to time’ (Memoirs JB, p. xxxii). 2 JB had recently obtained encouragement in his Guards scheme from the family of Col. Nathaniel Gould (Journ. 2, 6 Dec.), and from the Countess of Northumberland: ‘She mentioned my Commission & kindly desired me not to be impatient, & I would get it. If the Duke does not do it for me, She will be my next resource’ (Journ. 10 Dec.). He had written of the scheme in his journal on 11 Dec. and 13 Dec., when he noted: ‘I wanted to be something; and that the guards was the only scene of real life that I ever liked’ (Journ.). On 17 Dec. he had confidently informed TS that he had given up the law scheme entirely and was certainly ‘going into the Guards’ (Journ.). Yet JB was aware even before he received this letter that the scheme might fail. In To AE, 20 Nov., in Mem. 7 Dec., and in Journ. 11 Dec. JB had already contemplated what he might do to live content if the scheme did not succeed. He discussed one alternative plan with AE around the time that Queensberry was writing his letter: ‘some days ago … I told [AE] that if the Guards could not be got for me. I would just take a Cornetcy of Dragoons. I beseech you said he; never think of that’ (Journ. 23 Dec.).

3 Initially, Lord Auchinleck had agreed to help JB in the Guards scheme, as seen in the letter he wrote to Queensberry requesting the duke’s assistance in obtaining a commission. Yet he had backed away from the idea as the year progressed. In a letter of 27 Nov., he had written: ‘Before you left this I told you that it was in vain for you to expect a Commission in the Guards nor do I think you shoud be sorry at the disappointment, a man of your Age to enter in to the Guards on a peace and to live all his days & dy an Ensign is a poor prospect which no man woud be sorry to lose. The Entry is shabby & the Exit the same’. He added, ‘you have no chance for a Commission in the Guards and your pushing such a pitifull thing will make you held cheap’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov., Yale MS. C 211). In a conversation on 13 Dec., TS had discouraged him, pointing out that the Guards scheme was ‘the plan most opposite to your Father’s inclinations’ and advocating the law scheme instead (Journ. 13 Dec.; see also 17 Dec.). 4 Queensberry, who better than JB understood the patronage system, had been meticulously cautious and had taken care not to raise the hopes of Lord Auchinleck (From Queensberry to Lord Auchinleck, 24 May). He was also cautious with JB. On 2 Dec. ‘[Queensberry] told me that he found it very difficult to get me a Commission, but that he would try’ (Journ. 2 Dec.). On 6 Dec. ‘General Douglas … told me that the Duke told him that he thought it would not be in his power to get me a Commission … [I] despaired a good deal of getting it … [I] went to the Duke’s … He was gently informing me that the thing was very difficult … He told me that he would do what he could’ (Journ.). Queensberry still was guarded on 13 Dec.: ‘the Duke … [was]

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rather in better humour about my Commission: As Mr. Townsend had resigned, who was his great opposer … I told his Grace that I would not relinquish the pursuit but wait for my Commission if it should be two years’ (Journ. 13 Dec.). Queensberry on 20 Jan. 1763 would also suggest that JB choose ‘a civil life’, presumably ‘the law’. JB had already recognized that Queensberry made no real promises: ‘My youthfull impatience was a little unsatisfied with the calm diffident speech of the Duke; which however is in truth infinitely better than talking much & making me beleive much more than is true’ (Journ. 13 Dec.). 5 Queensberry had previously mentioned that Ligonier was key to JB’s achieving a commission: ‘He told me that he would do what he could with Lord Ligonier’ (Journ. 6 Dec.). Ligonier continued to be the key, according to the duke: ‘He [Queensberry] told me he had not seen Lord Ligonier, altho’ he had called on him, twice; but he promised to see him, & also to make application soon to the new Secretary at war, which he agreed with me, might do good’ (Journ. 13 Dec.). On 20 Jan. 1763 JB again mentioned the duke’s (unkept) promise of access to Ligonier: ‘your Grace has never yet mentioned me to Lord Ligonier. I should be sorry to give your Grace a great deal of trouble, but I should think that it would not be much to mention the thing once, so as I might be put upon Lord Ligonier’s list. He promised to me that he would mention it’ (Journ.).

6 After the failure of the war faction in the Commons division on 9 Dec. and in the Lords’ debate on the same day, it was clear that Bute had the votes in the Parliament to ratify the Peace Preliminaries and thereby end Britain’s participation in the Seven Years’ War (Parl. Hist. xv. 1257–79). Therefore, the army was not in need of new officers. In Feb. 1763 more than fifty regiments would be disbanded; the size of the army was soon after reduced from 120,000 to about 50,000 men and the number of ‘marching’ regiments cut to seventy line regiments of foot, leaving the officers to receive half-pay (J. Steven Watson, The Reign of George III, 1960, p. 103). 7 JB’s answer to this letter was not on paper, but in the form of a ‘push’ on 20 Jan. 1763: ‘My Lord said I, I got Your Grace’s letter, and was sorry for the contents. Your Grace was pleased to mention my following a civil life. I should be glad to know what. The law I am not able for. If indeed I could be put upon the civil list, for about a thousand a year, as Sir Francis Wronghead says, I should like it very well.— At this he laughed. He then talked of the difficulty of getting a Commission …. In short I find that indolence was the matter with him, & that he must be pushed, altho’ I have but little hopes from him’ (Journ.); for Sir Francis Wronghead, see The Provok’d Husband, 1728, by Colley Cibber, based on Sir John Vanbrugh’s A Journey to London.

To West Digges, Saturday 25 December 1762 Not reported. The usual shipment of the North Briton, plus (at least) a short ‘Encomium’. If JB followed his plan, it was sent on the day of publication, and thus would have been issue No. 30. Mentioned in From WD, 29 Dec.: ‘Your obliging Memorandum Every Wednesday …. I Experience once a Week that a gallant Young Gentleman can live amidst the pleasures of London, and not forget a poor Absent creature at 400 miles distance …. I thank You also for the Very honest Encomium passd by a very honest Young Man upon the blessing of Bacon And Eggs. I red them with sincere pleasure’.

To the Countess of Northumberland, Monday 27 December 17621 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 27 Dec. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 165– 69), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 990): ‘I went to Mrs. Gould’s 7 told my lamentable story [of Queensberry’s rejection of the Guards scheme]. I also told it to my freind Douglass. They advised me to apply to Lady Northumberland. I therefore wrote a letter to her Ladyship to the following purpose …. This I sent to her Ladyship’ (Journ. 27 Dec.).

MADAM: Your kindness to me upon many occasions2 makes me freely tell you any thing that vexes me. Sympathy is the greatest cordial we can have. I have received 346

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a letter from The Duke of Queensberry informing me that a Commission in the Guards cannot be got for me. What does your Ladyship think of a man who notwithstanding of such a dissapointment can cry vive la Bagatelle!3 and walk about contented chearfull and merry? Have not I spirit? ought I not to be a Soldier? ought I not to have the honour of serving George the Third?4 When your Ladyship tore the skin of your leg, and yet kept up your spirits, You had good reason to be vain.5 I think I may be so too. Your Ladyship may remember that I observed to you that People often fell into a great mistake; Because People of consequence liked them as Acquaintances and showed them civility they applied to them for substantial favours, which is quite a different sort of a thing. To come to the point Madam, Here am I anxious to get a Commission in the Guards. If you and My Lord can do the thing for me, I shall be very happy.6 I have an independent Spirit. I think a welch rabbit7 and Porter8 with freedom of spirit better than Ortolans9 and Burgundy10 with servility.11 I will by no means cringe not even to the ancient and honourable family of Northumberland. As a family I revere it.12 But I revere my own mind more. I can assure you Madam, that I do not expect that you are to take so much trouble for me. But I thought it was a chance and I might try. I have got as much as I can live upon:13 But I want to be something and I like nothing but the Army. If your Ladyship tells me that it is not convenient, I shall neither be surprised nor fretted. I am much obliged to you, for your goodness allready. It just comes to this, If the Representatives of the noble Piercy chuse to take a young man of a good old Scotch family by the hand, Who will rather do credit to his friends than otherwise and who will be very gratefull, it will be extremely obliging. I remain, etc. 1 Since the original does not appear to have survived, the date is editorially supplied from Journ. 27 Dec. 2 See To the Countess of Northumberland, 1 Apr. 1761, and n. 1. JB planned to leave a visiting-card at Northumberland House 28 Nov. (Mem. 28 Nov.: ‘leave full card at Northumb House’), and after one or two calls while they were absent, was invited on 3 Dec. to Lady Northumberland’s rout 7 Dec. (Journ. 3, 7 Dec.). On 7 Dec., Lady Northumberland had taken notice of JB in the crowd at her rout: ‘Mr. Boswell, I am very happy to see you. How do you do? I hope you are come to settle among us …. I gave positive orders that you should be admitted whenever you called ….’ JB continued: ‘I could observe People looking at me with envy, as a man of some distinction & a favourite of My Lady’s …. I am sure I deserve to be a favourite’ (Journ.). He had visited and conversed with her for twenty minutes on 10 Dec., in which conversation she invited him to ‘a private party every friday for particular friends; and that she would allways be glad to see me there, when I had nothing else to do. I exulted & thanked her, & said that I could not think

how I deserved all this, but that I hoped we should be better acquainted, and that I should run about the house like a tame spaniel … [I] withdrew full of joy at being reckoned a particular friend of the heir of the great Piercy, & a Woman of the first consequence in London.’ That same night, from 7 P.M. to 11 P.M., he attended part of her Friday card-party, although he did not play and eventually ‘tired’ (Journ. 10 Dec.). Although he missed the following Friday’s party, he recorded attendance at another Friday evening at Northumberland House 24 Dec.: ‘away I went in full dress to Northumberland-House’ (Journ. 24 Dec.). 3 ‘Vive la Bagatelle, is the maxim. A light heart may bid defiance to fortune’ (To AE , 25 Aug. 1761 [E–B], and n. 1). JB had in the autumn written in his journal, ‘Full of Swift’s maxim of vive la Bagatelle’ (Journ. 15 Sept.). 4 Despite JB’s doubts about the ‘House of George’ (French Theme, c. 14 Nov. 1763, in Holland, p. 67), he strove to be a Tory and yet have a most warm loyalty for King George III, whom he believed different from the first two Georges because he had been born a Briton (?Mem. 31 Jan. 1764, Holland, p. 131).

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27 DECEMBER 1762 5 Walpole mentioned the injury in a letter of Dec. 1759: ‘That great vulgar Countess [Lady Northumberland] has been laid up with a hurt in her leg; Lady Rebecca Poulett pushed her … against a bench: the Duchess of Grafton asked if it was true that Lady Rebecca kicked her?—‘Kicked me Madam! When did you ever hear of a Percy that took a kick?’ (Walpole to Montague, 23 Dec. 1759, Corres. Walpole, ix. 264–65). 6 The countess had encouraged JB’s Guards scheme up to this point, and seventeen days earlier she had suggested that if Queensberry failed, she might be able to help him. ‘She mentioned my Commission & kindly desired me not to be impatient, & I would get it. If the Duke does not do it for me, She will be my next resource. But it is better to have but one Patron at a time, & stick closs to him’ (Journ. 10 Dec.). After JB’s initial rage at Queensberry’s letter expressing doubts about the Guards scheme, ‘good sense prevailed & I resolved to be chearfull & to wait & to ask it of Lady Northumberland’ (Journ. 26 Dec.). Both the earl and countess held posts in the court of Queen Charlotte, and the two were related by marriage and connected by politics to Bute. 7 A contemporary preparation of Welsh Rabbit or Rarebit was described by Hannah Glasse: ‘To make a Welch-Rabbit. Toast the Bread on both Sides, then toast the Cheese on one Side, and lay it on the Toast, and with a hot Iron brown the other Side’ (OED, quoting from Hannah Glasse, Cookery, 1747, ix. 97). Rarebit was linked with Welsh poverty, as the Welsh were assumed to be too poor to eat the Roast Beef of Old England and obliged to dine instead on melted cheese and bread. Yet rarebit and porter or ale were often enjoyed by the more affluent: Frances Burney in 1771 liked ‘to browse over a pot of Castalian Porter and a Welsh Rabbit’, and in 1825 Sir Walter Scott esteemed ‘A welch rabbit and a tankard of ale’. ‘Scotch rabbit’ seems to have been a variant term for the dish, again playing off the English ridicule of neighbouring nations’ poverty (OED, quoting Mme. D’Arblay, Early Diary, 1889, I. 130, and from Sir Walter Scott, 12 Oct. 1825, in Fam. Lett. [1894], II. xxiii. 354).

8

For porter, see To AE, 19 June 1762, n.

12. 9 Ortolans are small songbirds, a species of European bunting, that, when roasted or grilled, are eaten, bones and all, as a delicacy. During the eighteenth century they were hunted almost to extinction (Jonathan Bartlett, Cook’s Dictionary and Culinary Reference, 1996). 10 Burgundy was regularly imported to Scotland from the fifteenth century, though it never became as popular as claret. Its popularity was another sign of Scots francophilia and the auld alliance, despite the inroads of port (F. Marian McNeill, The Scots Cellar, 1973, pp. 37–38). 11 Resembling the moral of Aesop’s fable of the town mouse and the country mouse. 12 JB had earlier in the month mused on ‘ancient ideas of the family of Piercy …. This is indeed a noble family in every Respect. They live in a most princely manner perfectly suitable to their high rank …. They keep up the true figure of old english Nobility’ (Journ. 7 Dec.). 13 A statement which conceals the budgetary strain apparent in JB’s ‘Scheme of Living’ and in Journ. See, for example, his statement to ‘Louisa’ as recorded 18 Dec.: ‘I am here upon a very moderate allowance. I am upon honour to make it serve me, and I am obliged to live with great œconomy’. See also his statement on 14 Dec.: ‘Manifold are the reasons for this my present wonderfull continence. I am upon a plan of œconomy and therefore cannot bea[r] the expence of first-rate dames’ (Journ.). Most of his budgeting difficulties stemmed from his need to maintain a suitable coiffure and wardrobe for visits to places such as Northumberland House: ‘went in full dress to Northumberland-House. There was spirit, to lay out a couple of Shillings & be a man of fashion in my situation. There was true œconomy’ (Journ. 24 Dec.). JB was doing his stoical best to reconcile himself to his £200 per year: ‘I eat my cold repast today heartily. I have great spirits. I see how little a man can live upon. I find that Fortune cannot get the better of me. I never can come lower than to live on bread and cheese’ (Journ. 23 Dec.).

From William McQuhae, Monday 27–Thursday 30 December 1762 MS. Yale (C 1882). ADDRESS: To, James Boswell Esqr., London SEAL: Greek philosopher’s head in black wax.

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Barquharry,1 27th Decr. 1762 DEAR SIR, It was extremely kind in you to write to Mr Reid.2 Letters on such Occasions indeed renew their Sorrow for a little, but they soon create a pleasure from the Bosom of uneasiness. Nothing affords greater relief than the tender Sympathy of those we love. Your really affectionate Letter pleased them much and they desired me to thank you in their Name. You can scarce imagine how well they have behaved. Though there be no more Worlds than this,3 Religion’s worth the having. As it affords the prospect of a happier State, that sooths the heart under all its Suffering, when nothing else can find Admittance. Mr Reid you know in his high Spirits is Superior to every thing but when they faill him his mind is overspread with gloomy images; he imagines himself a dying, hates to see any mortals face and is miserable if he thinks those about him happy. In either Situation he is a wretched Comforter to his Wife , tho’ for some days past he has been more moderate than usual. Mrs. Reid and I were always on very good terms. Since Jamie’s death we have been intimate friends. Her heart is easily managed. Her feelings are delicate not violent. She is easily shocked with any thing like want of Sympathy in others, And4 it is not difficult to make her tolerably chearful. I have made it my constant Study to enter into all her views; it gives me much Satisfaction to see her so well, for at first I dreaded her falling into low Spirits as she had been formerly subject to them. You must by this time be heartily tired with reading Circumstances which draw your Attention to the house of mourning. Solomon says it is better to go there then to the house of feasting,5 but it is above a year since you have begged leave to differ from his Jewish Majesty.6 Whether the difference arises from Judgement or passion your last Letter fairly determine’s7 but we shall let that pass. There is one Reflection which often occurs to me that some Situations appear happy or miserable at8 a Distance, in which when you come to take a nearer View of them you find much less happiness or misery than you had ever imagined. At London you will think that Barquharry is at present the Seat of constant Grief, the Valley of tears. And yet we enjoy a very large proportion of happiness. It is never express’d by loud peals of Laughter such as proceed from a gay and merry heart: it is founded9 in a sincere mutual Esteem and Affection or a kind of melancholy tenderness which drives away every peevish humour and keeps us uniformly disposed to please one another. Adversity has a Strong Effect to soften and humanize the temper. One would think that it had almost destroy’d that Bluntness or rather Rusticity which form’d the most disagreeable part of your honest friend’s Character .10 Such is our Situation—much better I’m perswaded than your Imagination would Represent it. On the other hand it is very probable that all the Contentment and Independence and Pleasures and Amusements which are at present mingled in your Cup do not afford such perfect Happiness as we in the Country are apt to think. I have received All your Journal to the time of your Departure for London11— Need I tell you how Much it entertained me. In truth, I cannot. You know how strong a principle it is with me to avoid flattering praises even where they are justly due. That it made me very happy and that I am greatly obliged to you for that happiness you will readily believe. Your Letters to me12 are all kept in retentis,13 it is an agreeable prospect that you will one day be looking them over in the Country 349

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and pleasing yourself14 with reflecting on various15 Circumstances which might otherways be buried in Oblivion. It is not to be supposed that your Journals should now be carried on at least so circumstantially as before,16 I would wish to hear what has become of the fix’d Resolution to persevere in that practice which you laid down in the last page of the Harvest Jaunt.17— I had almost forgot to inform you that the house at Lagwine18 which afforded you a hospitable retreat on your road to Galloway19 was burnt to Ashes about ten days ago. With great Difficulty the Children’s Lives20 were preserved by their leaping naked out of Windows two Stories high. Not a single paper nor piece of furniture could be sav’d from the flames. It is a prodigious Loss to the worthy Gentleman21 particularily as his Bills and rights of his Estate are all destroy’d.22— This is a sort of Tragical Letter which will scarce afford one pleasing thought. Miss Thomson at Edinr.23 was married last week24 to a Lieut.25 of Leighton’s Regiment.26 This is the Accomplishment of a Prophecy I remember to have heard you deliver.27 It forms a shining Paragraph in the Edr. Weekly Journal.28 I dare not risk the temptation of another sheet of Paper and yet I ought certainly to acquaint you, who have interested yourself so much in my affairs, of a Scheme proposed for my continuing at Ochiltree as an ordain’d assistant and Successor to Mr. Reid.29 Mr. Crawford of Polquhairn30 hinted it to me some time ago, and I’m perswaded would do what he could to bring it about. Mr. Reid is very fond of it and will freely part with one half of his Stipend31 to me which is really very kind. The Difficulty is to obtain Lord Glencairn’s32 Consent33 who is Patron of the Parish34 without which nothing can be done. Lord Galloway35 and he are Relations36 but I know not upon what terms they live. With regard to Leswalt37 it is said that Capt. Dalrymple38 had secur’d the Presentation39 before Mr Murray40 apply’d; in that case Sir Andr. Agnew41 or none of his Party can have any thing to say. This I can scarce believe and yet it passes current in Galloway.42 You will readily believe that Ochiltrees proximity to Auchinleck43 forms a very strong recommendation of it to me—Not to Speak of the unanimous Consent of the Parish. Some people laugh at such a trifling circumstance but I declare I would not be fond of preaching in an empty Kirk.— I am so fully convinced of your friendship in many instances that I always depend upon it with a kind of Confidence and therefore shall make no Apology for all this trouble. I am with the greatest sincerity disposed to Serve you if it were in my power, as it is not I can only tell you so. Adieu— WILLIAM MCQUHAE Treesbank,44 30th Decr. 1762 P.S. All the foregoing pages were wrote at Barquharry. On Tuesday45 Mr Reid Mrs Reid and I came to Treesbank, where we propose to spend a Week or two. Many and witty are the Attacks which are made upon this Laird46 to take unto himself a Wife.47 But he seems to dread it like death. The Gentry at Sornbeg48 are close Attendants and ever ready to ridicule his Schemes of matrimony. They think themselves secure of being his Successors.49 All the world are against them, and yet they will be victorious—to their great joy and profit. Miss Molly Montgomery50 is a Lady every way qualified douce good natured, 350

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thrifty, and prudent. Her Connections are the best he can hope for. But then her face, they say, is very much spoild with the small-pox. Miss Peggy Campbell at Sornbeg51 is an Active sensible Woman, of an equal and composed temper. But then her Constitution is not good or according to the Phraseology of L. Auchinleck ‘I doubt she’s no sound at the Bottom Man.’— ‘Yet I think thou may take her.’ — Miss Brown at Knockmarlock52 and Miss McKerral at Hilhouse53 are the two greatest favourites. Both of them know his taste of Life exactly, are well enough look’d, and in every other Respect sufficiently well qualified—But then, the first is connected with a heap of Bodies at Kilmarnock,54 who would eat him up. The other is now and then liable to vapours. Such are, in very few words, the Characters of Treesbank’s mistresses and the Objections which stand against them. If you were here he would himself with many more words explain the whole affair to you without enjoining Secrecy as is usual with young and inexperienced Lovers. I could not resist the temptation of this clean paper so fit for a Postscript especially when a Subject so curious presented itself. The Laird offers you his best wishes he likes you better than he did. Mr Reid is a warm friend and most sincere. In the flow of his Spirits this morning he prov’d to Hugh Campbell of Sornbeg55 that if any thing should happen to you in your present State of Danger;56 there would be just three persons to blame for it. Your father. Lord Eglinton, and ——— ——— Clow at Glasgow57 whom he calls a Stupid Body. Your Letter, I think has made him somewhat more keen in your Cause than formerly. Mrs. Reid was always fond of you but was under some restraint in your Company for fear of the razor—58 1

The home of the Reids. Not reported. See To Reid, 16 Dec. The letter had consoled the Reids on the death of their son. 3 McQuhae’s prudentialist view is that one should believe in Heaven whether it exists or not, since the mere prospect of a happy future afterlife is a help in this life even if the afterlife does not in fact exist. Such a vision of Heaven was not, of course, orthodox Church of Scotland doctrine in 1762. 4 MS. ‘yet’ deleted after ‘And’ 5 ‘It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart …. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth’ (Ecclesiastes 7:2, 4). 6 The statement JB made differing from ‘his Jewish Majesty’ ‘above a year’ before McQuhae’s letter was in a published letter to Eglinton, which explains how McQuhae knew its contents. In that letter, JB had written: ‘our sentiments of all things under the sun were somewhat different from that illustrious monarch’s, who to be sure was a very 2

wise man, but who, for the very reason that he was a man, might chance to fall into a little mistake’ (From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’ [JB] to the Earl of *** [Eglinton], 25 Sept. 1761, and n. 9). 7 JB had asserted in his most recent letter to McQuhae: ‘For my own part, I am So fully so peremptorly satisfied of the vanity of this world, that in Judgment I have a most philosophical indifference, altho Passion makes me keenly pursue pleasure’ (To McQuhae, 16 Dec.). 8 MS. ‘in’ deleted, replaced with ‘at’ 9 MS. ‘instea[d]’ deleted before ‘founded’ 10 Presumably McQuhae is referring diffidently to himself rather than Reid. Yet from contemporary descriptions Reid was likely more accurately described as blunt and rustic than the polished Moderate clergyman McQuhae, whom JB characterized as a man of ‘excellent parts, [who] has had a most accurate Education. He has a good heart fine dispositions, and an agreable vivacity of manners’. But JB added that although McQuhae ‘had a high relish for the Scenes of active life and a great natural share of spirited ambition [he] considering the uncertaintys & the hazards of a Soldier

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of fortune … cooly checked his aspiring ideas, determined to embrace a sure competency and live contented as a Country Clergyman’ (Journ. 26 Feb. 1763). JB had applied the epithet ‘Honest’ to McQuhae in Journ. 16 Feb. 1763. As for their friendship, in Dec. JB had written in his journal of McQuhae: ‘I regard him much’, a sentiment which he echoed in Feb. 1763 (Journ. 11 Dec.; cf. Journ. 26 Feb. 1763). 11 The Harvest Jaunt journal covered the events of JB’s life from 14 Sept. to 14 Nov. McQuhae was half of its intended audience: ‘as it is only intended for the perusal of Doctor Mcquhae and Johnstone I shall be quite easy and unconcerned’ (‘Journal of My Jaunt Harvest 1762’ [Yale MS. J2], ‘Introduction’). McQuhae’s letter to JB of 7 Dec. had noted that McQuhae had already received the journal and begun reading it: ‘I read with as much pleasure as melancholy would admit, your Journal’. The journal may have still been in McQuhae’s hands in May 1763: Lord Auchinleck’s letter of that date recorded that ‘Mr Reid came here informed us he had seen them & having a good memory repeated many things from them … he was surprised a Lad of sense and come to age should be so childish as keep a Register of his follies & communicate it to others as if proud of them’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May 1763, Yale MS. C 214). Reid presumably had read the journals without McQuhae’s or JB’s permission while McQuhae still resided with the Reids at Barquharrie. 12 Accounts of the only two known letters of JB to McQuhae prior to this date have been included in this volume as To McQuhae, 29 Sept. and To McQuhae, 16 Dec. However, the first of the two has not been reported, and the reason why the former letter did not survive cannot be inferred, since McQuhae announced his intention to hold the letters in trust. 13 Latin: held firmly, kept back, kept in reserve or in safekeeping. Perhaps a more subtle joke on Scots law, in which retention was ‘a right of withholding a debt, or retaining property until a debt due to the person claiming the right of retention shall be paid’ (Bell, s.v. ‘RETENTION’). 14 MS. ‘will’ deleted before ‘yourself’ 15 MS. ‘the’ deleted before ‘various’ 16 Presumably because JB would be busier in London than he had been on his harvest jaunt. This passage suggests that McQuhae was not yet aware of the existence of the ‘Journal from the time of my leaving Scotland 15 Novr. 1762’, whose introduction

suggests its intended audience was ‘my worthy friend Johnstone’, i.e., JJ. The London journal for 1762–63 is as circumstantial, if not moreso, than its predecessor. 17 The last day-entry of JB’s Journ. which McQuhae had read had stated: ‘Thus have I brought down my Journal from the time of my leaving Auchinleck to my setting out for London …. The last days are imperfect; as I was hurried. I shall continue the method of keeping a Journal, which will amuse me at the time, and lay up a store of entertainment for me afterwards’ (Journ. 14 Nov.). 18 Lagwine, an estate owned by James McAdam (for whom see n. 21 below) in the parish of Carsphairn in Kircudbrightshire, about twenty miles south of Auchinleck (Cary’s New Map, pl. 66 displays the vicinity but not the ruin). After the fire, ‘Laywyne was not rebuilt; the ancestral estate in the parish was sold soon afterwards, and the family removed to Blairquhan, a countryhouse on the Girvan near Straton, which was rented’ (Oxford DNB [DNB Archive], s.v. ‘McAdam, John Loudon’). 19 On the first day of his harvest jaunt, 14 Sept., JB set out at 8 A.M., and had travelled the route via Polquhairn to Dalmellington to Berbeth and reached Lagwine, despite foul weather, as it grew dark (Journ.). He left Lagwine on 16 Sept., travelling thence to Kenmore, south of New Galloway (Cary’s New Map, pl. 66). 20 There were two sons and eight daughters in the family of the McAdams or M’Adams of Waterhead. JB referred to them as ‘a number of children here of 10 9 8 7 6 who did not disturb us at meals but were allowed sometimes to be in the room’ (Journ. 16 Sept.). The children identified so far are Margaret or ‘Peggie’ (?b. ante 1736), the eldest daughter, who married in 1763 William Logan, a relation of the facetious Laird of Logan; Jacobina (b. 1736); Capt. James M’Adam (d. 1763); Elizabeth (b. 1752); Katherine (b. 1754); John Loudon M’Adam (1756–1836), who went on to become the famous road builder; Grissel or ‘Grissie’ (b. ?1757) who married in ?1777 Adam Steuart of Glenormiston; and Sarah (b. ?1759). See M’Kerlie, iii. 290–93; Ayr and Wigton, ii. 145–46; IGI, Parish Registers of Ayr and Dalmellington. 21 James McAdam (b. 1705 or 1715, d. 1770) of Waterhead; he married in ?1745 Susanna Cochrane (b. ?1716 or 1718–d. 1773). JB considered himself to be their ‘Cousin’, since Susanna Cochrane McAdam was also a relative of the 8th Earl of Dundonald (Journ. 14 Sept.; Ominous Years,

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Chart V, p. 378). McAdam founded the first bank of Ayr in 1763, but financial trouble forced him to sell his lands. He emigrated to America, where he died (M’Kerlie, iii. 290–93; Ayr and Wigton, ii. 145–46). 22 The loss of those legal papers apparently did not impede the transfer of sasines and the sale of property of McAdam of Waterhead’s estates during the declining family fortunes in the mid-to-late 1760s (M’Kerlie, iii. 290– 93; Ayr and Wigton, ii. 145–46). 23 Isabella Thomson (m. 1762), the daughter of Dr. David Thomson, was one of the young women to whom JB had paid court in Edinburgh from 1761 to 1762. JB’s notes for 12 Nov. 1761 to ?7Apr. 1762 recorded several meetings from Nov. to Mar. with ‘Miss Thomson’ (Yale MS. J 1.2). Yet despite their frequent teas and suppers, there is no surviving evidence (as there is in the case of other women of JB’s acquaintance, such as Margaret Stewart) that JB contemplated marriage (Corr. 1, pp. 95–96, n. 10). JB described her as ‘a Woman of a good deal of knowledge, pretty good sense, much vivacity & a prodigious flow of Words’ (Journ. 15 Mar. 1763; see also 20 Mar. 1763). 24 The last reading of the banns for the marriage of Isabella Thomson and Frederick Bridges Schaw occurred on 28 Nov. (Register of Marriages of … Edinburgh, 1715–1800, 1922, pp. 702, 784). JB visited ‘Mrs. Schaw’ twice in London (Journ. 15, 20 Mar. 1763), and they met several times in Edinburgh 1774–75 (see note following). 25 Lt. Frederick Bridges (or Brydges) Schaw (fl. 1758–75) of the 32nd Foot. He was commissioned as an ensign in 1758, and held the regimental rank of lieutenant from 1760. Schaw later held the army rank of capt. on 10 Feb. 1763 and held the regimental rank of capt. in the 66th Foot from 1 June 1763 onwards (Army List, 1759–75, but not 1778). JB socialized with the Schaws and their daughter in 1774–75 when they ‘had taken the house under us’, and in Aug. 1774 JB offered legal assistance to Captain Schaw (Journ. 27, 30 June, 6, 14, 17, 19, 27 Aug., 7 Sept., 14, 23 Dec. 1774, 20 Jan., 15, 28 Feb. 1775). 26 The 32nd Foot was referred to as ‘Leighton’s Regiment’ because its proprietary colonel from 1747 to 1773 was Gen. Francis Leighton (N. B. Leslie, The Succession of Colonels in the British Army From 1660 to the Present Day, 1974, p. 72). 27 JB’s prophecy is unknown; it perhaps predicted the sort of man whom Isabella Thomson would marry.

28 The paragraph announcing the marriage in the Edinburgh Weekly Journal, a paper that began publication 1756 or 1757, has not been located (R. S. Crane and F. B. Kaye, A Census of British Newspapers and Periodicals, 1620–1800, 1927). Colindale only has surviving issues from 1758 (ESTC P2445). 29 George Reid was minister of the parish of Ochiltree. An ‘ordain’d assistant’ would not have been the parish minister, but would have had the capacity to act as a sort of curate for the minister. JB was trying to use local influence to help McQuhae obtain a parish. He wrote to JJ, ‘I hope to get a settlement for him soon. I have his interest greatly at heart’ (21 Dec., Corr. 1, p. 33). JB retained his interest in Ochiltree parish, and in 1789 laid the foundation for the new Parish Church building (Fasti Scot. iii. 60). 30 Adam Craufurd (later Craufurd Newall) (d. 1790), ‘the last of the Craufurds of Dalleagles’, in 1756 gained the sasine in the land and manor of Eastern Polquhairn in Ochiltree parish, and would therefore have had influence among the elders and heritors of the kirk. He had sat as a Commissioner of Supply for Ayrshire in 1755 (Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 323, 633). 31 An account from the 1790s read, ‘The stipend [of Ochiltree parish], on an average, is about £95 Sterling’. McQuhae would likely have earned only £42 per annum or less under the proposed scheme, and presumably had made even less as family tutor (John Strawhorn, introd. to ‘Ayrshire’ volume, SAS, vi. 502–10). 32 William Cunningham (after 1704–d. 1775), 12th Earl of Glencairn from 1734, was an army officer from 1729 to 1775. Although he was on ‘Half-Pay’ at a major’s rate after the breaking of Powlett’s 9th Marines in 1748, he had recently been made a colonel (19 Feb. 1762), although he does not appear ever to have been proprietary colonel of a regiment. He was Governor of Dumbarton Castle from 1734. Despite remaining on half-pay, he later (1770) was promoted to maj.-gen. (Scots Peer. iv. 251; Comp. Peer. v. 675; Army List, 1755–75, e.g., ‘Half-Pay’ 1772, p. 176). 33 MS. ‘Cons’ in ‘Consent’ written over original ‘assent’ 34 Under the 1712 Patronage Act, rights of presentation to parish ministries had been given to lay patrons. The earls of Glencairn continued to exercise control over appointments in Ochiltree into the 1790s when a survey stated, ‘The right of patronage is vested in the Countess Dowager of Glen-

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cairn’. The account in 1793 noted that ‘The patron on the two last vacancies which happened, gave the people a pastor agreeable to their wishes’ (SAS, vi. 502–10). Fasti Scot. (iii. 62) suggests that Sinclair’s statement about the agreeable patronage by the family of the Earls of Glencairn referred to the presentation of ministers to the parish in 1786 (when David Grant succeeded George Reid) and 1789. 35 See To AE, 8 June, n. 17. 36 Galloway was Glencairn’s first cousin, since Glencairn’s mother was a daughter of the 3rd Earl of Galloway. JB’s maternal ancestry in the Cochranes made him kin to Galloway, who had married a daughter of the 4th Earl of Dundonald (Scots Peer. iv. 164–65; iv. 250–51; Ominous Years, Chart V, p. 378). 37 Leswalt, a parish in Wigtonshire, had three heritors in the 1790s: the Agnews of Lochnaw, the Agnews of Schuchan, and the Dalrymples, Earls of Stair; of the three, Sir Stair Agnew was then the ‘only residing heritor’. Its stipend was £49 18s 31/2d ‘of money’, but also ‘15 bolls of meal, of 16 stone to the boll, and 4 bolls bear, 12 bushels to the boll’ in the 1790s (SAS, v. 444–45). 38 ‘Capt.’ John Dalrymple (1720–89), of the Dalrymples of Dalmahoy. Later (1768) 5th Earl of Stair. A nephew of the 2nd Earl of Stair. He had been an Advocate since 1741, and joined the army after passing advocate. Although his uncle appears to have wished to make him heir of the peerage as well as the family lands, on the second earl’s death in 1747 John had acquired the deceased earl’s lands but not the title, which the House of Lords in 1748 awarded to a cousin. (He eventually received the title after the death of his cousins the third and fourth earls.) The Dalrymples had held land in Leswalt parish since at least 1677 but apparently never lived in that parish. Yet the family was influential in the county: the 5th Earl of Stair died at his seat in Culhorn, Wigtownshire. The fifth earl was a Whig Representative Peer from 1771 to 1774, in which capacity he supported American colonial claims (Scots Peer. viii. 156–57; Comp. Peer. xii. pt. 1. 211; Douglas’s Peerage, ii. 532–33; Fac. Adv. p. 51; M’Kerlie, i. 101, 115). 39 By the stipulations of the Patronage Act of 1712, the right of presentation of a new minister was a commodity which could be bought or sold by the chief heritor or heritors (T. C. Smout, History of the Scottish People 1560–1830, 1969, pp. 233–37). In 1721, 1731, 1733, and 1737, the ministers of Leswalt were all ‘called’ in the tradi-

tional Church of Scotland manner before being ordained or admitted. Yet the new parish ministers of Leswalt in 1762, 1765, and 1797 were all ‘presented’ by the Crown (‘pres. by George III’). Despite all of the gossip about influence, David Henderson had been presented by the Crown on 26 Oct. and was subsequently ordained 21 Apr. 1763 (Fasti Scot. ii. 343 [‘Stranraer/Leswalt’]). 40 James Murray (d. 1799) of Broughton, Wigtownshire and Cally, Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. M.P. for Wigtonshire from Mar. 1762 to 1768, and Kirkcudbright Stewartry 1768–74, later (1783–84) Receiver of Land Tax for Scotland. Murray’s combination of influence in the county and at Westminster made him a major contender in parish-mongering. His influence was all the greater in that he was simultaneously a nephew and a son-in-law of the 6th Earl of Galloway (Namier and Brooke, iii. 184–85; M’Kerlie, iii. 496–97). JB had written of him as ‘a most amiable Man. Has very good sense great knowledge of the World and easy politeness of manners’ (Journ. 22 Sept.). In a conversation during his harvest jaunt, JB attempted to gain Murray’s help for the Guards scheme: ‘Mr. Murray and I had a long conversation about my scheme of the Guards, and as I found him taking a concern for me, I told him with a sort of diffident ease, I shall set every body a-working for me. I shall set you, Mr. Murray. He told me very obligingly, Sir I can do little for you. But I shall gladly run about. He added that he would introduce me to … some more good People …. Then for introduction into life, he would recommend … some People of that kind. It raised my spirits and made me look with pleasure on my scheme to hear him talk so finely about it’ (Journ. 23 Sept.). 41 Sir Andrew Agnew (1687–1771) of Lochnaw, Bt. His forebears had resided in the parish since 1426, and as the one who represented the first family of the parish (he was, indeed, the only residing heritor) he might have expected to have his family interest regarded in the presentation (M’Kerlie, i. 103, 109–11). 42 The old lordship of Galloway included Wigtownshire. 43 Ochiltree was about two miles west of Auchinleck, and even closer to Auchinleck House (Cary’s New Map, pl. 66). 44 Treesbank, in the parish of Riccarton, Ayrshire, about two or three miles southwest of Kilmarnock, seat of James Campbell, brother of Jane (Campbell) Reid (Taylor & Skinner, pl. 41). ‘The mansion is modern, and

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pleasantly set down by a small streamlet, under shelter of some fine old wood’ (Robertson, ii. 245). 45 That is, 28 Dec. 46 James Campbell (?1709–d. 1776) of Treesbank (Robertson, ii. 240–43; Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 656; IGI, Pedigree Resource File). Treesbank’s year of birth is not certain. One may infer a birth year from the fact that his parents married in 1708 and that his younger brother John was licensed to preach in 1738 (and was therefore born ante 1720). Treesbank was therefore somewhere between 42 and 53 years old, and likely closer to 53. A first cousin of Lord Auchinleck (To JJ, 22 May 1771, Corr. 1, p. 264 n. 1 [second], 265 n. 5). JB called him ‘the honest Laird’, and noted that he was a man ‘with whom I had allways lived in great friendship’ (Journ. 2 May 1767, 12 Oct. 1776). He and JB dined and visited with some frequency, esp. from 1767 onwards (see, e.g., Journ. 13 Apr., 2 May 1767, 25 Apr. 1769). JB was at Campbell’s deathbed and funeral, and JB continued to take an interest in the family as ‘Tutor and Curator’ to ‘his sons’ after the laird’s death (Journ. 12–28 Oct. 1776). 47 Whatever his exact age, it is clear from the context of this letter that Campbell of Treesbank was ridiculed by the gentry at Sornbeg for his status as an old bachelor. On 13 Aug. 1763, defying community expectations, he married Helen Macredie or McCreddy (b. ?1739, d. ante 1768) of P[i]erceton in Ayrshire (IGI, Pedigree Resource File), who, although ‘[s]he died soon after’, bore him a daughter. 48 Sornbeg was an estate in the parish of Galston, Ayrshire. At this time the Campbells appear to have been factors and/or tenants in Sornbeg, for on 17 June 1765 Hugh Campbell (d. 1782) of Mayfield was served heir to his father ‘Hugh Campbell of Barnharrie [sic] factor at Sornbeg’ (information supplied by Sir James Fergusson). Later the property passed into the hands of Hugh Campbell’s brother, Bruce Campbell of Mayfield (Ayrshire, p. 313). 49 Since both of the Campbell of Treesbank males were unmarried as of 1762, if they died without heirs the descent of the lands might have been liable to default to a collateral male line. However, inheritance varied by estate, and bequests of land could be made with some flexibility depending on whether the property was settled on ‘heirs general, male or female’, or only ‘the representative in the male line’ (Robertson, ii. 244–45 with respect to Campbell lands).

50 After the death of his first wife, Campbell of Treesbank did indeed wed Mary ‘Molly’ Montgomerie (?1743–d. 1777) of Lainshaw on 5 Feb. 1768 (IGI, Pedigree Resource File). The couple produced two heirsmale, the eldest of whom inherited Treesbank (Robertson, ii. 242–43). She was a daughter of the Montgomerie of Lainshaw who had married Lord Auchinleck’s sister, and was therefore JB’s first cousin. In 1769 JB would marry her elder sister Margaret (Ominous Years, Chart VI, p. 379; Ayr and Wigton, III. ii. 598). 51 Perhaps Margaret Campbell (b. 1733), daughter of Hugh Campbell of Barquharrie (Ochiltree Register of Baptisms). She may or may not be the M. Campbell who in 1791, when JB answered her request for a loan with five shillings, wrote him a most abusive letter: ‘a poor Sperrite is the greatest of all povertie god knows you are poor indead’ (From M[argaret] Campbell, 30 Apr. 1791, Yale MS. C 751). 52 Not certainly identified. Knockmarloch is an estate in Riccarton, Ayrshire. McQuhae’s use of ‘at’ may provide a clue. Describing a family as ‘at’ a place (e.g., ‘Brown at Knockmarlock’) would prove only that they resided there, whereas those described as ‘in’ a place were tenants, and those described as ‘of’ a place (e.g., Montgomerie of Lainshaw) were the owners of the land (Corr. 8, Glossary, pp. 235– 39). Perhaps a relative of George Brown of Knockmarloch and Kilmarnock (fl. 1710, m. 1719, ?d. ante 1781), the owner of the estate, whose known children were both sons (Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 653; unpublished pedigree D. MSS. 928, File 162, Society of Genealogists, London; Ayrshire, p. 302). 53 Again, the use of ‘at’ rather than ‘of’ gives pause. Perhaps Elizabeth McKerrel or Jean McKerrel, who were daughters of William McKerrel (d. before 1750), 6th Laird of Hillhouse, Dundonald Parish, about four miles south of Irvine). The house was ‘a modern mansion … conspicuously set down on the brow of a considerable eminence’ (Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 483; Robertson, iii. 162–63; Burke’s Landed Gentry, 1937 recorded only Elizabeth). 54 Unknown; dependent on the identification of ‘Miss Brown’. Presumably various of her relations and friends whom McQuhae thought to be great meddlers. 55 McQuhae’s designation ‘of Sornbeg’ suggests that he is referring either to the elder Hugh Campbell (?1703– d. 1765) or to his son Hugh Campbell (1728–?d. 1782) (IGI, Pedigree Resource File). The correct

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form of reference was likely ‘in Sornbeg’, as Robertson claimed, or ‘at Sornbeg’ as the 1765 service of heir read (Robertson, ii. 246–48). 56 Presumably the ‘Danger’ is a reference to Lord Auchinleck’s fears that JB would fall in London into habits of dissipation and vacuity. 57 James Clow (d. 1788), M.A. (Glasgow, 1731), from 1752 Professor of Logic at Glasgow. He had been tutor to the Earl of Galloway’s children, and later held the offices of Dean of the Faculty and Vice-Rector at Glasgow (James Coutts, History of the University of Glasgow, 1909, p. 312). This passage strongly suggests that, while a student at Glasgow 1759–60, JB had been influenced by Clow. For Pottle’s further speculation on Clow’s role in JB’s life, see Earlier Years, pp. 43, 466–67. It is just as likely that Clow’s influence was intellectual rather

than based on any role in loco parentis, and that JB’s known susceptibility to being unbalanced by deep philosophical speculation may have been the source of Clow’s allegedly corrupting JB’s mind. Like Eglinton, he might have been (at least in George Reid’s mind) associated with JB’s fixations on London. 58 Another joke about the ‘Soaping Club’ and the sarcastic humour of ‘soaping’ and ‘shaving’ gullible parties in a conversation. JB had supposedly sworn off this sort of ridicule in autumn and winter 1762: ‘I took off whole groupes of characters and was very great in mimicry. Yet I resolved to lay it aside with shaving when I get into the Guards’ (Journ. 11 Nov.); ‘I set out with a determined resolution against shaving that is to say playing upon people’ (Journ. 15 Nov.).

From Agatha Home Drummond, Lady Kames, Tuesday 28 December 17621 MS. Yale (C 1645).

Edr., Decr. 28th Any thing that I could say relating to our Old gibrish2 would go ill down with Mr Bosswell in his present state of gaiety but as you was, when I knew you a little adicted to vanity you will perhapes not be displeasd to know that we truely do miss you saddly, in short, the Sunday night partys are dwindled down almost to Doctor Cullen3 Solus, in so much that I begin to think they have formerly come for you— you flatter me by desireing to hear from me,4 it is like your good nature tho to wish to make other people happy while you are so. I long to hear you have got hold of that same commission as I would indulge you in every reasonable scheme and I ever thought that, so. I have Little variety of past-time this winter, only my weekly Epistles from Galloway5 in which I take much delight, you will be glad to hear that your young friend there6 is very well and very happy, proposes passing next winter here or perhapes in the great City—7 I am likeways now and then regaled with a sencible Letter from George,8 who you never see nor hear of, do not write to me till you meet some body who knows him and speaks well of him. I shall then think your Letter charmingly agreeable. Your friend, and my husband, passes his hours very comfortably, betwixt his Lady9 Anstruthers,10 Philosophy11 and Manafactors,12 with no more Law13 than needs must—I sometimes see Fordyce14 Jamie Ferguson15 and Sir Adamia16 now and then but as you say about London, without Bosswell all is nothing.17 Perhapes you may not know that Miss Thomson has got to her self a Husband a Captain Shaw18 you may swear,—I will not offer you any advice. I never saw that those comeing from an Old woman had much weight—I know you are allways in 356

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good Company. I wish you every thing that can conduce to your real happyness, and am with sincere regard, much Your humble servant, AGATHA HOME Mr. Home begs you will pardon his not writing for some Posts—19 1 The year, not given in the MS, is supplied, consistent with Catalogue, on the following grounds: Lady Kames announces that JB is missed at her Edinburgh parties; she mentions his Guards scheme for a ‘commission’; and she suggests that he should have seen George Home, who was in London. 2 JB later described himself as having been ‘all giddiness’ at Lord Kames’s (Journ. 2 Jan. 1763). He continued to remember his youthful visits to the Kameses as times of folly: ‘Mrs. Drummond, [Lord Kames’s] lady, always revives youthful ideas in my mind, as in my most dissipated days I was much in their house’ (Journ. 19 Feb. 1775). 3 William Cullen (1710–90), M.D. (Glasgow, 1740), medical educator and scientist. Professor of Medicine at Glasgow 1751–55, Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh 1755–66, and Professor of Physics at Edinburgh 1766–89. Biographies include: John Thomson, An Account of the Life, Lectures, and Writings of William Cullen …, 1859; and John Dixon Comrie, An Eighteenth-Century Consultant, 1925. Studies of his influence include: A. Doig, ed., William Cullen and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World …, 1993; and Arthur L. Donovan, Philosophical Chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment: the Doctrines and Discoveries of William Cullen …, 1975. Lord Kames had been instrumental in persuading Cullen to leave his position of Professor of Medicine at Glasgow to become a Professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh (Ross, pp. 172–73). During the autumn JB had seen Cullen speak. ‘At one o’clock, I went and heard Doctor Cullen’s first lecture at the opening of his class for the Winter. He mentioned Study in general and insisted on a right method as of the utmost consequence …. I liked him much, and I was highly amused …’ (Journ. 27 Oct.). His lectures were first published, without his authority, in 1771. 4 No letter of this period from Boswell to Lady Kames is known to have survived. Possibly the remark she quoted was contained in a not reported letter JB is known to have written to Lord Kames in late Nov. or early Dec. (a letter mentioned in From Lord Kames, 5 Dec., Yale MS. C 1649). 5 Patrick Heron’s estate of Kirroughtrie

was ‘in Galloway’. JB had stayed at Kirroughtree 18 Sept.–4 Oct. in the company of the Herons and Kameses. 6 Jean (Home) Heron. 7 Presumably London. JB’s Mem. of 29 June–2 July 1763 refer to intended meetings with ‘Heron’. The ‘next winter’ would presumably have been winter 1763–64, when JB was on the continent. 8 George Home, Kames’s son. On 23 Nov. JB ‘went into the City and called for George Home, Lord Kames’s Son.’ On 2 Jan. 1763 the two finally met: ‘I had George Home at breakfast with me. He is a good honest fellow & applies well to his Business as a Merchant. He had seen me all giddiness at his father’s; and was astonished to find me settled on so prudent a plan’ (Journ.). 9 There is probably a missing apostrophe and comma here, and the passage should be read ‘betwixt his Lady [i.e., Lady Kames], Anstruther’s, Philosophy, and Manufactures’. 10 Anstruther was a prominent family name so an exact identification is difficult, since there were several branches. The most prominent of the name in legal Edinburgh was the father-son pair of Sir Philip Anstruther of Balcaskie, Bt. (1688–1763), an advocate from 1711 and one of the principal Clerks to the Bills, who died 27 May 1763, and his son Sir Robert Anstruther of Balcaskie (1733–1818), an advocate from 1754 and baronet from May 1763 (Fac. Adv.). Sir Robert on 18 Aug. 1763 would marry AE’s sister Lady Janet Erskine (Scots Peer. v. 89; Comp. Bar. iv. 366; Douglas’s Peerage, ii. 19). However, Lady Kames’s use of the term ‘Anstruther’s’ suggests (though not decisively) that she referred to one who would have used that place-name as a form of surname. Hence the most likely candidate is a member of the Anstruthers of Anstruther, a family of great antiquity in Fife, whose current representative was Sir John Anstruther, Bt. of Anstruther and Elie House (1718–99), later (1766–74, 1780– 82, 1790–93) an M.P. for Anstruther Easter Burghs. Sir John was ‘a numismatist, an agricultural improver, an exponent of drill husbandry’ and co-founder in 1756 of ‘the

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Anstruther whale fishing company’. He was eventually author of books on Drill Husbandry (1796) and Hoeing Husbandry (1798). Thus, he would have shared Kames’s schemes for improvement and modernization of agriculture. His ‘extravagant building projects’ would also have interested Kames (Namier and Brooke, ii. 24; Douglas’s Baronage, pp. 67, 92, 179, 302, 313– 316, 318; Comp. Bar. iv. 366, 387). 11 Lord Kames considered his Elements of Criticism (1762) to be a philosophical as well as aesthetic work. As he wrote to JB on 5 Dec., ‘I will explain myself in a philosophical manner …. Consult the Elements of Criticism …. You’ll observe that this is a new stroke for a man to cite his own works as an Authority …. I am resolved, that the Elements like Homer shall be a complete store-house of arts and sciences’ (Yale MS. C 1649, to appear in the volume of JB’s correspondence with the Scots literati, forthcoming in this series). In addition, his works such as Introduction to the Art of Thinking (1761) were more overtly philosophical. 12 From the mid-1750s, Kames was a spokesman for improvement, and was a member of the ‘Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufactures, and Improvements in Scotland’, and was also one of the more active Commissioners for Forfeited Estates. His writings publicized the theory and practice of improving manufactures and agriculture, and urged road and canal building (Ross, pp. 315–19). 13 Kames was in the legal profession continuously from the time he was called to the Scottish bar in 1724, had been a Lord of Session since 1752, and was to become a Lord of Justiciary in 1763. Kames, by contrast to the laborious Lord Auchinleck, ‘had a reputation for cutting down on judicial business to follow his other pursuits more ardently’ (Ross, p. 251). Still, Kames persisted diligently on both benches until a few days before his death, when he reportedly said a final farewell to the ‘bitches’ who had served with him as judges (Ross, p. 370). 14 John Fordyce (1738–1809) of Ayton, Berwickshire, began business as a merchant and was for a short time a director of the Royal Bank of Scotland. He was a partner in the Scottish banking house of Fordyce, Grant, & Company and was deeply involved in the failure of the banking firm of Douglas, Heron, & Company in 1772 which occurred in the wake of his kinsman Alexander Fordyce’s London bank failure. For an account of Fordyce’s career, see Frank Brady, ‘So Fast to Ruin: The Ayr Bank

Crash’, Ayrshire Collections, 1973, xi. no. 2, 27–44. After JB met Fordyce on 6 Nov., he described him as ‘a man of estate of good business as a Banker and good parts and a good heart.’ (Journ.). In the late 1770s, Fordyce, by then a ‘Bankrupt’, ‘though his Creditors are not above a fourth paid, lives in luxury … which disgusted me’ (Journ. 18 Mar. 1778). JB remained censorious: ‘I took no manner of notice of him, as I have all along thought that his living in plenty while numbers have been reduced to indigence by him, is (without going deeper) such dishonesty …. Besides, his manners are forward and assuming, and he is a fellow of low extraction’ (Journ. 19 June 1779). JB was related to Fordyce via Fordyce’s marriage to one of the branch of Maxwells who were JB’s relations (Boswell in Extremes, p. 221 n. 8). 15 James ‘Jamie’ Ferguson (1735–1820) of Pitfour, Aberdeenshire, casually known as ‘Young Pitfour’, who remained a bachelor throughout his life. ‘Young Pitfour’ passed advocate in 1757 (Fac. Adv.). Later he became M.P. for Banffshire (1789–90) and Aberdeenshire (1790–1820). He was described in 1788 by William Adam as a man ‘of real good sense, but indolent’ (Namier and Brooke, ii. 419). JB described him as ‘young Fergusson of Pitfour a sensible fellow very odd and whimsical’ (Journ. 7–9 Nov.). He was the eldest son of ‘Old Pitfour’ (Mem. 21 Mar. 1764; To JJ, 9 Apr. 1764, Corr. 1, p. 124; Journ. 9 Nov.). 16 ‘Sir Adamia’ was likely Lady Kames’s ‘gibrish’ nickname for Sir Adam Fergusson (1733–1813), 3rd Bt. of Kilkerran, Ayrshire from 1759. Fergusson passed advocate in 1755. He became a well-respected lawyer who represented the Hamilton claim in the Douglas Cause and the Countess of Sutherland in her peerage claim cause. Although recently derided in 1760 as ‘that absurd boy’ for bucking suggestions from the electoral managers (including Lord Eglinton) that he withdraw his name from the Ayr Burghs election candidates, he later would become M.P. for Ayshire (1774–80, 1781–84, 1790–96) and Edinburgh (1784–90), and a Lord of Trade 1781–82. A later biographer described him as ‘an able, sober, scholarly young man of high moral character and attractive, if somewhat humourless, personality’ (Namier and Brooke, ii. 419). Sir Adam’s brother Charles married Fordyce’s sister Anne (Dempster Letters, pp. 68–69). Sir Adam, a life-long friend of Fordyce, was also one of the closest friends of GD, hence the earliest attempt at a full-length biography of GD (1934) consisted of Letters of George

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Dempster to Sir Adam Fergusson … (Dempster Letters). 17 Indicating that JB had been fond of using the phrase, ‘without London all is nothing’. 18 Lt. Frederick Bridges (or Brydges) Schaw. See previous letter, nn. 23–25. 19 The last known letter JB had from Lord Kames was dated 5 Dec (Yale MS. C 1649). The next reported letter from Lord Kames, dated 27 Mar. 1763, opened with the words, ‘Don’t imagine that the date of

this letter is a symptom of a decaying inclination in me to keep up a correspondence begun betwixt us under the most favourable auspices’ (Yale MS. C 1650). Edinburgh Almanack, 1759, p. 62 noted that Letters for England left on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at midnight, and returns arrived on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturday afternoons ‘along with the London Packet’. Hence, Kames would have missed about eight chances to send post southward between 5 and 28 Dec.

From West Digges, Wednesday 29 December 1762 MS. Yale (C 1040).

Ed.1 Decr. 29, 1762 I need not I hope say how sincerely I think Myself obligd to You.— Your obliging Memorandum Every Wednesday2 is Unnecessary towards making me recolect You are really a Very honest fellow, but it somewhat serves me as a circumstance of Astonishment When I Experience once a Week that a gallant Young Gentleman can live amidst the pleasures of London,3 and not forget a poor Absent creature at 400 miles4 distance.— If I could see one more instance of the same worthy and Uncommon disposition, I would burn Rochfaucauld:5 but I fear You are a single proof of a staunch sort of integrity, Which I wish I were as able to praise, as I am Willing to Admire. I thank You also for the Very honest Encomium passd by a very honest Young Man upon the blessing of Bacon And Eggs.6 I red them with sincere pleasure (however plain the poetry is) as they are the produce of a very worthy Nobleman7 Whom I love, and Who once lovd Me. But the Malevolence of various sort of Ennemies, the ill effects of a long long absence, And the Misrepresentation of an Unkind Uncle8 Occasiond a loss Which I have set down in My heart among the few Which I regret with some degree of Emotion and pain.— God bless him! The North Briton is sensible and pointed, but I detest or rather despise his scurrility—his paper about the family of the Wise Acres9 is wholly uninteligible:10 however upon the Whole he pleases Me, When he does not forget good manners.— I think his sending A Letter to the Auditor11 about Canada signd Viater ,12 Which the Auditor was weak Enough to insert, Was a Coupe de Maistre.— Will You my Dear Sir send Me Under Cover the two Gentn. of Verona When it is publish’d?13 have You seen it? how do You like it?14 —Now our Xmass is over, I shall Expect very full houses15 —I have the pleasure to assure You our Theatric Entertainments are in great Reputation—thank God I can make my present Livelyhood my Amusement16 It is happy that I can do so.— I thank You again And Again for Your benevolent Wish for my better fortunes.— It lies in Lord Cantalupes17 power to Make my latter End of life most happy, but if My nearest Relation almost looks cool upon Me,18 I Own myself not master of flexibility sufficient to attend, to cringe, or to convince any Man, whom Nature seems to have little or no power over. What a Vicious, what a Vile place is a Court!19 this is a trite sort of Ex[c]lamation,20 but I vow to the Lord I have seen it so notoriously 359

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the Grave of many a Noble fellows principles and feelings, that I consider And Ever shall Consider it, with that sort of horrid Antipathy With Which Human Nature in general considers the pangs of Death or the pains of Damnation.— Believe Me Dear Sir the whole system of Happyness consists in private Life and in the Employment of that freedom which privacy gives You—There never Was a More restless or a More inquisitive Spirit after Happyness than Swifts—he sought for it in Learning, in Retirement, in Courts, in Country and in town, among Wits, among persons of Independant fortune, Among Politicians and Statesmen21— And Yet after all his studys, he tells Lord Bolingbroke that Vive la Bagatelle was as full a reciept for Happyness, as Any in All Solomons Observatory22—Adieu Dear Sir—I write at Random, but am most seriously and sincerely Yours. W. DIGGES 1 Edinburgh. An unused letter wrapper which JB recycled for his scrapbook of drafts of poems read ‘West Digges Esq: at Balfour’s Coffee house Edinburgh’ (Douce 193, f. 2 v.). Since the fragment is undated, it is not known if WD used Balfour’s as a town postal address. The letter by WD of 18 Feb. 1763 stated that ‘Your direction is right, when You direct to Me at Johns Coffee House Edinr’. WD noted in his letter to JB of 31 Jan. 1763 that before the move to Bonnington he had lived in ‘gloomy Apartments at the Bottom of the Canon Gate’, which he implied JB would have remembered. In the summer of this year, he and George Anne Bellamy had hired a house in Bonnington, a village between Edinburgh and Leith, where they ‘kept up a great style, continuing their joint course of extravagance to the furthest limit’ (Edin. Stage, p. 121). 2 WD means that the parcels posted by JB in London on Saturdays were received on Wednesdays, which suggests that the London-Edinburgh posts and packet-boats by which mail from England arrived Wednesday afternoon ‘along with the London Packet’ was generally dependable with regard to days of receipt as well as times of sending (Edinburgh Almanack, 1759, p. 62). 3 In addition to the well-known effusions in JB’s 1762–63 journal about being in London, JB’s unreported letters to WD and Kames also (on the basis of their replies) presented a rosy picture of his new life there. Hence Kames wrote that if his letter was any evidence, JB was ‘in such a delirium about the pleasures of London, which you express in a most rhapsodical strain’ (From Lord Kames, 5 Dec., Yale MS. C 1649). 4 A common rough estimate of the distance from Edinburgh to London. Lord Kames’s letter to JB of 5 Dec. had also stressed the distance as ‘through a medium

of no fewer than 400 miles’ (From Lord Kames, 5 Dec., Yale MS. C 1649). A modern estimate of the distance is 332 miles as the crow flies, and 404.82 miles by modern roads. One contemporary estimate of the travelling distance from Edinburgh to London was considerably lower than 400, perhaps owing` to use of the Scots mile: 302 miles if by the Carlisle Road, and 308 miles if by the post road (History of the Whole Realm of Scotland, Civil, Natural, and Ecclesiastical …, 1760, pp. 119–21). 5 François, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–80), French moraliste. His Mémoires were augmented by the better-known maxims and epigrams printed in Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales (1665 and subsequent expansions), which among other points contended that the virtues were indistinguishable from raw self-interest, that hypocrisy was the tribute which vice paid to virtue, and that there was something not displeasing in the misfortunes of even our best friends. Translators had ‘made English’ the maxims from 1694: Moral maxims and reflections, in four parts. Written in French by the Duke of Rochefoucault. Now made English, 1694 (ESTC R16964), and English-language editions followed in 1706, 1746 (Dublin), 1749 (ESTC T83583), ‘A new translation’ 1750 (Dublin: ESTC T200614), and 1751 (Dublin: ESTC T179201). 6 Probably a scrap epigram of ‘plain … poetry’, in the tradition of the sort of literary facetia which JB later collected into his scrapbook ‘Douce 193’. No poem fitting the description appears in Douce 193 or Donaldson’s Collection II. Nor is such a poem mentioned in Crit. Rev. or Monthly Rev. for Nov. 1762–Feb. 1763, nor Lond. Chron. for Dec. 1762. A facetious combination of religiosity and bacon and eggs appears in George Lyttleton, 1st Baron Lyttleton’s poem, ‘Virtue

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and Fame’, dedicated to the Countess of Egremont, ll. 30, 33: ‘This is some country parson’s wife … [w]ho banquets upon eggs and bacon’ (The works of George Lord Lyttelton … now first collected together … The third edition, 1776, p. 167). 7 Identifying the ‘worthy Nobleman’ is difficult without a surviving text. The only clues are those in this letter: that WD knew the author, that the nobleman once loved him, that WD had suffered through ‘a long long absence’ from the nobleman, and that the nobleman’s unkind uncle along with ‘various sort of Ennemies’ chilled relations between WD and the poet-aristocrat. One might in addition infer that JB also knew the author. However, JB’s circle of friends who were aristocrat-poets was relatively large, and included Eglinton, the Earl of Kellie, and AE, and eventually Lords Elibank, Stair, Chatham, and Lyttelton, and the Duchesses of Northumberland and Queensberry, among other notable authors. (For aristocratic authors of the era, see Walpole, A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, Scotland, and Ireland; With Lists of their Works, enlarged and continued by Thomas Park, 1806, vols iv. 242–379, and v. 155–72.) Perhaps he was Viscount Cantelupe (see n. 17 below). 8 George Anne Bellamy wrote, ‘Through my intimacy in the Delawar family, I learned that he [WD] had been ill-treated by his uncle, and pitied him much’ (Bellamy, iv. 11). Whether or not Lord Cantelupe was the ‘worthy Nobleman’, the ‘Unkind Uncle’ may have been John West (1693–1766), 1st Earl De La Warr (Comp. Peer. iv. 162–63). 9 North Briton No. 29, 18 Dec. 1762. The allegory concerns Lady Wiseacre and her custom of letting her servants such as Mrs. Brown choose her husband (to the detriment of the entire house, they select Captain Giddy). Wilkes added a note to his reprint of the allegory in the Political Controversy; or, Weekly Magazine (20 Dec. 1762), ii. 10, p. 381, in which he stated, ‘Nor shall we pretend to give any explanation of this day’s North-Briton, as we have no ambition to be acquainted with any of his majesty’s messengers’. 10 Because of the libellous nature of the North Briton’s journalism, the paper’s accusations of corruption of the realm by the Court interest of George III were frequently rendered ‘wholly uninteligible’ by rhetorical disguises (such as the ‘Wise Acres’ allegory, or the comparison of Bute to medieval conspirator Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of

March). Wilkes and Churchill worked this way in order to thwart those who would otherwise prosecute the printers and authors for seditious libel: the infamous issue No. 45 (23 Apr. 1763) finally crossed the line. As WD’s bafflement shows, the general reading public was often thereby rendered incapable of understanding the critique. Wilkes, despite his understandable fear in 1762 of arrest for libel, later published a key to the allegory. North Briton No. 29 was a satire on the Tories and the Court’s interference in the 1762 election of the Chancellor of Oxford University. ‘Lady Wiseacre’ was Oxford herself personified. ‘Mrs. Brown, leader of the servants’ was the vice-chancellor of Oxford, Dr. Brown, who supported the election. ‘Captain Giddy’, the unsuitable match chosen by the servants, was the 3rd Earl of Lichfield who had already served as High Steward of the University of Oxford 1760–62 and who was indeed made Chancellor of Oxford University 1762–72. Enemies such as Wilkes, Churchill, and Walpole derided Lichfield for being a Courtier (Lord of the Bedchamber to George III), a Tory, a suspected Jacobite, and a drunkard who had ruined his youthful promise and ‘drowned his parts’ (North Briton, Dublin, 1765, iii. 116–18; Comp. Peer. vii. 646; Sedgwick, ii. 205). The election was held 23 Sept., with the Court candidate, the Earl of Lichfield, receiving 321 votes, and Lord Foley 168 votes. Two other candidates, Lord Aylesford and the popular young Tory-backed Earl of Suffolk, withdrew. As Walpole wrote to Mann on 29 Aug., ‘Lord Litchfield will have the interest of the Court, which now has some influence there [at Oxford]; yet perhaps those [Jacobites] who would have voted for him formerly, may not now be his heartiest friends’. Yet it was also claimed by the Duke of Newcastle that the ‘Whigs’ had placed Litchfield into office (Corres. Walpole, xxii. 72 and nn. 24–25). Sutherland and Mitchell noted that ‘Bute’s aim was no doubt a step in the non-party politics he and his master favoured, but in view of the king’s well-known statements about purity of elections his method of achieving his end was something of a shock to those of the university tories who opposed Lichfield’ (L. S. Sutherland and L. G. Mitchell, eds., The History of the University of Oxford, Volume V: The Eighteenth Century, 1986, pp. 151–55). 11 The Auditor, 1762–63 (ESTC P2498), a pro-Bute weekly political newspaper, was edited by Arthur Murphy (1727–1805) and

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printed for Thomas Davies, not to be confused with the 1733 paper of the same name (ESTC P2499). Its articles gained more currency and a broader readership as a result of their being reprinted in their entirety (along with the Briton, The North Briton, and various pro- and anti-Administration newspapers) in the Wilkite The Political controversy: or, Magazine. Of ministerial and anti-ministerial essays; consisting of the Monitor, Briton, North Briton, Auditor, and Patriot. Entire; (with select pieces from the newspapers) collected and brought into one point of view. With annotations, anecdotes and remarks. By the editor, John Caesar Wilkes, Esq, 17 July 1762–6 Sept. 1763 (ESTC P2322). 12 On 18 Dec. The Auditor published a hoax letter signed VIATOR (which had the double meaning in Latin of ‘traveller’ and a summoner or apparitor empowered to bring offenders before a magistrate). ‘Viator’ claimed that falsehood was being used to make the acquisitions made by the treaty of peace appear contemptible. As an example he pointed to the economic value of ‘certain large bogs’, found in abundance in Florida, ‘which produced an excellent kind of fuel’, which could be shipped to the West Indies for home heating (quoted from the reprint of The Auditor, 18 Dec., in the Political Controversy; or, Weekly Magazine, Dec. 20., 1762, ii, no. 10, 358). It was generally considered a major point of ridicule among critics of the Treaty of Paris that ‘Bute’s Peace’ proposed something so ludicrous as to give up the valuable Caribbean sugar islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and St. Lucia, whose economic value was evident, while gaining the (allegedly) frozen wastes of Canada and the malarial swamps of East Florida and West Florida. Wilkes quipped that the Treaty of Paris, ‘like the peace of God … passeth understanding’ (Z. E. Rashed, The Peace of Paris 1763, 1951). 13 The two gentlemen of Verona. A comedy, written by Shakespeare. With alterations and additions. As it is performed at the TheatreRoyal in Drury-Lane, 1763 (ESTC T52075). It was in print early in the following year, by 31 Jan. 1763 (see From WD, 31 Jan. 1763). 14 Benjamin Victor’s adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona was advertised as ‘Never acted there. Taken from Shakespear, with a New Overture and New Music between the acts’. The adaptation was first acted at Drury Lane on 22 Dec., and was repeated on 28 and 30 Dec. and 4, 6, 25 [stopped by theatre riot] Jan. and 2 Feb. 1763 (English Stage, IV. ii. 969). Journ. does

not record JB’s having attended the staging. 15 ‘We are here Very thin as to Company—Our Theatre however Goes on with Spirit—and after Christmass I expect to see full houses Every Evening’ (see From WD, 9 Dec.; but see also From WD, 31 Jan. 1763). 16 WD was later in retirement from the stage c. 1764–71. 17 Maj.-Gen. John West (1729–77), styled Viscount Cantelupe 1761–66, later (1766) 2nd Earl De La Warr. If WD was in fact the son of the 1st Earl De La Warr (see To WD, ?first half of April 1757, n. 1), he and Cantelupe would have been half-brothers; they were definitely cousins. West entered the 3rd Foot Guards in 1746, was Lt.Col. of the 1st Troop of Horse Guards by 1755, had served as the King’s aide-de-camp in 1760–61, and achieved the army rank of maj.-gen. in 1761. As De La Warr, he continued to rise in the army as proprietary Col. of the 1st Troop of Horse Gren. Guards 1763–66 and proprietary Col. of the 1st Troop of Horse Guards 1766–77, and became a lt.-gen. 1770 (Comp. Peer. iv. 162– 63). 18 There is no evidence that any of the West family ever gave any help to WD, except his mother, Elizabeth (West) Digges, a sister of the Earl De La Warr. She left him a legacy of £4,000 in 1764 on the condition he never act again—a condition WD adhered to until the money was spent (Edin. Stage, p. 121; see To WD, ?first half of April 1757, n. 1). 19 Viscount Cantelupe was a courtier in George III’s Court, and served as Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen from 1761 to 1766. After he became the Earl De La Warr, his association with the Court continued, with his posts as Queen’s Master of Horse from 1766 and Queen’s Lord Chamberlain from 1768 to 1777 (Comp. Peer. iv. 162–63). 20 The rhetoric of ‘Country’ or ‘Patriot’ attacks on the corruption and luxury of the ‘Court’ politicians had been one of the major themes in eighteenth-century politics, and was a discourse in which Wilkes was a relative latecomer (H. T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property …, 1977). 21 Swift’s life had included his career in the Church (despite a chequered academic beginning), periods in Court favour under Queen Anne and in Country opposition under George II, his alliance with the Scriblerians, associations with the Whig and Tory politicians Temple and Harley, and travel between Ireland and England. 22 From Swift to Henry Saint-John, Vis-

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count Bolingbroke, 21 Mar. 1729–30: ‘I conclude that providence hath ordered our fears to decrease with our spirits; and yet I love la

bagatelle better than ever’ (Harold Williams, ed., The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, Volume III: 1724–1731, 1963, p. 382).

?To the Countess of Northumberland, before Thursday 30 December 1762 Not reported. Existence of the letter inferred from Journ. 30 Dec. Either a segment of a text (draft?) of To the Countess of Northumberland, 27 Dec., or a free-standing letter. ‘I went to Lady Northumberland’s. In my letter to her, I mentioned to her that I would not chuse to be far from London; and therefore I would chuse no other corps but the Guards or the Blues that is to say the Royal Horse Guards Blue. Madam (said I) I took the liberty to write you a letter. Sir, said she, I am sorry to find these guards so difficult to be got’ (Journ. 30 Dec.). ‘[M]y letter to her’ could, of course, simply be a reference to JB’s letter To the Countess of Northumberland, 27 Dec. However, the salient points of JB’s verbal description of ‘my letter to her’—(a) not choosing to be far from London; (b) choosing no other regiments except the Foot Guards or the Blues—are missing; only the Foot Guards frustrations are mentioned. Pottle in Lond. Journ. (p. 111 n. 2) remarked of JB’s discussion on 30 Dec. that ‘This is not the copy of the letter which he entered in the journal (above, 27 Dec.)’.

To the Earl of Eglinton, ?Wednesday 5 January 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 5 Jan. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 193–94), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 489). Perhaps one of the cards referred to by Lord Eglinton in Journ. 25 Jan.: ‘Writing me such cards & never coming near me, was enough to make me break with you. But I made allowance for your mistakes’.

[London] MY LORD. Your Lordship’s card2 which came safe, was received by me with different feelings. At first I talkd very cavalierly ‘Upon my word, the man has brought himself well off.’ But on a second perusal, and a discovery of the poignant ridicule, I was obliged to acknowledge that you had used me as Mr. Moody did the Devil; left me no the likeness o’ a Cat.3 However, I contrive to get an indirect compliment, by being the cause (as Falstaff says) of something so clever.4 You know we have often disputed whether or not I am a Poet. I have sent you an Ode.5 Lord Elibank6 thought it good. I think so too. 1 Date supplied from Journ. 5 Jan.: ‘I had this morning sent a letter to Lord Eglintoune as follows.’ 2 Usually assumed to have been an answer to From Eglinton, 22 Dec. 1762. This edition has provisionally dated the letter by following JB’s own placement of the item in his journal to JJ. However, as JB consciously rearranged and redated the events in Journ. in order to improve the narrative flow, it remains a possibility that this letter was actually written in the week immediately following 23 Dec. It certainly seems peculiar that on 5 Jan., after at least one conver-

sation and four possible visits, JB would have written as if Eglinton himself would need the news of the arrival of Eglinton’s card sent fourteen days earlier. After all, JB’s memoranda of the period almost daily signalled his intentions to call on Eglinton. Mem. 27 Dec. mentioned: ‘Be Digges there. Let your mind be easy all is well—Your closet has not been looked into’, and also mentioned an intention to ‘Get money’ from Eglinton: ‘Also Eglint’s 3 Shill. laugh & say you need silver.’ Mem. 28 Dec. noted, ‘then Eglint. or rather home— Be easy & independent’. Mem. 29 Dec.

