tered. If he succeeds in getting his advice, he has succeeded in making himself an object of concern to the elder generation. It is, in short, a harmless kind of vanity. It will be recalled that Boswell pardoned the envoy at Berlin for not giving the advice which he wanted, adding, "To enter into a detail of the little circumstances which compose the felicity of another is what a man of any genius can hardly submit to." Nevertheless, it was such a comprehension as that which Boswell demanded and was always hoping to get. On his own side, he had much to offer in return. Sheer appreciation, for example. Is not age for ever fretting because youth will not listen to its counsels? Here was a youth eager to listen. And then he could keep age in touch with a younger generation, if age had broadmindedness enough to let him upset its conservatism and introduce colour and movement into life. One might tour the Seven Provinces, or the farthest Hebrides, in company with youth; one might dine with Jack Wilkes, or attempt to scrape acquaintance with the King of Sweden. Life is not over at sixty.

It is clear that this attitude is not merely filial, dutiful, submissive. It is not the posture of obedient son in the presence of revered father. In a word, it is not hero-worship. There is too much in it of give-and-take, too much that originates

with the younger party to the contract. Of his own father Boswell never succeeded in making a companion. Perhaps he never tried. At any rate, long before we know them with any degree of intimacy, they had begun to draw apart; and it is likely that the dissimilarity of their natures had prevented them, from the beginning, from achieving any genuine intimacy or comradeship. Boswell always respected Lord Auchinleck, and in those rare moments when his father gave him plenty of rein, he loved him; but in general the father was dour. He was totally unfitted to understand or make allowance for the tastes and habits of his son James. By what jest of fate had he, the hard-headed, sharp-tongued, contentious Calvinist judge, begotten this runagate? By what methods could he hope to sober the creature and fasten his ever wayward thoughts on the Scots law, so that he might rise in time to the bench, as his father had done, and reign worthily over Auchinleck? But it was of no use. "Jamie" had gone "clean gyte." How could the thrifty father be expected to realise that his son's love of social life would ever be of more worth to the world than the earnest application to duty of the most industrious apprentice that ever lived?

As for "Jamie," his instinctive affection was gradually extinguished by the father's upbraiding.

Constant fretting at the young will in time wear away all affection; confidence and mutual respect disappear long before. "My lord," said the son,

66

was solid and composed, Boswell was light and restless." The younger man felt that he was treated like a boy (as, no doubt, he was); and even after he was married and independent, he was fain to consume a large amount of strong beer in order to get through the ordeal of a visit in his father's home- all of which could not have tended to allay the ever-rising hostility between them.

They differed sharply over the entail of the estate of Auchinleck, Boswell wishing to confine the succession to the male heirs. The question was of no practical importance, for there was no lack of male heirs ; but it none the less increased the friction between them. They were better off when they were far apart. A visit to London meant to Boswell, among other things, escape from a carping father.

And yet the father made a distinct appeal to the son. He had lost his son's heart, but fascinated his creative imagination. Boswell never ceased to realise that Lord Auchinleck was remarkably good "material." To adopt the phraseology of a later century, the old gentleman "belonged in a novel." His keen wits and his strong national prejudices flowered naturally into racy humour;

he was chock-full of anecdote; although a judge and an aristocrat, he had the vivid speech and the shrewd observation of a man who has learned from Nature and not from books. But Lord Auchinleck, though a highly-educated man and a devoted, if not pedantic, student of the classics, had never lost his mother wit. One thing at least James Boswell inherited from his father, his love of a good story. He filled the pages of his Commonplace Book with his father's vivacious anecdotes, and in so doing produced the best possible portrait of him. It is odd that such perfect artistic sympathy should exhibit itself after the decay of all filial devotion. It is the triumph of art over discord.

Of certain of James's associates the old gentleman did not disapprove. He liked Sir David, and listened to his intercessions on the son's behalf. He approved of Sir Alexander Dick. Neither of these gentlemen would take James far from home or distract his attention from the charms of the Scots law. Sir Alexander, in particular, was a safe associate. He was, to be sure, thirty-seven years older than James, but James had a fondness for older men, and a "way" with them, if only they would give him a chance.

Sir Alexander was now the head of the Dick family and residing at Prestonfield, or Priestfield

Parks, the family estate at the foot of Arthur's Seat, near Edinburgh. He was a man of classical learning, who liked to fancy that there was something Horatian in his peaceful retirement into rural life. He wrote verses and cultivated the soil, in imitation of Vergil's "Georgics," and threw open his hospitable doors to all comers. He told Boswell that he remembered to have had a thousand people in a year to dine at his house. He was a gracious gentleman, who loved men of genius, and was glad to cultivate the acquaintance of any who might be near Edinburgh. Allan Ramsay and David Hume were his intimate friends; the Bishop of London, Alexander Pope, and Benjamin Franklin were among his acquaintances. Franklin, with his son, visited Prestonfield, probably in the year 1759, lingered there some days, and on his return to England, wrote a poem, beginning, "Joys of Prestonfield, adieu," in which he praised the "beds that never bugs molest." Sir Alexander's table fairly groaned with food. He once wrote in his diary:1 "Willie's birthday. Mr. James Boswell and the India Mr. Boswell, Mrs. Young, etc., etc., all dined here, and Mr. Mercer, and danced. We had a fine piece of boiled beef and greens, a large turkey, some fine chickens, 250 fine asparagus from my hot bed,

1January 7, 1777. Lady Forbes's Curiosities of a Scots Charta Chest, p. 257.