He becomes more than ever before the butt of his acquaintance. He tells his old friend of a trick which has been played on him—only one of many. He was staying at a great house crowded with guests.
I and two other gentlemen were laid in one room. On Thursday morning my wig was missing; a strict search was made, all in vain. I was obliged to go all day in my nightcap, and absent myself from a party of ladies and gentlemen who went and dined with an Earl on the banks of the lake, a piece of amusement which I was glad to shun, as well as a dance which they had at night. But I was in a ludicrous situation. I suspect a wanton trick, which some people think witty; but I thought it very ill-timed to one in my situation.
When his father dies and he comes into his estates, he is deeply in debt; he hates Scotland, he longs to be in London, to enjoy the Club, to see Johnson, to whom he writes of his difficulties, asking his advice. Johnson gives him just such advice as might be expected.
To come hither with such expectations at the expense of borrowed money, which I find you know not where to borrow, can hardly be considered prudent. I am sorry to find, what your solicitations seem to imply, that you have already gone the length of your credit. This is to set the quiet of your whole life at hazard. If you anticipate your inheritance, you can at last inherit nothing; all that you receive must pay for the past. You must get a place, or pine in penury, with the empty name of a great estate. Poverty, my dear friend, is so great an evil, that I cannot but earnestly enjoin you to avoid it. Live on what you have; live, if you can, on less; do not borrow either for vanity or pleasure; the vanity will end in shame, and the pleasure in regret; stay therefore at home till you have saved money for your journey hither.
His wife dies and Johnson dies. One by one the props are pulled from under him; he drinks, constantly gets drunk; is, in this condition, knocked down in the streets and robbed, and thinks with horror of giving up his soul, intoxicated, to his Maker. “Oh, Temple, Temple!” he writes, “is this realizing any of the towering hopes which have so often been the subject of our conversation and letters?” At last he begins a letter which he is never to finish. “I would fain write you in my own hand but really cannot.” These were the last words poor Boswell ever wrote.
But Boswell’s life is chiefly interesting where it impinges upon that of his great friend. A few months after the famous meeting in Davies’s book-shop, he started for the Continent, with the idea, following the fashion of the time, of studying law at Utrecht, Johnson accompanying him on his way as far as Harwich.