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stated, ‘Say smart to Sir H then Eglint—or rather Gould’. Mem. 30 Dec. remarked, ‘Be serious—then Eglint—& keep up’. Furthermore, JB had certainly seen Eglinton on 29 Dec. at the Macfarlanes’ London residence: ‘I then went to Lady Betty’s. Lord Eglintoune had long been wanting to be acquainted with Captain Andrew. He came there this forenoon and I made them acquainted. My Lord said he fancied I was very busy that I had not time to see my freinds. O yes said I there are many curious Adventures in this town. Says he, I had a very good party with me, last night … Erskine talked a little to him; but not much’ (Journ. 29 Dec.). 3 The precise literary reference is untraced. The Rev. Alexander Moodie (1728–99), educated at Glasgow and licensed to preach in 1754, had initially been ordained to the Second Charge at Culross in 1759. JB’s friend and mentor Sir Alexander Dick presented Moodie to Riccarton parish in Sept. 1761, and Moodie had been admitted in Apr. 1762 (Fasti Scot. iii. 64). A well-known Ayrshireman, Moodie appears several times in Robert Burns’s poetry, particularly in ‘The Twa Herds’, ‘The Kirk’s Alarm’, and ‘The Holy Fair’. In ‘The Holy Fair’, Burns described Moodie’s defeat of the Devil: ‘The vera sight o’ [Moodie’s] face,/ To’s ain het hame had sent him [the Devil]/ Wi’ fright that day’ (The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, ed. James Kinsley, 1968, ll. 104–08). The Devil (and witches as well) were supposed by Scottish prosecutors of witchcraft to have frequently taken the form or likeness of a cat (Memories of Ayshire, p. 282). 4 ‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men’ (2 Henry IV, I. ii. 10). 5 JB had published several odes, and it was one of his three favourite genres in 1760–62, along with the verse epistle and witty epigram. His An Ode to Tragedy. By a Gentleman of Scotland, 1761 had been published as a poem-pamphlet in Dec. 1761 by Donaldson. In Collection II, published in Jan. 1762, JB printed his ‘Ode on the Death of Marshal Keith’, and ‘To Gluttony. An Ode. In Imitation of Midnight, an Ode’ (for Collection II, see Lit. Car. pp. 13–14). JB’s ‘Ode On An Engagement Between The Right Honourable Lady B****, And A Turkey-Cock’ (text in To AE, 1 June [E–B]) existed in manuscript form from mid-1762, but was not printed until the publication of E–B. JB’s unpublished work in Douce 193 included two poems likely written before

Jan. 1762: ‘Ode Written at Newmarket’ (?spring 1760), and ‘Ode to Comedy’ (which Werner guessed might have been a companion-piece to the 1761 ‘Ode to Tragedy’). JB’s scrapbook of poems also included the undated ‘Ode on Whistling’, ‘Ode to the Elves’, and ‘Ode on the Death of a Lamb’. JB’s French Ode beginning ‘Autre fois j’etois poète’ was not written until 1764 (Werner, pp. 56, 59, 107, 108, 109, 156, 168, 170–72, 187–88, 214–15). The actual poem JB sent to Eglinton in Jan. 1763 is not known. JB’s ‘Ode to Ambition’ was discussed the night of 5 Jan.: ‘My Lord produced me in writing saying he had got a new Poem which was my ode to ambition. I asked him when he got it. He said it was lying in the pocket of a coat that he wore last year’ (Journ.). Thus, Eglinton’s comments in Journ., if truthful, would suggest that Eglinton had owned his copy of ‘Ode to Ambition’ from Jan. 1762. Yet the ‘Ode’ which JB mentioned that he has ‘sent’ Eglinton was likely sent c. Jan. 1763. If both of those statements were in earnest, the ode JB had sent Eglinton that day was not the one read aloud that night. Of course, it remains possible that Eglinton was playing an elaborate joke on Sir James Macdonald with a hoax as to the author and the date of composition, or was ‘shaving’ JB’s vanity with the public statement that the poem had been left to languish in Eglinton’s coat pocket for a year. The ‘Ode to Ambition’ has not been reported but is listed as an ode of forty-eight lines in JB’s ‘Plan’ for a volume of poems (Douce 193). JB inscribed a copy, not located, which he presented to Voltaire (Journ. 28 Dec. 1764): ‘I … wrote a fair copy of my Ode on Ambition for him, and inscribed it thus: “Most humbly presented to Monsieur de Voltaire, the glory of France, the admiration of Europe, by Mr. Boswell, who has had the honour of regarding and loving him in private life at his Château de Ferney’. 6 Patrick Murray (1703–78), 5th Lord Elibank from 1736, was admitted to the Fac. Adv. in 1723, entered the army 1723, served in one campaign of the War of Jenkins’s Ear as Lt.-Col. of Marines, but left the army in 1740. Walpole and Wilkes accused Elibank of Jacobitism, but he became a supporter of the Hanoverians in the era of George III. Elibank was an author of several political works, including the 1758 Thoughts on Money Circulation and Paper Currency. He associated himself with men of the legal profession and literature, and was a friend of

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Kames and Hume, and a patron of Robertson and Home (Scots Peer. iii. 518; Comp. Peer. v. 47). He was regarded in Edinburgh, along with Lord Kames and David Hume, as a high authority on matters of literary taste. JB had met him at Eglinton’s and regarded him as ‘a man of strong genius great reading and lively

imagination’ (Journ. 26, 29 Nov.). SJ held an equally high opinion of Lord Elibank, and stated, ‘I never was in Lord Elibank’s company without learning something’ (Life iii. 24 [7 Apr. 1776], v. 182 [SJ to Elibank, 12 Sept. 1773]; v. 385–86 [10 Nov. 1773]).

From the Earl of Eglinton, Wednesday 5 January 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 5 Jan. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 194–95), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. C 1180).

[London] DEAR JAMIE: I received your note; and am very glad you are got right again. I like your Ode much. There was no need of that to convince me you had genius. I wish I was as sure of your Judgment of men and things. I know you think yourself as well acquainted with both, as Mr. Moody’s Elders2 think him with God and the Devil. I agree you are upon a par: but I differ from the chosen ones.3 Yours, E———— Pray sup with me tonight. I have a choice spirit or two.4 Bring the Captain with you. We’ll rub him up,5 and you shall have leave to laugh at him for not knowing the world. Lady Macfarlan’s Brother I mean .6 1 Date supplied from Journ. 5 Jan.: ‘As we were at dinner, I got his answer as follows …. This was realy so good that they all agreed I should go, which the Captain also complied with; so we sent our compliments & we would wait on him’. 2 The Elders or ‘ruling elders’ in a Church of Scotland congregation were lay representatives to the congregational assembly which the minister (or ‘teaching elder’) moderated. Even under the patronage system in the Kirk post-1712, they were a powerful force in the parish kirk through the kirk sessions (CSD). 3 Presumably a reference to Eglinton’s libertinism and scepticism which set him at religious loggerheads with the eternally chosen ‘Elect’ or ‘Saints’ of the Knoxian Church of Scotland. 4 JB recorded Eglinton’s guests besides himself and AE: ‘His choice spirits were [Thomas Miller (1717–89)] Lord Advocate [of Scotland;] Sir James Macdonald [(c. 1742–66) of Sleat, Bt.] & Captain [George] Johnston[e (1730–87)] of the Navy’ (Journ. 5 Jan.). 5 That is, revive him (OED). 6 JB’s record of the evening suggests that

although it was initially a socially overwhelming event for himself and AE, he was eventually able to have his vanity gratified, and effect a reconciliation with Eglinton. ‘At 9 Erskine & I went to Lord Eglintoune’s …. Erskine & I were most amazingly bashfull and stupid. The conversation was all about the Banks of Scotland, a method to burn ships at a distance, as by burning glasses and other topics out of our way entirely. In short, we appeared to a horrid dissadvantage. Let never People form a character of a Man from being a night in his company; Especialy a man of Wit …’ . In other conversations that night, Lord Eglintoune and Sir James disputed the idea of vanity, then Eglinton, Sir James, AE, and JB debated ‘the Nature of Poetry’. ‘This was all the show that I made tonight, in the way of speech …. Sir James read [my ode to ambition] aloud. He praised it upon the whole …. Such a scene would have disconcerted some People. But I sat by with the most unconcerned ease.’ The evening ended with the hoped-for rapprochement between JB and Eglinton: ‘My Lord took me by the hand. “I hope we are very good freinds.” My Lord I hope we never were otherwise. We stayed till near three’ (Journ. 5 Jan.).

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To the Earl of Eglinton, before 18 January 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 18 Jan. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 255– 56), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 490). Perhaps one of the cards referred to by Lord Eglinton in Journ. 25 Jan. 1763 (see To Eglinton, ?5 Jan.).

To The Earl of Eglintoune one of the Lords of his Majesty’s Bedchamber. Boswell the Poet sole Lord of his own sends such Compliments as men of the World generaly send to each other. The honour that Lord Eglintoune has done him in calling twice,2 is most properly felt, and he begs leave to acknowledge himself much out of his duty, in not paying his respects in Queen-Street , before now; altho’ between the Ladies celestial3 and terrestrial,4 he has for some time past, been kept in pretty good employment both of mind (which I mention first as the most exalted part of our nature) and body; which, let Metaphysicians talk as they may, has no small share in human felicity.5 Boswell will very soon wait of Lord Eglintoune.6 1 ‘I wrote for Answer …. This way of coresponding that the Earl & I have got into is something very clever, and entertaining’ (Journ. 18 Jan.). Again, JB’s placement of the materials in the entry for 18 Jan. is not conclusive evidence that it was composed on that day, but does indicate it was written on or before 18 Jan. 2 Eglinton had notified JB that he ‘ha[d] calld twice’ (see From Eglinton, ? before 18 Jan.). 3 The Muses. 4 ‘It is very curious to think that I have now been in London, several weeks without ever enjoying the delightfull Sex: Altho’ I am surrounded with numbers of freehearted Ladies of all kinds … [yet] I have had the most delicious Intrigues with women of Beauty sentiment & spirit, perfectly suited to my romantic Genius’ (Journ. 14 Dec.). In Dec. 1762 had JB begun his amour with ‘Louisa’: ‘I had now called several times for a handsom Actress of CoventGarden Theatre, whom I was a little acquainted with, and whom I shall distinguish in this my Journal by the name of Louisa. This Lady had been indisposed & saw no company; but today, I was admitted’. The couple first had sexual intercourse on 12 Jan. (Journ. 14 Dec. 1762; cf. Mem. 2, 3, 9, 13, 14, Dec. 1762, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 Jan.). He also appears to have attempted to carry on an intrigue with ‘Mrs. Ward’ and ‘old Canongate girl’ (Mem. 29 Nov., 9 Dec. 1762), and by mid-Jan. was flirting with ‘Lady Mirabel’: ‘I could not think of being unfaithfull to Louisa. But then I thought

Louisa was only in the mean time, till I got into genteel life, and that a Woman of fashion was the only proper object for such a Man as me. At last, delicate honour prevailed & I resolved for some time at least to keep alive my affection for Louisa’ (Journ. 14, 18 Jan.). 5 JB’s concern with the question of passions versus reason and body versus mind was a preoccupation dating back to his early metaphysical speculations. Stoic and Cynic philosophers had argued against the role of bodily comforts in creating happiness; Epicurean philosophers argued for moderate material ease as a source of happiness. JB strove for a balance between both: ‘my body warm, & my mind elegantly amused’ (Journ. 19 Nov.). In his journal JB specifically related the mind-body dichotomy to the issue of sexual relations. ‘There cannot be higher felicity on earth enjoyed by man than the participation of genuine reciprocal amorous affection with an amiable Woman. There he has a full indulgence of all the delicate feelings & pleasures both of Body & mind …. I am therefore walking about with a healthfull stout Body, and a chearfull mind, in search of a Woman worthy of my love, and who thinks me worthy of her’s, without any interested views’ (Journ. 14 Dec.). 6 JB met Eglinton 5, 14, 20, and 21 Jan. On the 20th, ‘I then called on Lord Eglintoune …. He discovered by my looks that I was ill [with gonorrhoea]. I went with him into another room, and confest my misfortune .… He was realy kind today. I loved him; & I could see that it was in vain

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for me to carry it high with him, for he did not understand it. He said he wished I could be kept at a mediocrity of spirits, neither too high, nor too low. But he was affraid I was low as I had not come near him for sometime. Nay, My Lord said I. I am high, and dont require you. Said he you should have half a dozen of your freinds, to whom you should come regularly. I asked him to

come & sit an afternoon with me. He promised he would’. The two met again on 21 Jan. at Lady Northumberland’s ‘grand rout’ where JB ‘chatted awhile with Lord Eglintoune. He promised that when I got sound, he would introduce me to some Women of intrigue of the highest fashion’ (Journ. 5, 14, 21 [for 20] Jan.).

From the Earl of Eglinton, ?before 18 January 17631 MS. Yale (C 1181). Transcribed by JB into Journ. 18 Jan. (Yale MS. J 2.1 p. 255). This is a rare case in which both the original letter and JB’s journal transcription survive. The more substantial alterations in Journ. are recorded below in the notes. SEAL:

******* To Js. Boswell Esqr. at Mr Terrys Downing street Wistmr.

ADDRESS:

Janr. 1762 2

3

Lord Eglinton presents his Compts to Mr BOSWAL (I think I should have said only4 BOSWELL5 for as the Gascoon sayd to the Marchall Talard6 nobody ever said Mr Horace),7 and takes the liberty to acquaint his Poetship that he has calld twice8 and lives in Queen Street Mayfair.9 1 Year emendation supplied from Journ. 18 Jan: ‘Lord Eglintoune sent me the following card …. This way of coresponding that the Earl & I have got into is something very clever, and entertaining.’ The MS is misdated ‘1762’ for ‘1763’ (a common enough mistake at the beginning of a new year), but JB’s London address at Terrie’s makes the redating to 1763 a certainty. However, the lack of a specific date within Jan. 1763 before the 18th is worrisome. The context in the journal is somewhat vague, and JB did transpose certain documents in time in his Journ. Thus, the provisional date of before 18 Jan. 2 Journ. ‘Lord Eglintoune’ 3 Journ. ‘compliments’ 4 Journ. ‘I should only have said’ 5 Eglinton had indeed spelled JB’s name two different ways in the same letter. In Journ. JB emended both of the misspellings to ‘Boswell’, losing the humorous effect of Eglinton’s capitalized emphasis in the process. 6 MS. Journ. ‘Monsieur Tallard’. Presumably Camille d’Hostun (1652–1728), Marquis [?later Duc] de la Baume-d’Hostun, Baron d’Arlanc, Comte de Tallard, French diplomat, and Marechal de France. He negotiated the partition treaties of 1698 and 1700 which set the stage for the War of the Spanish Succession. With the outbreak of war, he became a field commander for France. Al-

though victorious at Speyer (1703), Tallard lost to the Duke of Marlborough’s Allied force at Blenheim, and was taken prisoner at that battle (1704). Tallard later served as minister of state in 1726 (NBG). 7 The anecdote has not been traced (see Lond. Journ. p. 147 n. 9). The absurdity of placing a Modern honorific before an Ancient name was played upon in Tristram Shandy, in which the narrator noted, ‘I should beg Mr. Horace’s pardon’ (I. iv; Tristram Shandy, Florida ed., i. 5). A reconstruction of the jest is possible, and hinges on the popular view of the Gascon people of France. Gascons were stereotyped as a poor but proud people who considered no-one their superiors and who delighted in boasting but deflating the claims of others:

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It is said that a Gascon being asked what he thought of the Louvre in Paris, replied, ‘Pretty well; it reminds me of the back part of my father’s stables.’ … The Dictionary of the French Academy [offered another] specimen [of Gascon pride]: “A Gascon, in proof of his ancient nobility, asserted that they used in his father’s house no other fuel than the bâtons of the family [ancestors who had served as field-]marshals.” (Brewer’s Dict., s.v. ‘Gasconade’)

?BEFORE 18 JANUARY 1763

An example of Gascon sauciness (but with regard to the pretensions of poets rather than field-marshals) exists in an anecdote about M. Bredouillard. Proud of his great abilities as a poet, he upbraided a Gascon who presumed to greet him familiarly as ‘Bredouillard’. The Gascon replied: ‘Dit-on Monsieur Horace, Monsieur Ovide, Monsieur Virgile[?]; Je vous mets au rang des grands Hommes … Vous n’êtes pour moi [que] Bredouillard’ (Gasconia, ou recueil des bon mots … et des rencontres les plus vives des Gascons, 1708, p. 270). Thus, one might speculate that the joke was perhaps something of this sort: When Marshal Tallard was on campaign, there was a Gascon soldier in his army who repeatedly spoke to him as ‘Tallard’ or ‘Comte’. When instructed that he should address the Marshal either as ‘Monsieur le Comte’ or ‘Monsieur le Marechal’, the Gascon retorted that the request was ridiculous: as great and as respected as the Roman

poet Horace was, nobody referred to him as ‘Monsieur Horace’, after all, so why say ‘Monsieur le Comte’?. 8 After the supper at Eglinton’s on 5 Jan., JB next met Eglinton at Lady Northumberland’s Friday ‘very full meeting’ on the night of 14 Jan.: ‘Lord Eglintoune realy payd court to me. He asked me how I had been this long time and hoped that I heard of his being at my door, several times. He insisted that I should sup with him. He said he had several very clever fellows, amongst whom was Erskine; But I told him that I never was abroad, at night’ (Journ. 5, 14 Jan.). The reminder that Eglinton had called twice was therefore a belabouring of facts which JB certainly knew by 14 Jan.; hence a bit of ‘shaving’. 9 The reminder about Eglinton’s address, which of course JB knew well, is a humorous mock politesse tweaking JB for forgetting to visit.

To West Digges, ?on or before 22 January 1763 Not reported. JB presumably sent WD the North Briton of the day, No. 34 (22 Jan.). WD seems to refer to No. 34 in the sentence ‘Elvira.— Mr Churchill calls it a Political Poem’ (From WD, 31 Jan.). However, it should be noted that on 22 Jan. JB began his confinement which would last during his course of medication for his bout of gonorrhoea: ‘I gave orders to say at the door, that I was gone to the country, except to a few freinds … to be kept from comfortable Child’s is somewhat hard’ (Journ. 22 Jan.). JB’s breaking his Saturday routine of going to Child’s Coffee House also probably interrupted his usual patterns of the purchasing of the week’s North Briton and his Saturday posting of letters to Edinburgh. Presumably before the beginning of his confinement 22 Jan. (on a day he described as ‘Sometime ago’ on 9 Feb.), JB had stopped buying the North Briton from ‘the Pamphlet shop in the passage to the Temple-Exchange Coffeehouse’ and instead subscribed to receive the paper directly from the publisher by ‘Penny Post’. JB’s first mention of returning to his old Saturday routine of Child’s and the North Briton was in late Mar. (see To WD, 4 Dec. 1762). This letter appears to have included JB’s news of his sufferings from gonorrhoea, since WD noted in a letter of 31 Jan., ‘I am sorry to hear my kind correspondent has been indisposed.… I hope by this time the Goddess Higeia has payd You a Visit’ (From WD, 31 Jan.). JB had first felt symptoms of gonorrhoea on 18 Jan. (‘I this day began to feel an unacountable alarm of unexpected evil.’), felt an increase in strong pains 19 Jan. (‘Too too plain was signior Gonorhæa’), and on 20 Jan. had Surgeon Douglas confirm his selfdiagnosis: ‘Douglas … upon examining the parts, declared I had got an evident infection’. He did not experience the gleet signifying the subsidence of the infection until 27 Feb. (Journ.; cf. Clap, p. 40). The harsh London weather may have been a subject of JB’s letter to WD, although it was doubtless reported publicly in the Edinburgh press: ‘I hear the Weather has been extremely severe with You in London’. WD also thanked JB for sending him a copy of ‘two Gentn. of Verona’ which was probably sent along in the same packet, if the franking weight allowed (From WD, 31 Jan.).

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From the Earl of Eglinton, Monday 24 January 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 24 Jan. (Yale MS. J 2.1, p. 307), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. C 1182).

DEAR JAMIE: I am sorry it has not been in my power to pay my respects to you, as I promis’d,2 but will call on you soon.3 If you are not engaged, pray dine with me tomorrow.4 Yours, EGLINTOUNE 1 Date supplied from Journ.: ‘I was somewhat better, and had some hope of being happy again. I received the following card from Lord Eglintoune’ (Journ. 24 Jan.). 2 Presumably a reference to JB’s visit to Eglinton on 20 Jan., during which time JB had reported his case of gonorrhoea: ‘[C]alled on Lord Eglintoune …. He discovered by my looks that I was ill. I went with him into another room, and confest my misfortune. He was going to blame my rashness at first, but upon my telling him my Dulcinea was an Actress he was silent. I told Him I have had several intrigues within these two years & that if I was taken in but once in four or five times I was not unlucky. He agreed to all this.… I asked him to come & sit an afternoon with me. He promised he would’ (Journ. 21 Jan., recording events of 20 Jan.). He had also spoken with Eglinton on 21 Jan. (Journ.). 3 Eglinton visited JB on the forenoon of the 25th. The two discussed Charles Churchill’s anti-Scots bigotry, Eglinton

‘frank[ed] some covers’, and they discussed JB’s 1760 visit to London. Much of the conversation focused on JB’s quest for a Guards commission, the reason for Eglinton’s delays in promoting JB’s Guards scheme, and the correspondence between JB and Eglinton about it. The two made apologies for their anger, and Eglinton announced, ‘Well I hope—all is over now, & we’re just where we were’, to which JB replied, ‘(allmost weeping) We are indeed My Lord’. Because of an illness of his own, Eglinton had to send his apologies to JB via Douglas on 7 Feb. for the lack of further visits: ‘Lord Eglintoune … was indisposed & had been blooded; and had desired Douglas to tell me so, & make that Apology for his not having been again to see me …. My Lord talked of me with great regard: Explained our difference fully … declared he would do all for me in his power’ (Journ. 22, 25 Jan., 7 Feb.). 4 Evidently Eglinton was not yet informed of JB’s total confinement for gonorrhoea and inability to leave his rooms.

To the Earl of Eglinton, Monday 24 January 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 24 Jan. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 307– 08), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 491).

Mr. Boswell presents his Compliments to Lord Eglintoune and is sorry he cannot comply with his Lordship’s kind invitation, being confined to the house.2 But when he gets well, he hopes to be oftener with his Lordship.3 For indeed My Lord, we love each other.4 Yours, BOSWELL 1 Date supplied from Journ. 24 Jan.: ‘I wrote for Answer … This card was a little effusion of the love which I cannot help having for this very agreable Nobleman, who first brought me into life, & taught me the joys of splendour and gayety’. 2 JB’s ordeal of treatments did not end

until 27 Feb.: ‘I had now kept the house five compleat weeks … My disorder was now over. Nothing but a gleet remained. Douglas gave it as his opinion that I should confine myself no longer … I walked out to the Park’ (Journ.; see Clap, pp. 6–9, 40). 3 JB’s return of enthusiasm for Eglinton

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on 25 Jan. was genuine. However, it was tempered by lingering suspicion, a need for JB to prove his independence of Eglinton’s unreliable patronage, and an undercurrent of moral disapproval of Eglinton’s libertinism: ‘I shall now enjoy his elegant company & conversation as fully & freely, as formerly. We shall be intimate Companions. Yet … although Lord Eglintoune might mean to act honestly with respect to me, yet it is certain that he is very selfish and very dissipated.… He also sets a high value on his favours, so that he treats people who are

obliged to him, with a degree of contempt. Let me therefore be in this stile with him. Just an agreable lively Companion who is much at his house amongst other men of wit & spirit’ (Journ. 25 Jan.). 4 JB records other effusions of ‘love’ in Journ. 25 Jan.: ‘[JB:] Even when I was most angry, I could not help now & then having returns of fondness for you as strong as ever. [Eglinton:] Like what one feels for a mistress? was it not? [JB:] Just so, My Lord. [Eglinton:] I assure you Jamie, I have the same regard for you’.

To John Cairnie, Saturday 29 January 1763 Not reported; perhaps merely a wrapper with Cairnie’s address enclosing a letter to JJ. Mentioned in To JJ, 29 Jan., which expressed JB’s anxiety at not having had news from JJ for ‘a forthnight past yesterday’, and JB’s resultant fear: ‘I cannot help being anxious and thinking that my letters are lost or opened’. In light of his fear of interception of the Journ., JB sent the packet to Cairnie instead: ‘For fear of miscarriage I have inclosed this to Cairnie.’ Cairnie added the following note to JB’s letter to JJ: ‘Mr. Cairnie begs to see Mr. Johnston at Stewart and Lindesay’s Shop1 on Monday at eleven o’clock’ (Corr. 1, pp. 42– 43). It is not known, however, if JB’s packet included any additional message to Cairnie. JB’s Journ. for 29 Jan. noted: ‘I amused myself with writing letters’. 1

The shopkeepers Stewart and Lindsey have not been identified.

From West Digges, Monday 31 January 1763 MS. Yale (C 1041). ADDRESS: To James Boswell Esqr—

Edinr., Jany. 31. 1763— DEAR SIR: I am sorry to hear my kind correspondent has been indisposd .1 I know you too well to suppose that any Excesses have occasiond Your complaint,2 And As to those Disorders incident to the frame of our Nature we must submit to them with patience and resignation. I hope by this time the Goddess Higeia3 has payd You a Visit, And Made an apology for forsaking so worthy a human Being.— I hear the Weather has been extremely severe with You in London ,4 We have had Very Mild and soft weather in the North,5 And Nothing more surprises Us here, than to read of frozen rivers and an Inclement Season.— The town is not so full, as We expected it Would be—I live at Boninton,6 And have left some time my gloomy Apartments at the Bottom of the Canon Gate.—7 Nor do I think it any sort of pennance to go at nine oClock to Edinburgh to a rehearsal, or to return from a play at Eleven at Night.— ’tho I am near a Mile and a half from the City.— I thank You most sincerely for the two Gentn. of Verona8 but it is in my poor opinion a dull peice of Work—As I am Ever adding to the Obligations I recieve from You, by an impertinent curiosity Which Your good nature will perhaps pity as well as pardon, let me beg you to send Me the Citizen lately publishd9—I have some thoughts of playing it here,10 the sooner therefore You assist Our Stage according to your Accustomd patronage the more Essential service You will render 370

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it.— I hear You have Written to a Correspondent here a full Acct. of the Merit or rather Demerit of Elvira.—11 Mr Churchill calls it a Political Poem.—12 if it has any tendency to party,13 I blame the Manager14 more than the Poet15 —I suppose The Pleasures of the Drama, form the most frequent part of Your Entertainment16—I presume you have seen Love in a Village17 ten times, and that You are all Impatience for Mrs. Sheridans Comedy.—18 I hope Woodward19 is a favourite with You.— He is by far the best Comedian I ever knew—It is now near five oClock— I must set out for Edinr. to dress and so forth—Adieu, dear Sir, and pray believe Me Most Gratefully Yours, W. DIGGES 1 JB had developed symptoms of gonorrhoea during his four days of sexual intercourse with ‘Louisa’ 12, 16, 17, and 18 Jan., and he recognized the onset of the disease 18 Jan. His surgeon Douglas confirmed JB’s selfdiagnosis on 20 Jan., and JB suffered five weeks of confinement from 22 Jan. to 27 Feb. For a more thorough account of JB’s disease and treatments, see nn. to To ‘Louisa’ (?Anne Lewis), 3 Feb., and Clap, p. 40. 2 Perhaps an ironic wink based on WD’s knowledge of JB’s past libertinism and ‘whoring’. Yet JB himself had boasted of his moderation in Journ. 14 Dec. 1762: ‘It is very curious to think that I have now been in London, several weeks without ever enjoying the delightfull Sex: Altho’ I am surrounded with numbers of free-hearted Ladies of all kinds …. I have suffered severely from the loathsom distemper & therefore shudder at the thoughts of running any risque of having it again’. JB had ‘suffered’ from attacks of venereal disease twice before, the first in London in Mar. 1760, the second in Edinburgh July–Aug. 1760; Ober believed the second attack was ‘possibly a recurrence of incompletely resolved first infection’ (Clap, p. 40). On. 13 Jan. he had boasted of his improved ‘knowledge and moderation & government of myself’ (Journ.). JB was sure that by avoiding prostitutes in London and seeking out fine women he could avoid contracting any sexually-transmitted diseases. 3 The Ancient Greek goddess of health, a daughter to Aesculapius; personification of health. 4 On 19 Jan. JB records that he, AE and GD ‘went upon the top of London Bridge, from whence we viewed with a pleasing horror, the rude and terrible appearance of the river partly froze up, partly covered with enormous shoals of floating ice which often crash’d against each other’ (Journ.). The entire month had been characterized by ex-

ceptionally cold temperatures. In London it was so cold about 20 Jan. that ‘two soldiers were frozen to death on their duty; and, in other parts, several that have lost their way in the night, have been found frozen to death in the morning’. On 25 Jan. ‘A gentleman, with skaits on, was found frozen to death among some floating ice, over against the Isle of Dogs … by skaiting too near the stream, a portion of the ice had broken off, on which he had remained till he perished by the cold’ (Gent. Mag. Jan. 1763, xxxiii. 44–45). 5 Cal. Merc. (29 Dec. 1762) presented an extract of a letter from Cumberland of 10 Dec., which stated: ‘At the approach of winter, we had reason to expect a very severe season, but our apprehensions are now over, having had, for this month past, surprising mild weather. The fields have all the verdure of April, and the air all the warmth of May; the rose bushes in the gardens have got new cloathing’. However, the Scots Mag. reported: ‘The [late Dec./early Jan. London] frost was felt severely, also, in most parts of the British dominions, and in all the countries of the North’. In mid-Jan., the ‘North-water’ near Brechin ‘dried up all of a sudden’, and continued so from 6 A.M. until 12 P.M. (Scots Mag. Jan 1763, xxv. 56– 67). Wales and Ireland reported remarkably mild weather, with primroses beginning to bloom in Wales (Gent. Mag. Jan. 1763, xxxiii. 44–45). For the general pattern of weather in eighteenth-century Scotland, see Robert Mossman, ‘The Meterology of Edinburgh’, Trans. of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, xxxix/1 (Edinburgh, 1896–97): Tables 29, 38, and 49. 6 From summer 1762, WD and George Anne Bellamy had rented a house in Bonnington village (From WD, 29 Dec. 1762). 7 The Canongate section of Edinburgh, where the Erskine family also owned a

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house. WD’s wording implies that JB had visited him at that lodging. 8 Benjamin Victor’s adaptation of The two gentlemen of Verona …, 1763. 9 Arthur Murphy’s The Citizen, a farce, had premiered at Drury Lane on 2 July 1761. During the months of JB’s return to London, it had its Covent Garden debut (‘Afterpiece never perform’d there before’), with Woodward as the ‘Citizen’, on 15, 17, 20, 25 Nov., 1, 7 Dec. 1762, 19 Jan. (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 808, 874–75, 878, 884, 944–45, 963–64, 966, 974, 981–82, 984, 989–90, 998). WD had shown a particular interest in his letter to JB of 9 Dec. 1762 in ‘The Comedy of Mr Woodward’. Woodward shone in the role of ‘Old Philpot’, the London ‘Citizen’, Murphy’s title character. The production continued into the spring of 1763 and onwards, amidst the furore of the theatre riots against Beard’s management. There is no record of JB’s having attended one of those performances. The citizen. A farce. As it is performed at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden …, 1763 (ESTC T30776) was published 1 Feb. (Lond. Chron., 1763, xiii. 110). A Dublin piracy appeared in 1763 (ESTC T153277). 10 The Citizen was advertised as to be performed in Edinburgh for four nights beginning 23 Apr., and again on 10 May and 11 July (Edin. Eve. Cour. 16 Apr., p. [3], 9 May, p. [3], 9 July p. [3]). 11 See the account of JB’s attacks on David Mallet’s (or Malloch’s) Elvira in the theatre and in print in the notes to the not reported letter To an Unidentified Correspondent in Edinburgh, late Jan. 12 The North Briton No. 34 (22 Jan.), in the course of an attack on Lord Bute, quoted from Elvira (III. iii. 48–49): ‘In the political poem of ELVIRA, now acting at Drury-Lane Theatre, are the following remarkable lines: [QUEEN:] He holds a man who train’d a King to honour, A second only to the prince he form’d.’

This would have been interpreted as fulsome praise of Lord Bute, who had been the tutor of George III and had subsequently been made prime minister. The play was also thought by the public to contain certain political allusions to the Seven Years’ War, through references to Britain’s ally Portugal and its enemy Spain (Lit. Car. p. 19). 13 Elvira premiered in the seething atmosphere of the theatrical Half-Price riots and the anti-Bute/anti-Scots Wilkite furore. Mallet was politically supported by Lord

Bute, whom Mallet had praised. Bute in 1763 gave Mallet the post of Inspector of Exchequer-Book in the Outports of London, a sinecure worth £300 p.a. which he collected for the remainder of his life. Edward Gibbon had noted that Mallet’s supporters had feared the ill effects of ‘the malice of a [Wilkite?] party, Mallet’s [Scottish] nation, connections [with Bute?] and indeed imprudence’ (Edward Gibbon, Gibbon’s Journal, ed. D. M. Low, pp. 202–04). 14 David Garrick. 15 Mallet. 16 JB was at Drury Lane on 22 Nov. and ?3 Dec. [Mem. 1 Dec.] 1762; 10 Jan., 19 Jan., and 3 Feb. ; and at Covent Garden on 19 Nov., 8, 11, and ?13 Dec. [Mem.] 1762, 13 Jan. (Journ.; Mem.). His confinement with gonorrhoea had ruled out theatregoing for most of the time of his disease. 17 Isaac Bickerstaffe’s comic opera Love in a Village opened at Covent Garden on 8 Dec. 1762 and was performed forty times during the season (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 967). JB had attended opening night: ‘At night I went to Covent-Garden & saw Love in a Village a new comic opera, for the first night. I liked it much. I saw it from the Gallery, but I was first in the Pit …. I then went to the Gallery & was realy well entertained with the Opera’. His enjoyment was initially marred by anti-Scottish bigotry by the gallery audience, directed at two Highland officers (Journ. 8 Dec. 1762). 18 Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery. JB had begun trying to write a prologue to The Discovery in late Dec., and on 18 Jan. remembered the commission as having originated ‘some weeks ago’: ‘Mrs. Sheridan some weeks ago asked me to write a Prologue to her new Comedy …. Her applying to me, after this, no doubt flattered me a good deal …. As I had written no verses for some months, the task appeared very formidable’ (Mem. 31 Dec. 1762, 1 Jan. 1763; Journ. 18 Jan. 1763). He had produced two versions, preserved in the Bodleian MS. They have been printed in Werner (pp. 149–52, 207–10), and in Robert Hogan and Jerry C. Beasley, eds., The Plays of Frances Sheridan, 1984 (pp. 202–04); Hogan and Beasley state in error that neither of the prologues ‘has ever before been printed’, but their reversal of Werner’s order is correct. JB reported of the prologues’ reception by the playwright: ‘I wrote one which she said had good lines, but was too general. I therefore wrote another, which she said was near the mark, & with a little polishing would do’; he boasted of it to the Erskines and to

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GD (Journ. 18 Jan.). See also From WD, 18 Feb., n. 25. On 18 Jan. he had gone to TS’s to hear the reaction, and was crestfallen: ‘[t]o get a definitive Answer about this Prologue, was now my errand to Sheridan’s. I must observe that from the first, Sheridan himself never seemed hearty in the thing. I bid Mrs. Sheridan not show it him, as he was a severe critic …. I then desired to hear the faults of mine. Sheridan pointed them out with an insolent bitterness and a clumsy ridicule that hurt me much & when I answered them, bore down my words with a boisterous Vociferation …. He then read Mrs. Sheridan’s which was much duller as I

thought’ (Journ. 18 Jan.). JB apparently had not mentioned the rejection by the Sheridans in his recent letter to WD (?on or before 22 Jan.). JB’s admiration for TS diminished after the incident. The Discovery was produced at Drury Lane on 3 Feb. and ran seventeen nights (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 976–83, 991). 19 Woodward does not seem to have become a ‘favourite’ of JB’s. After the evening of 19 Nov. 1762 when JB had seen Woodward as Bobadil, there are no further mentions of him on or off stage in the 1762– 63 Mem. or Journ., nor does he appear in the letters to WJT or JJ (To AE, 20 Nov. 1762; Journ.).

To an Unidentified Correspondent in Edinburgh, late January 1763 ‘I hear You have Written to a Correspondent here a full Acct. of the Merit or rather Demerit of Elvira’ (From WD, 31 Jan.). It is not known whether JB’s Account was published or only existed in manuscript. JB’s early interest in David Mallet’s tragedy of Elvira appears in a memorandum from the preceding year: ‘Dont see one of the family till Elvira is advertiz’d’ (Mem. 13 Dec. 1762). Mallett’s Elvira was in rehearsals on 26 Nov. 1762, and premiered at Drury Lane on 19 Jan.; it continued performances on 20–22 and 24 Jan. JB, GD, and AE had resolved at some point before 19 Jan. that ‘on the first day of the new Tragedy called Elvira’s being acted, we three should … be in the Theatre at night, & as the Play would probably be bad and as … the Author … was an arrant Puppy, we determined to exert ourselves in damning it’ (Journ. 19 Jan.). Edward Gibbon recorded his impressions on the opening night, an account in which JB’s anti-Mallett cabal is conspicuous by its absence. Gibbon, his father, Mallet, and thirty friends of the author ‘went … into the Pitt … to silence all opposition. However, we had no occasion to exert ourselves … we heard nothing but applause’ (Gibbon’s Journal to January 28th, 1763, ed. D. M. Low, 1929, pp. 202–03). The text of Elvira was published anonymously 25 Jan. and sold for 1s 6d. Elvira: a tragedy. Acted at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane and was printed for A. Millar, 1763 (dedication to the Earl of Bute signed D. Mallet; ESTC T32629). The original imprint was followed in the same year by an Edinburgh piracy (ESTC N9174) and two Dublin piracies (ESTC T195712; ESTC T165855). The 1778 republication was advertised as Elvira. A tragedy. As written by Mr. Mallet. Distinguishing also the variations of the theatre, as performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. Regulated from the prompt-book, … by Mr. Hopkins, prompter, 1778 (ESTC T32630) (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 965, 973–78, 980, 983). The plot by JB, GD and AE against Elvira involved arming themselves with aliases, cudgels, pocket catcalls, and inebriation: ‘We had some Port and drank damnation to the Play, and eternal remorse to the Author[,] … sallied into the house, planted ourselves in the middle of the Pit, and … sat ready prepared … to be the swift ministers of vengeance’ (Journ. 19 Jan.). Yet their cabal against Mallet failed: ‘The Prologue was politicaly stupid. We hist it and had several to join us …. We did what we could during the first act, but found that the Audience had lost their original fire & spirit & were disposed to let it pass. Our Project was therefore disconcerted …. [W]e were obliged to lay aside our laudable Undertaking in the cause of Genius and the cause of Modesty.’ (Journ. 19 Jan.). The failure of JB, AE, and GD to lead the mob into revolt against Elvira was only a brief setback, since they decided that their revenge would be taken in a pamphlet form: ‘After the Play, we … threw out so many excellent sallies of humour & wit & satire on Malloch [Mallet’s original Scottish name] &

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his Play, that we determined to have a joint Sixpenny cut, & fixed next day for throwing our sallies into order’ (Journ. 19 Jan.). The project for a pamphlet damning the play was undertaken by JB and AE: ‘After dinner, Erskine produced our observations on Elvira thrown into a Pamphlet size. We corrected it, & I copied it out. We … called upon Flexney[,] … explained our Business, and he readily undertook it’ (Journ. 20 Jan.). The pamphlet appeared on 27 Jan. It was printed for W. Flexney, ran a scant twenty-four pages in octavo, and bore the title Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, Written by Mr. David Malloch (ESTC N2726; see the modern facsimile, Clark Library, 1952, Pamphlet No. 35 in the Augustan Reprint series). JB was quite pleased at the outcome: ‘Our Performance entitled “Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, written by Mr. David Malloch” pleased me greatly. I felt just the satisfaction that a Man does on the first time of seeing himself in print. We were very severe on Malloch, without sowring our own good-humour’ (Journ. 27 Jan.).

To ‘Louisa’ (?‘Mrs. Lewis’; ?Anne [Lewis] Standen),1 Thursday 3 February 17632 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 3 Feb. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 330– 31), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 861).

[London] 3

4

MADAM: My Surgeon will soon have a demand upon me of five guineas for curing the disease which you have given me .5 I must therefore remind you of the little sum which you had of me, sometime ago.6 You cannot have forgot upon what footing I let you have it.7 I neither paid it for Prostitution,8 nor gave it in charity. It was fairly borrowed and you promised to return it. I give you notice that I expect to have it, before Saturday se’night.9 I have been very bad; but I scorn to upbraid you. I think it below me. If you are not rendered callous by a long course of disguised Wickedness, I should think the consideration of your deceit and baseness, your corruption both of body & mind, would be a very severe punishment. Call not that a misfortune, which is the consequence of your own unworthiness. I desire no mean evasions. I want no letters. Send the money sealed up.10 I have nothing more to say to you.11 JAMES BOSWELL 1 ‘Louisa’ remains one of the most widely known and discussed people among JB’s readers, thanks to F. A. Pottle’s best-selling edition of Lond. Journ., yet she is one of the least well-attested. JB’s own account of her identity in his journal is deliberately reticent (an ‘Actress … whom I shall distinguish in this my Journal by the name of Louisa’: Journ. 14 Dec. 1762). ‘Louisa’ was ‘born of very creditable parents in London’ (Journ. 11 Jan.). There was also a ‘little black young fellow’ who lived with her whom she described as ‘her Brother’ (Journ. 16 Dec. 1762). When she was a girl, ‘she had two aunts who carried her over to France’,

and as a result ‘she could once speak french as fluently as english’ (Journ. 12 Jan.). She was ‘too strictly confined’, and as a result ‘ran off & married heedlessly’. Later she ‘was obliged for Subsistence to go upon the Stage & travelled in different companys’. Her husband proved to be ‘a harsh dissagreable creature’. After ‘it was discovered that they were illegaly married’, the couple ‘parted by consent’, and she ‘got into Covent-Garden Theatre’ (Journ. 11 Jan.). JB described her as ‘a handsom Actress of Covent-Garden Theatre, whom I was a little acquainted with’ (Journ. 14 Dec. 1762), and stated that she lived in ‘neat’ lodgings (Journ. 22 Dec.

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1762). She claimed when asked ‘if she had any intrigues, since she parted with her husband’ that ‘she had one; but that it was now over, and the Gentleman was not in Britain’ (Journ. 15 Jan.). At the time of her liaison with JB, he described her as ‘just 24 of a tall rather than short figure, finely made in person, with a handsom face and an enchanting languish in her eyes. She dresses with taste. She has sense good-humour & vivacity and looks quite a woman in genteel life’ (Journ. 12 Jan.). The relationship lasted less than two months. JB’s first formal visit to ‘Louisa’ was 14 Dec. 1762; on 18 Dec. 1762 JB pronounced himself ‘realy in love’, and on 25 Dec. ‘realy violently in love’. Although from 22 Dec. 1762 he was ‘in full Expectation of consummate bliss’ (see Journ. 2 Jan.), but several circumstantial impediments intervened, the couple did not actually engage in sex until 12 Jan., then again on 16, 17, and 18 Jan. Familiarity, for JB, bred contempt, and even before the onset of gonorrhoea JB ‘felt my passion for Louisa much gone. I felt a degree of coldness for her … a licentious love is merely the child of Passion it has no sure ground to hope for a long continuance’ (Journ. 16 Jan.). This letter marked the abrupt end of the affair. Pottle hypothesized that ‘Louisa’ was the ‘Mrs. Lewis’ mentioned in the Mem. 2, 13, 14 Dec. 1762. (see Earlier Years, pp. 98–100, 483–84, and passim). A Covent Garden announcement for a 27 Sept. 1762 performance of Hamlet noted that ‘Mrs. Lewis’, who played the Queen, had acted in Edinburgh ‘where she played under the name of Standen’ (Biog. Dict. xiv. 238). On 20 Oct. 1762 she acted Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Later in the season she appeared in The Constant Couple (15 Apr. 1763) and The Relapse (7 May 1763). She is one of five performers for whom the 7 May performance is listed as a benefit. Her name does not appear on the lists of players for the 1763–64 season (Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 952, 957, 989, 995). The standard biographical account of Mrs. Lewis/Mrs.Charles Standen is Biog. Dict. xiv. 238–39, which relies essentially on Pottle’s line of reasoning for the ‘Louisa’/ ‘Mrs. Lewis’/‘Mrs. Charles Standen’ identification. 2 Date supplied from journal. 3 Andrew Douglas, JB’s friend and surgeon. JB was convinced that the course of medical treatments set by Douglas from 20 Jan. had altered their relationship from that of two friends to that of a fee-taking surgeon

and his patient. ‘I opened my sad case to Douglas, who upon examining the parts, declared I had got an evident infection, and that the Woman who gave it me, could not but know of it. I joked with my freind, about the Expence, asked him if he would take a draught on my arrears, & bid him visit me seldom, that I might have the less to pay. To these jokes he seemed to give little heed, but talked seriously in the way of his Business. And here let me make a just & true Observation which is that the same man as a freind and as a Surgeon exhibits two very opposite characters. Douglas as a freind is most kind most anxious for my interest, made me live ten days in his house, and suggested every plan of œconomy. But Douglas as a Surgeon will be as ready to keep me long under his hands, and as desirous to lay hold of my money as any Man. In short his views alter quite. I have to do not with him but his Profession’ (Journ. 20 Jan.). Ober summarized Douglas’s treatment as ‘having Boswell keep to his room, rest, take a low calorie diet, electuaries …, medications not otherwise described, and, on one occasion (January 30), bloodletting’ (Clap, p. 7). 4 Apparently either the surgeon’s fee or the payment in installments was still in question as of 5 Mar.: ‘go immed to Pring [i.e., Sir John Pringle] & consult whether to stop the gleet, & what to give Douglas’ (Mem. 5 Mar.). 5 JB had likely contracted gonorrhoea in one of his four days of sexual intercourse with ‘Louisa’ on 12, 16, 17, and 18 Jan. He was probably infected in one of the earlier encounters, since he began to feel symptoms of the disease on 18 Jan., and men infected with gonorrhoea typically become symptomatic within three to five days. On the 18th, he noted: ‘I this day began to feel an unacountable alarm of unexpected evil. A little heat in the Members of my body sacred to Cupid very like a symptom of that distemper with which Venus when cross, takes it into her head to plague her Votaries’ (Journ. 18 Jan.). On the morning of 19 Jan., the symptoms worsened, JB began confessing to AE and GD his fears that he was ‘catching a tartar so very unexpectedly’ from his ‘fine woman’, and by the end of the day ‘too plain was signior Gonorhæa’ (Journ. 19 Jan.). Ober explained that ‘Louisa’ was probably sincere in her protestation that she was free of sexually-transmitted diseases, as ‘gonorrhoea may lurk latent and asymptomatic

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in women as a low-grade endocervicitis, it is easy to account for Louisa’s belief that she was not infectious’ (Clap, pp. 7–8). 6 ‘Madam said I … Two Guineas is at present all that I have, but a trifle more. There they are for you …. Tell me when you are in any little distress, & I will tell you what I can do.— She took the Guineas …. I had a delicacy in presuming too far, lest it should look like demanding goods for my money’ (Journ. 20 Dec. 1762). 7 ‘Louisa’ had promised to return the two guineas as soon as possible: ‘Sir I am infinitely obliged to you; As soon as it is in my power, I shall return them. Indeed I could not have expected this from you.— Her gratitude warmed my heart.— Madam! tho’ I have little, yet as far as ten Guineas, you may apply to me …. Her mentioning returning the money, looked well’ (Journ. 20 Dec. 1762). 8 One of JB’s intentions in 1762–63 was to avoid prostitutes and the venereal diseases they often carried: ‘My naming the sum of ten guineas was rash; however, I considered that it cost me as much to be cured of what I contracted from a Whore, and that ten Guineas was but a moderate expence for women, during the winter’ (Journ. 20 Dec. 1762). Much of his wrath against ‘Louisa’ issued from the fact that he assumed his liaison with a ‘fine’ woman would somehow protect him from sexuallytransmitted diseases. That much is apparent

from Journ. 13 Jan.: ‘I realy conducted this Affair with a manliness and Prudence that pleased me very much. The whole Expence was just 18 Shillings.’ 9 ‘Saturday se’night’ from Thu. 3 Feb. would be Sat. 12 Feb. 10 ‘Louisa’ returned the money two days early. On 10 Feb., ‘This forenoon a Maid from Louisa left a packet for me. It was most carefully sealed up, by the hands of attention, but was not addrest to me. I opened it up, & found my two guineas returned, without a single word written …. I imagined she might—perhaps—have been ignorant of her situation. I was so foolish as to think of returning her the money & writing her a letter of atonement …. I mentioned the thing to Dempster. He said it was just a piece of deep artifice in her. I resolved to think no more on the matter, and was glad that I had come off two guineas better than I expected’ (Journ.). 11 See, however, JB’s promise made in Louisa’s discussion with him on 1 Jan.: [‘Louisa’:] ‘Now Sir I have but one favour to ask of you. Whenever you cease to regard me, pray don’t use me ill, nor treat me coldly. But inform me by a letter or any other way, that it is over.— [JB:] Pray Madam Don’t talk of such a thing. Indeed we cannot answer for our affections. But you may depend on my behaving with civility & politeness …’ (Journ.).

To the Earl of Eglinton, Monday 7 February 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 7 Feb. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 344– 48), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 492).

MY DEAR LORD: Mr. Douglas2 delivered me your kind message today;3 for which accept of my sincere love in return. Indulgent fancy, My Lord, is now bringing back to my mind, those pleasing days when our intimacy first began.4 When your Lordship first showed me the brilliant Scenes of life,5 and inspired me with the gay ideas,6 which I have ever since admired and fondly pursued. I had formerly been a stranger to Pleasure.7 The Goddess had been debarred access to my mind which Nature had formed capable of being made a Temple worthy of her residence. A dark curtain had been drawn between me and her charms. It was Lord Eglintoune who opened to me the enchanted palace. Delightfull Prospect! What lively impressions did it make on my youthfull imagination! How sweetly did I revel in delicious Enjoyment! But those days did not last. Hurried into the bleak northern shade, the blissful visions fled.8 Gloom and melancholy succeeded. Dismal I sat. I looked arround. But fair hope would not approach me. Spirited Resolution came and lent his freindly hand.9 Encouraged by him, I pushed my way; and here I am 376

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again in the Sunshine.10 Reflect O thou who wast once my affectionate Guardian, whom I can never think of without the feelings of tender regard; Reflect on all the circumstances of the unhappy coldness that has for sometime been between us . We have allready communed together freely; and, thanks to the propitious stars! We are no longer at variance. But upon serious reflection, I must be allowed to give my opinion that thou hast acquitted thyself fully at the tribunal of Justice; yet thou hast not given entire satisfaction in the more delicate court of freindship. My dear Lord! you bid me think of our dispute, with attention . I have done so; and I have spoke freely. Your Lordship may be assured that we shall now be very good freinds. I am very sorry to hear of your being ill. Pray take care of yourself. I wish you were as good a patient as me. Whenever you come abroad, I hope for the honour of seeing you.11 I shall get well again soon: And then for days of felicity together. Yours, BOSWELL I beg leave to remind your Lordship of a little sketch which I drew of you, at Newmarket, in the year 1760.12 I appealed to you as an honest man if it was like You owned it was. Lord Eglintoune A Lord whose swift-discerning eye The nicest strokes of wit can spy. Whose sterling jests a sportive train Flow warmly genuine from the brain And with bright poignancy appear Original to ev’ry ear! Boswell fecit. I am in spirits you see. David Hume13 and John Dryden14 are at present my companions. Surely I am a man of Genius.15 I deserve to be taken notice of. O that my Grandchildren might read this character of me.— James Boswell a most amiable man. He improved and beautified his paternal estate of Auchinleck: made a distinguished figure in parliament; had the honour to command a Regiment of footguards, and was one of the brightest Wits16 in the court of George the Third.17 1

Date supplied from Journ. Andrew Douglas, who treated both JB and Eglinton. 3 ‘Douglas told me he had just been with Lord Eglintoune, who was indisposed & had been blooded; and had desired Douglas to tell me so, & make that Apology for his not having been again to see me. He said My Lord talked of me with great regard: Explained our difference fully: & upon Douglas’s saying that his Lordship had now an opportunity to make perfectly up an affair which was not quite clear, he declared he 2

would do all for me in his power. I was pleased with this new instance of the Peer’s sincere liking to me, & I wrote him the following Epistle’ (Journ. 7 Feb.). 4 As Eglinton was a neighbour of the Boswells in Ayrshire and the chief of the family of Montgomerie, the two presumably met socially before their meeting in London, which JB probably means in his reference to ‘when our intimacy first began’. Pottle claimed that ‘Lord Auchinleck … was not at all intimate with Eglinton’ (Earlier Years, pp. 47–85, 105–08, 402, 468). Yet

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JB himself wrote in his 1791 memoir that ‘the … Earl of Eglintoune … of the same county, and from his earliest years acquainted with the family of Auchinleck, insisted that young Boswell should have an apartment of his house’ (Memoirs JB, p. xxxi). The account in Earlier Years (p. 468) alleged that Eglinton was somehow recruited by Lord Auchinleck to seek out the missing JB in London and 1760 and return him to respectable company until his father could come south to fetch him. 5 JB had stayed in Eglinton’s house in 1760: ‘My Address … the E. of Eglintoun’s lodgings Queen-Street, Mayfair’ (To Dalrymple, 22 Mar. 1760 [MS not at Yale]). He recalled the events in a conversation with Eglinton on 25 Jan. ‘You know I left Scotland abruptly & came up to London, two years ago, in an odd enough way. Your Lordship was kind enough to take particular notice of me. You took me into your own house. And You brought me right. You pulled me out of the mire, washed me, & cleaned me & made me fit to be seen’ (Journ.). 6 JB’s 1791 memoir recalled that in 1760 ‘his views of the world were chiefly opened by the … Earl of Eglintoune … who … introduced him into the circles of the great, the gay, and the ingenious’ (Memoirs JB, p. xxxi). 7 JB’s involvement with the theatre and its ‘lively-minded pleasure’, and the actors WD and James Love, as well as Samuel Derrick’s introduction of JB to London low life (and his first experiences with a prostitute), all happened before his stay with Eglinton (Earlier Years, pp. 28, 37–38, 47). 8 JB’s first London residence Mar.–May 1760 ended when Lord Auchinleck came to London to retrieve him and take him back to Scotland (see Earlier Years, p. 51). This setback was remembered by JB in his conversation with Eglinton 25 Jan.: ‘My Father then came up & I was hurried down to Scotland, confined to live in my Father’s family & pressed to study law; so that my situation was very unhappy’ (Journ.). 9 Presumably a reference to Eglinton’s influence over JB in the period May 1760– Nov. 1762. Of this period, JB noted more critically, ‘After my wild expedition to London in the year 1760 after I got rid of the load of serious reflection which then burthened me, by being allways in Lord Eglintoune’s Company, very fond of him, & much caressed by him, I became dissipated & thoughtless’ (Journ. 1 Dec. 1762). 10 JB both praised and blamed Eglinton for encouraging his return to London and

his Guards scheme, and then delaying his patronage. As he mentioned to Eglinton in their conversation 25 Jan., ‘Your Lordship in the mean time, continued to profess a regard for me, and promised me your assistance; Nay My Lord you went so far as to say to me “Jamie, to be sure I cannot do so much for you, as your Father; but if you & he cannot agree, come to me, and I will do all I can for you.” Now, My Lord, this was saying the strongest thing you could say. It was making me more indifferent as to breaking with my Father. At last I got my Father’s consent. I immediatly applied to you; And you know My Lord how you used me, how you put me off. It was very hard’ (Journ.). 11 After their meeting on 25 Jan., JB did not see Eglinton again until 9 Mar., However, on 19 Feb. and other days Charles Crookshanks visited JB and perhaps brought him news of Eglinton: ‘Crookshanks who is Lord Eglintoune’s Steward in England comes now & then to see me’ (Journ.). On 20 Feb., JB complained, ‘I have heard nothing from Lord Eglintoune, this long time, a strong proof how little he is to be depended upon. After the interesting scene which we had together, it might have been expected that he would have been somewhat more attentive to me, than ordinary’ (Journ.). On 9 Mar., the two again met: ‘I went this day to Lord Eglintoune’s; He insisted that I should dine, which I agreed to … I then met My Lord with whom I walked a little. He said he would so every thing he could with Lord Bute to get my Commission’ (Journ.). 12 The 1760 Newmarket Races were held on 7–11 Apr. and 29 Apr.–3 May (Lond. Chron. 8–10 Apr., 10–12 Apr., 12–15 Apr., 1–3 May, 3–6 May 1760). For additional details, see Reginald Heber, An historical list of horse-matches run. And of plates and prizes run for in Great Britain and Ireland, in the year 1760, vol. 10, 1761. JB’s verse epistle to Eglinton has been reconstructed for this volume from the Douce MS and appears in full as To Eglinton, c. 7–11 Apr. or 29 Apr.– 3 May 1760 (expanded 1761). 13 On the day he began his confinement, he wrote: ‘I may read all Hume’s six volumes’. Subsequent journal entries (Journ. 29 Jan., 20 Feb., 3 May) and almost daily mentions in the Mem. confirm that until he began going out again on 20 Feb. (Journ.), he made the study of David Hume’s History of England (1762) part of his daily routine. 14 JB’s second reading project, reading Dryden, is mentioned four times in the memoranda (7, 10, 13, 22 Feb.) but clearly took up less of his time.

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15 FEBRUARY 1763 15 JB’s third literary project at this time was preparing E–B for publication. 16 Along with the ambition to be a ‘Genius’, the goal of becoming a ‘Wit’, especially a court wit, was prominent in JB’s mind in the years 1762–63. On 13 Jan. JB enjoyed ‘seeming to myself as one of the Wits in King Charles the Second’s time’ (Journ.). 17 These ambitions remained largely unfulfilled, but not entirely. Corr. 8 analyses JB’s improvements at Auchinleck (see Corr.

8, esp. Introduction). JB’s failed schemes to become an M.P. continued into the final decade of his life (Pol. Car.). The Guards scheme had collapsed decisively by late 1763. And although he was introduced to the Court of George III by Eglinton three years after this letter (Notes, 18 Feb. 1766), JB never became a fixture there, nor did he pursue his Court scheme as aggressively as his Guards scheme.

To West Digges, ?Saturday 12 February 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in From WD, 18 Feb. WD thanked JB for his ‘obliging punctuality’ and posting of The Citizen of London. JB had certainly by this point informed WD of his gonorrhoea: ‘the Displeasure of Dame Venus’. In addition, he had provided WD with a ‘description of Mrs. Sheridans Comedy’, The Discovery, whose premiere he had attended on 3 Feb. The provisional date of Saturday is based on the reply of the following Friday. JB, as noted, normally sent his parcels to WD on Saturdays, and WD normally received them on Wednesdays. JB’s Mem. for 10 Feb. had scheduled letter-writing: ‘Make out letters’ (Mem. 10 Feb.).

From William McQuhae, c. mid-February 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in Journ. 24 Feb.: ‘Doctor Mcquhae had sent me a letter inclosed in mine to Mr. Alexander Macdonald Surgeon to the Lord Mansfield Indiaman’. Presumably JB meant that McQuhae had sent a letter From McQuhae to Macdonald enclosed in a letter From McQuhae to JB. Alexander Macdonald was a lt. in the British East India Company. He died in India (Alexander Mackenzie, History of the Macdonalds, 1881, p. 269). JB recorded the meeting between himself and Macdonald: ‘This young fellow has been long intimate with Mcquhae who has often given him an excellent character, and as he is besides a Highlandman from the Isle of Sky, I thought I would like to see him. I accordingly sent to him & beg’d he might come here. He came this morning to breakfast. He was going out to India on his first voyage. In a few minutes he and I were as easy & chatty as could be. The Highlanders have all a vivacity & a frankness that is very agreable. I was in fine spirits and I thought of many agreable ideas. I found him warmly attached to the family of Stuart and he said the Scotch Jacobites had yet great hopes of a Restoration, in which they were confirmed by a dream which he had. He told me it and he promised to write it out for me. It was realy very fancyfull and strongly allegorical. He repeated it to me with greatest Enthusiasm. It was very entertaining to see the superstitious warmth of an old highland seer mixed with the spirited liveliness of a neat clever young fellow. He had a picture of Mary Queen of Scots set in a ring which he wore with much affection. I realy took a liking to the lad. He past the forenoon with me, and he promised to call again before he sailed. It gave me pleasure to see him animated with the prospect of making a fortune, and then returning to Scotland’ (Journ. 24 Feb.).

From ‘David Hume’ (i.e., George Dempster and Andrew Erskine), Tuesday 15 February 1763 Not reported. A hoax mentioned in Journ. 16 Feb.: ‘Dempster and Erskine had the night before [15 Feb.], put a trick upon me. A lad whose name is fletcher (a cousin of Dempster’s), at whom I had a very great Antipathy was the instrument which they

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employed. They forged a letter from David Hume to me containing some genteel compliments, and recommending Fletcher to me, who was come up to go out to the East Indies. He accordingly delivered it & I suspecting no deceit was vastly pleased. They expected that I would be much distrest at having a being so dissagreable recommended to me; But so great was my vanity that it put me into exceeding good humour even with a being very odious. They came this forenoon [16 Feb.] and told me the artifice, at which I was realy vexed. I could not dissemble my resentment of it. I told them it was what I would not have done to them, & that I did not think it genteel in them to give such a miscreant as Fletcher an opportunity of laughing at me as much as themselves. I told Erskine that I would henceforth consider him & Dempster not in the light of freinds, and in short was quite chagrined.’ JB used the occasion of this hoax to write to Hume on 18 Feb. (Yale MS. L 643) to solicit his correspondence, and transcribed the letter into Journ. 18 Feb. (Yale MS. J 2.1): ‘After dinner I grew better and was seized with a whim of making my quarrel with my companions [AE and GD] a good reason for obtaining the Corespondence of David Hume. I wrote therefore the following letter to him …. This letter amused me in writing. Perhaps I may reap advantage by it: The Corespondence of distinguished Men is very much to be valued. It gives a man a dignity that is very desireable’. In Hume’s good-natured reply of 24 Feb. (Yale MS. C 1562), he nonetheless scolded JB, GD, and AE for having made use of his name in their Critical Strictures … on Elvira. JB replied 1 Mar., in a letter (Yale MS. L 644) approved by GD and AE, which he described as ‘a proper mixture of compliment and spirit and jocularity’ (Journ. 1 Mar.). These letters will appear in the volume of JB’s correspondence with the Scots literati, forthcoming in this series. ‘Fletcher’ the lad has not been conclusively identified. He is possibly George Fletcher (b. c. 1751) who went out a seaman on the Earl of Middlesex, 1766–67 (Anthony Farrington, A Biographical Index of East India Company Maritime Service Officers 1600–1834, 1999, p. 272).

To the Countess of Northumberland, between Tuesday 15 February and Saturday 19 February 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 19 Feb. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 388– 89), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 991). Perhaps written as early as 15 Feb. and sent as early as 17 Feb. ‘I loved the Guards and I longed for my Commission. The Marquis of Granby had now been come home, some time. I regretted my losing this fresh occasion of reminding Lady Northumberland of her promise. I considered that time was now precious & as I thought an Apology necessary for my long absence. I wrote her this letter’ (Journ. 19 Feb.). The potential earlier dates of composition are based on Mem. See Mem. 15 Feb.: ‘[S]end to Lady North[umberland] & see her on Sat.’ See also Mem. 17 Feb.: ‘Talk to Dun … & give him let to North. House’. Those two items may indicate a discrete additional letter (which would be another not reported item), yet from the context of the note transcribed on 19 Feb., it probably supplies a more accurate date for this letter than JB provided in his finished Journ. As a rule, if JB mentioned a letter in the Mem. as something he should write, it remains in doubt whether he wrote it. Repeated mentions in sequence are particularly suspicious, and suggest JB’s procrastination. However, if a letter is mentioned as being a physical artifact to be posted or handed to someone, it seems far more likely to signify that an actual letter existed on that day.

MADAM: I have been indisposed and confined to the house for some weeks,2 which has prevented me from having the honour and pleasure of paying my duty to your Ladyship.3 I am now better, and hope to be abroad soon. In the mean time, Madam, as My Lord Granby4 is now come over,5 permit me to put your Ladyship in 380

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mind of my Commission.6 I have the honour to be, Madam, Your obliged and faithfull Humble Servant, JAMES BOSWELL 1 Date of 19 Feb. supplied from Journ. 19 Feb., but see headnote. 2 JB was careful in his confinement, with only one venture outside his house to see the premiere of Frances Sheridan’s play on 3 Feb. 3 JB had not seen the countess since the ‘grand rout’ on 21 Jan. (Journ.). Their connection was not close enough to suggest that she pay him a visit in his home. Furthermore, he was probably unwilling to allow her to discover that he was infected with gonorrhoea. 4 John Manners (1721–70), styled Marquess of Granby, M.P. 1741–54 (Grantham) and 1754–70 (Cambridgeshire). He had maintained his seat in Parliament despite his military service, and on 10 Feb. the King wrote to Bute that although Granby had personal debts to the Duke of Newcastle, he would be happy to support George III’s ‘measures and ministry as at present composed or however I should form it’ (Namier and Brooke, s.v. Manners, iii. 102–06). He had as of 1763 remained on good political terms with the Courts of both George II and George III. He had begun his military career in the Jacobite War of 1745 as an emergency regimental colonel. He served in the last years of the Austrian Succession in 1747, and rose further to become a lt.-gen. on 5 Feb. 1759 and a temporary commander-in-chief of forces in Germany after Sackville’s resignation in late 1759. Later Master-Gen. of Ordnance 1763–70, Commander-in-Chief of Land Forces, Britain 1766–70 (resigned). Junius attacked him in 1769 as having ‘degraded the office of commander-in-chief to that of a broker in commissions’. In his latter days he was harassed by creditors, to whom he owed £37,000. He predeceased his father the Duke of Rutland. Granby was one of the most talked-about generals of the latter half of the Seven Years’ War, and the only military celebrity to emerge from the land war in the German territories (by contrast to Wolfe, Clive, Hawke or other naval or non-European theatre heroes). His fame was reflected in the frequent use of his name for taverns and public houses. During the Seven Years’ War, he commanded the First Cavalry Brigade in North Germany from July 1758. He had

fought with distinction at Minden (1759), Warburg (1760), Brückermühl (1760), Fellinghausen/Kirchdenkern (1761) Gravenstein (1762), Wilhelmstahl (1762), and the heights of Homburg (6 Aug. 1762). His critics maligned his pliant disposition and hard drinking in the 1750s, but he received respect from British line troops and Brunswickers alike, and was strict in personal life and discipline. A soldiers’ general, he paid his own money to procure provisions and necessaries for his troops; all officers could dine with him. Granby’s proprietary regiments at the time were the 21st [Light] Dragoons (Royal Foresters) 1760– 63, a high-quality regiment nonetheless disbanded 3 Mar. 1763, and the Royal Regt. of Horse Guards (Blues) 1758–70. His wife was an aunt of Lady Northumberland (Comp. Peer., s.v. Rutland, xi. 268–69). 5 Granby’s return had been specifically discussed (again) in the conversation of 10 Jan.: ‘I waited on Lady Northumberland and exprest my joy at hearing that the Marquis of Granby was in a fair way of recovery [he had been ill with a fever at Warburg], and would soon be over. I hope Madam said I you will not forget me. No Sir, said she, you may be sure I will not … I shall therefore present you to the Marquiss as a freind of mine who is very desirous to serve in the Guards, and next to that in his own Corps. He is a good-natured man and is therefore ready to give his promise’ (Journ.). He had arrived home in early Feb.: ‘Sunday morning [6 Feb.], at eleven, the Marquis of Granby landed at Dover, from on board the Hanover packet boat, in perfect health, and immediately set out for London’ (Lond. Chron., 8 Feb. 1763, xiii. 135). 6 On 26 Dec. 1762 JB had ‘resolved to be chearfull & to wait & to ask it [officer’s commission in the army] of Lady Northumberland’ (Journ.). She had made a promise of some help in the conversation of 30 Dec. 1762: ‘Sir, said she, I am sorry to find these [foot] guards so difficult to be got …. As to the Blues again I should hope that may be easier; and when the Marquis of Granby comes over I shall apply to him …. I shall certainly, Sir, recommend you to Lord Granby in the strongest manner; and as the Blues are his own Regiment, I should think that they will not interfere, but allow him to

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do what he pleases.’ As JB pointed out in that conversation, ‘I would not chuse to be far from London; and therefore I would chuse no other corps but the Guards or the Blues that is to say the Royal Horse Guards Blue’ (Journ. 30 Dec. 1762). In a letter to JJ on 4 Jan., JB confessed that although ‘a Cornetcy in the Blues’ would offer ‘prodigious fine corps and great pay’, he had an ‘objection’ to the Granby/Blues scheme, namely, that ‘I don’t like the horse service’, and that the Blues were ‘quartered in Country towns’ rather

than the Court End of London. In JB’s conversation with the Countess of Northumberland on 10 Jan., JB had confessed his frustration at Eglinton’s putting him off in his promise of help in a commission (Journ. 10 Jan.). A subsequent letter to JJ on 18 Jan. had restated JB’s preferences for the Foot Guards over the Blues: ‘I shall certainly accept of a Commission in the Blues, if the Countess gets it first for me. But you will see by my Journal that I hope to get into my favourite Guards’ (Corr. 1, pp. 36–37, 39–40).

From West Digges, Friday 18 February 1763 MS. Yale (C 1042).

