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in the distance, after a year, Italy and Rome. "I am also to hear lectures on civil law." O Jemmy Boswell, Jemmy Boswell, O!

But before one makes off to Europe, to be gone, perhaps, three years, one settles one's private affairs; and hence this letter to the young solicitorfriend. Love has not yet paid up. Love was one of Boswell's actor-friends and former heroes, who is remembered as the man who first urged him to keep a journal. If Love should pay the thirty pounds which he still owes, the money may be applied to another object.

"My boy's maintenance, I imagine, will come to £10 a year." In the good old days of Samuel Pepys, the care of an illegitimate child "for ever" cost a man £5. Moll Flanders, it may be recalled, got rid of her child by an initial expense of £10. And now, in the year of our Lord 1763, the charge has risen to £10 annually. Or was it that Boswell, who, as we shall see later, had as much fatherly pride in his offspring as Robert Burns, had provided for his youngster some superior "accommodations"? Charles is, very probably, the name of this "boy," Cairnie, not impossibly, that of his caretaker. I cannot tell. It is now probably too late to identify them. At any rate, I have not succeeded in doing so.

"My boy's maintenance." Poor little boy!

Poor little waif flung out at random, on the great sea of life, with ten pounds a year for maintenance ! What your life was, lost among the peasants of southern Scotland, who shall guess? Your lot is less distinguished than that of Wordsworth's French daughter, for no books can be written about you. But your mere existence tells us something about your father that we did not know before. His melancoly had, it is clear, a very real foundation, which has hitherto been overlooked. His pious relatives would have called it sin and the wages of sin. The young fellow, who had reached the age of twenty-two, must indeed have felt that, in enjoying the pleasures of this world, he had moved at a rather rapid pace, and that the consequences of that pace were becoming a burden. Hence the promises of reform, and the determination to become "steady and sensible" in his conduct.

And so, having settled his affairs as best might be, under circumstances not wholly satisfactory, and having brought his father to a state of mind more or less hopeful, in which he might be amenable to later proposals for James's junketing about the Seven Provinces, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, young Boswell prepared himself to depart. A varied experience awaited him on the Continent, and an enrichment of that genius which nature

had bestowed upon him. He carried his luck with him, and in the game which ensued between him and his father, -a game which was played with the Grand Tour for a stake, - fortune consistently smiled upon the son.

Jas Boswel 1758

CHAPTER II

IN HOLLAND AND GERMANY

JAMES BOSWELL'S attainments in the law have been subjected to the same slighting criticism as everything else connected with his personal life. It does not do to be too frank with regard to yourself, or you will find that the world is accepting your own estimate, or accepting it at a discount. In his Commonplace Book Boswell wrote:

Boswell had a great aversion to the law, but forced himself to enter upon that laborious profession in compliance with the anxious desire of his father, for whom he had the greatest regard. After putting on the gown, he said with great good humour to his brother advocates, "Gentlemen, I am prest into the service here; but I have observed that a prest man, either by sea or land, after a little time does just as well as a volunteer. Boswell never liked his profession, but he contrived (until he left Scotland) to get along in it. In youth, he never liked the reading of the law, but he contrived to do it. Indeed, we may say that he was compelled to do it. If definite proof be demanded, that proof can be supplied. Boswell's fee-book is preserved in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, and an examination of it will con

vince any one that he was a busy and successful young lawyer.

The assumption that Boswell wasted all his time in those youthful days when he was set at the reading of law is incorrect. It is caused in part by a passage in one of his very earliest letters, written, at the age of eighteen, to Temple, from Edinburgh, which for many years has circulated in the following form:

I can assure you the study of the law here is a most laborious task. In return for yours, I shall give you an account of my studies. From nine to ten I attend the law-class; from ten to eleven study at home; and from one to two attend a college upon Roman Antiquities; the afternoon and evening I likeways spend in study.

It would seem as if a morning in which one hour was given to attending a class in law and one to studying it was no very arduous way of beginning the day. But, as a matter of fact, the first editor of the letters has carelessly dropped out a trifle of two hours. The manuscript reads:

From 9 to 10, I attend the law class; from 10 to 11, the Astronomy; from 11 to 1, study at home; from 1 to 2, attend a college upon Roman Antiquities, etc.

Clearly, if there is any truth in this account, Boswell could not easily have failed to shuffle on some knowledge.

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