Referring to his resolution to read more constantly, Boswell informs Mr. Temple, on the 19th June, that he has not yet “begun to read,” but that “his resolution is lively.” Lord Kames had asked him to become his biographer, a piece of intelligence which does not again crop up. In a conversation about Dr. Johnson he had disputed with Mr. Hume. The quarrel is thus described:—
“Mr. Hume said he would give me half a crown for every page of his dictionary in which he would not find an absurdity, if I would give him half a crown for every page in which he did find one; he talked so insolently, really, that I calmly determined to be at him; so I repeated, by way of telling that Dr. Johnson could be touched, the admirable passage in your letter, how the Ministry had set him to write in a way that they ‘could not ask even their infidel pensioner Hume to write.’ Upon honour, I did not give the least hint from whom I had the letter. When Hume asked if it was from an American, I said ‘No; it was from an English gentleman.’ ‘Would a gentleman write so?’ said he. In short, Davy was finely punished for his treatment of my revered friend; and he deserved it richly, both for his petulance to so great a character, and for his talking so before me.”
In a letter dated 12th August he informed his reverend correspondent that he had been suffering from his “atrabilious temperament.” In his melancholy he had been strongly impressed by the phrase in Scripture, “Seek ye the Lord while He may be found.” From sleep at night he had awakened “dreading annihilation or being thrown into some horrible state of being.” He proceeds:—
“My promise under the solemn yew I have observed wonderfully, having never infringed it till the other day a very jovial company of us dined at a tavern, and I unwarily exceeded my bottle of old hock; and having once broke over the pale I run wild. But I did not get drunk; I was, however, intoxicated, and very ill next day. I ask your forgiveness, and I shall be more strictly cautious for the future. The drunken manners of this country are very bad.”
The distinction between being intoxicated and drunk is not very obvious, and the allusion by way of defence to the intemperate habits of the country is Boswellian. Amidst his general gloom Boswell experienced comfort in the assurance by Mr. Temple that he was preparing for the press a portion of their correspondence. A specimen was transmitted, and Boswell tendered his advice. He insisted that anonymous authorship would not suit, and suggested that his own name as “James Boswell, Esq.,” should be displayed upon the title-page. Mr. Temple subsequently published selections from his own letters under the title of “Selection of Historical and Political Memoirs.”
About the middle of August Boswell begged Dr. Johnson for a prescription against melancholy. The moralist replied:—
“For the black fumes which rise in your mind I can prescribe nothing but that you disperse them by honest business or innocent pleasure, and by reading, sometimes easy and sometimes serious. Change of place is useful, and I hope your residence at Auchinleck will have many good effects.... Never, my dear sir,” added Dr. Johnson, “do you take it in your head to think that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and esteem. I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety. I hold you, as Hamlet has it, ‘in my heart of hearts,’ and therefore it is little to say that I am, sir, your affectionate, humble servant,
“Sam. Johnson.”
To check his “atrabilious” complaint Boswell did not have recourse to reading. He informed Mr. Temple that since his return from England his reading had been confined to some small treatises on midwifery. On the 2nd September he communicated with Mr. Temple from Auchinleck. He had been there a week, and had experienced an unsupportable distress. Next day being Sunday, he proposed to worship in the parish church, and on Monday to join at Edinburgh his “valuable spouse and dear little children.” To his dissension with his father he refers in characteristic fashion:—
“My father, whom I really both respect and affectionate (if that is a word, for it is a different feeling from that which is expressed by love, which I can say of you from my soul), is so different from me. We divaricate so much, as Dr. Johnson said, that I am often hurt when I dare say he means no harm; and he has a method of treating me which makes me feel myself like a timid boy, which to Boswell (comprehending all that my character does in my own imagination and in that of a wonderful number of mankind) is intolerable. His wife, too, whom in my conscience I cannot condemn for any capital bad quality, is so narrow-minded, and, I don’t know how, so set upon keeping him under her own management, and so suspicious and so sourishly tempered that it requires the utmost exertion of practical philosophy to keep myself quiet. I, however, have done so all this week to admiration; nay, I have appeared good-humoured, but it has cost me drinking a considerable quantity of strong beer to dull my faculties....