Edinburgh, Feb. 18. 1763 DEAR SIR: A thousand and a thousand thanks to You for Your obliging punctuality. The Citizen of London1 was Welcome to Edinburgh. I like the farce Extremely, But the humour of the principal Character is rather Local, we have No Bucks among the Inhabitants of the Grave Lucken booths2 —Before I knew Who were the Authors of the Strictures etc.3 I had red it here with great pleasure, and had publickly avowd it to be Churchills4 production, I hope you will accept of an Apology for My Error, but really there is something of his Spirit and Humour in the peice: As he is a Writer of some Eminence, my Mistake will not I hope offend You.— take care of falling Under the Displeasure of Dame Venus.5 if you are Ever sousd again I transmit You a receipt for an Injection (Gratis)6 R. 8q. Ros.7 sub. tbj Trochis alb.8 Rhazis9 Zÿ m.—10 Any sensible Apothecary will tell You what quantity of White Vitriol11 should be added.— NB. a pewter Syringe is the best.12 Eheu! I shall send You the Bills13 every Saturday.— Would for Your sake I had a better thing! Gays, what dye call it.14 Your description of Mrs. Sheridans Comedy,15 just tallies with my Idea of her genius.— She was a great Admirer of the great Mr Richardson16—She had heated her Imagination with Clarissa17 etc. etc.— And so she turnd a Serious novel into an English Comedy,18 Wit I knew she had none, nor had she Humour.— I have Conversd with her often and often19—And When Rumour whisperd that her Muse had been safely brought to bed of a regular Dramatic production, I Sayd that Rumour lyd.— I was I see in the right, for we find it was only a false Conception.20 —It is no great affair to Write a Modern Comedy—Get together a few droll or striking Incidents, digest them into some order, Give the peice a taking21 Name, and Dedicate it to a Secretary of State,22 borrow a23 solemn prologue24 and a lively Epilogue, Let the News paper puff it for three Weeks before it appears,— And the Author may be sure of three good nights of profit—25 Probatum Est26—Alass! poor Congreve! Where be Your gibes Your Jests! Your flashes of Merryment! that were Wont to set the table on a Roar! Quite Chop fallen!—etc.—27 382

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But to leave laughing, and to come to somewhat of a Serious matter.— I must intreat You to Execute a Commission for me in propria persona —thus it is.— When I was last in London28 I visited Lord De Lawarrs29 Steward, One Mr. Dugdale30—We were on Very good terms—and I promisd to write to him from Scotland.— About three weeks ago—I sent from Berwick31 a present to him of Six pots of potted Lobsters32—And Wrote him a Very kind letter with some profession of a remembrance of Many favours he had formerly done Me—But, lo! Not one Line have I recieved by way of Answer, altho I requested to know if they had arrivd safe.—33 Now as Affairs of some Consequence34 are to be settled between My Brother35 and Me principally through this Gentlemans Mediation, I am hurt, In short I am affronted at his Unpolite silence—He lives in Cooks Court36 near Wills Coffee house37 Lincolns Inn gate38—near Lincolns Inn fields.39— Be so good Dear Sir some Morning to call on him, if he is not at home he will be in the Stamp Office in Lincolns Inn40 near his house, Where he has a place— Only say to him ‘Pray Sir had not You a letter lately from Mr: Digges in Edinburgh Advising You of some potted Lobsters he had sent for Your Acceptance?’—(if he says No—the affair ha[s] Miscarryd; but as I am certain it is not so, go on and say) ‘He only begd to know if they have Come safe, as he hopd before Now to have heard from You.’— I suppose this little trouble will not burthen You,— I beg pardon for laying it on You—but really I am hurt at his unkind silence, And As My fortune is concernd I am under some Apprehension at seeing Any Man so lightly treating Me— I suppose I am not a person of Consequence to deserve attention—But surely Civility merits Civility—I have had some struggles About this matter, at last I have flown to a very worthy friend, When I have Addressd myself to You—forgive and Compassionate the occasion that renders Me thus troublesome I am With truth Yours: whilst, W. DIGGES Your direction is right, when You direct to Me at Johns Coffee House Edinr— PS—If You have the prophecy of Famine41 by You, and have done with it, I shall thank You to send it Me—the people at Wills C House will shew You Where Mr Dugdale lives—I blush at the trouble I give You!42 1 WD had asked JB ‘to send Me the Citizen lately publishd—I have some thoughts of playing it here’. Although there was a 1763 Dublin piracy of the London first edition (ESTC T153277), the farce was not printed as a separate volume in Scotland in the eighteenth century (ESTC; see From WD, 31 Jan., nn. 9–10). 2 In 1725 The New Canting Dictionary had defined ‘Buck’ as ‘a forward daring Person of either Sex’, and in 1763 the British Magazine objected that ‘the buck and blood, [suppose that wisdom consists] in breaking windows’ (Brit. Mag. 1763, IV. 261; both refs. from OED). Presumably WD was thinking of the

‘buck’ character in The Citizen. Beaufort describes young George Philpot, the ‘Citizen’s’ son, as a buck: ‘Oh! a diamond of the first water! a buck, Sir, a blood! every night at this end of the town … he drives a phaeton two story high, keeps his girl at this end of the town, and is the gay George Philpot all round Covent Garden’ (Arthur Murphy, The Citizen, I. ii). WD presumably means that the (allegedly) severe merchant class of Edinburgh would not have seen the humour in Murphy’s London-centric humour, although the dour Luckenbooths merchants seem to resemble the City of London businessman

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‘Old Philpot’ who is satirized in the play. By the mid-1770s the idea of an Edinburgh buck was common. Robert Fergusson, who died in 1774, wrote a notable ‘Epilogue, spoken by Mr Wilson, at the Theatre-royal, in the Character of an Edinburgh Buck’. It describes a buck’s rampage through the streets of Edinburgh, including George’s Square (built 1769–70) and the Meadows. It opened with the lines, ‘Ye who oft finish care in Lethe’s cup,/ Who love to swear, and roar, and keep it up,/ List to a brother’s voice, whose sole delight/ Is sleep all day, and riot all the night.’ A ‘luckenbooth’ or ‘lukkinbooth’ was a booth or covered stall which could be locked up, a type of market stall common in Scotland in the Middle Ages. The most famous Luckenbooths were the range of tradesmen’s buildings which stood in the High Street, parallel to St. Giles’s Church. The Luckenbooths were torn down in 1817 because of the coming of the era of more permanent shops (Cassell’s Edinburgh, i. 153). 3 WD had written on 31 Jan., ‘I hear You have Written to a Correspondent here a full Acct. of the Merit or rather Demerit of Elvira’. 4 Churchill, whose North Briton issues WD enjoyed and mentioned in several letters. WD had praised ‘the genius of Mr Churchill’ in his letter to JB of 9 Dec. 1762. 5 A reference to JB’s ‘venereal’ disease, associated etymologically with Venus. 6 The anti-gonorrhoeal injections of the mid-eighteenth century consisted of ‘a urethral irrigant installed by syringe’. The ‘usual urethral irrigants of the latter half of the eighteenth century were variously a dilute solution of vitriol, dilute nitrous acid, mercury salts[,] … a mixture of lead salts known as Goulard’s extract, and any number of other acid or heavy-metal salt solutions. Doubtless each doctor had his favorite solution, and there must have been an almost infinite number of personal variations’. Ober’s research located one irrigant recipe in Robert James, Pharmacopeia Universalis …, 2nd ed. [1752], p. 747 (Clap, pp. 18–19, 275 n. 53). 7 Presumably Aq. Ros. (though ‘8q.’ seems clear in the MS), Latin abbreviation for rose water. Although it was more often thought of as a perfume, early modern herbalists and apothecaries claimed medical properties for it. Nicholas Culpeper, The English physitian: or an astrologo-physical discourse of the vulgar herbs of this nation, 1652, contained in his section on ‘Directions for

making’, Section II, ‘Of Making and Keeping Compounds’, a first chapter entitled ‘Of distilled Waters’. His ‘Complete Herbal’ also contained a section on ‘Roses’ (Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, 1995 reprt., pp. 215–18, 286, ‘Simple Waters Distilled’, 394–98). Rose water seemed to be prescribed as a cooling and anti-inflammatory infusion. 8 A troche is a ‘flat round tablet or lozenge, made of some medicinal substance powdered, worked into a paste with mucilage or the like, and dried’, variously written in English as ‘Trochies’. Culpeper’s The English physitian (1652 ed., p. 251) contained in its section on ‘Directions for making’, Section II, ‘Of Making and Keeping Compounds’, a thirteenth chapter entitled ‘Of Troches’, which explained how to manufacture ‘Troches’ or ‘Placentule’ by using ‘fine Gum Tragacanth’ to make the powder into ‘Mussilage’. Culpeper’s ‘A Catalogue of Simples in the New Dispensatory’ offered the recipe to which WD specifically refers: ‘Trochisci Albi. Rhasis’, i.e., ‘white Troches’ made according to the formula handed down by Rhazes (for whom see subsequent note). The formula is as follows: ‘Take of Ceruss washed in Rosewater ten drams, Sarcocol three drams, white Starch two drams, Gum Arabic and Tragacanth, of each one dram, Camphire half a dram, either with Rosewater, or women’s milk, or make it into troches according to art’ (Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, 1995 reprt., p. 504). Ober noted that ‘the white troches of rhases … could not have done much harm (or good)’ (Clap, p. 275 n. 53). 9 Rhazes (Abu Bakr Muhammad bin Zakariya ar-Razi), also known as ‘Rasis’ (860/65–925/32), Persian chief physician at the Baghdad hospital. His medical books, including Liber continens (Al-Hawi, a comprehensive encyclopedia) and Liber Almansoris (Kitab al-Mansoori, a textbook) originally circulated in Arabic and Greek versions, had appeared in Latin from the fifteenth century onward. 10 Ober’s normalized reading of WD’s apothecarian scrawl is ‘Rx: Aq. Ros. sub. 1 tbsp. Trochii alb. Rhazii 21/2 drams’. 11 White vitriol was sulfate of zinc, or a combination of sulphuric-acid and oxide of zinc. It was distinguished from the blue, green, and red vitriols which were sulfates of copper, iron, and cobalt (OED, s.v. ‘vitriol’). Ober noted that ‘White vitriol is zinc sulfate, which is relatively bland’ (Clap, p. 275 n. 53). 12 The pewter syringe was to be used to irrigate the infected penis with a medicinal

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solution. JB’s surgeon Douglas, according to Ober, ‘did not recommend instillation of medication into the urethra by syringe’. In Douglas’s later treatment of JB in Apr.–May 1776, he would prescribe an electuary (sweetened pill) rather than a lenitive/laxative. Nonetheless, by 1776 Douglas would alter his opinion of injections, and would advocate an injection that produced a speedy cure with great safety, which new formula he portrayed as a secret known only to a few (Clap, pp. 7, 11, 18–19). 13 Presumably playbills from the Edinburgh theatre. WD had discussed their season in his previous letters to JB. 14 John Gay, What D’Ye Call It (1715), II. ii: ‘I[st]. Countryman. And take my Fourteen Pence — II[nd]. Countryman. And my Cramp-ring. Would, for thy sake, it were a better Thing’ (Dramatic Works, ed. John Fuller, 1983, i. 192). The context is the scene in which Thomas Filbert and five anonymous ‘Countrymen’ are trying to raise five pounds to free Timothy Peascod from the military firing squad. 15 ‘I presume … that You are all Impatience for Mrs. Sheridans Comedy’ (From WD, 31 Jan.). The premiere on 3 Feb. was advertised as offering ‘a new overture, new music between the acts, the characters new dressed, and both a prologue and an epilogue’. The Pub. Adv. announced the premiere of the play in its issue of 3 Feb., and promoted the publication of the script on 10 Feb. (Sheldon, p. 266). On 3 Feb., JB had interrupted his medical confinement to attend the premiere at Drury Lane, and he (not surprisingly) hated the play. ‘This day was the first representation of Mrs. Sheridan’s Comedy, The Discovery. As Dempster Erskine & I had made a resolution to be present at every first night I determined to venture abroad.… I was amused to find myself transported from my room of indisposition to the gay, gilded Theatre.… I felt a little pain when the Prologue was spoke, considering how near I was to have had mine sounding away.… The Play realy acted heavily. Dempster proposed it’s damnation. I would have agreed had not I been tied up, as it would look like revenge for refusing my prologue. It was therefore allowed to jog through. Goldsmith said many smart acrimonious things’ (Journ. 3 Feb.). The reviewer in the Theatrical Review of 1 Mar. 1763 (pp. 117–25) found it a readable play but one that in performance was tedious and heavy ‘owing to a scarcity of incident and uncommon lengthening of the acts’ (cited in Lond. Stage, pt. 4, ii. 976).

General opinion, as with JB’s damnation of Mallet’s Elvira, contradicted JB and his ‘critick’ friends. Among other things, the production was notable for reuniting the former rivals TS and Garrick as actors on the same stage. It was also notable for the public ‘secret’ of its anonymous author, who even in the published script was described under a pseudonym. As Frances Sheridan was afraid to attend the performance, Mrs. Cholmondeley, who led the pro-authorial claque, arrived to tell her of the play’s success. John O’Keefe’s eyewitness account also reported the premiere as a success, and the box office allowed for a long total run of seventeen nights (Lefanu, pp. 222–26; Percy Fitzgerald, The Lives of the Sheridans, 1886, i. 48–50; Sheldon, pp. 266–68). 16 Samuel Richardson; Frances Sheridan’s admiration for him was reciprocated by his mentoring of her. Alicia Lefanu noted that Richardson frequently attended gatherings at the Sheridans’ Henrietta Street residence and that in composing The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph Sheridan considered Richardson ‘her master’ (Lefanu, pp. 86–87, 108). Richardson in early 1756 ‘had honoured Mrs. Sheridan’s romance Eugenia and Adelaide with his approval …. Encouraged and inspired by Richardson, she went on to try her powers in a more ambitious work, Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, which late in the same year she left with him to read’. In gratitude, Sheridan had dedicated Sidney Bidulph to Richardson as ‘tribute due to Exemplary Goodness and distinguished Genius’. She and Richardson also conducted a ‘rather desultory’ correspondence (T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, Samuel Richardson: A Biography, 1971, pp. 453–54, 503, 532). 17 Richardson’s Clarissa. Or, the history of a young lady: comprehending the most important concerns of private life.… Published by the editor of Pamela.… (7 vols., 1748) had been emulated by Sheridan’s 1761 novel Sidney Bidulph, which also masked its author’s name and similarly claimed to be edited materials rather than presenting itself as a fiction. 18 The 1763 editions of Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery stressed the playwright’s bona fides as a sentimental novelist: The discovery …. Written by the editor of Miss Sidney Bidulph (e.g., ESTC T943). R. Fleming’s 1763 Edinburgh edition (ESTC T119903) also stressed the link between the (anonymous) playwright and the (anonymous) sentimental novelist. 19 WD had acted in TS’s company at Smock Alley from 1749 to 1754 (Sheldon, p. 504). It was there that he presumably met

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and conversed with Frances Sheridan. It is not known if they met again in the summer of 1761 when TS’s lecture series in Edinburgh took place. 20 A cruel personal joke. During early 1754, when WD and the Sheridans were in Dublin, Frances Sheridan had given birth in her fifth confinement to a sickly infant, Sackville, who ‘died in convulsions three months after birth’ (Sheldon, pp. 204–05). An earlier Sheridan child, Thomas (1747), had also died in ‘a few months’ (Fitzgerald, The Lives of the Sheridans, i. 28). 21 MS. ‘taking’ written over deleted illegible word. 22 The principal Secretaries of State in Feb. 1763 were the Earl of Halifax (Northern Dept., 14 Oct. 1762–Aug. 1763) and the Earl of Egremont (Southern Dept., 9 Oct. 1761–21 Aug. 1763). The Earl of Bute had also recently served as a principal Secretary of State (Northern Dept., 25 Mar. 1761–29 May 1762), and is presumably the dedicatee to whom WD alluded. See J. C. Sainty, compiler, Officials of the Secretaries of State 1660–1782, Office-Holders in Modern Britain II, 1973, p. 24; Comp. Peer. ii. v. 36, vi. 247. See also To AE, 8–9 May 1762, n. 2. WD’s enigmatic comment reflects the North Briton’s thoroughgoing suspicion directed against the Court and Administration and their literary friends, such as TS and his wife. TS had courted favour with Secretary of State Bute by dedicating his early 1762 prospectus for an English dictionary/grammar to him, and had been rewarded with a government pension in Oct. 1762 (Sheldon, p. 256; Fitzgerald, The Lives of the Sheridans, i. 51). Although TS had dedicated his 1762 elocution lectures to the Earl of Northumberland, he had also included comments in the dedication, dated 10 July 1762, which implied that Bute would usher in a golden age of literature (Thomas Sheridan, A Course of Lectures on Elocution, 1762 is No. 129 in English Linguistics, 1500– 1800: A Collection of Facsimile Reprints Selected and Edited by R. C. Alston, 1968, dedication page; cf. TS’s comments on revival of ministerial patronage, pp. xvi–xviii). 23 MS. ‘a a’ 24 A nod to JB’s resentment at his prologue’s not being used. Werner argued that ‘From the copy of Mrs. Sheridan’s Prologue which I give below, the reader will agree that it is indeed surprising that Boswell makes no mention of the fact that she not only cribbed a couplet from his own Prologue but also borrowed its main ideas …. The wholesale borrowings on Mrs. Sheridan’s part are all

the more remarkable in view of her protestations of absolute originality [i]n the play itself …. It is most unlikely that the brazen plagiarisms were lost on Boswell even at the first hearing’ (Werner, pp. 207–10). The twentieth-century editors of Frances Sheridan’s plays concur: ‘Frances’ own prologue, which Boswell found dull, is obviously little more than a revision of the longer of her young friend’s two pieces; it borrows its main ideas directly from Boswell and shamelessly steals one of his couplets … almost verbatim, adding only a certain polish and shapeliness to the whole. It is surprising that Boswell did not anywhere comment on these plagiarisms, incensed and hurt as he was by the sharp tones of Thomas Sheridan’s repudiation of his verses’ (Robert Hogan and Jerry C. Beasley, eds., The Plays of Frances Sheridan, 1984, p. 202; see also From WD, 31 Jan., n. 18). 25 Three nights was a relatively standard run for a new play. The Discovery ran seventeen nights: 3–5, 7–12, 14–15, 19, 22, 26 Feb., 3, 12 Mar., and 26 Apr. (‘For the last time this season’) with three of the performances advertised as a ‘Benefit for the Author’ (5, 9, and 12 Feb.) and a performance advertised as ‘By Command of their Majesties’ (7 Feb.). In addition, The Discovery was enough of a success to inspire in the 1766– 67 season a spin-off, altered by Jane Pope, and entitled The Young Couple. Ironically, both of Garrick’s new mainpieces for 1762– 63, David Mallet’s Elvira and Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery, were opposed by JB, although JB strove to curry favour with Garrick (Lond. Stage, IV. ii. 948, 976, 977– 79, 981–83, 991, 1181). 26 The Latin phrase probatum est, ‘it has been proved or tested’, was a phrase commonly used in recipes or prescriptions; but also in a general sense (OED). WD, with his amateur’s knowledge of apothecaries demonstrated in his prescription for the gonorrhoea treatment, likely knew the phrase from its medical use. The phrase also appeared in Latin rhetoric and argumentation: ‘si quid inter utramque partem convenit, si quid probatum est, denique cuicumque adversarius non contradicit’ (Quintilian, Institvtio Oratoria, V. x. 13). 27 Hamlet, V. i, ll. 184–92:

386

HAMLET: Alas, poor Yorick!… Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?

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In the early 1760s, ‘Poor Yorick’ would also have called to mind the Yorick of Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. 28 WD lived in London 1754–55; he may have returned subsequently before his next lengthy English residence in 1764–71 (To WD, ?first half of Apr. 1757, n. 1). JB had benefited from a list WD had made of London travel suggestions: ‘I got from Digges a list of the best houses on the road and also a direction to a good Inn at London’ (Journ. 19 Nov. 1762). 29 John West, 1st Earl De La Warr. The uncertainty over whether he was WD’s unkind uncle is discussed in From WD, 29 Dec. 1762, n. 8. 30 All of the information known about ‘Mr. Dugdale’ is that he was De La Warr’s steward in 1763, also a placeman in the Stamp Office, and that he lived in Cooks Court. There were two Dugdales working in the Stamp Office in 1763—James Dugdale (?d. 1790), paid £60 p.a. as a Receiver General’s Clerk, and Josias Dugdale, paid £50 p.a. as an Assistant Teller of Stamps and £50 p.a. as a Bill-man (The Court and City Register, 1763, pp. 129–30). 31 It is not known why WD was in Berwick ‘About three weeks ago’, i.e., c. Fri. 28 Jan. He was back in Edinburgh 31 Jan. when he wrote to JB from there. 32 The popularity of various potted meats and seafoods is attested by the recipes of Hannah Glasse, who writing in 1747 offered instructions on how to pot not only lobsters (p. 117), but also eels, lampreys, char, pike, salmon, pigeons and other fowl, beef, venison, tongue (beef, neat’s, or venison), and Cheshire cheese. For the potted lobster, the ‘well boiled’ lobster flesh was ground into a paste, seasoned with mace, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and butter, and sealed in its ‘Potting-pot’ with a layer of ‘clear Butter’ (Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, 1747, facsimile with introduction ed. Jennifer Stead, Priscilla Bain, and Alan Davidson, 1983, pp. 117– 18, 127–28). 33 Nothing more is known of this episode. 34 WD’s ‘Affairs of some Consequence’ have not been explained. 35 Unclear. George Anne Bellamy mentioned that WD had a brother, Capt. Dudley Digges (Bellamy, iv. 48). A ‘Dudley Digges’ (d. 1779) was commissioned as a naval lt. in 1745, and was a capt. by 1753, at which rank he remained until his death. In 1763 ‘Dudley Digges’ was listed as master of the Deptford, a fourth-rate ship stationed in

the West Indies. (The Court and City Register, 1763, pp. 185, 193; Sea Officers, i. 253). The notes to From WD, 29 Dec. 1762 explain that Maj.-Gen. John West, styled Viscount Cantelupe 1761–66, was perhaps WD’s half-brother, and certainly his cousin. 36 Cook’s Court connected west Carey St. and Searle St., and its eastern terminus led to the Stamp-Office Building (Rocque’s Plan [1740], as printed in Ralph Hyde, ed., The A to Z of Georgian London, London Topographical Society Pub. 126, 1982, p. 11Ca; Universal British Directory, 1791). 37 This ‘Will’s Coffeehouse’ (not to be confused with the better known Will’s Coffeehouse in Bow St., Covent Garden) had flourished since 1736, and perhaps dated back to 1713, and survived through various moves and incarnations into the nineteenth century. Its location was given variously through the century as ‘near Lincoln’s Inn’, ‘Lincoln’s Inn Fields’, ‘Lincoln’s Inn Gate’, ‘the back side of Lincoln’s-Inn Square’, ‘facing the passage to Lincoln’s Inn New Square’, and on 7 Serle Street (in 1799) (Lillywhite, Item 1547, p. 654). From this account, it seems the location of Will’s in 1763 was ‘Lincoln’s Inn Gate’. 38 Lincoln’s Inn Gatehouse, east side of Lincoln’s Inn in Chancery Lane, was one of the three principal entrances to the Inn, and had been built 1517–21 (Lond. Encyclopedia). 39 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the square of residential addresses WNW of Lincoln’s Inn, bounded by Searle St. to the east, Portugal Row to the south, Yeates St. to the west, and Holbourn Row to the north (Rocque’s Plan [1740], as printed in Ralph Hyde, ed., The A to Z of Georgian London, London Topographical Society Pub. 126, 1982, p. 3Cc). WD’s geography is somewhat askew in its depiction of proximity. 40 ‘Stamp-Office, Lincoln’s Inn’ (The Court and City Register, 1763, pp. 129–30). The ‘Stamp Office’ location in the southwest corner of Lincoln’s Inn New Square bordering Searle St. is clearly shown on Rocque’s Plan (1740), as printed in Ralph Hyde, ed., The A to Z of Georgian London, London Topographical Society Pub. 126, 1982, p. 3Cc. The office was a very short walk from Dugdale’s residence in Cook’s Court. 41 Churchill’s satire against Bute and the Scots, The prophecy of famine. A Scots pastoral. By C. Churchill. Inscribed to John Wilkes, Esq; (ESTC T42786) was published on 26 Jan. (Lond. Chron. 27–29 Jan. 1763, p. 100). Within 1763, it reached a ‘fifth edition’ (ESTC T118035) and a Dublin piracy

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(ESTC T98217). It was successful enough to be answered by The prophecy of genius. Inscribed to the Revd. author of The prophecy of famine, 1763 (ESTC N62200) and The prophecy of famine: a Scots pastoral. Part the second. Inscribed to C. Churchill, 1763 (ESTC N12181). 42 WD’s debt owed to JB for the various books sent mounted. JB noted in To JJ 29 Mar., ‘Digges will soon owe me half a Guinea

for Pamphlets etc.’. As Ralph S. Walker pointed out, this would have included (a) ‘My little bundle of pamphlets’, mentioned in From WD, 9 Dec. 1762, (b) the Two Gentlemen of Verona (price 1s), mentioned in From WD, 29 Dec. 1762, and (c) The Citizen (price 1s), mentioned in From WD, 31 Jan. (Corr. 1, pp. 62–64, 62 n. 2). He should likely have added (d) The Prophecy of Famine, as mentioned in this letter.

To the Countess of Northumberland, Sunday 20 February 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in Journ. 20 Feb. ‘I had this day the honour of a Message from the Countess of Northumberland enquiring how I was. She is indeed an excellent Woman. I cannot enough regard her.’ From 22 Feb. to 2 Mar. JB was already planning his re-integration into the Northumberland House set: ‘go out Monday next to North house & propose half pay ensign in mean time’; ‘Be at North-house immed. & push all you can’; ‘Prepare for going out tomorrow & resolve to do it gradualy & be first at North-House’ (Mem. 22, 26, 27 Feb., 2 Mar.). On 2 Mar., he ‘called at Northumberland-House, but My Lady was not at home’, and again the next day: ‘I called again at Northumberland-House. But My Lady was again abroad. The Porter promised to let her know that I had been there; & would call again next day’. By the morning of 4 Mar., when he twice called without effect at ten and eleven A.M., and received conflicting reports that the lady had yet to rise from bed (at 10) and that she had already left the house (at 11), JB began to suspect that Lady Northumberland was avoiding him. He speculated that ‘She has found that she could not easily do me any service with the Marquis of Granby & so wants to shun a conversation with me, and has asked me to come in the evening as she is then surrounded with company, and I can have no opportunity to talk to her’. He pondered whether to seek her company or avoid her. ‘I thought I behoved to go to My Lady’s at night: But I thought I might make my Apology & so just be six weeks absent from her house’ (Journ. 4 Mar.).

From Anonymous1 (William Cochrane),2 Monday 21 February 17633 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 21 Feb. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 397– 98), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. C 809). ‘There has more than once been calling for me a tall Gentleman in black, when I was denied; He never would leave his name. I this morning received the following Letter from him’ (Journ. 21 Feb.).

[London] 4

Arrah now by my shoul my dear Shoy you are much in the wrong in the midst of your melancholy to shut the door against your acquaintances and deprive yourself of the comforts of friendly confabulation. Who in the performance of a manly part, would not wish to get Claps? The brave only are wounded in front, and Heroes are not ashamed of such scars. Yours are the offspring of fun & merriment, and would you make them the Parents of dolour & care?5 I intend to laugh and breakfast with you, tomorrow.6 Pray give the necessary orders for my admission; otherwise, Pox take you. Yours. 388

21 FEBRUARY 1763 1 Cochrane’s practical joke of concealing his identity from JB only lasted one day. 2 William Cochrane (b. 1734 or 1737, d. 1766), son of the recently deceased James Cochrane of Waterside (d. 29 Aug. 1762). JB would have been familiar with the family through the Cochrane kinship, through the legal connection with the Scots bar, and by virtue of Waterside’s being an estate lying in the parishes of Auchinleck and Ochiltree. Cochrane had succeeded his father as Judge Advocate of Scotland in 1757, and had become a member of the Faculty of Advocates in 1759. He was in London at this time to study English law (Journ. 22 Feb.). He died at Marseilles on 20 Jan. 1766 of consumption (Fac. Adv. p. 37; Scots Mag. 1766, p. 111; IGI). JB visited Cochrane in France when Cochrane was already ill (Journ. 23 Dec. 1765). JB referred to him as ‘my Cousin Willy Cochrane’ (Journ. 23 Dec. 1765). He was a grandson of the John Cochrane of Waterside who was a younger brother of JB’s great-grandfather William (Scots Peer. iii. 348–50, ix. 76). JB does not seem to have been a particular friend of Cochrane. 3 Date supplied from Journ. 4 Cochrane demonstrates familiarity with an exaggerated Hiberno-English ‘Stage Irish’ dialect of the sort used by characters in eighteenth-century theatre. One example, which has some affinities with Cochrane’s phrase, is Teague’s speech in Farquhar’s Twin Rivals (1705), Act V, l. 453: ‘Arah, maak me a Justice of peacsh, dear Joy’. Other examples include ‘Major Out-side’ in C. Shadwell, The Humours of the Army (1713), Act III, l. 414 (‘Arrah, by my Shoule’) and Act IV, l. 136; and ‘Country-man’ in C. Shadwell, The Plotting Lovers (1720). Alan Bliss, Spoken English in Ireland, 1600–1740 …, 1979, pp. 138–71 offered various other examples. Bliss offered TS’s

character Captain O’Blunder in The Brave Irishman (1740/1754) as a classic example of the type (Bliss, pp. 166–71). Cochrane’s slang translates roughly into Georgian colloquial English as ‘Zounds, now by my soul, my dear boy’. ‘Arrah’ is an ‘expletive expressing emotion or excitement, common in Anglo-Irish speech’ or signifying ‘indeed’ (OED; Alan Bliss, Spoken English in Ireland, 1600–1740 …, 1979, pp. 256, 351). ‘Joy’, often rendered phonetically as ‘Shoy’, and meaning ‘my friend’ was also common Hiberno-Irish, and used by Teague in Twin Rivals, Act III, ll. 181, 260. The endearment ‘dear joy’ was so common that a ‘dear joy’ became slang for ‘an Irishman’ (Bliss, pp. 233–38, 264–65, 315, 355, 361). Bliss (pp. 312–16) argued that the ‘Stage Irish’ of 1600–1740 was a far more accurate rendition of contemporary ‘Hiberno-English’ than previous critics had claimed. However, stage Irish overloaded the script with more exaggerated mispronunciations than the authentic dialect offered. Although based on a genuine Anglo-Irish speech, its employment in comic grotesques was indicative of prevalent anti-Irish stereotypes (‘Teagues’), much as the stage Scots dialect in ‘Sawney’ characters was evidence of anti-Scottish sentiments. 5 Cochrane’s knowledge of JB’s venereal disease was presumably not gained from JB’s landlord, who had repeatedly denied the gentleman access to JB’s rooms. Cochrane’s knowing mentions of ‘Clap’, ‘wounded in front’, ‘scars … the offspring of fun & merriment’, and ‘Pox’ strongly suggest that Cochrane had spoken to someone in London, likely an expatriate or visiting Scot, who knew of JB’s gonorrhoea. 6 JB did in fact plan to meet the following morning, as Mem. 22 Feb. reveals: ‘This day break parl wt. Gentleman. Be easy —’.

To Anonymous (William Cochrane), Monday 21 February 17631 Not reported. In answer to the Mentioned in Journ. 21 Feb. ‘I sent him for answer that he would be very wellcome. I could not conceive who it was. I formed multitudes of conjectures’. Journ. 22 Feb. reported the end of the prank: ‘Who did this strange tall Gentleman in black turn out to be, but Mr. William Cochrane Judge Advocate for Scotland. Upon my word, I did not think he had humour enough to write such a letter & I told him so. He told me he was come up to study english law, and be called to the bar here. I was put into good humour with him. His company was a fine variety to me. He put me in mind of Burntsfield Links and Monday’s after the spring sacrament at Edinburgh, when the Meadow swarms with Preachers and others taking their walks’. By 27 Feb., JB had become displeased with Cochrane’s company: ‘Mr. William Cochrane was with me today. I tired of him. He was affected vulgar & snappish’ (Journ. 27

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Feb.). In late 1765, when he visited Cochrane on his deathbed in Marseilles, JB had softened somewhat, but was nonetheless amazed at his lack of concern at his death: ‘I regret the distress of a Relation; but do not feel it much. I was sorry not to have heard of him sooner. I used rather to dislike his manner. Sickness had softened and bettered it. I liked him’ (Journ. 23 Dec. 1765). 1

Date supplied from Journ.

To Jean White, before Thursday 24 February 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in From JJ, 24 Feb.: ‘and last night I also received a letter covering one to my Lord [Auchinleck], one to the Doctor [? John Boswell?], —Davie [David Boswell]—and Jean White. All but the last I Sealed and gave to Davie … Your leaving your Letters open for my perusal is a favour I am very Sensible off’ (Corr. 1, pp. 50–52). This ‘Jean White’ has not been certainly identified. The only solid information we have is that she would perhaps have been known to JJ, although he mentioned her rather clinically as ‘Jean White’ rather than with a nickname (e.g., ‘Jeany’) or an honorific (i.e., ‘Mrs. White’). We also know that JJ (a) either lived close enough to ‘Jean White’ in Edinburgh to hand-deliver the letter to her, or that (b) the contents of the letter were such as could not be entrusted to JB’s highly reliable brother David for delivery to her in Edinburgh or Auchinleck, and were therefore sent through the post. Ralph S. Walker (Corr. 1, p. 51 n. 4) guessed that she was ‘[p]erhaps the foster-mother in whose charge JB’s illegitimate son Charles had been placed’, which at least would conform to the idea that she may have lived in Edinburgh near JJ’s residence. The editors of Corr. 8 researched Jean (White) Bruce (1717–83), her husband the Auchinleck Estate Overseer James Bruce, and their children, who lived less than a quarter of a mile east of Auchinleck House. She would be a credible nominee since she was a longstanding acquaintance of JB’s and was part of JB’s life for many years. From Bruce, 11 July 1769 mentioned Jean’s opinions in a familiar way which suggested JB knew her reasonably well, and his later letters to JB (1782–83) on her illness are similarly familial (Corr. 8, pp. xxxiv, 19, 33, 38, 40 n. 11, 42, map p. 244). However, it is unclear why JB could not have sent a letter intended for Jean (White) Bruce via David, unless Lord Auchinleck and Dr. John Boswell were in ‘town’ while she remained in Ayrshire, or unless she herself was in Edinburgh on a visit at the time.

From Alexander Macdonald to William McQuhae, after 24 February and before ?21 March 1763 Not reported. The letter must have been written after JB’s breakfast with Macdonald on 24 Feb. It would also need to have been posted from London in time to arrive at McQuhae’s on 26 Apr. Even more importantly, it would very likely have been posted to McQuhae before Macdonald’s mid-March departure on the East India ship Lord Mansfield: ‘He was going out to India on his first voyage’ (Journ. 24 Feb.). His ship had already departed by 21 Mar., and awaited its convoy until the 24th. The ship news from Deal noted in its entry for 21 Mar., ‘Came down and remain with the Ships as before; the Lord Mansfield, [Captain] M’Cloud [or M’Cleod], and Lord Clive, [Captain] Webster, for East India’. For 22 Mar., it reported ‘Remain in the Downs … the Lord Mansfield … and Lord Clive’, and for 24 Mar. it noted ‘Came down and sailed … the two East Indiamen’ (Pub. Adv. 23, 24, 26 Mar. [reporting news from Deal dated 23, 24, 26 Mar.]; Lond. Chron. 22–24 and 24–26 Mar. 1763, pp. 287– 94). The contents of Macdonald’s letter to McQuhae can be reconstructed from From McQuhae, 26 Apr.: ‘Your kind Behaviour to Sandy McDonald gave me infinite Satisfaction …. I had a Letter from him since, he speaks of you most feelingly. You who are

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moderate in all your principles … you would enter into his views and notions in a manner quite agreeable to him—indeed he seems to think that you are altogether such a one as he is [i.e., a Jacobite], tho’ the Son of the greatest Whig in Britain’. Macdonald’s mention of JB’s Toryism and sentimental Jacobitism helps to illuminate the Mem. for 24 Feb.: ‘Be fine wt. Mcdonald. Think on Mcquhae—Countess of Eglintoune— breakfast sunshine—Marmalade—High land hills—Tartan plaids—Jacobites—Cairrnie.’ It also explains JB’s comments in Journ. 24 Feb: ‘I was in fine spirits and I thought of many agreable ideas. I found [Macdonald] warmly attached to the family of Stuart and he said the Scotch Jacobites had yet great hopes of a Restoration’. JB’s ‘Jacobitism’ was purely sentimental and nostalgic, and less socially respectable and openly expressible than JB’s more pragmatic Scots gentry ‘Toryism’ which admitted the victory of the ‘House of George’.

To William McQuhae, Saturday 26 February 1763 Not reported. Presumably a reply to From McQuhae, c. mid-Feb., which JB had certainly received before breakfast on 24 Feb. with Alexander Macdonald (discussed in From McQuhae, c. mid-Feb.). JB’s reply to McQuhae is mentioned in Journ. 26 Feb.: ‘I past this day in writing a great many letters particularly a long one to Mcquhae, whom I regard much …. I regret my want of power to serve such Men as him according to his Merit; however I hope to make him tollerably happy.’

From John Cairnie, late February 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in To JJ, 1 Mar.: ‘I had a letter from Cairnie last week. He tells me that Mr. Hart is to discharge the debt to Mossman and is to draw a bill upon me payable for the £40 and interest from the time the debt was contracted till the first of April. This I am to accept, and am to take Love’s bill in the same terms to me’ (Corr. 1, pp. 52–54). JB was made anxious by Cairnie’s news and plan. ‘I have no doubt of getting it easily settled. But you know I gave Mr. Hart a bond of relief for £40 of the £60 which we borrowed jointly from Mossman’s friend. Now I suppose you must see both these papers cancelled. Would not that bond stand against me? or will the sum in the bill be mentioned to be the same with that in the Bond?’ (ibid.). The hypothetical account in Corr. 1 reconstructed the episode as follows: Orlando Hart, Edinburgh Shoemaker, was supposed to send JB ‘six pair in all’ of ‘shoes’ and ‘Pumps’, merchandise which JB noted (in To JJ, 18 Jan.) had not yet arrived and would need to be ‘sent up by sea’. JJ was to pay Hart and send the receipt to JB. As JB had lacked the ready money to pay the debt, the two men had made arrangements with Mossman jointly to borrow money, of which JB would use two thirds to pay Hart’s bill, and also assume the debt for Hart’s cosigned portion. Yet when the debt had come due, Hart had paid Mossman all £60, while simultaneously sending JB a bill for JB’s two thirds of the debt. JB was understandably concerned that Hart had not been clear that the £40 owed to Hart was the same £40 of the debt JB and Hart had owed to Mossman, and not a second debt. He was, however willing to consider covering his debt to Hart by drawing up a bill on the impecunious James Love using the same strategy, except with Love as the major debtor (Corr. 1, pp. 39–40, 52–54). The lives and vital dates of Hart and the hypothetical identification of Mossman as ‘John Mossman’ may be consulted in Corr. 1, p. 53 n. 2. JB’s Edinburgh budgeting before his new London financing may be inferred by his willingness to spend £40 on shoes and pumps, which suggests an average price of about £6 13s 4d per pair of shoes. In his ‘Scheme of living’ for London written at the beginning of his London residence in 1762 JB was much more restrained: ‘Stockings & Shoes I reckon for the year £10’.

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To the Countess of Northumberland, Tuesday 8 March 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in Mem.: ‘Send card by Chairman to North-House’ (Mem. 8 Mar.). Probably, given the subsequent day’s Mem., a brief carte de visite announcing his impending visit to Northumberland House. He planned calls on 9 and 11 Mar.: ‘step out to North House, & then to Gould’s. to pay respects fairly’; ‘go to North House, & see what is done’ (Mem. 9, 11 Mar.). After not having seen the Countess of Northumberland since 21 Jan., he finally spoke to her at her gathering on 11 Mar.: ‘She said that she had as yet only seen Lord Granby in Public, but would not forget me. She spoke rather slightly, and I imagined She had no more thoughts of serving me. I was realy deprest’. He nonetheless attended ‘a grand rout at Northumberland-House’ on Sat. 19 Mar. (Journ.).

To the Earl of Bute,1 Tuesday 15 March 17632 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 15 Mar. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 455–56), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 338). The authorship of this letter is a complicated matter. This letter, though drafted by JB and sent to Bute in JB’s hand, was revised heavily by the Earl of Eglinton. The genesis of the letter was a late-night hock-drinking session: ‘At night My Lord came as he promised …. I showed him a letter that I had written to Lord Bute, which he declared too long too personal & too circumstantial. He therefore wrote the following which I just copied out’ (Journ. 15 Mar.). The scheme of Eglinton’s version of the letter depended for much of its effect on Eglinton’s personal conversations with Bute. ‘I thought this letter not plain enough, nor free enough; but My Lord said he would explain all the affair. So I resolved to be for once the real Courtier & so most gravely signed this Letter. This anecdote will amuse me much afterwards’ (Journ. 15 Mar.). In the wake of the debate during the mid-night composition of this letter, JB distrusted it, and Lord Eglinton’s management of his Guards scheme in general. The subsequent days were tense ones for JB. JB on 16 Mar. appears to have pondered telling Eglinton not to send the letter which Eglinton had composed and whose contents JB believed vague and ineffective. He seems to have believed it possible on 16 and 17 Mar. to stop the letter (Mem. 16 Mar.: ‘Eglint’s & settle affair & not to send letters by any means as you will write.’; Mem. 17 Mar. ‘Eglint’s & settle no letter sent’). He projected a visit to check on progress on 19 Mar.: ‘Then go to Lord Eglintoune’s & see about affairs’ (Mem. 19 Mar.). On 20 Mar. JB was planning to insist to see Bute in person rather than trust Eglinton’s letter and conversations: ‘Then Eglint’s & consult & determine nothing out of London But what is broke & insist on seeing Lord Bute so then you can tell him your Story’ (Mem. 20 Mar.), a plan which he reiterated on 21 Mar.: ‘Lord Eglint. & be spirited & say you will have nothing but Guards & you’ve made a vow not to quit London, as you’d be miserable. Keep to purpose, dont be imbecill & ask to see Lord Bute’ (Mem. 21 Mar.). Yet by 23 Mar. he seems to have planned to accept Eglinton’s management of the commission: ‘Dont go Lord B[ute] as E[glinton]—forbid it; so let him take his own way entirely’ (Mem. 23 Mar.).

MY LORD: I am ashamed to trouble your Lordship,3 having nothing to recommend me, but being the eldest son of a Scotch Judge who is thought to serve his country honestly; I mean My Lord Auchinleck.4 My Father insisted on my following the Law. I past tryals5 to please him; but having an utter detestation at that Profession,6 beg your Lordship would recommend me to his Majesty to have a Commission in the Army;7 which will be conferring the highest favour on8 one who is with the highest Respect & Esteem, My Lord, Your Lordship’s Most Obedient Humble Servant, JAMES BOSWELL 392

15 MARCH 1763 1 John Stuart (1713–92), 3rd Earl of Bute. He had been born in Edinburgh, but was heavily anglicized, as he had been educated at Eton in 1720, in 1736 had married an Englishwoman (Mary Wortley-Montagu of Wortley in York, daughter of the famous author of the same name), in 1762 had resigned his Scots K. T. in order to accept an English K. G., and in 1763 had set about enlarging the newly-purchased mansion and grounds of Luton Hoo in Bedfordshire. Politically, he served in the House of Lords as a Representative Peer from 1737 to 1741 and again from 1761 to 1780. But more importantly, he had close ties to the Court of Frederick, Prince of Wales from 1750 to 1751, and of George, Prince of Wales from 1756 to 1760. He was not only a tutor but a friend to the young George, and was so closely involved in Court life that the Opposition assumed that he was the lover of the Dowager Princess Augusta, George’s mother. Thus, when George III became king, Bute was given a key post at Court (Groom of the Stole 1760–61), as well as various sincecures and honours (Chancellor of Marischal College [from 1761], Ranger of Richmond Park [from 1761], and a K. G. [1762]); see also Romney Sedgwick, ed., Letters from George III to Lord Bute, 1756–1766, 1939. Under George III, Bute was also preferred to the Privy Council, and made a principal Secretary of State (Northern Dept. 1761–62). He was first a ‘prime minister’ while Secretary of State in the so-called Bute-Newcastle coalition ministry from Oct. 1761 to May 1762. Yet from May 1762 he was First Lord of the Treasury, and sole prime minister from 29 May 1762 to 15 Apr. 1763. However, his premiership was so disastrous that he mostly retired from public life after 15 Apr. 1763, save for various patronages of the British Museum, Society of Antiquaries, Scotland, and Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh (Comp. Peer. ii. 441–43). The ‘Whig Interpretation’ promulgated from Horace Walpole and the North Briton onwards into the nineteenth century represented Bute as a wicked and conniving Scots carpet-bagger who had set out to corrupt English liberty through Tory (or even Jacobite) connivance and Court subversion of the Parliament. Revision by twentieth-century Parliamentary historians from Sir Lewis Namier onward debunked the idea of a Bute conspiracy (Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution, 1930). Yet John Brewer (while taking a sympathetic view of the misfortunes of Lord

Bute) stressed that ideology undeniably (mis-)shaped perception of events both in Parliament and ‘out of doors’ (Brewer, ‘Lord Bute’, in Herbert Maurice Van Thal, ed., The Prime Ministers, 2 vols., 1974–75, i. 105– 13; Karl W. Schweizer, Lord Bute: Essays in Re-Interpretation, 1988). 2 Date supplied from Journ. 3 JB’s scheme of asking Bute for the commission was tantamount to hitching his wagon to a falling star, since Bute fell from power almost exactly a month after the date of JB’s letter. Initially, Eglinton had hoped to gain Bute’s influence through a verbal overture and face-to-face meetings, either between JB and Bute, or between himself and Bute. Such was the original scheme as discussed on 25 Jan. ‘I then told [Eglinton] all my different expectations about my Commission. The Duke of Queensberry Lady Northumberland, the Marquiss of Granby. He said he would take me to Lord Bute’s levee, & I should push at all hands. All would help’ (Journ. 25 Jan.). JB’s confinement with gonorrhoea delayed that plan for five weeks. Eglinton continued on 9 Mar. to be sanguine about the hopes of intervening with Bute on JB’s behalf: ‘I went this day to Lord Eglintoune’s …. He said he would so every thing he could with Lord Bute to get my Commission’ (Journ. 9 Mar.)’. Yet by mid-Mar. JB was seriously entertaining the audacious idea of writing directly to Bute. However, he first wished to consult Eglinton, as his Mem. shows: ‘Then Eglint. & settle Plan about Lord Bute’(Mem. 15 Mar.). He proposed the scheme to Bute on 15 Mar.: ‘I then went to Lord Eglintoune’s …. I had formed a scheme of writing a letter to Lord Bute, about my Commission, but thought it a wild conceit, so kept it to myself. Luckily Lord Eglintoune hit upon the same, & proposed it to me. I appointed to meet him at his house this evening at eleven, when we might talk my affair over, fully. He promised he would do every thing in his power, for me, with Lord Bute’ (Journ. 15 Mar.). 4 Bute would presumably have known who Lord Auchinleck was, given Bute’s inheritance of Argyll’s political power in Scotland (Pol. Car., pp. 8, 18, 57–58, 84). 5 JB’s academic examination in civil law took place on 30 July 1762 (Journ. ?30 July). He would pass advocate and enter the faculty of advocates 29 July 1766, after returning from his Dutch legal training and his Grand Tour (Fac. Adv. p. 18). 6 JB insisted to Queensberry, in a conversation he might have assumed would be

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relayed to his father, ‘The law I am not able for’ (Journ. 20 Jan.). Indeed, JB found the very idea depressing. ‘I thought I would return to Scotland and drudge as a Lawyer, which would please my father, & gain me a character of prudence and also get me money & enable me to do good, and as I would not flatter myself with the expectation of much felicity, I would not be dissapointed. But then I considered this scheme as the unripe fruit of vexatious thought and as what I would soon repent of’ (Journ. 18 Feb.). The law remained, however, JB’s chosen fall-back if the Guards scheme failed, as is shown in Mem. 19 Feb.: ‘push Guards in the mean time as it is the most agreable to your inclinations. If it does not do, you can go to Holland &c & push Law.’ JB was not pleased with the prospect. ‘The law-scheme appeared in another light. I considered it as bringing me back to a Situation that I had long a rooted aversion to …. I would find it very irksome to sit for hours hearing a heavy agent explain a heavy cause, and then to be obliged to remember and repeat distinctly the dull story, probably of some very trivial affair. I considered that when I should again go about and mix in the hurry & bustle of life, and have my spirits agitated with a variety of brilliant scenes, this dull legal scheme would appear in its usual colours’ (Journ. 25 Feb.). 7 Eglinton’s vague mention of ‘a Com-

mission in the Army’ was troubling to JB, since it did not specify the Foot Guards or Blues. As JB explained to Eglinton on the night of the composing of the final draft, ‘I told My Lord I would have nothing but the Guards. Sir said he, I think you should catch at any string. Nay, My Lord said I another Commission would be a rope wherewith to hang myself; except you can get me one that is to be broke, & then I am not forced from London’ (Journ. 15 Mar.). JB’s view that the Foot Guards mainly promenaded around London was apparently not modified by his knowledge that the 1st Regt. of Foot Guards, second battalion, was returning home from the German territories after a harsh series of bloody campaigns (Journ. 27 Feb.; St. James Chronicle, 28 Feb. 1763; Lond. Chron. xiii. 202). Eglinton had previously on 25 Jan. pointed out the impracticality of JB’s insistence on a Foot Guards regiment (Journ. 25 Jan.), as had Queensberry (Journ. 26 Dec. 1762, 20 Jan. 1763). The Guards scheme became even more chancy as the flood tide of officers from broken regiments entered the Half-Pay lists or sought commissions in the core regiments which had not been made redundant by the Peace. The heraldic Proclamation of the Peace of Paris took place on 22 Mar. (Journ. 22 Mar.), and the General Thanksgiving for the Peace took place on 5 May 1763 (Journ.). 8 MS. ‘one’

From the Earl of Bute to the Earl of Eglinton, Saturday 26 March 1763 MS. Yale (C 710). JB discussed this letter in To JJ, 5 Apr., in which he had intended to enclose ‘Lord Bute’s card, sealed with his own large seal’ (Corr. 1, p. 64 and n. 7). For a photographic reproduction, see Boswell’s London Journal 1762–1763, together with Journal of My Jaunt Harvest 1762, ed. Frederick A. Pottle, 1951, facing p. 297. ADDRESS: To the Earl of Eglinton, etc. etc. etc. ENDORSEMENT in Bute’s hand: Bute. ENDORSEMENT in JB’s hand: The Prime Minister’s note that I was to have an Ensigncy. But as I liked only the Guards I declined it.1

South Aud. Street2 March 26th 1763 Lord Bute presents His Compts to Lord Eglinton, and acquaints His Lordship that he mentioned to the King Mr. Boswell’s Case, and that His Majesty3 will not fail to order that He should have a pair colours.4 394

26 MARCH 1763 1 On a day between 15 Mar. and 21 Mar., Eglinton met Bute to make JB’s case for a free grant of an ensigncy (without the purchase price normally attached to military rank). He presented Bute a copy of JB’s ‘Ode to Ambition’. He also ‘presented [JB’s] letter & told [his] story in the most favourable manner’. However, ‘Lord Bute told him it was impossible to give [JB] a [free] Commission in the Guards, as People of the best parliamentary interest were pushing to purchase them.’ Eglinton then ‘asked a [free ensign’s] Commission in another [i.e., a marching] Regiment for me; which Lord Bute promised I should have’ (Journ. 21 Mar.). The delicacy of the political situation of army patronage within the purchase system, especially in a peacetime army slated for drastic reduction, meant that Eglinton could not comply with JB’s wish that Eglinton should have ‘insisted on it’s being in a young Corps’ [i.e., a high-numbered regiment created only for the war emergency and therefore about to be disbanded] if the Foot Guards proved impossible. Eglinton protested to JB that political etiquette demanded that ‘I could not mention it so particularly’. JB was puzzled at Eglinton’s vagueness, given that he presumed ‘your Lordship had just talked freely with Lord Bute, as I do with you’. Eglinton had to explain to JB that although Bute was a personal connexion, ‘he has not time to talk so much’, even to his friends. Eglinton reminded JB that if he was commissioned in one of the higher-numbered ‘young Regiment[s]’ who were being ‘broke’ in spring 1763, he would not be liable for field service. Eglinton also pointed out that if JB was unlucky and was in an ‘old’ but non-FootGuards regiment, ‘numbers’ of people would be ‘willing to exchange a half-pay commission for yours’, and by selling a free ensigncy for a half-pay commission, earn money: ‘& give you some money into the Bargain’. JB reminded Eglinton that ‘London leave will I not’. In his Journ., JB added as a coda to the conversation, ‘This may be a step towards my favourite situation the guards. At any rate, it can do no harm: as I can throw it up immediatly when I feel the least inconvenience from it’ (Journ. 21 Mar.). JB’s letter to JJ on 22 Mar. explained his understanding of the situation. ‘As to my Commission, I find the Duke of Queensberry will do nothing … Lady Northumberland I am doubtfull of. Lord Eglintoune with all his dissipation is yet my best friend …. He has presented a letter from me to Lord

Bute; who said that at present to give me an Ensigncy in the Guards was impossible. But at My Lord’s desire he has promised me one in another Regiment, which My Lord insists that I shall accept of, as it will either be in a Regiment that is to be broke, or I can exchange it with such a one; so that I shall [get] £30 a year half-pay, have no sort of trouble as I will not join my Corps and then it will be a step to my getting into the Guards’ (Corr. 1, pp. 58–62). JB’s letter to JJ of 5 Apr. restated his plans in the wake of receipt of this card, which was probably forwarded to him by Bute. ‘I am now resolved to accept of an Ensigncy in a marching Regiment, and to exchange it immediatly with a half-pay one, and so have that pretence to push for the Guards. Lord Eglintoune advised me to take it. I am sure of having it. I inclose you Lord Bute’s card, sealed with his own large seal.’ Yet From JJ, 18 Apr. noted that JB had erred, and failed to send the promised card as an enclosure: ‘I was greatly dissappointed at not finding Lord Butes Letter enclosed, as you intended. You have mislaid it, and by this time will be Sensible of your Mistake, pray be So good as to Send it to me, and I will return it’ (Corr. 1, pp. 64–66, 70–71). Ralph S. Walker (Corr. 1, p. 66 n. 9) noted that ‘he may have sent it later’; however, he may equally well have forgotten, or changed his mind. 2 Bute’s town residence was at No. 73 South Audley St., south-southwest of Grosvenor Square. Bute died in his house on South Audley St. in 1792 (Comp. Peer. ii. 442). JB went to Audley Chapel on 8 May (Journ.). 3 JB’s letter to JJ of 5 Apr. noted that ‘Bute’s … mention of his Majesty is only a form. It means the secretary at war’ (Corr. 1, pp. 64–66). The Secretary at War was then Welbore Ellis (1713–1802), later (1794) cr. Baron Mendip. Ellis was an M.P. for various seats in the Commons from 1741 to 1794: Cricklade (1741–47), Weymouth and Melcombe Regis (1747–61 and 1774– 90), Aylesbury (1761–68), and Petersfield (1768–74 and 1791–94). Formerly a Foxite, he had increasingly turned to Bute for help from 1760. Although he was never a military officer, he served as a Lord of the Admiralty 1747–55 and Treasurer of the Navy 1777–82, and as Secretary at War 1762–65. His former patron Fox wrote of him that ‘Ellis had by my friendship and accident, got into a place much above his pretensions, and he was the only man in England who did not think so’.

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In Mar. 1763 Ellis was in the midst of ‘onerous and difficult’ War Office business. As Rigby noted in a letter to Bedford 16 Dec. 1762, ‘to have the principal hand in reducing a large army … is a most irksome and unpleasant task’. Unbeknownst to JB, Ellis had spent more than an hour on 4 Mar. in the Commons defending the Army Estimates (Sedgwick, ii. 10; Namier and Brooke, ii. 397–400; Comp. Peer. viii. 657–58, s.v. Mendip; Holland’s ‘Memoir’ in, Life and Letters of Lady Sarah Lennox, i. 15). The reduction of the army in 1763 is examined in David Ascoli, A Companion to the British Army: 1660–1983, 1983, pp. 28–34. 4 Each regiment of foot carried a ‘pair of colours’. The first colour was the ‘King’s Colour’, the Union Flag of Great Britain on which was typically superimposed a wreath of roses and thistles bearing the regiment’s number, or (in special cases) some other distinctive mark of identification for those regiments entitled to unique regimental badges. The second colour was the ‘Regimental Colour’, of the regimental facing colour, with the Union Flag in the upper canton, typically also bearing the numbered wreath, except in special cases as specified by the Royal Warrant.

It was the duty of two of the regiment’s ensigns, who were typically eight in number per battalion, to carry the ‘pair colours’ on parade and into battle, and to guard them with their lives. Since the capture of enemy colours was a great honour and the loss of one’s own regimental colours was a great disgrace, ensigns were often targets for enemy attacks. Ensigns were generally new officers in their late- or even mid-teens when they purchased their commissions. JB at age 22 would have been rather long in the tooth for a new ensign: ‘while in theory these [ensigns] might be of any age they were usually very young, sometimes only in their mid-teens’. Furthermore, a short man such as JB would likely have had trouble wrangling the regulation 6' 6" long and 6' deep flag mounted on a 9' 10" pike (Robin May, The British Army in North America, 1775–1783, 1974, repr. 1990, p. 34). For purchase prices of an ensign’s rank in a generic marching regiment (£400 in 1775) and pictorial examples of an ensign bearing the colours, see ibid., pl. B3 and pp. 14, 29, 33–34; Robin May, Wolfe’s Army, 1974/ 1990, pl. C2 and pp. 43–44; John Mollo, Uniforms of the American Revolution …, 1975, pls. 108, 215–219, pp. 189, 220–21.

To William McQuhae, after 2 and before 26 April 1763 Not reported. JB was thinking about writing to McQuhae on 2 Apr., when he wrote in Mem. ‘Write Mcquhae note’. However, as is typical with the Mem., it is not clear whether JB merely scheduled the activity for 2 Apr., or actually carried it out on the scheduled day as well. The letter was received by McQuhae by 26 Apr., who mentions it in his letter to JB: ‘now I sit down to try to say something or other about the various particulars contained in your Letter which lies before me’. As the post took about nine days in transit from London to Barquharry, the letter would presumably have been composed closer to 17 Apr. The contents of the letter may be reconstructed from From McQuhae, 26 Apr. JB informed McQuhae that he had been ‘p[ox]’d’ with gonorrhoea. JB also explained that his resultant confinement had led to his ‘progress in the Study of History’. He noted that he had been reading ‘Mr Hume’, and must have been specific enough in describing where he was in the series for McQuhae to know that ‘you have not yet read the history of the Stuarts’, which means McQuhae knew with some assurance ‘the Volumes which you have read’. JB also apparently recounted his ‘kind Behaviour to Sandy [Alexander McDonald]’ in their meeting on 24 Feb., since McQuhae noted, ‘I had a Letter from him since’. He also mentioned his Guards scheme again, since McQuhae noted: ‘it is a part of your Scheme to be a Soldier.’ JB’s letter had imploringly asked McQuhae to be honest with him about JB’s life plans, the military in particular. McQuhae’s reply paraphrased JB’s request: ‘you beseech you intreat me to Speak my Mind freely—how very obliging you are. Thus called upon, would it not be inexcusable to say what I do not think. The truth is, I cannot help being extremely apprehensive of the consequences of such a Scheme.’ JB also in the letter seems to have reprimanded himself for unsteadiness: ‘You accuse yourself of wanting Steadiness’.

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AFTER 11 AND BEFORE 18 APRIL 1763

To the Countess of Northumberland, after 11 and before 18 April 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 22 Apr. (Yale MS. J 2.1, p. 517), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 992). The terminus a quo for the letter’s date can be established by the first mention of the aidede-camp scheme in Journ. 11 Apr.: ‘It was now fixed that Lord Northumberland should go Lord Lieutenant to Ireland. This I considered as a very fortunate thing for me; as I could go over as an Aid de Camp, get promotion in the army in Ireland, & from thence step easily into the Guards. Lord Eglintoune promised to do what he could to forward this scheme; & this forenoon we met My Lady Northumberland in her chair. Lord Eglintoune stop’d her, & proposed the thing to her. She said she should like it much. But did not yet know whether My Lord & she were to go to Ireland. This looked ill; as if she wanted to shift doing any thing.’ The terminus ad quem for the letter is 18 Apr. In his Mem. for 18 Apr., JB had scheduled posting of such a letter: ‘as you go up leave letter at North[umberland] House’ (Mem.).

MADAM: I am soon to have a Commission in the Army.2 I beg leave to offer my attendance on Lord Northumberland to Ireland.3 Your Ladyship has it now in your power to serve me very much.4 I hope to be honoured with an answer.5 I am, etc.— 1 See Journ. 22 Apr., reporting the earlier event: ‘To make a fair tryal of Lady Northumberland I had written to her as follows’. 2 Bute’s intentions about JB’s commission were communicated verbally by Eglinton to JB on 21 Mar. (Journ.). Written confirmation was received by Eglinton on 26 Mar. As of 5 Apr., JB was resolved to accept the commission in a less desirable ‘marching’ regiment and then trade up from it. JB’s letter to JJ of 5 Apr. noted that ‘I am now resolved to accept of an Ensigncy in a marching Regiment, and to exchange it immediatly with a half-pay one, and so have that pretence to push for the Guards’ (Corr. 1, pp. 64–66). 3 The Earl of Northumberland was Lord Lieutenant for Ireland 1763–65. He had been a successful courtier for both George II and George III (as Lord of the Bedchamber 1753–63) and was Lord Chamberlain to the Queen Consort from 1762 to 1763. He had also previously served the Crown as a Lord Lieutenant (of Northumberland 1753–86), and had quite recently (2 Feb.) been appointed Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex, which he held from 1763 to 1786 (Corres. Walpole, xxxviii. 492 n. 3, 497, 533–34; J. C. Sainty, List of Lieutenants of Counties of England and Wales, 1660–1974, List and

Index Society Special Series xii., 1979, p. 116). Gossip about the gift circulated widely before the appointment was in the official Gazette. Walpole wrote to Montagu on 14 Apr.: ‘Lord Granby has refused Ireland, and the Northumberlands are to transport their jovial magnificence thither’ (Corres. Walpole, x. 65). 4 JB’s own reflections around the date of the letter showed a distinct lack of confidence in Lady Northumberland’s influence and even more so her intentions towards him. He wrote to JJ on 22 Mar., ‘As to my Commission … Lady Northumberland I am doubtfull of’ (Corr. 1, pp. 58–62). JB had paid court to her on 19 Mar. (‘a grand rout at Northumberland-House’), and on 14 Apr. ‘went to Lady Northumberland’s Rout. I was easier this night then I have been at any’ (Journ). In Journ. 11 Apr., even as he was formulating the aide-de-camp scheme, JB expressed his mistrust: ‘O these great People! They are a sad set of Beings. This Woman who seemed to be so cordialy my friend, and promised me her good offices so strongly, is I fear a fallacious Hussey. Thus do I philosophize, & thus do I lash such unworthy proceedings. However, let me not yet be too certain. She may perhaps be honest’.

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From Sir James Macdonald of Sleat,1 Thursday 14 April 1763 MS. Yale (C 1838).

Oxford,2 April 14th, 1763— DEAR SIR: Whenever you find it convenient to come down here, you will make me very happy with your Company.3 My stay in this place has nothing to do with your scheme,4 because you may be sure I shall wait at least till I have the pleasure of shewing you the Lions.5— If you have any one or more friends that would like to be of the Party I beg you will not scruple bringing them with you; for it can be no sort of inconvenience to me. Dr. Blair,6 whom you expected when I saw you,7 might perhaps have no objection—What would your friend Erskine8 say to it?—I do not mean that either of these could be any addition to the pleasure of Mr. Boswell’s company; but as I cannot answer for the satisfaction he may have in mine, I advise him to make sure before he sets out by bringing some agreeable friend along with him9—Whatever Company you bring, or whenever you chuse to come, you will find me very happy to receive You—I remain always with great sincerity Your most obedient and most humble Servant, J. MACDONALD 1 For Sir James Macdonald of Sleat or Slate, see To Eglinton, c. 7–11 Apr. or 29 Apr.–3 May 1760 (expanded 1761), nn. 22–24. 2 JB noted that ‘this is Sir James Macdonald’s last winter at Oxford’ (Journ. 18 Feb). JB had been invited to visit Oxford by Sir James at latest by 18 Feb.: ‘he asked me to come down and said he would show me everything. I should not lose the opportunity. Perhaps, when I get well again, and the fine weather comes in, I may make a trip to it. (Journ. 18 Feb.). The offer was repeated at Eglinton’s supper 25 Mar.: ‘Sir James … invited me very kindly to come to Oxford, & promised to show me every thing to the best advantage. I shall certainly go & pass a week there’ (Journ.). At Eglinton’s dinner on 30 Mar. Sir James praised the regularity of Oxford life: ‘Sir James said that a man in the gay life of London could scarcely [enjoy a wholly pleasant day]; because a thousand accidents may cross & dissapoint him. But that he had past such days at Oxford; because his time was regularly laid out. Exactly at such hours he did such & such things the doing of which in what manner was his pleasure, & could scarcely be interrupted as he moved like Clockwork’ (Journ.). JB’s plans for the visit solidified, presumably as a result of receiving this letter. On 16 Apr. he wrote: ‘pray don’t leave London. Restrain or you’ll lose economy’. However,

on 17 Apr. his Mem. read ‘be at ease to go to Oxford’, and his Mem. 18 Apr. noted ‘Oxford soon’; Mem. for 19, 20, 21 Apr. also planned the trip, e.g., 21 Apr.: ‘compose Mind for Ox’. On 22 Apr. he wrote in his Mem., ‘This is the day before you go to Oxford, so employ it well’. 3 JB’s deepening friendship with Sir James dated from a 26 Nov. dinner at Eglinton’s.: ‘Sir James Macdonald [is] a remarkable young man of good parts & great Application. So that he knows a great deal.’ JB’s entry for the dull day of 29 Nov. recorded a conversation with Sir James from ‘some former days’, probably 26 Nov., in which ‘Sir James Macdonald … descanted much on … Hannibal’, and ‘said that the proper knowledge of mankind was to be gained from History’. JB tempered his early admiration for Sir James with a critique of his donnishness and ambition. ‘Sir James Macdonald has natural quickness, and has led a life of hard study these many years so that he has got an excellent foundation. How he will build upon it is hard to say.’ He may have been encouraged in this critical opinion by TS, whose view of Sir James in a conversation of ?28 Nov. is reported in Journ. 29 Nov. ‘Mr. Sheridan said if [Sir James] is not able to throw out his knowledge with spirit it will not avail him much. For a Bookcase contains more learning than he. Sir James is too

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much of the fellow of a College to be easy & agreable in Company, as he allways introduces some learned subject. He has also the appearance of too much haughtiness, which is disgusting’ (Journ.). It is unclear from the text whether the final sentences reflected JB’s opinion, or TS’s, or both. JB himself wrote: ‘Sir James Macdonald a young man who had made a great figure at Eaton School & the University of Oxford & is studying hard to fit himself for parliament, being full of notions of the consequence of real life and making a figure in the world and all that …. Ah! thought I, little do you know of how small duration the pleasure is of making one of these great figures, that now swell before your ambitious Imagination’ (Journ. 11 Dec.). JB again saw Sir James at Eglinton’s breakfast 7 Dec.: ‘This morning I could observe Sir James Macdonald waiting till I should make up to him, which I did not do, but sat down by myself. He came & sat down beside me & we chatted very well. I said I should wish to pass an hour or two with him. He said he would come & see me. This inverview was very pleasing to me.’ On 13 Dec. JB and Sir James met again at JB’s lodgings, with TS also there: ‘Sir James Macdonald then came in to wait upon me for the first time’, and Sir James defended the idea that the drama of ‘Kings & Heroes’ should be written in verse rather than prose. JB had next seen Sir James at Eglinton’s on 5 Jan. when they had been among the ‘choice spirits’ and ‘Lord Eglintoune and Sir James disputed about Vanity. Sir James said it allways made a man dissagreable …. Sir James mentioned a dissagreable Pride of Understanding, which I thought very applicable to himself’. When the discussion turned to poetry, ‘Sir James said it was just Personification, animating every object, & every feeling and that measure was not necessary’. On that same evening, ‘Sir James read [JB’s ‘Ode to Ambition’] aloud’, and ‘said the Author of this does not want either Poetical Imagination or Ambition’ (Journ.). Although the two had been on more amicable terms since 7 Dec., it was from 9 Mar. that their friendship expanded. By the time of their encounter on 9 Mar. at Eglinton’s dinner, JB had warmed to Sir James: ‘Sir James Macdonald and some more company were with us …. Sir James & I walked to Covent-Garden together. I had a long conversation with him, in which I discovered that his seeming Pride was not real haughtiness. We talked in such a way, that we parted with a good opinion of each

other, & a desire to be more together’ (Journ.). On 10 Mar., ‘Sir James Macdonald and I walked a long time in the Green Park. I found him very good company. We now begin to understand one another, and he likes me.’ On 12 Mar., he appears to have met Sir James again at Eglinton’s (Journ.), and may have planned a meeting on 17 Mar. (Mem.). On 20 Mar., ‘I then called on Sir James Macdonald, with whom I stayed an hour & was very easy’ (Journ.). 4 Perhaps a reference to JB’s Guards scheme which kept him in London soliciting patronage. The Mem. for 10 Mar. suggest that a ‘Sir James’ knew of JB’s scheme: ‘At 12 meet Sir James and be well wt. him, and consult him in your commission affair’; likewise Mem. 28 Mar.: ‘At 12 Eglint’s & Sir James’s & settle Commiss.’ On 29 Mar., JB had complained, ‘I disliked the idea of being a Soldier. I thought of refusing a Commission’ (Journ.). On 4 Apr., JB ‘went to Gould’s, where I explained my scheme of accepting an ensigncy in a marching Regiment. He pushed me to get it changed to a Cornetcy, from which I might easily step into the Guards’ (Journ.). 5 Showing someone the lions was a generic turn of phrase for showing visitors the most typical (if often also the most overrated) sites which tourists were expected to visit (OED). The generations of famous lions of the ‘Lion Tower’ and other inmates of the Tower of London menagerie remained (in a declining condition) until their removal to the Zoo in 1834; there were ten lions c. 1780 (An Historical Description of the Tower of London, 1760, pp. 13–28; David Henry, Historical Description of the Tower of London, 1778, pp. 12–27). Hosts often used the phrase as a metaphor for dull duty: ‘I had much rather be excused from such a commission, as showing the tombs and the lions, and the King and Queen, and my Lord Bute and the waxworks, to a boy’ (Walpole to Mann, 30 Apr. 1763, in Corres. Walpole, xxii. 135; see also ibid., ii. 244 n.; ix. 28 n.; xvii. 233; xxx. 176; xxxi. 114; xxxiii. 197). 6 Hugh Blair, for whom see To AE, 8 Dec. 1761 (MS), n. 7. Journ. 6 Apr.: ‘Doctor Blair … is now come to town …. Blair is a very amiable man. In my earliest years I admired him while he was Minister in the Cannongate. He is learned & ingenious & has a degree of simplicity about him, that is extremely engaging. He & I went this day to Sheridan’s & dined …. No sooner was the Doctor set down, then he gave him a cart-load of compliments on his Disserta-

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tion on the Poems of Ossian. Poor Blair sat quietly & took it all like a Scotch fornicator when rebuked on the stool of Repentance’. Sir James was certainly a social companion of Blair’s by May. On 9 May, Blair was at Eglinton’s dinner with ‘Sir James MacDonald’; on 14 May, GD and JB ‘called on Doctor Blair where was Sir James’ (Journ.). JB had spent a considerable amount of time with Blair in early Apr. He planned a social evening with Blair on 7 Apr.: ‘at night Dempst & engage him to go wt. Blair’ (Mem.). On 9 Apr., Blair visited JB and ‘sat awhile’ with him; they later went to dine at St. Clement’s Chophouse before the theatre: ‘We were in good frame & talked agreably serious’. That night, JB and Blair attended a performance of Arne’s Artaxerxes, although JB left the crowded theatre until the afterpiece, meeting Blair afterwards at the Piazza Coffeehouse for negus (Journ.; Mem. 9 Apr.). JB planned social evenings with Blair, e.g., 15 Apr.: ‘Dress careless then run to Blair; & settle Dining place’ (Mem.). JB’s evenings with Blair involved heavy drinking and a consequent reduction in his journalizing. Dining with Blair was apparently strenuous enough to make him jot a cautionary Mem. for 16 Apr.: ‘Resolve no more plays or Dr. Blair’s dinners & be very moderate & try to compose mind & lay aside dissipation’. On 29 Apr., JB took a more improving visit with Blair, to the British Museum (Mem. 28 Apr., Journ. for 6 May reporting events of 29 Apr.). On 14 May, JB saw ‘Doctor Blair’ again (Journ.). On 15 May JB heard Blair preach at Fordyce’s Meeting in Monkwell Street: ‘heard Doctor Blair preach. I thought this would have done me good. But I found the

reverse. Blair’s new-kirk delivery … made me very gloomy’ (Journ.). 7 Presumably a reference to the meeting between JB and Sir James of 20 Mar., or perhaps 28 Mar. (Journ. 20 Mar., Mem. 28 Mar.). 8 When Sir James had first heard JB describe AE, Sir James had found the idea of AE repellent. ‘I was mentioning Erskine’s character to Sir James Macdonald …. When he heard Erskine’s sentiments [of indifference] which by the by are much my own and which I mentioned just to see what he would say—He was perfectly stunned. Why said he—he must not be a man. He is unfit to live in human society. He is not of the Species’. JB recorded of himself: ‘I am determined to have a degree of Erskine’s indifference, to make me easy when things go cross; and a degree of Macdonald’s eagerness for real life, to make me relish things when they go well’ (Journ. 11 Dec. 1762). AE seems to have met Sir James in person on 5 Jan., when they had discussed whether poetry was mere personification (Journ.). As AE became more of a fixture at Eglinton’s events, with or without JB, AE and Sir James were able to converse, as on 30 Mar.: ‘Erskine & I dined with Lord Eglintoune …. My Lord and the Captain are growing better acquainted …. We talked on human happiness … [with] Sir James’ (Journ.). 9 JB visited Oxford alone from 23 to 26 Apr. (Journ.). He found that Macdonald’s friends ‘were all Students; and talked of learning too much; and in short were just young old men without vivacity’ (Journ. 23 Apr.). In general, he found the clerical and donnish atmosphere of Oxford depressing.

To the Public Advertiser, after 15 and before 18 April 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in Journ. 24 May: ‘I had in return for their civility, sent a little Essay, begging to know who had spoken so favourably of us’, namely in ‘the Criticism on Erskine and Boswell’s Letters in The Public Advertiser’. JB’s ‘little Essay’ was an attempt to discover the author of the favourable criticism of E–B published in Pub. Adv. The date of composition can be determined from Mem. 18 Apr.: ‘Put lett to Pubic [sic], in Penny Post’. JB and AE’s letters, revised for publication as E–B had been published 12 Apr. in an edition printed by Chandler and published by Flexney. ‘This was the greatest day that Erskine & I ever saw; the day of the Publication of our Letters …. We were entertained with the printing of it. We kept our secret to a miracle. Not a single soul knew a word of it, till it appeared in the News-papers’ (Journ. 12 Apr.). JB was initially (and with good reason) anxious about the social effect of the book’s publication on his reputation. ‘I went to Lady Northumberland’s Rout. I was easier this night then I have been at any. I called up all my fortitude of mind to stand the jokes on my letters’. The review appeared in the Pub. Adv. issues for 15 Apr. and 28 Apr. It began: ‘This is a Collection of Letters that passed between two Gentlemen of Scotland, intimate Friends.

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They are written quite in the Gayete de Cœur, are for the most part very sprightly, and abound with that sort of extravagant Fancy which is very pleasing.’ The review then printed an excerpt from From AE, 1 May 1762, beginning, ‘Believe me, I have sometimes taken you at a distance for a pillar of smoke’, and the letter From AE, 25 May 1762, in its entirety. The Pub. Adv. of 28 Apr. continued the review with: ‘We shall insert one more Letter from this agreeable little volume, and take our leave of it.’ The letter reprinted was To AE, 19 June 1762. JB’s request for information bore fruit. The anonymous reviewer identified himself on 23 May as Bonnell Thornton (From Thornton, c. 23 May; Journ. 24 May). The issues of the Pub. Adv. in which this criticism appeared are among the Boswell papers at Yale (Talbot Inventory, no. 6).

From William McQuhae, between 17 and 23 April 1763 Not reported. Contents can be reconstructed from From McQuhae, 26 Apr. McQuhae mentioned that ‘Last week I broke off in the middle of an intended long Letter to inform you of a piece of news which was just then communicated to me by an Express from Ayr.’ Given that Tue. 26 Apr. was in the week of 24–30 Apr., the ‘intended long Letter’ would have been written in the week of 17–23 Apr. As the news of the breaking off in mid-letter occurs at the beginning of From McQuhae, 26 Apr., it must refer to a separate letter. The ‘piece of news’ which McQuhae received by ‘Express from Ayr’ is not known.

From the Countess of Northumberland, Friday 22 April 17631 MS. Yale (C 2104). The signed and sealed original survives, unlike most of the letters copied into the journal for this period. Transcribed by JB into Journ. 22 Apr. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 518–19). ADDRESS: To James Boswell Esqr.

Friday April 22 SIR: It is with very great pleasure I hear you are likely so soon to get a Commission in the Army.2 I hope it is in the Guards3 as I know that will be the most agreable to you. My Lord is as well as myself extreamly thankfull to you for your polite Offer4 of accompanying us into5 Ireland. Our Establishment there was compleated6 for some Time7 before the Kings8 Destination of my9 Lord to the Lieutenancy of that Kingdom10 was made public,11 nor indeed is there any Post in the Household fit for the Acceptance of a Man in your Situation12 in Life,13 but should any thing happen in our power14 we should be very happy to shew our Inclination15 to serve you,16 which I assure you we much wish to do. I am with17 great truth, Sir, Your most Obedient, Humble Servant,18 ELIZABETH NORTHUMBERLAND 1 Date present in original, confirmed by Journ. 22 Apr.: ‘This day I had her answer as follows … This Letter I by no means liked. I showed it to Lord Eglintoune who said it was very polite; but just “three blue beans in a blue bladder.” However, he said he would try if she would do any thing.’ 2 Journ. transcription added a full stop here, retained editorially, though it is absent in the original letter.

3 Journ. transcription added a comma here. 4 Journ. ‘offer’ 5 Original letter contains blotted out ‘t’, presumably for ‘to’. 6 Northumberland did indeed appoint aides-de-camp, the post which JB coveted. One was Lt. John Francis Erskine, later (1824) 7th (or 24th) Earl of Mar, who was born in 1741 and therefore roughly JB’s age.

