James Boswell. W. Keith Leask
of the son the father makes a considerable figure, while his mother, 'of the family of Buchan, a woman of almost unexampled piety and goodness,' as he styles her, is but a dim name in the background, as with John Stuart Mill who has written a copious autobiography, and left it to the logical instincts of his readers to infer that he had a mother. The profession of law was adopted by the father, who, after a residence abroad at Leyden where he graduated, passed as advocate at the Scottish bar in 1729, from which, after a distinguished career, he was appointed to the sheriffdom of Wigton, and ultimately raised to the bench in 1754, with the title of Lord Auchinleck. He possessed, says his son, 'all the dignified courtesy of an old baron,' of the school of Cosmo Bradwardine as we may say, and not only was he an excellent scholar, but, from the intimacy he had cultivated with the Gronovii and other literati of Leyden, he was a collector of classical manuscripts and a collator of the texts and editions of Anacreon. His library was rich in curious editions of the classics, and was in some respects not excelled by any private collection in Great Britain, and the reputation of the Auchinleck library was greatly increased by the black-letter tastes and publications of his grandson. A strong Whig and active Presbyterian, he was much esteemed in public and in private life. The son had on his northern tour the pleasure to note, both at Aberdeen and at Inverness, the high regard in which the old judge was held, and to find his name and connection a very serviceable means of introduction to the travellers in their 'transit over the Caledonian hemisphere.' Like the father of Scott, who kept the whole bead-roll of cousins and relations and loved a funeral, Lord Auchinleck bequeathed to his eldest son at least one characteristic, the attention to relatives in the remotest degree of kin. On the bench, like the judges in Redgauntlet, Hume, Kames, and others, he affected the racy Doric; and his 'Scots strength of sarcasm, which is peculiar to a North Briton,' was on many an occasion lamented by his son who felt it, and acknowledged by Johnson on at least one famous occasion. In the Boswelliana are preserved many of old Auchinleck's stories which Lord Monboddo says he could tell well with wit and gravity—stories of the circuit and bar type of Braxfield and Eskgrove, such as Scott used to tell to the wits round the fire of the Parliament House. In his younger days he had been a beau, and his affectation of red heels to his shoes and of red stockings, when brought under the notice of his son by a friend, so affected Bozzy that he could hardly sit on his chair for laughing. A great gardener and planter like others of the race of old Scottish judges he had extended, in the classic style of architecture then in fashion, the family mansion, and had, as Johnson found, 'advanced the value of his lands with great tenderness to his tenants.' Past the older residence flowed the river Lugar, here of considerable depth, and then bordered with rocks and shaded with wood—the old castle whose 'sullen dignity' was the nurse of Boswell's devotion to the feudal principles and 'the grand scheme of subordination,' of which he lets us hear so much when he touches on 'the romantick groves of my ancestors.'
James Boswell, the immortal biographer of Johnson, was born in Edinburgh on October 29, 1740. The earliest fact which is known about him is one which he himself would have described as 'a whimsical or characteristical' anecdote, and which he had told to Johnson:—'Boswell in the year 1745 was a fine boy, wore a white cockade, and prayed for King James, till one of his uncles, General Cochrane, gave him a shilling on condition that he would pray for King George, which he accordingly did. So you see that Whigs of all ages are made the same way.' It may have been these early signs of perversity that led his father to be strict in dealing with him, for we cannot doubt that Boswell in the London Magazine for 1781, is giving us a picture of domestic life when he writes as follows:—'I knew a father who was a violent Whig, and used to upbraid his son with being deficient in "noble sentiments of liberty," while at the same time he made this son live under his roof in such bondage, that he was not only afraid to stir from home without leave, but durst scarcely open his mouth in his father's presence.' For some time he was privately educated under the tuition of the Rev. John Dun, who was presented in 1752 to the living of Auchinleck by the judge, and finally at the High School and the University of Edinburgh. There he met with two friends with whom, to the close of his life, he was destined to have varied and close relations. One was Henry Dundas, first Lord Melville, and by "Harry the Ninth" Bozzy, in his ceaseless attempts to secure place and promotion, constantly attempted to steer, while that Pharos of Scotland, as Lord Cockburn calls him, was as constantly inclined to be diffident of the abilities, or at least the vagaries, of his suitor.
