Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/314

 her husband; she cannot rival him, nor can he ever be ashamed of her." She died in June, 1739, leaving two sons, Alexander and James, and three daughters, Veronica, Euphemia, arid Elizabeth.

For two or three years after his marriage, Boswell appears to have lived a quiet professional life at Edinburgh, paying only short occasional visits to London. In autumn, 1773, Dr Johnson gratified him by coming to Edinburgh, and proceeding in his company on a tour through the north of Scotland and the Western Islands. On this occasion, Boswell kept a journal, as usual, of every remarkable part of Dr Johnson's conversation. The journey being made rather late in the season, the two travellers encountered some hardships, and a few dangers; but they were highly pleased with what they saw, and the reception they every where met with; Boswell, for his own part, declaring that he would not have missed the acquisition of so many new and delightful ideas as he had gained by this means, for five hundred pounds. Dr Johnson published an account of their trip, and the observations he made during its progress, under the title of a "Journey to the Western Islands;" and Boswell, after the death of his friend, (1785), gave to the world the journal he had kept, as a "Tour to the Hebrides," 1 volume 8vo. The latter is perhaps one of the most entertaining works in the language, though only rendered so, we must acknowledge, at the expense of the author's dignity. It ran through three editions during the first twelvemonth, and has since been occasionally reprinted.

For many years after the journey to the Hebrides, Boswell only enjoyed such snatches of Johnson's company and conversation, as he could obtain by occasional visits to London, during the vacations of the Court of Session. Of these interviews, however, he has preserved such ample and interesting records, as must make us regret that he did not live entirely in London. It appears that, during the whole period of his acquaintance with Johnson, he paid only a dozen visits to London, and spent with him only a hundred and eighty days in all; which, added to the time which they spent in their northern journey between August 18th and November 23d, 1773, makes the whole period during which the biographer enjoyed any intercourse with his subject, only two hundred and seventy-six days, or one hundredth pail of Johnson's life.

The strangely vain and eccentric conduct of Boswell had, long ere this period, rendered him almost ag notable a character as any of those whom he was so anxious to see. His social and good-humoured character gained him universal friendship; but this friendship was never attended with perfect respect. Men of inferior qualifications despised the want of natural dignity, which made him go about in attendance upon every great man, and from no higher object in life than that of being the commemorator of their conversations. It is lamentable to state that, among those who despised him, was his own father; and even other relations, from whom respect might have been more imperatively required, were fretted by his odd habits. "Old Lord Auchinleck," says Sir Walter Scott, "was an able lawyer, a good scholar, after the manner of Scotland, and highly valued his own advantages as a man of good estate and ancient family, and, moreover, he was a strict presbyterian and whig of the old Scottish cast." To this character, his son presented a perfect contrast a light-headed lawyer, an aristocrat only in theory, an episcopalian, and a tory. But it was chiefly with the unsettled and undignified conduct of his son, that the old gentleman found fault. "There's nae hope for Jamie, man," he said to a friend about the time of the journey to the Hebrides; "Jamie's gane clean gyte: What do ye think, man? he's aff wi' the land-louping scoundrel of a Corsican; and whase tail do ye think he has pinned himself to now, man?" Here the old judge summoned up a sneer of most sovereign contempt. "A dominie, man, (meaning Johnson)