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Erskine had served as a cornet in the 9th Dragoons 1757–59, and had been a lt. in the 1st Regt. of Horse since 31 Dec. 1759. He would serve as aide-de-camp to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1763–65, and would be promoted to capt. 15 June 1764. His military experience in two ‘old’ regiments then stationed in Ireland, along with his longer and more conventional military career, would have made him a more likely choice as an aide-de-camp than JB. He was also better-connected than JB. Through Horace Walpole’s patronage, Erskine continued on as aide-de-camp under Hertford (Northumberland’s successor) from 1765 to 1766 (Walpole to Holland, 21 July 1765, in Corres. Walpole, xxx. 198; cf. ibid., xxx. 41 n. 3; Army List, 1758, 1763, 1769; Comp. Peer. viii. 429–30; Scots Peer. v. 633–34). JB had during his confinement been paid a visit by ‘Captain [John Francis] Erskine eldest son to Lady Frances’, with whom he had previously dined on 29 Nov. 1762 (Journ. 29 Nov. 1762, 2 Feb. 1763). 7 Journ. ‘time’ 8 Journ. ‘King’s’ 9 Journ. ‘My’ 10 Journ. added a comma here. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was the king’s Viceroy in name if not in fact, and was ‘almost as a matter of course, a prominent nobleman’. He was entitled to aides-de-camp in his capacity as a titular head of the Army in Ireland, since ‘the lord lieutenant was distinctly a military as well as a civil governor’. JB might have expected that the posting would not be a total banishment from London, since ‘[u]ntil 1767 [the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland] spent two-thirds of his time in England, leaving the day-to-day administration of Ireland during his absence in the hands of the lords justices’ (Francis Godwin James, Ireland in the Empire, 1688–1770, 1973, pp. 140–41, 166–68, 174–79, 280–82). The Lord Lieutenant’s lot was not a happy one: he was, if not careful, often caught in the middle of conflicts between the Irish Protestant Ascendancy in the Irish Parliament and the dictates of Westminster. As R. F. Foster has noted, ‘[t]he Viceroy found himself in an odd position: possessing many Crown powers but occupying a highly political appointment, and subject

to being overridden …. Early in the century the appointment was seen as a banishment; later it still carried the aura of a consolation prize. But it rapidly became a preserve of heavyweight grandee politicians’. Worst of all, the post, despite its salary, was financially ruinous, and ‘occupants had to be rich: by 1782 they were… still failing to break even’ (R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972, 1988, p. 227). 11 Journ. altered the comma to a semicolon. The official public announcement or ‘gazetting’ of the Earl of Northumberland’s appointment as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland on 20 Apr. appeared in the London Gazette for 19 Apr.–23 Apr., p. 1. 12 Journ: ‘acceptance of a man in your situation’ 13 Journ. altered the comma to a semicolon. Lady Northumberland meant that any posts not beneath the dignity of a son of a Scots laird and judge had already been filled. The Viceroy’s court was large: ‘The viceregal establishment required a steward, a comptroller, a chamberlain, aides-decamp and all the trimmings of a little court: it was a curious mixture of grandeur and gimcrack’ although it ‘remained the centre of the “fashionable” world’ (R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland, 1600–1972, 1988, p. 227). Some of the Lord Lieutenant’s ‘Servts.’ were mentioned by name in the countess’s diary of the voyage to Ireland, as having become seasick in the crossing from Holyhead to Ringsend 21–22 Sept. The family left London c. 15 Sept., and the Lord Lieutenant’s procession to the Irish House of Lords occurred 11 Oct. (Diar. Duch., pp. 55–62). The rare ‘Northumberland Shilling’ of 1763 was distributed by Northumberland as souvenirs on his installation in Dublin as Viceroy of Ireland. About £150 worth were minted, representing only 3000 coins, a very small mintage. 14 Journ. added a comma here. 15 Journ. ‘inclination’ 16 Journ. altered the comma to a colon. 17 Journ. ‘With’ 18 Commas after ‘Obedient’ and Servant’ are editorial, and do not appear in either version.

To Richard Shepherd,1 Monday 25 April 17632 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 25 Apr. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. pp. 527 and verso, numbered ‘526’ in error by JB), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. L 1155).

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JB wrote this letter in the midst of a depression during his 23–26 Apr. jaunt to Oxford. On 25 Apr., JB wrote: ‘In the midst … of my dullness, I recollected a Mr. Shepherd of Corpus Christi College author of Odes Descriptive and Allegorical3 and of The Nuptials: A Didactic Poem.4 … I could find nobody who was acquainted with him; which I thought a good sign of him … I took a vast desire to be acquainted with him: and I said I would just call upon him, & pay my respects as an admirer of his Genius. They thought this a most extraordinary proposal … At six … had an hour or two by myself. I went & knocked at Mr. Shepherd’s rooms, but he was not at home. My curiosity to see him, was so great, that I wrote him the following Card’ (Journ. 25 Apr.).

[Oxford] A Gentleman from London who has received much pleasure from Mr. Shepherd’s Odes,5 is now in Oxford, and is to leave it early tomorrow morning.6 He is to sup with Mr. Foote7 of Christ-church,8 so cannot be his own master till eleven o clock. If after that time Mr. Shepherd will honour him with his Company, at the Blue Boar,9 it will be very obliging. He hopes Mr. Shepherd will excuse this freedom from a Stranger. 1 Richard Shepherd (?1732–1809), M.A. (1757) poet and theologian, matriculated Corpus Christi, Oxford, 1749; elected Probationary Fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1760. Shepherd took religious orders in the Church of England after originally hoping to join the Army. He received his B.D. in 1765 and his D.D. in 1788, the year he became Bampton Lecturer at Oxford and delivered lectures entitled The ground and credibility of the Christian religion …, 1788. He eventually became chaplain to Bishop Thurlow, and left Oxford via his patronage. Shepherd was in 1783 made archdeacon of Bedford, and in 1792 became rector of Wetherden and Helmingham in Suffolk. Most of his early works up to the mid-1770s were republished in Miscellanies: in two volumes. By the Rev. Richard Shepherd, 1775 (ESTC T153566) and 1776 (ESTC T75123). On 25 Apr. JB recorded Sir James Macdonald’s impression of Shepherd: ‘Sir James said he was a very good sort of man very retired, & that he had seen him walking by himself in deep meditation, with the distracted look of a Poet.’ JB described him as ‘a quiet modest diffident Man … [He] told me he was a fellow of a College, but it was but a poor pittance which that yielded him & besides that it kept him from active life, which was the sphere he loved most; in particular the Army. So strangely do people mistake themselves! Mr. Shepherd is exactly in the quiet serene life that is proper for him, & yet he has some fancifull ideas of the charms of a scarlet coat, & the respect which is shown to a military man, who has seen the world, as the phraze goes …. Poor Shepherd would

like to have been born to an Estate. He signify’d as much, & quoted Martial who reckons “Fortuna non parta labore” as one of the requisites of happiness’ (Journ. 25 Apr.). 2 Date supplied from Journ. 25 Apr.: ‘I went & knocked at Mr. Shepherd’s rooms, but he was not at home. My curiosity to see him, was so great, that I wrote him the following Card.’ 3 Anonymous (Richard Shepherd), Odes descriptive and allegorical, 1761 (ESTC T42028). 4 Anonymous (Richard Shepherd), The nuptials: a didactick poem. In three books, 1761. In the 1763 second edition, the poem was identified as ‘By Mr. Shepherd’ (ESTC T153641), and other editions appeared in 1764 (ESTC N40634). The publisher of JB’s E–B volume, Flexney, had published both editions of The Nuptials. The frequent visits of AE and JB to Flexney’s shop in early 1763 to forward the publication of E–B may help to explain JB’s awareness of the Nuptials as well as the Odes. 5 ‘I had read extracts from his Odes in the Scots Magazine, a summer or two ago, in fine weather, when I was in serene and pleasant spirits, and so had elegant ideas of them’ (Journ. 25 Apr.). The excerpts of Odes which JB read were published in Scots Mag. Feb. 1761, xxiii. 93. 6 ‘Early in the morning, I set out … We had a very good journey; I was a little affraid of highwaymen: but we met none. When I got to London, I could not view it in the usual light’ (Journ. 26 Apr.). 7 George Talbot Hatley Foote (c. 1744– 1821) of Chart, Kent, matriculated at St.

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Mary Hall on 18 Oct. 1762, aged 18. He became a barrister-at-law at Lincoln’s Inn in 1769 (Alum. Oxon. ii. 474). ‘Mr. Foote’ was one of the four ‘Students’ at a supper, of whom JB objected that they ‘talked of learning too much; & in short were just young old men without vivacity’ (Journ. 23 Apr.). Yet the journal implies that Foote’s supper two evenings later was pleasant enough, as it was a part of the events of 25 Apr. which JB summed up: ‘This night I past the only pleasant hours during my stay at Oxford’ (Journ. 25 Apr.). 8 JB was mistaken about Foote’s college, and in Journ. after his transcription corrected his error: ‘At supper we met at Mr. Foote’s of St. Mary-Hall (& not of Christchurch) … here we had great dinners, & great suppers, &

I just clogged my faculties. It is but justice to observe that the young Oxonians are very hospitable & civil to strangers. I experienced that very much’. (Journ. 25 Apr.). 9 JB reported: ‘At night I had a bed at the blue boar inn. I was unhappy to a very great degree’ (Journ. 23 Apr.). ‘The Blue Boar inn was built at the corner of Blue Boar Lane c. 1550, and although it survived only until the early 19th century it was in the front rank in Wood’s day, and the duke of Monmouth stayed there’ (The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Oxfordshire Volume IV, 1979, pp. 438, 475– 76). In 1798, it was kept by the broker/ auctioneer Richard Maldum (The Universal British Directory of Trade, Commerce, and Manufacture …, 1798, iv. 153).

From Richard Shepherd, Monday 25 April 17631 Original letter not located. Surviving text is from Journ. 25 Apr. (Yale MS. J 2.1, pp. 526– 27 [second series of these page numbers, re-used in error by JB]), which Catalogue provided with a Yale MS number as if it were a free-standing letter (Yale MS. C 2483).

[Oxford] Mr. Shepherd’s Compts. to the Gentleman from whom he was favoured with a note, and wishes he might have had the pleasure of waiting on him, at his rooms, tomorrow: as that cannot be, he will do himself the pleasure of waiting on him, at the time appointed tonight.2 1 Date established from Journ.: ‘I got for Answer …. I was as much pleased with this, as most Courtiers would have been with a letter assuring them of a Place or Pension’ (Journ. 25 Apr.). 2 ‘At eleven [P.M.] I hastened to my Inn, & waited Mr. Shepherd’s arrival with impatience, and with a degree of concern as to my behaviour to him. When he came, I was freed from my apprehensions …. I fell into his way with great address, & we soon chat-

ted quite easily. I told him my name & where I came from; & he spoke with the utmost freedom.… He had so much simplicity that he offered to pay the Wine. No, no, Mr. Shepherd, said I, that would neither be descriptive nor Allegorical. He was much pleased. He promised to call on me when he came to town, & said he would wish to cultivate an acquaintance with me. I was realy pleased with this night’s adventure’ (Journ. 25 Apr.).

From William McQuhae, Tuesday 26 April 1763 MS. Yale (C 1883).

Barquharry, 26th April 1763 DEAR SIR, Last week I broke off in the middle of an intended long Letter1 to inform you of a piece of news2 which was just then communicated to me by an Express from Ayr.3 And now I sit down to try to say something or other about the various particulars contained in your Letter4 which lies before me. I congratulate you, not on being p——’d5 tho’ perhaps I might properly enough have done so as it was the Cause, but on your progress in the Study of History. Mr Hume6 is of all modern 404

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historians the most agreeable writer—to me at least. I don’t know whether you have ever read Tacitus7 that is the model on which he seems to have formed himself.8 The Character which Mr Hume gives Cromwell9 bears a strong resemblance to the Character of Tiberius10 as it is drawn by Tacitus—in their hypocrisy and particularily in a certain art of speaking indistinctly and confusedly in public on a Subject which they did not choose to represent in a clear light. But I have forgot that you have not yet read the history of the Stuarts.11 In the reign of Henry 7th12 was laid the foundation of the influence of the Commons in England by his allowing the Barons to sell their Estates which were formerly unalienable. This is an important Circumstance in the history of England—it is mentioned among the Laws I believe of Henry the 7th13 but is not illustrated at so great Length as on account of it’s Consequences it ought to have been. Do not accuse me of arrogance in this Observation till you are convinced of its being groundless. The history of the Stuarts14 was more offensive to the Christians in general and particularily to the Presbyterians of Scotland15 than the Volumes which you have read. They were offended much more than there was cause—tho’ there was some Cause. What has the moderate Presbyterians16 of 1760 to do with the enthusiastic Puritans of 1648[?]17 And yet it was not fair in Mr. Hume to deny them the praise of being sincere even in their fanaticism.18 I don’t know if he gives the true Cause of that Spirit of Toleration which is now so universal in Europe and which was then so unknown to all parties. Catholics & Protestants persecuted in their turns almost with equal fury.19 How has it happened that among the Latter that dreadful Spirit is entirely banished, and I hope very much so among the former[?] By the By our Seceders20 have a good deal of it Still. Principles are long rejected by men of Sense before they are worn out of the minds of the Vulgar.— I have not in my head any just or clear account of this happy revolution in the Sentiments of Mankind. Mr. Hume, if I remember right, lays a great deal of Stress on the revival of Letters in the fifteenth21 and sixteenth Centuries. By reading the Greek and Latin Classics Men imbib’d their Spirit, he says.22 There seems to be a great deal in this but is the Cause adequate to the Effect[?] Must we not take in along with this the bold furious Attacks of the first Reformers against the Romish Superstition, (as he calls it)[?]23 Had these never been made would the other Cause singly been sufficient to bring about so great a change[?] I doubt not.— What do you think?— Your kind Behaviour to Sandy McDonald24 gave me infinite Satisfaction. Whether is it a Compliment to your goodness or to my own penetration to say that I expected it.— I had a Letter from him since,25 he speaks of you most feelingly. You who are moderate in all your principles26 would be greatly loved by an honest lively highlander27—you would enter into his views and notions in a manner quite agreeable to him—indeed he seems to think that you are altogether such a one as he is, tho’ the Son of the greatest Whig in Britain28—Let that be as you please. I have in my small experience found as much Civility and true friendship among Tories as any other kind of people, tho’ I would not be fond of seeing much Disturbance in the Country either for the sake of their political notions or my own.— Your Brother Mr. David29 and I have exchanged two or three Letters.30 Our Correspondence I hope will be kept up regularily. He writes very well,31 seems in earnest to acquire a fortune,32 the only sufficient Counterpoise to the love of Pleasures and Ease. My hopes of him are the same with yours that he will turn out 405

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an active Man of Business and make a handsome fortune.33 It is in truth a great Advantage to him to be so early sent into the World34 —he would soon have contracted such habits of idleness as would not have been easily conquer’d. And then the Army would have been his sole object.35— How much better is his present Situation—But I must beg your Pardon for this assertion—it is a part of your Scheme to be a Soldier. And since it is so I ought to wish you Success. However you beseech you intreat me to Speak my Mind freely—how very obliging you are. Thus called upon, would it not be inexcusable to say what I do not think. The truth is, I cannot help being extremely apprehensive of the consequences of such a Scheme. A Subaltern officer in a marching Regimt. as for sometime at least you must lay your account to be; appears to me a very unhappy Being, tossed about from one Country town36 to another obliged to live and converse with whatever Company chance throws in his Way without having it in his power to make a proper Choice.37 The first acquaintances one picks up amongst Strangers are Seldom the best. They are indeed commonly people of agreeable and easy manners. Such Qualities are engaging at first Sight but they are very often accompanied with much Ignorance and great Debauchery.38 The one of these you must despise, the other I know you detest. People of good Sense and worthy Dispositions are more cautious and reserved—it requires time to gain their friendship and intimacy. May I venture to say that the goodness of your own heart would be apt to lay you open to plausible but designing and Selfish Men: do not Imagine that I could ever intend by this bold insinuation to lessen in your own view your very uncommon penetration. On the contrary if a Man does not think well of himself, he will seldom act nobly. When walking in the Piazza’s of Holy-rood house your worthy friend Mr Erskine offer’d to you a like observation— and You were generous enough to own it had some foundation.39— May I expect the same forgiveness. But, My dear Sir, this is not at all the chief cause of my being apprehensive about the Consequences of your going into the Army: Lord Auchinleck would be highly provoked by it. He is very earnest to have all his Schemes for improving and ornamenting his Estate carried fully into Execution.40 To find his heir altogether inattentive to matters of that kind gives him great uneasiness, and he well knows that the Army41 or even living at London42 is not the way to acquire a different taste. It would be perhaps too severe to your own Sensibility of temper and filial Affection to hear the manner in which he talks upon that Subject. For my part, I never heard any thing of it, but many others have and all the world speak of it. It is not, I am perswaded[,] in your power to accommodate yourself entirely to his taste nor will reasonable people expect that you should. Absence is at present of great use, but if long continued may have a bad Effect. It may disoblige him so far as to put in execution the threatenings which you well know he has often made.39 But this prospect is so dismal that no one who has the least acquaintance with you can bear to think of it. For my part, it woud grieve me to the heart to see it happen, and yet very moderate and prudent people Seem to be of opinion that it is not improbable. He has been frequently this winter liable to lowness of Spirits, (my authority is Lady Auchinleck’s information44 to Mrs. Reid.) It occurs to me that this disorder may increase in time, and you know what an Influence it has on the affections and passions of the heart. The kind regard with which you have favoured me makes me very often meditate upon your 406

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Situation, the Consequence of which always is a sincere wish that you could live on proper terms with Lord Auchinleck. Your opinion is certainly just that as you are so different from one another, you should not be always together. But will you not likeways allow that there is a danger of provoking him by living long in a place and in a manner which he Abhors[?] You accuse yourself of wanting Steadiness45 which is no doubt a defect. But is it a method to cure that defect to humour46 a taste for an endless variety of Amusement[?] This gives pleasure in the mean time but who can act rationally without looking forward—for by displeasing Lord Auchinleck would you not deprive yourself of having it in your power to persist in that Scheme. Perhaps you will argue that this Danger is altogether chimerical—My Lord will not think of carrying matters so far. From the bottom of my Soul I wish it were so—but my attachment to you founded on real gratitude hinders me from being able to endure the thought of your running the least risk. The Same good sense and taste, which makes a man relish a piece of fine Composition in Poetry or musick, would if so directed—make him relish a beautiful Disposition of fields and plantations. And in such employmt. there is very great variety. Agriculture and Gardening are noble arts, they ought not to be neglected in any Gentleman’s education. Even a moderate degree of Skill and taste in them forms a Strong Counterpoise to the love of Company and Crouds. The force of Habit here as in every other case is very great—but by strengthening opposite Habits you scarce leave yourself a Chance of being ever tolerably easy in the Country. I believe you have never read any well wrote Books upon such Subjects. Would it not be a variety to look into one or two of them[?] By the month of August,47 I would gladly48 hope you will be able to endure forty days or so of the Country. Mr Dun’s49 preaching50 and Bread and cheese betwixt Sermons51 will be a very great variety. Every mortal will rejoice to see you. London will be more agreeable after a short Absence. The most passionate Lovers will leave their Mistress now and then. She has twenty charms for one when they see her again. This is by far too long a Letter for me to write—you will perhaps tell me that the matter requires more an Apology than the Length—but your last is my excuse, you desired me to write freely and how could I refuse it. Mr Murray52 very readily on the first application promised to present me to St Quivox.53 Sir Thomas Wallace54 was prevaild upon by some friends of mine among the Clergy about Ayr55 to write in my favours. As he is the chief if not the only residing Heretor his interposition was very agreeable to me. Your friendship I never doubted. For your assistance in the present case, I return you many thanks from a really grateful heart—I am, Dear Sir, your very much obliged Servant, WILLIAM MCQUHAE P.S. I have delay’d sending the second part of your Journal56 till I hear if the first Packet came safe to hand without being charged.57 1 Not reported. See From McQuhae, between 17 and 23 Apr. 2 The piece of news is unknown. One hypothesis is that it involved the news of the reception in Scotland of E–B, which

had been published 12 Apr. From JJ, 28 Apr. noted that JJ, who had been in Edinburgh until 19 Apr., ‘came to the knowledge of [your] publishing your Letters [in E–B] from Some Body who had Seen the

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publication advertised in one of the London papers.… I am affraid of My Lords [Auchinleck’s] displeasure, which you seem to dread’ (Corr. 1, pp. 70–71, 72–74). Lord Auchinleck first found out about the publication while on circuit in Jedburgh through ‘the news’ printed in ‘that Article’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). Another possibility is that it involved the earlier discovery by the Rev. George Reid of JB’s journals: ‘Mr Reid came here informed us he had seen them & having a good memory repeated many things from them’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). However, From McQuhae 30 June treats that event as if it were news. Lord Auchinleck was home between his return to Auchinleck on or before 11 Apr. (‘You’l know that all the Auchenleck Family are now in the Country’ [From Dr. John Boswell, 11 Apr., Yale MS. C383]) and his departure on the Jedburgh-Dumfries-Ayr Circuit. Beyond those two events, most of the spring was spent in a battle of wills between JB and his father, and a letter from JB’s mother 7 Mar. had noted ominously, ‘I Supos you have no Expectations new of a Comision in the Gaurds … you are folowing no other Busness … no Body woud thinck it reasonable … after your year is out to Continou your Alouance to live idely at London … your poor Father is stil in great distress about you … I hope you will Come to See that it is both your duty and intrest to Setel hear befor the End of this year’ (From Euphemia Boswell, 7 Mar., Yale MS. C 332). A not reported letter From Lord Auchinleck (Feb.) which JB received 8 Mar. had been ‘severe’ on JB, and condemned his ‘scheme of keeping a Journal and sending it down’. JB had written a defiant reply which Lord Auchinleck described as follows: ‘The Answer you wrote me was telling me in pretty plain language you contemnd what I could say or do’ (To JJ, 8 Mar., Corr. 1, p. 55 and n. 2; From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). 3 The ‘Express’ from someone in Ayr to McQuhae has not been reported. 4 See To McQuhae, after 2 and before 26 Apr. (not reported). 5 That is, ‘pox’d’. JB had not told everyone about his gonorrhoea. For pragmatic reasons, medical professionals such as Douglass and Pringle had to be told, as did his landlord (Journ. 20, 21 Apr.). Socially, associates such as AE, GD, and Eglinton were let in on the secret (Journ. 19, 21

Apr.), while the Countess of Northumberland and Sir James Macdonald, among many others, seem to have been unaware of JB’s bout, or at least pretended to be. Some of those living in London, such as William Cochrane, seem to have found out about JB’s ‘Claps’ through third parties rather than from JB himself. Of his Scots correspondents, relatively few seem to have known about his infection. JJ knew via To JJ, 25 Jan., even before he received the relevant Journ. (Corr. 1, pp. 40–41, 56), and WD certainly knew (From WD, 18 Feb.). Of JB’s family, Dr. John Boswell may have been in on the secret. His 11 Apr. letter to JB (Yale MS. C 383) wrote of JB as ‘my dear Friend & Nephew who I hope is now well & cur’d of all kindes of Complaints—& that you injoy perfect health’. And JB’s brother John, who visited JB during his convalescence on 22 Jan., would likely have known (Journ.). Yet JB appears to have concealed the news from his parents. 6 JB had decided on the first day of his confinement to employ the time in reading David Hume’s History: ‘I have often lamented my ignorance of English History. Now I may make up that want. I may read all Hume’s six Volumes’ (Journ. 22 Jan.). Later Mem. cited below show that he borrowed all six volumes from GD. A week later he reported that ‘I have now one great satisfaction which is reading Hume’s History. It entertains & instructs me. It elevates my mind, and excites noble feelings of every kind’ (Journ. 29 Jan.). He made a similar comment praising the exercise on 20 Feb.: ‘I employed the day in reading Hume’s History which enlarged my views, filled me with great ideas and rendered me happy. It is surprising how I have formerly neglected the study of History which of all studys is surely the most amusing and the most instructive. As I am now begun to it in earnest, I hope to make good Progress. I write my Father regularly my observations on each Volume which is of great service to me and gives much satisfaction to him’ (Journ. 20 Feb.). The confinement in particular provided JB with time for an ambitious scheme of autodidacticism, in which Hume was only one component: JB’s letter to Eglinton 7 Feb. had noted, ‘David Hume and John Dryden are at present my companions’; he was also continuing a scheme of reading the Bible. His Mem. were full of reminders (28 Jan.: ‘Finish Hume [vol. 1?]’; 30 Jan.; 31 Jan.: ‘Be busy wt. Hume finish 2 Vol’; 1 Feb.:

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‘Gon on with Hume’; 2 Feb.: ‘read Hume afternoon’; 3 Feb.: ‘Hume till 2’; 12 Feb.; 13 Feb: ‘Hume & Dryden & Bible’; 14 Feb.; 15 Feb.: ‘Be busy at Hume’; 16 Feb.; 20 Feb.: ‘Hume. & fin[ish] 3[rd vol.]’; 21 Feb.: ‘fin Hume’; 22 Feb.: ‘Go on wt. Hume, Dryden’; 23 Feb.: ‘go on wt. Hume. You’re doing well’; 24 Feb.: ‘Go on wt. Hume’; 25 Feb.: ‘Fin Vol Hume today’; 27 Feb.: ‘Hume’s … read busily his 5[th vol.]’; 1 Mar.; 2 Mar.: ‘Read Hume busy today’). The Mem. suggest that the quest for a copy of the sixth volume was something JB either delayed or had difficulty in (Mem. 5 Mar.: ‘get last vol [i.e., vol. 6] Hume’; 8 Mar.; 23 Mar.: ‘Get last [6th] vol of Hume’; 24 Mar.: ‘get other [6th] Vol of Hume’; 25 Mar.: ‘get Hume’; 26 Mar.: ‘get Hume’; 1 Apr.: ‘Get Hume & finish’; 3 Apr.: ‘get Hume’). Indeed, Mem. 2 June suggested that he had borrowed rather than bought the book. Mem. 6 July reveals that he had indeed borrowed all six volumes from GD: ‘send Hume to Dempst—except last Vol’. The Apr.–June Mem. linked JB’s struggle to complete the sixth and final volume with his struggle to fight dissipation and set about a methodical plan of life (Mem. 4 Apr.: ‘sit in all afternoon at … hume’; 5 Apr.: ‘if they dont come, … Hume all forenoon’; 6 Apr.; 8 Apr.; 13 Apr.; 27 Apr.; 29 Apr.: ‘fall to Hume & try to be as when confined’; 8 May: ‘Monday Hume till 12 & every day this week study all morn.’; 13 May: ‘begin Hume on Monday’; 18 May; 19 May: ‘fall to Hume & learn command of self’; 20 May: ‘now study to attain retenué & dignity & read Hume’; 24 May; 25 May: ‘bring up journ … Then you can read Hume afterwards’; 26 May: ‘on friday begin Hume’; 31 May; 2 June: ‘At night Kensington [GD’s house], if Ersk goes & ask leave to have Hume anoyr week and mention plan of quietness’; 10 June; 13 June: ‘read Hume … Let this be a week of tryal’; 14 June; 17 June; 21 June: ‘D Hume all the week & pray learn retenué’; 23 June; 24 June: ‘on Sat sit in at Hume. Now attain command of self & studious plan, and retenué’; 25 June; 28 June; 29 June: ‘fall to Hume & try again to get into consistent plan’). He once even resorted to the expedient of having another read the book to him: ‘made my Barber try to read me asleep with Hume’s History of which he made very sad work’ (Journ. 3 May). On 1 July he was still vowing to complete the sixth volume: ‘Finish Hume & settle all’ (Mem. 1 July). He consistently associated his lack of success in completing his reading programme with his lack of self-

discipline which he was attempting to mend: ‘finish Hume e’er you go; & let not dissipation prevent thought & schemes for your Journey’ (Mem. 3 July). He was still trying to read vol. 6 on 10 July (Mem. 6 July; 10 July). Some Mem. of Feb.–Mar. recorded his plans to write epitomes and criticisms of each volume, which by 20 Feb. he had decided were to be sent to his father (6 Feb.: ‘write account of Hume’; 9 Feb.: ‘Be literary … make abstract of 2 Vol Hume’; 19 Feb: ‘Copy out Hume’; 20 Feb.: ‘Write account of 2 Vol of Hume’; 27 Feb.: ‘Make out Acct. of Hume’s 3[rd vol.]. One Sheet will do’; 2 Mar.: ‘Make out account of 3 Vol of Hume as also 4th’; 6 Mar.: ‘if it be cold, stay in comfortable & write … acct. of 4 Vol of Hume’). The dates of completion for each epitome may be inferred from the point at which JB scheduled the ‘account’ of the next volume in the series: vol. 1 by 9 Feb., vol. 2 by 27 Feb., vol. 3 by 6 Mar. The scheme of the epitomes is not mentioned after the plan for one of vol. 4. 7 Cornelius Tacitus, c. 55–c. 117, Roman historian. Tacitus’s Histories and Annals, despite surviving only in part, offered an influential depiction of the reigns of Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, Galba, and Vespasian. His Agricola and De origine et situ Germanorum were also historical in nature. There were many Latin editions of Tacitus in the eighteenth century, the most common being adaptations of the editions by Theodore Ryck and Johan Gronovius, including two printed at Glasgow, one such by JB’s future printers the Foulises (C. Cornelii Taciti opera quae exstant ex recensione et cum animadversionibus Theodori Ryckii …, Dublin, 1730 [ESTC T96053]; C. Cornelii Taciti opera quae extant omnia. Ad editionem optimam Joh. Fre. Gronovii accurate expressa …, Glasgow, 1743 [ESTC T70289]); C. Cornelii Taciti opera quae supersunt. Ex editione Jacobi Gronovii fideliter expressa [Foulis/Glasgow], 1753 [ESTC T96046]; C. Cornelii Taciti opera quae extant omnia. Ad editionem optimam Theodori Ryckii adcurate [sic] expressa. Huic editioni accessit ejusdem Ryckii Sejanus …, 1754–60 [ESTC T107446]; C. Cornelii Taciti opera quae exstant omnia. Ad editionem optimam Theodori Ryckii accurate expressa. Huic editioni accessit ejusdem Ryckii Sejanus …, 1754 [ESTC T152387]; C. Cornelii Taciti opera quae exstant omnia. Ad editionem optimam Theodori Ryckii accurate expressa. Huic editioni accessit ejusdem Ryckii Sejanus …, 1760 [ESTC N43600]). The most popular translation into English from 1728 to 1770 was that of Thomas

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Gordon, The works of Tacitus …, 1728–31 (ESTC T96042). It supplanted The annals and history of Cornelius Tacitus; his account of the ancient Germans, and the life of Agricola. Made English by several hands. With political reflections from Monsieur Amelot de la Houssay; and notes of the learned Sir Henry Savile, Rickius, and others. In three volumes. The second edition, with additions and cuts, 1716 (ESTC T96041). ‘Gordon’s Tacitus’ went through a Dublin piracy from 1728 to 1732 (ESTC T96630), a corrected second edition, 1737 (ESTC T96631; ESTC N25926), a corrected third edition ‘With political discourses upon that author, by Thomas Gordon, Esq’ for various including A. Millar and R. Dodsley, 1753 (ESTC T96629); the ‘corrected’ fourth edition of 1770 (ESTC N25927) was by no means the last reissue. There was also a 1763 Glasgow reprint of Gordon’s Agricola: The life of Agricola. By Tacitus. With an account of the situation, climate, and people of Britain. Translated from the Latin, by Thomas Gordon, Esqr, Glasgow, 1763 (ESTC T169216). No evidence survives of JB’s having read any of Tacitus’s works until his rigorous programme of study of Tacitus at Utrecht in the autumn of 1763 (Mem. 8, 23, 24, 27 Sept.; 5, 7 Oct.; To WJT, 23 Sept.). The fact that his edition of ‘Taciti Opera—Amst. 1734’ in his c. 1770 ‘A Catalog of Books belonging to James Boswell Esq.’ was an Amsterdam one suggests that it was either inherited or purchased (National Library of Scotland MS. 3285, p. 10; Lincoln, 198, 262, 293). In a 1772 conversation with SJ, JB ‘ventured to say that I did not think him a good historian; that he had admirable sense, and elegant sentences, but was too compact; had not sufficient fulness’; SJ concurred (Journ. 15 Apr. 1772; cf. Life ii. 189). 8 In Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (sect. 10, pt. 2), he referred to Tacitus as ‘that fine historian’; in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (sect. 5, pt. 2), Hume wrote of ‘the masterly pencil of TACITUS, [which] may convince us of the cruel depravity of NERO or TIBERIUS …’; and in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (pt. 1, essay 6): ‘Of the Independency of Parliament’ he wrote of ‘such a genius as CICERO, or TACITUS’. Tacitus was largely taken at face value by Hume for his History of England, which in vol. 1 (app. 1: ‘The Anglo-Saxon Government’) praised ‘the masterly pencil of Tacitus’. Hume’s History made six references to Tacitus, all in vol. 1; his printed work contained twenty-nine references to

Tacitus, and he was familiar with D’Alembert’s Tacitus. Although McQuhae could not have known it, Hume had brought a Tacitus with him to London: (Hume to Hugh Blair, 19 Sept.) ‘I carried only four books along with me; a Virgil, a Horace, a Tasso, and a Tacitus’, and in 1775 Hume encountered Gabriel Brotier’s 1771 ed. of Tacitus (J. Y. T. Greig, The Letters of David Hume, 1932, i. 401 [letter 215, To Blair]; cf. ii . 110 [letter 363]; Raymond Klibansky and Ernest Mossner, New Letters of David Hume, 1954, p. 209 [letter 118]). 9 Oliver Cromwell figured in Hume’s History of Great Britain, vol. 1 (1754), Charles I section, chs. 2, 8 through to vol. 2 (1757), Commonwealth section, ch. 2 (1778 ed., vol. 5, chs. 51, 57 through to vol. 6, ch. 61). In vol. 1, ch. 2, p. 194, he was intoduced as ‘this fanatical hypocrite’ (1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 51, p. 214), and in vol. 1, ch. 8, p. 383 was described as having ‘habits of profound hypocrisy’ (1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 57, p. 444: ‘profound dissimulation’). Hume in vol. 2, ch. 2, p. 46 described Cromwell’s ‘elocution’ as ‘homely, tedious, obscure, and embarrassed’ (1778 ed., vol. 6, ch. 61, p. 95: ‘always confused, embarrassed, and unintelligible’). Hume offered a Tacitean character of Cromwell in History of Great Britain, vol. 2, Commonwealth section, ch. 2, pp. 88–91, which was designed to contradict the ‘extravagant panegyric’ of pro-Cromwellians, but also (or so Hume claimed) to contradict the ‘virulent invective’ of anti-Cromwellians (1778 ed., vol. 6, ch. 61, pp. 107–10). Hume admitted Cromwell’s ‘great courage, his signal military talents, his eminent dexterity and address’, and later described him as ‘[a]n eminent personage, however, he was in many respects, and even a superior genius … not defective in any talent, except that of elocution’. But he characterized Cromwell as being ‘at bottom as frantic an enthusiast as the worst of them … unequal and irregular in his operations’, and possessed of a ‘peculiar dexterity in discovering the characters, and practising on the weaknesses of mankind’. Hume’s conclusion was therefore a mixed verdict: ‘upon the whole, his character does not appear more extraordinary and unusual by the mixture of so much absurdity with so much penetration, than by his tempering such violent ambition and such enraged fanaticism with so much regard to justice and humanity’. 10 In his Annals, book 1, Tacitus stated his revisionist purpose: ‘The histories of Tiberius, Caius, Claudius, and Nero, while they were in power, were falsified through

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terror, and after their death were written under the irritation of a recent hatred. Hence my purpose is to relate … the reign of Tiberius, and all which follows, without either bitterness or partiality, from any motives to which I am far removed.’ Yet a few scant passages after presenting himself as impartial, Tacitus launched into his dissection of Tiberius’s character: ‘Tiberius Nero … had the old arrogance inbred in the Claudian family, and many symptoms of a cruel temper, though they were repressed, now and then broke out …. [H]is younger days [included] … years [in] which, on the pretext of seclusion he spent in exile at Rhodes, he had had no thoughts but of wrath, hypocrisy, and secret sensuality …. Augustus had not even adopted Tiberius as his successor out of affection or any regard to the State, but, having thoroughly seen his arrogant and savage temper, he had sought glory for himself by a contrast of extreme wickedness’. His account of Tiberius’s reign emphasized its perversion, its crimes and the descent of Rome into slavery. His summation of the character of Tiberius at the conclusion of book 6 (another discursive strategy adopted by Hume) may be taken as summing up his view of that emperor: ‘His character too had its distinct periods. It was a bright time in his life and reputation, while under Augustus he was a private citizen or held high offices; a time of reserve and crafty assumption of virtue … while his mother lived, he was a compound of good and evil; he was infamous for his cruelty, though he veiled his debaucheries …. Finally, he plunged into every wickedness and disgrace, when fear and shame being cast off, he simply indulged his own inclinations’ (Tacitus, Annals, books 1, 6, trans. by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb; Loeb ed., trans. John Jackson). 11 Hume’s own account in The Life of David Hume, Esq. written by himself (MS 1776, pub. 1777) stressed the critics’ having maligned his work for excessive partiality to the early Stuarts and the Royalists, Cavaliers, and Tories: ‘I commenced with the accession of the House of Stuart, an epoch when, I thought, the misrepresentations of faction began chiefly to take place.… I thought that I was the only historian, that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; Eng-

lish, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, churchman and sectary, freethinker and religionist, patriot and courtier, united in their rage against the man, who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I and the Earl of Strafford’. Yet Hume, like Tacitus, did have an agenda, the disproving of the Whig interpretation of history: ‘in above a hundred alterations, which farther study, reading, or reflection engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made all them invariably to the Tory side. It is ridiculous to consider the English constitution before that period as a regular plan of liberty’ (ibid.). 12 Hume’s history of the Tudors was also criticized by Whigs for obfuscating or ignoring the advances of ‘Liberty’ in the Tudor era. As Hume wrote, ‘In 1756, two years after the fall of the first volume, was published the second volume of my History, containing the period from the death of Charles I. till the Revolution. This performance happened to give less displeasure to the Whigs, and was better received …. In 1759, I published my History of the House of Tudor. The clamour against this performance was almost equal to that against the History of the two first Stuarts. The reign of Elizabeth was particularly obnoxious. But I was now callous against the impressions of public folly’ (The Life of David Hume, Esq. written by himself, 1777). 13 Hume’s account of Henry VII is chiefly in History of England, Under the House of Tudor, vol. 1 (1759), Henry VII section, chs. 1–3 (1778 ed., vol. 3, chs. 24–26). Hume freely admitted the importance and significance of the law ‘4[th] H[enry] 7[th]. cap. 24’ despite his laconic treatment of it: ‘the most important law in its consequences, which was enacted during the reign of Henry, was that by which the nobility and gentry acquired a power of breaking the ancient entails, and of alienating their estates. By means of this law … the great fortunes of the barons were gradually dissipated, and the property of the commons encreased in England. It is probable, that Henry foresaw and intended this consequence’ (vol. 1, p. 63; 1778 ed., vol. 3, ch. 26, p. 77). Here, McQuhae may have unwittingly hit a nerve, since one of JB’s worries in spring 1763 was whether Lord Auchinleck could alienate the entailed estate from JB. 14 MS. ‘was’ above deleted ‘were’ 15 The whiggish Monthly Rev. condemned the History, vol. 1 ‘containing the reigns of

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James I. and Charles I.’ (later renumbered vol. 5) as ‘singular’ in its notion that religion ‘of every denomination of Christians’ only existed in two forms, ‘superstition and fanaticism’. The reviewer singled out for one of his quotations Hume’s criticism of the Church of Scotland as ‘occasion[ing] the most enormous ravages in the breast’, ‘subvert[ing] every rational principle of conduct and behaviour’, and flying from ‘every intercourse of society, and from every sweet or chearful amusement’ (Monthly Rev. Mar. 1755, xii. 206–09). In Scotland, Daniel MacQueen wrote his Letters on Mr. Hume’s History of Great Britain, 1756, to criticize Hume’s interpretation of the religious history of Britain. In the Jan. 1756 Scots Mag. (xviii) list of new books, the brief notice of MacQueen’s Letters read: ‘In these letters, two passages relative to the reformation are particularly considered’. 16 The ‘Moderate’ Party of the Church of Scotland, although it was chiefly an elite movement, gained influence in the Kirk in the 1760s via the influence of divines such as Robertson (see Richard B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment, 1985). 17 On the whole, the Kirk was relatively sympathetically portrayed in the final chapter (Charles I section, ch. 10) of History of Great Britain, vol. 1 (1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 59), in which Hume was chiefly concerned with criticizing the radicalized English revolutionaries of 1645–49. Hume distinguished among ‘Three parties … in Scotland’, those being ‘Royalists … without any regard to religious sects or tenets[,] … Rigid presbyterians, who … abhorred toleration; and … Moderate presbyterians, who endeavoured to reconcile the interests of religion and of the crown’. Hume noted that ‘The Scots were faithful friends and zealous for presbytery and the covenant’ (vol. 1, ch. 10, pp. 433–48; 1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 59, pp. 502, 519). 18 Hume’s criticism of Scots Kirk fanaticism in History of Great Britain, vol. 1 began in the James I section, ch. 3 (1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 47): ‘by the prevalence of fanaticism, a gloomy and sullen disposition established itself among the [Scots] people; a spirit, obstinate and dangerous; independent and disorderly; animated equally with a contempt of authority, and a hatred to every other mode of religion, particularly to the catholic’ (vol. 1, ch. 3, p. 63; 1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 47, p. 68). The account of the Puritans of 1648 was chiefly in the Charles I section, ch. 10 (1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 59).

Hume’s chs. 9–10 dealt with the emergence from 1643 to 1648 of a rift between the Presbyterians and the Independents, and emphasized ‘the tyranny, exercised by the Scotch clergy’ via the Solemn League and Covenant and the Westminster Assembly (vol. 1, ch. 9, p. 415; 1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 58, p. 481). Hume generally interpreted the radicalization of the English Revolution of 1645– 49 as the work of fanatical hypocrites: ‘The sanctified hypocrites, who called their oppressions the spoiling of the Egyptians, and their unbounded severity the dominion of the Elect, interlarded all their iniquities with long and fervent prayers, saved themselves from blushing by their pious grimaces, and exercised, in the name of the Lord, all their cruelty on men …. Hypocrites exercising iniquity under the vizor of religion’ (vol. 1, ch. 10, pp. 432, 439; 1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 59, pp. 502, 520, with slight changes). 19 Hume’s History did deal with the rise of Toleration. One chapter dealing with the early 1640s argued that ‘Toleration had hitherto been so little the principle of any christian sect, that even the catholics, the remnant of the religion professed by their ancestors, could not obtain from the English the least indulgence’ (History of Great Britain, vol. 1, Charles I section, ch. 8, p. 395; 1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 57, p. 459, with slight changes). Hume’s account of the Protectorate noted that ‘The presbyterians had adopted the violent maxims of persecution; incompatible at all times with the peace of society’ (History of Great Britain, vol. 2, Commonwealth section, ch. 2, p. 53; 1778 ed., vol. 6, ch. 61, p. 65). However, Hume’s account of the Restoration did imply a basic similarity in Catholic and Protestant persecutions: ‘all persecution naturally, or rather necessarily, adopts the iniquities, as well as rigours, of the inquisition’ (vol. 2, Charles II section, ch. 4, p. 268; 1778 ed., vol. 6, ch. 66, p. 324). He also noted that ‘the protestant teachers, irritated by persecution, broke out in a furious attack on the ancient superstition, and that the Romanists replied with no less zeal and acrimony’ (History of England, Under the House of Tudor, vol. 2 [1759], ch. 1, p. 407; 1778 ed., vol. 4, ch. 38, p. 8). 20 In 1733, the Associate Presbytery (casually referred to as ‘Seceders’) had been founded by Ebenezer Erskine, and reified when in 1740 the Kirk’s General Assembly deposed the Associate Presbytery’s ministers and when in 1745 a synod of three Seceder presbyteries was founded. Issues of

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confessional purity led to secession within the secession. ‘The Breach’ in 1747 between the Burghers and the Anti-Burghers had led to the creation of two major Seceder branches: the strict Burgher Associate Synod and the even more strict AntiBurgher General Associate Synod. Certain Seceders used seventeenth-century Covenant principles to argue that Toleration in the post-1689 Revolution Kirk had weakened the godly power of the Kirk to impose righteousness on the general society through civil penalties for excommunication. ‘Seceder’ opinions were expressed in the pre-secession Testimony of 1734, and in the centennial renewal of the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643; ‘covenanting’ was made a precondition of communion among them. In 1761 the Presbytery of Relief had been founded as a form of presbyterian dissent from the Church of Scotland which would be more open and less harsh than the two branches of the Seceders. The ‘main growth’ of Secession churches in the 1760s and 1770s was in ‘Lowland rural parishes’. By the 1780s, parish clergy in the Lowlands reported a decline of Seceders’ ‘blind furious zeal’, ‘forbidding asperity’, and ‘moroseness and acrimony’ (Callum G. Brown, Religion and Society in Scotland Since 1707, 1997, pp. 22–25). John Mitchell (born in 1768), himself a Seceder, noted in c. 1842 the spirit of Seceder zeal in Ayrshire in 1780. Mitchell claimed: ‘Their Zeal was honest, but at the same time perhaps too hot occasionally in its manifestations & expressions …. Strictly orthodox … they could hardly bear a deviation from the accustomed expressions’ (Memories of Ayrshire, pp. 303–05). 21 MS. ‘fifteenth’ follows deleted ‘sixtee’ 22 Hume dealt with the revival of Greek and Latin in History of England, Under the House of Tudor, vol. 1, Henry VII section, ch. 3, p. 67, and Henry VIII section, ch. 7, p. 286; vol. 2, ch. 7, pp. 737–38 (1778 ed., vol. 3, ch. 33, p. 331; vol. 4, app. 3, p. 385). He claimed there were political effects of classical learning under James VI and I: ‘A familiar acquaintance with the precious remains of antiquity excited in every generous breast a passion for a limited constitution, and engendered an emulation of those manly virtues, which the Greek and Roman authors, by such animating examples, as well as pathetic expressions, recommend to us’ (History of Great Britain, vol. 2, James I section, ch. 1, p. 15; 1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 15, p. 18, with slight changes). Hume condemned the Cromwellian Church for ig-

noring the clergy’s ‘Greek and Roman erudition’ and focusing only on their evangelical zeal (History of Great Britain, vol. 2, Commonwealth section, ch. 2, p. 72; 1778 ed., vol. 6, ch. 61, p. 86). 23 Hume dealt with the conflict which pitted the ‘Romish superstition’ and ‘popery, or, more properly speaking, the papists’ against ‘the protestant sects … the evangelical faith’ in History of England, Under the House of Tudor, vol. 1, Edward VI section, ch. 2, pp. 332–33 et seq. (1778 ed., vol. 3, ch. 35 et seq.). See especially History of Great Britain, Charles I section, vol. 1, ch. 3, p. 201, and vol. 2, James II section, ch. 2, p. 423 (1778 ed., vol. 5, ch. 52, p. 223, and vol. 6, ch. 71, p. 507) for Hume’s uses of the phrase ‘Romish superstition’. ‘The numerous and burthensome superstitions, with which the Romish church was loaded, had thrown many of the reformers, by the spirit of opposition, into an enthusiastic strain of devotion …. Many circumstances concurred to inflame this daring spirit; … [including] the furious persecutions to which they were exposed’ (History of England, Under the House of Tudor, vol. 1, Edward VI section, ch. 1, III. xxxiv. 339). 24 McQuhae had sent a letter to Macdonald enclosed in a letter to JB (From McQuhae, c. mid-Feb.). 25 Not reported. See From MacDonald to McQuhae, after 24 Feb. and before ?21 Mar. 26 Typically in the Journ. 1761–63, JB’s references to his moderation are to his intention to avoid excessive consumption of food and alcohol, excessive spending of money, excessive emotional openness with friends, or excessively robust laughter and ridicule (e.g., Journ. 7 May 1761, 4 Nov., 1, 3, 6, 9, 11, 18, 20 Dec. 1762; 12, 25 Jan., 9, 17, Feb. 1763). In Journ. 13 Jan., JB boasted of ‘the knowledge and moderation & government of myself which I have now acquired’. The reminder to ‘be moderate’ is frequent in the Mem. (2 Dec. 1762: ‘keep the reins—Be chearfull yet moderate’; 11 Dec. 1762; 28 Jan., 3 Feb., 10 Mar., 16 Apr., 3 May 1763). Yet the species of moderation to which McQuhae here refers is political. JB was described by J. F. Erskine in 1778 as ‘a Tory with Whig Princip[le]s’. Throughout 1760–73, JB tried to reconcile his Patriot and libertyloving whiggish inclinations with his socially deferential Church-and-King aristocratic toryism. He simultaneously esteemed aspects of both Pitt and Bute, of both Out-ofDoors Oppositionism and Court Loyalism. Young JB also balanced his sensible pro-

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Georgianism—which acknowledged various political benefits of 1688 and 1714 and even loved George III—against his lifelong sentimental attachment to the lost cause of the Stuart dynasty and its tragic heroism (Pol. Car., pp. 14–55). Brady concluded: ‘romantic sentiment made him partial to the Stuarts, while prudence and interest attached him to the Hanoverians’ (Pol. Car., p. 27). In his meeting with Alexander Macdonald on 24 Feb. JB had been amazed that Macdonald’s Jacobitism was the plotting, forward-looking sort which still planned ‘great hopes of a Restoration’, although Macdonald’s basis for such a belief was chiefly ‘a dream which he had’ (Journ.). JB’s ‘Jacobitism’ was a tristesse for a lost cause, by contrast. JB recorded a notable conversation he had with the Erskines of Kellie in London: ‘We then fell upon Political topics, and all agreed in our love of the Royal family of Stuart and regret at their being driven from Britain. I maintained that their encroachments were not of so bad consequence as their being expelled the throne. In short the substance of our conversation was—That the family of Stuart altho’ unfortunate, did nothing worthy of being driven from the throne. That their little encroachments were but trifles in comparrison of what Oliver Cromwell did who overturned the whole constitution, and threw all into anarchy, and that in a future period, King William who came over the defender of our liberties, became a most domineering Monarch, and stretched his prerogative farther than any Stuart ever did. That by the Revolution we got a shabby family to reign over us, and that the German war, a consequence of having a German sovereign, was the most destructive thing this Nation ever saw. That by the many changes & popular confusions the minds of the People were confused and thrown loose from ties of loyalty, so that public spirit and national principle were in a great measure destroyed. This was a bold & rash way of talking; but it had justice, and it pleased me’ (Journ. 17 Jan.). Compare this rash talk to JB’s cooler opinions in Journ. 31 Jan., 23 July 1764. 27 JB had described Macdonald in Journ. 24 Feb. as having ‘a vivacity & a frankness that is very agreable … warmly attached to the family of Stuart … greatest Enthusiasm … superstitious warmth of an old highland seer mixed with the spirited liveliness of a neat clever young fellow’. 28 Lord Auchinleck. Pol. Car. pp. 17–19 briefly discusses Lord Auchinleck’s Whig

electioneering 1734–54 and 1774. JB, before reporting the famous altercation between his father and SJ at Auchinleck, would describe his father as ‘as sanguine a Whig and Presbyterian as Dr. Johnson was a Tory and Church of England man’ (Hebrides, p. 370). One of JB’s Hypochondriack papers (no. XLV, June 1781) offered what was presumably a veiled description of the political polarity between JB and Lord Auchinleck: ‘I knew a father who was a violent whig, and used to attack his son for being a tory, upbraiding him with being deficient in “noble sentiments of liberty”’ (see Bailey, ii. 90). 29 JB’s youngest brother David ‘Davie’ Boswell (1748–1826). David had begun his apprenticeship c. 7–17 Mar. at the John Coutts & Co. bank in Edinburgh. He was at this time a trusted confidante of JB’s, who knew of JB’s son and had given JJ the four parcels of JB’s private papers left with Lady Auchinleck. David was also increasingly a friend of JJ, and thus was a gobetween for the transmission of family news in 1762–63. JB referred to David in To JJ, 4 Jan. as ‘a fine Boy. I hope to see him a pretty man’, and in To JJ, 22 Mar. referred to David as ‘a charming little fellow’. From JJ, 18 Apr. had rebuked JB for not writing to David: ‘He [David] is much Shagreened at your not writing to him. You ought to do it, it will please the Boy, he may afterwards be your friend and an usefull one’ (To JJ, 24 Nov. 1762, 4 Jan., 8 Feb., 22 Mar. 1763, 11 May, 19 July 1765; From JJ, 13 Dec. 1762, 24 Feb., 10 Mar., 18 Apr. 1763; Corr. 1, pp. 24–25, 29, 36, 44, 51 n. 5, 52, 58 n. 6, 62 n. 12, 71, 120–21, 167, 175, 235 n. 7). In the final months of 1767 David went to Valencia, Spain, as a merchant, where he adopted the name ‘Thomas’ before David, a style which he kept for the rest of his life (From the Earl Marischal, 26 Jan. 1768, 18 Apr. 1769, in Corr. 7, pp. 11–13 and nn. 2–3, pp. 166–68 and n. 12; From the Earl Marischal, 12 Mar., 14 Dec. 1771 [Yale MSS. C 1967– 68], in Mary Dukeshire, ed., ‘Selected Correspondence of James Boswell 1770–1773’, Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1955, pp. 105– 07, 127–29). He returned from Spain in 1780, and thereafter settled in London. The expression ‘Mr. David’ is also used by JB in a fragment—perhaps from May or June 1776—in which JB counsels Thomas David ‘Be Mr. David’ (Yale MS. L 261). The grave businessman ‘Mr. David’ was presumably the more serious and sombre side of the boy familiarly called ‘Davie’ and later referred to as ‘T. D.’

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These letters are not reported. Some seventy-eight letters from T. D. Boswell to JB survive, dating from July 1763 to Feb. 1795, as well as other letters by T. D. Boswell to other correspondents after JB’s death, and substantial correspondence between T. D. Boswell and Andrew Gibb about the Auchinleck estate from 1790–92 (Yale MSS. C 462–540; Catalogue ii. 497– 510; see also Yale Gen. MSS. 89, Series XVII, Box 169, folder 2974). Like his eldest brother, David Boswell would contribute frequently to the Edinburgh and London newspapers (see John Bonar to William Creech, 30 Dec. 1766 and [10] Apr. 1767, in Henry Paton, ‘Letters from John Bonar to William Creech concerning the Formation of the Speculative Society’, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, v [1912]: 163–90, esp. pp. 177 and 185). 32 JB had written to JJ on 8 Feb.: ‘He [David] will be a fine man. Pray encourage him to be an active Banker and make a fortune’ (Corr. 1, pp. 43–44). Dr. John Boswell wrote a glowing report on 11 Apr.: ‘David is become an eminent Banker alreadie—& gives great application & make no Doubt of his success’ (From Dr. John Boswell, 11 Apr., Yale MS. C 383). David wrote to JB on 13 Oct. of his industriousness and fortune-seeking: ‘This Business is a very laborious one, but at the same time there is a great dale of variety in it, and one who applies diligently to it has a chance to acquire a Handsom independent Fortune’ (Yale MS. C 465). T. D. Boswell failed to earn a fortune as a merchant in Valencia, but, after returning to London and securing a post in the Navy Pay Office, amassed sufficient wealth to purchase the estate of Crawley Grange in Buckinghamshire (Later Years, p. 464). 33 ‘I parted with my Brother Davie leaving him my best advices, to be diligent at his Business as a Banker and to make rich and be happy’ (Journ. 15 Nov. 1762). 34 David was at this time fifteen. Smout speculated that a typical apprentice in the mercantile profession was ‘perhaps normally in his early teens’ (T. C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830, 1969, p. 165). 35 Perhaps a reference to JB’s other brother’s disastrous service in the army. Lt. John Boswell had in Apr. 1760 (at the age of seventeen) been commissioned an ensign in the 30th Regt. of Foot. Lt. John was mentally ill from 1762 to 1763, perhaps as a consequence of a fall during guard duty. He subsequently returned to service as a first lt. in the 21st Regt. of Foot (commission 9 Dec. 1763), but almost immediately after 31

got a leave of absence. When the 21st Foot was ordered abroad in early 1765, he negotiated to be put on half- pay (Apr. 1765), and left active service forever (Corr. 1, pp. 16 n. 11, 249 n. 1). Lord Auchinleck’s letter to JB 13 Jan. 1763 (Yale MS. C 213) lambasted the low characters whom Lt. John had met in the army. 36 MS. ‘to ano’ deleted before ‘town’ 37 McQuhae’s criticism of JB’s Guards scheme accords with Lord Auchinleck’s comment in a letter at the end of May (see n. 41 below). 38 MS. False start: ‘Both of these’ deleted at the bottom of the page following this sentence. 39 JB recorded the conversation with AE: ‘Then walked in the Piazzas of Holyroodhouse. Erskine said he thought me in great danger of getting in with Blackguard Geniuses in London; Bucks and Choice Spirits, under players and fellows who write droll songs; Who would admire my humour make me King of the Company and allow me to pay the bill. I owned it; and determined to be upon my guard’ (Journ. 4 Nov. 1762). 40 Lord Auchinleck had advised JB to learn useful skills relevant to estate lairdship: ‘the more tastes a man acquires if they be such as he can get satisfyd the better, Reading, Gardening, planting &c …. There are many gardens about London well worth seeing both fruit & Kitchen & fflower gardens And it woud be worth while to make notes of what you see’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov. 1762, Yale MS. C 211). Yet in his youth JB lacked enthusiasm for country life and land management, although he desperately wanted to inherit Auchinleck. In Jan. James Bruce, Auchinleck’s overseer, asked JB to ‘purchase Some plans of Noblemens Seats’ and ‘a few different kinds of seeds eather of Trees or flowers’ for Lord Auchinleck ‘which would be no small comfort to him, as you know his taste, that way’ (From Bruce, 10 Jan., Corr. 8, p. 1). Seven months later Bruce found it necessary to repeat the request: ‘Your Honour According to promise has never Sent any Plans etc.’ (From Bruce, 8 July, Corr. 8, pp. 4–6). 41 Lord Auchinleck in May stated his reasons for his continuing disapproval of an army scheme, although he continued to abet JB’s plans: ‘I never declared positively against any kind of Life except that of Dissipation & vice And as a consequence against your going into the Guards, But I told you if you hope to be a Soldiour & make that your busines in good earnest tho’ I did not like ye busines I shoud procure you a Commission

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in a Marching Regiment & had one prest upon me by my good ffriend General StClair now no more, But you signifyd your unwillingness to serve in a Marching Regiment so that scheme went over’. He added, ‘if you are bent on the Army As you say you have the offer of an Ensigncy in a Marching Regiment Tho’s I am far from liking the thing … prudence & discretion … is as necessary for a souldiour as for a man of any oyr employment’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214; see also From Queensberry, 22 Dec. 1762, n. 3). 42 JB’s mother, reflecting and even amplifying Lord Auchinleck’s distaste for JB’s London stay, had written a letter of caution in Mar. She noted, ‘it woud have given me Pleasure to have heard that you was Layving of London & thincking of Comeing home’ (From Euphemia Boswell, 7 Mar., Yale MS. C 332). In early letters (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov., 24 Dec. 1762, Yale MSS. C 211– 12), JB’s father had co-operated somewhat with his son’s jaunt, but in the letter of May he warned that the English ‘must look on one who comes from Scotland as an idle person to have no right to Share of their Country’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). 43 The conflict between JB and his father had again flared up in Feb.–May 1763 to the point that Lord Auchinleck threatened to disinherit JB. Lord Auchinleck’s brother had made veiled allusions to the quarrel in his letter of Apr.: ‘I shold be happie to see my good Brother easier att your absence & not going in with his Designs, but I flatter my self this will yet come about … & all that’s pass’d shall turn out to have been for the best to you both’ (From Dr. John Boswell, 11 Apr., Yale MS. C 383). Lord Auchinleck had written constructively to JB on 13 Jan. (Yale MS. C 213) answering two of JB’s not reported letters. An unreported letter of Feb. from Lord Auchinleck had expressed strong disapproval of ‘some particulars of [JB’s] conduct’, to which JB had sent a defiant reply (also unreported). Even in an angry letter of May 1763, Lord Auchinleck stressed his generosity to JB: ‘tho’ you were behaving in a way highly disrespectfull to me [I] settled an annuity upon you for life and so put you in a State of independency’. He also insisted that he wielded no ‘Authority’ over JB, but rebuked him out of ‘ffriendship’ (‘I do not insist on authority’). Yet he described his mood during the months Feb.–Apr. as follows: ‘Indeed finding that I coud be of no

use to you I had determined to Abandon you to free myself as much as possible from Sharing your ignominy, and to take ye strongest & most publick steps for declaring to ye world that I was come to this resolution …. I say even I by Your strange conduct had come the resolution of selling all off from the principle that it is better to snuff a Candle out than leave it to stink in a Socket’. Only the intercession of JB’s mother and a letter of repentance from JB stayed Lord Auchinleck’s wrath, or so he claimed (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). That he publicly mentioned the threat is clear from a letter of May by Bruce: ‘No doubt you’ll have heard before this of what my L——— talks of pretty freely as to desposing of Rig and forrow House and yard of An Ancient Seat. I’m sorry to mention it, But hops a Gentleman of Sense and Judgement will prevent by fixing on some agreeable plan’ (From Bruce, 19 May, Corr. 8, pp. 3–4). Not until 1778 did JB learn that Lord Auchinleck perhaps lacked the power under the law to sell off any other property than that which he himself had added to the estate (Journ. 31 Oct. 1778). Despite JB’s apologetic letter, matters were still tense on 21 May, when JB wrote to Sir David Dalrymple that ‘My father is far from being pleased with me. We are really on bad terms …. He is bent on my returning to Scotland; and following the plan that he did’ (Letters JB, i. 10–11). McQuhae, JJ, Bruce, and Dalrymple all contributed their thought to the resolution of the stand-off (To Dalrymple, 21 May, 25 June, in Letters JB, i. 10–11, 28–32); From JJ, 28 Apr., Corr. 1, pp. 72–74; From Bruce, 19 May, Corr. 8, pp. 3–4; cf. the redaction in Earlier Years, pp. 80–83, 108–10). 44 Lady Auchinleck had written to her son in Mar. about his father’s despair: ‘your poor Father is stil in great distress about you[. Y]our showing A dislike at this Country is a thing very disagreabl to him’ (From Euphemia Boswell, 7 Mar., Yale MS. C 332). 45 JB was concerned with his lack of steadiness in his schemes for advancement and moral improvement. See Journ. 27 Feb.: ‘O why can I not allways preserve my inclinations as constant & as warm. I am determined to pursue it with unremitting steadiness. I don’t despair of having a Regiment. O why don’t my friends encourage me in it?’. See also Journ. 3 June: ‘I am allways resolving to study propriety of conduct. But I never persist with any steadiness’.

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26 APRIL 1763 46 MS. ‘to humour’ preceded by deleted ‘hum’ 47 JB remained in London until early Aug., when, having capitulated to his father’s wishes, he left to study Civil Law in Utrecht. 48 MS. ‘for’ deleted before ‘gladly’ 49 John Dun (1724–92) had served as chaplain in the family of Lord Auchinleck and had been JB’s first tutor. Licensed to preach in 1750, he was called and ordained in the parish of Auchinleck in 1752, a post in which he remained until his death. He was author of the Statistical Account survey of Auchinleck published after his death (Fasti Scot. iii. 4; SAS, vi. 13–17; Earlier Years, p. 18). 50 Many of Dun’s sermons would be published. See The blessedness of those who die in the Lord: a sermon, preached in the church of Auchinleck, Sunday, January 19. 1766. Upon occasion of the death of Lady Auchinleck …, Edinburgh, 1766 (ESTC N48952); A sermon preached at Kirkconnel, Saturday, June 24. 1780. upon occasion of dispensing the Lord’s Supper …, Kilmarnock, 1780 (ESTC N36780); Sermons, in two volumes …. To each volume is added a miscellaneous appendix …, Kilmarnock, 1790 (ESTC T116096). 51 The Church of Scotland offered a morning and an afternoon service, each lasting two to four hours, with sermons often one hour or more long, and lengthy extempore prayers. As no cooking was allowed on Sunday, the congregation usually ate a cold meal (e.g., bread and cheese) between sermons, which they brought with them (H. G. Graham, The Social Life of Scotland, 1937, pp. 25–26; Corr. 8, pp. li–lii; for Scots Sabbatarianism, see Memories of Ayrshire, pp. 297–98). 52 James Murray of Broughton (for whom see From McQuhae, 27–30 Dec. 1762, n. 34). As lay patron of St. Quivox Kirk, his influence was, while not unchecked by the influence of the heritors and congregation, a necessary pre-requisite for McQuhae’s gaining the parish ministry there (Fasti Scot. iii. 66–67). 53 The period from Dec. 1762—when the death of George Reid’s son ended McQuhae’s service as a tutor in the Reid household—until Aug. 1763 was a tense one for McQuhae. He remained in a quasiassistant capacity at Ochiltree in Jan.: James Bruce noted, ‘Docter McQuhae Still continues with Mess George, its talked he is to have Share of the Stipend and to be established’ (From Bruce, 10 Jan., Corr. 8, p. 1). He was still in limbo in July: ‘I saw

McQuhae last week who was than very well But told me he was opprest with preaching from Kirk to Kirk. He still continus in full hops of St Quivox’ (From Bruce, 8 July, Corr. 8, pp. 4–6). McQuhae’s suspense ended when in Aug. 1763 James Murray of Broughton presented him to the kirk; he was ordained as minister of St. Quivox, the final confirmation of his status, on 1 Mar. 1764, and retained the pulpit until his death (Fasti Scot. iii. 66–67). 54 Sir Thomas Wallace (1702–70), 4th Bt. of Craigie-Wallace from 1728, who had passed advocate in 1723 (Comp. Bar. iv. 277). Although the family seat was in the parish of Craigie, he owned the estate of Craigie in St. Quivox and built Craigie House there. About 1763 he founded ‘Wallacetown’, a fast-growing new town which by 1792 contained the bulk of the parish’s population. In 1733 he was listed as one of four heritors and thereby had a crucial role in the church-government of the parish (Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 666; Ayrshire, p. 284; SAS, v. 516–23). The re-establishment of lay patronage in the Church of Scotland in 1712 had meant that a significant percentage of lay patrons and parish heritors did not reside within ‘their’ parish or attend its kirk, despite having powers of appointing its minister. The Established Church of Scotland had as its initial step in the ministry the rank of licentiate, who had received ‘a licence to preach’ in a parish church or within the bounds of the presbytery. The next task (which McQuhae faced) was obtaining ‘a presentation to a living’, a right which ‘generally belongs to one or other of the heritors, who have the payment of the stipend’. On the reception of a ‘presentation to a living’, the licentiate then underwent an examination by the presbytery in which the parish lay. If the court was satisfied with the candidate, a member was appointed to ‘moderate the call’. Induction and ordination by laying on of hands of local ministers followed after the ‘reading the edict of the presbytery sustaining the presentation; and desiring all who have any pertinent objections to state’ to present them (William Chambers, The Book of Scotland, 1830, pp. 413–17). 55 These friends have not been identified. 56 JB had sent the Harvest Jaunt journal to McQuhae before he left for London: ‘I promised Mcquhae to write one [a journal] during my jaunt thro’ Scotland this harvest. I did so. I never mist one day in it, but sent it to him, down to the night before I left Scotland. He

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has it’. As he wished for JJ to read the journ., ‘I shall therefore write to him [McQuhae] by and by, to send it to Davie [Boswell], who will deliver it to you’ (To JJ, 21 Dec. 1762, Corr. 1, pp. 32–34). Yet McQuhae still had ‘the second part’ in his possession, a fact that was soon to cause JB considerable embarrassment (see From McQuhae, 30 June). On 30 June McQuhae wrote that he was sending the last part of the journal under cover to GD, and on 26 July JB noted that the ‘whole’ of his ‘Autumn Journal’ was ‘safely arrived’ (To McQuhae, 26 July).

57 Probably a reference to the weight allowed in franking in order to qualify for free postage or receipt postage-free at a government office. JB had reminded JJ in Feb. of the limit on free letters: ‘you had made the Packets directed to Mr. Terrie greatly too large. Remember never to put above two ounces under one cover. I thought indeed that this rule was only to be observed in the case of franks. But I find it is also necessary in packets directed to the Plantation Office’ (To JJ, 22 Feb., Corr. 1, pp. 47– 50).

From Bruce Campbell, before 11 May 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in Journ. 11 May. ‘I had a letter sometime ago from Bruce Campbell in which he told me that he had once drank a bottle of Sherry, in London, for me, and he insisted that I should call on a Lady of the Town named Miss Watts, and treat her with another of the same.’ Bruce Campbell (1734–1813), styled Bruce Campbell of Mayfield and Milrig, or of Hillhouse (Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 528–29). He was JB’s second cousin, and his closest friend among the various Campbells. JB had written of him in 1762: ‘He is a rough blunt resolute young fellow with much common sense, and is very obliging to his friends’ (Journ. 18 Oct. 1762). Two letters from JB to him survive, dated 1782 and 1790 (Yale MSS. L 351–52), and two letters from Campbell to JB survive, dated 1792 and ?1793 (Yale MSS. C 739.6, 740); see Catalogue i. 200–01, ii. 552–53, iii. 1185. He would become an ally of JB’s in later decades, and would be retained by JB to see to Auchinleck estate affairs during JB’s absences (Later Years, pp. 376, 383, 390, 396, 415, 557). Fullarton of Fullarton described him thirty years later as ‘a gentleman of great skill and long experience’ (Colonel William Fullarton of Fullarton’s General View of the Agriculture of the County of Ayr, 1793, p. 59).

From Bonnell Thornton, c. Monday 23 May 1763 Not reported. A reply to To the Public Advertiser, after 15 and before 18 Apr. Received 24 May, and probably written close to that date (Journ.). Mentioned in Journ. 24 May: ‘I received a very polite letter from Mr. Thornton one of the Authors of the Connoisseur, informing me that he had written the Criticism on Erskine and Boswell’s Letters in The Public Advertiser, to which I had in return for their civility, sent a little Essay, begging to know who had spoken so favourably of us. Mr. Thornton said he should be happy in our [i.e., JB’s and AE’s] acquaintance’. Bonnell Thornton (1724–68), miscellaneous writer and wit, still lacks a full-scale critical biography. Until the 1760s, Thornton typically published pseudonymous pieces. As ‘Fustian Sackbut’ he had composed An ode on Saint Caecilia’s day, adapted to the ancient British musick. As it was performed on the twenty-second of November, 1749 (ESTC T41954), repackaged as An ode on Saint Cecilia’s day, adapted to the antient British musick: viz the saltbox, the Jews harp … With an introduction, giving some account of those truly British instruments. By Bennell [sic] Thornton Esquire, 1763 (ESTC T41955). As ‘the Rev. Busby Birch’ Thornton had written City Latin, or, critical and political remarks on the Latin inscription on laying the first stone of the intended new bridge at Black-Fryars. Proving almost every word of it to be erroneous …, 1760 (ESTC T30789), which reached its 3rd ed. in 1761, and as ‘a deputy’, may have composed Plain English: in answer to City Latin; or critical and political remarks on the Latin inscription on laying the first stone of the intended new bridge at Black-Fryars …, 1761 (attrib. in ESTC T12704).

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Thornton had begun his pseudonymous career as an essayist masquerading as two women surnamed ‘Termagant’: Have at you all: or, the Drury-Lane journal. By Madam Roxana Termagant (Jan.–Apr. 1752, ESTC P2341) and The Spring-Garden journal. By Miss Priscilla Termagant (a near relation of the late Mrs. Roxana) (Nov.–Dec. 1752, ESTC P193). Thornton, George Colman, and others had edited the far more successful 140 numbers of The connoisseur. By Mr. Town, critic, and censor-general (1754–56) under the pseudonym ‘Mr. Town’ (ESTC P1984–85). The Connoisseur strove to be a Spectator and Tatler for the 1750s; it maintained its popularity as a standard essay series late into the century. The Connoisseur papers were in their fourth edition by 1761 (ESTC T144201), and were still being reprinted in 1793 (ESTC T165095). Along with William Cowper, George Colman, Robert Lloyd, and James Bensley, Thornton was a member of the ‘Nonsense Club’ of which Chase Price, Joseph Hill, and Charles Churchill may also have been members (Lance Bertelsen, The Nonsense Club: Literature and Popular Culture, 1749–64, 1986; Charles Ryskamp, William Cowper of the Inner Temple, 1959, pp. 82–83). JB had sought out his acquaintance because of Thornton’s favourable review of E–B in the Pub. Adv., and, through Thornton’s good offices, would meet Churchill, Wilkes and Lloyd (Journ. 24 May). A Mem. of the month shows that JB was at work building his acquaintance with the group, especially Thornton and Wilkes, with an eye to making a living from ‘paper essays’: ‘Cultivate acquaintance wt. wits to be belle esprit … See Thornton & mention your liking for paper essays & if genteel the proffits … Go on wt. Geniuses moderately’ (Mem. 25 May). Journ. 24 May recorded JB’s first impression of Thornton and his friends: ‘I … found him a well-bred agreable man, lively & odd. He had about £15000 left him by his Father, was bred to Physic, but was fond of writing. So he employs himself in that way … I was just got into the middle of the London Geniuses. They were highspirited & boisterous; but were very civil to me’. AE, for his part, did not meet Thornton until June: ‘I introduced the Captain [AE] to Mr. Thornton, with whom he was much pleased’ (Journ. 1 June).

To Bonnell Thornton, Tuesday 24 May 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in Journ. 24 May: ‘I wrote to him my thanks & said I would call upon him at eleven o clock’. Journ. 24 May reported their meeting.

To Bonnell Thornton, ?c. Sunday 5 or Monday 6 June 1763 Not reported. Thornton appears to have been asked by JB when he would be available for a visit, since Thornton explained in reply his plans. JB also named an unknown group of Thornton’s friends (‘friends you mention’) and Thornton suggested ‘they will be happy to meet Mr. Boswell’: the phrase ‘friends you mention’ could either indicate the London wits with whom JB had socialized 24 May (Journ.) or some new elements of the London literati whom Thornton knew. The difficulties with dating this sequence of letters, and an estimate of the reply’s date of composition, is in the next item. The period 25 May–25 July contains one definite meeting with Thornton, and three memoranda of plans for meetings with him. JB had noted in late May: ‘See Thornton & mention your liking for paper essays & if genteel the proffits’, and had done so in the context of seeking out the circle of ‘wits’ and ‘Geniuses’ (Mem. Wed. 25 May). On Wed. 1 June he had introduced AE and Thornton (Journ. 1 June), and on Fri. 1 July noted, ‘Sat — … Settle night wt. Thornton’. The next explicit plan to meet Thornton was on 25 July, a Monday, on which JB wrote, ‘call Thornton and have evening etc.’ (Mem.). The tentative date is based on the hypothetical dating of the reported letter From Thornton, ?6 or 7 June. JB’s Mem. and Journ., which would be expected to provide help, do not: the Mem. for 5 June does not survive.

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From Bonnell Thornton, ?Monday 6 or Tuesday 7 June 17631 MS. Yale (C 2987).