The other friend was William Johnson Temple, son of a Northumberland gentleman of good family, and grandfather of the present Archbishop of Canterbury. Temple was a little older than Boswell, who for upwards of thirty-seven years maintained an uninterrupted correspondence with him. As he is the Atticus of Boswell, we insert here a detailed account of him in order to avoid isolated references and allusions in the course of the narrative. On leaving Edinburgh he entered Trinity Hall, Cambridge; after taking the usual degrees, he was presented by Lord Lisburne to the living of Mamhead in Devon, which was followed by that of St. Gluvias in Cornwall. Strangely enough for one who was an intimate friend of Boswell, he was no admirer of Johnson (whose name, by a curious coincidence, was a part of his own), and a strong Whig and water-drinker, 'a bill which,' says Bozzy humorously, 'was ever one which meets with a determined resistance and opposition in my lower house.' As the friend of Gray and of Mason, he must have been possessed of some share of ability, yet over his moral character the admirers and critics of Boswell are divided. To some he appears as the true and faithful Atticus to the Cicero of his friend, the Mentor and honest adviser in all times of danger and trial. To others he seems but to have possessed, in a minor degree, all the failings of Boswell himself, and it would appear the most natural inference to believe that, had Temple been endowed with greater force of mental or moral character, the results would have been seen in many ways upon the actions of his friend. In his wife he was unfortunate, and, at one time at least, he attempted to secure a colonial chaplaincy in order to effect a separation. He was the writer of an Essay on the Clergy; their Studies and Recreations, 1774; Historical and Political Memoirs, 1777; Abuse of Unrestrained Power, 1778; all of which have completely passed from the memory of man. But he lives with a fair claim to fame, as the correspondent of Boswell, who calls him 'best of friends' to 'a weak distemper'd soul that swells in sudden gusts, and sinks again in calms.' A chance memorandum by Temple, on the death of Gray, displaying considerable felicity of phrase and insight, was sent by Boswell to the London Magazine of March 1772, from which it was copied by Mason in his Life of Gray, and in an adapted form it was used by Johnson himself in his sketch of the poet's work, in his Lives of the Poets. The discovery of the Letters to Temple is one of the happiest accidents in literature, and without them the true life of Boswell could not be written. To neither Macaulay nor Carlyle were they known for use in their famous reviews. On the death of Temple in 1796, one year after the decease of his friend, his papers passed into the possession of his son-in-law, who retired to France, where he died. Some fifty years ago, a gentleman making purchases in a shop at Boulogne, observed that the wrapper was a scrap of a letter, which formed part of a bundle bought shortly before from a travelling hawker. On investigation, the letters were found to be the correspondence of Boswell with Temple, and all doubts as to their genuineness were conclusively set at rest by their bearing the London and Devon post marks, and the franks of well known names. But the internal evidence alone, as we shall see, would be sufficient to establish their authenticity. Published in 1857 by Bentley, under the careful editorship of Mr. Francis, they constitute, along with the no less happy discovery in 1854, behind an old press in Sydney, of Campbell's Diary of a Visit to England—though Professor Jowett was inclined to doubt the authenticity of the latter—the most valuable accession of evidence to the Johnsonian circle of interest, and they shed on Boswell and his method a light which otherwise would leave much in darkness, or, at least, but ensure a general acceptance of the harsher features in the criticism by Macaulay. From the remark by Boswell to Temple—'remember and put my letters into a book neatly; see which of us does it first,' it has been inferred that he meditated, in some sort of altered appearance, their republication. That Temple entertained the same idea on his part we know from his own words, and from the title under which Boswell suggested their issue—Remarks on Various Authors, in a Series of Letters to James Boswell, Esq. But that Boswell himself ever did intend the publication of his own must be pronounced, by all that know what lies behind their printed form, a moral impossibility.
The first preserved letter is dated from Edinburgh,