neglected to do for himself to Mrs Boswell's charge her husband's waywardness, he was credulous indeed. She could be very sarcastic to Boswell about his obsequience to Johnson. was a pure delusion. "I have written a conciliating letter to my father, but I fear he is callous. If he persists in retaining the allowance or establishment which he has hitherto paid to me, I shall be somewhat embarrassed. I trust, however, that he will not be so unreasonable. If Lord Mountstuart would but get me an independency from the King, while my father lives, I should be a fine fellow." Auchinleck paid his debts, and, as he had not the wanton resiliency of his son, was uncordial over it. Boswell, relieved of his worries, and with some of his former jauntiness, seizes the chance of putting him in the wrong. "My father is most unhappily dissatisfied with me. My wife and I dined with him on Saturday; . . . I understand he fancies that if I had married another woman I might not only have had a better portion with her, but might have been kept from what he thinks idle and extravagant conduct. He harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think, how shockingly erroneous !) and wandering (or some such phrase) to London. In vain do I defend myself. . . . How hard is it that I am totally excluded from parental comfort." The smallness of Boswell's mind where his father was concerned is extraordinary. We would like to know what Temple thought, but his letters, if they exist, have been with- The idea of his being able to held from publication. If he cajole Auchinleck after what believed that Auchinleck laid had happened is humorous. He tells Temple that he has a mind to go to Auchinleck and try what living in a mixed stupidity of attention to common objects, and restraint from expressing any of his own feelings, can do. And he asks him if a man who receives so many marks of more than ordinary consideration can be satisfied to drudge in an obscure corner, where the manners of the people are disagreeable to him. His buffoonery had brought upon him a coarse familiarity from others. 'You see how soon I revive again. Could I but persuade my father to give me £400 a year, and let me go to the English Bar, I think I should be much better. That, however, seems to be impossible. As he is bound for £1000 which I owe, he has resolved to lessen his allowance to me of £300 to £200. I must not dispute with him, but he is really a strange man. He is gone to Auchinleck. I intend to pass a little while with him there soon, and sound him, or rather see just what attention can produce." Boswell's allowance, had he supplemented it by earnings, should have been ample. It was increased to the desired £400. The salary of a Scottish Judge at the time was £700. So is his account of the attempt, but it is unconscious humour. One would not willingly lose a line of it. "Here I am, according to my purpose. I came to Auchinleck on Monday last, and I have patiently lived at it till Saturday evening. To-morrow I shall go to the parish kirk and hear Mr John Dun preach. On Monday I go in my father's coach to Glasgow, and on Tuesday he goes west on his circuit, and I go east to my home in Edinburgh, to my valuable spouse and my dear little children. Intervals of absence make conjugal society more agreeable, especially when the time of absence has not been very happily spent. You may remember how I described to Lord Lisburne the causes of my aversion to the country: it is hardly credible how difficult it is for a man of my sensibility to support existence in the family where I now am. My father, whom I really both respect and affectionate (if that is a word, for it is a different feeling from that which is expressed by love, which I can say to you from my soul), is so different from me. We divaricate so much, as Dr Johnson said, that I am often hurt when, I dare say, he means no harm; and he has a method of treating me which makes me feel myself like a timid boy, which to Boswell (comprehending all that my character does in my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) His wife, too, But is intolerable. whom in my conscience I cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded and, I don't know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so suspicious and so sourishly tempered, that it requires the utmost exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet. I, however, have done so all this week to admiration: nay, I have appeared good-humoured, but it has cost me drinking a considerable quantity of strong beer to dull my faculties. The place is greatly improved; it is really princely. I perceive some dawnings of taste for the country. I have sauntered about with my father, and he has seen that I am pleased with his works. what a discouraging reflection it is that he has in his possession a renunciation of my birthright, which I madly granted to him, and which he has not the generosity to restore now that I am doing beyond his utmost hopes, and that he may incommode and disgrace me by some strange settlements, while all this time not a shilling is secured to my wife and children in case of my death. You know, my best friend, that as an old laird of this family gave the estate to the heir male, though he had four daughters, I hold it as a sacred point of honour not to alter that line of succession. Dr Johnson praises me for my firmness, and my own mind is immovable. There is a kind of heroism in it, but This bugbear, for their behaviour when his delinquency is the cause of it. "A stick," as he said himself, "kept always moist becomes rotten." The love of wine, which he had celebrated in verse, was his undoing. With the passing of the years he became a prosaic drunkard. Paoli, Johnson, and