[London], Monday—2 DEAR SIR, Your Note came to my eyes this night, or I might rather say in the Hibernian dialect,3 tomorrow morning, for the watchman has just told me, it is past twelve o’clock. Messieurs Wilkes,4 Churchill,5 and myself are to be at Aylesbury6 on Wednesday next,7 and Colman8 is already in the Country.9 The time of my return is quite uncertain; and when I return, to use the language of Shew-folks, my stay will be but short in this Town.10 However, I will take the first opportunity of collecting together as many of the friends you mention as I can; and I make no doubt but that they will be happy to meet Mr. Boswell. I am Your most obedient, humble Servant, BONNELL THORNTON If I did not set off to-morrow on my Journey, I would do myself the pleasure of waiting on Mr. Boswell, to communicate the Contents of this by word of mouth. 1 The precise Monday is unknown, although the Wilkes–Churchill letters relating to the visit, cited below, provide clues. It was certainly after the initial meeting described in From Thornton, c. 23 May and Journ. 24 May, and not long after the final mention of Thornton in the Mem. on 25 July. The hypothetical date is based on (a) the information on the meeting of Wilkes’s friends at Aylesbury from Wilkes Corr. (see notes below); (b) JB’s own records of meetings and appointments with the men mentioned, esp. Thornton. 2 Unclear whether ‘Monday’ is the date after midnight, in which case the letter was begun late Sun. 5 June and concluded in the early hours of Mon. 6 June, or the date before midnight, in which case the letter was begun late on Mon. 6 June and completed early in the morning of Tue. 7 June. The latter seems more plausible given the relatively short distance from London to Aylesbury, and Thornton’s plan to ‘set off to-morrow’. 3 On the matter of ‘stage Irish’, see From Anonymous (William Cochrane), 21 Feb., n. 4. Wilkes used similar faux-Irish—‘my sartain nolledge’—in his letter to Churchill c. 7 June (Wilkes to Churchill, Tuesday [7 June], in Edward H. Weatherly, ed., The Correspondence of John Wilkes and Charles Churchill, 1954, p. 55). 4 For JB’s Mem. which planned meetings with Wilkes, see Mem. 25 May (‘Call Wilkes & leave card wt. full directions’), 18 June (‘You have Johnston [i.e., SJ] &

Wilkes & Churchill &c to be well with’). He appears to have only subsequently attempted to reconnect with Wilkes in early Jan. 1765, when he saw Wilkes in Turin: ‘To see a man whom I have so often thought of since I left England filled me with romantic agitation. I considered He might have been dead as well as Churchill’. They would meet again in Rome in mid-Feb. 1765 (Journ. 9 Jan. 1765; Mem. 16, 18 Feb., 6 Mar. 1765; cf. To Wilkes, 9 Jan. 1765, and To Wilkes, 2 Mar. 1765, both Wilkes MSS, British Library). 5 For Charles Churchill, see To AE, 10 Oct. 1761, n. 11. He is mentioned several times in the Journ. and Mem. for this period, and sometimes combined with thoughts of or plans regarding Wilkes (e.g., Mem. 18 June) or SJ (e.g., Mem. 9 July). JB met Churchill (‘a rough blunt fellow very clever’) on 24 May (Journ.). He saw Churchill again, seemingly by accident, in late June at the Haymarket Theatre: ‘I sat by Churchill just at the Spikes. I was vain to be seen talking with that great Bard’ (Journ. 20 June). He scheduled meetings with Churchill in early July: ‘resolve no more taverns but 1 wt. Johnson & 1 wt. Churchill’ (Mem. 9 July); ‘then Churchill one ev’ (Mem. 11 July), but it is not known if those plans led to encounters. Churchill died 4 Nov. 1764, and thus did not survive to see JB upon his return to Britain. 6 Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, thirtyeight miles northwest of London. Wilkes was educated by a tutor in Aylesbury, had briefly been married to an heiress who lived

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at Aylesbury House, was M.P. for Aylesbury 1757–64, and ‘had a house and other property’ there. Aylesbury was c. 12–16 miles north of two sites associated with the ‘jovial monks of St. Francis’ (the ‘Hellfire Club’): Sir Francis Dashwood’s estate and caves at West Wycombe, and the ruins of Medmenham Abbey (Cary’s New Map, pl. 24; E. Beresford Chancellor, The Hell Fire Club [Lives of the Rakes, vol. 4], 1925, pp. 1–2, 7–21, 39–40, 48–49). 7 Presumably meaning Wed. 8 June. Wilkes’s plan to meet Churchill at Aylesbury, according to Weatherly, was hatched in early June, perhaps c. Tue. 7 June. Wilkes seemed to anticipate that the wine for the party would be sent by the coach ‘tomorrow’ (Wed. 8 June?), and that Churchill would already be there to receive it, but that he expected that they would ‘save some for Saturday’ (11 June?). Thus, the Aylesbury party was expected to last from about Wed. 8 June to Sat. 11 June, likely longer, given the Medmenham/West Wycombe tradition of one- or even two-week-long countryhouse revels. On Thu. 9 June, Wilkes wrote to Churchill from Great George Street that ‘The plot thickens so fast, that Serjeant Glyn will not give me leave to go so far as Aylesbury the next ten days [?10–19 June]. I wish you every variety of fair pleasure, which I hop’d to have enjoy’d with you … I hope you found the Rhenish excellent. There is a reinforcement of claret &c sent off for 3 thirsty Parsons [?Churchill, Thornton, and Colman] on this very day. My compliments to the two others’ (Wilkes to Churchill, Tuesday 7 June, Wilkes to Churchill, 9 June, in Edward H. Weatherly, The Correspondence of John Wilkes and Charles Churchill, 1954, pp. 55–56). The party was probably concluded, without Wilkes’ help, before JB saw Churchill at the theatre 20 June (Journ.), as Churchill seems to have been the head of the revels pending Wilkes’s arrival. 8 George Colman the Elder (1732–94), dramatist and theatrical manager. Barrister (Lincolns Inn, 1757–64), M.A. (1758). From 1767, Colman was one of four owners of Covent Garden Theatre, and was its manager 1767–74, and then owned and managed the Haymarket Theatre 1776/77– 1787/88 (Eugene Richard Page, George Colman, the Elder; Essayist, Dramatist, and Theatrical Manager, 1732–1794, 1935, pp. 39–43). Like JB, he was ‘The Law Student’ (see his poem of that name) who yearned to be a man of letters; unlike JB, Colman successfully rejected the law for authorship and

the stage. Also like JB, he sought an aristocratic patron (his kinsman the Earl of Bath). Lord Bath in his will (1764) supported Colman with a bequest. Though Colman had hoped for £40,000, the will gave him a conditional annuity of only 900 guineas, and Colman had difficulties with the heir of the Earl of Bath, Gen. Pulteney, who managed the terms of the annuity and disapproved of theatre. See Eugene Richard Page, George Colman, the Elder; Essayist, Dramatist, and Theatrical Manager, 1732– 1794, 1935, pp. 70, 80–81, 93–98. As ‘Mr. Town’, Colman co-edited with Bonnell Thornton and others The connoisseur. By Mr. Town, critic and censor-general, 1754–56 (ESTC P1985). Colman continued his periodical essays with the The Genius (1761 [ESTC P3157], continued 1761– 62 in The St. James’s Chronicle, or British Evening Post [ESTC P1812]), a title which either inspired or paralleled JB’s use of that pseudonym. The literary partnership of Colman and Thornton was perhaps one model for that of JB and AE (Earlier Years, p. 116). Colman was also reputed the author of the anonymous Terrae Filius, satirical political essays of 1763 (ESTC; Eugene Richard Page, George Colman, the Elder; Essayist, Dramatist, and Theatrical Manager, 1732–1794, 1935, pp. 26–39, 80–81). Colman’s many theatrical pieces included in these years his anonymous Polly Honeycombe, a dramatick novel of one act, 1760 (ESTC T44027); The jealous wife: a comedy, 1761 (also printed in Edinburgh) (ESTC T29053); the anonymous The musical lady. A farce, 1762 (ESTC T41649), and The deuce is in him. A farce of two acts [premiere 4 Nov.], 1763 (ESTC T28318). Although Colman was a member of The Club from 1768, and a friend of SJ, there are no known surviving JB–Colman letters (Corr. 3, p. xx; Eugene Richard Page, George Colman, the Elder; Essayist, Dramatist, and Theatrical Manager, 1732–1794, 1935, esp. pp. 188, 224–25 for JB). Colman was a close friend and collaborator of Garrick until their angry rivalry began 1766–67, and was again a friend of Garrick from c. 1774. JB had met Colman at a breakfast at Garrick’s in May: ‘Colman the Author of the Jealous Wife was there. He is a sensible clever agreable little Man’ (Journ. 6 May, reporting events of 3 May). JB’s only reported near-encounter with Colman during his remaining time in London this year was again in Garrick’s company, in mid-May: ‘Mr. Garrick & I then walked to Lincoln’s Inn, where he went to call for Colman’ (Journ. 13 May).

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?6 OR 7 JUNE 1763 9 That is, at Aylesbury. The ‘Country’ was in 1763 considered to begin relatively close to London/Westminster; see, for example, JB’s excursion with SJ ‘clear out into the Country’ during a day-trip’s rowing from Billingsgate Stairs (Journ. 30 July). A house in Kensington was still considered to be ‘a house in the country’ (Journ. 28 Feb.), as when GD, AE, and JB ‘walked out to Kensington to look for country lodgings to the great Orator’, i.e., GD (Journ. 5 May; cf.

Journ. 14 May). Northward were ‘country’ villages and fields as well: from the roof of the cupola of St. Paul’s Cathedral, JB could see ‘The Thames and the Country arround, the beautifull hills of Hampstead & of Highgate’ (Journ. 19 July). 10 It was a typical marketing ploy of actors and other ‘Shew-folks’ to advertise to the public that their stay in town would be brief, in order to create a boom in demand for tickets.

To William McQuhae, c. Tuesday 14 June 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in From McQuhae, 30 June as having been received ‘last week’, which would place the receipt of the letter during the week of 19–25 June. On 10 June JB thought of writing to McQuhae in the context of letters to another of his mentors, Sir David Dalrymple, and his father: ‘write Sr. Dav. & Mcquhae & Father short—& say you’ll write fully, by and by’ (Mem.). On 11 June he seems to have been stalled in his plan: ‘write Father and Sr. Dav: & Mcquhae’ (Mem.). By 13 June he may still have been procrastinating: ‘Tuesday write Fathr. & Johnston & Mcquhae’ (Mem.). The contents can be reconstructed tentatively from From McQuhae, 30 June: ‘I was favoured with yours last week, which gave me a great deal of pleasure on several accounts’. To begin with, the letter ‘informed’ McQuhae of ‘the good understanding which subsists betwixt Lord Auchinleck & you’. JB may have written of George Reid’s accidentally ‘reading … part of the Journal’. JB, perhaps in discussing that debacle, may have written of Lord Auchinleck’s memory: ‘… you compliment him with having a good memory’. He had also likely forgiven McQuhae for the blunder of leaving the Harvest Jaunt journal where Reid could see it: ‘You are extremely good in making an Apology for me, that you had not injoined Secrecy’. He appears to have also have requested information on when McQuhae intended to send the last part of the Harvest Jaunt journal. He presumably informed McQuhae of his Utrecht and Grand Tour plan: ‘I rejoice to hear of your intention to go abroad’.

To Dr. John Pringle,1 ?between 22 and 29 June 17632 MS. Yale (L 1078). Incomplete draft, written on one side of leaf, the remainder of which JB used in writing Mem. for 29 June–1 July.

DEAR SIR, I just now observe that I have mistaken your invitation to dine on Tuesday for Sunday.3 I shall see Doctor Boswell4 soon5 and shall let you know on Sunday6 if he can come on that day.7 Tho’ I recollect that he is engaged on that day also. 1 Dr. John Pringle (1707–82), M.D. Leyden (1730), Prof. of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh 1733–34, and Fellow of the College of Physicians in Edinburgh (1735); created bt. in 1766. Originally intended to be a businessman, he became enchanted with medicine in Leyden. His medical career in London from 1748 was successful enough for him to live in Pall Mall; he was a licentiate of the Coll. of Physicians of London (1758) and then (1763) a Fellow spec. grat., an unusual at-

tainment for a Scot. He was associated with the scientific community as a Fellow of the Royal Society (1745), of which he was later (1772–78) President, and later (1778) a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. He served as a Physician to the Commanding Officer and Army in Flanders and to the Forces in the War of the Austrian Succession (1742–44) and in the defeat of the Jacobite rebels (1745–46), and published important works on military medicine. He had a long connection as a physician to the Georgian

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Court under George II and III, and was Physician to the Duke of Cumberland with whom he served in the ’Forty-Five (1749), to Queen Charlotte’s household (1761) and to her person (1763), and later (1774) to George III (Comp. Bar. v. 138). Dr. Pringle’s personal differences from JB were clear, e.g., Pringle’s strong pro-Hanoverian loyalism and his rational (proto-unitarian) Christianity. Nonetheless, JB trusted Pringle even when he thought him ‘sour’. A typical encounter with Pringle occurred in Nov. 1762: ‘I called on Pringle. He was sour. Indeed he is a good deal so; altho’ a sensible learned man: A good Philosopher & an excellent Physician. By the chearfull ease of my address I made him smile & be very kind to me. I consulted him about all my plans’ (Journ. 24 Nov. 1762). JB later noted, ‘As Sir John has witnessed many of my weaknesses and follies, and been allways like a Parent to me, I cannot help standing much in awe of him’ (Journ. 2, 15 Sept. 1769). Pringle had been one of JB’s baptismal sponsors (To Pringle, 28 Nov. 1780, Yale MS. L 1087). Of JB’s letters to Pringle, some eight from 1776 to 1780 survive, not counting the two ?1763 fragments (Yale MSS. L 1078– 87); of Pringle’s letters to JB, some 30 from 1766 to 1780 survive (Yale MSS. C 2293– 2326). At one point, JB proposed writing a life of Sir John (To Pringle, 2 Feb. [1777], Yale MS. L 1081). Pringle was one of the several important mediators who helped to reconcile JB and Lord Auchinleck in the tense months of Jan.–June 1763. He continued to play the role of mediator between Lord Auchinleck and JB into the 1760s and 1770s (see the two letters From Pringle, 24, 28 Jan. 1766, Yale MSS. C 2293–94, and From Pringle, 10 June 1766, Corr. 5, pp. 34–35; cf. Corr. 5, pp. xli–xlii). Corr. 5 and Corr. 7 contain five items in the long Pringle–JB correspondence. As Pringle had attended the University of Leyden at the same time as Lord Auchinleck, Pringle was what JB termed ‘mine own friend and my Father’s friend’ (Life iii. 65), and Pringle described Lord Auchinleck as ‘my oldest and best friend’ (From Pringle, 4 Mar. 1773, Yale MS. C 2304). JB suspected that Pringle was too frequently a porte-parole for Lord Auchinleck’s schemes and advices: ‘I found the Doctor in the way of discouraging me; which as from my Father’s friend I took patiently & intended to get the better of’ (Journ. 21 Nov. 1762). 2 The rationale for dating this fragment is as follows. JB discussed with some cer-

tainty Dr. John Boswell’s plans for Sunday. JB saw Dr. John Boswell in London Wed. 22 June (see below), and thus 22 June is a rough terminus a quo. The use of the scrap for Mem. 29 June–1 July provides a terminus ad quem. JB and Dr. John Boswell finally dined together with Dr. Pringle on Wed. 29 June (Journ.). 3 Presumably meaning, ‘I thought that you had invited me for Sunday [19 or 26 June or 3 July], but instead discovered that you had in fact invited me for Tuesday [21 or 28 June]’. An excusable mistake, since two of the documented dinners with Pringle had been scheduled for Sundays: 21 Nov. 1762, 12 June (Journ.). 4 Dr. John Boswell (1710–80), JB’s ‘affectionate uncle’. M.D. Leyden (1736). He was a member of the Royal College of Physicians at Edinburgh (Robert Douglas, The Baronage of Scotland, 1798, p. 460; Journ. 15 May 1780). JB wrote of him after his death: ‘He was a very good scholar, knew a great many things, had an elegant taste, and was very affectionate. But he had no conduct. His money was all gone; & do you know he was not confined to one woman. He had a strange kind of Religion’ (To WJT, 3 Sept. 1780). One of JB’s letters to him survives, from 1768 (Yale MS. L 161); seven from Dr. Boswell to JB survive, dated 1763–76 (Yale MSS. C 383–84, 86–89). ‘The Doctor’ as a veteran of study in the Netherlands attempted to persuade JB of its value: ‘The Doctor was weakly passionate with me for insisting on a gayer place’ (Journ. 29 June). He also tried to mould JB’s character: ‘I breakfasted with Doctor Boswell, who said the longer he knew me the better he liked me. However I found the honest Doctor had not the refined notions of friendship which I have. He said he would trust his Journal to no man, from which I saw that he had no idea of people being so connected that they were but as one person. He talked too something about Jesus Christ’s being his friend. I was quite provoked at this’ (Journ. 19 July). Dr. Boswell had been another intermediary in the rift between JB and Lord Auchinleck. He was in on the secret of JB’s ‘Complaints’ of gonorrhoea, and as late as mid-Apr. he had abetted JB in his pursuit of a commission (From Dr. John Boswell, 11 Apr., Yale MS. C 383; cf. From Dr. John Boswell, 23 July, Yale MS. C 384). He had arrived in London on or before 22 June: ‘It was a curious thing to see the Doctor in London’ (Journ. 22, 24, 27, 29 June, 2, 4, 19 July). JB hoped to be often with his uncle in

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London: ‘Be much wt. Doctor’; ‘Be fine wt. Doctor; & resolve to be much wt. him & to be quite friendly &c’ (Mem. 23, 24 June). 5 ‘Doctor Boswell is now in town. I breakfasted with him today. He was very happy to see me. We walked about all the forenoon. It was a curious thing to see the Doctor in London’ (Journ. 22 June). JB also breakfasted with him on Fri. 24 and Mon. 27 June (Journ.). He additionally wrote Mem. to be with Dr. John on Thu. 23, Fri. 24, and Mon. 27 June (Mem.). 6 The plan to let Pringle know on Sun. helps to solidify a hypothetical date. JB socialized frequently with Pringle in London. Furthermore, Pringle had been a discreet

medical adviser to JB, at the time of his infection with gonorrhoea (Mem. 31 Jan., 29 June, Journ. 3 Feb., 5 Mar.). The two breakfasted together 5 Mar., and dined together Sun. 21 Nov. 1762, Fri. 7 Jan., Sun. 12 June, Wed. 29 June 1763. They enjoyed other visits on 24 Nov. 1762, 3 Feb., 16 May (‘serious conversation’), and 9 June (‘told Doctor Pringle my intentions’) 1763 (Journ.; cf. Mem. 2 Mar.). JB repeatedly planned meals with or visits to Pringle (Mem. 16 May, 11– 12, 18, 27, and 29 June, 5 July), and noted in Mem. Mon. 27 June: ‘Appoint dine Pringle Wednesday’. 7 That is, ?Tuesday.

To Dr. John Pringle, ?between 22 and 29 June 1763 (second draft) MS. Yale (L 1079). Incomplete draft of the same letter as the preceding draft. It is written on one side of a leaf, the rest of which bears JB’s memoranda of 3–6 July 1763. The notes on dating for the previous entry provide rationales for the hypothetical date.

Mr. Boswell presents his best Respects to Doctor Pringle and begs pardon for a mistake of1 T. 1

MS. ‘Sunday for’ deleted after ‘of’

From John Ogilvie, Thursday 23 June 1763 1 MS. Yale (C 2110).

London, June 23. 1763 DEAR SIR: It is a great while since I was favoured with a letter from you.2 I am now in London and lodged at one Mr. Collin Donaldson’s in Hay-market St. James’s.3 —If It is convenient I shall be glad to see you any time this evening or tomorrow,4 as I am wholly a stranger and do not know how to call for you, besides being greatly fatigued with a tedious journey.— I shall probably remove after that time to the other end of the town.5 But any rate you will hear of me here.—I have many things to mention to you and am with much esteem, Dear Sir, Your affectionate, humble servant, J. OGILVIE P.S. Excuse haste and nonsense. 1 Correcting Catalogue iii. 829, which gave the date as 25 June. 2 Ogilvie himself admitted that he was an inconstant correspondent (From Ogilvie, 16 Nov. 1762). JB seems to have followed suit in inconstancy (To Ogilvie, between 16 Nov. 1762 and 23 June 1763). 3 ‘Collin Donaldson, Esq’ (?d. 29 Oct. 1776; IGI) was listed as an ‘Agent’ at ‘St.

James’s Hay-market’ in 1768–72 (Kent’s Directory …, 1768, p. 54; see also The New Complete Guide …, 1772, p. 207). He was an innkeeper from 1760 to 1763, and JB said later that he was in business as an innkeeper ‘many years, and made much money’ (Journ. 19 Mar. 1772). The Hay Market remained in Hay-Market Street until 1830. Besides Vanbrugh’s

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opera and theatre building (c. 1705–89) and the ‘Little Theatre’ made famous by Samuel Foote (c. 1721–1820, later [1767] a Royal Theatre), the Haymarket contained taverns and inns such as the ‘Black Horse’ and the ‘Blue Posts’. The Lemon Tree Inn was located at ‘N.W. corner of the Haymarket and Piccadilly’, and was in business as a tavern 1742–1809 (Wheatley and Cunningham, ii. 197–99; Lond. Signs, pp. 49, 65, 335, items 3278, 3304–06, 1802). The Lemon Tree was also known as ‘Mr. Collin Donaldson’s’ inn in 1760–63. On arriving in London in 1772, JB wrote, ‘We stopt at the Lemon Tree Inn at the top of the Haymarket a true Scots house, where Colin Donaldson lived many years, and made much money. He gave up business some time ago, and was succeeded by one Armstrong who was just dead; so the house was in a state of Viduity. It was as dirty and confused as any Scots Inn can be;—though in the middle of London. As it was the first house I was in when I came first to London [in 1760], there was a certain curious pleasure in finding myself in it again’ (Journ. 19 Mar. 1772). 4 They do not seem to have met on 23– 24 June. JB’s first entry in Journ. or Mem. mentioning Ogilvie is Mem. 27 June: ‘at 12 call Ogilvie’; see also Mem. 28 June (‘Have Ogilvie &c at Break’). His Mem. 29 June outlined the likely topics for their breakfast

conversation: ‘Have Ogilvie at break. Recollect former days—S[i]r. Dav[id Dalrymple]: & Scots Magazine & be fine wt. him— & try Contemplation’. Yet there may have been either repeat visits or (more likely) procrastination, since Mem. 2 July read: ‘See Ogilvie’ and Mem. 3 July noted ‘Have Ogilvie here soon’. The pair had certainly breakfasted before 4 July, since in the Journ. for that day JB noted: ‘I should have mentioned some days ago, that Ogilvie the Poet is come to town, & breakfasted with me, and chatted away finely, & showed me much respect’. On 6 July Ogilvie was one of JB’s five guests for supper at the Mitre Tavern: ‘Ogilvie was rapt in admiration of the Stupendous Johnson …. Ogilvie who is a rank Scot, defended his native land with all the powers that he could muster up. I was diverted to see how great a Man a London Wit is in comparrison of one of your country Swans who sing ever so bonnily. Ogilvie said there was very rich country round Edinburgh. No no said Goldsmith with a sneering laugh; It is not rich country. Ogilvie then said that Scotland had a great many noble wild prospects. Sir —, said Johnson, I beleive you have a great many noble wild Prospects …. But Sir, I beleive the noblest Prospect that a Scotsman ever sees, is the road which leads him to England’ (Journ.). 5 That is, from the West or ‘Court’ end of town eastwards to the City or East End.

From William McQuhae, Thursday 30 June 1763 MS. Yale (C 1884). ADDRESS: To James Boswell Esqr.

Barquharry, 30 June 1763 DEAR SIR: I was favoured with yours last week,1 which gave me a great deal of pleasure on several accounts. And particularily as it informed me of the good understanding which subsists betwixt Lord Auchinleck and you.2 When Mr Reid3 returned from his first visit at Auchinleck4 I was greatly vexed to hear what he had blabb’d out there. His reading any part of the Journal was merely accidental it was what I never intended. For well did I know his incapacity of keeping any thing to himself. However, he read only a few pages in the Beginning5 before I found it out and immediately took it from him. The truth is Mrs Reid and Treesbank6 insisted much to see it. Depending on their promise of never mentioning any thing they read, I gave it them. By this means Mr. Reid got a few minutes at it when I went out. But luckily he saw nothing except a few pages. I’m not sure how he might represent it to Lord Auchinleck, for tho’ you compliment him7 with having a good memory, he is extremely apt to forget circumstances and then he sets his invention at work to make up the defect.8 425

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No person whatever read a word of it, except those I have mentioned. I assure you it gave me a great deal of uneasiness to hear that Lord Auchinleck was disobliged about it, but I did not venture to tell him how the matter stood.— You are extremely good in making an Apology for me, that you had not injoined Secrecy,9 but this I confess was no sufficient reason for showing to strangers what was only wrote for your own Amusement. It will teach me more caution and reserve for the future which is all that can now be done. Your Letters are read everywhere even at Glasgow10 —I had a copy sent me from thence last day. I find that I had heard most of them before .11— The Question about this Book is not whether it is well or ill wrote, but whether it was right or wrong in James Boswell Esqr. and Captain Erskine to publish their Letters. And in the usual manner the World is divided. Those who know Mr Boswell or Capt Erskine defend them—they who never saw their faces accuse them—.12 I have sent you the last t of the Journal under cover to Mr Dempster.13 Will not surprize you to hear that the Laird of Treesbank is on the Brink of Matrimony14 against Miss Nelly McCredie of Pearstoun.15 It will certainly happen in a few Weeks.— I rejoice to hear of your intention to go abroad,16 because I am perswaded it will give you a great deal of pleasure. It will not happen so soon but that I may expect to hear from you before you set out. The current of political dispute17 has made its way, tho’ with gentle force, even to this extremity of the Land.18 Mr. Reid is a most strenuous defender of Mr Wilkes19 for what reason I cannot tell.20 I was never in a more unfruitful State as to writing than at this moment—this you are fully convinced of already and without multiplying arguments to prove the same thing I conclude with offering you Mr and Mrs. Reids’ Compliments and my own most sincere wishes for your happiness. WILLIAM MCQUHAE 1 Not reported. See To McQuhae, c. 14 June. 2 JB had since Feb. been attempting to reconcile himself to the frustration of the Guards scheme and the growing likelihood of having to accept his father’s plan for law study in the Netherlands and a legal career in Scotland. From Feb. at the latest, he was negotiating the terms of his surrender to his father’s will: ‘write … Father … Let your scheme be study & push Guards …. If it does not do, you can go to Holland &c & push Law’ (Mem. 19 Feb.). He still had mixed feelings about the law. On consecutive days in Feb., he had accepted the law scheme and rejected it. ‘Law was my plain road to preferrment … and would make my father exceedingly happy …. I would write to my Father and propose the thing to him, on condition that he made me a handsom settlement … and be quite an independent Man … I had better get his permission to go abroad for a year or two to Holland where we have some dutch relations, to france and to Italy; after

which I would be better satisfy’d & more settled’ (Journ. 24 Feb.). On 25 Feb., he wrote: ‘The law-scheme appeared in another light. I considered it as bringing me back to a Situation that I had long a rooted aversion to. That my Father might agree to let me be upon the footing of independence, but when he had me under his eye he would not be able to keep to it’ (Journ. 25 Feb.). JB was still hoping to modify his father’s plan in mid-Apr. to include more time in London and more freedom to wander before assuming the yoke: ‘Write to Father to have leave to go to Holland or any where abroad or perhaps just hang softly in London’ (Mem. 18 Apr.; cf. Mem. 19 Apr.). JB had tried to mitigate the crisis through a letter (not reported and undated) which his father had received at Ayr on the Circuit (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). The letter’s likely contents can be inferred from a letter to JJ in mid-May: ‘I have written a most warm letter to my Father and told him that if he can have no peace of mind unless I return to Scotland

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that I will make that sacrifice, but have beg’d him to allow me some years in my own way, and then I may more effectualy settle’ (To JJ, 17 May, Corr. 1, pp. 74–76). Pringle was one of the several intermediaries whom JB had asked to intercede in the quarrel between him and his father in the hopes of gaining more time or freedom or both. In mid-May JB wrote, ‘Doctor Pringle is to write to him to let me try the Army’ (To JJ, 17 May, Corr. 1, pp. 74–76). Sir David Dalrymple was another: JB noted to Sir David in late May, ‘My father is far from being pleased with me. We are really on bad terms, which is a most disagreeable thing. He is bent on my returning to Scotland; and following the plan that he did … I assure you I have a sincere regard and affection for my father, and am anxious to make him easy … use your good offices between us … my affection for him makes me very unhappy at the thoughts of offending him … Tell him to have patience with me for a year or two, and I may be what he pleases’ (To Dalrymple, 21 May, Letters JB, i. 10–11, item 5). Lord Auchinleck’s letter of 30 May had rebuked JB for his ‘strange Journals’, his ‘publishing some Letters’, and his ‘mimickry’. He had protested that he only wanted JB to be serious and prudent and discreet and productive, whether as an Army officer or as a Scots advocate. Yet he had stressed that ‘your following the study of the Law whether as a Lawier or as a Gentleman to fit you to be usefull in the world is what to me is most agreable’ (E–B; From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). ‘At night I received a very kind letter from my Father, in which he told me that he would allow me to follow any Profession that I pleased, but … if I would pursue the law tho’ moderately, & be in the stile of his eldest Son, that he would give me all encouragement. It was a most sensible & indulgent Letter. It made me think seriously … I could have no prospect of rising in the Army … by getting into the plan of civil life, I should … please my worthy Father, who tho’ somewhat narrow in his notions, is one of the best Men in the World’ (Journ. 8 June; cf. Mem. 8 June). By mid-June JB was actively striving to be content with the new treaty for his future: ‘I felt a great degree of satisfaction at thinking that my Father would now be happy, & all things go well’ (Journ. 10 June). He had even told his more buckish friends about the settlement: AE and GD ‘were glad to hear that I was upon good terms with my Father’ (Journ. 16 June). JB’s

memoranda of late June were full of references to his new plan to follow his father’s will and to correspond frequently and amicably: ‘write … Father short—& say you’ll write fully, by and by’ (Mem. 10 June); ‘write Father’ (Mem. 11 June). ‘Attain self-government & please father’ (Mem. 19 June); ‘study retenué to please worthy father’ (Mem. 20 June); ‘leave England … like Father’ (Mem. 24 June); ‘write … Father fully enquiring. What books to take &c. & no papers’ (Mem. 25 June); ‘Write Father’ (Mem. 29 June). Lord Auchinleck’s letter of 18 June (presumably replying to a letter written c. 10–11 June) had accepted JB’s surrender and forgiven the ‘Quadrennium inutile’ of JB’s wanderings and rebellions of 1759–63. He noted JB’s full acknowledgement of error: ‘you write in your last Letter of your being fully convinced of your passt errors And that you are determined for the future to follow the rational plan of Life so as to become an usefull and respected Member of Society’. Lord Auchinleck also accepted JB’s ‘reasons for your going abroad’—i.e., the Grand Tour—rather than insisting that he ‘return to Scotland’. He concurred that a fair price for the freedom of the European tour would be JB’s agreeing ‘first to go over to Holland’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 18 June, Yale MS. C 215). On 30 June, the very day of this letter from McQuhae, JB wrote to his father informing him of his ‘happy resolution to change [his] Systems’ and ‘becoming an usefull member of Society’ rather than ‘a man who is idle’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 6 July, Yale MS. C 216). JB’s brother David also received a letter stating that JB had ‘altered his scheme’ and was to be ‘following the Law’ which would make Lord Auchinleck ‘happy’ (From David Boswell, 4 July, Yale MS. C 462). 3 The Rev. George Reid. McQuhae seems to have remained in Reid’s household until his move to St. Quivox. 4 Meaning ‘his first visit to Auchinleck after the Boswell family’s return there from Edinburgh’. 5 The number of pages Reid read before McQuhae intercepted him is not known. The ‘Introduction’ of the Harvest Jaunt journal clearly stated that ‘it is only intended for the perusal of Doctor Mcquhae and Johnstone’. JB had also warned that the journal did not reflect the more serious aspects of his character: ‘As it is written for Amusement and in a careless dissipated way, it cannot fail to be very incorrect both

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in the Arrangment of the Subjects and in the Expression. It must therefore meet with much indulgence and, altho’ it should appear sometimes trifling and insipid and sometimes stupidly sententious it must not be allowed to disgrace it’s Writer’. 6 James Campbell of Treesbank, Mrs. Reid’s brother. The letters between JB and McQuhae suggest that the Rev. George Reid was an authoritative master of Barquharrie and elder clergyman in his relationship with McQuhae, while Jane Reid and Treesbank were on more informal and confidential terms with him. McQuhae had remained at Barquharrie ‘as an ordain’d assistant & Successor to Mr. Reid’ at Ochiltree (From McQuhae, 27–30 Dec. 1762), with a plan ‘to have Share of the Stipend and to be established’ (From Bruce, 10 Jan., Corr. 8, p. 1). 7 In this case ‘him’ refers to George Reid: Lord Auchinleck had not seen the Harvest Jaunt journal. Lord and Lady Auchinleck had, however, ‘broke open’ one of JB’s ‘packets’ which contained letters: ‘Happily they could not possibly know the hands of some of the letters written to me’ (To JJ, 22 Mar., Corr. 1, pp. 58–62). 8 McQuhae’s self-exculpation for the breach of security of the Harvest Jaunt journal is illuminated further by McQuhae’s and Lord Auchinleck’s letters of Apr.–May. The event almost certainly happened in Apr., yet it is unclear if McQuhae informed JB of the disaster until this letter at the end of June. As McQuhae specifically mentions that the pages read by Reid were ‘a few pages in the Beginning’, Reid definitely read them before McQuhae had sent the first part of the Journ. to JB (see From McQuhae, 26 Apr.). It was also certainly before the time Lord Auchinleck ‘came to the country’, for soon after his return to Auchinleck House ‘Mr Reid came here informed us he had seen them & having a good memory repeated many things from them. He made these reflections that he was surprised a Lad of sense and come to age should be so childish as keep a Register of his follies & communicate it to others as if proud of them, He added that if the thing were known no man woud choose to keep company with you’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). 9 JB had not explicitly ‘injoined Secrecy’ in the ‘Introduction’, but he had indeed specified that the Journ. was only written for two close friends rather than for the general community.

10 Glasgow, despite the sense implied here by McQuhae, was an important academic and publishing centre in the latter half of the eighteenth century (Andrew Hook and Richard B. Sher, eds., The Glasgow Enlightenment, 1995). JB’s Corsica (1768) was first published a half-decade later by the Foulis brothers in Glasgow (Philip Gaskell, A Bibliography of the Foulis Press, 2nd ed., 1986). 11 This admission suggests that young JB had handed about some of the manuscript versions of the AE–JB letters to friends in 1761–62, or read them aloud to those friends, even before his scheme to publish them. 12 JB kept a ‘History of Erskine and Boswell’s Letters Published Tuesday 12 April 1763’ which recorded the London gossip about them (Yale MS. M 142; it will appear in the volume devoted to JB’s earliest journals, forthcoming in this series). Lord Auchinleck’s letter of 30 May had summarized Scots gossip at Jedburgh. Some commentators thought the publication was wrongheaded by its very nature (Archibald Erskine, Miss Dempster, Middleton, Pitfour, Nairne, Lord Eglinton, the Gentlemen at Jedburgh, Baldwin, ‘Some grave Dons at Flexney’s’); others thought that its innocent fun would be misread by the public (GD, Hugh Blair, Lord Auchinleck); still others praised it (GD again, Noble, Crookshanks); and a fourth group (WJT, Lord Sutherland, Lord Dunmore, Lady Margaret, Pitfour again) merely commented on its appearance and reserved judgment until they read the book or read the reviews (‘History of Erskine and Boswell’s Letters’, 12–15 Apr.). Lord Auchinleck did not condemn the letters themselves, but did attack the indiscretion of making a public spectacle of them. 13 On 5 May AE, GD, and JB ‘walked out to Kensington to look for country lodgings to the great Orator [i.e., GD]’. By 14 May GD had ‘taken country lodgings at Kensington, for himself and Sister …. He is charmingly lodged here, and the fellow enjoys it much’. The Journ. and Mem. for July do not specifically mention picking up the Harvest Jaunt journal, but the July entries cover the most likely time of the visit during which the handover took place (Journ. 5, 14, 23 May, 3, 23, June, 2, 14 July). 14 The marriage of Treesbank and ‘Helen McReadie’ took place as predicted ‘in a few Weeks’ after 30 June, in Dreghorn, Ayr, on 13 Aug. 1763 (IGI). 15 Helen Macredie or McCreddy (b. ?1739, d. ante 1768), daughter of Macredie of Perceton. Helen (Macredie) Campbell

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died before 5 Feb. 1768, when Treesbank married his second wife, Mary ‘Molly’ Montgomerie (Ayr and Wigton, I. ii. 656; III. i. 201). Helen Macredie’s name was not included in the list of Treesbank’s potential wives that local gossip had set up, as described in From McQuhae, 27– 30 Dec. 1762 (‘Miss Molly Montgomery’, ‘Miss Peggy Campbell at Sornbeg’, ‘Miss Brown at Knockmarlock’, ‘Miss McKerral at Hilhouse’). 16 First to Holland (Utrecht), and then on to a Grand Tour of the Continent. JB had been contemplating a Grand Tour in his published revisions of the AE–JB letters, emendations which he made in early 1763: ‘I shall be in France this year, and in Spain the next’ (To AE, 25 Aug. 1761 [E–B]). France remained a constant in his ideal Grand Tour, but Italy replaced Spain: ‘I am thinking of making the tour of Europe, and feasting on the delicious prospects of Italy and France; … at Rome … on the banks of the Tiber. I am thinking of the distinguished honours which I shall receive at every foreign court … I shall pass the winter in London … I shall go and live in one of the most pleasant provincial towns in the South of France, where I shall be blest with constant felicity’ (To AE, 8–9 May 1762 [E–B]). Yet in a conversation c. 30 June–5 July, AE had remarked to JB, ‘Farewell … may you be the best of Travellers, and may you perambulate Spain’ (Journ. 7 July). JB had considered a key element of his treaty with his father that he be allowed to tour Europe, a scheme in which he had enlisted Sir David Dalrymple as a negotiator. As of 25 June, the particulars were still somewhat vague. JB wrote to Dalrymple that he was ‘going abroad. As to the particular place, I shall not insist on having my own way …. The only thing that I imagined [France] preferable for, was that I could acquire the French language better in the country itself, than in Holland. However, you seem to think that I may have that advantage at Utrecht …. [A] letter from my father … has mentioned Utrecht as agreeable to him’ (To Dalrymple, 25 June, Letters JB, i. 11–14). 17 Presumably a reference to the disputes over the Peace Treaty (signed 10 Feb.) and the Cider Tax (debated Mar.-Apr.), and the consequent fall of Bute (8 Apr.). Also a reference to the Government’s revenge on Wilkes for North Briton No. 45, which had been issued 23 Apr. Wilkes was arrested 30 Apr. but released 6 May on grounds of M.P.’s parliamentary privilege and habeas corpus.

18 Wilkes’s attacks on the Scots had made him few friends among them, even those strong Whigs who would ordinarily be natural allies of Wilkes’s defence of ‘Liberty’. GD is a good example: in his maiden speech he had backed Wilkes, but on 15 Nov. he would vote that the famous No. 45 of the North Briton was in fact a seditious libel against George III. GD was particularly harsh against Wilkes in a speech 9 Dec.: ‘Talking of Wilks having still Friends in Scotland (Dun [Alexander Dunn] had said so in a Letter) Dempster told us that he had travelled a great part of Scotland this Summer, & yet no man could be more generally detested there, than Wilks was’. On 14 Feb. 1764, however, GD would speak and vote against the Government on the issue of the illegality of the ‘general warrant’ used to arrest Wilkes (see Andrew Munro Lang, A Life of George Dempster: Scottish Member of Parliament of Dunnichen, 1732–1818, 1998, pp. 41–42; for another Scot’s assessment of Wilkes, see Alexander Carlyle, Anecdotes and Characters of the Times, 1973, pp. 86–87). 19 John Wilkes (1725–97), M.P. for Aylesbury 1757–64, Middlesex 1768–69, 1774–90. One of the masters of Georgian ‘out of doors’ popular politics, Wilkes saw ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ become one of the more popular political slogans of JB’s time (see, e.g., George F. E. Rudé, Wilkes and Liberty: A Social Study of 1763 to 1774, 1962). The government’s failure to keep him in the Tower in spring 1763 had made him a popular icon of British liberty. Gibbon’s diary recorded an impression of ‘Colonel Wilkes’ from 23 Sept. 1762: ‘I scarcely ever met with a better companion; he has inexhaustible spirits, infinite wit and humour, and a great deal of knowledge; but a thorough profligate in principle as in practice; his character is infamous, his life stained with every vice, and his conversation full of blasphemy and bawdy …. He told us … that in this time of public dissension he was resolved to make his fortune. Upon this noble principle he has … commenced public adversary to Lord Bute, whom he abuses weekly in the North Briton’ (Gibbon, Journal, pp. 145–46; see also James Harris’s contemporary character sketch in June 1763 [Malmesbury MSS]; both cited in Namier and Brooke, iii. 639–40). For biographical accounts of Wilkes, see P. D. G. Thomas, John Wilkes, a Friend of Liberty, 1996; Horace Bleackley, Life of John Wilkes, 1917; R. W. Postgate, That Devil Wilkes, 1929; and Charles Chenevix Trench, Portrait of a Patriot: A Biography of John Wilkes, 1962.

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JB’s lengthy friendship with Wilkes (which continued during the Grand Tour and would later include the famous dinner at the Dillys’ at which SJ met Wilkes) was still in its infancy. JB had dined in the same room as Wilkes 27 Nov. 1762 at the Beefsteak Club, but only on 24 May 1763 did the two formally meet at Thornton’s: ‘In a little, Mr. Wilkes came in to whom I was introduced … Wilkes is a lively facetious man … Wilkes said he would be glad to see me in George Street’ (Journ.; cf. Mem. 25 May, 18 June; To Wilkes, 6 May 1766, Corr. 5, pp. 25–26). 20 The split in the Church of Scotland of Moderates versus Traditionalists or Evangelicals in some respects paralleled the divide in politics between Bute’s defenders versus Wilkites, or more generally the Court/Establishment politics versus Country/Opposition/‘Radical’ resistance. The traditional Knoxian/Melvilleian Kirk as recodified in the Covenants and by the Westminster Divines was seen as a refuge of liberty, whereas the ‘Revolution Kirk’ of 1689–1712 and onwards, in which gentry and aristocratic patrons ruled, was often derided as a form of corruption and loss of liberty (Richard B. Sher, ‘Scottish Divines and Legal Lairds: Boswell’s Scots Presbyterian Identity’, in Greg Clingham, New Light on Boswell: Critical and Historical Essays on the Occasion of the

Bicentenary of The Life of Johnson, 1991, 1993, pp. 28–55). George Reid, as a High Kirk traditionalist, probably admired Wilkes for his attacks on Bute and Court influence and his defence of ‘Liberty’; Reid certainly would not have admired Wilkes’s morals. JB’s views on the Wilkites were complex. Besides having sympathy for Wilkes as a London wit, JB also later supported the Corsican and American rebels and other manifestations of ‘Liberty’. He also had considerable qualms about the patronage system in the Kirk. His interest in Wilkes and the Wilkites was shown in his shipments of the North Briton to WD, and in his attendance at Wilkite events even before he met Wilkes. On 3 May JB ‘walked up to the Tower in order to see Mr. Wilkes come out. But he was gone.’ On 6 May ‘This morning the famous Wilkes was discharged from his Confinement, & followed to his house in Great George Street by an immense Mob, who saluted him with loud huzza’as while he stood bowing from his Window.’ In a conversation with Eglinton on 18 July, JB offered his interpretation of Wilkes’s role in Bute’s fall: ‘Wilkes a Colonel of Militia came by, beating his drum to the tune of Britons strike home …, The Horse [of State] frighten’d at this noise, fell to plunging and capering …. And then his Bootship [Bute] came sowse into the Mire’ (Journ.).

From Robert Hunter,1 Saturday 23 July 1763 MS. Yale (C 1564).

Edinburgh, 23d July 1763 MY DEAR MR BOSWELL: I did my Self the honour some days ago to wait of Lord Auchinleck, and in course of Conversation my Lord told me with a pleasant Countenance, that you had now given over thoughts of the Army2 and London3 and were designing to go for Holland .4 As I always find my Self interested in your wellfare; You cannot ima[gine] how much Satisfaction this gave me; and therefore you must allow me on this occasion to express my joy to you. When the graver part of the World were perhaps too apt to censure your conduct, I always reflected on the generally acknowledg’d Saying. Semel insanivimus omnes.5 and hoped that, tho from the Spirit and vivacity of youth you might seem to be flying of in the Tangent, yet from the projectile’s force’s abating you might wind about in due time, by the influence of the Center of Gravity:6 and I flatter my self it is now exerting it’s force. You are well acquaint with our old friend Horace, I know you are,7 and as you admire his Witt and Humour, and can Sympathise with him in his frolicks, so you do regard and hope will imitate him in his good sense, dispassionat and cool Sentiments.— Nec lusisse pudet, sed non incidere lusum.8 430

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You have now seen, my Dear Sir, the young and the beau monde, and hope in Holland you’l see and be acquaint with another World and it’s Maxims, and having try’d many things lay hold on what is best, and conclude with your Old friend, excuse me for quoting one passage more from the same Scripture in the Book of Horace, Nunc itaque et Versus et cætera Ludicra pono; Quid Verum atque Decens, Hoc curo et totus in Hoc sum.9 Now to conclude, wherever you go and in whatever Studies you are to be employ’d, please take my best wishes along with you, which are Mens Sana in corpore Sano,10 and that after you have improved your self in what is honourable, you may come home with Reputation, put on the Gown you have already a tittle to,11 and Serve your Countrey and friends, as your Birth and Education expect from you either as a Lawyer or in parliament,12 or as a Judge. and if you chuse a Baron13 rather then a Lord of Session,14 as I used to alledge,15 it is all one, and believe me to be, Dear Sir, Your Sincere Welwisher and most obedient humble Servant, ROBERT HUNTER 1 Robert Hunter (1704–79), Professor of Greek at Edinburgh University from 1741 to 1772, began his career as a clergyman and private tutor of Greek, and taught at George Heriot’s Hospital before his advancement to professor in 1741. Accounts of his abilities differ. Bower argued that Prof. Hunter’s ‘remarks were delivered in so condescending and agreeable a manner, that he was a great favourite with his pupils, and universally esteemed as a most useful professor’ (Alexander Bower, The History of the University of Edinburgh, 1817, ii. 331–33). On the other hand, Mackenzie described Hunter as ‘himself a keen scholar both in Greek and Latin, but indolent and indulgent, and inspired no zeal or spirit in his pupils. He was a great man for politics and news.’ Somerville noted that while Hunter was thought one of the best classical scholars in Scotland, his method of teaching did not differ much from that of ‘most country schoolmasters’ (Henry Mackenzie, Anecdotes and Egotisms, 1927, p. 38; Thomas Somerville, My Own Life and Times, 1861, p. 11). It was in Hunter’s Greek class that JB certainly met WJT and perhaps JJ (Matriculation Role of Robert Hunter’s Greek Class, 10 Mar. 1756, in the Matriculation Office, University of Edinburgh). An account of JB’s university days is offered in F. A. Pottle, ‘Boswell’s University Education’, in Johnson, Boswell, and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Thomas Fitzroy Powell, 1965, pp. 230–53.

JB remained acquainted with Hunter; they dined in Edinburgh in the late 1760s (Journ. 17 Feb. 1767; 26 June 1769). 2 The army scheme was declared defunct by JB in early June: ‘I could have no prospect of rising in the Army’ (Journ. 8 June; Mem. 8 June). JB made the convenient post facto excuse that his father’s opposition was the main cause of the failure of the Guards scheme. ‘I never could be able to make any thing of my Army schemes. My Father’s rooted Aversion would have allways prevented me from rising in that way’ (To JJ, 30 June, Corr. 1, pp. 81–82). Lord Auchinleck had long professed an aversion to the Guards scheme, partly because he thought it was a vain hope which would lead to JB’s being an unemployed idler or a life-long Ensign (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov. 1762, Yale MS. C 211). However, he already had one son, John, in the army, and he had as late as the end of May reminded JB that from 1760 to 1763 he had, although not wholeheartedly, supported JB in it. ‘I told you if you hope to be a Soldiour & make that your busines in good earnest tho’ I did not like ye busines I shoud procure you a Commission in a Marching Regiment … if you are bent on the Army As you say you have the offer of an Ensigncy in a Marching Regiment Tho’ I am far from liking the thing, if better cannot be, take it, and hold by that as your busines for Life’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214). In a letter of early July, he

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had mentioned Queensberry’s reaction to hearing of JB’s rejection of the army life: ‘His Grace spoke of you with regard but said your Scheme of going into the Army was wrong as you were much better qualifyd to make a figure in civil Life’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 6 July, Yale MS. C 216). 3 Lord Auchinleck opposed JB’s remaining in London on the grounds that the city was too expensive, that it (like the rest of England) was bigoted against Scots, that it was full of snares and traps for unwary and impressionable young men, and that it had already by Nov. 1762 proven nearly impossible for JB to follow a sensible plan of study, discretion, and economy while there (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov. 1762, Yale MS. C 211; From Lord Auchinleck, 24 Dec. 1762, Yale MS. C 212; From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214; From Lord Auchinleck, 6 July, Yale MS. C 216). Letters such as that of late Nov. show that Lord Auchinleck saw the merits of London, though he increasingly doubted that JB possessed the strength of will to benefit from the opportunities of Parliament, the Courts, and the gardens rather than give in to the numerous distractions of the town (From Lord Auchinleck, 27 Nov. 1762, Yale MS. C 211). In reconciling himself to leaving London, JB had put up a brave front that London was too dissipated a place for him to remain in. ‘I found, by carefully making observations for a Winter in London, that the constant Repetition of gayety and dissipation would soon pall upon me’ (To JJ, 2 July, Corr. 1, pp. 82–83). Although JB still remained subject to the allure of London, his pose of indifference was reflected in a visit to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral: ‘the immense prospect of London and it’s Environs … gave me no great idea. I just saw a prodigious groupe of tiled roofs and narrow lanes opening here & there … I did not feel the same enthusiasm that I have felt sometime ago, at viewing these rich prospects’ (Journ. 19 July). JB’s letters of these weeks were certain as to his intention to depart from London, though still somewhat vague about the timetable: ‘the time is fast approaching, when I must leave dear London, and embark for distant Regions’ (To JJ, 21 July, Corr. 1, pp. 94–96); ‘my time for leaving London is not-yet fixed. However it cannot be long now before I breathe the air of another Climate’ (To JJ, 23 July, Corr. 1, pp. 97–99). 4 Lord Auchinleck’s arguments in favour of study at Utrecht were presented in letters

of mid-June and early July: the family had several important relatives there, ‘Holland’ was a polite and interesting place, it was not as expensive as London, JB could learn and constantly speak French there, could attend lectures and perfect his education, could be freed from dissipated London acquaintances, and could become a ‘man of Study’ rather than a fatuous fribble and coffeehouse/tavern wit (From Lord Auchinleck, 18 June, Yale MS. C 215; From Lord Auchinleck, 6 July, Yale MS. C 216). JB had accepted the Utrecht scheme as a method of gaining a foothold on the continent and legitimating a Grand Tour. His father had agreed to allow the Tour if it was preceded by a successful course of legal study in Holland. The influence of Lord Auchinleck and Dalrymple on JB’s reasoning is clear in letters of June–July. At the end of May JB wrote, ‘My Father inclines that I should pass next Winter at Utrecht and afterwards proceed thro’ the south of Europe. At Utrecht I am told that I shall have a most beautifull City to live in. Very genteel People to be acquainted with; an opportunity of learning the french language and easy opportunity of jaunting about to the Hague, Roterdam and in short up and down all the seven Provinces. I am also to hear the lectures on civil law and put myself on the plan of acquiring a habit of Study and application’ (To JJ, 30 June, Corr. 1, pp. 81–82). JB initially opposed Holland as excessively dull: ‘You must know that I am a good deal uneasy at hearing that Utrecht is a dull stiff starched place. I am affraid of growing melancholy there; But to shift going to it, may vex my Father. I would hope that I may contrive to jaunt thro’ the Provinces in Autumn; and pass the winter at Berlin’ (To JJ, 5 July, Corr. 1, pp. 83–84). He reconciled himself to it as a provisional plan, by which he could placate his father with Holland, but retain an option to reject it for Berlin: ‘I have been told that Utrecht is a dull, formal, dissagreable place; and that I shall grow very melancholy there. I am also told that it is a pleasant City chearfull and polite, and much in the french taste. No wonder then that I have been fluctuating in my views of travelling … my Father wants to have me at Utrecht as a Place more grave and fit for Study … I cannot as yet determine what I shall do. In the mean time, I shall go over to Holland, jaunt up and down the Low Countries, and if I can stay comfortably at Utrecht, I shall pass the Winter there. But if it is very horrid, I shall proceed to Berlin’

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(To JJ, 9 July, Corr. 1, pp. 85–87). His conviction that the ‘Dutch’ were dreary and tedious had been somewhat changed by the assiduous Dalrymple: ‘Sir David Dalrymple tells me that I have got very false ideas of Utrecht. So that I hope to be very happy there’ (To JJ, 23 July, Corr. 1, pp. 97–99). 5 ‘We have all at one time been insane’ (Mantuan [Ioannes Baptista Spagnuoli Mantuanus], Eclogues, i. 118); Lat. ‘insania’ can, however, also be used to indicate poetical inspiration. The Renaissance Latin Eclogues of ‘good old Mantuan’, first published in 1498, maintained their importance as text-books in Latin education for centuries, hence Hunter’s familiarity with them. 6 A metaphor drawn from Newtonian orbital mechanics. The centre of gravity modifying JB’s wayward trajectory into a dependable orbit was presumably his father, but it is perhaps a more general reference to the men of sense and reason (which included Dalrymple and Pringle). Hunter’s reassurance here runs counter to certain perceptions of the young JB as eccentric almost to the extent of questionable sanity. Lord Auchinleck was painfully aware of JB’s reputation as a loose cannon, and remained frustrated with JB’s idleness, whims, mimicry of great men, dissipated and vicious course, misplaced trust in low or odd companions and idle dissipated acquaintances, and indiscreet lapses in judgement such as the publication of E–B. He continued to give his son advice on how to mend his ways and avoid melancholy through rational entertainment, manly pursuits, self-discipline, and a rational plan or scheme of life. These counsels persisted in much the same form even while JB was in Holland and on the Grand Tour (From Lord Auchinleck to JB, Yale MSS. C 211–26, fifteen letters dated 27 Nov. 1762–15 Apr. 1764). His letter of 27 Nov. 1762 had warned: ‘It is necessary you shoud be more upon your guard than ordinary both on account of the escapade you made three years ago And the State of poor Johnie, For people will be more strict in observing your conduct upon these accounts’. (For Lt. John Boswell, see From McQuhae, 26 Apr., n. 33.) Ramsay in Scotland and Scotsmen much later remembered JB’s youth in terms that reflect such perceptions: ‘The evening of Lord Auchinleck’s life was much clouded by the absurdity, eccentricity, and mischievousness of his son James …. His first publication [E– B?] was one of the most silly and nonsensical that ever disgraced the press …. In the Douglas Cause he was keen and intemperate to a degree of absurdity …. His behaviour [on the

occasion of the Lords’ reversal of the Court of Session’s decision] savoured so much of insanity, that it was generally imputed to his Dutch blood’ (Scotland and Scotsmen, i. 171–73). Hester Thrale observed on 1 Mar. 1779 that ‘Erskine & Boswell publish’d their Correspondence when 14 years old as I remember—but both are supposed to be touched strong with Insanity’ (Katherine C. Balderston, ed., Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale [later Mrs. Piozzi], 1776–1809, 1942, i. 375 n. 1). 7 In the post-1709 organization of Edinburgh Univ., the ‘Professor of Greek … taught only Greek language and literature’, generally assumed to be the second year of a regular course. (There were institutional assumptions about a core sequence of appropriate ‘regular’ courses which would help prepare candidates for the M.A. examinations, if desired, although students could omit even ‘regular’ courses such as public Latin or public Greek.) In and after 1709, ‘Latin, which had previously been merely ancillary, now became the first year of a regular four-year course in Arts, and was taught for its own sake’. JB matriculated in 1753–54 and 1754– 55 as a student of Latin under George Stuart, and only after that in 1755–56 matriculated as a student of Greek under Robert Hunter. He perhaps had private Latin instruction 1755–56, and private Greek and Latin instruction 1756–57. The Univ. of Edinburgh Latin curriculum of 1741–42 included some of Horace’s Odes and Satires; the private curriculum included Horace’s Epistles and Ars Poetica (F. A. Pottle, ‘Boswell’s University Education’, in Johnson, Boswell, and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell, 1965, pp. 231–42). 8 Hunter misremembered Horace’s ‘ludum’ as ‘lusum’: ‘[N]ec lusisse pudet, sed non incidere ludum’ [‘Nor is it shameful to have once been foolish, but not to cut folly short’] (Horace, Epistles, I. xiv. 36, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb ed.) . 9 Again, Hunter seems to be quoting from memory, since he substitutes ‘Hoc curo et totus in Hoc sum’ for Horace’s ‘curo et rogo et omnis in hoc sum’. The original reads ‘Nunc itaque et versus et cetera ludicra pono; quid verum atque decens curo et rogo et omnis in hoc sum’ (‘So now I lay aside my verses and all other toys. What is right and seemly is my study and pursuit, and to that I am wholly given’; Horace, Epistles, I. i. 10– 11, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Loeb ed.). 10 ‘[H]ealth of body, health of mind’ (Juvenal, Satires, x. 356, trans. A. F. Cole, Loeb ed.).

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23 JULY 1763 11 JB had passed his academic examination in civil law 30 July 1762 (Journ. ?30 July). He would pass advocate on 29 July 1766 (Fac. Adv. p. 18). ‘The Faculty of Advocates did not require [university] graduation for admission, and prescribed no particular course of studies’ (F. A. Pottle, ‘Boswell’s University Education’, in Johnson, Boswell, and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell, 1965, p. 233). 12 JB had entertained notions of being an M.P. at least as early as his (1763?) revision of To AE, 8–9 May 1762 (E–B): ‘I am thinking of returning to England, of getting into the house of commons, of speaking still better than Mr. Pitt, and of being made principal secretary of state’. Although that published dream suggested an English seat, Journ. had been more realistic in suggesting he could on the basis of ‘a good family interest’ hope for a seat as M.P. for Ayrshire: ‘I may indulge the idea of representing the County’ (Journ. 25 Jan.). The idea was not repugnant to his father; Lord Auchinleck seemed also to have had a notion that JB might aspire to ‘getting in to Parl and having the power of conferring places’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 30 May, Yale MS. C 214; cf. To JJ, 16 June, Corr. 1, p. 78). On 20 Jan., JB noted, ‘I sometimes indulge noble Reveries of … getting into parliament, making a figure, and becoming a man of consequence in the state’ (Journ.) He also imagined that he would like to be remembered as one who ‘made a distinguished figure in parliament’ (To Eglinton, 7 Feb.). See also Pol. Car., pp. 20–23.

13 ‘Baron’ was a title given to the judges in both of the separate and analogous Scots and English Courts of Exchequer, which originally dealt with matters of revenue, but through the years had acquired jurisdiction in other kinds of cases as well. The ‘Lord Chief Baron’ of the Scots Exchequer presided over four barons of Exchequer (OED; for officeholders in 1763 see Universal Scots Almanack, 1763, p. 57; The Court and City Register, 1763, p. 117). The Exchequer of Scotland was curtailed and abolished in the nineteenth century, and its functions transferred to the Scottish Court of Session (see below). Perhaps also a punning reference to JB’s being heir to the barony of Auchinleck (Earlier Years, p. 7). 14 ‘Lord of Session’ was a title given to judges in the ‘Court of Session’ or ‘College of Justice’, the supreme civil tribunal of Scotland. Judges, officially styled ‘Lords of Council and Session’, were more casually referred to as ‘Lords of Session’ (OED). There were fourteen ordinary Lords of Session, with the Lord President making fifteen on the court; the Lord Justice-General and Lord-Register were unsalaried ‘Judges extraordinary’ who were theoretically entitled to sit and vote in all cases (Universal Scots Almanack, 1763, p. 56; Edinburgh Almanack, 1764, pp. 58–59). As JB’s father was on the court, JB knew many of the lords, including Lord Kames. Robert Dundas of Arniston was Lord President in 1763 (see next letter). 15 Unclear; perhaps Hunter assumed JB would not wish to tread so directly in his father’s footsteps.

To Robert Dundas (Lord President),1 Monday 25 and/or Tuesday 26 July 1763 Not reported. This letter was written speedily. The final weeks of JB’s second residence in London 1762–63 were accompanied by a great wave of letters explaining his scheme of studying law in Holland. He sat up the entire night of 25 July writing letters (To JJ, 26 July, cited below), and did so again 27 July: ‘I sat up all last night, writing letters’ (Journ. 28 July). Contents can be reconstructed from mentions in letters and Journ. On 26 July, JB wrote: ‘I sat up all last night writing Epistles of an uncommon kind—for me—that is to say to my Lord President … all about my important self; and indeed Johnston since I have taken it into my head to prefer the rational plan, I may, without joking, turn out a man of some importance. But only think of a man who has written these Epistles’ (To JJ, 26 July, Corr. 1, pp. 99–101). He noted at the end of the week, ‘As I am now determined to humour my Father as much as I can, and may in time, perhaps apply to the law in Scotland, I have written to Lord President to whom I said that experience had now taught me that my Father is as wise as myself, and that I am to follow his plan of life. I thank his Lordship for his former good offices while I was an Idler, & hope he will not withhold them from me when I endeavour to be a man of business …. Such is the substance of these letters which I exprest very neatly. I am sure they will do good, as they will be shown or at least quoted to my Father. I have touched every Man on the proper key & yet have used no deceit’ (Journ. 29 July).

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In a letter which perhaps would have arrived too late to have provided the template for JB’s letter to Dundas, Lord Auchinleck offered paternal advice dictating the contents: ‘You may if you think proper write to Ld Advocate Ld President thanking them for all their civilities and telling them of Your having the satisfaction to hope to be more under their eye hereafter and thereaby to have an oportunity to testify your gratitude & regard’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 23 July, Yale MS. C 219). Lord Auchinleck had been encouraging JB to write to Dundas since the solidification of the plan to study law in Holland in midJune: ‘I shoud have mentioned to you that it will be proper for You to write to My Lord Advocate a Letter of compliment & to let him know your schemes, a Letter too to My Lord President will be well taken these are my ffriends and you may rely on them’ (From Lord Auchinleck, 18 June, Yale MS. C 215). 1 Robert Dundas the Younger (1713–87) of Arniston, fourth in a dynasty of eminent lawyers, had studied law at Utrecht, and travelled to Frankfurt and Paris (1733–37), was an advocate from 1738, Solicitor-General (Sc.) 1742–46, Dean of the Faculty of Advocates 1746–54, M.P. Edinburghshire 1754–60, Lord Advocate 1754–60. He was Lord President of the Court of Session from June 1760 until his death. In that office he was notable for having cleared the cause-list of its arrears. He was notable also for having little interest in study or reading for its own sake, and for the keen ambition which also marked his half-brother Henry Dundas’s later hammerlock on Scots politics (Namier and Brooke, ii. 361–64; College of Justice, 523–25; George W. T. Omond, The Arniston Memoirs, 1887, pp. 111, 162, 197). Some of his correspondence from the 1750s with Lord Auchinleck ( whom he once addressed as ‘Dear Sandy’) is in Yale Gen. MSS. 89, Series XVI, Box 133, folders 2429–30. His relationship with JB to this point had not been entirely amicable. The ‘Harvest 1761’ journal used the derisive satirists’ nickname to mention him: ‘Bumbo w[i]t[h] us’ (Journ. 29 Aug. 1761). The Harvest Jaunt journal was equally blasé and unenthusiastic in its mention of Dundas, who seems to have put him off his scheme of character sketches: ‘rode out to Arniston, the seat of Lord President where we din’d. I am now weary of the custom of drawing characters wherever I go; And therefore from this time that must not be expected in this my Journal. I shall just take down one now & then when I chuse it and some times give only a stroke or two. We

were but dull at Arniston. There was a large company there & things went on stiffly’ (Journ. 28 Oct. 1762). Lord President later was in opposition to JB on the controversial Douglas Cause (Journ. 3–4 Jan. 1768), and ordered the arrest of the publishers of JB’s Dorando (1767), yet JB was able to state ‘The President showed a friendly concern which will ever make him be regarded by me’ (Journ. 2 Jan. 1768). JB would remain an opponent of Dundas, especially after he had undermined JB’s side in the 1774 Ayrshire elections. He imagined Dundas excessively influenced Lord Auchinleck’s thinking and the Court of Session’s rulings in general (Journ. 11 Nov. 1774, 18 Nov. 1775, 16 Jan. 1776). JB published squibs against the Lord President, and generally avoided any ‘intercourse’ with him to the point of refusing to shake his hand for five years 1774–79. Only a conscious decision to resume speaking to him, which resulted in a rapprochement between JB and the Lord President, led to a reappraisal of his ‘warm humanity’ (Journ. 21 Nov. 1776, 19 Dec. 1777, [14 Jan.] 1779). There was nonetheless a fundamental dislike of JB for the Lord President which led to another breach (Journ. 9 July, 21 Dec. 1779) and another ‘reconciliation’ with ‘the hereditary freind of our family’ (Journ. 6, 24 Apr. 1780). Despite the returns to hospitality, JB nonetheless insisted that the Lord President was a man of ‘uncultivated manners’ (Journ. 8 Dec. 1780) and a ‘hollow dog’ (Journ. 12 Oct. 1780) who had, despite veins of ‘hospitality—quickness of apprehension—glowing keeness’ a ‘general rotten rock’ as his character (Journ. 21 Nov. 1776).

To Thomas Miller (Lord Justice Clerk),1 Monday 25 and/or Tuesday 26 July 1763 Not reported. Another of the speedily-written letters of the all-night letter-writing session of 25 July (To JJ, 26 July, cited below). Lord Auchinleck’s prompting of JB to write this letter is explained in the preceding headnote.

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The contents may be reconstructed from letters and Journ. JB explained the unusualness of the letter in a communication to JJ: ‘I sat up all last night writing Epistles of an uncommon kind—for me—that is to say to … my Lord Advocate’ (To JJ, 26 July, Corr. 1, pp. 99–101). At the end of the week, he summarized the contents of the letter for the Journ.: ‘To Lord Advocate I talk in the easy stile of a companion as he & I were allways easy, & mention with Satisfaction, my having more rational views’ (Journ. 29 July). 1 Thomas Miller (1717–89) of Barskimming (from 1753) and later (from 1780) of Glenlee. Advocate from 1742, Steward-Depute of Kirkcudbright 1748–55, Solicitor of Excise (Sc.) 1755–59, Solicitor-General (Sc.) 1759–60, Lord Advocate succeeding Dundas 1760–66, M.P. for Dumfries Burghs 1761–66. Later (1766–88) Lord Justice Clerk, first as Lord Barskimming 1766–80, and then as Lord Glenlee 1780–88, created bt. 1788, and briefly Lord President (1787/ 88–89). See Namier and Brooke, iii. 139– 40; Comp. Bar. v. 259–60; College of Justice, pp. 530–31; George W. T. Omond, The Lord Advocates of Scotland, 1883, ii. 68–72. JB knew him by 1761, when the Harvest Jaunt journal mentioned that ‘I din’d with Lord Advocate a crowd with him of ladies and gentlemen’ (Journ. 21 Sept. 1761). JB’s association of Barskimming with his young adulthood was reflected in an observation made in 1788: ‘Sir Thomas Miller, the new Lord President … appeared old, but revived in my mind some comfortable ideas of my

youth’ (Journ. 20 Apr. 1788). Lord Justice Clerk’s disharmony with JB began with the Douglas Cause verdict: JB referred to ‘the Justice Clerk, with whom I had somehow never been well since the decision of the Douglas Cause’ (Journ. 17 Nov. 1774). Their disagreements eventually led to the affray of JB’s ‘Royalist’ paper of 1774, ‘a very dissagreable affair’ which nearly led to a duel with Miller’s son but resulted in JB’s noting ‘I was really pleased with the Justice Clerk’s warmth of heart and the justice of his reasoning … if it could easily happen, I should be glad to be on a good footing with him’ (Journ. 6, 11, 17 Oct., 17 Nov. 1774). JB remarked in 1778 that he ‘was in such good spirits and talked so heartily that I liked to contemplate him … genteel. I regretted that there was an unhappy coolness between him and me. I hoped to bring about better terms in time, though I own I did not wish for an intimacy with so near a neighbour’ (Journ. 30 Oct. 1778), and later complained of ‘an aukward meeting’ in 1786 (Journ. 23 Apr. 1786).

To James Ferguson of Pitfour,1 Monday 25 and/or Tuesday 26 July 1763 Not reported. Another of the letters of the all-night letter-writing session of 25 July (To JJ, 26 July, cited in next headnote). Unlike the two preceding, it does not seem to have been written at the express urging of Lord Auchinleck. The Lord President and Lord Justice Clerk were the two highest-ranking members of the College of Justice, while ‘Old Pitfour’ at this time was Dean of the Faculty of Advocates. The contents of the letter may be reconstructed from letters and Journ. At the end of the week JB summarized the letter’s strategy: ‘To Pitfour I say that his prophecy that I would return to the law will be fullfilled, & I say that if a Saint nowadays obtained the gift of prophecy, none can have a better chance for it, than Pitfour. I bid him tell his Son to hasten on at the Bar, lest he be overtaken by a younger Man’ (Journ. 29 July). The grouping of Pitfour with the other two legal luminaries—Lord President and Lord Justice Clerk—suggested that JB thought that writing to ‘Old Pitfour’ also would smooth matters with Lord Auchinleck. 1 James Ferguson (c. 1700/1701–77) of Pitfour, referred to as ‘Old Pitfour’ to distinguish him from his son (for whom see From Agatha Home Drummond, Lady Kames, 28 Dec. 1762, n. 15); Advocate from 1722; Dean of the Faculty of Advocates (‘an office of no profit but much dignity’) 1760–64,

succeeding Dundas of Arniston. He was promoted to the Court of Session (taking the title Lord Pitfour) in his mid-sixties in 1764, and from 1765 to 1776 also served as a Lord of Justiciary. John Ramsay noted that ‘his small shrill voice and awkward person prevented him from being an elegant speaker,

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yet so deeply learned was he in the philosophy of the law … that few barristers were heard with more satisfaction … for a number of years, people were unwilling to proceed in any business of moment till they had Pitfour’s opinion to sanction them’ (Scotland and Scotsmen, i. 150–60). He was a member of the Church of England’s qualified chapels, and this ‘Episcopalianism’ may have been a factor in the delay in appointing him to the Court of Session until he was sixty-four. Although he took the oaths to the House of Hanover (probably under George I as well as II), he ‘was long considered as a disaffected man, whom it would be improper for a Whig administration to promote’, and so he was passed over until the reign of George III (George Brunton and David Haig, An Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice, 1832, p. 527).

‘Old Pitfour’ and Dalrymple were among the few men whom both JB and Lord Auchinleck trusted. In the company of Dalrymple, Old Pitfour had witnessed the deed (7 Mar.) by which Lord Auchinleck gained power to place JB under trustees when he inherited the estate. Old Pitfour had socialized with JB in Edinburgh (Journ. 20 July 1762), and JB described him as ‘the greatest Lawyer in Scotland and one of the best of men, posest of good sense Honesty and meekness’ (Journ. 9 Nov. 1762). JB also wrote in praise of ‘Old Pitfour’ in a letter to JJ: ‘Let us imitate the amiable Pitfour. Who is a better member of Society? yet who is a greater Saint?’ (To JJ, 9 Apr. 1764, Corr. 1, pp. 124–25), and in Holland wrote in a memorandum, ‘Be pious like Pitfour’ (Mem. 21 Mar. 1764).

To Basil Cochrane, Monday 25 and/or Tuesday 26 July 1763 Not reported. Mentioned in To JJ, 26 July: ‘But only think of a man who has written these Epistles; besides several more to Lord Kames, Commissioner Cochrane’ (To JJ, 26 July, Corr. 1, pp. 99–101). The letter to Kames will be printed in the volume of JB’s correspondence with the Scots literati, forthcoming in this series.

To William McQuhae, Tuesday 26 July 1763 MS. Yale (L 916).

