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 130 BOSWELL BOSWORTII mncli ridiculed on account of his enthusiasm for Paoli, whom he had visited in Corsica ; but his " Account of Corsica, with Memoirs of General Pasquale di Paoli" (Glasgow, 1768; 3d ed., London, 1769), was praised by Hume, Johnson, Gray, and Walpole, translated into several languages, and was in a great measure the means of obtaining for Gen. Paoli marked attention and a pension of 1,200 on coming to England. In 1769 Boswell, after numerous love adventures, married a cousin, Miss Mar- garet Montgomery, an accomplished lady, with whom he lived very happily, and who died in 1789, leaving him two sons and three daugh- ters. The great event of his life was his ac- quaintance with Johnson, formed in 1763, which ripened into intimacy. Through John- son's influence he became in 1773 a member of the famous Literary club, where he met Burke, Garrick, Goldsmith, Reynolds, and other eminent persons. He went with John- son to the Hebrides, and his narrative of this journey appeared in 1785, soon after his idol's decease ; it contains valuable records of John- son's conversation, and is exceedingly enter- taining. Between 1773 and 1785 Boswell ^only enjoyed such snatches of Johnson's com- pany and conversation as were afforded by oc- casional visits to London. These visits were but a dozen in all, and, added to the time spent in the northern journey, make the whole period during which the biographer enjoyed intercourse with his subject only 276 days. But the "Life of Johnson," which was pub- lished in 1791, is universally conceded to be the most entertaining biography ever written, and Macaulay declares it to be the best in uni- versal literature. John Wilson Croker's famous edition of this work, including the "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides," with numerous addi- tions and notes, appeared in 1831 (5 vols.), and has frequently been reprinted. Boswell succeeded to his father's estate in 1782, and removed to London in 1786. In 1790 he stood for parliament, but was defeated. In addition to the works already mentioned, he published several political pamphlets and a series of papers in the "London Magazine," entitled "The Hypochondriac," expressive of the feel- ings of a man subject to a depression of spirits, such as was common to himself and to Dr. Johnson. A posthumous volume of "Letters of James Boswell, addressed to the Rev. W. J. Temple," was first published from the origi- nal MS. in London in 1856. In his letters published in 1785, Boswell says: "Egotism and vanity are the indigenous plants of my mind." This frank avowal of his foibles and his eccentricities only served to enhance the popularity which he acquired by his amiability and accomplishments, and by his generous appreciation of real merit. His eldest son, Sir ALEXANDER, born Oct. 9, 1775, an intimate friend of Sir "Walter Scott and a member of the Roxburghe club, was a contributor to "The Beacon," a bitterly personal tory journal of Edinburgh, and to its successor, "The Senti- nel " of Glasgow. Having in the latter insult- ed Mr. James Stuart, a leading whig of Edin- burgh, by an imputation of cowardice, he was challenged to a duel, in which he was mortally wounded, March 26, 1822, and died the next day. Mr. Stuart was tried for murder and ac- quitted. Sir Alexander was the author of a volume of "Songs, chiefly in the Scottish Dia- lect" (.1803), " Clan Alpine's Vow " (1811), &c. The second son, JAMES, was the author of a "Memoir of Edmund Malone" (1814) and editor of Malonc's edition of Shakespeare, and also of several publications of the Roxburghe club. He died in London in 1822, in his 43d year ; and it was immediately after returning from his funeral that Sir Alexander fought his fatal duel. BOSWORTH, or Market Bosworlli. a town and parish of Leicestershire, England, 12 in. W. of Leicester; pop. of the parish about 2,500. The town has a free grammar school, in which Dr. Johnson was an usher. On a moor in the vicinity the battle was fought, Aug. 22, 1485, Bosworth Field Monument over King Richard's Well. in which Richard III. fell, and the wars of the roses were brought to an end. It was on the Crown hill near Bosworth that the crown was placed by Lord Stanley on the head of the earl of Richmond (Henry VII.) after the battle. BOSWORTH, Joseph, D. D., an English phi- lologist, born in Derbyshire about 1790. He was educated at the university of Aberdeen, and is a clergyman of the church of England. From 1829 to 1841 he was British chaplain at Am- sterdam and at Rotterdam, afterward vicar of Walthe, Lincolnshire/and in 1858 became rec- tor of Water Stratford, near Buckingham. His "Elements of Anglo-Saxon Grammar" (1823) and "Dictionary of the Anglo-Saxon Lan- guage" (1838) embody, according to the "Ed- inburgh Review," " the whole results of An- glo-Saxon scholarship." Among his other works are : " The Origin of the English, Ger- manic, and Scandinavian Languages and Na- tions;" "King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version of the Compendious History of the World by Orosius" (1856) ; and "The Gospels in Gothic of 3GO, and in Anglo-Saxon of l>95, in parallel