others, Temple among them, tried to reclaim him, but failed. He complains that his father is influenced by his second wife, wife, and laments that he cannot cannot interfere, "however galling it is to see him estranged from me and my family." Temple, who was a waterdrinker like Johnson, and a His father was not meditating clergyman, innocently advises any dark deed, nor was he that he should reason with keeping him on the rack of him. This tickled the unhappy set purpose. Auchinleck en- Boswell, as well it might. "I tailed his estate in the follow- could not help smiling at the ing year. He was a just man, expostulation which you sugthough in truth it would have gest to me, to try with my been no injustice had he dis- father. It would do admirinherited so unsatisfactory a ably with some fathers, but That was the disturbing it would make mine worse." thought at the back of Boswell's He is fair, and says a mind. The preamble to the word for him. Temple was Entail, an interesting and very not a perspicacious person. human statement, though part Boswell was caught in a web of a legal instrument, ade- of his own weaving. His stepquately disposes of Boswell's mother was not the implacable insinuations, and establishes his woman he imagined. When father's nobility of character. his wife died, she, a widow, It explains the delay, and the was exceedingly good" to explanation is simple. Auchin- one of his daughters left in leck had put off making a her charge. "How much better settlement," not having fallen is it," he wrote to Temple, upon a plan which gave me "that I am on decent terms satisfaction." with that lady." son. Five years later Boswell very ingeniously arraigns his father and stepmother, the latter the Auchinleck was to live only another two years. His great strength of body and mind gave way so gradually that to himself it was not apparent, and he remained on the bench after his memory and judgment were impaired. In this state of incipient dotage he gave an inconsistent vote in a political cause, which offended one of his friends. Going up to the Bar that gentleman said, "Boswell, what think you of your father to-day?" "Sir," to Sir," he answered, "you and your brother have made him a politician, and you have not improved him." We can forgive Boswell much for that. They had surprised the old Judge into a promise which he would not have made when in full possession of his faculties. He died on the 31st August 1782. On 24th September 1780, Boswell enters in his 'Commonplace Book': "My father had all along so firm, so dry a mind, that religious principles, however carefully inculcated by his father and mother, and however constantly they remained on the surface, never incorporated with his thoughts, never penetrated into the seat of his affections. They were a dead range, not a quick-set hedge. The fence had a good appearance enough, and was sufficiently strong; but it never flourished in green luxuriance, never blossomed, never bore fruit. The ground within, however, produced plentiful crops of useful exertions as a Judge, and improvements as a landed gentleman. And let it be considered that there may be a fine fence round barren un- Boswell's belief in himself was justified in the end, but he had nothing to show for it until the end. His ambition was literary; he was consumed by a desire to be the author of a book that would live, and this he achieved by a process all his own. To his father it was an ignoble way. Had Auchinleck lived to see the Life of Johnson' he would have thought it the last humiliation. Boswell's son, Sir Alexander, who had a poetical talent of no ordinary kind and an ardent love of literature, could not bear to hear the work mentioned. The Prince of Biographers was to them a kind of Sancho Panza, a rôle unbefitting a Boswell of Auchinleck! STRICTLY HONEST. BY HUMFREY JORDAN. THERE were only five men in the smoking-room, although it was within a quarter of an hour of lights out. But the ship was empty, and she was indulging in uncomfortable movements, shouldering and lurching her way into great seas, thrumming and whining to the last violence of the southwest monsoon. The five men sat about a table in a corner, and two of them made calculations with pencil and paper. One of the calculators was of the type that rewards the casual observer with very little information. He was obviously nearer forty than thirty, shrewd, hard-bitten, and able to look after himself; beyond that he gave nothing away. The other, a boy of twentyfive or so, was a safe bet; the subaltern returning home on his first leave cried out in him for recognition. But as he finished his calculations he looked a rueful subaltern unsuccessfully attempting to hide his dismay. The hard-bitten calculator put down his pencil and paper and turned to the boy. "Seventy-two pounds ten? he asked. "That right? "You needn't worry about that," the boy told him, flushing. "I'll write you a cheque to square things now." He produced a cheque-book and a fountain-pen, but though he smiled gallantly he did not look happy. The elder man laughed with genuine amusement. "You know," he declared, "that you haven't really the air to carry that off. Give me an I.O.U. and a fiver a month until the debt's off. You'll get more fun out of your leave if you do." "But," the boy protested, although he could not keep relief from his voice, you hardly know me." "I know your regiment," the other man told him, "so I presume you have a commanding officer who would make you squirm if I had to write to him that you'd defaulted. Come "Quite," the boy answered, forcing his smile. "My luck was damnable." The other man gave him a on, England's infernally expenquick look. sive these days; hand over |