Inner Temple,1 26 July 1763 DEAR SIR: The whole of my Autumn Journal is now safely arrived.2 I have had a good deal of amusement in the reading it over again. It presents combinations of ideas so very different from any that have been in my head for some time, that it looks like something quite new,3 and yet I have a kind of recollection of it like what you would suppose one to have of his preexistent State.4 This State perhaps you don’t beleive.5 The Chevalier6 Ramsay was fond of it.7 But he was a Man rather of fine than strong genius, excelling more in vivacity of Imagination, than in sollidity of Judgment. However that is nothing; for many People fat and lean short and tall sollid and light have maintained the same doctrine. The Marriage of Treesbank8 is indeed an Event which at once pleases and surprises me .—9 There’s a Sentence that would do in a Novel10—but it must be a bad one.— Indeed, I am very happy that the honest Laird has at last plucked up a little courage. For indeed I beleive it has been sheer terror that has kept him single, in the winter nights, for many a year. Now he will think himself a very comfortable Man, and will laugh heartily at all the Batchellors11 whom he either sees hears or reads of. The like fate probably awaits thee, O Doctor.12 But I hope it will not wait so long before it come to a crisis.13 For, behold in the Manse of St. Quivox,14in the lowring days of winter thy heart shall be sad, and thy countenance gloomy, and 437

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thou shall sigh for social intercourse with one whom thou regardest. And lo! thou shalt be a member of the General Assembly15 and when thou art at the metropolis16 thou shalt see Beauties scattered up, and down, like the primroses in a Green field at Auchinleck when Spring shoots forth her lovely Blossoms Then Doctor will you commence your life of felicity, for then will you carry home one of the fairest of these flowers. Long say I may your felicity last. And now Dear Sir having given you too much levity, let me inform you that in a few days I shall leave fair England and dear London, and embark for foreign Shores, It is a curious thought. Walk out either on the 4 or 5 of August, and imagine me on the wide Sea. I hope to have much pleasure abroad, and to return sollidly improved. Remember me very kindly to Mr. and Mrs. Reid and beleive that I ever shall be, My Dear Sir, most sincerely your friend.17 Farewell, Doctor. JAMES BOSWELL P.S. I have now fixed friday the fifth of August for my setting out. On Saturday the Sixth, I shall be upon the Channel.18 1

The change of JB’s address from Thomas Terrie’s in Downing Street to the Inner Temple came after a quarrel with Terrie on 5 July, which resulted in JB’s angry departure from Terrie’s house 6 July (Journ. 5–7 July; see From Lord Auchinleck, 14 July, Yale MS. C 217). JB moved ‘to the Temple [on 6 July]. My friend Temple was to go to Cambridge, this morning, and kindly insisted that I should live in his Chambers which he has taken by the year’ (Journ. 7 July). By 9 July he was referring to WJT’s rooms as ‘my calm retirement in the Temple’, and on 13 July he ‘had some low debauchery with Girls who patrole the courts in the Temple’ (Journ.). In mid-July he described his life there: ‘The method of living in the Inner Temple, is, in my opinion, the most agreable in the World for a single man. We have genteel agreable chambers in that calm Retreat … [A] Templar … can come in and go out, at all hours … If he has a Servant, it is a piece of Luxury, and he is somewhat easier: But he may may do very well without one. At present we have … a Laundress, who has breakfast set every Morning washes our linnen cleans the chambers, wipes our Shoes’ (Journ. 17 July). All in all, he was impressed by ‘how very comfortable and independent chambers in the Temple are’ (Journ. 22 July). JB had been to the Inner Temple many times before his move there: ‘On Sunday [21 Nov.] I had called at the Inner Temple for my old friend Temple. But did not find him. This day I called again’ (Journ. 27 Nov. 1762). JB finally encountered WJT by chance in London in early Apr. after several

failed attempts to meet him by visits and correspondence (Journ. 2 Apr.). They had visited the Temple grounds in Apr.: ‘We … stroled about the Temple which is a most agreable Place. You quit all the hurry & bustle of the City in fleetstreet & the strand; and all at once find yourself in a pleasant academical Retreat. You see good convenient buildings, handsom walks, you view the silver Thames. You are shaded by venerable trees. Crows are cawing above your head. Here & there you see a solitary bencher sauntering about. This description I take from the Reverend Doctor Blair who is now come to town’ (Journ. 6 Apr.). JB and WJT had also attended the Temple Church (‘good building’) and afterwards lounged in ‘my friend’s chambers’ (Journ. 10 Apr.). JB’s many other visits to WJT were either explicitly stated as at ‘chambers’ or presumably so (Journ. 12, 13, 27 Apr., 6, 13, 15, 21, 22, 25, 28, 31 May, 12, 19 June, ?4 July). The delights of the Spectator-like life inspired by Inner Temple chambers were dulled for a time by WJT’s roommate: ‘a Gentleman lives with him in his chambers, who is quite his reverse. A Prig a fop an idler. He will soon be rid of him, & then he will be at ease’ (Journ. 13 Apr.). However, JB faced another roommate for most of 7–28 July, WJT’s younger brother: ‘now I was left in my chambers in the Temple, with little Captain Bob [Temple] who waited in town’ (Journ. 7 July; cf. Journ. 9, 22, 28 July, Mem. 14 July). It was still possible, despite the collapse of TS’s plan for JB to study law in London, for JB to have positive associations with the Inns of Court: ‘We next walked into the

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Temple. It look’d well. I thought of living there some time perhaps’ (Journ. 19 Mar.). JB’s stay in the Inner Temple would have produced a frisson of memory of the Inns of Court Scheme as well as summoning up ideas of his friend WJT, his old mentor TS, and his new mentor SJ: ‘Mr. Samuel Johnson … has chambers in the Inner Temple where he lives in Literary state’ (Journ. 24 May; see also To TS, 27 Sept. 1761; Samuel Salt, Certificate, 19 Nov. 1761; From TS, 21 Nov. 1761; To AE, 20 Nov. 1762). 2 JB had been informed of its posting nearly a month earlier: ‘I have sent you the last t of the Journal under cover to Mr Dempster’ (see From McQuhae, 30 June). McQuhae had already sent the first part of the Journ. to JB in Apr.: ‘I have delay’d sending the second part of your Journal till I hear if the first Packet came safe to hand without being charged’ (From McQuhae, 26 Apr.). 3 MS. ‘knew’ 4 Laurence Echard’s A General Ecclesiastical History …, 1702, p. 147 addressed ‘the Jewish notion of souls sinning in some preexistent state’, and Ralph Cudworth’s The True Intellectual System of the Universe …, 1678, I. v. 693 discussed the issue of whether ‘all Learning be not the Remembrance of what the Soul once before actually understood in a Pre-existent State’ (OED, s.v. ‘pre-existent’, ‘hypostatic’, ‘remembrance’). 5 JB had stated to TS, ‘I take this state of Being to be a jest; that it is not intended that we should do much here to the purpose; and therefore we must just go thro’ it, the best way we can’ (Journ. 23 Dec.). He somewhat guiltily prided himself on his belief in ‘superstition’ such as second sight, ghosts, and other folk beliefs (Journ. 12 Mar.), even where it contradicted his mostly traditional Christian credalism. 6 MS. ‘Clevalier’ 7 Dr. Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686– 1743), Knight of the Order of St. Lazarus and thus generally known as the ‘Chevalier de Ramsay’. Born in Ayr but resided in France c. 1710–43. He went to Europe with the English military in 1706. Influenced by Poiret, a mystic, he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1710; from 1710 to 1715 he was a friend and biographer (1723) of the quietistic mystic Fénelon. His lack of strict orthodoxy was confirmed by the burning in Rome in 1739 of his defence of freemasons. A tutor to several noble families, Ramsay was tutor in Rome c. 1724–25 to the two sons of James Francis Edward Stewart (the ‘Old Pretender’ or

‘James VIII and III’), and was later offered the tutorship of George II’s son the Duke of Cumberland and allowed by George II to return briefly in 1728 to become a Fellow of the Royal Society and receive an Oxford LL.D. Ramsay was a prolific poet, novelist, biographer, defender of the freemasons, and pedagogical, literary, and political theorist. His mélange of mystical Catholicism and Masonic beliefs, plus his brief but terminated service to the Jacobites, was likely to appeal to JB. Ramsay offered his evidences of a pre-existent state in On the Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion … (Glasgow, 1749), Bk. v, Proposition xlvii. On 25 Apr. 1764, JB continued his engagement with Ramsay’s ideas: ‘You read Ramsay & was clear ag[ains]t Prescience. Keep to this’ (Mem.). JB also read Ramsay’s Les Voyages de Cyrus, 1727, which JB and Margaret Montgomerie both appear to have cited in letters of Oct. 1769; a 1762 ed. of Voyages de Cyrus is listed in the c. 1770 list of books in JB’s Edinburgh library. 8 James Campbell of Treesbank, an ‘old bachelor’ of c. 42–53 years of age who had been teased for his refusal to marry, was on 13 Aug. 1763 to marry Helen Macredie, aged c. 24 years (From McQuhae, 27–30 Dec. 1762; From McQuhae, 30 June). JB had ridiculed Walter Macfarlane for marrying a much younger woman: ‘What an absurd thing was it for this old clumsy dotard to marry a strong young woman of quality. It was certainly vanity, for which he has paid very heavily’ (Journ. 2 Dec. 1762). 9 JB had heard reports on this marriage from others. At the beginning of the month, David Boswell wrote, ‘Your friend Treesbanks is just now going to be married to Miss Mackredy of Pearston, who I think by the by will be as good a match for him as if he had got Miss Betty Boswell’ (From David Boswell, 4 July, Yale MS. C 462). JB’s father noted in autumn, ‘Your Mother and I are this day returned from visiting Treesbank & his Lady. I believe they will be very happy together He took Your Letter very kind’ (From Lord Auchinleck, ?c. 3 Sept., Yale MS. C 221). 10 Compare to the subtitle of Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews, bk. III, ch. 12: ‘More Adventures, which we hope will as much please as surprize the Reader.’ 11 In his schemes to acquire gravity and enter responsible manhood, JB would have felt his own inexorable march towards a sensible marriage as well as the law and lairdship. JB’s bachelor friends included McQuhae, GD, AE, WJT, and JJ, and various jests about marriage appear in their

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correspondences with JB. JB’s attitude towards the nature and desirability of marriage was variable. Certainly for much of his time in London his Ranger/Macheath/Spectator vision of bachelor life as superior was predominant. Yet he did plan an eventual marriage: ‘I hope my choice of a Wife will be more elegant. I hope that shall not be in haste … I considered how much happier I was, than if I had been married last year to Miss Colquhoun or Miss Bruce & been a poor regular animal tied down to one’ (Journ. 30 Nov. 1762). Although JB had expressed a rakish gratitude that his liaison with ‘Louisa’ did not create a binding marriage (as it would have in Scotland), even he seemed to have been somewhat shocked by ‘Louisa’s’ dim view of marriage (Journ. 4, 12 Jan.). Several of his acquaintances discussed marriage with him. Walter Macfarlane had encouraged him to marry (Journ. 18 Jan.); JB had for his part ridiculed Macfarlane’s being burdened with his wife’s extravagant London bills (Journ. 14 Mar.). In a conversation with GD’s sister, ‘We talked of Love & Marriage on which she threw out many elegant sentiments’ (Journ. 16 Apr.). In his meeting with AE before AE left London, JB fantasized about his various friends’ roles in his marital schemes: ‘I joked & said that if I was going to be married, Temple & Johnston would be the men whom I would have in my room … consulting and examining the Settlements. But that when the Wedding was over and festivity was going on, then I would send for Dempster and Erskine’ (Journ. 7 July, reporting earlier event). He had already developed his theory of marriage as a rejection of ‘licentious love’ and ‘Passion’ in favour of reason, a theory which would end up determining his choice of a wife in 1769. ‘I considered that any woman who married me must be miserable. Here I argued wrong … rational esteem founded on just motives, must in all probability, endure; especialy when the opinion of the world and many other considerations contribute to strengthen & preserve it’ (Journ. 16 Jan.). Under the influence of his new mentor SJ, JB came to associate marriage (at least in theory) with ‘the dutys of Morality and Religion, and the dignity of Human Nature’: ‘promiscous concubinage is certainly wrong … it is a transgression of the Laws of the Allmighty Creator who has ordained Marriage for the mutual comfort of the Sexes, and the Procreation & right educating of Children’ (Journ. 16 July). 12 McQuhae did not become a D.D. (St. Andrews) until 1794 (Fasti Scot. iii. 66).

13 McQuhae married four years before JB did, and was a prolific father. McQuhae’s first wife, whom he married in 1765, was Elizabeth Park (d. 1780); the couple had seven children, of whom five predeceased their father. In 1782, McQuhae married his second wife, Mary Lawrie (d. 1824); eight children resulted from their union, of whom two predeceased their father (Fasti Scot. iii. 66–67). 14 McQuhae in July was still waiting for news on the appointment: ‘McQuhae last week … still continus in full hops of St Quivox’ (From Bruce, 8 July, Corr. 8, pp. 4– 6). In Aug. the kirk patron James Murray of Broughton presented him to the parish, and he officiated there until Mar. 1764: ‘Honest Dr. Mcquhae is now fairly settled in St Quivocks, the Parish where Mr. Reid was Minister, it is extremly lucky that he should have got a Church so soon, Mr. Murray … is the Patron’ (From David Boswell, 13 Oct., Yale C 465). His ordination as minister of St. Quivox occurred 1 Mar. 1764 (Fasti Scot. iii. 66–67). 15 Perhaps a joke based on the fact that McQuhae’s predecessor at St. Quivox was the Rev. George Reid (not to be confused with the Ochiltree minister of the same name), who served as the moderator of the Church of Scotland General Assembly from 1755 to 1756, and who died in Mar. 1763. McQuhae was proposed as Moderator of the General Assembly in 1806 when he was about 69 years old, but declined the honour (Fasti Scot. iii. 66). 16 Edinburgh was the traditional location of the annual General Assembly meetings each May. 17 JB’s surviving correspondence with McQuhae is meagre after this letter. The only exception was an exchange of formal letters in 1766: from McQuhae and Reid requesting JB’s influence in procuring a place for Hugh Morton, a mason, as a gauger in the Excise Office (From McQuhae and Reid, 14 July 1766, Corr. 5, pp. 44–45), and JB’s polite refusal (To McQuhae and Reid, 23 July 1766, Corr. 5, p. 48). Nor did McQuhae’s name ever again appear in any of JB’s journals; a remarkable fact considering JB’s protestations of ‘true’ friendship in 1762–63 (Journ. 16, 26 Feb.) and the proximity of St. Quivox to Auchinleck. The friendship appears to have lapsed while JB was touring the continent, and was not resumed. The cause of the withering of their friendship, if any, is unknown, although Corr. 1, pp. 13–14, n. 7 made some speculations. The only explicit reference to a possi-

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ble estrangement occurs in a letter of 1766 from David Boswell to JB: ‘I am extremely Sorry to hear that Dr. McQuhae is grown as you describe him, indeed I was a little Surprised at his behaviour. I sent him a Present of Popes Works a Twelve Month ago and he has never returned me thanks for them’ (From David Boswell, 29 Apr. 1766, Yale MS. C 474). 18 A precise echo of the letter to JJ: ‘I have now fixed tomorrow senight friday the fifth of August, for my setting out …. On Saturday the Sixth, I shall be upon the Channel’ (To JJ, 28 July, Corr. 1, pp. 101–02; see also To WJT, 28 July, Corr. 6, p. 57). JB’s change of schedule for the ocean voyage from 4–5 to 6–7 Aug. presumably occurred on or just before 26 July, since this letter contains the old schedule in its body and the revised schedule in its postscript, whereas letters of 28 July incorporate the corrected schedule.

JB ‘set out upon my travels, with a kind of gloom upon my Mind. My enthusiastic love of London made me leave it with a heavy heart’. He blamed his malaise on the Dutch law scheme and his surrender to his father: ‘It might not have been the case, had I been setting out on an immediate tour thro’ the gay regions of Italy and france. But to comply with my Father’s inclinations, I had agreed to pass my first winter at Utrecht a dutch University town of which I had received the most dissagreable preposessions’. He travelled from London to Harwich with SJ, and sailed from Harwich on the packetboat Prince of Wales on 6 Aug. JB was ‘sick and filled with a crowd of different ideas’ on the crossing, which ended with his landing in the Netherlands at noon on 7 Aug. (To JJ, 23 Sept., Corr. 1, pp. 111–15; cf. To WJT, 16 Aug., Corr. 6, pp. 60–62).

To Andrew Erskine, Tuesday 26 July 1763 MS. Yale (*L 529).

Inner Temple, 26 July 1763 Mr. Boswell presents his Comps to Captn. Erskine. As it is allways part of the Plan1 that he who leaves a place should write first, Mr. Boswell will by no means write a letter till he hears from Captn. Erskine. The following Criticism copied from the Review2 goes (upon honour tis true) by tonight’s post to Lord Kames.3 Article 22. An Introduction to the Art of Trunkmaking,4 by Henry Lord Kames to which is subjoined a modest Proposal for lining all the trunks in Great Britain, with his own works.5 We have had occasion to review several performances by this Noble Lord, which have evinced the depth of his knowledge, and the accuracy of his reasoning; at the same time, we have not forgot his Introduction to the art of thinking in the composition of which we pronounced ‘that little thought has been bestowed.’6 In the Essay before us, Lord Kaymis7 has given us much philosophical theory, and has endeavoured to evolve the principles of the usefull art of trunk-making, with much ingenuity. Nevertheless, we cannot help thinking that no practice can excell that of our friend at the corner of St. Paul’s Church-yard.8 We have received much pleasure from the laughable Proposal which is subjoined to this Essay. His Lordship has there displayed strong sense, true humour, and uncommon Candour. Mr. Boswell has sent Capt. A. E. a present of Lloyd’s9 New River head10 which he thinks pretty clear but pretty Shallow. 441

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And Robert Lloyd be Robert Shallow.11 He has also sent The Public Advertiser where is inserted Gilbert Long-nose.12 Composed by the united efforts of a Peer, a Member of Parliament, a Letter-writer, a Translator, and a Crooked Sixpence.13 If Gilbert is not known in the North it is very odd. 1 Perhaps the ‘Plan’ was AE’s suggestion of a correspondence: ‘Erskine said we ought to write now & then to each other a Letter of good amusing facts, which I agreed to’ (Journ. 7 July, reporting earlier conversation with AE). JB’s ‘A Minced Pye of Savoury Ingredients For the Honourable Andrew Erskine’ (Yale MS. *L 528, written 5–22 July) was an earlier effort (as a journalletter, it will appear in the volume devoted to JB’s earliest journals, forthcoming in this series). After the ‘Hume’ letter hoax and the social scandal following the publication of E–B, JB emotionally distanced himself from AE. JB’s decision to become a more serious and reputable gentleman and scholar in his father’s (or SJ’s) image had significantly dampened his interest in AE’s facetious sense of life. ‘In the evening, my friend Erskine and I walked a while in the park. But I did not now set the same value on our outré flights, being realy bent on pursuing a grave, prudent course’ (Journ. 29 June). Two days before AE’s departure (i.e., ?c. 30 June–5 July) he and JB said goodbye. JB said that while JJ and WJT were his friends, he regarded AE and GD ‘more as literary partners, & as Companions, than as friends’ (Journ. 7 July, reporting earlier undated event). Only two later letters from JB to AE are known to have survived, one written 25 Aug. 1768 (Corr. 7, pp. 100–01), in which JB responds to AE’s request for a loan to help him purchase a company, and one written 6 Mar. 1793 (Corr. 2, pp. 399– 400), in which JB responds with pleasure to AE’s praise of the Life of Johnson (see From AE, 14 Jan. 1793, Yale MS. C 1213, Corr. 2, p. 395). That letter, a copy, was endorsed by Sir Alexander Boswell with a revealing comment: ‘… a Letter From James Boswell To The Honour[a]ble Andrew Erskine after a cessation of correspondence.’ JB was preoccupied with creating new resolutions and plans in the final weeks of his 1762–63 London visit: ‘I am now upon a less pleasurable but a more rational and lasting plan. Let me pursue it with Steadiness, and I may be a Man of dignity’ (Journ.

?4 Aug.). He had recently written, ‘my Father is as wise as myself, and that I am to follow his plan of life’ (Journ. 29 July), and in a memorandum of mid-July: ‘Begin now immed to right Plan’ (Mem. 15 July; see also the record of a conversation with SJ, Journ. 16 July). 2 Monthly Rev. only used the system of numbered ‘Articles’ for its ‘Monthly Catalogue’ which followed the longer unnumbered reviews at the beginning of each issue. In the June Monthly Rev., ‘Art. 22’ was a review of ‘Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of Tsonnonthouan, a King of the Indian Nation called Roundheads’. The highest monthly catalogue number of the July Monthly Rev. was ‘Art. 19. A Letter to the Right Honourable George Grenville, Esq.’ (Monthly Rev. June 1763, xxviii. 484–531; July 1763, xxix. 68–80). Crit. Rev. used Roman numerals for the longer review articles at the beginning of each issue. Their ‘Monthly Catalogue’ continued the numbering sequence of the chief articles, but switched over to the Arabic numerals. One of JB’s first pangs of regret about leaving London came in early July when he realized that the July editions of the reviews were likely the last he would be able to read before he departed: ‘Review after calling on [Erskine]. Read it with relish as your last’ (Mem. 1 July). 3 Not reported; the statement of intention to send a copy of the spoof to Henry Home, Lord Kames, may have itself been a hoax. 4 A parody of Kames’s Introduction to the Art of Thinking. Kames had published anonymously his 202-page Introduction to the art of thinking, Edinburgh, 1761 (ESTC N17029). It was a long duodecimo book which in its still-anonymous Second edition, enlarged with additional maxims and illustrations, Edinburgh, 1764 was expanded to 282 pages (ESTC T66080). The likewise anonymous Third edition. Enlarged with additional maxims and illustrations, Edinburgh, 1775 was further expanded to 311 pages (ESTC T166926), as was the London edition of 1775 (ESTC N17016).

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26 JULY 1763 5 The frequent use of unwanted and unsold printed matter as lining for trunks was a metaphor for the fate of the published works of all writers (even the wise Lord Kames), but especially dunces. The transformation of print into trunk-lining was made the subject of satire by Alexander Pope in ‘The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated’ (1737), l. 418. The idea that all the trunks in Britain could be lined with Kames’s juridical and critical works is also a joke about their numerousness and copiousness. Although many of Kames’s early works were anonymous, JB would have known their authorship through his friendship with Kames and knowledge of the Edinburgh literati. The least lengthy of Kames’s works from 1732 to 1763 was 164 pages, and he had written not only works which went into expanded second and third editions, but also multi-part and multi-volume works (Essays upon several subjects in law …, 1732, 164 pp. (ESTC T116097); Essays upon several subjects concerning British antiquities …, 1747, 217 pp. (ESTC T60638), 2nd ed., 1749, 3rd ed. ‘With additions and alterations’, 1763; Essays on the principles of morality and natural religion. In two parts, 1751, 394 pp. (ESTC T70373), 2nd ed. ‘With alterations and additions’; two volumes of Historical law-tracts …, 2 vols., 1758 (ESTC T67127); Principles of equity, 1760, 289 pp. (ESTC T70419); Elements of criticism, by 1763 in its ‘second edition’ (Edinburgh, 1763) was three substantial volumes with ‘additions and improvements’ (ESTC T32598). 6 Reference untraced; perhaps one of JB’s ‘invention’. 7 Another of JB’s parodies of Scots pronunciation. He had pointed out ‘Will you hae some jeel?’ to WJT as the sort of Scots expression that grated on his ears (To WJT, 1 May 1761, Corr. 6, pp. 33–34 and n. 4). His description of the Laird of Spottiswoode also showed awareness of the accent: ‘quite a braid Scots Man’ (Journ. 13 Mar.). He was equally distressed by the Erskine family’s manners and accents, and described them as ‘the plain hamely fife family’ (Journ. 1 Dec. 1762). 8 JB noted his purchase of a trunk in midJuly: ‘I have been buying a travelling trunk, from the famous trunk-maker at the corner of St. Paul’s Church-yard’ (To JJ, 12 July, Corr. 1, pp. 87–88). The trunk seems to have been bespoke, since a Mem. of two days later reads, ‘Call for trunk at St Paul’s’ (Mem. 14 July); the next day he reminded himself, ‘Call Trunkmaker’s tomorrow & settle’

(Mem. 15 July). The fetching of the trunk seems to have been the object of some characteristic Boswellian procrastination, as was the departure for Holland: ‘Get trunk & great-coat & set out week after next at farthest’ (Mem. 18 July). The saga of the custom-made trunk continued into late July: ‘Call for trunk’ (Mem. 19 July); ‘call Trunkmaker’s and order home trunk tomorrow at 3’ (Mem. 20 July). JB had presumably procured the trunk by the end of July, for he was packing for the voyage: ‘stay in class & pack all, & get books, & make out lists & get boots & breeches in order’ (Mem. 31 July); ‘Give out linnens & pack up’ (Mem. 2 Aug.). It is likely that JB’s trunkmaker was one of the two trunkmakers known to have been doing business in ‘the corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard’ in 1763: ‘James Bryant’ and Mr. ‘Clements’. There were at least eleven trunkmakers doing business in London in 1763 (Mortimer’s The Universal Director [1763], Part II, p. 78). The site was so associated with the trade that in Hogarth’s print ‘Beer Street’ a tag attached to the basket of books bore the name ‘Mr. Pastem, the Trunk Maker, St. Paul’s Ch. Yd’ (see From AE, 13 Dec. 1761). However, no trunkmaker in St. Paul’s Churchyard was listed in The New Complete Guide to … London, 1772. 9 Robert Lloyd (1733–64), M.A. (Cambridge) 1758, author, briefly an usher at Westminster School, but chiefly determined to support himself by his pen. In Feb. 1764 he renounced his magazine editorship, and was soon after arrested for debt and confined to the Fleet Prison. He died there, not long after hearing news of Churchill’s death, in mid-Dec. 1764, aged only 31. A member of the Nonsense Club and perhaps the ‘Hellfire Club’ as well. Besides being somewhat close to JB’s age (seven years older), he shared JB’s ambitions of becoming a journalist, published poet, and author of theatre pieces. He had begun publishing poems in his late teens (1751), much as JB had, and collected editions of his poems were the author’s own Poems. By Robert Lloyd, A.M., 1762 (ESTC T114144) and the posthumous The poetical works of Robert Lloyd, A.M. To which is prefixed an account of the life and writings of the author. By W. Kenrick, LL.D. 2 vols, 1774 (ESTC T94392). Like JB, his verse was light and in the tradition of Matthew Prior: Cowper’s ‘Epistle to Robert Lloyd, Esq.’ noted him as ‘sole heir and single/ Of dear Mat Prior’s easy jingle’. He was editor of and contributor to The St. James’s magazine …, 1762–64 (ESTC P2242).

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He wrote libretti for light entertainments for the London theatres. His theatrepieces were mainly musicals. The tears and triump[hs] of Parnassus: an ode for musick, as it is perform’d at the Theatre-Royal in DruryLane, an occasional interlude on the death of George II and the accession of George III, was printed for P. Vaillant, 1760 (ESTC T127593); Arcadia; or, the shepherd’s wedding. A dramatic pastoral. As it is performed at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane. The music composed by Mr. [?Charles] Stanley, 1761 (ESTC T22351), repr. 1778; The capricious lovers; a comic opera. As it is performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury-Lane, adapted from Charles-Simon Favart’s Caprices d’amour, with music composed by Mr. Rush, 1764 (ESTC T19907); repr. 1765, 1780. His theatricals remained popular even after his death: see Phillis at court; a comic opera of three acts …, adapted from Charles Simon Favart’s Caprice amoureux, ou Ninette à la cour., with music by Tomaso Giordani, 1767 (ESTC T95824), an alteration of 1764’s The Capricious Lovers; and Phoebe at court, an operetta, of two acts. Written originally by R. Lloyd, Esq. The dialect necessarily contracted and turned into Hudibrastic verse for recitative, new songs added, with new music by Thomas Arne, 1776 (ESTC T206400). He was one of the circle of Garrick through the Drury Lane connection; see Shakespeare: an epistle to Mr. Garrick; with an ode to genius, 1760 (ESTC T48008). Lloyd’s close alliance with the ‘London wits’ (Colman, Churchill, Wilkes, Garrick, Thornton) had begun at Westminster School, where he met Churchill and Colman. He contributed verses to Thornton and Colman’s Connoisseur papers. His vision of their common cause was demonstrated in his works, esp. The actor. A poetical epistle to Bonnell Thornton, Esq, 1760 (ESTC T19078) and later eds. The epistle to Thornton served as fuel for Churchill’s The Rosciad, which was briefly misidentified as perhaps Lloyd’s work until he corrected the Crit. Rev.’s mistake. Lloyd also wrote An epistle to C. Churchill, author of The rosciad. By R. Lloyd, M.A., 1761 (ESTC T221), and Churchill’s ‘Night’ (1761) was addressed to Lloyd. The triumph of genius, a dream; sacred to the memory of the late Mr. Charles Churchill. By Mr. Lloyd, 1764 (ESTC T110620) was also claimed to be his, although he publicly disclaimed authorship in both major Reviews. Another connection with the wits was his collaboration with George Colman the Elder on the anonymous parody of Mason and Gray, Two odes, 1760 (ESTC T52113); 2nd ed., 1760.

JB and AE had discussed Lloyd on 6 Feb., and JB met him on 24 May (Journ.). JB, however, made no known attempts to renew contact with Lloyd, although he did seek out Wilkes and Churchill before he left London. Lloyd, like Churchill, was dead by the time JB returned to Britain in 1766. 10 The new-river head. A tale. Attempted in the manner of Mr. C. Denis. And inscribed to John Wilkes, Esq. By Robert Lloyd, 1763, was a 19-page quarto printed for G. Kearsly and (JB’s publisher) W. Flexney (ESTC N10277). Crit. Rev. (July 1763, xvi. 72) noted the poem briefly and equivocally. 11 ‘But if you still waste all your prime/ In spinning Lilliputian rhyme,/ Too long your genius will lie fallow,/ And Robert Lloyd be Robert Shallow’: ‘The Cobler of Cripplegate’s Letter to Robert Lloyd, A. M.’, ll. 168–69, in The poetical works of Robert Lloyd, A.M.…, 2 vols., 1774, p. 104. Robert Shallow, the weak-minded country justice, appears in The Merry Wives of Windsor and 2 Henry IV. Like Lloyd, he was a rakish trickster in his youth, and a rogue. The pun that the ‘new-river’ is clear but shallow is evidence that JB’s penchant for punning had not disappeared with his new resolve to be more serious and manly. 12 Anonymous, ‘Gilbert Long-nose: A Scotch Character’, Pub. Adv. 23 July 1763. The fifty-seven line poem described a penny-pinching Scot. F. A. Pottle suggested that it was perhaps a satire on Sir Gilbert Elliot, Lord Minto, the Scots judge and colleague of JB’s father, or Lord Minto’s son Sir Gilbert Elliot, 3rd Bt. of Minto, M.P., poet, and philosopher. The ‘long nose’ is yet another indication of JB’s surviving interest in Tristram Shandy which had played so great a role in his 1761–63 correspondence with AE. GD mentioned ‘Gilbert Longnose’ in an Aug. letter to JB: ‘I have gaind you not a little credit among our Countrymen in Paris by reading them Dr Davie Pill as a production of Yours. They have been pleased to find it a lively Character in the Stile of the Dean and you cannot imagine how highly Gilbert Longnose entertaind them’ (From GD, 23 Aug., Yale MS. C 931). Evidence of JB’s role in composing ‘Gilbert Long-nose’ survives. He scheduled it in his late July Mem. as one of his last two London publications before Holland: ‘Let Long-nose & Lord B’s riding be your last printings’ (Mem. 21 July). Thus the poem was likely being composed or even finished by 21 July. A poem or prose work on ‘Lord B.’s riding’ has yet to be located in the 1763

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press. The matter of the poem of ‘Lord B.’s riding’ is, however, presumably the series of satirical political images described in JB’s mid-July conversation with Eglinton: ‘My Lord Bute … is just as if a very unskillfull Rider should be thrown off, & then cry This riding is a damn’d bad exercise. Now it is not a bad exercise: But he is a bad Rider. Now My Lord Bute instead of getting upon one of his own highland Shelties and then upon a Galloway, and so training himself by degrees, he must mount the great state-horse all at once, and take Sir Harry Erskine before him, & John Home behind him; while you & Lord March & the rest of you were runing like so many Ostlers, to hold his Lordship’s Stirrup, till he should mount, and every man getting half a crown for his pains …. And so My Lord away goes this equipage prancing along, till Wilkes a Colonel of Militia came by, beating his drum to the tune of Britons strike home and Churchill a Parson, with great Zeal blowing the trumpet in Zion. The Horse frighten’d at this noise, fell to plunging and capering; when Sir Harry with the

perpendicular dignity of a Prologue-maker, flew off at the ears, while Johny Home came tragically off at the tail: And then his Bootship came sowse into the Mire crying out My Lord Shelburn I told you a year ago, that I was to take this fall.” … My Lord [Eglinton]! how do you like my Nag?’ (Journ. 18 July). 13 The co-authors of ‘Gilbert Long-nose’ are not known with certainty. Eglinton may be JB’s ‘a Peer’; JB had taken leave of him on 18 July (Journ. 18 July, Mem. 19 July). GD may be JB’s ‘a Member of Parliament’; he remained in touch with JB until the final days of JB’s stay in London (Journ. 20 July, 1, 2 Aug.). JB or AE may be JB’s ‘a Letter-writer’, although JB had said farewell to AE in early July (Journ. 7 July, recording earlier events). James Macpherson ‘the Translator of Fingal’ may be JB’s ‘a Translator’, though he does not seem to have seen JB much after mid-June (Journ. 11 Dec. 1762, 19 June). The man JB nicknamed ‘a Crooked Sixpence’ remains unidentified; perhaps Eglinton’s steward Crookshanks.

445

446

Appendix: Incomplete or undatable items To West Digges, undated MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). Used as scrap paper in JB’s scrapbook of poem drafts.

[f. 2 v.] West Digges Esq: at Balfour’s Coffee house Edinburgh

To Andrew Erskine, undated MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). Used as scrap paper in JB’s scrapbook of poem drafts.

[f. 93 v., inverted] Dear Erskine

Edinburgh

To ‘Sir ———’,1 undated (?after 1768) MS. Bodleian Library (Douce 193). Previously printed in Werner, pp. 57–58, 168–69.

[f. 60 r.] Dear Knight both my kinsman and friend While I’m absent I beg you may tell How much I her lover2 depends On the favour3 of Mademoiselle. O tell her how often I sigh And all my4 fond feelings disclose How5 the tender tear springs from6 my eye As I think of la moindre des choses. Tho’ Di is all lovely and sweet Believe me I cannot but laugh When I see you admiring her7 feet For Doline’s8 are less by one half. * [mark presumably signalling insertion of stanza written on edge of page] 447

APPENDIX

I am sure Sir you cannot deny9 That we measur’d them10 shoe against shoe My Lady’s of11 rich silver stuff And my neat pretty charmers12 plain blue, I own that my Lady’s divine Tho’ her13 cousin before her I kneel 14 Yet let Mademoiselle be mine And envy I never shall feel. 1 The subject remains unidentified. Werner (pp. 168–69) speculated that the only character who fit both the description of kinsman and friend was Sir Alexander Macdonald, who married Elizabeth Diana Bosville in 1768. If his identification proves correct, then the letter rightly belonged in Corr. 7. 2 MS. ‘fond’ written above the gap between ‘her’ and ‘lover’, creating the alternate line ‘how much her fond lover depends’ 3 MS. ‘kindness’ written above ‘favour’ 4 MS. ‘soft’ written above ‘fond’

5

MS. ‘while’ written above ‘How’ MS. ‘in’ written above ‘from’ 7 MS. ‘in raptures you fall at’ written above ‘I see you admiring her’ 8 Werner read ‘Pauline’s’. 9 MS. ‘with attention enough’ inserted by caret as an alternative to ‘Sir you cannot deny’ 10 MS. ‘em’ written above ‘them’ 11 MS. ‘was’ written above ‘of’ 12 MS. ‘creatures’ written above ‘charmers’ 13 MS. ‘a’ written above ‘her’ 14 MS. ‘if’ written above ‘let’

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6

Index SOVEREIGNS and members of the British royal family are entered under their first names, and all other persons under their surnames (with cross references to their titles where appropriate). The following abbreviations are used: D. (Duke), M. (Marquess), E. (Earl), V. (Viscount), B. (Baron), JB (James Boswell), GD (George Dempster), WD (West Digges), AE (Andrew Erskine), SJ (Samuel Johnson), JJ (John Johnston), TS (Thomas Sheridan), WJT (William Johnson Temple), E–B (Letters Between the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq.), Life (Boswell’s Life of Johnson). Actor …, The, 306 n. 5 Adam, Robert (1728–92), architect, 64 n. 1 Addison, Joseph (1672–1719), 93 n. 15, 101 n. 28, 171 n. 7; The Spectator, 158 n. 1 Aesop (?620–560 B.C.), 277 n. 9, 348 n. 11 Agar, Alice or Ellis (?1708–89), Countess of Brandon, of Kilkenny, 49 n. 13 Agnew, Sir Andrew (1687–1771), of Lochnaw, Bt., 350, 354 n. 41 Alcibiades (c. 450–04 B . C .), Athenian statesman, 112 n. 13, 209 n. 9 Alexander III (356–23 B.C.), ‘the Great’, son of Philip II, 114, 115 n. 3 Alexandria, Hellenistic library of, 202 and n. 5 Alfred (849–99), ‘the Great’, 266, 268 n. 17 America, lxxviii Amherst, Jeffrey (1717–97), 1st B. Amherst, British general, 7 n. 3 Anne (1665–1714), Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, 50 n. 22, 62–63 n. 25, 93 n. 16, 238 n. 15, 321, 322 n. 3 Annual Register, 187 n. 12, 303, 304 n. 7 Anstruther, Sir John (1718–99), 2nd Bt. of Anstruther and Elie House, 92 n. 1, 357 n. 10 Anstruther, Sir Philip (1688–1763), of Balcaskie, Bt., advocate, 357 n. 10 Anstruther, Sir Robert (1733–1818), of Balcaskie, Bt., advocate, son of above, 357 n. 10 ‘Appie McNabb’, Scottish song, 230–31, 234 n. 22, 240–41, 243 n. 12, 247 Arbuthnot, Dr. John (1667–1735), physician and wit, 128 n. 1, 152 n. 16 Arbuthnot, Robert (1735–1803), of Haddo, 305, 307 n. 13 Ardven, mountain on isle of Arran, 271, 273 n. 5

Argyll, 3rd D. of. See Campbell, Archibald, 3rd D. of Argyll Arne, Thomas Augustine (1710–78), composer, 36 n. 76, 199 n. 3, 268 n. 17; Artaxerxes, 334 n. 15, 399–400 n. 6; Love in a Village, 334 n. 15 Arrochar (or Arroquhar) parish, 101 n. 32 Asgill, John, Esq. (1659–1738), author, An apologetical oration on an extraordinary occasion, 46 n. 11 Atticus, Titus Pomponius (109–32 B.C.), Roman patron of letters, l Auchinleck, house and estate, xxxix, lxi, 54 n. 4, 286 n. 7, 415 nn. 31, 40, 418, 427 n. 4 Auchinleck, Gilbert (d. 1780), Edinburgh cutler, 92 n. 3, 99 n. 16 Auchinleck, Lord. See Boswell, Alexander, Lord Auchinleck The Auditor, 361 n. 11, 362 n. 12 Augusta (1719–72), Dowager Princess of Wales, 35 n. 60, 278 n. 19, 282 n. 8 Augustus (Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus) (63 B.C.–14 A.D.), Roman emperor, 274 nn. 14, 15, 17, 18, 410–11 n. 10 Aylesbury, 420 and n. 6, 422 n. 9 Bainbridge, ?Capt. William (fl. 1760–69), of 56th Regt., lvii. n. 92, 93 n. 9 Balfour, John (1715–95), bookseller, 192 n. 32 Banks, John (fl. 1696), dramatist, The Albion Queens; Or, the Death of Mary Queen of Scots, 4 n. 2; The Rival Kings, 295 n. 5 Barclay, ?Henry (or Harry) (1697–1780) of Collairnie, Fifeshire, lvii n. 92, 93 n. 8 Barquharrie, Bruce Campbell’s estate, 329 n. 1, 349, 350

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INDEX

Baskerville, John (1706–75), Birmingham type-founder, 144 n. 7 Bath, 176, 177 nn. 12, 13 Bath, E. of. See Pulteney, William, E. of Bath Bayle, Pierre (1647–1706), French Protestant philosopher, 259, 260 and n. 2, 275; Dictionnaire historique et critique, 260 n. 2, 261 n. 6 Beard, John (?1716–91), theatre manager, singer, actor, 112 n. 17, 136 n. 13 Beattie, James (1735–1803), poet, essayist, and moral philosopher, 67 n. 2, 191 n. 18 Behn, Aphra (1640–89), playwright, poet, novelist, Oroonoko, 14 n. 2 Belasyse, Thomas (1699–1774), Viscount Fauconberg of Henknowle, 31 n. 16 Bellamy, George Anne (?1731–88), actress, 3–4 n. 1, 161 n. 8, 333 n. 10, 334 n. 20, 360 n. 1, 361 n. 8, 371 n. 6, 387 n. 35 Bennett, Charles Hodges (1906–57), xli and nn. 27, 29, lxxviii n. 4, 93 nn. 8, 9, 99 n. 20, 166 n. 5 Bensley, James (c. 1732–65), lawyer and wit, 419 Bentley, Richard (1662–1742), librarian, classical scholar, 258 n. 4 Berington, Simon (1680–1755), Catholic priest, The memoirs of Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca, 285, 286 n. 5 Berkeley, John (fl. 1762), M.D., 93 n. 8 Bickerstaffe, Isaac (1735–1812), playwright and poet, Love in a Village, 36 n. 76, 371, 372 n. 17 Bingley, William (1732–99), bookseller and stationer, 332 n. 3 Birkhead, Matthew (d. 1722), actor, 313 n. 3 Blacklock, Thomas (1721–91), poet, 67 n. 2 Blackstone, Sir William (1723–80), English jurist, 177 n. 4 Blacow, Richard (b. c. 1723), A.M., Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 Blair, Hugh (1718–1800), D.D., 153, 154 n. 7, 318 n. 5, 398, 399 n. 6, 428 n. 12, 438 n. 1 Blair, Robert (1699–1746), author, ‘The Grave’, 68 n. 7 Bland, Humphrey (?1686–1763), lt.-gen., governor of Edinburgh Castle, 232 n. 8 Blue Boar, inn at Oxford, 403, 404 n. 9 Bonnington, near Edinburgh, xxxix

Bostocke, John, (b. c. 1710), D.D., Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 ‘Boseville, Sieur de’, 86 n. 7 Bosville, Elizabeth Diana. See Macdonald, Lady, 448 n. 1 Bosville, Godfrey (1717–84), of Gunthwaite Hall, 86 n. 7 Bosville, Capt. William (1745–1813), son of above, army officer, 67 n. 1, 86 n. 7 Boswell, Sir Alexander (?m. c. 1498, d. 1513), of Balmuto, 233 n. 15 Boswell, Alexander (1717–82), Lord Auchinleck, father of JB: and Auchinleck estate, 54 n. 4, 302 n. 16, 415 n. 40; relationship with JB, xxxiii and n. 2, xlix, lvii, lviii, lx and nn. 103, 107, 160 n. 2, 171 n. 6, 195 n. 1, 244 n. 19, 286 n. 7, 302 n. 16, 340 and nn. 1, 2, 341 nn. 4–8, 342 n. 9, 351, 378 nn. 8, 10, 390, 407, 407–08 n. 2, 411 n. 13, 416 nn. 42–44, 422, 425, 426 n. 2, 429 n. 16, 433 n. 6, 434, 436, 442 n. 1; and JB’s E–B, 407–08 n. 2, 428 n. 12, 433 n. 6; in JB’s Give Your Son His Will, 44–45 n. 5; and JB’s legal studies and career, 66 n. 8, 112 n. 19, 135 n. 9, 141, 142 nn. 1, 3, 7, 160 n. 2, 209 n. 7, 226 n. 7, 392, 393–94 n. 6, 434 n. 15, 435; and JB’s letters, 428 n. 8; and JB’s military aspirations, 220, 221 n. 10, 225 n. 1, 226 n. 12, 249, 255, 325, 344, 345 nn. 1, 3, 4, 392, 406, 415 nn. 37, 41, 431 n. 2; and JB’s political aspirations, 434 n. 12; on JB’s religious views, 42 n. 10; career of, 358 n. 13, 434 n. 14; coin collection of, 78 n. 6; as trustee for Lady Colquhoun, 175 n. 1; on Court of Session, 262 n. 12; on criminal punishment, 151 n. 5; and Robert Dundas, 435 n. 1; and Eglinton, 377 n. 4; and family finances, 302 n. 16, 330 n. 8, 411 n. 13; friendships of, lxiv, 44 n. 1, 326 n. 1; and C. of Galloway, 7 n. 1; home in Parliament Close, 53 n. 2, 319 n. 1; and Robert Hunter, 430; as Lord of Justiciary, 44 n. 1, 150–51 n. 3; and Lord Kames, lxi; at Leyden, lxii; marriage of, 104 n. 4; on Northern Circuit, 7, 8–9 n. 2, 87 n. 14, 150–51 n. 3, 298 n. 5; political influence of, xlii; politics of, 414 n. 28; and Pringle, 422–23 n. 1; riding style of, 115 n. 3; and ‘Society for Promoting

450

INDEX

… English Language in Scotland’, 179 n. 8; on Southern Circuit, 261 n. 11; travels of, 298 n. 5; on Western Circuit, 87 n. 14, 150–51 n. 3 Boswell, Sir Alexander (1775–1822), son and heir of JB, author, 199 n. 3, 442 n. 1 Boswell, Charles (1762–64), illegitimate son of JB and Peggy Doig, 300 n. 4, 309, 335, 390, 414 n. 29 Boswell, Christian (m. 1575), 296 n. 8 Boswell, David (d. 1661), 5th Laird of Auchinleck, 102 n. 49 Boswell, David (1748–1826), later Thomas David, bro. of JB: and JB, lx, 390, 414 n. 29, 417–18 n. 56; correspondence with JB, 415 n. 31, 426–27 n. 2, 439 n. 9, 440– 41 n. 17; career of, 414 n. 29, 415 nn. 32–34; purchases estate of Crawley Grange, 415 n. 32; on future, li; correspondence with McQuhae, 405; moves to Spain, 88 n. 2, 414 n. 29 Boswell, Euphemia (Erskine) (1718–66), 1st Lady Auchinleck, mother of JB: on JB and father, 416 nn. 43, 44; and JB’s private papers, 414 n. 29, 428 n. 7; on JB in London, 416 n. 42; relationship with JB, 104 n. 4; correspondence of, xxxiii n. 2, 340, 341 nn. 3, 4, 406, 407–08 n. 2; liferent of, 302 n. 16; marriage of, 104 n. 4; TS sends compliments to, 134, 135 n. 10; and loss of son, 338 n. 8 Boswell, James (d. 1618), 4th Laird of Auchinleck, 102 n. 49 Boswell, James (1672–1749) (‘Old James’), 7th Laird of Auchinleck, grandfather of JB, 302 n. 16 BOSWELL, JAMES General. Aberdeen, visit to, 298 n. 5; allowance of, 229 n. 12, 278 n. 13, 326 n. 1, 330 n. 8, 341 n. 5, 348 n. 13; on America, 430 n. 20; on Ancients v. Moderns debate, 295 n. 2; respect for antiquity, 54 n. 6, 296 n. 8; and Auchinleck, 284, 285 n. 2, 302–03 n. 16, 309, 311 n. 1, 411 n. 13, 415 n. 40, 434 n. 12; book collection of, 82 n. 12, 277 n. 9, 307 n. 11, 317 n. 2, 322 n. 2, 409– 10 n. 7, 439 n. 7; and Edmund Burke, 75–76 n. 6; ‘choice of life’, xxxvii, xliii, lix; and Church of England, xliii, 292 n.

451

9; and Church of Scotland, xliii, xlv; and Charles Churchill, 116 n. 11; collects correspondence, 171 n. 4; and Rev. Edward Colquitt, 41 n. 1; on Corsica, 430 n. 20; and the Court, 37 n. 83, 38 n. 122; debts of, 326 n. 1, 391; and Jean Dempster, 125 n. 13; depression of, 33 n. 37, 44 n. 2, 263 n. 2, 281 n. 2, 288 n. 3, 310, 311 n. 4, 312 n. 13, 319 n. 6, 376; and Samuel Derrick, 47–48 n. 1; and WD, 10 n. 1, 327–28, 368, 430 n. 20; and Robert Dodsley, 35 n. 63, 131 n. 8; and Alexander Donaldson, xliii and n. 31, lviii, 75; and Donaldson’s Collection I & II, lviii, 65 nn. 5, 6, 66 n. 7, 68–69 n. 13, 93 n. 15, 99 n. 12, 128, 129 nn. 6, 9, 144 n. 10, 153, 175 n. 1, 182 n. 8, 186 n. 4, 190 nn. 14–15, 17, 191 n. 18, 197 nn. 3, 5, 203 n. 13, 267–68 n. 9, 270 n. 30, 278 n. 17, 308 n. 19, 319 n. 8, 364 n. 5; on Robert Dundas, 435 n. 1; in Edinburgh, lxvii, 152 n. 22, 208 n. 5, 284; and n. 33, 308 n. 23, 311 n. 1; at University of Edinburgh, 288 n. 8, 308 n. 22, 433 n. 7; education of, 115 n. 7, 122 nn. 3–5; and Lord Eglinton, xl, 18– 19 n. 1; epicureanism of, 286 n. 8, 338 n. 10; and AE (see also Erskine, Andrew), xli, lxxiii, lxxviii, 64–65 n. 1, 86 n. 6, 275, 307 n. 11; and family history, 86 nn. 6,7, 100 n. 27, 354 n. 36; and family house in Blair’s Land, Parliament Close, 53 n. 2; fashion of, 199–200 n. 5, 212 nn. 6, 9, 229 nn. 11, 12; and father, xlii– xliii, xlix, lx, 45 n. 8, 141, 159, 171 n. 6, 273 n. 1, 286 n. 7, 341 nn. 4–8, 414 n. 28, 416 nn. 43–44, 422, 426 n. 2, 429 n. 16, 434, 442 n. 1; financial concerns of, 278 n. 13; critiques Foote’s Minor, 112– 13 n. 23; visits Fort George with SJ, 61 n. 3, 63 n. 32; abilities in French, 122 n. 5; French tour of, 88 n. 2; friendships of, xlv–lxxii, xlv n. 35; relation to Countess of Galloway, 7 n. 1; visits Galloway House, 7 n. 1; esteem for Garrick, 323 n. 10; and John Gay, 33 n. 38; and George III, 37 n. 83, 347 n. 4, 379 n. 17; and fear of ghosts, 338 n. 11; at University of Glasgow, 13–14 n. 1, 132 n. 10, 154 n. 5, 193, 195 n. 1, 307–08 n. 18; Grand Tour

INDEX

of, xxxiii, xlv, lxiv, lxxiv, 158 n. 4, 343 n. 2, 393 n. 5, 422, 426–27 n. 2, 429 n. 16, 429–30 n. 19, 433 n. 6; handwriting of, 186 n. 1; attends hanging, 254–55 n. 24; harvest jaunt of (1762), lxi, 7 n. 5, 309, 314 n. 6, 314–15 n. 9, 332 n. 2, 352 n. 19, 354 n. 40; health of, xliv–xlv, lxviii, 44 n. 2, 54 n. 5, 331 n. 1, 368, 369 nn. 2, 4, 371 nn. 1, 2, 372 n. 16, 374–75 n. 1, 375 n. 5, 376 n. 8, 379, 384 n. 5, 389 n. 5, 393 n. 3, 396, 403, 408 n. 5, 423 n. 4, 424 n. 6; in Holland, xxxiii, liv, lxxiv, 33–34 n. 39, 82 n. 12, 122 n. 5, 132 n. 10, 325 n. 19, 429 n. 16, 430, 433 n. 6, 434–35; and Jean Home, 118 n. 1, 119 nn. 6, 8, 9; visits House of Commons, 334 n. 18; correspondence with Hume, l and n. 61; and Hume letter hoax, xxxvi n. 17, l, lii, 379–80; illegitimate child of, 300 n. 4, 328, 335; and inheritance, 411 n. 13; ‘inventions’ and hoaxes of, xxxvi–xxxvii; and Inner Temple, 133 and nn. 2–3, 134 and n. 8, 321, 324 n. 13, 438 n. 1; and Jacobitism, 5–6 n. 5, 391; and SJ, l, 61 n. 3, 63 n. 32; and JJ, xxxv; visits to Kames’ household, 119 n. 2, 316 n. 1, 317, 320 n. 6; and Lady Kames, 120 nn. 20–21, 326, 356, 357 nn. 1, 2; and Lord Kames, 120 n. 24, 266 n. 1, 319–20 n. 3, 326, 357 and n. 2; on Kames’s Elements of Criticism, 265, 266 n. 1, 316 and n. 2; at Kellie, 310, 311–12 nn. 10–11, 312 n. 12, 319 n. 3; to Kensington, 422 n. 9, 428 n. 13; kinships of, lxv; at Kirroughtrie, 310, 311 nn. 8, 9; legal career of, xlv, 426 n. 2; legal studies of, xxxiii, lx–lxi, 65 n. 3, 66 n. 8, 83 n. 38, 85, 111, 112 nn. 19–20, 142 n. 3, 226 n. 7, 261–62 n. 11, 308 n. 22, 330 n. 7, 393 n. 5, 393–94 n. 6, 417 n. 47, 426 n. 2, 434 n. 11, 434–35, 441 n. 18; libertinism of, 371 n. 2; literary mimicry of, 259 n. 6; and/in London, xlv, xlvii and n. 40, lxiii, lxvii and n. 136, 30 n. 2, 142 nn. 5, 8, 204 n. 3, 237, 268 n. 11, 295 n. 5, 324 n. 18, 325 n. 19, 327, 330 n. 7, 334 n. 19, 338–39 n. 14, 340 n. 1, 340–41 n. 2, 341 n. 6, 343 and n. 2, 349, 366 n. 4, 369 n. 3, 371 nn. 2, 4, 372 n. 9, 377–78 n. 4, 378 nn. 5, 7–9, 391,

452

416 n. 42, 417 n. 47, 424–25 n. 3, 426 n. 2, 429 n. 16, 430, 434, 438 and n. 1, 441 n. 18, 442 nn. 1, 2, 445 n. 13; and ‘Louisa’, 122 n. 5, 366 n. 4, 371 n. 1, 374 n. 1, 375 n. 5; and James Love, 7, 8 n. 1; and Mrs. James Love, 8 n. 1; on Mallet’s Elvira, 8 n. 1, 373–74, 385 n. 15; marital interests of, lxix and n. 145, 108 nn. 18– 19, 23; marriage of, xxxiv; on marriage, 439 n. 11; rumour of marriage of, 127– 28, 130, 151 n. 10, 191 n. 22; fascination with Mary, Queen of Scots, 4–5 n. 2, 172 n. 10, 296 n. 8; as a Mason, 313 n. 3; on William McQuhae, 315 n. 1; and Memoirs of the Bedford coffee-house, 204– 05 n. 7; metaphysical speculations of, 366 n. 5; military aspirations of, xlii, lxiv, 90 n. 8, 92 n. 4, 108 n. 11, 140 n. 24, 158 n. 3, 216–18, 221 n. 10, 224, 225 and n. 1, 226 n. 12, 237, 249, 255, 256 n. 6, 323 n. 12, 325–26, 330 n. 7, 336 and n. 1, 340 and n. 2, 341 n. 7, 342 n. 2, 344–45, 345 nn. 1–4, 346 and n. 5, 347, 354 n. 40, 356, 357 n. 1, 363, 369 n. 3, 378 nn. 10, 11, 379 n. 17, 380, 381 nn. 5, 6, 392, 393 n. 3, 393–94 n. 6, 394 and n. 7, 395 n. 1, 396, 397 and n. 2, 399 n. 4, 406, 407–08 n. 2, 415 nn. 37, 41, 426 n. 2, 430, 431 n. 2; on moderation, 413 n. 26; on moral improvement, 407, 416 n. 45; and mother, 104 n. 4, 338 n. 8, 341 nn. 3, 4, 416 nn. 42–44; at Mundell’s School, 254 n. 24; at New Tarbet, 102 n. 39, 163 n. 2, 164–65, 190 n. 5, 204 n. 2; at Newmarket, xl, 15, 20 n. 10; on Northern Circuit, 7, 8–9 n. 2, 83 n. 38, 87 n. 14, 150–51 n. 3, 261–62 n. 11, 298 n. 5; and opera, 334 n. 15; and Oriental ideas, 82 n. 12; visits Oxford, 400 n. 9, 403 and n. 7, 404 n. 8, 404; correspondence with parents, 338 n. 8, 340, 341 nn. 4, 6–7; parodies Scots pronunciation, 443 n. 7; as patron of literature, 13, 14 n. 3; and the Percy family, 54 n. 6; physical appearance of, 93 nn. 5, 13, 140 n. 23, 212 nn. 7–9, 233 n. 18, 234 n. 21; and Pitt the Elder, 279 n. 30; poetry of, 68– 69 n. 13, 129 n. 6, 324 n. 17; political ambitions of, 379 n. 17, 434 n. 12; and political friendship, lxiv; politics of, 391,

INDEX

413 n. 26, 414 n. 28; prologues of, 3, 4 and n. 2, 5 n. 4, 5–6 n. 5; pseudonyms of, xxxvi and n. 16; reading of, in childhood, 115 n. 6, 246 n. 37; religious beliefs of, xliii–xliv, 42–43 n. 10, 45 n. 10, 228 n. 5, 238 n. 13, 307 n. 17; reviews of E–B, by JB, 93 n. 15, 101 n. 37; riding style of, 115 n. 3; romantic interests of, 242 n. 2; and Scottish traits, lxxiv; and George Lewis Scott, 44 n. 1; meets Sir Charles Sedley, 109 n. 31; and Select Society, 154 n. 7, 155 n. 10; sexual affairs of, xliv– xlv, lxvii–lxxii, lxx n. 153, 55 nn. 1–3; on F. Sheridan’s Sidney Bidulph, 179 n. 7; attends TS’s lectures, 301 n. 8; use of shorthand, 219 n. 4; and Soaping Club, xliv, lviii, 39 n. 1, 42 n. 2, 182 n. 9; and Society of Gentlemen, xliv; on Southern Circuit, 261–62 n. 11; and Adam Smith, 132 n. 10; and Laurence Sterne, lxxviii and n. 4, 38 n. 122; temper of, 159; and WJT, xxxiv and n. 5, xxxv, 55 n. 1; and theatre, xliv, lix, 8 n. 1, 139 n. 8, 291 n. 6, 333 nn. 6, 11, 378 n. 7, 385 n. 15; admires Thomson’s Seasons, 139 n. 15; Toryism of, 391, 413 n. 26, 414 n. 28; at Utrecht, 409–10 n. 7, 417 n. 47, 422, 429 n. 16; at Vauxhall, 36 n. 72; verse epistles of, xl; prices of verse of, 295 n. 3; admiration for Villiers’ The Rehearsal, 206 n. 16, 269 n. 20; violin playing, 132 n. 1, 171 n. 2; on meeting Walpole, 289 n. 11, 324 n. 15; on Walpole’s Anecdotes of painting, 287; on Wilkes, 430 n. 20; and women, lxvi–lxxii; writing career of, xxxiv, xxxv, xliv; writing habits of, 152 n. 17; influences on writing of, xlix and n. 55; youth of, xxxiv Journals. Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–63, xxxiv and n. 4; ‘1762–63 London journal’, xxxv and n. 11, xxxviii, xxxix, xlvi and nn. 38, 39, lxvii, lxviii, lxxiii–lxxiv, 85–86 n. 5, 323 n. 11, 340 n. 2, 352 n. 16, 360 n. 3; Early journals of, xxxv; ‘Harvest Journal, 1761’, xlvi n. 39, 89 nn. 1, 2, 102 n. 38, 115 n. 1, 435 n. 1, 436 n. 1; ‘Harvest Journal, 1762’, xxxiv n. 7, xxxv and n. 10, xlvi nn. 38, 39, 118–19 n. 1, 313 n. 1, 323 n. 13, 329, 330 nn. 5, 6, 350, 352 nn. 11, 16–17, 422,

453

425, 426, 427 n. 5, 428 nn. 7, 9, 435 n. 1, 437, 439 n. 2; ‘Journal in Edinburgh’, xlvi n. 39, 308 n. 23; ‘Journal of the North Circuit’, xlvi n. 39, 55, 77 n. 5, 81 n. 1, 84 n. 58, 298 n. 5; Journal of a Tour to Corsica, xxxvii; Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, xxxvii, xlii, lxxiii, 46, 81 n. 6, 100–01 n. 27, 215 n. 1; ‘A Minced Pye of Savoury Ingredients’, 442 n. 1 Poems & Songs: ‘Autre fois j’etois poète’, 364 n. 5; ‘B———. A Song’, 40 nn. 4, 5, 41 n. 6, 43 n. 11, 182 n. 9, 308 n. 19; ‘B——— of Soapers the King’, 73 n. 25, 99 n. 14; ‘A Crambo Song on losing my Mistress’, 312; Cub at Newmarket, The, xxxvii n. 19, xl, lxiii– lxiv, 15, 21 n. 47, 64–65 n. 1, 88 n. 1, 91, 92 n. 2, 93 nn. 5, 17, 96, 102 n. 40, 107 n. 4, 109 n. 31, 112 n. 16, 115 n. 6, 123, 124 nn. 7–9, 126, 127 nn. 1, 3, 129 n. 8, 131 n. 8, 158–59 n. 5, 201 and n. 2, 217, 222, 223 n. 12, 231, 242, 248, 269 nn. 24–26, 270 n. 28, 295 n. 3; ‘The Dunce and his Pen’, 190 n. 14; ‘The Lion, the Fox, and the Bull’, 190 n. 14; An Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady, xxxvi and n. 13, xlix n. 57, lii, 56, 64–65 nn. 1, 6, 67 n. 6, 68 nn. 8, 12, 73 n. 33, 74, 75 n. 1, 76 nn. 7, 8, 190–91 n. 17; ‘Epigrams’, 190 n. 14, 267–68 n. 9; An Epistle from Lycidas to Menalcas, 65 n. 6, 73 n. 33; ‘An Epistle to Lady Mcintosh’, 78, 81 n. 2, 85; ‘Epitaph on the Rev. Mr. John Campbell’, 68–69 n. 13, 319 n. 8; ‘An Evening-Walk in the Abbeychurch’, 68–69 n. 13, 167 n. 16; ‘Gilbert Long-nose: A Scotch Character’, xxxvi, 444 n. 12, 445 n. 13; ‘A Hard-hearted wretch’, 319 n. 8; ‘Jack Bluster’, 319 n. 8; ‘Kick on the Bretch’, 109 n. 33; ‘Ladies and Gentleman, your most devoted!’, 5 n. 4, 40 n. 4; No Abolition of Slavery, xxxvi; Ode by Dr. Samuel Johnson to Mrs. Thrale …, xxxvi; ‘Ode on the Death of a Lamb’, 364 n. 5; ‘Ode on the Death of Marshal Keith’, 99 n. 13, 364 n. 5; ‘Ode on an Engagement … a Turkey-Cock’, 265, 270–73, 364 n. 5; ‘Ode on Whistling’, 364 n. 5; ‘Ode to Ambition’, 364 n. 5, 395 n. 1, 398–99 n. 3; ‘Ode to

INDEX

Comedy’, 364 n. 5; ‘Ode to the Elves’, 364 n. 5; ‘Ode to Gluttony’, 40 n. 3, 87 n. 11, 99 n. 13, 128, 129 nn. 6, 9, 10, 144 n. 10, 145–46, 146 and n. 3, 147, 150 n. 1, 151 nn. 6, 8, 157–58, 159 n. 8, 164, 166 n. 12, 293 n. 12, 308 n. 19, 364 n. 5; Ode to Tragedy, xxxvi n. 17, 73 n. 25, 99 nn. 13, 14, 102 n. 41, 109 n. 27, 112 n. 16, 120–21, 162 n. 2, 163, 165, 170, 171 n. 3, 172, 173, 177, 187 n. 10, 295 n. 3, 364 n. 5; ‘Ode Written at Newmarket’, 364 n. 5; ‘On the Contest between the Author of an Estimate …’, 182 n. 8; ‘On Hearing that Mr Digges and Mrs Ward were lost in the Irish seas’, 10–11, n. 6, 316 nn. 3, 4; ‘The Race, An Heroic Ballad’, 197 and n. 5, 300 n. 5; ‘Rebell against eternal Providence’, 45–46 n. 10, 263 n. 3; ‘Song to Lord Kenmore’, 312– 13, 313 n. 2; ‘To the Countess of Galloway,’ 278 n. 17, 319 n. 8; ‘To Miss Kitty Colquhoun’, 174–75, 175 n. 1, 175– 76; ‘The Turnspittiad’, 293 n. 12; ‘Verses on Lord Warkworth’s …’, 53 n. 3 Prologues. ‘Occasional Prologue’ to Cibber’s Love Makes a Man, 5 n. 4, 5–6 n. 5; ‘Prologue’ to The Coquettes, 5 n. 4; Prologue for David ‘Royal’ Ross, 5 n. 4; ‘Prologue’ to F. Sheridan’s The Discovery, lxi, 5 n. 4, 180 n. 10, 372 n. 18, 386 n. 24; ‘Prologue Macbeth’, 5 n. 4, 5–6 n. 5 Other Writings. Account of Corsica, xxxvi, xlii; ‘Boswelliana’, xxxvi, li and n. 65, 152 n. 17, 192 n. 30, 254–55 n. 24; ‘Commonplace Book’, xxxv n. 9; Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, xxxvi and n. 15, xlix n. 57, 192 n. 33, 374, 380, 382, 384 n. 3; Decision of the Court of Session …, 64–65 n. 1; ‘Dedication’ to Garrick, 64–65 n. 1; Dorando, 435 n. 1; ‘Ébauche de ma vie’, lvi, lxviii, 104 n. 4, 107 n. 4, 115 n. 7, 118 n. 1, 273 n. 1, 285 n. 2, 307 n. 17, 338 n. 11; The Essence of the Douglas Cause, xxxvi; From ‘A Gentleman of Scotland’, xxxvi n. 17, 342 n. 2; Give Your Son His Will, xxxv n. 12, 43, 44 n. 2, 44– 45 n. 5, 45 n. 9; ‘History of Erskine & Boswell’s Letters’ MS, xxxvii and n. 20, 428 n. 12; Hypochondriack, 130 n. 1, 245–

46 n. 36, 263 n. 2, 316 n. 2, 414 n. 28; Justiciary Opera, 314 n. 5; A Letter to the People of Scotland (1783), xxxvi; A Letter to the People of Scotland (1785), xxxvi and n. 14; Letters Between The Honourable Andrew Erskine, and James Boswell, Esq. (E–B), xxxvii and n. 19, xli, xlix, liii, liv, lxxiv, 40 n. 3, 46, 56 n. 2, 101 n. 37, 121, 129 nn. 5, 9, 138 n. 4, 146 n. 3, 151 n. 8, 152 n. 23, 155 n. 9, 158 n. 5, 166 nn. 5, 12, 181 n. 4, 189 n. 2, 207 n. 21, 225 n. 1, 229 n. 11, 239, 242 n. 1, 258 n. 2, 259 n. 6, 263 n. 1, 266 n. 2, 268 n. 14, 273 n. 2, 276 nn. 2, 4, 281 n. 2, 283 n. 24, 297 n. 1, 300 n. 1, 305 n. 1, 316 n. 1, 324 nn. 17, 18, 364 n. 5, 379 n. 15, 400, 403 n. 4, 407 n. 2, 418–19, 426, 428 n. 11, 429 n. 16, 433 n. 6, 442 n. 1; Life of Johnson, xxxv, xxxvii, xlii, lxvi n. 132, lxxiii, lxxv, 19 n. 5, 30 n. 1, 33 n. 38, 47–48 nn. 1, 2, 53 n. 1, 179 n. 7, 179–80 n. 9, 263 n. 1, 442 n. 1; ‘Lord B.’s riding’, xxxvi; ‘Memoirs of James Boswell, Esq.’, 41 n. 1, 86 n. 6; Observations … on … Foote’s ‘The Minor’, xxxvi, 54 n. 5, 64–65 n. 1, 93 n. 15, 302 n. 14; ‘Plan of a Volume of Poems’, 22, 53 n. 3, 57, 78, 99 n. 13, 119 n. 2, 129 n. 6, 144 n. 10, 155 n. 22, 158– 59 n. 5, 159 n. 8, 360 n. 6, 364 n. 5; ‘Sceptical Observations’, 322 n. 4; A View of the Edinburgh Theatre, 5 n. 3, 8 n. 1, 10 nn. 1, 2, 11 Boswell, John (1710–80), M.D., bro. of Lord Auchinleck, 78 n. 6, 313 n. 3, 390, 408 n. 5, 415 n. 32, 416 n. 43, 422, 423 nn. 2, 4, 424 n. 5 Boswell, John (1743–?98), bro. of JB, lt., lx, 132 n. 1, 329 n. 1, 340–41 n. 2, 408 n. 5, 415 n. 35, 431 n. 2, 433 n. 6 Boswell, Margaret (Montgomerie) (?1738– 89), wife of JB, 307 n. 11, 439 n. 9 Boswell, Thomas (d. 1513), 1st Laird of Auchinleck, 233 n. 15 Bower, Archibald (1686–1766), S.J., 290, 292 n. 8; A faithful account of Mr. Archibald Bower’s motives, 292 n. 8 Boyce, William (1710–79), composer and organist, 107 n. 2, 199 n. 4 Boyle, John (1707–62), 5th E. of Cork, 122 n. 1

454

INDEX

Boyle, Hon. Robert (1627–91), Irish natural philosopher and chemist, 258 n. 4, 280, 283 n. 18; Occasional reflections, 283 n. 18 Brady, Frank (1924–1986), Boswell in Search of a Wife: 1766–1769, lxix n. 145 Brandon, Lord Baron of. See Crosbie, Maurice, B. of Brandon Brent, Charles (fl. 1740–51), author, 322 n. 2 Brent, Charlotte (1734–1802), later Mrs. Pinto, soprano, 36 n. 76, 199 n. 3 Bridgewater, (unidentified), 144 n. 2 Bristol, 3rd E. of. See Hervey, Augustus John, 3rd E. of Bristol British Magazine, 72 n. 12, 261 n. 3 Brooke, Hester (d. 1782), actress, 55 n. 2 Brooke, J. W. (fl. 1764–66), printer, 332 n. 3 Brown, George (fl. 1710–19), of Knockmarloch and Kilmarnock, 355 n. 52 Brown, James (d. 1788), law clerk to JB, 343 n. 2 Brown, John ‘Estimate’ (1715–66), clergyman, 181, 182 n. 8, 183; An estimate of the manners, 182 n. 8 Brown, (Lancelot) ‘Capability’ (?1716–83), landscape gardener and architect, 64 n. 1 Browne, Sir Thomas (1726–95), Bt., styled 4th V. Kenmare, 46, 48 nn. 8, 9, 10, 49 nn. 14, 15, 51 n. 26 Browne, Sir Valentine (fl. 1588), 49 n. 16 Browne, Sir Valentine (1638–94), Bt., styled 1st V. Kenmare, 51 n. 25 Browne, Sir Valentine (1695–1736), Bt., styled 3rd V. Kenmare, 47, 52 n. 31 Bruce, Charles (1732–71), 5th E. of Elgin, 9th E. of Kincardine, 42 nn. 5, 6, 8 Bruce, James, (1719–90), Auchinleck estate overseer: correspondence with JB, xlv, xlvi–xlvii n. 39, 139 n. 9, 273 n. 1; on JB and father, 416 n. 43; friendship with JB, xlvii, 270, 273 n. 1; on McQuhae, 417 n. 53; as overseer, 390, 415 n. 40, 416 n. 43 Bruce, Janet (b. 1761), dau. of Charles, 42 n. 6 Bruce, Jean (White) (1717–83), wife of James, 390 Bruce, Lady Martha/Matilda (b. 1760), dau. of Charles, 42 nn. 2, 6, 8 Bruce, Miss, lxx, 90 n. 7, 191 n. 23, 208–09 n. 5, 439–40 n. 11

Buchan, C. of. See Steuart, Agnes, C. of Buchan Buchan, 10th E. of. See, Erskine, Henry David, 10th E. of Buchan Buchan, 11th E. of. See Erskine, David Steuart, 11th E. of Buchan Buchanan, George (1506–82), historian and scholar, 73 nn. 26, 27, 114, 115 nn. 8, 9 Buckingham, D. of. See Villiers, George, 2nd D. of Buckingham Budgell, Eustace (1686–1737), M.P., miscellaneous writer, 96, 101 n. 28, 123, 124 n. 6 Burke, Edmund (1729–97), statesman and author, lxvi, 30 n. 1, 75 n. 6, 279 n. 30; Philosophical Enquiry into the … Sublime and Beautiful, 75 n. 6, 306 n. 6 Burnet, Gilbert (1643–1715), Bishop of Salisbury, author: History of His Own Time, 123 n. 7 Burney, Charles (1726–1814), musicologist and author, father of following, 38 n. 128, 102 n. 43 Burney, Frances (1752–1840), diarist, novelist and playwright, 348 n. 7 Burns, Robert (1759–96), poet, 234 n. 22, 314 n. 5, 364 n. 3 Burt, Edward (d. 1755), author, 233 n. 10 Bute, 3rd E. of. See Stuart, John, 3rd E. of Bute Butler, James (1610–88), 12th E. and 1st D. of Ormonde, 50 n. 20 Butler, Samuel (1612–80), 90, 92 n. 2; Hudibras, 92 n. 2 Caesar, Gaius Julius (100–44 B.C.), 202–03 n. 5; De Bello Gallico, 61 n. 12 Cairnie (or Cairney), John (fl. 1745, d. 1791), Edinburgh physician, xxxix, 300 n. 4, 308, 309 and n. 1, 328, 370, 391 ‘Caius’, Gaius Julius Caesar Germanicus (Caligula) (12–41), 410 n. 10 Caledonian Mercury, 10 and n. 6 Cambridge, Richard Owen (1717–1802), poet and essayist, 122 n. 1 Cambridge, University of, 51 n. 28 Campbell, Anne (m. 1708), wife of George, of Treesbank, 337 n. 4 Campbell, Archibald (1682–1761), 3rd D. of Argyll, 98, 100 n. 25, 102 n. 50, 102– 03 n. 51, 307 n. 10

455

INDEX

Campbell, Archibald (d. 1790), of Succoth, W.S., 234 n. 26 Campbell, Bruce (c.1734/5–1813), of Mayfield and Milrig, second cousin of JB, bro. of Hugh, lxv, 355 n. 48, 418 Campbell, George (m. 1708), of Treesbank, 337 n. 4 Campbell, Helen (Macredie, or ‘McCreddy’) (b. ?1739–d. before 1768), of Pierceton, Ayrshire, wife of James, 350, 355 n. 47, 426, 428 nn. 14, 15, 439 nn. 8, 9 Campbell, Hugh (?1703–65), of Barquharrie and Mayfield, father of following, 355 n. 55 Campbell, Hugh (1728–82), of Barquharrie and Mayfield, 355 nn. 48, 51, 55 Campbell, James (?1709–d. 1776), of Treesbank, 350, 355 nn. 46, 47, 49, 50, 425, 426, 428 nn. 6, 14, 437, 439 nn. 8, 9 Campbell, John (1705–82), 4th E. of Loudon, 81 n. 1 Campbell, Margaret (b. 1733), dau. of Hugh Campbell of Barquharrie, 351, 355 n. 51, 428–29 n. 15 Cantelupe, V. See West, John, V. Cantelupe Carillon, Fort, 7 n. 3 Carillon, Heights of, 7 nn. 2, 3 Carlyle, Alexander (1722–1805), Scottish minister, 125 n. 14, 154 n. 6, 159 n. 10 Cash, Arthur, 32–33 n. 26, 33 nn. 27, 36 Cassillis, E. of. See Thomas Kennedy, E. of Cassillis Cassillis House, Ayrshire, seat of the E. of Cassillis, xxxix, 260 n. 1 Cathcart, Charles Schaw (1721–76), 9th B. Cathcart, 100 n. 27 Catholics, 405, 412 n. 19, 413 n. 23 Centlivre, Susanna (1667–1723), dramatist and actress, The Busy Body, 160 n. 6 Cervantes (Saavedra), Miguel de (1547– 1616), Don Quixote, 140 n. 18, 153, 155 n. 15, 156 Chaeronea, Boeotia, Greece, 230, 233 n. 13 Chalmers, James (d. 1783), of Fingland, 313 n. 2, 314 n. 5, 314–15 n. 9 Chandler, Samuel (fl. 1747–75), London printer, 400 Charles I (1600–49), King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 50 n. 20, 410 n. 9, 411 n. 11, 411–12 n. 15 Charles II (1630–85), King of England,

Scotland, and Ireland, 50 nn. 20–21, 93 n. 16, 237, 238 n. 15, 239 n. 26, 276, 277– 78 n. 12 Charles (Carlos) III (1716–88), King of Spain, 232 n. 2 Charles Edward Stuart (1720–88), P. (‘Young Pretender’), 81 n. 1, 86 n. 8, 313 n. 1 Charlotte Sophia (1744–1818), queen of George III, 107 n. 2, 159, 160 n. 5, 191 n. 24, 194, 228 n. 7, 243 n. 5, 277–78 n. 12, 348 n. 6 Chesterfield, Lord. See Stanhope, Philip Dormer, Lord Chesterfield Chevrier, Francois Antoine de (1721–62), author, Testament politique du marechal duc de Belle-Isle, 158 n. 5 Chiffinch, William (?1602–88), A catalogue of the collection of … King James the Second, 289 n. 12 Chillingworth, William (1602–44), Oxford theologian, 317–18 n. 2 Choiseul, Étienne-François de (1719–85), D. de Choiseul, French foreign minister, 232 n. 2 Cholmondeley, Mary (Woffington) (d. 1811), 385 n. 15 Christian’s Magazine, 261 n. 3 Chudleigh, Elizabeth (1720–88), Countess of Bristol, 35 n. 60, 276, 278 n. 19, 344 n. 4 Church of England, 32 n. 24, 32–33 n. 26, 38 n. 124, 41 n. 1, 42–43 n. 10, 258 nn. 1–2, 290, 322 n. 3 Church of Ireland, 49–50 n. 18 Church of Scotland, xliii and n. 32, xlv, 41– 42 n. 1, 42 n. 2, 238 n. 13, 307 n. 17, 317, 318 n. 5, 333 n. 7, 351 n. 3, 354 n. 39, 365 nn. 2, 3, 411–12 n. 15, 412 nn. 16– 18, 20, 417 nn. 51, 54, 430 n. 20 Churchill, Charles (1731–64), poet, political writer: use of allegory, 361 n. 10; in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, 420; meets JB, lxiii, 419, 420 n. 5, 421 n. 7; in JB’s satirical political image, 444–45 n. 12; attacks Crown’s policies, xliii; death of, 443 n. 9; on Elvira, 371, 372 n. 12; as London wit, 443–44 n. 9; and the North Briton, 331, 332 nn. 3, 4, 382, 384 n. 4; and Wilkes, 421 n. 7; correspondence with Wilkes, 420 nn. 1, 3, 421 n. 7

