Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/439

 Diocese of Bristol,' Sherborne [1826?], 8vo.

 BOSWELL, JAMES, the elder (1740–1795), biographer of Johnson, was the descendant of an old Scotch family. One of his ancestors, Thomas Boswell, killed at Flodden (1513), had obtained from James IV the estate of Auchinleck in Ayrshire. His father, Alexander Boswell (1706-1782), is noticed in a separate article. James was educated by a private tutor, John Dun (who became minister of Auchinleck on Lord Auchinleck’s presentation in 1752), then at a school kept by James Mundell at Edinburgh, and afterwards at the Edinburgh High School. In childhood he professed to be a Jacobite, his father being a thorough whig, and prayed for King James till an uncle gave him a shilling to pray for King George (Life of Johnson, 14 July 1763). Boswell entered the university of Edinburgh, where he began a lifelong friendship with William Johnson Temple, afterwards rector of Mamhead, Devon, vicar of St. Gluvias, Cornwall, and a friend of Gray. Temple went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and Boswell, writing to him there in 1758, says that he has been introduced to David Hume, and describes his desperate love ‘for Miss W—t.’ The only other confidant of his passion is Mr. Love, an actor from Drury Lane, who taught elocution at Edinburgh. In 1758 Boswell also went the northern circuit with his father, travelling in the same post-chaise with Sir David Dalrymple, advocate-depute, afterwards Lord Hailes, and by Love's advice already keeping an ‘exact journal.’ He had also begun to publish trifles in the magazines. In November 1759 Boswell went to Glasgow as a student of civil law, and heard Adam Smith's lectures. He made the acquaintance of Francis Gentleman, then acting at the Glasgow theatre, who in 1760 dedicated to him an edition of Sonthern's ‘Oroonoko.’ Meeting some catholics in Glasgow he straightway resolved to become a Romish priest. The distress of his parents induced him to abandon this plan on condition of being allowed to exchange the law for the army. In March 1760 his father took him to London, and asked the Duke of Argyll to et him a commission in the guards. The duke replied, according to Boswell: ‘I like your son; that boy must not be shot at for three-and-sixpence a day.' Boswe11's military ardour meant a love of society. There was, he said long afterwards (to Temple, 4 Jan. 1780), an animation and relish of existence 'amongst soldiers only to be found elsewhere amongst players, an he loved both varieties of life. e was eager (Letters, p. 14) to ‘ enjoy the happiness of the beau monde and the company of men of genius,' and he stayed in London for a year, where he never managed to see Dr. Jortin, who was to have removed his religious heresies, but did see Lord Eglinton, who took him to Newmarket and introduced him to the Duke of York, Boswell ‘wrote a poem called ‘The Cub of Newmarket,' with a dedicatory epistle to the duke, describing himself as a ‘ curious cub ’ from Scotland. Lord Eglinton grew tired of the vagaries of his young friend, who had to return to Edinburgh and law studies in April 1761.

Boswell groaned under the necessity of exchanging London gaieties for legal studies in the family of a strict father. He sought all the distinctions possible in Edinburgh society. He wrote some notes on London life, which gained him the acquaintance of Lord Somerville. He was admitted to the society of Kames, Dalrymple, Hume, and Robertson. He became intimate with an actor, David Ross, who was now giving private entertainments in Edinburgh, and who afterwards (December 1767) obtained permission to open the first theatre there, on which occasion Boswell contributed a prologue. Meanwhile his chief associate was Andrew Erskine, captain in the 71st regiment, and son of the fifth Earl of Kellie, with whom he carried on a correspondence from August 1761 to November 1762. The young men did their best to be vivacious in prose and verse, and published their letters in 1763. Erskine had edited in 1760 the first volume of ‘A Collection of Original Poems by the Rev. Mr. Blacklock and other Scotch gentlemen,’ published by Donaldson, an Edinburgh bookseller; a second, partly edited by Boswell, followed in February 1762, but the reception was not such as to encourage an intended third. From one of the twenty-eight poems contributed by Boswell we learn that he was the founder of a ‘jovial society called the Soaping Club,’ from the proverbial phrase, ‘Let every man soap his own beard.' Boswell gives one of his numerous self-portraitures, calls himself king of the soapers, boasts of his volatility, his comic singing, and conversational charms,and ends by declaring that ‘there is no better fellow alive.’ In December 1761 he published an anonymous ‘Ode to Tragedy,' gravely dedicated to himself as to one we could ‘relish the productions of a serious muse' in spite of his apparent volatility. These amusements had not extinguished his love of London, for which he has ‘as violent an affection as the most romantic lover ever