There was a variation of spirits about James Boswell which indicated some slight touch of insanity. His melancholy which he so often complained of to Johnson was not affected but constitutional, though doubtless he thought it a mark of high distinction to be afflicted with hypochondria like his moral patron.
Malone too denies altogether 'that he caught from Johnson a portion of his constitutional melancholy.' 'This was not the fact,' writes Malone. 'He had a considerable share of melancholy in his own temperament; and though the general tenour of his life was gay and active, he frequently experienced an unaccountable depression of spirits.'[7] It was natural that Boswell's malady of depression should have become worse towards the end of his life; not only because habits of excess take their revenge upon the constitution, but because these too are likely to grow with the disease. The result of Boswell's sorrows when his wife had died and his ambitions were being thwarted was that he was driven still more to drink.
I have drunk too much wine for some time past. I fly to every mode of agitation.[8]
With grief continually at my heart, I have been endeavouring to seek relief in dissipation and in wine, so that my life for some time past has been unworthy of myself, of you, and of all that is valuable in my character and connections.[9]
It is a pitiable picture this, of a man's decay; grief and self-indulgence reacted upon each other, each of them adding something to the causes of disappointment.
[1:] Malone saw a sheet of the Tour to the Hebrides at the printer's and was so much impressed that he obtained an introduction to Boswell; he helped him in the final stage, both of this book and the Life, and was eventually Boswell's first editor.
[2:] Sir Alexander became Lord Macdonald in 1776 (Boswelliana, p. 140).
[3:] Letters to Temple, p. 246 et seq.
[4:] Letters to Temple, p. 242.
[5:] Letters to Temple, p. 253.
[6:] Letters to Temple, p. 231.