456

INDEX

Writings. ‘Night’, 443–44 n. 9; The prophecy of famine, 383, 387 n. 41, 388 n. 42; The Rosciad, 114, 116 nn. 11, 12, 323 n. 7, 323 n. 12, 443–44 n. 9 Churchill, John (1650–1722), 1st D. of Marlborough, politician and general, 322 n. 3, 367 n. 6 Cibber, Colley (1671–1757), actor and playwright, 215–16 n. 4 Writings. The Careless Husband, 215 and n. 4, 216 Cibber, Theophilus (1703–58), actor and playwright, son of Colley, 265, 267 n. 9; Lives of the poets …, 265, 268 n. 10, 307 n. 14 Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) (106–43 B.C.), xli n. 28, l, 136, 138 n. 3, 183, 184 nn. 3, 4, 230, 233 nn. 14, 16, 410 n. 8; De Officiis, 184 nn. 1, 2 Clancare E. of. See MacCarthy, Donald Clarke, Samuel (1675–1729), D.D., 25, 33 n. 39; Sermons, 33 n. 39; Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, 33 n. 39 Claudius Pulcher, Appius (fl. 72 B.C., d. c. 48 B.C.), Roman politician, 244 n. 16, 247, 409 n. 7, 410 n. 10 Claxton, John (d. 1811), barrister and antiquarian, 36 n. 72 Clement XIII (Carlo Rezzonico) (1693– 1769), pope, 158 n. 2 Clement XIV (Lorenzo Ganganelli) (1705– 74), pope, 158 n. 3 Clerihue, John (d. 1769), Edinburgh tavern keeper, 177–78 n. 1 Clive, Sir Robert (1725–74), B., M.P., 381 n. 4 Clow, James (d. 1788), M.A., professor of Logic, Glasgow, 351, 356 n. 57 Cochrane, Hon. Basil (1701–88), commissioner of customs, bro. of 8th E. of Dundonald, great-uncle of JB: advice to JB, 340 and n. 1, 341 n. 5; correspondence with JB, xxxix, xl, 437; friendship with JB, lx and n. 103, lxi, lxv, lxvi; as loyalist, 326 n. 1; military career of, 326 n. 1 Cochrane, James (1690–1758), maj.-gen., great-uncle of JB, 326 n. 1 Cochrane, James (d. 1762), of Waterside, father of William, advocate, 389 n. 2

Cochrane, John (Dates?), of Waterside, grandfather of William, 389 n. 2 Cochrane, Thomas (1691–1778), 8th E. of Dundonald, 326 n. 1, 352 n. 21 Cochrane, William (b. 1734 or 1737, d. 1766), advocate, lxv, lxviii, 388, 389 and nn. 1–2, 4–5, 408 n. 5 Coke, Lady Mary (Campbell) (1726–1811), 110 n. 38 Collins, William (1721–59), poet, ‘Ode to Fear’, 152 n. 23 Colman, George (1732–94), the elder, dramatist and theatrical manager, 419, 420, 421 n. 8, 443–44 n. 9 Writings. The Connoisseur, 419, 421 n. 8, 443–44 n. 9; The Deuce is in Him, 421 n. 8; The Jealous Wife, 421 n. 8; The Musical Lady, 421 n. 8; Polly Honeycombe, 421 n. 8; Terrae Filius, 421 n. 8 Colquhoun, Katharine (‘Kitty’) (1742– 1804), and JB, xliv, lxviii–lxix, lxx, 90 n. 7, 108 n. 19, 119 n. 15, 124 n. 1, 142 n. 1, 161 and n. 1, 162 n. 6, 172 n. 15, 174, 175 n. 1, 176 n. 1, 189, 191 n. 23, 192 n. 29, 208–09 n. 5, 210, 212 n. 10, 439–40 n. 11; and Thomas Erskine, 189, 194; family of, 161 n. 1; letters of, xxxix; marriage of, 176 n. 1 Colquitt, Rev. Edward (‘Ned’) (fl. 1761–64), Scots Anglican clergyman: and correspondence with JB, xxxix, 42 n. 2; friendship with JB, xliii, lvi, lvii, 41 and n. 1, 42 n. 10, 292 n. 9; at Fountainbridge, 42 n. 3; and Soaping Club, lvii n. 92, 39 n. 1, 41 n. 1, 43 nn. 11, 12, 292 n. 9 Colvill, Rev. Robert (1732–88), 65 n. 4, 67 n. 2 Colville, Lady Elizabeth. See Macfarlane, Lady Elizabeth (Erskine) (later Colville) Colville, Rear-Admiral Alexander (1717– 70), 7th Lord Colville of Culross, 85–86 n. 5 The complete letter-writer … (anon.), 123, 124 n. 11 Congreve, William (1670–1729), playwright, 331, 333 n. 9, 382. Writings. Love for Love, 333 n. 9; The Mourning Bride, 10–11 n. 6, 302 nn. 12, 13, 333 n. 9; The Way of the World, 331, 333 nn. 9, 10

457

INDEX

Constantinople, 278 nn. 14, 15 Cooke, Edward, dramatist, Love’s Triumph, 295 n. 5 Cooper, Anthony Ashley (1671–1713), 3rd E. of Shaftesbury, 305, 307 n. 18 Corelli, Arcangelo (1653–1713), Italian composer, 137, 140 n. 27 Cork, E. of. See Boyle, John, E. of Cork Corsica, xxxvii Cotterell, Sir Charles (1615–1701), M.P., Charles II’s master of ceremonies, 295 n. 5 Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations, 339 n. 15 Court Magazine, 261 n. 3 Cowper, William (1731–1800), poet, 419, 443 n. 9 Craftsman, 101 n. 28 Craigie House, seat of Sir Thomas Wallace, 417 n. 54 Craufurd, Adam (d. 1790) (later Craufurd Newall), commissioner of supply, Ayrshire, 350, 353 n. 30 Creech, William (1745–1815), bookseller, 169 n. 2 Critical Review, 72 n. 9, 116 n. 11, 147, 152 n. 19, 167 n. 25, 190 nn. 7, 9, 10, 12, 300, 304 n. 8, 305, 324 n. 16, 442 n. 2, 443–44 n. 9 Croft, Stephen, 32 n. 23, 34 n. 42, 35 n. 66 Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658), Lord Protector, 38 n. 124, 49 nn. 17, 18, 405, 410 n. 9, 413–14 n. 26 Crookshanks, Charles, E. of Eglinton’s steward, 378 n. 11, 428 n. 12, 445 n. 13 Crosbie, Andrew (1736–85), of Holm, advocate, lx and n. 102 Crosbie, Maurice (c. 1689–1762), B. of Branden, M.P., father of following, 46, 49 n. 11 Crosbie, Hon. William (1716–81), M.P., 49 n. 12 Crowder, Stanley (d. 1798), bookseller, 124 n. 11 Cuba, 292 n. 7 Cudworth, Ralph (1617–88), philosopher, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, 439 n. 4 Cullen, William (1710–90), M.D., professor, 356, 357 n. 3 Culpeper, Nicholas (1616–54), physician,

384 n. 7 Culzean Castle, seat of the E. of Cassillis, 260 n. 1 Cumberland, William Augustus (1721–65), D. of Cumberland, 181 n. 5 Cunningham, John (1729–73), playwright and poet: An elegy on a pile of ruins, 165, 167–68 n. 28; ‘A Prologue, Spoke in the Character of a Sailor’, 199 n. 3 Cunningham, William (b. after 1704–d. 1775), 12th E. of Glencairn, 350, 353– 54 nn. 32, 34, 354 n. 36 Curll, Edmund (1675–1747), bookseller, 119 n. 15 Curtis, Lewis P., 31 n. 16, 35 n. 66 Dalrymple, Sir David (1726–92), Bt., Judge in the Court of Session, styled Lord Hailes: friendship with Lord Auchinleck, 162 n. 3, 436-37 n. 1; correspondence with JB, xxxiii, 41 n. 1, 162 n. 3, 416 n. 43, 422; and JB’s relationship with father, 426–27 n. 2, 429 n. 16; friendship with JB, xlvi, xlix, l, lii, lvii, 35 n. 63, 47–48 n. 1, 162 n. 3, 334 n. 19, 425 n. 4, 433 n. 6, 436– 37 n. 1; on JB’s religious views, 42–43 n. 10; on Northern Circuit, 8–9 n. 2, 298 n. 5; poems of, 161, 162 n. 3; member of Select Society, 162 n. 3; on Utrecht, 432– 33 n. 4 Dalrymple, John (1720–89), later 5th E. of Stair, 350, 354 n. 38 Dance, George (1695–1768), English architect, 214 n. 33 Dance, George (1741–1825), English architect and painter, 212 n. 7 Dance, James. See Love, James (Dance) Darnley, Lord. See Stuart, Henry, Lord Darnley Dashwood, Sir Francis (1708–81), Chancellor of the Exchequer, 420–21 n. 6 Davies, Thomas (?1712–85), bookseller, 186–87 n. 6, 219 and nn. 1, 2, 361–62 n. 11 Dawson, Nancy (?1730-–67), dancer, 198, 199 n. 3 Delaney, Mary Granville (1700–88), artist and correspondent, 288 n. 3 Demosthenes (?384–322 B.C.), Greek orator, 136, 138 n. 2, 230, 233 nn. 11–14

458

INDEX

Dempster, Ann (d. 1805), sister of George, 125 n. 13 Dempster, Agnes Augusta (d. 1787), later Gordon, sister of George, 125 n. 13 Dempster, George (1732–1818), M.P., of Dunnichen, Forfar: as bachelor, 439 n. 11; correspondence with JB, xxxviii, xliv, l, 127, 132 n. 3, 185; and JB’s Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady, xxxvi, 75 n. 1; friendship with JB, xlix, li, lii, liii, lix, lxiv, lxvi, lxxiv, 55, 56 and n. 1, 2, 188, 191 n. 19, 194, 220, 310, 334 n. 19, 375 n. 5, 376 n. 10, 439–40 n. 11, 442 n. 1; and JB’s 1762 harvest jaunt journal, 426, 428 n. 13, 439 n. 2; and JB’s health, 408 n. 5; JB borrows Hume’s History from, 408 n. 6; in JB’s verse epistles, xxxvi and n. 13, 96, 100 n. 24; career of, 56 n. 1; and Crown’s policies, xliii; and Donaldson’s Collection II, xlix n. 57, lviii, 35 n. 63, 191 n. 18; education of, 56 n. 1; and E–B, 428 n. 12; and AE, 185, 186, 187 n. 9; family of, 125 n. 13; family name of, 286 n. 4; and Sir Adam Fergusson, 75 n. 1; financial concerns of, 278 n. 13; Grand Tour of, 56 n. 1, 73 n. 24; and Hume letter hoax, 379– 80; dislikes SJ, lxxv; at Kensington, 422 n. 9, 428 n. 13; letters of, xxxviii, xlii; in London, 123; as M.P., 100 n. 26, 102–03 n. 51, 125 n. 12, 127, 132 nn. 5, 7, 9, 160, 161 n. 11, 165 n. 3, 222 n. 16, 234 n. 30, 242, 266, 288 n. 1, 325 n. 1, 334 n. 18; on Mallet’s Elvira, 8 n. 1, 373–74; personality of, 125 n. 14; politics of, 125 n. 12, 191 n. 21, 195 n. 2, 334 n. 18; publications on, liv; member of Edinburgh Poker Club, 125 n. 14; scholarly interest in, lvi; advocacy for a Scottish militia, xlii, 62–63 n. 25, 125 nn. 12, 14; attends TS’s lectures, 301 n. 8; and ‘Society for Promoting … English Language in Scotland’, 179 n. 8; speeches of, 126 n. 21, 127, 132 nn. 7, 9, 195 n. 2; and theatre, 385 n. 15; attacks Wilkes, 429 n. 18 Writings. Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, xxxvi and n. 15, xlix n. 57, 192 n. 33, 374, 380, 382; Disputatio juridica, l n. 60; Reasons for extending the militia acts, l n. 60 Dempster, Jean (‘Jeany’) (b. 1736), sister of

George, 125 n. 13, 310, 312 n. 15, 428 n. 12, 439–40 n. 11 Dempster, Helen (c.1740–1831), later Burrington, sister of George, 125 n. 13 Dempster, Margaret (‘Peggy’) (1731–64), sister of George, 125 n. 13 Deptford, H.M.S., 269 n. 21 Derrick, Samuel (1724–69), Irish playwright and poet: and the Aeneid, 282 n. 12; at Bath, 177 n. 12; correspondence with JB, xxxix, xl, xliv, 46, 47 n. 1, 48 n. 2; friendship with JB, xlviii–xlix, lix, lx, lxvi, 47–48 n. 1, 144 n. 7, 209 n. 11, 261 n. 9, 378 n. 7; career of, 47 n. 1; antiCromwellian, 49–50 n. 18; and Gentleman, 13–14 n. 1; writings on Ireland, 49 n. 16, 50 nn. 20, 21, 52 nn. 33, 35, 36, 38, 40; anti-Jacobite, 50 n. 23; on James II, 50 n. 23; promotes Killarney, 48 n. 3; public letters, epistles, and dedications of, lxiii–lxiv; dedication to Pomfret, 283 nn. 16, 17; cultivates Pomfret’s patronage, 283 n. 16; verses of, 251, 280 Writings. ‘The Apparition’, 284 n. 31; The Battle of Lora, 242, 246 n. 45, 248, 280, 282 nn. 7, 14, 283 nn. 19, 20, 22– 25, 284 nn. 26–27, 29; A Collection of travels, 282 n. 15; Derrick’s Jests, or the Wit’s Chronicle, 47–48 n. 1 Dibdin, Charles (d. 1798), actor, composer, author, 36 n. 76 Dick, Sir Alexander (Cunningham) (1703– 85), of Prestonfield, Bt., M.D., lx and n. 103, lxii and n. 122, 160, 161 nn. 9, 10, 179 n. 8, 364 n. 3 Dick, John (d. 1684), Scottish author, 267 n. 4 Digges, Dudley (d. 1779), captain of H.M.S. Deptford, bro. of WD, 269 n. 21, 387 n. 35 Digges, Elizabeth (West) (m. 1724, d. 1762), mother of WD, 3 n. 1, 362 n. 18 Digges, Col. Thomas (Esq.) (fl. 1713–40, d. before 1762), of Chilham Castle, Kent, 3 n. 1 Digges, West Dudley (1720 or 1726–86), gentleman-actor: acting career of, lix, 3– 4 n. 1, 6 n. 6, 10 and n. 6, 239 n. 22; and George Anne Bellamy, 334–35 n. 20, 371 n. 6; as ‘Mr. Bellamy’, 333 n. 6;

459

INDEX

biographical account of, 3–4 n. 1; correspondence with JB, xxxviii–xxxix, xliv, lxviii, 332 n. 4, 334 n. 18, 360 n. 3, 447; debt to JB, 388 n. 42; friendship with JB, xlix, lvi, lviii, lix, lx, lxvi, 5 n. 3, 208– 09 n. 5, 286 n. 7, 332 n. 2, 334 n. 19, 378 n. 7, 379; and JB’s health, 408 n. 5; JB sends North Briton to, 327–28, 335, 340, 346, 368, 430 n. 20; on JB’s prologues, 4; JB’s verse epistles to, 9–10; and Canongate Concert Hall, 161 n. 8, 333 n. 6; and Crown’s policies, xliii; epicureanism of, 338 n. 10; family of, 362 n. 18, 387 n. 35; financial concerns of, 278 n. 13; homes of, 371 n. 6, 387 n. 28; and labor dispute, 8 n. 1; and the Loves, 8 n. 1; letters of, xxxviii, xxxix; as libertine, xliv–xlv; as Macheath, 5 n. 3, 332 n. 2; postal address of, 360 n. 1; retirement of, 362 n. 16; compared to Roscius, 236, 239 n. 21; and Sheridans, 386 n. 20; acts in TS’s Smock Alley company, 385 n. 19; theatrical exile of, 10 nn. 1, 5; plays Zanga, 316 n. 3 Dilly, Charles (1739–1807), bookseller, bro. of following, lviii Dilly, Edward (1732–79), bookseller, lviii Dio Cassius (c. 155–?235), Roman Senator and historian, 202–03 n. 5 Dodsley, James (1724–97), bro. of following, bookseller, 35 n. 63, 72 n. 12, 124 n. 8, 201 and n. 1, 304 n. 7, 306 n. 8 Dodsley, Robert (1703–64), author and bookseller: and Annual Register, 304 n. 7; publishes Burke, 75–76 n. 6; business of, 35 n. 63, 67, 124 n. 8, 201 n. 1; collection of English poets, xliii, lviii; Collection of Poems by Several Hands, xliii n. 31, 69 n. 15, 188, 190 n. 16, 194, 203 nn. 10, 11; publishes Cub, 123, 124 n. 7, 126, 128, 130, 201 and nn. 2–3, 222, 223 n. 12, 234 n. 27, 242, 248, 270 n. 28; and Donaldson’s Collection I & II, 35 n. 63, 72 n. 12, 144 n. 6, 190 n. 16, 202; and AE, 98 n. 8; as footman, 69 n. 16; and parodies of Gray’s Elegy, 287 nn. 10, 11; on contemporary poetry, 265; publishes Sheridan, 135 n. 4; shop of, 20 n. 28, 35 n. 64, 188; as Sterne’s agent and publisher, 26, 35 n. 62, 35 n. 63, 38 n. 118; and Tristram Shandy, 31 n. 9, 35 n. 63; publishes Two Lyric Epistles,

20 n. 29; and Walpole’s Catalogue of the royal and noble authors of England, 306 n. 8; publishes The World essays, 122 n. 1 Doig, Margaret (‘Peggy’), mother of JB’s illegitimate child, 309, 328 Donaldson, Alexander (bap. 1724, d. 1794), Edinburgh bookseller: and Berington’s Memoirs of Sigr Gaudentio di Lucca, 285, 286 n. 5; and JB’s Cub, 234 n. 27, 242; friendship with JB, lvi, lviii and nn. 95, 96, 98, lix, 64 n. 1, 72 n. 15, 143, 144 n. 2, 145, 154, 157, 201 and n. 4, 281, 304, 334 n. 19; publishes JB, 162 n. 2, 170; business of, 64 n. 1, 65 n. 2, 95, 144 n. 5, 147, 153; Collection I (1760), xl, 35 n. 63, 56 n. 2, 65 n. 4, 67 n. 2, 69 n. 15, 72 nn. 9, 12, 98 nn. 3–8, 98–99 n. 10, 106–07 n. 1, 144 n. 8, 190–91 n. 17, 194, 203 n. 10, 210; Collection II (1762), xliii n. 31, lxix, 10 nn. 3, 4, 43 n. 11, 53 n. 3, 64–65 n. 1, 65 nn. 4–5, 66 and n. 7, 67, 69 n. 15, 72 nn. 9, 12, 98 n. 9, 106–07 n. 1, 123, 128, 129 nn. 4, 7, 130, 144 n. 8, 155 n. 13, 156, 185, 186 nn. 4–6, 187 n. 7, 190 nn. 13, 15–17, 192 n. 30, 194, 196 and nn. 3–4, 197 n. 1, 203 nn. 6, 11, 13, 204, 206 nn. 18, 19, 207, 210, 263 n. 6, 266, 270 n. 30, 281, 298 n. 6, 305, 308 n. 19, 316 n. 4, 324 n. 16, 360 n. 6; “Collection III”, plans for, 66 n. 9, 209, 211 n. 3, 263 and n. 6, 264; and Dodsley, 144 n. 6; Donaldson v. Becket, xliii n. 31; and AE, 98 n. 9, 147, 152 n. 19, 163, 164, 165, 167 n. 25, 183, 249, 303, 304 n. 8; family of, 151 n. 13; nationalist collections of poetry, xliii; shop of, 193, 240; The Works of Shakespear, 64–65 n. 1; and works of Swift, 98–99 n. 10 Donaldson, Collin (?d. 29 Oct. 1776), London innkeeper, 424 and n. 3 Donaldson, James (1751–1830), Edinburgh bookseller, son of Alexander, 151 n. 13 Donaldson, John (b. 1729, fl. 1782), Edinburgh bookseller, bro. of Alexander, 64 n. 1, 286 n. 5 Dorset, 6th E. of. See Sackville, Charles, 6th E. of Dorset Douglas, Andrew, surgeon, 331 n. 1, 346, 368, 369 n. 3, 371 n. 1, 374, 375 nn. 3, 4, 376, 377 nn. 2, 3, 384–85 n. 12, 408 n. 5

460

INDEX

Douglas, Catherine (Hyde) (1700–77), Duchess of Queensberry, 361 n. 7 Douglas, Charles (1698–1778), 3rd D. of Queensberry, 2nd D. of Dover: correspondence with JB, xxxix, xliii, 393 n. 6; friendship with JB, lxiv, and JB’s quest for military commission, xlii, 249, 255 and n. 1, 325–26, 330 n. 7, 336, 339, 344–45, 345 nn. 1–4, 346 and n. 5, 348 n. 6, 393 n. 3, 394 n. 7, 395 n. 1; career of, 255 n. 1; and accession of George III, xlii; friend to George III, 255 n. 1; married Lady Catherine Hyde, 119 n. 15; residences of, 256 n. 2; as Scottish patron, xliii Douglas, Francis (1719–86), of Aberdeen, printer and author, 191 n. 18 Douglas, George, son of Andrew, 331–32 n. 1 Douglas, James (1697–1715), styled E. of Drumlanrig, 254 n. 19 Douglas, John (1721–1807), Bishop of Salisbury: Six letters from A——d B——r, 292 n. 8 Douglas Cause, xxxvii, 292 n. 8, 358 n. 16, 435 n. 1, 436 n. 1 Douglas, Heron & Co., 358 n. 14 Drake, Lt.-Col. (fl. 1649–52), maternal grandfather of Derrick, 49–50 n. 18 Drummond, Alexander (d. 1769), author: Travels Through Different Cities, 82 n. 12 Drummond, Robert Hay (1711–76), Bishop of Salisbury, later Archbishop of York, p. 107 n. 2 Drumsheugh House, lv Dryden, John (1631–1700), poet, satirist, dramatist, 10 n. 2, 233 nn. 13, 14, 282 n. 9, 377, 378 n. 14, 408 n. 6; ‘Alexander’s Feast’, 74, 76 n. 8, 215; Cymon and Iphigenia, 31 n. 17 Dugdale, Mr. (possibly James, ?d. 1790, or Josias), steward to John West, 1st E. de La Warr, 383, 387 n. 30 Dun, Mr, ?London tailor, 380 Dun, Rev. John (1723–92), JB’s tutor, minister of Auchinleck parish, 107 n. 4, 108 n. 12, 115 n. 7, 285 n. 2, 407, 417 nn. 49, 50 Duncombe, John (1729–86), poet, An evening contemplation, 287 n. 10 Dundas, Henry (1742–1811), 1st V. Melville, British statesman, 435 n. 1 Dundas, Robert (1713–87), the Younger, of

Arniston, Lord President, Court of Session: correspondence with Lord Auchinleck, 435 n. 1; correspondence with JB, xxxix, 434; JB on, 435 n. 1; legal career of, 434 n. 14, 435 n. 1, 436; political career of, 256 n. 4, 435 n. 1; as Scottish patron, xliii Dundee, V. See Graham, John, V. Dundee Dundonald, 8th E. of. See Cochrane, Thomas, 8th E. of Dundonald Dunk, George Montagu (1716–71), 2nd E. of Halifax, Lord of Trade, 339 n. 15 Dunmore, Lord. See Murray, John, 4th E. of Dunmore Dutens, Louis (1730–1812), French author and diplomat, lxxvii Dymocke, John (d, 1784), of Scrivelsby, Lincolnshire, king’s champion, 94 n. 20 East India Company, 214 n. 34, 341 n. 7, 379 Echard, Laurence (c. 1670–1730), historian: A General Ecclesiastical History, 439 n. 4 Edgecumbe, Richard (1716–61), 2nd B. of, 36 n. 68 EDINBURGH Coffee-houses. Balfour’s, 360, n. 1, 447; John’s, 164, 167 n. 15, 360 n. 1, 383 Clubs. Antemanum, 39 n. 1; Auld Herioters, 39 n. 1; Auld Watsoners, 39 n. 1; Bannet Lairds, 39 n. 1; Black Wigs, 39 n. 1; Boar, 39 n. 1; Caledonian, 39 n. 1; Cape, 39 n. 1; Creehallions, 39 n. 1; Dirty, 39 n. 1; Faculty, 39 n. 1; Hell-Fire, 39 n. 1, 443 n. 9; Horn Order, 39 n. 1; Industrious Company, 39 n. 1; LawnMarket or Whey, 39 n. 1; New, 39 n. 1; Odd Fellows, 39 n. 1; Pious (Pye-House), 39 n. 1; Poker, 62–63 n. 25, 125 n. 14; Select Society, 146 n. 2, 154 n. 7, 155 n. 10, 162 n. 3, 179 n. 8, 322 n. 4; Skull, 39 n. 1; Soaping, xliv, lvii and n. 92, lxvi, 5 n 4, 39 n. 1, 40 nn. 2, 4, 5, 42 nn. 2, 9, 42–43 n. 10, 91, 92, 93 n. 7, 99 n. 15, 102 n. 48, 136, 139, n. 7, 140–41 n. 30, 147, 151 n. 9, 163, 208–09 n. 5, 221 n. 10, 286 n. 7, 324 n. 17; Spend-Thrift, 39 n. 1; Sweating, 39 n. 1; Union, 39 n. 1; Wig, 39 n. 1 Institutions. Abbey of Holyroodhouse, 164, 167 n. 16, 170, 171 n. 8, 173, 189,

461

INDEX

194; Advocate’s Library, 241, 243 nn. 13, 14, 247, 258 n. 5; Caledonian Hunt, 300 n. 5; Canongate prison, 3–4 n. 1; Canongate-Kilwinning Masonic Lodge, 309 n. 1, 313 n. 3; City Guard, 195 n. 5; Company of Hunters, 300 n. 5; Edinburgh Assembly, 211 n. 4, 239 n. 19; Edinburgh Castle, 212 n. 14; University of Edinburgh, 288 n. 8, 433 n. 7; James Mundell’s academy, West Bow, 115 n. 7, 254 n. 24; St. Giles’s Church, 383–84 n. 2; Tolbooth prison, 148, 252 n. 3 Streets, Squares, Districts, and Ports. Campbell’s Land, 210, 215 n. 39; Canongate, 71 n. 1, 172 n. 11, 173, 215 n. 39, 215 n. 1, 277 n. 7, 319, 320 n. 7, 371 n. 7; Castle Hill, 210, 212 n. 14, 236, 239 n. 24, 277 n. 7; Cowgate, 215 and n. 1, 216; Chessel’s Land, 71 n. 1; George’s Square, 383–84 n. 2; Grassmarket, 249, 252 n. 3, 319 n. 1; High St., 383–84 n. 2; Meadow, 124 n. 4, 383–84 n. 2; Parliament Close, xxxix, 210, 214 n. 38, 319 and n. 1; ‘Stripping Close’, Castle Hill, 252 n. 14 Taverns and Inns. John Clerihue’s, 177, 178 n. 1; Paxton’s Inn, 319 n. 1; Peter Ramsay’s, 222 and n. 3; Thomas Nicolson’s Tavern, West Bow, lvii and n. 92, lviii, 40 nn. 3, 4, 42 n. 9, 158, 159 n. 10, 208–09 n. 5, 221 n. 10, 285, 286 n. 7 Theatres. Canongate Concert Hall (a.k.a. Edinburgh Theatre), 3 n. 1, 5 n. 5, 13–14 n. 1, 139 n. 8, 160 n. 6, 161 n. 8, 331, 333 nn. 6, 11; Theatre Royal, 5 n. 4 Edinburgh Advertiser, xxxvi n. 14, 151 n. 13 Edinburgh Chronicle, 12 n. 2 Edinburgh Magazine, 261 n. 3 Edinburgh Miscellany, 305, 306 nn. 7, 9, 307 n. 14 Edward III (1327–77), King of England, 86 n. 6 Edward VI (1537–53), King of England, 180, 181 n. 2, 182 Edward Augustus (1739–67), D. of York: and JB’s ‘Dedication’ to Cub at Newmarket, xxxvii n. 19, xl, lxiii–lxiv, 21 n. 47, 126, 127 nn. 1, 3, 269 n. 25; and JB’s Cub, 93 n. 17, 217, 269 n. 24; JB attempts to befriend, xliii; introduced to JB, 21 n. 47; and JB’s verse epistles, 15, 18, 37 nn. 78,

91; and Lady Mary Coke, 110 n. 38; death of, 127 n. 2; and Eglinton, 21 nn. 46, 47, 37 n. 89, 110 n. 37; naval service of, 37 n. 84, 127 n. 2; patronage of, 27; and Sterne, 30 n. 2 Egerton, John (1721–87), Bishop of Bangor, later Bishop of Lichfield, Coventry, and Durham, 74, 76 n. 9; A sermon preached … the 11th day of February, 1757, 76 n. 9; A sermon preached … January 30, 1761, 76 n. 9 Eglinton, 10th E. of. See Montgomerie, Alexander, 10th E. of Eglinton Egremont, E. of. See Wyndham, George O’Brien, 3rd E. of Egremont Elibank, Lord. See Murray, Patrick, Lord Elibank Elizabeth I (1533–1603), Queen of England and Ireland, lxx, 46, 47–48 n. 1, 49 n. 16 Elliot, Sir Gilbert (1693–1766), Lord Minto, Lord Justice Clerk, 261 n. 11, 444 n. 12 Elliot, Sir Gilbert (1722–77), 3rd Bt. of Minto, M.P., poet, philosopher, 444 n. 12 Ellis, Welbore (1713–1802), later B. Mendip, secretary at war, 395 n. 3 Ennius (Quintus Ennius) (239–169 B.C.), Latin poet and playwright, 70, 72 n. 21 Erskine, Alexander (d. 1756), 5th E. of Kellie, 56 n. 2, 115–16 n. 9, 361 n. 7 Erskine, Alexander (fl. 1752), smith, at Halyburton’s, Grassmarket West, 95, 99 n. 17 Erskine, Hon. Andrew (1740–93): in Aberdeen, 296, 297 and nn. 1, 2, 298 n. 7, 311 n. 5; on Ancients v. Moderns debate, 295 n. 2; aunts of, 197 n. 4; as bachelor, 439 n. 11; born in Carnbee, Fife, 300 nn. 2, 3; correspondence with JB, xxxviii–xxxix, xl, xli, xliv, l, lv, lviii, lxxiii, lxxvii–lxxviii, 64–65 n. 1, 285 n. 3, 288 n. 9, 294, 325 n. 19, 442 n. 1, 444 n. 12, 447; and JB’s Cub, 93 n. 17; on JB’s dancing, 94 n. 19; and JB’s dedication to Ode to Tragedy, 120; and JB’s Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady, xxxvi; familial relationship to JB, lxv, 86 n. 6, 99 n. 19; friendship with JB, xlv–xlvi n. 35, xlix, li–lv and n. 79, lvi, lix, lxvi, lxxiv, 56 and n. 2, 57, 182 n. 10, 285, 305 n. 1, 345 n. 2, 361 n. 7, 375 n. 5, 398, 406,

462

INDEX

439–40 n. 11, 442 n. 1, 445 n. 13; and JB’s health, 408 n. 5; asks JB for loan, 442 n. 1; on JB in London, 415 n. 39; and JB’s 1762–63 London journal, xlvi n. 38; meets JB, 212 n. 13, 275 and n. 3; in JB’s verse epistles, xxxvi and n. 13, xl; JB’s verse epistles to, 57; influence on JB’s writing, xlix n. 55; as ‘Capt. Erskine’ or ‘Capt. Andrew’, 67 n. 1, 267 n. 3, 365; and Church of Scotland, 318 n. 5; as ‘Dash’, 310, 311 n. 2; decline of, lv; and GD, 125 n. 12, 161 n. 11; depression of, 281 n. 3, 310, 311 n. 7, 317; on Derrick’s poetry, 280, 282 n. 15, 283 n. 25; and Donaldson’s Collections I & II, xlix n. 57, l n. 60, lviii, 35 n. 63, 65 nn. 4, 6, 67 n. 2, 72 nn. 8, 12, 98 nn. 3, 4, 124 nn. 5, 10, 144 n. 1, 153, 155 n. 11, 186 n. 4, 191 n. 18, 196 nn. 3, 4, 206 n. 18, 262 n. 13, 270 n. 30, 319 n. 8; in Edinburgh, 305 n. 1; education of, 63 n. 26; and Eglinton, 363–64 n. 2, 365 and nn. 1, 4, 6, 368 n. 8; family home of, 371–72 n. 7; fashion of, 252 n. 13; visits Flexney’s shop, London, 403 n. 4; at Fort George, xlii, 61 n. 3, 87 n. 12, 189 n. 2, 238 n. 7; parodies Gray’s Elegy, 287 n. 10; handwriting of, 186 n. 1; and Hume letter hoax, 379–80; impecuniousness of, 115 n. 5, 252 n. 13, 278 n. 13; Jacobite ancestry of, 239 n. 27; dislikes SJ, lxxv; correspondence with JJ, lv; and Kames, 266–67 n. 2; at Kellie Castle, 286 n. 6, 300 n. 2, 305 n. 1; to Kensington, 422 n. 9, 428 n. 13; on law, 177 n. 4; letters of, xxxix; letters of, revised, xxxviii; lineage of, 293 n. 11; enjoys literary mimicry, 259 n. 6; in London, 325 n. 19, 337, 338 n. 13; and Sir James Macdonald, 400 n. 8; on Mallet’s Elvira, 8 n. 1, 373–74; interest in Mary, Queen of Scots, 172 n. 10; military career of, 62 n. 22, 73 n. 28, 87 n. 12, 102 n. 46, 152 n. 15, 202 n. 1, 221 n. 15, 238 n. 10, 291 and n. 3, 293 nn. 11, 13, 14, 299 n. 11; musical talents of, 252 n. 9; at New Tarbet, 123, 152 n. 19, 172 n. 15, 196 n. 2, 222, 286 n. 6; personality of, 56 n. 2, 93 n. 6, 291 n. 6, 311 n. 2; physical appearance of, 126 n. 19, 253 n. 16, 290, 291 nn. 1, 2; poetry

of, 93 n. 14, 124 n. 2, 267 n. 8 ; fondness for George Robertson, 298 n. 6; scholarly interest in, lvi; attends TS’s lectures, 301 n. 8; and Soaping Club, lvii and n. 92, 39 n. 1, 40 n. 2, 43 n. 12, 56 n. 2, 93 n. 7, 139 n. 7; suicide of, lvi, 293 n. 11; meets WJT, lv; and theatre, 385 n. 15; verse of, xl, 294; verse epistles of, 55 Writings. ‘Adella’, 196 n. 4; The Cloaciniad, l n. 60, 72 n. 9, 98–99 n. 10, 124 n. 5, 184 n. 1, 260, 262 n. 13, 308 n. 20; ‘The Chairmen’, 98 n. 3, 153, 155 n. 11, 266–67 n. 2; Critical Strictures on the New Tragedy of Elvira, xxxvi and n. 15, xlix n. 57, 192 n. 33, 374, 380, 382; ‘Elegies’, 98 n. 7; ‘An Epistle from the Old Chaise’, 98 n. 4, 298 n. 6, 288–99 n. 10; ‘An Epistle to a Gentleman’, 98 n. 4, 125 n. 12; ‘An Epistle to Mr. D——n’, 98 n. 4, 123, 124 n. 10; ‘The Hare and the Redbreast. A Fable’, 72 n. 8, 98 n. 5; ‘How bless’d is the man’, 98 n. 6; ‘How Sweet This Lone Vale, lv, 56 n. 2; ‘The Lawyer’s Overthrow’, 215 n. 40; ‘Mary’s Charms’, lv, 56 n. 2; ‘To Midnight. An Ode’, 98 n. 8, 145, 146 nn. 1, 2, 147, 151 n. 6, 153, 155 nn. 9, 11, 266 n. 2; ‘Morna’, 196 n. 4; ‘Ode on the Death of Three Kittens’, 250– 51, 263 n. 5; ‘Ode to Fear’, 148, 152 n. 23, 153; ‘Ode to Memory’, 72 n. 9, 98 n. 8, 308 n. 19; ‘Ode to Pity’, 72 n. 9, 98 n. 8, 123, 124 n. 10, 270 nn. 29, 30, 307 n. 16, 308 n. 19; ‘Ode upon a Jew’s Harp’, 138; ‘A Pastoral Ballad’, 98 n. 6; ‘The Pigs, an Elegy’, 143, 144 and n. 1, 293 n. 12; ‘See the moon’, 252 n. 9; She’s Not Him …, 56 n. 2; ‘The Starling, the Crows, the Fox, and the Hawk. A Fable’, 72 n. 8, 98 n. 5; Town-Eclogues, lv, 98 n. 3; Two odes, l n. 60, 98 n. 8, 165, 168 n. 31, 302 n. 15, 321; “The Witch’, 98 n. 6 Erskine, Lady Anne (1735–1802), sister of Andrew: JB’s meeting with, 86 n. 8, 337, 338 n. 13; JB’s mention of, 84, 85 n. 3, 88, 97, 102 n. 42, 141 n. 35, 154, 181, 242; JB’s tributes to, lxix, lxxi; and AE, 123, 125 n. 16, 164, 166 n. 11; at New Tarbet, 123, 129 n. 3, 155 n. 21 Erskine, Capt. the Hon. Archibald (1736– 97), 7th E. of Kellie, bro. of Andrew: JB’s

463

INDEX

mention of, lv, 181, 189, 192 n. 31, 203; death of, 293 n. 11; visits Edinburgh, 204 n. 1, 207 and n. 1, 210, 212 n. 12; and E– B, 428 n. 12; as brother to AE, 99–100 n. 20, 164, 166 n. 11; sells Kellie lands, 92 n. 1; and London, 203, 204 n. 1, 207, 210, 212 n. 12; military career of, 99–100 n. 20; political career of, 165 n. 3 Erskine, Ebenezer (1680–1754), Scottish divine, 412 n. 20 Erskine, Euphemia (Cochrane) (?1693– ?1721), maternal grandmother of JB, 326 n. 1 Erskine, Euphemia. See Boswell, Euphemia (Erskine) Erskine, Sir Henry (or Harry) (d. 1765), 5th Bt. of Alva and Cambuskenneth, lt.-gen., 125 n. 12, 444–45 n. 12 Erskine, Henry David (1710–67), 10th E. of Buchan, 77 n. 4 Erskine, Janet (Pitcairn) (1699–1775), Dowager Countess of Kellie, mother of Andrew: JB’s meeting with, 86 n. 8; JB’s mention of, 85 n. 2, 141 n. 36, 220, 221 n. 14; family of, 197 n. 4; studies history, 225, 226 n. 9 Erskine, Lady Janet (‘Jenny’) (1742–70), sister of Andrew: and ‘Appie McNab’, 240, 243 n. 12, 247; and JB, 128, 129 n. 3, 308, 310, 312 n. 16; JB’s meeting with, 86 n. 8; JB’s mention of, 84, 85 n. 4, 88, 97, 102 n. 44, 141 n. 35; and JB’s romantic interests, 208–09 n. 5, 242 n. 2; JB’s tributes to, lxix, lxxi, 196 n. 2; visits Edinburgh, 182 n. 10; marriage of, 357 n. 10; taste for Italian music, 241, 247 Erskine, John (d. c. 1555), 5th Lord Erskine, 86 n. 6, 99 n. 19 Erskine, John (d. 1572), 6th Lord Erskine, 1st (or 6th) E. of Mar, 99 nn. 18, 19, 115– 16 n. 9 Erskine, John Francis (1741–1825), 7th (or 24th) E. of Mar, lt., 401 n. 6 Erskine, Thomas (1566–1639), 1st E. of Kellie (or Kelly), 99 n. 19 Erskine, Thomas Alexander (1732–81), 6th E. of Kellie, 56 n. 2, 97, 102 n. 43, 185, 187 n. 8; musical talents of, 252 n. 9; visits Edinburgh, 182 n. 10; writes ballad, on Kelso races, 187 n. 8, 312 n. 13; and

Katharine Colquhoun, 189, 192 n. 28, 194 Euripides (c. 480–06 B.C.), Greek tragic dramatist, 69, 71 n. 2 European Magazine, lvi Ewer, John (d. 1774), Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 Fairfax, Brian (1633–1711), A catalogue of the curious collection … of George Villiers, 289 n. 12 Farquhar, George (1677–1707), dramatist: The Beaux’ Stratagem, 160 n. 6; The Constant Couple, 374–75 n. 1; Twin Rivals, 389 n. 4 Fauconberg, Lord. See Belasyse, Thomas, Lord Fauconberg Fawkes, Francis (1720–77), M.A., Vicar of Orpington, Kent, Original poems and translations, 204, 207 n. 20 Ferdinand (1721–92), D. of BrunswickLüneburg, prince of house of Brunswick, 300 and n. 6, 301 n. 7, 325 n. 1 Ferguson, James (‘Old Pitfour’) (c. 1700/ 1701–77) of Pitfour, the elder, xxxix, 226 n. 7, 436 and n. 1 Ferguson, James (‘Jamie’) (‘Young Pitfour’) (1735–1820), of Pitfour, son of above, 356, 358 n. 15, 428 n. 12, 436 and n. 1 Fergusson, Sir Adam (1733–1813), 3rd Bt. of Kilkerran, liv, 56 n. 1, 62–63 n. 25, 73 n. 24, 243 n. 13, 356, 358 n. 16 Fergusson, Charles, bro. of above, 358 n. 16 Fergusson, Rev. Joseph (?1719–91), tutor to Boswell children, 115 n. 7 Fergusson, Robert (1750–74), poet, 169 n. 2, 383–84 n. 2 Fermor, George (1722–85), 2nd E. of Pomfret, 48 n. 9, 280, 283 nn. 16, 17 Fern, Mr., master of stores, Fort George, 61 nn. 3, 6 Ferrers, 4th E. See Shirley, Laurence, 4th E. of Ferrers Fielding, Henry (1707–54), novelist, lxxvii, 168 n. 29; The Author’s Farce, 311 n. 2; Joseph Andrews, 439 n. 10; Shamela, 69 n. 17; Tom Jones, 108–09 n. 23, 141, 162 nn. 4, 5, 226 n. 8, 263 n. 3; Tom Thumb, 206 n. 16 Finch, Daniel (1689–1769), 8th E. of Winchelsea, 36 n. 68

464

INDEX

Fingal, Scots Highland folk hero, 96, 101 n. 34, 183, 184 n. 6 Fingland. See Chalmers, John, of Fingland Fitzroy, Augustus Henry (1735–1811), 3rd D. of Grafton, 283 n. 16 Fletcher, George (b. c. 1751), seaman, 380 Flexney, William (1731–1808), London bookseller, xxxiii, 400, 403 n. 4, 428 n. 12 Flodden Field, Northumberland, 230, 233 n. 16 Foote, George Talbot Hatley (c. 1744–1821), of Chart, Kent, 403 and n. 7, 404 n. 8 Foote, Samuel (1720–77), actor and dramatist, 424–25 n. 3; The Minor, 112 n. 23; The Liar, 112–13 n. 23; Taste, 214 n. 32 Forbes, Sir William (1739–1806), banker and author, 309 n. 1 Ford, Robert (1846–1905) 199 n. 3 Fordyce, Alexander (d. 1789), banker, 358 n. 14 Fordyce, John (c. 1738–1809), of Ayton, Berwickshire, banker, 100 n. 26, 356, 358 n. 14 Fordyce, Grant, & Co., 358 n. 14 Forrester, Alexander, Esq. (?1711–87), 100 n. 26, 102 n. 51 Fort Augustus, 62 n. 15 Fort George, xxxix, 61 nn. 3, 6, 11, 12, 62 nn. 15, 22, 24, 188, 189 n. 2, 196 n. 1, 238 n. 7, 275 and n. 3 Fouquet, Marechal Charles Louis Auguste de (1684–1761), duc de Belle-Isle, Marshal of France, 156, 158 n. 5 Fountainbridge, near Edinburgh, xxxix Fox, Charles (1749–1806), Whig politician, 213 n. 21 Fox, Henry (1705–74), 1st B. Holland, Memoirs, 21 n. 46 Francis I (1708–65), holy Roman emperor, 252 n. 2 Francklin, Thomas (1721–84), professor of Greek, 190 n. 7 Franklin, Benjamin (1706–90), 213 n. 25 Fraser, Alexander (1699–1775), Lord Strichen, 87 n. 14 Frederick Louis (1707–51), prince of Wales, 255 n. 1, 282 n. 11, 290 n. 13, 393 n. 1 Frederick II (‘the Great’) (1712–86), King

of Prussia, 62 nn. 13, 14, 124, 126 nn. 20, 21, 156, 158 n. 4, 235, 238 nn. 10, 11, 300–01 n. 6 Fulham, John (d. 1777), M.A., Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 Galba (Servius Sulpicius) (3 B.C.–69 A.D.), Roman emperor, 409 n. 7 Galland, Antoine (1646–1715), French Orientalist, 82 n. 12 Galloway, Countess of. See Stewart, Catherine (Cochrane), Countess of Galloway Galloway, 6th E. of. See Stewart, Alexander, 6th E. of Galloway Galloway House, 311 n. 9 Garrick, David (1717–79), actor, dramatist and theatre manager: as actor, lix, 83 n. 36, 134; correspondence with JB, lxvi, 30 n. 1; JB’s esteem for, 323 n. 12, 334 n. 14, 386 n. 25; friendship with JB, 260, 261 n. 9; on Charlotte Brent, 36 n. 76; and George Coleman, 421 n. 8; coronation pageant of, 179 n. 5, 323 n. 9; and The Discovery, 385 n. 15; and Drury Lane, 111, 112 nn. 17, 22, 135 n. 12, 136 n. 13, 261 n. 10, 321, 322–23 n. 8, 323 nn. 10, 11, 334 n. 14, 334–35 n. 20, 372 n. 14; fame of, 323 n. 9; and Gentleman, lxiii; plays Hamlet, 112 n. 22; dispute with Dr. Hill, 168 n. 29; in Home’s Siege of Aquileia, 261 n. 10; plays King Lear, 321, 323 n. 10; and Robert Lloyd, 443–44 n. 9; as London wit, 443–44 n. 9; and James Love, 8 n. 1; rivalry with Rich’s Covent Garden, 112 n. 22, 136 n. 13; rivalry with TS, 136 n. 13; and Sterne, 30 n. 1, 31 n. 9, 35 n. 62; tragedies, acting in, 331 Writings. Harlequin’s Invasion, 199 n. 4; Lethe, 160 n. 6; A Peep Behind the Curtain, 10 n. 2 Gay, John (1685–1732), poet and dramatist, lxxiv, 25, 33 n. 38, 57, 58 n. 2; The Beggar’s Opera, lxiv–lxv, 8 n. 1, 33 n. 38, 36 nn. 75, 76, 41 n. 7, 108 n. 22, 112 n. 6, 199 n. 3, 208–09 n. 5, 213 n. 22, 333 n. 6; Polly, 255 n. 1; What D’Ye Call It, 385 n. 14 General list of His Majesty’s land forces, 232 n. 9 General Magazine of Arts and Sciences, 261 n. 3

465

INDEX

Gentleman, Francis (1728–84), Irish actor, dramatist, and journalist: authorial career of, 13 n. 1; correspondence with JB, xxxix, xliv; friendship with JB, lxii, lxiii, 13–14 n. 1; encouraged JB to meet SJ, 13 n. 1; dedications of, lxiv; and dedication to Oroonoko, xl, 12–13; theatrical career of, 13 n. 1; verse epistles of, xl, lxiii, 12–13; and A View of Edinburgh Theatre, 11, 12 n. 2 Writings. Dramatic Censor, 13 n. 1; Modish Wife, 13 n. 1; Oroonoko, lxiii, 14 n. 2, 14 n. 3; ‘Osman’, 13 n. 1; Sejanus, 13 n. 1; To the Public, 13–14 n. 1; Trip to the Moon, 14–15 n. 3 Gentleman’s Magazine, 190 n. 12, 261 n. 3 George I (1660–1727), King of Great Britain and Ireland, lxiv, 282 n. 11 George II (1683–1760), King of Great Britain and Ireland, xliii, lvii, lxiv, 21 nn. 46, 47; celebrates end of war, 228 n. 5; death of, 38 n. 123; and D. of Queensberry, 255 n. 1; and Dr. Andrew Ramsay, 439 n. 7 George III (1738–1820), King of Great Britain and Ireland, 93 n. 16, 123, 125– 26 n. 18; accession of, xlii, xliii, 15, 94 n. 21, 232 n. 2; birthday of, 191 n. 24; and Bolingbroke, 282 n. 11; JB’s esteem for, 413–14 n. 26; Bute’s influence on, 332 n. 3; Bute tutor to, 372 n. 12, 393 n. 1; and Queen Charlotte, 191–92 n. 26; coronation of, 107 n. 2, 109–10 n. 36, 191–92 n. 26, 228 n. 7, 344 n. 4; court of, 38 n. 129, 191 n. 24, 361 n. 10; and Eglinton, 21 n. 46; and performance of Home’s Siege of Aquileia, 301–02 n. 9; and Kenmare peerage, 51 n. 25; commands performance of King Lear, 323 n. 11; and Lord Mayor of London, 277–78 n. 12; marriage of, 191–92 n. 26, 228 n. 7; and the North Briton, 429 n. 18; politics of, 125 n. 12; on Robertson’s History of Scotland, 322 n. 4; and Scotland, 126 n. 18; Scottish influence in court of, 284 n. 28; and Seven Years War, 238 n. 14; speeches of, 300–01 n. 6, 325 and n. 1, 334 n. 18; and D. of York, 21 n. 47 Germain, Lord George (1716–85), 1st V. Sackville, 46 n. 11, 125 n. 12, 301 n. 7, 381 n. 4 Giannone, Pietro (1676–1807), Italian

historian, 292 n. 8 Giardini, Felice de (1716–96), violinist and composer, 38 n. 128; ‘Voi amante’, 180, 181 n. 6, 183, 231, 234 n. 23 Gibb, Andrew (1767–1839), Auchinleck estate overseer, 415 n. 31 Gibbon, Edward (1737–94), historian, 322 n. 4, 372 n. 13, 373, 429 n. 19; Decline and Fall, 254 n. 19 Gibraltar, 292 n. 7 Gifford, William (1756–1826), editor of ‘Quarterly Review’, 109 n. 36 Glasgow, xxxix, 428 n. 10 Inns. Graeme’s (or Graham’s), 165, 167 n. 23, 222, 223 nn. 7, 8 Theatres. Argyle Street Theatre, 8 n. 1 Glasse, Hannah Allgood (1708–70), author, The Art of Cookery, 221 n. 8, 387 n. 32 Glencairn, E. of. See Cunningham, William, 12th E. of Glencairn Glorious Revolution, 50 n. 22, 171 n. 8, 258 n. 1 Golconda, India, 184 n. 7 Goldsmith, Oliver (?1730–74), poet, 211 n. 4, 219 n. 1, 385 n. 15, 425 n. 4; Life of Richard Nash, 177 n. 12 Gordon, Alexander (d. 1728), 2nd D. of Gordon, 244 n. 23 Gordon, Alexander (1743–1827), 4th D. of Gordon, 244–45 n. 23 Gordon, Cosmo George (c. 1720–52), 3rd D. of Gordon, 244 n. 23 Gordon, Lady Frances (Mackenzie) (?1726– 96), wife of 8th V. Kenmure, 313 n. 1 Gordon, George (c. 1649–1716), Earl and Marquess of Huntly, 1st D. of Gordon, 241, 244 n. 22, 247 Gordon, Gilbert (fl. 1760, d. ?1789), Scottish poet, 67 n. 2 Gordon, John (1713–69), of Kenmure (styled 8th V. Kenmure), xxxix, 312, 313 nn. 1– 2, 314 nn. 4, 7, 8, 314–15 n. 9 Gordon Castle, seat of D. of Gordon, 241, 245 n. 25 Gordon Riots, 212 n. 17, 292 n. 8 Gore, Sir Ralph (1725–1802), lt.-col., Bt., 276, 278 n. 18 Graeme (or Graham), Col. David (1716– 97), of Braco Castle, Perthshire, M.P., 189, 191 nn. 24, 26, 192 n. 29, 194

466

INDEX

Grafton, D. of. See Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd D. of Grafton Grafton, Anne Liddell, Duchess of (?1738– 1804), 348 n. 5 Graham, James (1612–50), 5th E. and 1st M. of Montrose, 305, 306 n. 9, 307 n. 10 Granby M. of. See Manners, John, M. of Granby Grant (or Colquhoun), Helen (1717–91), wife of following, 161 n. 1 Grant (or Colquhoun), Sir James (1714– 86), of Luss, Bt., 161 n. 1 Grant, James (fl. 1746–64), Church of England minister in Edinburgh, 335 and n. 1 Gravelot, Hubert François Bourguignon (1699–1773), engraver, 200 n. 8 Gray, Thomas (1716–71), poet: and JB, 19 n. 5; on Green’s ‘The Spleen’, 130 n. 1; on Tristram Shandy, 35 n. 59 Writings. An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard, 61 nn. 2, 4–5, 7–8, 10, 62 nn. 19, 21, 23, 25, 63 nn. 27, 29, 31, 33, 68 n. 7, 275, 285, 287 nn. 10, 11; Odes, 289 n. 11, 324 n. 15 Green, Matthew (1696–1737), customshouse employee, poet, ‘The Spleen’, 130 and n. 1 Greenwood, Richard, servant to Sterne, 33 n. 32, 34 n. 50 Griffiths, Ralph (1720–1803), founder of Monthly Review, 188, 190 n. 10, 194, 304 n. 8 Grignion (or Grignon), Charles (1717– 1810), line engraver, 198, 200 nn. 7, 8 Grosvenor, Sir Richard (1731–1802), Bt. M.P., 109 n. 36 Guinea, 71 n. 6 Gunning, Elizabeth (1733 or 1734–90), Dowager Duchess of Hamilton, 31 n. 17 Hailes, Lord. See Dalrymple, Sir David, Lord Hailes Halifax, E. of. See Montagu-Dunk, George, 2nd E. of Halifax Hall, John (1718–85), author, later HallStevenson, 20 n. 29, 192–93 n. 33; Crazy Tales, 304, 305 n. 2; Two Lyric Epistles, 20 n. 29 Halley, Dr. Edmond (1656–1742), physicist and astronomer, 261 n. 4

Hamilton, Archibald (d. 1793), printer and bookseller, 188, 190 n. 9, 10, 194 Hamilton, Archibald (1740–1819), 9th D. of Hamilton, 219 n. 6 Hamilton, Dowager D. of. See Gunning, Elizabeth, Dowager D. of Hamilton Hamilton, Dr. Robert (1707–87), professor of Divinity, Edinburgh, 318 n. 5 Hamilton, William (1704–54), of Bangour, author, 7 n. 1 Hamilton, William Gerard (1729–96), English statesman, 75 n. 6 Handel Jubilees, 228 n. 5 Hankins, Nellie Pottle (1904–93), 273 n. 1 Harcourt, Simon (1661–1727), V. Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt, 119 n. 15 Hardy, Sir Charles (?1716–80), the younger, admiral, 127 n. 2 Hardwicke, Lord. See Yorke, Philip, Lord Hardwicke Harrison, John (1693–1776), English horologist, 269 n. 21 Harrison, Thomas (1723–91), publisher, 267 n. 7 Hart, Orlando, Edinburgh shoemaker, 391 Harte, Walter (b. 1709), M.A., Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 Hawke, Edward (1705–81), B. Hawke, admiral, 127 n. 2, 381 n. 4 Hawkesworth, John (?1715–73), L.L.D., Oroonoko, 14 n. 2 Hayes, Richard (fl. 1718–39), Interest at one view …, 322 n. 2 Hayman, Francis (1708–76), painter and illustrator, 198, 200 nn. 7, 8 Heber, Reginald (1728–1804), An Elegy written among the tombs in Westminster Abbey, 285, 287 n. 11 Helicon, Mount, 34 nn. 46, 47 Hell Fire Club, West Wycombe and Aylesbury, lxviii, 443 n. 9 Henderson, Matthew (1737–88), of Tannochside, Lanarkshire, 242, 246 n. 41 Henry VII (1457–1509), King of England, 405, 411 n. 13 Herd, David (1732–1810), editor and accounting clerk, 140 n. 28 Heron, Patrick (?1732–1803), of Kirroughtrie, husband of Jean Home, 118 n. 1, 311 n. 8, 357 n. 5

467

INDEX

Hervey, Augustus John (1724–79), 3rd E. of Bristol, admiral and politician, 35 n. 60 Hickey, William (?1749–1830), author, 213 n. 21 Hill, Aaron (1685–1750), author and enterpreneur, 306 n. 5 Hill, George Birkbeck (1835–1903), lxxvii, Boswell’s Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, xli and n. 27 Hill, Dr. ‘Sir John’ (c. 1714–75), actor, doctor, botanist, 165, 168 n. 29, 305, 306 n. 5 Hill, Joseph (1733–1811), lawyer and wit, 419 Hinxman, John, former apprentice of Dodsley, 35 n. 62 Historia litteraria, 292 n. 8 Hoadley, Benjamin (1706–57), M.D. The Suspicious Husband, 83 n. 36, 109 n. 30, 142 n. 13 Hogarth, William (1697–1764), 165, 168 n. 30, 200 n. 8, 213 n. 26, 291 n. 3, 443 n. 8 Holland, Lord. See Fox, Henry, Lord Holland Holyroodhouse Chapel, 172 n. 10 Holyroodhouse Palace, 171–72 n. 9, 191 nn. 24, 25 Holyroodhouse Piazza, 406, 415 n. 39 Home, Agatha (Drummond) (1711–95), styled Lady Kames: correspondence with JB, xxxix, lxi; friendship with JB, lxxii, 311 n. 9, 321 n. 4, 356, 357 nn. 1, 2, 4; succeeds to family estate, Blair Drummond, 120 nn. 20, 22, 267 n. 5; as mother to Jean, 118 n. 1 Home, George (1743–1819), son of Henry and Agatha, 120 nn. 22, 26, 356, 357 nn. 1, 8 Home, Henry (1696–1782), Lord Kames, Scottish judge, author: friendship with Lord Auchinleck, 119–20 n. 18; correspondence with JB, xxxix, 357 and n. 4, 359 n. 19, 360 nn. 3, 4, 437; friendship with JB, lii, lx and n. 103, lxi, 119–20 n. 18, 120 n. 19, 141, 142 nn. 1, 11, 153, 155 nn. 8–10, 162 n. 5, 179 n. 6, 208–09 n. 5, 266 n. 1, 310, 311 n. 9, 316 n. 1, 319–20 n. 3, 320 n. 6, 321 n. 4, 434 n. 14, 441, 442 n. 3, 443 n. 5; in JB’s Give Your Son His Will, 44–45 n. 5; meets JB, l; in JB’s verse epistles, 118; and JB’s writing

style, xlix; on Buchanan, 115 n. 8; career of, 119 n. 18, 358 n. 13; and William Cullen, 357 n. 3; friendship with Lord Elibank, 364 n. 6; and AE, 145, 265, 266 n. 2, 267 n. 6; promotes improvement, 358 n. 12; as father to Jean, 118 n. 1; juridical and critical works, 443 n. 5; as husband of Lady Kames, lxxii; literary criticism of, 146 n. 2, 155 n. 12; residences of , 267 n. 5; reads Sheridan’s Sidney Bidulph, 178, 179– 80 n. 9; and ‘Society for Promoting … English Language in Scotland’, 179 n. 8 Writings. Elements of Criticism, 146 n. 2, 265, 266 n. 1, 300, 302 nn. 10, 11, 13, 316 and nn. 1, 2, 320, 358 n. 11; Introduction to the Art of Thinking, 119– 120 n. 18, 358 n. 11, 442 n. 4; Principles of Equity, 119–20 n. 18 Home, Jean (c. 1745–after 1782), later Mrs Patrick Heron, dau. of Henry and Agatha: and JB, xliv, lxi, lxvii n. 140, lxviii, lxix, lxx, 118 n. 1, 119 n. 16, 310, 311 n. 8, 357 n. 6; JB’s verse epistles to, 15, 119 n. 2, 311 n. 8 Home, John (1722–1808), playwright: and JB, lii; epigram on Derrick, 47–48 n. 1; and Donaldson’s Collection II, 185, 186 n. 5, 191 n. 18, 202, 203 n. 7, 308 n. 19; and patronage of Lord Elibank, 364–65 n. 6; in JB’s satirical political image, 444– 45 n. 12; verses of, 318 n. 3 Writings. Agis, 301–02 n. 9; Douglas, 4 n. 2, 6 n. 6, 8 n. 1, 10–11 n. 6, 24, 31 n. 20, 32 nn. 21, 22, 186 n. 5, 300, 301–02 n. 9, 318 n. 5; ‘Epistle to the Earl of Eglintoun’, 308 n. 19; The Siege of Aquileia, 31–32 n. 20, 32 n. 22, 301–02 n. 9 Homer (10c–8c B.C.), lxvi, 69, 70, 183, 184, 187 n. 12; Iliad, 108 n. 16, 256, 258 n. 1 Hooker, Richard (1554–1600), British philosopher, 317–18 n. 2 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 B.C.), Roman poet, lxii, lxvi, 70, 72 nn. 18, 19, 274 n. 14, 367–68 n. 7, 410 n. 8, 430–31, 433 nn. 8–9; Ars Poetica, 433 n. 7; Epistles and Satires, 240, 244 nn. 16, 19, 247, 433 n. 7; Odes and Satires, 433 n. 7 Hounslow Heath, Middlesex, 254 n. 21 Houston, Lady. See Cathcart, Eleanora, Lady Houston

468

INDEX

Howe, Richard (1726–99), admiral of the fleet, 127 n. 2 Hume, David (1711–76), philosopher and historian: and Advocates’ Library, 243 n. 13, 258 n. 5; and JB, xliii, xliv, lix; correspondence with JB, l n. 61, 380; meets JB, l, 258–59 n. 5; JB reads, 377, 378 n. 13, 396, 408 n. 6; on Church of Scotland, 412 nn. 17, 18; on Cromwell, 410 n. 9; discursive strategy of, 410–11 n. 10; friendship with Lord Elibank, 364–65 n. 6; and AE, 257; eulogy of, 132 n. 10; on Home’s Douglas, 301 n. 9; and Kames, 265; letter hoax, xxxvi n. 17, l, lii, 442 n. 1; on loyalty to politics, li and n. 63; McQuhae on, 404–05; philosophy of, 320 n. 8; politics of, 411 n. 11; on Presbyterians, 412 nn. 17–19; on the Protectorate, 412 n. 19; on Puritans, 412 n. 18; republic of letters, 171 n. 7; on the Restoration, 412 n. 19; praises Robertson’s History of Scotland, 322 n. 4; quarrel with Rousseau, xxxvii; on Royalists, 412 n. 17; on Tacitus, 410 nn. 8, 9; on Wilkie’s Epigoniad, 76 n. 11 Writings. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 410 n. 8; Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 410 n. 8; Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 258–59 n. 5, 410 n. 8; History of England, 258–59 n. 5, 378 n. 13, 410 nn. 8, 9, 411; nn. 13, 15, 412 nn. 17–19, 413 nn. 22, 23; Life of David Hume, 411 nn. 11, 12 Hunter, John (1728–93), M.D., 243 n. 5 Hunter, Robert (1704–79), Professor of Greek, Edinburgh, xxxix, lx and n. 103, lxii, 431 n. 1, 433 n. 7 Hunter, William (1718–83), of Long Calderwood, M.D., 240, 243 n. 5 Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746), philosopher, 307–08 n. 18 Hyde, Lady Catherine (c. 1710–77), actress, later Duchess of Queensberry, 119 n. 15 Hyndman, John, D.D. (1723–62), Scottish minister, 318 n. 5 Hyrcania, region southeast of Caspian Sea, 274 n. 18 Imperial Magazine, 261 n. 3 Inverness, 114 n. 11

Ireland: Aghadoe Parish, 48 nn. 5, 6; Cork, 50 n. 19; Dublin: Smock Alley Theatre (Theatre Royal), 3 n. 1, 6 n. 6, 14 n. 2; Kerry, 50 n. 19, 52 n. 41; Killarney, xxxix, 48 n. 3, 49 n. 16, 52 nn. 33, 39; Lough Leane (Killarney Lake), 48 n. 4; Malahide, xxxiv, lxxiii; Prospect Hall, Aghadoe Parish, 46, 48 n. 6 Jackson, John (1730–1806), actor, 161 n. 8 Jacobitism, xliii, lvii, 7 n. 1, 50 nn. 22–23, 51 n. 26, 61 nn. 3, 11, 61–62 n. 12, 62– 63 n. 25, 81 n. 1, 85–86 n. 5, 86 n. 8, 102 n. 51, 140 n. 17, 197 n. 4, 244 n. 22, 252 n. 5, 256 n. 4, 282 n. 11, 292 n. 8, 296 n. 8, 313 n. 1, 336 n. 1, 344 n. 4, 361 n. 10, 364 n. 6, 379, 381 n. 4, 391, 393 n. 1, 413–14 n. 26, 439 n. 7 Jamaica, 291 n. 6, 292 n. 7 James IV (1473–1513), King of Scotland, 171–72 n. 9, 233 n. 16 James V (1512–42), King of Scotland, lxxi, 81 n. 4, 167 n. 16, 171 n 8, and 171–72 n. 9, 172 n. 10, 173 James I (James VI of Scotland) (1566–1625), King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 49 n. 16, 99 nn. 18, 19, 115 n. 9, 116 n. 10, 411–12 n. 15, 413 n. 22 James II (1633–1701), King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, lvii, 10 n. 5, 50 nn. 22, 23, 51 nn. 24, 25, 171 n. 8, 238 n. 15 Jenyns, Soame (1704–87), miscellaneous writer, 122 n. 1 Jerningham, Edward (?1737–1812), poet and dramatist: The Magdalens, 286–87 n. 9; The Nunnery, 285, 286 n. 9 Johnson, Samuel (1709–84): visits Aberdeen, 298 n. 5; and Lord Auchinleck, 414 n. 28; at Bath, with Thrales, 177 n. 15; praises Bayle’s Dictionnaire, 260 n. 2; and JB, xl, xlix, 409–10 n. 7; JB’s admiration of, lxxv; excursion to country with JB, 422 n. 9; friendship with JB, lii, liv, lx, 47–48 n. 1; meets JB, l; in JB’s London journal, xxxv n. 11; as JB’s mentor, 439–40 n. 11, 442 n. 1; JB travels with, 441 n. 18; and JB’s writing style, xlix; on Charles Churchill, 116 n. 11; and George Colman, 421 n. 8; and Samuel Derrick, xlviii, 48 n. 2; and Robert Dodsley, 35 n. 63; censure

469

INDEX

of Alexander Donaldson, 64–65 n. 1; favorite drink of, 225 n. 4; high opinion of Lord Elibank, 364–65 n. 6; at Fort George, 61 n. 3; opinion of Gay, 33 n. 38; tour to Hebrides, 130–31 n. 3, 215 n. 1; on Highlanders, 167 n. 19; at Holyroodhouse Palace, 172 n. 10; chambers in Inner Temple, 439 n. 1; on Kames’ Elements, 316 n. 2; and linguistic fun, 72 n. 16; and London, 204 n. 5; on Macpherson’s Ossian, 101 n. 33, 282 n. 14; and Ogilvie, 425 n. 4; politics of, 414 n. 28; on Scotland, 309 n. 1; on Frances Sheridan’s Sidney Bidulph, 178, 179 n. 9; low opinion of Sterne, 30 n. 1; meets Wilkes, 429–30 n. 19 Writings. Idler, 222, 268 n. 12; Rambler, 257, 259 n. 6; Rasselas, 82 n. 12, 115 n. 6, 259 n. 6 Johnston, George (1730–87), naval captain, 365 n. 4 Johnston, John (?1729–86), of Grange: as antiquary, 296 n. 8; as bachelor, 439 n. 11; friendship with (Thomas) David Boswell, 414 n. 29; correspondence with JB, xxxv, xxxviii, xlv, xlvi n. 36, xlvi–xlvii n. 39, xlix, l, lv, 44 n. 2, 246–47 n. 47, 434; on JB and father, 416 n. 43; and JB’s finances, 391; friendship with JB, xlv–xlvi n. 35, xlvi and n. 38, xlvii and n. 40, xlviii, li, lii, liii, liv, lvii, lxvi, 144 n. 2, 242, 246 n. 46, 248, 249 nn. 4, 5, 286 n. 7, 292 n. 9, 295, 296 nn. 6, 7, 315 n. 1, 370, 439–40 n. 11, 442 n. 1; and JB’s health, 408 n. 5; and JB’s illegitimate son, 309, 328; JB’s journal for, xxxviii, lxix, 18–19 n. 1, 118– 119 n. 1, 315 n. 1, 330 n. 5, 352 nn. 11, 16, 414 n. 29, 417–18 n. 56, 427 n. 5; advises JB about James Love, 8 n. 1; and Church of England, 292 n. 9; and E–B, 407 n. 2; interest in Queen Mary, 296 n. 8 Jones, Inigo (1573–1652), architect, 256 n. 2 Jones, Richard (c. 1636–1712), 3rd V. and 1st E. of Ranelagh, 36 n. 70 Jones, William (d. 1757), architect, 36 n. 71 Jonson, Ben (1572–1637), Every Man in His Humour, 322–23 n. 8 Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) (fl. 1c– 2c), 70, 72 n. 19

Kames, Lady. See Home, Agatha (Drummond), Lady Kames Kames, Lord. See Home, Henry, Lord Kames Kames House, Berwickshire, xxxix Kearsley, George (1758–90), publisher, 327 Keith, George (?1693–1778), 10th E. Marischal of Scotland, 88 n. 2 Kellie, 5th E. of. See Erskine, Alexander, 5th E. of Kellie Kellie, Dowager C. of. See Erskine, Janet (Pitcairn) Kellie Castle, Fife, seat of Earls of Kellie, xxxix, 87 n. 12, 92 n. 1, 155 n. 21 Kenmare, Lord. See Browne, Sir Thomas, Lord Kenmare Kenmure Castle, Kirkcudbright, xxxix Kennedy, Thomas (fl. 1744, d. 1775), 9th E. of Cassillis, 260, 262 n. 12 Keppel (Kepple), Hon. Frederick (1729–77), A.M., D.D., Canon of Windsor, Bishop of Exeter, 51 n. 27 King, William (1650–1729), Archbishop of Dublin, 202 and n. 4 Kingston, 2nd D. of. See Pierrepont, Evelyn, 2nd D. of Kingston Kirroughtrie, Heron estate, 311 nn. 8–9, 313, 315 n. 9, 321 n. 4 Knapton, James (1687–1736), bookseller and publisher, 237 n. 2 Knapton, John (1696–1770), bookseller and publisher, 235, 237 n. 2 Knapton, Paul (fl. 1728–58), bookseller and publisher, 237 n. 2 Kneller, Sir Godfrey (1646–1723), court painter, 236, 238 n. 15 Knockmarloch, estate in Riccarton, Ayrshire, 351, 355 n. 52 Knolles, Richard (?1550–1610), General History of the Turks, 82 n. 12 La Calprenède, Gaultier de Coste, Seigneur de (1610–63), French author, 295 n. 5 Lady’s Magazine, 261 n. 3 Lagwine, James McAdam’s estate, 350, 352 nn. 18, 19 Lamb, Charles (1775–1834), essayist, humorist, 133 n. 1 Langhorn, William (1721–72), M.A., rector of Hawkinge, 280, 282 nn. 9, 10 Latimer, Hugh (?1485–1555), Bishop of

470

INDEX

Worcester, 180, 181 n. 2, 182 Law, Edmund (1703–87), 1st B. Ellenborough, Bishop of Carlisle, 202 n. 4 Lawrie, Mary (d. 1824), 2nd wife of McQuhae, 440 n. 13 Lee, river, 228 n. 4 Lee, Arthur (1740–792), American medical student, later diplomat, lvii n. 92, lviii, 39 n. 1 Lee, George Henry (1718–72), 3rd E. of Lichfield, 361 n. 10 Lee, Nathaniel (c. 1653–92), playwright, The Rival Queens, 295 n. 5 LeFanu, Alicia (Sheridan) (1753–1817), 111 n. 2 Lefanu, Alicia (b. 1791), memoirist, daughter of following, 111 n. 2 LeFanu, Anne Elizabeth (Sheridan) (1758– 1837), wife of following, 111. n. 2 LeFanu, Capt. Henry (m. 1789), 111 n. 2 LeFanu, Joseph (m. 1781), husband of Alicia (Sheridan), 111 n. 2 LeFanu, Joseph Sheridan (1814–73), Irish author, 111 n. 2 Leighton, Francis (d. 1773), general, British army, 353 n. 26 Leveson-Gower, Elizabeth (1765–1839), Countess of Sutherland, painter, 358 n. 16 Lewis, Anne (?1739–d. after 1791) (‘Louisa’), actress: correspondence with JB, xliv; affair with JB, xliv, lvii, lxvii, lxviii, lxix, lxx, 366 n. 4, 371 n. 1, 374 n. 1, 375 n. 5, 376 nn. 7, 10, 11, 439–40 n. 11; in JB’s 1762– 63 London journal, xxxv n. 11, 348 n. 13 Lewis, Paul (d. 1763), convict, 254–55 n. 24 Lichfield, 3rd E. of. See Lee, George Henry, 3rd E. of Lichfield Ligonier, Sir John Louis (1680–1770), 1st E. Ligonier, field marshal, lxiv, 336 and n. 1, 339, 345, 346 n. 5 Lind, George (c. 1700–63), Lord Provost of Edinburgh, 100 n. 26 A list of the general and field-officers, 232 n. 9 Livy, Titus (59 B.C.–17 A.D.), Roman poet, 274 n. 14 Lloyd, Robert (1733–64), author, lxiii, 419, 441–42, 443 n. 9, 444 n. 11; The newriver head, 441, 444 n. 10 Loch Lomond, 96, 102 n. 39, 102 n. 39, 141 n. 33

Loch Long, Arrochar Parish, 87 n. 12, 139 n. 14, 141 n. 33 Locke, John (1632–1704), 31 n. 17; An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 220 n. 2 Lockman, John (c. 1721–1807), A.M., B & D.D., Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 LONDON Clubs. Almack’s, 212–13 n. 20; Brothers’, 205 n. 9; Catch, xliv, 18 n. 1; Dilettanti Society, 205 n. 9; Jockey, 18 n. 1, 205 n. 9; Maccaroni, 38 n. 126; Nonsense, lxiii, 419, 443 n. 9; Scriblerians, 72 n. 16, 152 n. 16; Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, 18 n. 1; Thursday, 205 n. 9 Coffee-houses. Almack’s, 210, 212 n. 20; Apollo’s, 294 n. 15; Bedford, 203, 204 n. 7, 207; Child’s, xxxv n. 11, 327, 368; George’s, 203, 205 n. 8, 207; Piazza, 399– 400 n. 6; Shakespear’s, 210, 213 n. 21; Smyrna’s, 35 n. 64; Temple-Exchange, 327, 335; Tilt Yard, 203, 205 n. 10, 207; Will’s, Bow St., Covent Garden, 387 n. 37; Will’s, Lincoln Inn’s Gate, 383, 387 n. 37 Institutions. British Museum, 399–400 n. 6; Fordyce’s Meeting, Monkwell St., 399–400 n. 6; Newgate Prison, 90 n. 5, 108 n. 21, 210, 214 n. 30; Old Bailey, 252–53 n. 14; Royal Exchange, 210, 214 n. 34; St. Paul’s Cathedral, 422 n. 9; St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, 204, 206 n. 13, 207; St. Paul’s Churchyard, 210, 213 n. 26, 441, 443 n. 8; Stamp Office, Lincoln’s Inn, 383, 387 n. 40; Temple Church, 438 n. 1; Tower of London, 210, 212 n. 15, 399 n. 5 Streets, Squares, and Districts. Billingsgate, 210, 214 n. 36; Bloomsbury Square, 210, 212 n. 17; Blowbladder St., 210, 214 n. 32; Cheapside, 203, 206 n. 12, 207; Cheyne Row, 212 n. 19; Constitution Hill, 210, 212 n. 18; Cook’s Court, 383, 387 n. 36; Covent Garden Market, 210, 214 n. 28; Craven St., 210, 213 n. 25; Fleet St., 210, 214 n. 31; Grub St., lxiii, 37 n. 111, 210, 214 n. 37, 311 n. 2; Hay Market, 424 n. 3; Hockley in the Hole, 210, 213 n. 22; Hungerford Market, 214 n. 36; Leadenhall Market, 210, 213 n. 27; Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 383,

