Boswell's letters enjoy the advantage of a mysterious history. They were written between 1758 and 1795, not without a view to publication, but were lost for more than fifty years. At Boulogne in 1850 Major Stone, of the East India Company, had the fortunate curiosity to examine a scrap of paper in which was wrapped some small purchase; it turned out to be a letter signed by James Boswell, and was traced to the store of an itinerant paper-vendor, where the letters published in 1856 were discovered. The anonymous editor of this issue is conjectured—with good reason, as we think—by Mr. Seccombe, who introduces the volume, to have been a Philip Francis of the Middle Temple who became later Sir Philip of the Supreme Consular Court of the Levant; but this matter also is obscure. The strangest mystery of all, however, is that these interesting, entertaining, in fact delightful letters, though on their first appearance they created a mild literary sensation, till last December had never been reprinted.

The volume before us is a reprint from the first edition, the introduction by Mr. Seccombe being substituted for that of the original editor. We wish that Mr. Seccombe had been less modest—less conservative at any rate. With his view that "the editing was admirably done" we cannot agree entirely. Francis, who has intercalated blocks of exegesis and comment between the letters, writes good, straightforward prose, and appears to have been a good, sensible sort of man. He has enlivened his editorial labours with irruptions of legal facetiousness and sagacious reflections. He admires Carlyle. But his lack of subtlety and his prodigious good sense make him incapable of appreciating the character of Boswell. Passages in the letters which seemed to him ridiculous he, in his solicitude for the reader's enjoyment, has been careful to print in italics; for it is difficult to suppose that Boswell underlined them himself. The originals are again lost; should the passages in question really be underlined, it would follow that Boswell was not unintentionally or unconsciously ridiculous; that all his life he practised an elaborate mystification; that he succeeded in hoodwinking the world; that he enlightened Temple alone, who nevertheless appears to have treated him as though he were what the world took him for; and that Francis, who saw these underlined manuscripts, and yet persisted in the conventional view of Boswell, was not a Mid-Victorian prig but a common imbecile. It is true that he has been stupid enough to mangle and emasculate the letters that he was employed to publish; an officious prude unquestionably he was, but no fool, much less an idiot.

To discuss the character of Boswell has ever been a delicate, not to say dangerous, undertaking; but at least we may affirm that those who, judging him from the "Life of Johnson," are dissatisfied with the ordinary, unfavourable view, will not be put out of countenance by these letters. To be sure they will not be disappointed of the popular "Bozzy," ridiculous, vain, and a little vulgar, something of a snob, of a sycophant even, with an undignified zeal for notoriety and an imperfect moral sense; but beside him they will find another Boswell, the friend of Hume and Johnson, with his passion for excellence, generous nature, good understanding, and genius for observation—a man by no means to be despised. They will see how this man expresses thoughts and feelings, often sufficiently commonplace, in words so astonishingly appropriate that we are amazed by the sheer truth of the self-revelation; and they may even conjecture that some of his performances, which have been lightly attributed to dull self-complacency or a defective sense of proportion, are more probably the effects of a whimsical and fantastic mind through which ran possibly a queer strain of madness. Be that as it may, we now select for quotation a few characteristic passages, leaving the reader to decide for himself when and how far Boswell is laughing at "Bozzy."

The correspondence with Temple, a fellow-student at Edinburgh, began in 1758, when Boswell was eighteen; for the first eight years, however, he was too busy making acquaintance with Johnson, travelling on the Continent, and conducting his famous Corsican adventure, to be a very prolific letter-writer. In 1766 he settled down in Edinburgh to the law, which he found intolerably dreary, and a love-affair, which he found too exciting. "The dear infidel," as he called her, besides being another man's wife, seems to have been an extravagant and disreputable young woman:

"In a former part of this letter I have talked a great deal of my sweet little mistress; I am, however, uneasy about her. Furnishing a house and maintaining her with a maid will cost me a great deal of money, and it is too like marriage, or too much a settled plan of licentiousness; but what can I do?

"Besides, she is ill-bred, quite a rompish girl. She debases my dignity; she has no refinement, but she is very handsome and very lively."

What he did was to break with her; four weeks later he writes:

"My life is one of the most romantic that I believe either you or I really know of; and yet I am a very sensible, good sort of man. What is the meaning of this, Temple? You may depend upon it that very soon my follies will be at an end, and I shall turn out an admirable member of society. Now that I have given my mind the turn, I am totally emancipated from my charmer, as much as from the gardener's daughter who now puts on my fire and performs menial offices like any other wench; and yet just this time twelve month I was so madly in love as to think of marrying her."

The frequency and solemnity of Boswell's resolutions to amend are extraordinary, though the fact that his correspondent was a curate suggests an explanation; in carrying them out he was perfectly normal.

Boswell tells us that he "looks with horror on adultery," and the love-affairs with which his letters overflow appear, for the most part, to have been sufficiently innocent; for an "Italian angel," Zelide (whom he knew at Utrecht), Miss Bosville, and "La Belle Irlandaise" he cherished at different times a chaste flame; while Miss Blair, a neighbour and lady of fortune, very nearly caught him. But Boswell decided that he would not have a "Scots lass." "You cannot say how fine a woman I may marry; perhaps a Howard or some other of the noblest in the kingdom." "Rouse me, my friend!" he cries; "Kate has not fire enough; she does not know the value of her lover!" Nevertheless, he was to have a "Scots lass" after all, for in the autumn of 1769 he married Miss Margaret Montgomerie, "a true Montgomerie, whom I esteem, whom I love, after fifteen years, as on the day when she gave me her hand" ("Letter to the People of Scotland").

After his marriage Boswell's life continued agitated and desultory: he practised at the Scotch Bar, without much success, and was called to the English; almost every year he visited London, where he cultivated Johnson, enjoyed good company and fine, made the most of his social and literary importance, and revelled in the genuine and flattering friendship of Paoli, who seems to have made him free of his house: "I felt more dignity when I had several servants at my devotion, a large apartment, and the convenience and state of a coach."

It was absurd of him, no doubt, to say, "Am I not fortunate in having something about me that interests most people at first sight in my favour?" but it seems to have been near the truth. "I am really the great man now. I have had David Hume in the forenoon, and Mr. Johnson in the afternoon." These great men were interested somehow, and so, one must suppose, was Miss Silverton:

"There is a Miss Silverton in the Fly with me, an amiable creature, who has been in France. I can unite little fondnesses with perfect conjugal love."

There was, too, "an agreeable young widow" who, also in a fly, "nursed me, and supported my lame foot on her knee."

Boswell's life in Edinburgh was not happy; he hated the rough society of Scotch lawyers, and quarrelled with his father, the Laird of Auchinleck, who seems to have been a tiresome, disagreeable old man. The Laird died in 1782, and seven years later Boswell lost his "valuable wife." His story becomes melancholy: money troubles and family perplexities beset him (he was left with five children); and it may be that what once made him odd, aggravated by his breaking health, now made him gloomy. After his wife's death he came to London for good. Already he had taken a house in Queen Anne Street, and here he worked hard at "The Life," comforted a little by his assurance that it would be a masterpiece:

"I am absolutely certain that my mode of biography, which gives not only a History of Johnson's visible progress through the world, and of his publications, but a view of his mind in his letters and conversations, is the most perfect that can be conceived, and will be more of a Life than any work that has ever yet appeared."

With this bold but just prophecy we may leave him; he died in 1795.

[7] "Letters of James Boswell to the Rev. W. J. Temple." (Sidgwick and Jackson.)