He admits, however, that 'his paying £1000 of my debt some years ago was a large bounty.' Lord Auchinleck, no doubt with justice, considered Boswell to be extravagant; and he did not approve of his marriage. 'I understand,' writes Boswell, '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.'

The indiscretion of Boswell in his correspondence and conversation with his father must have continually aggravated the pronounced prejudices and preferences of the ill-tempered old lawyer. It was a wanton imprudence to express his extreme aversion to his father's second marriage; we can hardly doubt that he was equally imprudent with regard to the Scotch law and Scotch legal circles. Boswell intended that his father should appreciate him for what he was rather than tolerate him for what he was not. In 1767 he writes to Temple:

How unaccountable it is that my father and I should be so ill together! He is a man of sense and a man of worth; but from some unhappy turn in his disposition, he is much dissatisfied with a son whom you know. I write to him with warmth, with an honest pride, wishing that he should think of me as I am; but my letters shock him, and every expression in them is interpreted unfavourably.

Boswell did not understand that the temperaments of his father and himself were in some degree incompatible, and he succeeded in emphasising their points of disagreement rather than cultivating what they had in common. He was very slow to realise how much his father disapproved of his literary friends in London, and of Dr. Johnson in particular: to Temple he exclaims, with horrified surprise, 'he harps on my going over Scotland with a brute (think how shockingly erroneous) and wandering (or some such phrase) to London.' Johnson was actually taken to visit Auchinleck—a most hazardous experiment!

Boswell must certainly be blamed, if blame can be distributed in this sort, for indiscretion, but not for unkindness. From no passage in the 'Letters to Temple' can it be inferred that he disliked his father, or wished to displease him; on several occasions he speaks of him with affection. Moreover the obligation to be deliberately kind to one who cannot occupy the position of a friend is based upon a supposed affection on his part. Boswell clearly was not cruel in any positive or malevolent sense; he can only be condemned as unkind if it be proved that he was inconsiderate to a man who displayed a substantial affection towards him. But Lord Auchinlech cannot be said to have done this—if we may accept as true the dictum of Dr. Johnson to Boswell on the occasion of his father's death: 'His disposition towards you was undoubtedly that of a kind, though not of a fond father.' And so we may say that Boswell was a disappointing, though not a bad son.

.....

In 1782 Boswell, on his father's death, became Laird of Auchinleck. The new position was a matter of importance to him. Not only were the duties it involved such duties as he liked to perform, but it was a considerable advance in the right direction. He was the man of property. A part of his dream was come true; and he could now invest himself with a fresh halo of respect and respectability derived from his new station. Local and public affairs were more intimately connected in the eighteenth century than in our own day; and, when the men of estate had a monopoly of governing, it was not unnatural for one who inherited land to cast his eyes beyond the fences of his patrimony. At the age of forty-two Boswell was by no means too old to look forward. The event of inheriting quickened his aspirations, and the prospect of becoming 'the great man' seemed nearer.

The ambitions of Boswell were not destined to be realised in any high degree.

His hopes were of a double nature; they were both legal and political. Of his early life at the Bar BOSWELL BECOMES LAIRD we have already spoken, and we must now briefly trace out the course of his legal career to its dismal conclusion.

It was hardly to be expected that a man who disliked and despised so much the whole Scotch atmosphere of his work should persevere with it. Boswell was so discontented with his lot that he began to hope for a change which should bring him into a more congenial situation. In 1775 he entered at the Inner Temple with the intention of being called eventually to the English Bar.