Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/322

 when a call was made upon his services, which formed the sterling excellence, and the brightest feature of Mr Boswell's character. This amiable man and excellent scholar died, February 24, 1822, in the forty-third year of his age, and was buried in the Temple Church, by a numerous train of sorrowing friends. It is a melancholy circumstance, that his brother, Sir Alexander, had just returned from performing the last offices to a beloved brother, when he himself was summoned from existence in the manner above related.  Author:Archibald Bower, a learned person, but of dubious fame, was born on the 17th of January, 1686, near Dundee. He was a younger son of a respectable Catholic family, which, for several centuries, had possessed an estate in Forfarshire. In 1702, he was sent to the Scots College at Douay, where he studied for the church. At the end of the year 1706, having completed his first year of philosophy, he went to Rome, and there, December 9, was admitted into the order of Jesus. After his noviciate, he taught classical literature and philosophy, for two years, at Fano, and subsequently he spent three years at Fermo. In 1717, he was recalled to Rome, to study divinity in the Roman College. His last vows were made at Arezzo, in 1722.

Bower's fame as a teacher was now, according to his own account, spread over all the Italian states, and he had many invitations to reside in different places, to none of which he acceded, till the College of Macerata chose him for their professor. He was now arrived at the mature age of forty; and it was not to have been expected that any sudden change, either in his religious sentiments or in his moral conduct, would take place after that period of life. Probably, however, Bower had never before this time been exposed to any temptation. Being now appointed confessor to the nunnery of St Catherine at Macerata, he is alleged to have commenced a criminal intercourse with a nun of the noble family of Buonacorsi. Alarmed, it is said, for the consequences of his imprudence, he determined upon flying from the dominions of the Pope; a step which involved the greatest danger, as he had previously become connected, in the capacity of counsellor, with the Holy Inquisition, which invariably punished apostasy with death. Bower's own account of his flight sets forth conscientious scruples on the score of religion, as having alone urged him to take that step; but it is hardly credible that a man in his situation could expose his life to imminent danger from a sudden access of scrupulosity. The circumstances of his flight are given in the following terms by himself:

"To execute that design with some safety, I purposed to beg leave of the Inquisitor to visit the virgin at Loretto, but thirteen miles distant, and to pass a week there, but, in the meantime, to make the best of my way to the country of the Grisons, the nearest country to Macerata out of the reach of the Inquisition. Having, therefore, after many conflicts with myself, asked leave to visit the neighbouring sanctuary, and obtained it, I set out on horseback the very next morning, leaving, as I purposed to keep the horse, his full value with the owner. I took the road to Loretto, but turned out of it at a small distance from Recenati, after a most violent struggle with myself, the attempt appearing to me, at that juncture, quite desperate and impracticable; and the dreadful doom reserved for me, should I miscarry, presenting itself to my mind in the strongest light. But the reflection that I had it in my power to avoid being taken alive, and a persuasion that a man in my situation might lawfully avoid it, when every other means failed him, at the expense of his life, revived my staggering resolution; and all my fears ceasing at once, I steered my course to Calvi in the dukedom of Urbino, and from thence through the Romagna into the Bolognese, keeping the by-roads, and at a good distance from the cities of Fano, Pisaro, Rimini, Forli, Faenza. and Tivola, through which the high road passed. Thus I advanced very