471

INDEX

387 n. 39; Lincoln’s Inn Gatehouse, 383, 387 n. 38; Marylebone gardens, 36 n. 74; Pall Mall, 20 n. 28, 35 n. 64, 131 n. 7, 205 n. 11, 215 n. 3, 270 n. 28; Primrose Hill, 212 n. 18; Rag Fair, 210, 214 n. 35; Ranelagh, Chelsea, 27, 30 n. 2, 36 nn. 70, 71, 36–37 n. 76, 104, 107 n. 6, 228 n. 5; Rolls Liberty, 205 n. 11; St. Giles, 212 n. 17; St. James, 29, 131 n. 7, 203, 204 n. 6, 207; Soho Square, 204, 206 n. 14, 207; Sutton Commons, 254 n. 21; Tyburn, 108 n. 21, 22, 208, 210, 214 n. 29; Vauxhall, 27, 36 nn. 72, 74, 75, 76, 200 n. 7; Westminster, 203, 205 n. 11; Westminster Bridge, 210, 212 n. 16 Taverns, Inns & Eateries. Black Horse, 424–25 n. 3; Blue Posts, 424–25 n. 3; Lemon Tree Inn, 424–25 n. 3; Mitre Tavern, 425 n. 4; St. Clement’s Chophouse, 399–400 n. 6; Star and Garter, 35 n. 64, 203, 205 n. 9, 207 Theatres. Covent Garden, 4 n. 2, 36 nn. 74, 75, 76, 179 n. 5, 321, 322 n. 6, 421 n. 8; Drury Lane, 8 n. 1, 36 nn. 74, 75, 136, 139 n. 8, 179 n. 5, 321, 322–23 n. 7; Haymarket Theatre, 36 n. 74, 421 n. 8; King’s Opera House (a.k.a. King’s Theatre), 38, n. 128, 228 n. 6; ‘Little Theatre’, 424–25 n. 3; New Theatre (Richmond Green), 8 n. 1; Royal Italian Opera House, 210, 213 n. 23; Vanbrugh’s, 424 n. 3 Miscellaneous. Carlisle House, 206 n. 14; Mansion House, 210, 214 n. 33 London Chronicle, xxxvi–xxxvii, 199–200 n. 5 London Gazette, 265, 267 n. 7 London Gazette Extraordinary, 267 n. 7 London Magazine, 261 n. 3 Long, Col. James (fl. 1702–43), 3 n. 1 Lord Mansfield, East India Co. ship, 390 Loudoun, E. of. See Campbell, John, E. of Loudoun Louis XIV (1638–1715), King of France, 258 n. 3 Louis XV (1710–74), King of France, 232 n. 2 ‘Louisa’. See Lewis, Anne. Love, James (Dance) (1721–74), actor and theatre manager: acting career of, 8 n. 1; as ‘Bayes’ in The Rehearsal, 10 n. 2;

correspondence with JB, xliv, xlvi n. 38; friendship with JB, xlvi, xlviii, xlix, lix, lx, lxvi, 7, 8 n. 1, 8–9 n. 2, 298 n. 5, 378 n. 7, 391; in JB’s View of the Edinburgh Theatre, 11; at the Canongate, 161 n. 8; in Edinburgh, 254–55 n. 24; financial concerns of, 278 n. 13; reads from Tom Jones, 263 n. 3 Love, Mrs. James (Catherine?, née L’Amour?), actress, 8 n. 1 Lovibond, Edward (1724–75), poet, 122 n. 1 Lowe, Theophilus (1708–69), M.A., Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 Lowe, Thomas (fl. 1740, d. 1783), tenor, actor, 36 n. 75 Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (39–65), Latin poet, 70, 72 n. 20 Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) (c. 99–55 B.C.), Roman poet-philosopher, 70, 72 n. 17, 338 n. 12 Ludi Circenses (Circensian games), 272, 274 n. 16 Lyttelton, George (1709–73), 1st B., statesman and author, 36 n. 68, 122 n. 1, 360 n. 6, 361 n. 7 MacCarthy, Donald (d. 1597), ‘Maccarty More’, 1st E. of Clancare, 49 n. 16 Macdonald, Aeneas (d. 1683), of Glenaladale, 241, 244 n. 21, 247 Macdonald, Alexander, surgeon, 379, 390– 91, 396, 405, 413 n. 24, 413–14 n. 26, 414 n. 27 Macdonald, Sir Alexander (c. 1745–95), 1st B. Macdonald, bro. of Sir James, 448 n. 1. Macdonald, Lady Elizabeth Diana (Bosville) (1749–89), wife of Sir Alexander, 448 n. 1 Macdonald, Sir James (c. 1742–66), Bt. of Sleat: social companion of Hugh Blair, 399–400 n. 6; correspondence with JB, xxxix, xliv, 398 and n. 1; friendship with JB, lxii, 15, 20 n. 24, 398 nn. 2, 3, 400 n. 7; and JB’s guards scheme, 399 n. 4; and JB’s health, 408 n. 5; meets JB, l; in JB’s verse epistle, 17; death of, 20 n. 22; education of, 20 nn. 23, 24; and Lord Eglinton, 364 n. 5, 365 nn. 4, 6, 398 nn. 2, 3; and AE, 400 n. 8; friends of, 400 n. 8; at Oxford, 398 n. 2; impression of Richard Shepherd, 403 n. 1

472

INDEX

Macfarlane (or Macfarlan), Lady Elizabeth ‘Betty’ (Erskine) (later Colville) (c. 1734– 94), wife of Walter: correspondence with JB, 218, 225, 226 nn. 13, 14, 227, 229, 231, 234 n. 28; invites JB to New Tarbet, 147; JB’s meetings with, 86 n. 8, 155 n. 14, 337, 338 n. 13, 363–64 n. 2; JB’s mention of, 84, 88, 92, 94 n. 24, 102 n. 45, 153, 155, 181, 183, 241, 247, 310; JB’s romantic interests in, lxix, lxxi and n. 167, 85–86 n. 5, 87 n. 10, 153, 156, 312 n. 17; JB’s tributes to, lxix, lxxi and n. 159, 171, 173; in E–B, lxix; and AE, lv, 137, 140 n. 20, 141 n. 35; marriages of, 85 n. 5; and Jacobitism, 85–86 n. 5; and New Tarbet, 87 n. 12, 94 n. 25, 129 n. 3, 139 n. 14, 231, 320 n. 4 Macfarlane, John (d. 1705), 19th Laird of Macfarlane, father of following, 137, 139 nn. 14, 16 Macfarlane (or Macfarlan), Walter (1705– 67), 20th Laird of Macfarlane, antiquary: as antiquary and genealogist, 94 n. 26, 163–64, 165 n. 4; encourages JB to marry, 439–40 n. 11; death of, 71 n. 1; and AE, 92; husband to Lady Elizabeth (‘Betty’), lxxi, 439 n. 8; in London, 338 n. 13; and New Tarbet, 101 n. 32, 139 n. 14 Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527), Florentine author, statesman, 137, 139 n. 13, The Prince, 139 n. 13 Mackay, Miss, at Moffat, lxx Mackenzie, Sir George (1630–1714), Bt., Lord of Session as ‘Lord Tarbat’, 245 n. 24 Mackenzie, Sir James (c. 1671–1744), Bt., Lord of Session as ‘Lord Royston’, 241, 245 n. 24 Mackenzie, James (?1680–1761), physician, Essays and Meditations on Various Subjects, 7 n. 5 Mackenzie, Margaret (m. ?1752), wife of William Mackenzie of Suddy, 82 n. 23 Mackenzie, Sir Roderick (?1740–1811), of Scatwell, Bt., husband of Katherine Colquhoun, 176 n. 1 Mackintosh, Angus (or Aeneas) (d. 1770), 22nd Chief of Clan Chattan, 80, 83 nn. 46, 49, 84 nn. 58, 62, 103 and nn. 2, 3, 113 Mackintosh, Anne (Farquharson) (1725– 84) (‘Lady Mackintosh’), wife of

preceding: and JB, 81 n. 1, 82 n. 23, 114 nn. 1, 12; correspondence with JB, xxxix, xliii, 83 n. 42; and JB’s romantic interests, lxxi–lxxii, lxxii n. 168; and Jacobitism, 81 n. 1, 103 n. 3; marriage of, 83 n. 4; verse epistles of, xl Macklin, Charles (c. 1697–1797), actor and dramatist, Love à la Mode, li Maclaurin, John (1734–96), advocate, later Lord Dreghorn, lx and n. 102, 191 n. 18 Macpherson, James (1736–96), poet, l, 67 n. 2, 191 n. 18, 280, 282 n. 14, 284 n. 32, 445 n. 13; ‘The Battle of Lora’, 283 nn. 20, 22, 284 nn. 26, 27, 29; Fingal, 101 nn. 33, 34, 165, 168, 169 n. 6, 171, 173, 184 n. 6, 185 nn. 8–11, 186, 187 n. 12, 189, 192 nn. 32, 33, 194, 241, 245 n. 28, 273 n. 5, 274 n. 8, 284 n. 28; Fragments of Ancient Poetry, 284 n. 31; Ossian, 81 n. 6, 101 n. 33, 171 n. 1, 183, 184 and n. 5, 187 n. 12, 273 n. 5, 275 n. 21, 282 n. 14, 283 n. 25, 284 n. 28, 292 n. 8, 399–400 n. 6 Macpherson, Lauchlan (fl. 1760–98), of Strathmassie, 191 n. 18, 281, 284 n. 32 MacQueen, Daniel (d. 1777), author, Letters on Mr. Hume’s History, 411–12 n. 15 Mallet (formerly Malloch), David (?1705– 65), author, 372 nn. 13, 15, 385 n. 15; Alfred, 268 n. 17; Elvira, 8 n. 1, 371, 372 nn. 11–13, 373, 384 n. 3, 386 n. 25 Malone, Edmund (1741–1812), critic and author, lxvi, 30 n. 1, 133 n. 2 Manners, John (1696–1779), 3rd D. of Rutland, father of the following, 381 n. 4 Manners, John (1721–70), styled M. of Granby, 300–01 n. 6, 380, 381 nn. 4–6, 388, 392, 393 n. 3, 397 n. 3 Mantuanus, Ioannes Baptista Spagnuoli (1447–1516), poet, 433 n. 5 Mar, 1st (or 6th) E. of. See Erskine, John, E. of Mar Maria Theresa (171–80), archduchess of Austria, holy Roman empress, 252 n. 2 Marlborough, D. of. See Churchill, John, 1st D. of Marlborough Mary (1542–87), Queen of Scots, lxxi, 4–5 n. 2, 167 n. 16, 171 and n. 8, 172 n. 10, 173, 181 n. 2, 322 n. 4, 379 Mary II (1662–94), Queen of England, Ireland, and Scotland, 50 n. 22, 23, 51 n. 25

473

INDEX

Maxwell, Catherine (?1726–63), of Springkell, 208–09 n. 5 Maxwell, Sir William (1739–1804), of Springkell, Bt., 192 n. 29 McAdam, Elizabeth (b. 1752), 352 n. 20 McAdam, Grissel (‘Grissie’) (b. ?1757), 352 n. 20 McAdam, Jacobina (b. 1736), 352 n. 20 McAdam, James (b. 1705 or 1715–d. 1770), of Waterhead, 352 nn. 18, 21, 353 n. 22 McAdam, Capt. James (d. 1763), 352 n. 20 McAdam, John (d. 1790), the Laird of Craigengillan, 314 n. 5 McAdam, John Loudon (1756–1836), 352 n. 20 McAdam, Katherine (b. 1754), 352 n. 20 McAdam, Margaret (‘Peggie’) (?b. ante 1736), 352 n. 20 McAdam, Sarah (b. ?1759), 352 n. 20 McAdam, Susanna (Cochrane) (b. ?1716 or 1718–d. 1773), 352 n. 21 McEuen (or McQueen), James (fl. 1714– 33), Edinburgh printer and publisher, 306 nn. 7, 307 n. 14 McKerrel, Elizabeth, dau. of William, 355 n. 53 McKerrel, Jean, dau. of following, 355 n. 53 McKerrel, William (d. ante 1750), 6th Laird of Hillhouse, Dundonald Parish, 355 n. 53 Mcghie (or McKie), Nathaniel (1715–81), 314 n. 7 McQuhae, David, father of following, 315 McQuhae, William (1737–1823), clergyman, tutor to JB’s brothers: advises JB on career, 406–07; as bachelor, 439 n. 11; career of, xlvii, 315 n. 1, 330 nn. 7, 8, 338 n. 9, 353 n. 31, 417 nn. 52, 53, 54, 428 n. 6, 440 nn. 12, 14, 15; correspondence with JB, xxxviii, 329 nn. 2, 3, 338 n. 9, 339, 352 n. 12, 379, 396, 401, 422, 428 n. 6, 440 n. 17; on JB and father, 416 n. 43, 422, 425; friendship with JB, xlvi and n. 38, xlvii and nn. 40, 41, lx, lxvi, 30–31 n. 7, 107 n. 4, 144 n. 2, 315 and n. 1, 440 n. 17; Harvest Jaunt journal, 1762, written for, xxxv; meets JB, 315 n. 1; reader of JB’s journal, 118–19 n. 1, 315 n. 1, 330 n. 5, 352 nn. 11, 17, 417 n. 56, 427 n. 5, 439 n. 2; JB on, 315 n. 1; letters of, xxxviii, xxxix,

lxviii; and Alexander Macdonald, 390–91, 413 n. 24; marriages of, 440 n. 13; moderate views of, 351 n. 10; prudentialist view of, 351 n. 3; and death of James Reid, 328–29, 329 nn. 2, 4, 337 n. 2, 338 n. 9, 339; and St. Quivox Church, 417 nn. 52, 53, 427 n. 3, 440 n. 14; sermons of, l Meikle, John (fl. ?1684–98), bell-founder, 189 n. 4 Melville, Sir James (1535–1617), of Halhill, Fife, diplomat-courtier, 295, 296 n. 8; The memoires of Sir James Melvil, 296 n. 8 Memoirs of the Shakespear’s Head, 213 n. 21 Merlin, ship, 269 n. 21 Methodism, 258 n. 2 Methuen Treaty of 1703, 318 n. 3 Mickle, William Julius (1735–88), Scottish poet, 191 n. 18 Middleton, Lord. See Willoughby, Thomas, 1st Baron Middleton Millar, Andrew (?1707–68), London bookseller and publisher, 159, 160 n. 3, 209 n. 16; Works of James Thomson, 160 n. 3 Miller, Thomas (1717–89), of Barskimming, later Sir Thomas, Bt., Lord Justice Clerk, xxxix, 365 n. 4, 436 n. 1 Milton, John (1604–74), 58 n. 8, 183, 187 n. 12, 202, 292 n. 8; Defensio Secunda, 288 n. 5; Paradise Lost, 287, 288 n. 5 Minden, battle of, 301 n. 7 Mingotti, Regina (or Caterina) (Valentini) (1722–1808), German-Italian singer, 29, 38 n. 128 Minto, Lord. See Elliot, Sir Gilbert, Lord Minto ‘Mirabel, Lady’ (possibly Lady Mary Coke), xxxv n. 11, lxvii, lxviii, 110 n. 38, 366 n. 4 Mitchell, John (b. 1768), seceder, 412–13 n. 20 Monro, Dr. Alexander (1697–1767), M.D., 242 n. 4, 243 n. 5 Monro, Dr. Alexander (1733–1817), M.D., 242–43 n. 4 Montagu, Elizabeth (1720–1800), author, 35 n. 60 Montagu-Dunk, George (1716–71), 2nd E. of Halifax, statesman, 386 n. 22 Montcalm de Saint-Véran, de Marquis Louis Joseph (1712–59), field marshal in Canada, 7 n. 3

474

INDEX

Montesquieu, Baron de (Secondat, CharlesLouis de) (1689–1755), Lettres Persanes, 82 n. 12 Montfaucon, Bernard de (1655–1741), 73 n. 36; Diarium Italicum, 73 n. 36 Montgomerie, Alexander (1723–69), 10th E. of Eglinton: as bachelor, 32 n. 23, 109 n. 36; and JB’s Cub, 93 n. 17, 269 n. 24, 342 n. 2; correspondence with JB, xxxviii n. 22, xxxix, xl, xliii, xliv, lxviii, lxxi, 20 n. 10, 30 n. 3, 46, 217, 218, 325, 342 and n. 2, 343, 363, 408 n. 6; friendship with JB, xliii, xliv, xlvi, l, lvi–lvii, lix, lx, lxiv, lxvi, lxxii, 18–19 n. 1, 36 n. 70, 89 n. 2, 107 nn. 3, 4, 334 n. 19, 342 nn. 2, 3, 343 n. 3, 351, 361 n. 7, 363 n. 2, 365 n. 6, 366 and nn. 2, 6, 368 n. 8, 369 and n. 3, 370 n. 4, 376–77, 377, 378 nn. 5, 6, 9, 10, 400 n. 8, 444–45 n. 12; in JB’s Give Your Son His Will, 44–45 n. 5; and JB’s health, 408 n. 5; in JB’s 1762–63 London journal, xxxv n. 11; and JB’s quest for military commission, xlii, 224, 392, 393 n. 3, 394 n. 7, 395 n. 1, 397 and n. 2, 401 n. 1; JB’s neighbor in Ayrshire, 377 n. 4; patron of JB, 21 n. 42, 378 nn. 10, 11, 379 n. 17; JB’s verse epistles to, 15–18, 19 n. 3, 21 nn. 44, 45, 377, 378 n. 12; in JB’s verse epistles, 37 n. 90; use of Bute’s electoral influence, 18 n. 1; career of, 342 n. 3; and Church of Scotland, xliii; club membership of, 18 n. 1; death of, 18 n. 1; treated by Andrew Douglas, 377 nn. 2, 3; and E–B, 428 n. 12; and accession of George III, xlii; and ‘Gilbert Long-nose’, 445 n. 13; as Gov. of Castle of Dumbarton, 18 n. 1; Duchess of Hamilton on, 31 n. 17; and John Home, 202, 203 n. 7; letters of, xxxviii; as libertine, xlv, xlvii, lix, 18 n. 1, 21 n. 46, 107 n. 4, 111 n. 4, 365 n. 3, 369–70 n. 3; literary gatherings of, lxiii; London residence of, 344 n. 1; as Lord of the Bedchamber, 18 n. 1, 21 n. 46, 107 n. 2; and Sir James Macdonald, 398 nn. 2, 3; as patron of young poets, 21 n. 35; as poet-amateur, 344 n. 3; scepticism of, 365 n. 3; as Scots Representative Peer, 18 n. 1, 342 n. 3; and ‘Society for Promoting … English Language in Scotland’, 179 n. 8; at Vauxhall, 36 n. 72; in verse epistles,

28; favourite wines of, 107 n. 7; and D. of York, 21 nn. 46, 47 Montgomerie, Hon. Archibald (1726–96), later 11th E. of Eglinton, army officer, M.P., 18 n. 1, 334 n. 19 Montgomerie, Mary (‘Molly’) (?1743–d. 1777) (later Campbell), of Lainshaw, cousin of JB, 350, 355 n. 50, 428–29 n. 15 Montgomerie, Susanna Kennedy (1689– 1780), Dowager Countess of Eglinton, 3rd wife of Alexander, 9th E. of Eglinton, 54 n. 4, 262 n. 12, 391 Monthly Review, 72 nn. 9, 12, 152 n. 19, 190 n. 10, 12, 202, 203 n. 10, 303, 304 n. 8, 411 n. 15, 441, 442 n. 2 Montrose, M. of. See Graham, James, 5th E. and 1st M. of Montrose Moodie, Rev. Alexander (1728–99), 363, 364 n. 3 Moore, Edward (1712–57) (‘Adam FitzAdam’), playwright, poet and essayist, 121, 122 n. 1 Morton, Hugh, mason, 440 n. 17 Moreton, Sir William (?1696–1763), M.P., treasurer of Inner Temple, 133 n. 1 Morpeth, Northumberland, 195, 196 n. 1, 293 n. 14 Mortimer, John Hamilton (1740–79), painter, 200 n. 8 Mossman, John (d. 1787), merchant, 391 Moy Hall, Inverness, seat of chief of Clan Chattan, xxxix, lxxii, 78, 81 nn 1, 4, 83 n. 38, 84 nn. 63, 64, 113 Mure, William (1718–76), of Caldwell, M.P., 153, 154 n. 6 Murphy, Arthur (1727–1805), editor of The Auditor, 361 n. 11; The Citizen, 372 n. 9, 372 n. 10, 379, 382, 383 nn. 1, 2, 388 n. 42 Murray, Lady Charlotte (1731–1805), 77 n. 5 Murray, James (d. 1799), of Broughton, Wigtownshire, 350, 354 n. 40, 407, 417 n. 52, 417 n. 53, 440 n. 14 Murray, Hon. James (?1719–94), col. of Royal Americans, 62 n. 17 Murray, Gen. Lord John (1711–87), of Banner Cross, Yorkshire, 7 n. 4 Murray, John (1730–1809), 4th E. of Dunmore Murray, Patrick (1703–78), 5th Lord Elibank, 361 n. 7, 363, 364 n. 6

475

INDEX

Murray, Robert, (fl. 1758–62), maj., 71st Regt. of Foot, 62 n. 22, 235, 238 n. 8 Mustafa III (1717–74), sultan of Ottoman empire, 278 n. 14 Nairne, William (c. 1731–1811), advocate, later Lord Dunsinane, 187 n. 7, 191 n. 18, 210, 215 n. 40, 428 n. 12 Nancy Dawson’s jests …, 199 n. 3 Nash, Richard ‘Beau’ (1674–1762), master of ceremonies at Bath, 177 n. 12, 211 n. 4 Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar) (37–68), Roman emperor, 130, 131 n. 5, 409 n. 7, 410 nn. 8, 10 New Tarbet (or ‘Inverioch House’), seat of Macfarlanes, Arrochar parish, xxxix, 87 nn. 12, 15, 92, 96, 101 n. 32, 137, 138, 138–39 n. 6, 139 n. 14, 141 n. 33, 170, 172, 191 n. 19, 202, 281 n. 1, 285 n. 2 Newbery, John (1713–67), printer, 213 n. 26 Newcastle, 249, 252 n. 4 Newcastle, Duke of. See Pelham-Holles, Thomas, D. of Newcastle Newhaven, William Mayne (1722–94), of Carrick Mayne, 1st B., lxxviii Newmarket Races, 19 n. 2, 378 n. 12 Newton, Sir Isaac (1642–1727), English mathematician and philosopher, 168, 169 n. 1, 433 n. 6 Nicol, Alexander (fl. 1739–66), poet, 313– 14 n. 3 Nicolson, Helen (‘Nelly’) Douglas, wife of following, 159 n. 10 Nicolson, Thomas (fl. 1748–74), stabler, burgess, vintner, 158, 159 n. 10 Nivernais, Louis-Jules-Barbon ManciniMazarini, Duc de (1716–98), French ambassador, 343, 344 n. 3 North, Sir Thomas (1535–?1601), translator of Plutarch, 282 n. 9 North Briton, xliii, xliv, lix, 5 n. 3, 327, 331, 332 nn. 3, 4, 334 n. 17, 335, 340, 359, 361 nn. 9, 10, 11, 372 n. 12, 386 n. 22, 393 n. 1, 429 nn. 17–19 Northumberland, Countess of. See Seymour, Elizabeth, Countess of Northumberland Northumberland, E. of. See Percy, Hugh (Smithson), E. of Northumberland O’Farrell, Richard (d. 1757), col., 3

O’Keefe, John (1747–1833), Irish dramatist and poet, 385 n. 15 Ogilvie, John (?1732 or 1733–1813), M.A. (later D.D.), author, Church of Scotland clergyman: on Banffshire jaunt, 320, 321 n. 3; acquaintanceship with JB, 311 n. 5, 425 n. 4; correspondence with JB, xxxix, 321 n. 2, 424 and n. 2; career of, 309 n. 1, 321 n. 1; in Donaldson’s Collection II, 191 n. 18, 309–10 n. 1; on Kames’ Elements, 320 Writings. Day of judgment, 309–10 n. 1; Poems on several subjects, 309–10 n. 1 Olympic games, 273 n. 3 Oman, Margaret (d. 1778), Leith vintner, 252 n. 8 Oman, William (fl. 1762, d. ante 1778), Leith vintner, 250, 252 n. 8 Onslow, Arthur (1691–1768), M.P., Privy Councilor, 109 n. 25 Ormonde, 12th E. and 1st D. of. See Butler, James, 12th E. and 1st D. of Ormonde Oroonoko. A Tragedy. Altered From The Original Play of That Name …, Anonymous, 14 n. 2 ‘Ossian’, son of ‘Fingal’, 96, 101 nn. 34–36 Ottoman Turkish Empire, 82 n. 19 Otway, Thomas (1652–85), dramatist: The Orphan, 4 n. 2, 10 n. 6; Venice Preserved, 10 n. 6, 208–09 n. 5, 239 n. 22, 332 n. 2 Ovid (43 B.C.–c. 17 A.D.), Roman poet, 23, 26, 274 n. 14; Metamorphoses, 31 n. 12, 35 n. 58 Owen, Edward, (d. 1783) printer and stationer, 267 n. 7. Oxford, University of, 51 n. 28, 291, 292– 93 n. 10, 361 n. 10, 398 n. 2 Paoli, Pasquale (1725–1807), general of the Corsican nation, liv, 222–23 n. 3 Park, Elizabeth (d. 1780), 1st wife of McQuhae, 440 n. 13 Parke, William Thomas (1762–1847), oboist and memoirist, 36 n. 76 Parnassus, 20 n. 21, 34 n. 46, 99 n. 12 Pelham, Henry (1696–1754), P.M., xlii Pelham-Holles, Thomas (1693–1768), D. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and of Newcastleunder-Lyme, Prime Minister, xlii, 125 n. 15, 221 n. 8, 284 n. 28, 381 n. 4

476

INDEX

Percy, Lady Elizabeth Anne Frances (1744– 61), dau. of following, 64 n. 3 Percy, Hugh (Smithson) (c. 1714–86), 2nd E. and 1st D. of Northumberland, M.P., 53 n. 1, 54 n. 7, 64 nn. 1, 4, 397 and n. 3, 401 n. 6, 402 n. 11 Percy, Capt. Hugh (Smithson) (1742–1817), son of preceding, styled Lord Warkworth, later M.P. and D. of Northumberland, 53 n. 3 Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista (or Giovanbattista) (1710–36), Italian composer, 137, 140 n. 29 Petitot, Col. William (fl. 1721–d. 1764), maj.-gen., 71st Foot, 193 n. 34, 196 n. 1, 223 n. 11, 238 n. 9 Philip II (382–36 B.C.), King of Macedon, 114, 115 n. 2, 230, 233 nn. 12, 13 Piccolomini, Girolama Nini (‘Moma’), (1728–92), lxvii n. 139 Pierrepont, Evelyn (1711–73), 2nd D. of Kingston, 35 n. 60, 343, 344 n. 4 Piles, Roger de (1635–1709), Conseiller Honoraire to the Académie Royale, 305 and n. 3; L’Abrégé de la vie des peintres, 305–06 n. 3 Pindar (?518–c. 438 B.C.), Greek poet, 137, 141 n. 31, 147, 245 n. 27, 271, 273 n. 3 Pindus mountains, 20 nn. 17, 18 Pisa, Leaning Tower of (Campanile of the Duomo), 73 n. 23 Pitcairn, Agnes (bap. 1705), 197 n. 4 Pitcairn, Dr. Archibald (d. 1713), physician and professor of medicine, 197 n. 4, 226 n. 9 Pitcairn, Elizabeth (bap. 1694), 197 n. 4 Pitcairn, Margaret (bap. 1701, d. 1777), 197 n. 4 Pitfour, Lord. See Fergusson, James, Lord Pitfour Pitt, William (1708–78), the elder, 1st E. of Chatham: fall of administration of, 232 n. 2; JB’s mention of, 248 and n. 1; as JB’s political idol, 279 n. 30, 325 n. 1, 413 n. 26; contrary and egotistical, xlii; in debate with Fox, 334 n. 18; coalition with Newcastle, 125 n. 15, 284 n. 28; as secretary of state, 248 n. 2; speeches of, 301 n. 7; strategic planning of, 336 n. 1; war policy of, 125 n. 12, 132 n. 7

Pliny, the Elder (Caius Plinius Secundus) (c. 23–79), Roman naturalist, 73 n. 34; Historia Naturalis, 73 n. 34 Pliny, the Younger (Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus) (?62–c.113), orator and statesman, xli n. 28, 73 n. 34, 266, 268 nn. 15, 16; Epistolarum, 73 n. 34; Panegyricus, 268 n. 15 Plutarch (?46–c. 120), Greek essayist and biographer, 111, 112 n. 10, 202 n. 5, 276, 277 n. 11, 282 n. 9; ‘Life’ of Alcibiades, 112 n. 15 Political Controversy, 261 n. 3, 361–62 n. 11 Pomfret, E. of. See Fermor, George, 2nd E. of Pomfret Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), poet, xli n. 28, l, 58 n. 1, 70, 73 n. 30, 76 n. 11, 101 n. 28, 130 n. 1, 152 n. 16, 256 Writings. The Dunciad, 116 n. 11, 214 n. 35, 224 n. 15, 322 n. 5; Epistles to Several Persons, 200 n. 6; Essay on Criticism, 73 n. 31; Essay on Man, 108 n. 20, 263 n. 3; ‘The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated’, 443 n. 5; Pastorals, 243 n. 11; Shakespeare, 290 n. 13 Pottle, Frederick A. (1897–1987), xxxiv n. 7, lxvii n. 140; on JB’s ‘Amiable Young Lady’, 67 n. 6; editing JB, lxxiii, 15, 19 n. 3, 106 n. 1; on JB and Hester Brooke, 55 n. 2; on JB and father, 142 n. 3; on JB and Garrick, 261 n. 9; on JB and Jean Home, 118 n. 1; on JB and Mrs. Love, 8 n. 1; on JB and Anne Mackintosh, lxxii; on JB and Sterne, 19 n. 5, 21 n. 36, 30 n. 1; on JB’s authorship of A View of the Edinburgh Theatre, 10 n. 1, 11, 12 n. 2; on Lady Mary Coke, 110 n. 38; on WD’s correspondence, 4 n. 1; on Donaldson’s Collections, 65 n. 6; and Gentleman’s dedication (in Oroonoko) to JB, 12; on Soaping Club, 39 n. 1, 42 n. 2; on Strathaven, Lanarkshire, 65 n. 3 Writings. Boswell in Search of a Wife: 1766–1769, lxix n. 145; James Boswell: The Earlier Years, xxxiv, 11, 110 n. 38, 242 n. 2, 377 n. 4; ‘Bozzy and Yorick’, 30 n. 1; London Journal 1762–1763, xxxiv n. 4, 363, 374 n. 1; Private Papers of James Boswell, lxxiii

477

INDEX

Poulett, Lady Rebecca (1716–65), 348 n. 5 Presbyterians, 405, 412 nn. 17–20 Preliminary Treaty of Peace, 342 n. 3, 344 n. 3, 346 n. 6 Prestonfield House, seat of Sir Alexander Dick, 161 n. 10 Price, Chase (?1731–77), M.P. and wit, 419 Prince of Wales, packet-ship, 441 n. 18 Pringle, Sir John (1707–82), Bt., M.D., P.R.S.: correspondence with JB, xl, 422– 23 n. 1, 424; and JB’s relationship with father, 422–23 n. 1, 426–27 n. 2; friendship with JB, lx and n. 103, lxi–lxii, lxii nn. 117, 119, lxiv, 422 n. 1, 423 n. 2, 424 n. 6, 433 n. 6; and JB’s health, 408 n. 5, 424 n. 6; career of, 422 n. 1 Prior, Matthew (1664–1721), poet and diplomatist, 21 n. 35, 119 n. 15, 443 n. 9 Ptolemy I (c. 367–283 B.C.), King of Egypt, 202 n. 5 Ptolemy II (309–246 B.C.), King of Egypt, 202 n. 5 Public Advertiser, 442 Pulteney, Henry (1685–1767), E. of Bath, general, bro. of following, 421 n. 8 Pulteney, William (1684–1764), E. of Bath, statesman, 122 n. 1, 421 n. 8 Punishments of Life and Limb, 253–54 n. 18 Puritans, 405, 412 n. 18 Québec, Canada, 62 nn. 16, 17 Queensberry, 3rd D. of. See Douglas, Charles, 3rd D. of Queensberry Rabelais, François (c. 1490–1553), author, 265; Gargantua, 267 n. 6; Pantagruel, 267 n. 6 Rae, David (?of Eskgrove, advocate) (1724– 1804), 191 n. 18 Ramsay, Allan (1686–1758), Scottish poet: The Gentle Shepherd, 10–11 n. 6; Tea Table Miscellany, 100 n. 22, 140–41 n. 30 Ramsay, Allan (1713–84), painter, 110 n. 38 Ramsay, Dr. Andrew Michael (1686–1743), Knight of the Order of St. Lazarus, 437, 439 n. 7; On the Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, 439 n. 7; Les Voyages de Cyrus, 439 n. 7 Ramsay, Peter (fl. 1762, d. 1794), innkeeper, 222 and n. 3 Rapin de Thoryas, Paul (1661–1725),

French historian, 290 n. 13 Reid, Alexander (b. 1750), ?son of Rev. George and Jean, 329 n. 4 Reid, Rev. George (d. 1763), minister of St. Quivox, 440 n. 15 Reid, Rev. George (1696–1786), Lord Auchinleck’s boyhood tutor, xxxix; and JB, 351, 352 n. 11, 438, 440 n. 17; and JB’s journals, 407–08 n. 2, 422, 425, 427 n. 5, 428 nn. 7, 8; JB’s regard for, 336, 337 n. 3, 349; career of, 337 n. 3, 353 n. 29; death of son of, 328–29, 329 nn. 2, 4, 336– 37, 339, 349, 351 n. 2, 417 n. 53; family of, xlvii, 329 and n. 4; home of, 329 n. 1; and Rev. McQuhae, 315 n. 1, 338 n. 9, 350, 353 n. 29, 427 n. 3, 428 n. 6; personality of, 351 n. 10; at Treesbank, 350; defends Wilkes, 426, 430 n. 20 Reid, George (b. 1751), ?of Ratho, ?son of Rev. George and Jean, 329 n. 4 Reid, James (1754–62), son of Rev. George and Jean, 315 n. 1, 329 and n. 4, 336–37, 338 n. 9, 339, 349, 417 n. 53 Reid, Jean (or Jane) (Campbell) (c. 1721– d. 1770), wife of Rev. George, cousin of Lord Auchinleck, 329 and nn. 1, 2, 336, 337 n. 4, 349, 350, 351 and n. 2, 406, 425, 426, 428 n. 6, 438 Reynolds, Sir Joshua (1723–92), English painter, 212 n. 7 Rhazes (Abu Bakr Muhammad bin Zakariya ar-Razi) (860/65–925/32), 382, 384 nn. 8–9 Rich, John (1691–1761), theatre manager, company at Covent Garden, 112 n. 17, 112–13 n. 23 Richard III (1452–85), King of England, 130, 131 n. 6 Richardson, John (1741–?1811), Orientalist, A Dictionary, Persian, Arabick …, 82 n. 12 Richardson, Joseph (d. 1763), bookseller and publisher, 188, 190 n. 8 Richardson, Samuel (1689–1761), novelist, xliv, 382, 385 n. 16; Clarissa, 382, 385 n. 17; Pamela, 69 n. 17 Rickson, William (d. 1770), lt.-col., 166 n. 5 Robertson, George (fl. 1762), postilion for Erskines, 296–97, 298 n. 6 Robertson, James (1714–95), professor of Hebrew and Oriental languages,

478

INDEX

Edinburgh, 288 n. 8 Robertson, James (1714–95) (‘Delia’), poet, 186 n. 6, 364–65 n. 6 Robertson, John (fl. 1751–69) (‘Philo’), barber-poet, 185, 186 n. 6 Robertson, Rev. William (1721–93), D.D., clergyman and Scottish historian, 318– 19 n. 5, 321, 322 n. 4, 412 n. 16; History of Scotland, 172 n. 10, 322 n. 5 Rochefoucauld, François, duc de La (1613– 80), French moraliste, 359, 360 n. 5 Rockingham, M. of. See Watson-Wentworth, Charles, M. of Rockingham Roscius Gallus, Quintus (d. c. 62 B.C.), 236, 239 n. 21 Ross, Charles (d. ?1797), lt.-col., 166 n. 5 Ross, David (‘Royal’) (1728–90), theatre manager, Ross, Robert (fl. 1762), lt.-col., 166 n. 5 Rossdhu Castle, seat of Sir James Grant (or Colquhoun), 161 n. 1 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78), lvi, lxviii, 289 n. 11, Confessions, 295 n. 5 Rowe, Elizabeth Singer (1674–1737), devotional author, poet, 241, 245 nn. 35, 36, 248; Friendship in death, 245–46 n. 36; Letters on various occasions, 245 n. 36, 246 n. 37 Rowe, Nicholas (1674–1718), English dramatist; monument at Westminster Abbey, 160 n. 4; The Tragedy of Jane Shore, 10–11 n. 6 Roy, William (1726–90), lt.-col., 166 n. 5 Royal Bank of Scotland, 358 n. 14 Royal Magazine, 261 n. 3 Royal Society, 204, 206 n. 15, 207; Philosophical Transactions, 204, 206 n. 15, 207 Sackville, Lt.-Gen. Lord. See Germain, Lord George, 1st V. Sackville St. Clair, Gen. the Hon. James (d. 1762), 415–16 n. 41 St. John, Henry (1678–1751), 1st V. Bolingbroke, statesman, philosopher, 280, 282 n. 11, 360, 363 n. 22; The Craftsman, 282 n. 11; The Idea of a Patriot King, 282 n. 11 Saint James’s Magazine, 261 n. 3, 443 n. 9 Sainte-Albin, Pierre Rémond de (1699– 1778), Observations sur l’art du comédien, 306 n. 5

Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, 284 n. 30 Salt, Samuel (c. 1723–92), under-treasurer of Inner Temple, M.P., 133 nn. 1, 3 Schaemackers, Peter (Peeter) (c.1652– 1714), sculptor, 51 n. 29 Schaw, Frederick Bridges (or Brydges), lt., 32nd Foot, 350, 353 nn. 24, 25, 356, 359 n. 18 Scheemakers, Henry (fl.1726–d.1748), sculptor, 51 n.29 Scheemakers, Peter (1691–1770), sculptor, 47, 51 n. 29 Scheemakers, Thomas (1740–1808), sculptor, son of above, 51 n. 29 Scotland, xliii–xliv; Aberdeen, 188, 189 n. 2, 297 n. 3, 297–98 n. 4, 298 n. 5; Dumbarton, 166 n. 8, 191 n. 19; Dunfermline, 42 n. 8; Fettercairn, xxxiv, lxxiii; Fountainbridge, 42 n. 3; Kelso, 310, 312 n. 13; Kinghorn, 310, 311 n. 11; Leadhills, South Lanarkshire, 276, 279 n. 28; Leswalt, Wigtonshire, 350, 354 n. 37; Lorn, Argyllshire, 275 n. 21; Midmar, South Aberdeenshire, 321 n. 1; Ochiltree, Ayrshire, 350, 354 n. 43; Pittenweem, 304 n. 10; Wallacetown, 417 n. 54 Scots Magazine, xxxvii n. 19, xxxviii n. 22, xl, lxxi, 8–9 n. 2, 12 n. 2, 30 n. 3, 46, 65 n. 5, 69, 99 n. 13, 101 n. 34, 261 n. 3, 266, 270 n. 29, 411–12 n. 15 Scott, George Lewis (1708–80), mathematician, lxiv, 43–44, 44 n. 1, 46 nn. 11, 12 Scott, James (1733–1814), poet, A Spousal Hymn, 165, 167 n. 27 Scott, Robert (fl. 1762), Scottish poet, 67 n. 2, 191 n. 18; ‘The Larks’, 144 n. 1 Scott, Sir Walter (1771–1832), novelist and poet, 166–67 n. 13, 348 n. 7; Guy Mannering, 178 n. 1; Heart of Midlothian, 274 n. 9; Waverley, 150 n. 2 Seceders (Associate Presbytery), 405, 412 n. 20 Sedley, Sir Charles (c. 1721–78), of Nuthall, Bt., M.P., 109 n. 31 Sempill, Francis (?1616–82), of Beltrees, ballad-writer: ‘Moggie Lauther’ (or ‘Moggie Lauder’), 140 n. 28; Serious and Cleanly Meditations Upon a House of Office (Anonymous), 184 n. 1

479

INDEX

Seven Years War: Annual Register reports on, 304 n. 7; JB mentions, 156, 158 n. 4; ‘Bute’s Peace’, 362 n. 12; colonial theatres of, 93 n. 12; GD’s opposition to, 195 n. 2; eastern theatre of, 167 n. 17; AE blasé about, 223 n. 11; fashion of, 199–200 n. 5, 232 n. 7; Prince Ferdinand in, 300 n. 6; German theatre of, 195 n. 2; M. of Granby in, 381 n. 4; line regiments of, 256 n. 5; City of London observations during, 206 n. 13; Mallet’s Elvira and, 372 n. 12; muskets used in, 278 n. 21; naval manpower crisis in, 299 n. 11; shortage of officers in, 229 n. 10; Peace Party, 232 n. 2; Peace Preliminaries, 346 n. 6; Press Acts in force during, 223 n. 10; press gangs in, 299 n. 11; prisoner exchanges in, 168 n. 32; Proclamation of Peace, 394 n. 7, 429 n. 17; occasioned by dispute over Silesia, 126 n. 21; involves Spain, 232 n. 2, 249 n. 3; summary of, xlii, 126 n. 21; theme in JB’s correspondence, xliii; Treaty of Paris, xlii, 232 n. 2, 362 n. 12; Lord Warkworth’s service in, 53–54 n. 3; West Indian outposts in, 292 n. 7; western theatre of, 125 n. 12; D. of York serves in, 127 n. 2 Seymour, Algernon (1684–1750), 7th D. of Somerset and 1st E. of Northumberland, 53 n. 1, 344 n. 6 Seymour, Charles (1662–1748), 6th D. of Somerset, 53 n. 1 Seymour, Elizabeth (1716–76), Countess of Northumberland, wife of Hugh (Smithson) Percy: on Auchinleck, 285 n. 2; visits Auchinleck, 53–54 n. 3, 54 n. 4; in JB’s London journal 1762–1763, xxxv n. 11; correspondence with JB, xxxviii, xxxix, xl, xliii, 169–70, 174, 178, 180 n. 11, 181, 188, 216, 218, 219 nn. 1, 7, 388, 397 n. 1; friendship with JB, lxiv– lxv, lxxii, 110 n. 38, 177 n. 15, 361 n. 7; and JB’s health, 408 n. 5; and JB’s quest for military commission, xlii, 53 n. 1, 345 nn. 1, 2, 346–47, 348 n. 6, 363, 380–81, 381 nn. 5, 6, 393 n. 3, 395 n. 1, 397 n. 4, 401, 402 n. 13; JB visits, 347 n. 2, 348 n. 13, 363, 366–67 n. 6, 368 n. 8, 388, 392, 397 and n. 4, 400; at Court, 53 n. 1; death of daughter, 64 n. 3; on Edward, D. of York, 127 n. 2; visits Eglinton, 54 n. 4;

family of, 53 n. 1; injury of, 348 n. 5; move to Ireland, 401; letters of, xxxviii; patronage of, 53 n. 1; heiress to Percy lands, 54–55 n. 7; salons of, xliv; and Syon House, 64 n. 1 Seymour, Lord Francis (d. 1799), Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 Shadwell, Charles (?1670–1726), dramatist: The Humours of the Army, 389 n. 4; The Plotting Lovers, 389 n. 4 Shaftesbury, E. of. See Cooper, Anthony Ashley, 3rd E. of Shaftesbury Shakespeare, William (1564–1616), 150, 160 n. 4, 169 n. 7, 202 Writings. Hamlet, 68 n. 10, 90 n. 6, 152 n. 27, 208–09 n. 5, 215, 216, 237, 239 n. 28, 264 and n. 1, 331, 333 n. 12, 374–75 n. 1, 386 n. 27; Henry IV, Part 2, 334 n. 14, 444 n. 11; Henry VI, Part 3, 224 n. 15; Julius Caesar, 129 n. 2, 152 nn. 26, 28; King Lear, 221 n. 11, 262, 264; Macbeth, 149, 152 n. 24, 230, 233 n. 20, 236, 239 n. 20, 263, 264, 287, 288 n. 4, 331, 333 n. 12; Merry Wives of Windsor, 139 n. 11, 374–75 n. 1, 444 n. 11; Richard III, 149, 152 n. 25; Two Gentlemen of Verona, 359, 362 nn. 13, 14, 368, 370, 372 n. 8, 388 n. 42 Shenstone, William (1714–63), poet and landscape gardener, 87 n. 9; Pastoral ‘Absence’, 84, 87 n. 10, 88 Shepherd, Richard (?1732–1809), M.A., poet and theologian: correspondence with JB, xxxix, xliv; friendship with JB, lxii, lxiii, 404 and n. 2; JB visits, 403 Writings. The Nuptials, 403 and n. 4; Odes descriptive and allegorical, 403 and nn. 3–5 Sheridan, Alicia (1753–1817), later LeFanu, dau. of Frances and TS, playwright, 111 n. 2 Sheridan, Anne Elizabeth (1758–1837), later LeFanu, dau. of Frances and TS, 111 n. 2 Sheridan, Charles Francis (1750–1806), son of Frances and TS, author and politician, 111 n. 2 Sheridan, Frances (Chamberlaine) (1724– 66), novelist and playwright: and JB, 177, 178; meets JB, l; WD meets, 385–86 n.

480

INDEX

19; friends of, 135 n. 7; literary career of, 111 n. 2; politics of, 386 n. 22; admirer of Richardson, 385 n. 16; and birth of Sackville, 386 n. 20; wife of Thomas, 68 n. 9 Writings. Conclusion … Sidney Bidulph, 180 n. 10; The Discovery, 180 n. 10, 371, 372 n. 18, 379, 381 n. 2, 382, 385 nn. 15, 18, 386 n. 24, 25; The Dupe, 180 n. 10; Eugenia and Adelaide, 385 n. 16; History of Nourjahad, 180 n. 10; Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph, 68 n. 9, 111 n. 2, 178, 179 nn. 7, 9, 385 nn. 16, 17; A Trip to Bath, 180 n. 10 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751–1816), son of Frances and TS, playwright, 68 n. 9, 111 n. 2; The Critic, 10 n. 2 Sheridan, Sackville (1754–54), son of Frances and TS, 111 n. 2, 386 n. 20 Sheridan, Thomas (1719–88), (TS), actor and elocutionist: correspondence with JB, xxxviii, xxxix, xliv; friendship with JB, l, lix, lx and nn. 103, 107, lxi, lxii, 68 n. 9, 178 n. 1, 209 n. 9, 399 n. 6; and JB’s legal studies, lxv, 112 nn. 19, 20, 134, 135 n. 9, 142 n. 3, 324 n. 13, 345 n. 2, 438 n. 1; and JB’s military aspirations, 345 nn. 2, 3; and JB’s ‘Prologue’ to The Discovery, 372 n. 18, 386 n. 24; on JB’s temper, 143; and JB’s writing style, xlix; and E. of Bute, 386 n. 22; career of, 68 n. 9, 178 n. 3, 179 n. 8; attacked by Churchill, 116 n. 11; and Covent Garden, 112–13 n. 23, 135 nn. 1, 12; and West Digges, 3 n. 1, 6 n. 6; and The Discovery, 385 n. 15; and Drury Lane, 139 n. 8; made honorary freeman of Edinburgh, 112 n. 17; as elocutionist, 67, 68 n. 9, 257–58, 259 n. 7; financial concerns of, 278 n. 13; critical of Garrick, 334 n. 14; employed by Garrick, 112 nn. 17, 22; rivalry with Garrick, 135 n. 12, 136 n. 13, 178 n. 3; performs Hamlet, 112 n. 21, 142 n. 9, 179 n. 4; health of, 135 n. 2; and Hiberian Academy, 179 n. 8; lectures of, 68 n. 9, 70, 73 n. 32, 135 n. 4, 169 and n. 7, 178 n. 3, 179 n. 8, 300, 301 n. 8, 385–86 n. 19, 386 n. 22; letters of, xxxviii; London residence of, 111 n. 1, 135 n. 1; on Sir James Macdonald, 398 n. 3; and E. of Northumberland, 386 n. 22;

royal pension of, 160 n. 5; and Smock Alley Theatre, 14 n. 2, 178 n. 3, 267 n. 9, 322–23 n. 7, 334–35 n. 20; theatrical career of, 68 n. 9, 135 nn. 4, 12 Writings. The Brave Irishman, 68 n. 9, 389 n. 4; Coriolanus (adaptation), 68 n. 9; Course of Lectures On Elocution, 68 n. 9, 135 n. 4, 169 n. 7, 209 n. 16; The Critic, 206 n. 16; A Dissertation On … Learning The English Tongue, 68 n. 9, 135 n. 4, 209 n. 15; A Discourse Delivered In The Theatre At Oxford, 68 n. 9 Sheridan, Thomas (1747–50), son of Frances and TS, 111 n. 2, 386 n. 20 Shiells (or Shiels, or Shields), Robert (d. 1753), Scottish author, 268 n. 10, 307 n. 14 Shirley, Laurence (1720–60), 4th Earl Ferrers, 108 n. 22 Shovell, Sir Clowdisley (or Cloudisley) (1650–1707), admiral, 156, 158 and n. 1 Smart, Christopher (1722–71), poet, 39 n. 131, 168 n. 29 Smith, Adam (1723–90), political economist, 132 and n. 10, 152, 153, 154 nn. 1, 2, 155, 307–08 n. 18; Theory of Moral Sentiments, 132 n. 10, 133 n. 11 Smith, Charles (?1715–62), Irish county historian, 48 n. 3 Smith, William (1711–87), D.D., 305, 306 n. 5; Dionysius Longinus on the sublime, 305, 306 n. 6 Smithson, Sir Hugh, Bt. See Percy, Hugh (Smithson) Smollett, Tobias (1721–72), M.D., author: and JB, 19 n. 5, 174, 181; correspondence with JB, 188; and British Magazine, 261 n. 3; and The Briton, 332 n. 3; as editor of Critical Review, 190 nn. 7, 10; use of ‘Genius’, 93 n. 15; novels of, li; translation of Don Quixote, 140 n. 18 Writings. Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves, 173 n. 1; History of England, 190 n. 9; Humphrey Clinker, 205 n. 9; Travels Through France and Italy, 73 n. 23 Solomon (fl. 977–37 B.C.), King of Israel, 107 nn. 9, 10 Somerville, James, 12th Lord Somerville, l, lii, lviii Socrates (469–399 B.C.), Athenian philo-

481

INDEX

sopher, lxii, 111, 112 nn. 9, 15, 130 n. 2, 208, 209 n. 9 Somerville, James (1697/98–1765), 12th Lord Somerville, 12 n. 2 Sornberg, estate in Galston, Ayrshire, 350, 355 nn. 47, 48, 55 Southerne, Thomas (1660–1746), Irish dramatist, 13; Oroonoko, 14 nn. 2, 3 Southwell, Thomas (1698–1766), Baron Southwell of Castle Mattress, 52 n. 38 Spaldie, Samuel, 314 n. 7 Spectator, xlvii n. 40, 101 n. 28, 105, 108 n. 12, 164, 166 n. 7, 241, 246 n. 37, 419 Spenser, Edmund (?1552–99), 305, Faerie Queene, 305, 307 n. 12 Stanhope, Philip Dormer (1694–1773), 4th E. of Chesterfield, politician, xli n. 28, 36 n. 68, 122 n. 1, 322 n. 4 Stanhope, Sir William (1702–1772), bro. of Lord Chesterfield, 58 n. 1 Statius (Publius Papinius Statius) (c. 45–c. 96), Latin poet, 94 n. 23; Thebiad, 92, 94 n. 23 Steele, Sir Richard (1672–1729), Irish essayist, dramatist, politician, Tatler, 125 n. 17 Sterne, Elizabeth (1714–73) (née Lumley), wife of following, 32 n. 23, 33 n. 33 Sterne, Laurence (1713–68), clergyman and author: and JB, xliv, xlix and n. 55, lii, 20 n. 28, 30 n. 1, 33–34 n. 39; JB’s admiration of, xliv, lxxiv, 109 n. 34; and JB’s Cub, 93–94 n. 17, 109 n. 34; JB’s mention of, 109 n. 32; in JB’s verse epistle, 17; JB’s verse epistles to, 15, 19 n. 3, 22, 23; at Cambridge, 30 n. 7; invented characters of, 72 n. 16; admiration of Samuel Clarke, 33–34 n. 39; at Court, 35 n. 60, 36 n. 69, 37 n. 79; ecclesiastical career of, 30 n. 1, 31 n. 16, 32 nn. 24, 26, 33 n. 27, 34 nn. 51–53, 39 n. 135, 109 n. 33; editors of, lxxvii; and farming, 32 n. 25; friendships of, 21 n. 36; Grand Tour of, 30 n. 1; in London, 20 n. 28, 20 n. 29, 30 n. 1, 31 n. 8, 35 nn. 59, 66, 67; marital troubles of, 32 n. 23; memoirs of, 34 n. 41; and music, 34 n. 41; and painting, 34 n. 42; at Ranelagh, 30 n. 2, 36 n. 70; early reading of, 33 n. 36; self-deprecation of, 33 n. 31; sermons of, 33 n. 28, 138 n. 5; servants of, 33 n. 32, 34 n. 50; uses Tillotson, 33–

34 n. 39; as ‘Mr Tristram’, 138 n. 5; writing style of, 184 n. 2; and D. of York, 21 n. 47, 30 n. 2 Writings. Sermons, 30 n. 2, 30–31 n. 7, 31 n. 8, 38 n. 118, 109 n. 35; Tristram Shandy, xlix, lxxvii n. 2, 17, 21 n. 47, 23–29, 30 nn. 1, 3, 6, 31 nn. 8, 9, 13, 17, 32 n. 25, 33 nn. 32, 36, 34 nn. 41, 42, 43, 52, 35 nn. 59, 63, 37 n. 105, 39 n. 133, 75 n. 5, 88 n. 1, 106, 109 n. 34, 110, 138 n. 5, 166 n. 7, 180, 181 n. 3, 182 n. 7, 183, 184 n. 4, 187 n. 11, 204 n. 4, 212 n. 16, 298 n. 9, 322 n. 3, 367 n. 7, 386– 87 n. 27, 444 n. 12 Steuart, Adam, of Glenormiston, 352 n. 20 Steuart, Agnes (d. 1778), Countess of Buchan, 77 n. 4 Stevens, George Alexander (1710–84), poet, 199 n. 3 Stewart, Alexander (c. 1694–1773), 6th E. of Galloway, 219 n. 6, 276, 278 n. 17, 350, 354 n. 36 Stewart, Catherine (Cochrane) (c. 1709/10– 86), Countess of Galloway, 2nd wife of 6th E. of Galloway, lxxii, 6, 7 nn. 1, 5 Stewart, Hon. George (b. post 1736, d. 1758), lt., 6, 7 nn. 2, 3 Stewart, Harriet Lady (d. 1788), JB’s cousin, 218, 219 n. 6 Stewart, Margaret (‘Peggy’) (c. 1745–1816), 90 n. 7, 176 n. 1, 189, 192 n. 29, 208–09 n. 5 Stewart-Nicolson, Houston (1741–86), author, 189, 192 n. 30, 194, 195 n. 3, 208– 09 n. 5, 286 n. 7 Stone, Jerome (or Jeremiah) (c. 1727–56), scholar and poet, 191 n. 18 Strafford, E. of. See Wentworth, Thomas, E. of Strafford Strahan, William (1715–85), printer, 209 n. 16 Stratford Shakespeare Jubilee, 228 n. 5 Strathaven, Lanarkshire, xxxix, 65 n. 3 Strawhorn, John (1922–97), 273 n. 1 Strichen, Lord. See Fraser, Alexander, Lord Strichen Stuart, George LL.D. (1711–93), professor of Humanity, Edinburgh, 433 n. 7 Stuart, Henry (1545–67), Lord Darnley, E. of Ross, D. of Albany, 2nd husband of

482

INDEX

Mary, queen of Scots, 172 n. 10 Stuart, James Edward (‘Old Pretender’) (1688–1766), son of James II Stuart, John (1713–92), 3rd E. of Bute, statesman, P.M.: accusations against, 279 n. 30; and Lord Auchinleck, 393 n. 4; correspondence with JB, xl; JB’s esteem for, 413 n. 26; and JB’s quest for military commission, xlii, lxiv, 336, 392, 393 n. 3, 394, 395 n. 1, 397 n. 2; and Bolingbroke, 282 n. 11; career of, 393 n. 1; fall of, 429 n. 17; favourite at Court, 21 n. 46, 393 n. 1; death of, 395 n. 2; defenders of, 430 n. 20; and GD, 125 n. 12; and Eglinton, 21 n. 46, 342 n. 3, 378 n. 11, 394, 395 n. 1; and accession of George III, xlii; tutor to George III, 372 n. 12; in JB’s satirical political image, 444–45 n. 12; and Col. Graeme, 191–92 n. 26; and Dr. Hill, 168 n. 29; Macpherson’s Fingal dedicated to, 284 n. 28; supports Mallet, 372 n. 13; compared to Roger Mortimer, 1st E. of March, 361 n. 10; coalition with Newcastle, 125 n. 15, 132 n. 7, 255–56 n. 1, 284 n. 28; North Briton attacks, 332 n. 3, 372 n. 12; and Northumberlands, 348 n. 6; and party politics, 334 n. 17; patronage of, 100 n. 26, 102 n. 50; and ‘Peace Party’, 232 n. 2, 238 n. 14; and Peace Preliminaries, 346 n. 6l and Hugh (Smithson) Percy, 54–55 n. 7; and D. of Queensberry, 255 n. 1; residence of, 395 n. 2; and supervision of Richmond Park, 324 n. 14; as Scottish patron, xliii; and Scottish political affairs, 154 n. 6; as secretary of state, 248 n. 2, 386 n. 22, 393 n. 1; speeches of, 342 n. 3 Stuart, Mary (Wortley-Montagu) (1713– 92), Countess of Bute, wife of preceding, 393 n. 1 ‘Suddie, Lady’. See Mackenzie, Margaret Sumner, John (?1705–72), D.D., canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 Supple, James (c. 1756–60), 46, 48 n. 6 Sutherland, Countess of. See LevesonGower, Elizabeth, Countess of Sutherland Sutherland, William (1735–66), 18th E. of Sutherland, 428 n. 12 Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745): ancients and moderns debate, 258 n. 4; JB emulates, lxxiv; career of, 362 n. 21; correspondence

of, xli n. 28; editors of, lxxvii; Dean of St. Patrick’s, 123 n. 7; AE compared to, 308 n. 20; AE imitates, 183; happiness of, 360; and Scriblerians, 152 n. 16, 362 n. 21; on condition of a Spider, 240; writing style of, 184 n. 2 Writings. Country Post, 234 n. 24; Gulliver’s Travels, 75, 76 n. 12, 172 n. 12, 184 n. 3, 293 n. 12; Meditation upon a Broom-Stick, 283 n. 18, 299 n. 12; Tale of a Tub, 21 n. 34, 165 n. 2, 242 n. 3; Syon House, home of Percys of Northumberland, 64 n. 1 Tacitus, Cornelius (c. 55–117), Roman historian, 405, 409 n. 7, 410 nn. 8–10, 411 n. 11; Agricola, 409 n. 7; Annals, 410 n. 10; De origine et situ Germanorum, 409 n. 7; Histories, 409 n. 7 Tallard, Camille d’Hostun, Comte de (1652– 1728), Marquis de la Baume-d’Hostun, B. d’Arlanc, French diplomat, Marechal de France, 367 and n. 6 Tarbet, David W., 10 n. 1, 12 n. 2 Tasso, Torquato (1544–95), Italian poet, 410 n. 8 Tate, Nahum (1652–1715), playwright and poet, The True and Ancient History of King Lear, 323 n. 10 Tatler, 419 Taylor, Lt.-Col. William (d. 1793), 62 n. 22 Temple, Lady Ann (Chambers) (1709–77), poet, 324 n. 15 Temple, Robert (‘Bob’) (1748–83), brother of WJT, 36 n. 72, 334 n. 19, 438 n. 1 Temple, Sir William (1628–99), author and statesman, 75, 77 n. 13, 257, 258 n. 4; Observations upon … the Netherlands, 75, 77 n. 13 Temple, Rev. William Johnson (1739–96): as bachelor, 439 n. 11; correspondence with JB, xxxiv and n. 5, xlv, xlvi n. 36, xlvi–xlvii n. 39, xlix, lxvi n. 132, lxxiii, 8–9 n. 2, 11, 298 n. 5; friendship with JB, xliii, xlv–xlvi n. 35, xlvi, xlvii and n. 40, xlviii, li, lii, liii, lxvi, 36 n. 72, 55 n. 1, 107 n. 4, 292 n. 9, 315 n. 1, 334 n. 19, 438 n. 1, 439–40 n. 11, 442 n. 1; and JB’s London journal, xlvi n. 38; on JB’s writing, lxxiv–lxxv; at U. of Edinburgh,

483

INDEX

288 n. 8; education of, 292 nn. 9, 10; and E–B, 428 n. 12; as unpublished poet, l and n. 59; takes religious orders, 292 n. 9 Writings. An Essay on the Clergy, l n. 59; Miscellanea, 258 n. 4 Terence, (Publius Terentius Afer) (c. 185/ 95–159 B.C.), 66, 67 n. 4, 70 Terrie, Thomas (fl. 1758–67), officekeeper, Council of Trade and Plantations, 337, 338 n. 14, 339 n. 15, 343 and n. 2, 418 n. 57, 438 n. 1 Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811–63), 19 n. 5 Thames, river, 228 n. 4 Thomson, George (1757–1851), lv, 252 n. 9 Thomson, Isabella, (m. 1762), 90 n. 7, 208– 09 n. 5, 350, 353 nn. 23, 24, 27, 356 Thomson, James (1700–48), Scottish poet, 137, 139 n. 15, 159, 160 nn. 3, 4, 168 n. 31, 268 n. 17, 305, 307 n. 14 Writings. Liberty, 160 nn. 3, 4; ‘On a Country Life’, 307 n. 14; ‘On Happiness’, 307 n. 14; The Seasons, 139 n. 15, 160 nn. 3, 4; Sophonisba, 160 n. 3; Tancred and Sigismunda, 4 n. 2; ‘Verses on Receiving a Flower,’ 307 n. 14 Thorkelin, G. J., liv Thornton, Bonnell (1724–68), miscellaneous writer and wit, xl, xliv, lxii–lxiii, 401, 418–19, 443–44 n. 9 Writings. City Latin, 418; The Connoisseur, xliv, lxiii, 419, 421 n. 8, 443– 44 n. 9 ; Have at you all, 419; An Ode on Saint Caecilia’s Day, 418; Plain English, 418; The Spring-Garden Journal, 419 Thrale, Henry (?1728–81), M.P., brewer, husband of following, 293 n. 12 Thrale, Hester Lynch (Salusbury) (1741– 1821), later Mrs. Piozzi, 433 n. 6 Tiber, river, 241, 245 n. 32, 247 Tiberius (42 B.C.–37 A.D.), Roman emperor, 405, 410 nn. 8, 10 Tibullus, Albius (c. ?55–19 B.C.), 66, 67 n. 5 Ticonderoga, Fort, xlii, 6, 7 n. 3 Tigellius, Marcus Hermogenes (?d. c. 35 B.C.), musician and singer, 240, 244 n. 18, 247 Tillemont, Louis-Sebastien Le Nain de (1637–98), French ecclesiastical historian, 292 n. 8

Tinker, Chauncey Brewster (1876–1963): Letters of James Boswell, xxxiv n. 6, xli, lxxiii; Young Boswell, xxxiv Traill, Robert (d. 1775), Professor of Divinity, Glasgow, 318 n. 5 Trajanus, Marcus Ulpius (c. 53–117), 266, 268 n. 16 Treaty of Utrecht, 322 n. 3 Treesbank, seat of James Campbell, 350, 354 n. 44, 355 n. 50 Turpin, Richard (‘Dick’) (1706–39), alias John Palmer, 89 n. 4, 90 n. 5 Turenne, Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de (1611–75), Marechal de France, 271, 273 n. 6 Twickenham, Pope’s estate, 57, 58 n. 1 Universal Magazine, 261 n. 3 Universal Museum, 261 n. 3 Utrecht, xxxiii Vanbrugh, Sir John (1664–1726), dramatist and architect: The Provok’d Wife, 4 n. 2, 10–11 n. 6; The Relapse, 374–75 n. 1 Van der Doort, Abraham (d. 1640), A catalogue and description of King Charles the First’s capital collection, 289 n. 12 Vega, Lope de (1562–1635), Spanish playwright, 267 n. 4 Verral (or Verrall), William (1715–61), innkeeper and cookery writer, 221 n. 8 Vertue, George (1684–1756), writer, engraver and antiquary, 287, 289 n. 12 Vespasian (Titus Flavius) (9–79), Roman emperor, 409 n. 7 Victor, Benjamin (d. 1778), actor, theatre manager, and author: adaptation of Two Gentlemen of Verona, 362 n. 14, 372 n. 8 Villiers, George (1628–87), 2nd D. of Buckingham, politician, satirist, 266; The Rehearsal, 8 n. 1, 10 n. 2, 160 n. 6, 197 n. 5, 206 n. 16, 269 n. 20 Vincent, Isabella (Burchall) (c. 1735–1802), soprano, 36 n. 74 Vincent, James (d. 1749), instrumentalist, 36 n. 74 Vincent, Mrs., actress, 36 n. 74 Vincent, Thomas (c. 1720–?83), instrumentalist, 36 n. 74 Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (70–19 B.C.),

484

INDEX

lxvi, 96, 101 nn. 30, 31, 183, 184, 187 n. 12, 243 nn. 9, 11, 274 n. 14, 280, 410 n. 8; Æneid, 101 n. 31, 282 n. 12; Eclogues, 101 n. 31; Georgics, lxii n. 122, 101 n. 31 Wakeling, Mary (later Digges), 3–4 n. 1 Wallace, Sir Thomas (1702–70), 4th Bt. of Craigie-Wallace, advocate, 407, 417 n. 54 Wallace, William (d. 1786), of Cairnhill, advocate, professor of universal history, 308 n. 22 Walpole, Horace (1717–97), later 4th E. of Orford, author, politician: publishes Anecdotes of painting, 287, 289 n. 12, 324 n. 15; and JB, 19 n. 5, 94 n. 18, 324 n. 15; on JB, 289 n. 11; on Bute, 393 n. 1; on Archibald Campbell, 3rd D. of Argyll, 307 n. 10; career of, 289 n. 11; and war celebrations, 228 n. 5; on Elizabeth Chudleigh, Countess of Bristol, 35 n. 60; correspondence of, xli n. 28, lxxiii; on GD, 132 n. 7; on Edward, D. of York, 127 n. 2; accuses Lord Elibank of Jacobitism, 364 n. 6; on Fingal parodies, 192 n. 33; publishes Gray’s Odes, 289 n. 11; on influenza, 281 n. 5; derides Lichfield, 361 n. 10; on Ligonier, 336 n. 1; on the ‘Maccaroni Club’, 38 n. 126; patronage of John Francis Erskine, 401–02 n. 6; on Evelyn Pierrepont, D. of Kingston, 344 n. 4; praises Robertson’s History of Scotland, 322 n. 4; on Elizabeth Seymour, Countess of Northumberland, 348 n. 5; on the Northumberlands and Ireland, 397 n. 3; Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, 289 n. 11; Strawberry Hill Press, 289 nn. 11, 12, 306 n. 8, 321, 324 n. 15; on Syon House, 64 n. 1; on Tristram Shandy, 35 n. 59; on Twickenham, 58 n. 1; publishes Vertue’s ‘Notebooks’, 289 n. 12, 290 n. 13; and John Wilkes, 125 n. 12; and The World, 122 n. 1 Writings. A catalogue of the royal and noble authors of England, 305, 306 n. 8, 307 n. 10; Fugitive Pieces in Verse and Prose, 324 n. 15; Memoirs, 289 n. 11 Walpole, Sir Robert (1676–1745), 1st E. of Orford, statesman, xlii, 282 n. 11 Wapping, suburb of London, 167 n. 21 War of Austrian Succession, 3 n. 1, 336 n. 1, 344 n. 3, 381 n. 4

Wars of Spanish Succession, 322 n. 3, 336 n. 1, 367 n. 6 Warburton, William (1698–1779), bishop of Gloucester, 31 n. 9, 36 n. 68, 256, 258 n. 2 Ward, Edward (‘Ned’) (1667–1731), author, 317 n. 1 Ward, ?Mrs. Sarah (Butcher) (1711–86), 366 n. 4 Ward, Sarah (Achurch) (d. 1771), actress, ‘wife’ of WD, 3–4 n. 1, 10–11 n. 6 Warkworth, Lord. See Percy, Capt. Hugh (Smithson) Warr, Lord de la. See West, John, Lord de la Warr Watson, John (d. 1769), 322 n. 2 Watson-Wentworth, Charles (1730–82), 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, 36 n. 68 Webb, Benjamin (fl. 1758–67), 322 n. 2 Wedderburne, Alexander (1733–1805), 1st B. Loughborough and 1st E. of Rosslyn, Lord Chancellor, 68 n. 9 Wentworth, Thomas (1593–1641), E. of Strafford, 411 n. 11 Werner, Jack: on JB’s ‘Prologue to Frances Sheridan’s The Discovery’, 386 n. 24; on JB’s verse epistles, 15, 19 nn. 3, 4, 30 n. 4, 31 n. 17, 32 n. 23, 39 n. 131 Wesley, John (1703–91), founder of Methodism, 258 n. 2 West, Gilbert (1703–56), 307 n. 12 West, John (1693–1766), 7th B. and 1st E. de la Warr, 3 n. 1, 362 n. 17, 383, 387 n. 29 West, John (1729–77), maj.-gen., styled V. Cantelupe, later 2nd E. de la Warr, 359, 361 nn. 7, 8, 362 nn. 17, 19, 387 n. 35 Whately, Robert (fl. 1714), lawyer, 135 n. 7 Whately, Thomas (c. 1728–72), M.P., 135 n. 7 Whately, William Esq. (d. 1782), London banker, 135 n. 7 Whitefield, Rev. George (1717–70), Methodist leader, 258 n. 2 Whitefoord, Caleb (1734–1810), lv. n. 79 Whitefoord, Sir John (?1730–1803), lv Wilkes, John (1727–97), politician: use of allegory, 361 nn. 9, 10; arrest of, 429 n. 17; in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, 420 and nn. 1, 6, 421 n. 7; and JB, xliv, 325 n. 1, 429–30 n. 19; correspondence with JB, 171 n. 4; meets JB, lxiii, 419, 420 nn. 4, 5; JB on, 430 n. 20; in JB’s satirical political

485

INDEX

image, 444–45 n. 12; public adversary to Bute, 429 n. 19; and Churchill, 421 n. 7; correspondence with Churchill, 420 nn. 1, 3, 421 n. 7; defenders of, 430 n. 20; accuses Lord Elibank of Jacobitism, 364 n. 6; as London wit, 443–44 n. 9; M.P. for Aylesbury, 420–21 n. 6; and the North Briton, 332 nn. 3, 4, 429 nn. 17–19; and party politics, 334 n. 17; in Political Controversy, 361 n. 9; politics of, xliii, 125 n. 12, 279 n. 30; and Scots, 429 n. 18; at Shakespear’s Head coffee house, 213 n. 21; in Tower, 212 n. 15, 429 n. 19 Wilkie, William (1721–72), farmer, minister, professor of natural philosophy, 75, 76 n. 11; Epigoniad, 75, 76 n. 11 William I the Conqueror (1027 or 28–87), D. of Normandy, King of England, 84, 86 n. 7, 88 William III (William of Orange) (1650– 1702), King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 50 n. 22, 23, 51 n. 25, 204 n. 6, 238 n. 15, 413–14 n. 26 Willoughby, Francis, Liverpool merchant, 48 n. 7 Willoughby, Thomas (?1670–1729), 1st Baron Middleton, 48 n. 7, 428 n. 12 Wilmot, Richard (1704–72), D.D., Canon of Windsor, 51 n. 27 Winchelsea, E. of. See Finch, Daniel Wolfe, James (1727–59), major-general, 62 nn. 15, 16, 17, 381 n. 4 Wood, Anne (Slater), servant to E. Sterne, 33 n. 33 Wood, John, servant to Sterne, 33 n. 32 Woodgate, Henry (fl. 1744–66), bookseller, 124 n. 11

Woodward, Henry (1714–77), comic actor, 321, 322–23 nn. 6–8, 331, 334 n. 13, 334– 35 n. 20, 371, 372 n. 9, 373 n. 19 Woodward, John (1665–1728), M.D., professor of physic, 147, 151 n. 11; Fossils of all Kinds, 151 n. 11 The World, 122 n. 1 Wormius, Olaus (1588–1654) (‘Ole Worm’), Danish historian and antiquary, 321, 322 n. 5 Wotton, William (1666–1727), philologist and classicist, 258 n. 4 Wriothesley, Thomas (1607–67), 4th E. of Southampton, 212 n. 17 Wyndham, George O’Brien (1751–1837), 3rd E. of Egremont, art patron, statesman, 248 n. 2, 386 n. 22 Xenophon (c. 430–355 B.C.), historian, warrior, 130 and n. 2, 138 n. 4 York, D. of. See Edward Augustus, D. of York Yorke (York), Hon. James (?1730–1808), D.D., canon of Windsor, bishop of Gloucester and Ely, 51 n. 27 Yorke, Philip (1690–1764), 1st B. and 1st Earl of Hardwicke, 109 n. 25, 342 n. 3 Young, Arthur (1741–1820), agriculturalist and author, 49 n. 16 Young, Edward (1683–1765), poet, dean of Salisbury, 280, 282 n. 8; Conjectures on original composition, 181 n. 1, 282 n. 8, 303 and n. 2; Night Thoughts, 181 n. 1, 282 n. 10; The Revenge, 10 n. 6, 316 nn. 3, 4 Young, Katherine (d. 1761), 67–68 n. 6

486