From Edinburgh, on the 3rd June, Boswell wrote to Mr. Temple as follows:—
“On my arrival here I had the pleasure to find my wife and two little daughters as well as I could wish; but indeed, my worthy friend, it required some philosophy to bear the change from England to Scotland. The unpleasing tone, the rude familiarity, the barren conversation, of those whom I found here, in comparison with what I had left, really hurt my feelings.... The General Assembly is sitting, and I practise at its bar. There is de facto something low and coarse in such employment, though on paper it is a Court of Supreme Judicature; but guineas must be had.”
“Low and coarse” as Boswell regarded the practice of his profession in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, he acknowledges that he did not perform his part without some misgiving. “Do you know,” he proceeds, “it requires more than ordinary spirit to do what I am to do this very morning; I am to go to the General Assembly and arraign a judgment pronounced last year by Dr. Robertson, John Home, and a good many more of them, and they are to appear on the other side. To speak well, when I despise both the cause and the judges, is difficult; but I believe I shall do so wonderfully. I look forward with aversion to the little dull labours of the Court of Session.”
Besides being disgusted with the Scottish Lord Advocate, Scottish manners, and Scottish courts, ecclesiastical and civil, Boswell was particularly dissatisfied with his father. He had sent him, he writes, “a conciliatory letter, but he fears he is callous.” In dread of the paternal allowance being discontinued, he writes,—
“If Lord Mountstuart would but give me an independency from the King while my father lives, I should be a fine fellow.” He adds, “My promise under the venerable yew has kept me sober.”
Boswell’s habits were not more pleasing to his father than were his professional diligence and domestic economy. In the belief that his son was an incorrigible idler, Lord Auchinleck seriously meditated a withdrawal of his pension. But for his two children, disinheritance might have followed. To Mr. Temple on the 19th of June he wrote thus:—
“My father is most unhappily dissatisfied with me. My wife and I dined with him on Saturday; he did not salute her, though he had not seen her for three months; nor did he so much as ask her how she did, though she is advanced in pregnancy. 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[56] (think how shockingly erroneous!), and wandering, or some such phrase, to London. In vain do I defend myself; even the circumstance that my last jaunt to London did not cost me £20—as I got forty-two guineas in London—does not affect him. How hard it is that I am totally excluded from parental comfort! I have a mind to go to Auchinleck next autumn, and try what living in a mixed stupidity of attention to common objects, and restraint from expressing any of my own feelings, can do with him. I always dread his making some bad settlement.”
Lord Auchinleck had solid grounds for indignation. He allowed his son £300 per annum, besides having provided him with a very expensive education. In the Scottish courts Boswell had abundant employment when he evinced the slightest inclination to attend to it. He had run himself aground; he owed a thousand pounds, which he could not pay, and his creditors were clamorous. Fretting under the unexpected burden which he was expected to sustain, Lord Auchinleck felt disposed to blame his daughter-in-law for encouraging his son’s extravagance, and it is not certain that Boswell took the blame solely upon himself. The worthy judge was at length got over, and Boswell recovered his elasticity. To Mr. Temple on the 12th August he writes as follows:—
“Tell me, my dear Temple, 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? 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 £1,000 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 there see just what attention can produce.”
In allusion to the request that his letters might be preserved, Boswell was assured by Mr. Temple that he too contemplated a publication. Boswell pronounces it “a charming thought.”[57] He refers exultingly to the attention he had lately received from Paoli. “For the last fortnight that I was in London,” he writes, “I lay at his house, and had the command of his coach.... I felt more dignity when I had several servants at my devotion, a large apartment, and the convenience and state of a coach; I recollected that this dignity in London was honourably acquired by my travels abroad, and my pen after I came home, so I could enjoy it with my own approbation; and in the extent and multiplicity of the metropolis other people had not even the materials for finding fault, as my situation was not particularly known.”